Winston Peters and David Seymour clash at public meeting

A public meeting turned sour on Sunday after a clash between New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and ACT leader David Seymour.

Dairy owners were meeting with politicians to ask what their parties could do to keep them safe on the job, however the meeting's organisers found themselves trying to calm Mr Peters down. 

"He's telling you that he's on your side, go back to Epsom, don't come out here to south Auckland and make a fool of yourself," Mr Peters said to Mr Seymour.

As organisers tried to calm the situation down Mr Peters said "I'm giving a speech and I'll give it the way I like, you won't be telling me how I'm doing my speech."

Earlier in the meeting, Mr Seymour had criticised Mr Peters' during his own speech. 

"It's ethnic minorities that are targeted for verbal harassment and worse," he told the audience.

"And every time a political leader stands up or goes on TV like Mr Peters did this morning and attacks a group of people because of who they are, because of their ethnicity, that encourages the dregs of our society to victimise people who look different."

Mr Seymour told Newshub: "He appeared to be devoting almost all of his speech to me, he's clearly not used to people questioning him. But a number of people came up to me afterward and said good on you, someone needed to say it."

"He can impress a crowd but as a couple of people said to me none of us are going to vote for him because he's a racist."

"He's always tried to get away with it, no one's ever called him out explicitly that I'm aware of and that gets under his skin. He got pretty angry - I thought he was going to have a heart attack."

"If someone attacks me like that, he's not going to get away with it," Mr Peters told Newshub.

"He turned it into a personal attack against me, and so I said to them sorry people but when I get bitten by a flea I squash it."

Newshub.