spinofflive
New Zealand’s new leadership team: Bill English, Selina Tusitala Marsh, and Paula Bennett
New Zealand’s new leadership team: Bill English, Selina Tusitala Marsh, and Paula Bennett

PoliticsDecember 12, 2016

Prime minister startles nation by quoting poem: ‘Lead’, by Selina Tusitala Marsh

New Zealand’s new leadership team: Bill English, Selina Tusitala Marsh, and Paula Bennett
New Zealand’s new leadership team: Bill English, Selina Tusitala Marsh, and Paula Bennett

In his first speech after getting the formal tick from his caucus, and ahead of a trip to Government House to be sworn in as prime minister, Bill English has proved his literary credentials by reading a line from a poem. Go poetry. Go English Lit Bill. Here we publish the poem in full.

Prime minister designate Bill English addressed the press alongside his soon-to-be-deputy, Paula Bennett, this morning.

Many will pluck out from his remarks the apparent departure from the position of his predecessor, John Something-or-other, in leaving the door open to a change in the qualifying age for superannuation. But here at the Spinoff, we recognise that easily the most significant part of this historic press conference was his decision to read a line of poetry.

This is what he said: “Last Thursday, after it was apparent that I may succeed in the leadership of the National Party, I went to a women’s leadership conference I’d been booked in to speak at, and there I heard a poem performed, by Selina Tusitala Marsh, in which she said, ‘Lead and dig up the diamonds around you.’ That is our task, together.”

A slight misquote, perhaps, but after some of the disappointment of the last guy, this is a huge fillip. Will English Literature BA (Honours) graduate Bill English, or English Lit Bill as he must henceforth be known, take the culture portfolio? Probably not. But still.

New Zealand's new leadership team: Bill English, Selina Tusitala Marsh, and Paula Bennett
New Zealand’s new leadership team: Bill English, Selina Tusitala Marsh, and Paula Bennett

Acclaimed Auckland-based poet and academic Selina Tusitala Marsh, asked if she had any advice for her new fan and the new PM, offered this: “When you’re trying to decide which line to tow, choose the poetic one!” She added: “You could also ask if he’s bought the book yet.”

Here’s the poem, originally written for Pasifika leaders …

Lead

By Selina Tusitala Marsh

   for BEST Leadership Academy

You’re a leader-in-the-making, you’re making history
Redefining this nation’s brown legacy

Poly-saturated activity
It’s Nafanua graduating from university

And now

In tautua, lead our community
Lead through uniqueness, your diversity

Lead through leaning, lead through learning
Lead through others, lead by earning

Your own way in the world.

Lead in alofa, lead in compassion
Lead in fun – lead in your own fashion

Lead by falling forward when you make a mistake
Lead by giving more than what you take

Lead when your strategy is a forward-looking story
Lead when the task in front of you holds no glory

Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’, let your ‘No’ be ‘No’
Lead and follow in the footsteps of your heroes

Lead by creating out of happy accidents
Lead by taking risks when there’s no precedent

Lead by following the cup-o’-tea trail
Sit, listen, eat and they’ll follow without fail

Lead by digging up diamonds in those around you
Lead when you scale the heights, then plummet to ground zero

Lead with transparency, lead with laughter
Lead in celebration, lead in disaster

Lead with your strengths, lead in honesty
Lead when you see between the lines of policy

And into people’s eyes.

Lead, even in the times you just want to follow
Lead for today, lead for tomorrow

Lead when you want to end all injustice
Lead in the crowd, lead when it’s just us

Lead when you want to revolutionise
When you no longer want to be hypnotised

By what everybody else says is right
Lead when you have your vision in sight

Lead from the front, lead from behind
Lead from the middle, wherever you find

Your standing place.

In the workplace, in the home
Lead when everyone’s watching, and when you’re alone

Lead with an eye on your dream, an eye on the rest
Lead when you can look at yourself and assess

Your weaknesses and strengths with clarity
Remembering humility and charity

Lead when you’re brave enough to ask different questions
And when the answers aren’t good enough, to raise objections

Lead and give yourself permission to fail
Lead and take the less-often-walked trail

Lead and never forget to be kind
Lead with the heart bound up with the mind

Lead with a child’s curiosity
Lead with the end goal of unity

Lead with national excellence and innovation
Lead through intimate conversation

Lead with courage and determination
Even in the face of discrimination – Lead.

Lead with balance, a sense of fair play
Lead to help others lead in this way

Lead when you learn your failures are a test
Lead as you learn to lead from the best

Today we celebrate Pacific success
Now, Lead.


Reproduced with permission from Dark Sparring (AUP, 2013). Music by Tim Page

Keep going!
Bill English poses with a copy of his budget speech during the printing of the budget on May 24, 2016. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Bill English poses with a copy of his budget speech during the printing of the budget on May 24, 2016. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

PoliticsDecember 9, 2016

Is Bill English really the most boring man in New Zealand? A Spinoff investigation into the new PM

Bill English poses with a copy of his budget speech during the printing of the budget on May 24, 2016. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Bill English poses with a copy of his budget speech during the printing of the budget on May 24, 2016. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Superstar of breakfast radio, All Black captain and owner of a world-class duck face, John Key is one hell of a hard act to follow. But is the PM-designate really that boring? Toby Manhire crushes forever the Dull Bill English myth.

Guyon Espiner: Are you excited?

Rt Hon Bill English (most unexcited voice in history of world): Yes. I am.

Espiner: That’s good.

A few minutes later, Guyon Espiner posed the big question on the nation’s lips …

Espiner: Are you boring?

English: No, I’m not, but talking about GDP all the time can tend to give people that impression. I like to think I’m steady, Guyon.

She’s a hard road to find the perfect leader to follow the most laid-back-entertainer prime minister the country has ever seen.

National MPs who have honed their parliamentary craft speaking nothing but Key patois now must prepare to learn – and I’d like to apologise for this, but I’ve started so I’ll finish – English as a second language.

And that language, it has to be said, is kind of dry. The um-ah-ah-um filler, for example, bears an uncanny resemblance to the sound of a corpse being dragged down a gravel path.

But for all that, the “Boring Bill English” refrain seems just too easy. Surely there is more going on.

Today the Spinoff fearlessly bucks the “boring” bores, and unearths evidence that Bill English may not be that boring after all.

He has fathered six children

And that is restrained compared to his parents, who had 12.

He once read a poem aloud in parliament

Including the lines “I suckled you / with potent milk” (yes, it was a David Cunliffe work).

He once got beaten up in a boxing bout

Or beaten, anyway, by an old friend of his. He was nicknamed “Raging Bill”.

ragingbillsmall

He’s a grinder.

In a North and South interview after Key assumed the prime ministership, English said, “I’m a stayer, he’s a sprinter. I grind away, John just bounces from one cloud to another.” He caught a bit of flak for that, but he’s proved a stayer after all, outlasting that cloud-bouncing show pony.

Forgiveness, mercy, sinfulness, worship

Bill English is a Catholic, and say what you like about Catholicism, it aint boring. He once said he likes to spend at least an hour a week in Mass “hearing language like forgiveness, mercy, sinfulness, worship – none of which you hear about in day-to-day political life”. He has refused in the past to say whether he believes in transubstantiation, the virgin birth or the trinity.

He was a member of the Brat Pack

Alongside the likes of  Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald, he starred in a number of seminal coming-of-age films in 80s.

Update: Turns out the Brat Pack he was a member of was alongside the likes of once-young National MPs Tony Ryall, Roger Sowry and Nick Smith, who arrived in parliament in 1990, and starred in at least one homage to an earlier MP posse.

homage

(By the way, of all those actors listed above, only Molly R is younger than Bill E.)

He actually answers questions

One former current affairs producer told me not that long ago that while most politicians were infuriating in their constant evasions, he could listen to Bill English all day, simply because he engaged with the questions he was asked.

He has coached under-7 grade rugby

Mike Hosking really seems to hate him

As in kind of viscerally. I mean, the Hosk is obviously going through the stages, but still that’s exciting.

He and Cameron Slater hate each other

The man who runs the Whale Oil website – anyone know if it’s still going? – used to have a good text-centred relationship with his m8 John Key, but that’s not especially likely with Bill. “I don’t like the guy,” he said, devastatingly, during the Dirty Politics flamenco.

His mind was corrupted at Victoria University

In what may have been an enrolment administrative error, he studied English (honours).

What else?

Um. He likes a mug of Milo!

So there’s that.

And there’s the bulldog home, obviously


Erm, he was integral in the development of the computer mouse.

bill-mouse

He has won acclaim as a jazz drummer.

And he played Joel in the American comedy television show Cavemen

bill-cave

Which was named among the “25 least funny sitcoms of all time

Anyway, what’s so wrong with a bit of boring?

OK so maybe Bill English is kind of boring.

But is that such a terrible thing?

After the palpitations of Donald Trump, of Brexit, of our last Peak Cray election, after eight years of bish-bosh honk-honk how’s-your-father leadership, isn’t a bit of boring welcome medicine? If English vs Little scores low on the comedy-revue scale and high on policy debate, shouldn’t we celebrate?

Yes, we should. But first, stockpile.

nodoz

But wait there's more!