New Zealander Of The Year

Still Number One: Five years after his election as New Zealand's 38th Prime Minister, John Key is still New Zealanders’ first choice as leader and his party consistently polls ten clear points ahead of its nearest rival. This would be a remarkable feat under the old first-past-the-post electoral system, it is nothing short of astonishing under a system of proportional representation. Love him or loathe him, John Key remains the indisputable master of New Zealand's political domain.

 

IT IS FITTING that my New Zealander of the Year should be a politician. Not only is politics this columnist’s bread and butter but, like ‘em or loathe ‘em, politicians are the people who affect us most directly. They write the rules of our daily lives. They hold the ring in which we struggle to make a living. In the twenty-first century just about everything we encounter, except the weather, is the product of social organisation. And wherever you find social organisation, there also you will find politics - and politicians.

 

My first thought for New Zealander/Politician of the Year was the new Leader of the Opposition, David Cunliffe.

 

Mr Cunliffe had, after all, begun the year as a disgraced and despised (at least by a majority of his caucus colleagues) back-bencher, and is ending it as his party’s leader. That sort of come-back is, if not unprecedented, then, at least, highly unusual. A great many talented politicians simply would not have bothered to stick around after being treated as shabbily as Labour’s caucus treated Mr Cunliffe.

 

Charles Chauvel, for example, walked away from his political career after being told by the supporters of Mr Cunliffe’s predecessor that his steadfast support for the Member for New Lynn would cost him a seat at any Cabinet Table presided over by David Shearer.

 

In Mr Chauvel’s case, Labour’s (and New Zealand’s) loss was the United Nation’s gain. There can be little doubt that Mr Cunliffe’s highly marketable skills would have been snapped-up just as quickly had he, too, decided that the game of politics was no longer worth the candle.

 

The morale of his supporters certainly flagged following the outrageous treatment meted out to him following the 2012 Labour Party Conference at Ellerslie. Not since the darkest days of Rogernomics in the late-1980s had Labour Party members witnessed such a venomous display of factional back-biting. But the member for New Lynn’s faith in his political destiny never wavered. Throughout it all, Mr Cunliffe conducted himself like one who has seen already the faces of Dame Fortune’s cards - and knows he cannot lose.

 

Runner-Up: David Cunliffe staged a remarkable comeback in 2013, but in his first 100 days as Labour leader failed to capture the electorate's imagination as completely as John Key did between December 2006 and February 2007 .

 

And so it proved. Quite out of the blue Mr Shearer folded his cards, gathered-up what was left of his stake, and left the table. From that point on Mr Cunliffe’s victory was assured. Only the most rank skulduggery could have robbed him of the victor’s crown - and when it came to digging skulls his opponents simply did not know where to sink their spades.

 

But, winning the leadership of the Labour Party is a long way from winning the confidence of the country. To do that one must not only have a story to tell the country, it must also be a story the country is wanting to hear.

 

Now, you might object that Mr Cunliffe has barely been 100 days at the helm of the Labour Party, and that a great many more days than that are required to open the ears of the electors. My answer to that objection would, however, be a blunt as it is bleak: 100 days was all the time Mr Cunliffe had.

 

One year out from an election most voters have already made up their minds. To have any chance at all of changing those minds a new leader has to hit the ground running with a message he knows the electorate is longing to hear.

 

And that brings me to the man who, I believe, must once again step forward to claim the title of New Zealander of the Year.

 

John Key became Leader of the Opposition in November 2006, and by 6 February 2007 he had the country’s full attention. His visit to McGehan Close, a poor street in Labour’s Auckland heartland, marked him out as a National Party politician of a very different sort - a man quite unlike his flinty-faced predecessor, Dr Don Brash. His invitation to take one of the street’s residents - a young girl named Aroha - to the 2007 Waitangi Day celebrations (an invitation she eagerly accepted) only added extra icing to the cake.

 

Seven years on, Mr Key remains New Zealanders’ overwhelming choice as “Preferred Prime Minister”, and his party continues to poll in the high 40s. This would be a remarkable feat under the old first-past-the-post electoral system, it is nothing short of astonishing under a system of proportional representation.

 

Nothing that has happened in 2013: not the GCSB controversy; not the partial privatisation of state assets; not Kim Dotcom; and certainly not David Cunliffe; have been able to make even a sizeable dent in Mr Key’s apparently impregnable political armour.

 

For holding our attention - and our affection - for yet another year, I cannot forebear from naming John Key, New Zealander of the Year.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 31 December 2013.

Charging The Train

Collision Course: Following Charles Chauvel's resignation from Parliament - allegedly after being told that, as an ally of David Cunliffe, he would have no role in a David Shearer-led Labour government - what will the Member for New Lynn do? The Labour Caucus's refusal to promote Cunliffe, its most electable member, to the party leadership offers grim evidence of its political and moral decline. (Photograph by John Chapman/Alamy)

AS LABOUR’S TRAIN rolls on towards 2014, I feel a bit like the bull in the Georgia politician’s story. Describing yet another doomed campaign waged by his liberal opponents in the Senate, the all-powerful leader of the segregationist Southern Caucus, Senator Richard B. Russell Jnr, observed that their position “reminded him of a bull who had charged a locomotive train. That was the bravest bull I ever saw, but I can’t say a lot for its judgement.”

 

I should have known that in championing the leadership credentials of David Cunliffe I was backing a bull over a locomotive.

 

After all, Mr Cunliffe could only boast a Harvard MPA, ministerial experience, a telegenic personality and the ability to string together a coherent English sentence. He was, moreover, the only member of the Labour caucus to have fully grasped the meaning of the Global Financial Crisis. The only Labour MP who understood how few of neoliberalism’s shibboleths remained politically serviceable to the Twenty-first Century Left.

 

There is always one who stands out in any party caucus: a man or woman who, in spite of their faults, is recognised by their colleagues as the only person who can beat the incumbent. Norman Kirk, Rob Muldoon, David Lange, Jim Bolger, Helen Clark, John Key: they may not have been liked by their colleagues; they may even have unseated a leader beloved and respected by the party’s rank-and-file; but they were the ones who could win; and they were the ones chosen.

 

I don’t think it is drawing too long a bow to say that the moral health (not to mention the historical success) of any political party depends upon its caucus’s ability to both recognise and engineer the promotion of the one/s most likely to succeed.

 

The elevation of the woefully inexperienced and chronically inarticulate David Shearer to the Labour leadership revealed a caucus no longer capable of identifying “The One”. Indeed, the very notion of a candidate possessing outstanding leadership qualities is now condemned as both disruptive and demoralising. Anyone promoted on the grounds that they possess superior talent or, God forbid! – charisma – is immediately blackballed by their less talented and charisma-bypassed colleagues.

 

The personality structure best suited to a Labour caucus overpopulated with MPs who owe their parliamentary seats to a high ranking on the Party List is that of the passive-aggressive courtier; the intriguer; the secretive collector of his or her colleagues’ political IOUs.

 

Robust egos and forthright personalities are proving easy meat for such folk.

 

Charles Chauvel, “Champagne Charlie”, that wilful roisterer whose liberal disposition and utterly brilliant legal mind promised a Labour Attorney General and Justice Minister of rare ability and enduring achievement, is merely the latest victim of a Labour caucus which, increasingly, is distinguished by nothing other than its dreary mediocrity.

 

I ask myself: “With Champagne Charlie gone, can the talented Mr Cunliffe be far behind?”

 

New Zealand now faces the dismal prospect of a change of government by default. It is entirely possible that, in twenty months’ time, Mr Key and his National Party, in spite of enjoying a ten percentage point advantage over their nearest political rival – will, nevertheless, lose the 2014 General Election.

 

Replacing him will be a man of whom it can only be said: “He was loathed less than his opponents.” Mr Shearer will enter office not like David Lange – on the updrafts of his own soaring rhetoric. Nor will he possess the menacing mandate of a Rob’s Mob, or even John Key’s “Labour-lite”. Mr Shearer will sit at the head of the Cabinet Table by virtue of simple arithmetic. Because Labour’s Party Vote, plus the Greens’ Party Vote, plus NZ First’s Party Vote, together, add-up to a Prime Minister.

 

The mandate of these three, ideologically distinct, political parties will be impossible for the electorate to discern. Inevitably, New Zealand’s policy direction will default to the usual bureaucratic suspects: Treasury, MFAT and the Ministry for Primary Industries. Their attached ministers are unlikely to cause any trouble. The ambition of courtiers is to climb things – not change things.

 

It is in the nature of bulls to defend their own. Mr Cunliffe’s supporters should, therefore, console themselves with the knowledge that while they lacked the judgement to avoid a head-on collision with Labour’s locomotive, they retained just enough courage for one final, redeeming, charge.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 22 February 2013.