Wellington - Former New Zealand prime minister and diplomat Mike Moore on Thursday launched a blistering attack on the current government led by Helen Clark, the woman who ousted him as leader of the Labour Party.

"New Zealand's governance is in a state of disrepair," said Moore, who led the country briefly in 1990 and headed the World Trade Organization from 1999 to 2002. "It's dysfunctional and the problems systemic."

"It's moving from farce to tragedy," he said, noting that Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who leads the nationalist New Zealand First party, has publicly opposed a free trade pact signed with China this week that Clark hailed as a significant achievement of international importance.

Another minister, Peter Dunne, who leads the United Future party, supports the deal but rejected Clark's invitation to go to Beijing to witness the signing in protest at the Chinese crackdown in Tibet.

"Three parties that have pledged to support the government will vote against the agreement," Moore said of the Green Party, Maori Party and New Zealand First. "The agreement will pass because the opposition [National Party] will correctly support the government."

Moore noted that Peters' English-born deputy, Peter Brown, "continues to rant against migrants" when the majority of New Zealand immigrants come from Britain.

He said the political parties in parliament can no longer perform the "solemn and historic duty of scrutinizing, questioning and challenging each other" because they might have to form a coalition after the general election due later this year.

"This process lacks honour, let alone dignity," he said, criticizing the German electoral system of mixed-member proportional voting, which New Zealand adopted in 1996 and has returned minority governments in the past three elections. (dpa)