Trade minister Todd McClay came back from India with what looks like a diplomatic hamper. Wooden elephants, silver peacocks, brass ornaments, coffee, chocolates, wine.

Deputy prime minister and foreign minister Winston Peters came back with one thing. A bottle of Indri whisky.

As per rules, ministers and MPs are required to declare all gifts they receive on official overseas trips that cost more than $500 in New Zealand. 

The presents our ministers received last year are contained in the Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests submitted to Parliament last week.

McClay’s list, declared in that register, runs like a guided tour through a curated version of India. Not one India, but several at once. Craft India, ceremonial India, export India, hospitality India.

The kind of gifting that doesn’t choose a single message because it wants to send all of them. It is India as presentation layer.

Two wooden elephants, silver peacock artwork, two silver elephants, Indian horn, gold decorative plate, brass elephant, artisanal scarf, Indian regional coffee, flowers, wine and chocolates.

Peters, by contrast, wasn't spoilt with any of that layering. His disclosure is rather brief: 'Bottle of Indri whisky — Government of the Republic of India'.

No basket. No supporting cast. No decorative animals arranged for effect. Just the bottle.

Indri itself matters here, even if no one says so in the register. It is part of India’s quiet repositioning in global spirits. A single malt from a country long associated with volume rather than premiumisation. 

Still, the contrast is not really about whisky. It is about how different versions of the same country get handed out depending on who is standing in front of it.

By the time Winston Peters arrived in New Delhi for his May 29-30 trip last year, it was already his third visit to India as deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Negotiations for a free trade agreement were underway.

It followed earlier trips in February 2020 and March 2024. At that point, countries probably stop giving you introductory elephants.

On that visit, India's foreign minister Dr S. Jaishankar held bilateral discussions with him on May 29. The talks covered the full span of the relationship. Trade and economy, defence and security, traditional medicine, sports, education, and people-to-people ties.

Both sides also exchanged views on regional and global issues, and reaffirmed a shared commitment to a free, open, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific. 

Todd McClay’s engagement with India, meanwhile, has been more continuous than episodic. The trade minister has visited India eight times since the election.

Multiple visits across March, May and November 2025, alongside repeated meetings with Indian trade counterparts. But the number of visits is not really the point. The point is what travels back.

India is not the only country juggling with the gifting game. The pecuniary register, when you read it over time, starts to resemble a parallel travelogue. One written not by diplomats, but by the things they bring home.

Last year, Mongolia gave Winston Peters a horse. Not a model. Not a sculpture. A horse that the foreign minister couldn't bring back home. It stayed in Mangolia, where it's being looked after till it's available to a New Zealand dignitary on their next visit.

McClay’s declared gifts from other countries last year follow a similar grammar. It is less about individual items than about the style of national self-expression being handed over.

From Saudi Arabia, he received decorative coffee sets, Arabian coffee, traditional incense and ceremonial burners, wooden masks and dates among others.

From Singapore, the trade minister received wine, luggage tags, passport holders, porcelain trays, pen holders. Thailand was more nuanced. McClay returned with silver cufflinks, decorative plates, cultural masks, watercolour portraits, wine, and even pad Thai.

Each country, in its own way, is doing interpretation work on the same question. What does this person respond to?

At some point, Winston Peters seems to have settled into a category. In 2019, Cuban ambassador Edgardo Valdes Lopez gifted him a box of Cohiba Behike cigars. They’re considered the Bentley of cigars.

As far as India's gifts last year go, McClay brought back the version meant to be toured. Peters gets the version meant to be understood quickly.

PS: The cabinet manual permits ministers to keep the expensive gifts with the prime minister's permission. It's not clear if Peters ever got a pour of that Indri.