Hawkes Bay Tribune

I have only met John Key once. He was either standing for parliament or recently elected. I can’t remember. A prominent television newsreader, whom we were helping to add ‘interviewer’ to his range of skills, had invited him along as a guest. It was usual for trainee interviewers to rope in politicians as interview subjects. The would-be interviewers could practise their interrogation skills and the politicians could practise fending them off.

We knew little or nothing about Key at the time, so the impressions we had of him were first impressions which, they say, are the most lasting. Key was easy, engaging, pleasant, a man seemingly comfortable in his own skin and a good listener. If he was indeed going places, he displayed neither arrogance nor self-importance. You would have said, as the country has been saying for two years now, that he was ‘a nice bloke’. We may have given him a couple of tips on how to improve his on-camera performance, but not enough to constitute disloyalty to our #1 client.

I was reminded of this occasion by John Armstrong’s column in the Weekend Herald,  ‘Politician of the year: John Key’, sub-headed ‘Get used to it, Labour, he’s the man the country wants in charge’.

The column was as much a critique of Labour and its leader Phil Goff as it was  a paean of praise for the Prime Minister.

The left dismisses the most popular Prime Minister in New Zealand’s recent political history as Smile and Wave John Key, Do Nothing John Key and Lucky John Key. The left’s fatal error has been to constantly underrate Key in terms of ability and the fact that though he is of centre-right disposition, he is firmly at the moderate end of that broad spectrum. Key does not fit the left’s mould, which assumes or even dictates that someone as wealthy as him must be an acolyte of the old New Right. In short, Key’s critics on the left still don’t get it. Maybe the Mana byelection will remove a few scales from a few eyes. It should. That result was a gruesome preview of the slaughter that may well be inflicted on Labour at the end of next year.

Armstrong went on to list Key’s achievements and Goff’s failings.

But has Key been as good a Prime Minister and Goff as bad a Leader of the Opposition as Armstrong – whom I regard as our most astute political writer –  suggests?

Goff, it must be remembered, faces the same problem as every other Leader of the Opposition – he has to work much harder to get coverage than the PM or even a middle-ranked Cabinet Minister. Governments act, oppositions react. And generally the reaction is carping and negative. Put slightly differently, governments do, oppositions just talk.

The advantage of being in power is never more evident than during times of national crisis. Though it may seem cynical to say so, disasters, handled well, are a boon to politicians in power, while their opposition counterparts are largely sidelined. Who wants to talk to Phil Goff about the Canterbury earthquake or the Pike River mining disaster? He can do nothing  about either beyond expressing his concern and sympathy for the victims and their families.  Key, it must be said, handled the two events superbly, both in terms of being there and offering his personal and his government’s support. Goff, through no fault of his own, was conspicuous by his absence from the media coverage. If anyone doubts the role which a disaster can play in shaping a political leader’s fortunes, they need look no further than Jim Anderton and Bob Parker.   Read the rest of this entry »

Picture: Mark Mitchell/NZ Herald

‘Bugger policies! Bugger Leadership! This really works. (Note to self: Must be careful not to pat kids from Thailand, Saudi Arabia and some Muslim countries on the head. Apparently they think it could damage their souls.  Not sure about Maori and PI kids. Think I heard something about the head being tapu.  Better check with Hone. In the meantime, maybe just pat Pakeha kids on the head. Shake everyone else’s hand. Pity though. Still, better not to offend anyone. So, what was it again? Just pat Pakeha. Just pat Pakeha.)’ 

“Viewed through a parliamentary prism, there is nothing overtly brilliant about the man. He lacks the personal charisma of a Rob Muldoon or a David Lange. He does not have the after-hours bonhomie of a Winston Peters nor the intellectual menace of a Helen Clark.

“Indeed there is a touch of the Chauncey Gardner about him – the Peter Sellars gardener that charmed everyone in the classic movie satire Being There.

“Others graft their aims and aspirations on to the benign countenance of the prime minister and see themselves reflected back.

“This is the first prime minister who is actually liked. Not respected nor admired nor feared. Liked. You would have to go back to Labour’s Walter Nash to find another prime minister so routinely inoffensive.”

Michael Laws in today’s Sunday Star Times

Outed! Dr Key tries to hide stethoscope, but white coat isdead giveaway!

Fortunately, the PM will not have to make that choice. With characteristic modesty he has been hiding his light under a bushel, his stethoscope under a bed sheet. He is a member of a much more respectable profession than foreign exchange trader. He is a doctor, the Rt. Hon. Dr. John Key MD, FRCS, FRCPsych, MP, PM (NZ).

Dr Key’s special field is the little-known ‘Retrospective Diagnosis’.  Still in its infancy, Retrospective Diagnosis has the distinct advantage over more traditional forms of diagnosis that it does not require the patient to make the burdensome journey to the doctor’s surgery or to hospital. No actual examination is required.

The sick person, or a relative or friend, if the sick person is unable to speak, simply rings the surgery and asks to speak to the doctor. Since there are no patients waiting in the surgery to see him, the doctor will usually be free to take the call. Here is a transcript of a classic Retrospective Diagnosis.  Read the rest of this entry »

In what can only be described as an egregious piece of bloody cheek, the $50 million man, our Prime Minister John Key, has told those who can expect to be better off by between 85c and $5 a week after Thursday’s budget,  that they should not be envious of the rich because the rich are crucial to the economy.

‘We can be envious about these things but without those people in our economy all the rest of us will either have less people paying tax or fundamentally less services that they provide… But those who pay the top personal rate fit into some core and critical categories for our economy. They include doctors, entrepreneurs often, scientists, engineers, lawyers, accountants, school principals, nurses…’

This will come as distressing news to the nation’s wage and salary earners, whose median annual income is $30,200 but who may nonetheless have considered themselves as fitting into ‘some core and critical category for our economy’. They now know better. Read the rest of this entry »

Pic: NZPA

Pic: Maggie Tait

Pic: Maggie Tait

 More than 20 years ago Judy and I ran a 2-day media training seminar for 150 business executives in Wellington.  The final session took the form of a panel discussion, which included former Prime Minister Rob Muldoon. During the discussion Sir Robert referred to the diffiiculty cabinet ministers often faced in responding to what he called ‘television’s forceful visual images’.

From memory, he used the example of an elderly woman complaining about the inadequacy of the pension. The pleasant looking woman is interviewed in her little pensioner flat. She is seated in an armchair with a blanket around her shoulders. A raggedy looking moggy is asleep in her lap. She complains of the cold and of not being able to afford to keep a heater running in the flat. She often stays in bed to keep warm. It’s impossible for her to afford anything but the barest necessities. She regards a banana once a week as a luxury. She’d love to get out a bit more, but could not possibly afford the expense of owning a car. It’s heartrending stuff and there’s more, much more.

After the film has been shown, the Minister of Social Welfare is interviewed in the television studio. He expresses sympathy for the elderly woman and outlines a number of services and special benefits that are available to someone in her situation. But he might as well not bother. His coolly rational responses, delivered in the hostile and sterile atmosphere of the television studio, cannot match the emotionally charged scene which the viewer has just watched. Television’s ‘forceful visual images’ almost invariably take the day.  Read the rest of this entry »

I assume Phil Goff would like to be Prime Minister of New Zealand. He has every reason to think he deserves the job. He’s served a lengthy apprenticeship, having come into Parliament in 1981, the same year as Helen Clark. And he’s had a distinguished career as an MP and Cabinet Minister. He’s highly intelligent and well-informed on a whole range of portfolios from Justice to Foreign Affairs. And he comes from good Labour stock.

Goff and his party are languishing in the polls at the moment, but their figures are actually better than Helen Clark’s and Labour’s were in early-mid 1996. Both the party and its leader then looked like dog-tucker. In my book, Helen, Portrait of a Prime Minister, she takes up the story:  Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Herald makes interesting reading for anyone who thinks that, despite his Wall Street millions, John Key’s state house background makes him more sympathetic to those on lower incomes. GST is to rise by up to 2.5%. Such an increase disproportionately penalises those at the bottom of the economic heap – lower income earners and beneficiaries – since a much greater proportion of their income is spent on essential items such as food, power and rent. They are to be compensated by an unspecified decrease in personal taxation and an unspecified increase in benefits and Working for Families.

On last night’s Campbell Live, the Prime Minister gave Campbell a guarantee that lower income earners or beneficiaries would be no worse off after the changes in the budget. ‘No worse off’, but not necessarily ‘any better off’. Middle and higher income earners, on the other hand,  will of course be better off as a result of any decrease in income tax, since that is an economic truism. So, in a nutshell, the rich will get richer and the poor stay where they are, which in real terms means ‘go backwards’. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Michael Field

Recently I bumped into Paul Henry having coffee with his daughter in trendy Herne Bay. He’s really very nice when you meet him in person off the box. Or maybe it was the civilising presence of his very nice daughter.

Anyway, we got to talking politics, as you do. He was enthusing about John Key whom he’d interviewed that morning. ‘The thing about him,’ he said, ‘is that he just answers the question. You ask him a question and he just answers it. ‘

I’d formed precisely the same impression watching Key on television. He seems natural, unaffected, nice. There’s no sense of the wheels going round in his head as he searches for a clever, stay-out-of-trouble answer. Nothing obviously  Machiavellian. No evident side. ‘He just answers the question.’

Read the rest of this entry »