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twenty16

PoliticsDecember 16, 2016

2016 in politics: the champs and the flops

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After a political year in which New Zealand saved its most surprising moment till the very end, the Spinoff assembles a pantheon of 21 wise owls to pick out their winners and losers

Following the surprise John Key resignation and ahead of Bill English’s first cabinet reshuffle, we asked: Who would you rank as the best performing individuals in politics for 2016, and who would you rank as the worst performing?

Next week: our posse assess the performance of the parties, how they’d characterise 2016 in a sentence, and what to expect in 2017.

Shamubeel Eaqub

Champs

1. John Key

Maintained extraordinary popularity and left on a high.

2. Paula Bennett

Making deputy PM is phenomenal success.

3. Winston Peters

Somehow stays relevant to NZ politics and voters. Always the same dog whistles and always works!

Flops

1. Nick Smith

Housing is a complete and utter disaster and has gotten much worse under his watch.

2. Victoria Crone

Failed to use the mighty National Party machinery to win the Auckland mayoralty.

3. Sam Lotu-Iiga

Botched the corrections portfolio and had to fall on his sword.

Shamubeel Eaqub is a bullshit-eviscerating economist

Graeme Edgeler

Champs

1. John Key

I tried to come up with an clever or unique answer, but failed. Going out on top. His failure to sack Murray McCully for misleading cabinet to obtain millions of dollars for Saudi Sheep farming is the only major blemish on his political year.

2. Angela Merkel

Will be the first woman to hold the position of leader of the free world when her promotion takes effect in January.

3. Chris Bishop

He’s had a good year, although perhaps isn’t quite among the three best-performing individuals in politics. I’m putting him here anyway because he once asked me for suggestions for members’ bill, and the first new idea I suggested to him got drawn from the ballot and passed its first reading last week.

Flops

1. Nuk Korako

He probably didn’t draft the infamous “lost luggage” bill, but he could at least have read it before introducing it.

2. Kyle Lockwood’s Blue and Black Silver Fern Flag

A long-popular alternative to the New Zealand Flag, but not nearly popular enough. Was that really this year?

3. David Cunliffe

I don’t know why I still follow DC on twitter, but he has long outstayed his welcome and his relevance.

Graeme Edgeler is a lawyer, blogger and check on the executive

Emma Espiner

Champs

1. John Key

The only PM to leave office on his own terms, still remarkably popular and without having destroyed his party in the process.

2. Marama Fox

Established as a dexterous media performer and authentic leader with real heart and energy.

3. Jenny Salesa

Not flashy or headline grabbing but the only politician I’ve heard mentioned by a wide range of people in Auckland as someone who “gets stuff done”.

Flops

I don’t have the heart to single out three individuals. It’s unfashionable to say but they all work bloody hard and try their best. Frankly I’m so over 2016 that I just can’t be mean. Even to a politician.

Emma Espiner is a medical student, mother and social commentator

Laila Harré

Champs

1. Nicola Sturgeon

Proving the value of long lasting and evolving, institutionalised political movements, and a clarity of voice and vision. A huge influence on my decision to back Labour.

2. Helen Kelly

Especially in relation to drug law reform.

3. Michael Wood(house)

On the basis that people should be assessed here on how well they did their own job. Michael Woodhouse for responding to the call for prohibition on zero hours contracts, Michael Wood for perfect pitch and a stunning result.

Flops

1. The TPPA and all who sailed in her

2. The top brass of the flag referendum

(I thought my support for change was unassailable, until I voted for the status quo.)

3. The ones on Bill’s dismissal list

Laila Harré is a former Alliance MP turned restaurateur who has just signed up to the Labour Party

Bronwyn Hayward

Champs

1. Helen Kelly

In the year of the anti-politician, my best performing individuals in politics are New Zealanders who made a significant impact, inspiring others on issues they care about. No matter what you think about Helen Kelly’s politics, she inspired respect, was transparent about her values and campaigned to make New Zealand a more inclusive, fairer place, right to her untimely death.

2. Hurimoana Dennis

Chairman of Te Puea Memorial Marae in Mangere Bridge, south Auckland, which provided emergency accommodation for 56 families between May and July this year, Dennis’s efforts managed to change a seemingly impossibly negative NZ conversation about emergency housing, into practical action. He was positive and upfront in the face of a leak from Minister Bennett’s office about a court case he faced, and won over a distracted and fairly sceptical media

3. Lan Pham

Another little known individual who came from nowhere to make a big difference on issues she cares about. Creating a Facebook video diary from remote Raoul Island with a sincere message about Canterbury water quality, she campaigned as a fresh water ecologist and won 55,000 votes to gain a seat on Ecan, which is nearly 4 times the number of votes the NZ Act party won in the 2014 General Election. Since then, with virtually no media coverage she has motivated significant numbers of Cantabrians to go to key meetings and is helping bring decision making into the sunlight after years of no regional government elections.

Flops

1. Judith Collins

2. David Seymour

16,600 party votes, in total, and how many thousand dollars later in charter schools? Is that why he is in politics? To privatise New Zealand’s education system for the government?

3. Tim Groser

He resigned in December 2015 from climate and trade but his legacy has cast a long shadow over 2016. NZ is effectively doing less than it has in the past reducing green house gasses and while TPP was derailed by Trump, Grocer failed to win New Zealanders hearts and minds about how new trade regulations could secure their employment, safety or future.

Bronwyn Hayward is associate professor in political science at the University of Canterbury

Tau Henare

Champs

1. Bill English

2. John Key

3. James Shaw

Flops

1. Most of the Labour caucus

2. The media team at parliament, it’s been crap reporting

3. NZ First

Tau Henare is a former National and NZ First MP and troublemaker

Bernard Hickey

Champs

1. Donald Trump

2. Nigel Farage

3. Winston Peters

Flops

1. Hillary Clinton

2. David Cameron

3. Sam Lotu-liga

Bernard Hickey is the editor of Hive News

Joshua Hitchcock

Champs

1. Paula Bennett

From solo mum to deputy prime minister is an inspiring tale and the first Māori women to hold the role to boot.

2. Marama Fox

Firebrand Māori Party MP, she has been a breath of fresh air in Māori politics this year.

3. Andrew Judd

Stood up to racism in Taranaki. Lost his job as a result but a principled stand gained the respect of local Iwi.

Flops

1. Andrew Little

When you are polling 25% going into election year something has gone wrong.

2. The political right in Auckland

Trounced in the mayoral elections, trounced in the Mount Roskill byelection.

3. Parmjeet Parmar

Needs to go. Alongside whoever has been selecting National’s byelection candidates.

Joshua Hitchcock is a writer and Head of Finance and Operations at Hubbub.net

Stephen Jacobi

Champs

1. John Key

Nothing in his (political) life became him like leaving it.

2. Phil Goff

Veni, vidi, vici.

3. Todd McClay

This man actually believes in trade, give him a cheer!

Flops

1. Winston Peters

First man into Pike

2. Phil Twyford

Knows a Chinese name when he hears one.

3. Penny Bright

One-time mayoral candidate (please God …)

Stephen Jacobi is a former diplomat, policy adviser, and trade advocate

Nicola Kean

Champs

1. Bill English

Who’d have guessed he’d be PM by the end of the year?

2. Annette King and Phil Twyford

I couldn’t choose between the two, so I picked both. But I’ve placed them for the same reason: a year’s worth of chipping away at the government’s record in health and housing. King vs Coleman in Question Time was appointment viewing.

3. Publicly funded journalism

I’m obviously slightly biased, but you can’t deny the impact it’s had this year. Think about that Kim Hill interview with Anne Tolley a few weeks ago (in fact Susie Ferguson, Guyon Espiner, and the rest of the Morning Report team have been on fire this year), The Hui, Lisa Owen every damn week on The Nation, or RNZ’s Benedict Collins’ dogged work on the HNZ/meth scandal. Closest to my heart is the Mike Wesley-Smith’s agenda-setting story on homelessness from May on The Nation.

Flops

1. All the people who told me Trump wouldn’t win

Especially you, Nate Silver. I trusted you.

2. Paula Bennett

This is likely to be an unpopular call now she’s deputy PM, but let’s not forget her performance in the social housing portfolio this year. Caught on the hop by the homelessness story and had little to offer but piecemeal responses.

3. Nick Smith

The “million dollar” Housing Minister and architect of the Kermadecs snafu.

Nicola Kean is producer on TV3’s The Nation

Annabelle Lee

Champs

1. Kelvin Davis

For his unrelenting commitment to addressing family violence and keeping Corrections honest

2. Winston Peters

For his wonderful head of hair, for his remarkable ability to feign outrage and righteousness in equal parts and for being real good at politicking and stuff

3. Tukoroirangi Morgan

The new Māori Party President for making them appear relevant again when they looked set to disappear into minority coalition partner oblivion..

Flops

1. Paula Bennett

For failing to demonstrate authentic leadership by fronting up and taking part in any challenging interviews about the issues in her portfolios.

2. Anne Tolley

CYFS, nuff said.

3. Nick Smith

Housing, Kermadecs: is there nothing this man can’t balls up?

Annabelle Lee is executive producer on TV3’s The Hui and the cleverest person on the Spinoff’s political podcast

Laura O’Connell Rapira

Champs

1. Tukoroirangi Morgan

For making Māori politics great again

2. Penny Hulse

For her perseverance with the Unitary Plan, and her pronunciation of the word “mayor”

3. Chlöe Swarbrick

For surprising everyone (see what I did there? I put her in third.)

Flops

1. The TPPA

2. Lockwood Flag #1

3. Lockwood Flag #2

Laura O’Connell is ‎director of campaigns at ‎ActionStation

Claire Robinson

Champs

1. Bill English

2. James Shaw

3. David Seymour

Flops

1. Brett Hudson

2. Ian McKelvie

3. Stuart Smith

Never heard of them before I looked down the list of MPs today. Who are they and what have they done?

Claire Robinson is pro vice-chancellor, Toi Rauwharangi College of Creative Art, Massey University

David Slack

Champs

1. Chlöe Swarbrick

2. Phil Goff

3. Michael Wood

Flops

1. Nick Smith

2. Murray McCully

3. Parmjeet Parmar

David Slack is a writer and broadcaster

Tainui Stephens

Champs

1. Te Ururoa Flavell

2. Jacinda Adern

3. Bill English

Flops

1. Gerry Brownlee

2. Murray McCully

3. Mikefuckinghosking

Tainui Stephens is a film and TV producer and presenter

Ben Thomas

1. Bill English

The new champ. A thoughtful and very competent politician who has already showed more steel rejuvenating cabinet than was expected. Discussions of John Key’s legacy mainly focused on the achievements and leadership of his ministers Chris Finlayson (Māori relationships, intelligence reform), Gerry Brownlee (Christchurch rebuild) and English, the social and economic policy architect.

2. Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox

Showed real backbone over the Kermadecs, staring down the government to protect iwi consultation, and the whanau ora approach now looks like it will be a blueprint for future initiatives in wider government programmes. The two leaders have real chemistry as a double-act, recalling the heady early days of the party in 2005.

3. Amy Adams

John Key, private resident of Hawaii, was sometimes criticised during his time in public life for an awkward silence on matters affecting women. Amy Adams has taken a very hands-on approach as justice minister to domestic abuse issues. Only geography probably prevented her from becoming deputy prime minister.

Flops

1. Nick Smith

If Bill English is a humble farm boy, then Nick Smith is his Old Yeller. A full 33% of John Key’s regrets on leaving office was the failure to secure a Kermadecs Marine Reserve – as he had promised the United Nations last year – which was due entirely to Smith’s myopic bungling with Māori, a recurring theme of his latest tenure as minister. Hardworking and still a great electorate MP, but at ministerial level the equivalent of the Simpsons’ scene where Homer manages to set cereal alight by pouring milk on it.

2. Murray McCully

Bungled New Zealand’s moment in the spotlight at the UN, with New Zealand initiating and chairing a debate on Syria which ended in a superpower meltdown and US-Russian acrimony. High point was being found not guilty of criminal corruption by the Auditor General. Leaving in 2017.

3. We, the media consumers who encouraged reporting on the Colin Craig defamation trial

In this way, just like the named parties to the case, we were also both villains and victims.

Ben Thomas is a journalist turned political adviser turned PR hack at Exceltium and the cleverest person on the Spinoff’s political podcast

Andrea Vance

Champs

1. The Trump-Putin ticket

And God help us all.

2. Bill English

Books in healthy shape, and the top job. It’s his Second Coming.

3. Marama Fox

The Māori Party finally has a little bit of fire in the belly. Shame it had to be at the expense of the Kermadec Sanctuary.

Flops

1. Andrew Little

He can’t shift those polls because he’s not lifting performance.

2. Hillary Clinton

Thanks Hillary.

3. Pollsters

We’d better off with tarot card readers.

Andrea Vance is a political reporter for TVNZ news

Tim Watkin

Champs

1. John Key

For perfectly executing the coup against himself, and Bill English, the little engine who finally did.

2. Winston Peters

Who starts an election year with stronger polls than ever.

3. Michael Wood

For reminding everyone that all politics is local.

Flops

1. Paula Bennett

Ended up promoted, but has overseen a rising level homelessness with panic and no solutions

2. Murray McCully

For the “significant shortcomings” revealed in the Saudi Sheep deal, which by any decent standard would have seen him sacked.

3. Labour’s front bench

Who still haven’t done their number one job – look like a government-in-waiting

Tim Watkin is executive producer of podcasts and series and bloglord at Pundit

Jamie Whyte

Champs

1. Bill English

Prime minister!

2. John Key

Smooth exit while riding high.

3. Chlöe Swarbrick

From out of nowhere, she is now the face of youth in politics.

Flops

1. Murray McCully

Smelly sheep deal.

2. Colin Craig

Just keeps digging.

3. Victoria Crone

Great right hope, but Xero success.

Jamie Whyte is a writer and former ACT Party leader

Guy Williams

Champs

1. Winston Peters?

It’s been a bleak year … He’s positioning himself as New Zealand’s Trump.

2. Julie Anne Genter

I really like her but I’m biased/blinded cause I’ve met her personally. COOL BRAG!

3. Phil Goff/ Chlöe Swarbrick

Flops

1. Andrew Little.

He’s holding his cards so close to his chest it’s hard to notice that he’s playing!

2. Paula Bennett

Obviously becoming deputy PM has been great but her handling of the housing crisis has been horrific and who gets shown up by Jack Tame!? Amazing effort!

3. David Cunliffe and David Shearer

When the going gets tough… quit!

Guy Williams is a tall comedian, broadcaster and writer

Simon Wilson

Champs

1. John Key

Kept National ridiculously popular, left on his own terms and didn’t even get criticised for abandoning his party: how did he do that?

2. Marama Fox

One of only three MPs in parliament this year with the natural attributes of great leadership – Key and Winston Peters the other two. Includes singing, obviously. And now the big boys “on her side” are going to cut her into little pieces.

3. Chris Finlayson

The treaty settlements process rolls on extremely successfully, despite Don Brash’s absurd best efforts, and he’s even stayed good humoured about Ngapuhi – in public at least.

Flops

1. Nick Smith

The cretin who wrecked Auckland. OK, not all his fault, but more his than any other’s. Is there nobody who will save us his block-headedness?

2. Murray McCully

The Saudi sheep deal took us further down a dirty road to corruption than any other political scandal in recent memory. Although, arguably, the fact he is not sitting in the corner tarred and feathered with a big “disgraceful” sign round his neck makes him a sort of champ…).

3. Parmjeet Parmar

Simon Wilson is a writer and former editor of Metro

Keep going!
john-key-four

PoliticsDecember 16, 2016

The four John Keys you meet when he governs your country

john-key-four

Who was Prime Minister John Key? A lovably uncool dad, goofing off on the breakfast TV couch? A proudly vicious parliamentarian, sticking the knife in at Question Time? A political genius with an uncanny knack for understanding voters better than they did themselves? Or a cautious conservative who avoided the real issues? Danyl Mclauchlan picks apart the man who, even when he lost, just kept on winning.

“Buy the rumour, sell the fact.” – old stockbroker’s adage.

Back in 1998 I lived in London. One summer evening I was eating dinner with a friend at a restaurant in Soho. It was late, but still light, and we sat outside on a balcony looking down on one of the narrow streets, lined with bars and restaurants and ad agencies, and after we’d finished eating my friend pointed at a café down the road and across from us and said, ‘Phil’ – a mutual and very wealthy acquaintance who worked at the same merchant bank as my friend – ‘has just bought that business.’

I looked at the café. The building was quite shoddy and run down; the café itself looked very unfashionable; there was a rainbow flag above the doorway. None of these were qualities I associated with Phil. I asked, ‘Why on earth has he bought a gay cafe?’

‘It makes sense,’ my friend replied. ‘The business probably brings in revenue of about fifty thousand per annum. Phil can borrow two to four million pounds against that and invest it and clear a profit of several hundred thousand a year.’

This explanation confused me at the time and it still confuses me now, and it is possible I have mis-remembered the details. My point is this: that was the first moment I realised that I didn’t really understand money. I’d been earning it and spending it for a while, and I had a vague intuition that people who worked in banks and other financial institutions could do complicated things with money, but the actual money itself seemed pretty simple.

But it wasn’t. When I stopped and thought about it I realised I had no idea what money even was. The more I learned about it – subsequent to that night – the more I realised that it functioned in ways that were complex and deeply counterintuitive, and there were people who understood that complexity and seemed to be able to leverage that knowledge to make more money in ways that defied basic common sense.

Here’s John Key – who was also working in London at the time, albeit at a much more lavishly remunerated level, as global head of FX trading for Merrill Lynch – talking about money and value and common sense in John Roughan’s 2014 biography:

Most people, he explains, take their profits too early and cut their losses too late.

If they buy a house for $500,000 and a month later somebody offers them $600,000, it is human nature to take the money and dine out on their good fortune. Conversely, if they put that $500,000 house on the market and the best offer it brought was $350,000, they would hold onto it.

A good dealer would not. As soon as he realised the asset was losing value he would get what he could for it and put the money into a new, hopefully better, investment.

This, by the way, is by far the most comprehensible thing Key tells Roughan about his time in the financial sector; the rest of his comments about it are rich in the complex jargon of the industry, and Roughan does not translate them. There’s another insight into Key’s quantitative side later on though: when the prostitution law reform bill is up for a conscience vote in Parliament, Key tries to work out his position by calculating the number of sex workers in the country, and the number of clients they’d need to see to be fiscally viable as businesses, and thus the potential number of sex worker clients who might support the bill.

Newly elected Prime Minister John Key arrives on stage to deliver his victory speech after his re-election as PM, September 20 2014. Photo: Phil Walter / Getty
Newly elected Prime Minister John Key arrives on stage to deliver his victory speech after his re-election as PM, September 20 2014. Photo: Phil Walter / Getty

A lot of people have written about John Key’s business background; it functions as a kind of negative space for people to project their own, often odd, fantasies and misconceptions and conspiracies about finance and banking. (He’s often celebrated for his incredible sales and negotiating skills, yet every time he’s sat down with a company to cut a deal on behalf of the taxpayer, the corporation always seems to come off far, far better than the Crown.)

I’ve made fun of the fetishisation of Key’s business/financial mojo in the past, but now I’m going to indulge in it myself and suggest that it helped him understand that complex systems – financial systems, political systems – often behave in ways that are counterintuitive, that defy common sense, but if you study the systems methodically you can bet against the conventional wisdom and win.

Let me give you an example. In November of 2006 Key became leader of the opposition. In early 2007 the main political issue was the ‘anti-smacking bill’: Sue Bradford’s controversial Private Member’s Bill amending the Crimes Act, which was slowly and agonisingly making its way through Parliament. Critics attacked it as ‘social engineering’, a perception Clark’s by-then unpopular Labour government was already struggling with.

‘Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake’ is one of the oldest rules in politics, especially in opposition. When the government is doing something unpopular, and failing at it, let them keep doing it; let them fail. But Key did the opposite: he negotiated an amendment with Clark – an amendment carefully worded to mean almost nothing – and the bill was passed with a gigantic majority. I remember discussing it with work colleagues the morning after Key and Clark made their joint announcement, and mocking one of them who claimed ‘John Key just changed New Zealand politics’, but if you look back at the Colmar Brunton poll, which charts which politicians New Zealanders prefer as their prime minister, you can see Key start at the standard 10% baseline most opposition leaders languish in, and quickly soar to 40% in the early months of 2007, overtaking Clark.

Key’s move was based on a ‘deep dive’ into polling and focus group data, a National advisor told me a few years later. Bradford’s bill was broadly unpopular, they discovered, but it didn’t have ‘valence’: it generated a lot of media and was a very big deal to a tiny number of supporters and opponents but most people didn’t actually care about it that much, as opposed to how they felt about, say, the quality of their kid’s schools, or the healthcare system. What they did care about was the petty antagonism of politics, and what tested very well was the idea of a leader who could transcend that and deliver solutions.

It’s not unusual for politicians to consult polls and focus groups. But politicians are very susceptible to overconfidence bias; they prefer to indulge in a vast over-estimation of their own abilities and judgement. Most political leaders, when offered a choice between doing something that seems counter-intuitive but is driven by research, or something that their guts tell them is right, will go with their gut. It got them where they are today, they reason, forgetting that they’re generally there to replace prior failed leaders who also followed their gut.

Nine years later Labour opposition leader Andrew Little was offered an almost identical opportunity to Key, when Key’s attempt to change the New Zealand flag was floundering, at roughly the same point in the political cycle to Helen Clark’s struggle with Bradford’s bill. Little did not interrupt his enemy: he let him fail – no doubt his gut told him that was the smart thing to do – and fail Key did, to much crowing and gloating from his critics. But Key’s popularity remained high and Little’s very low popularity did not budge, because voter behaviour is more complex than a politician’s gut.

All Black captain Richie McCaw with Prime Minister John Key during the 2012 Steinlager Rugby Awards. (Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)
All Black captain Richie McCaw with Prime Minister John Key during the 2012 Steinlager Rugby Awards. (Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

“You will never have another boss like me. Someone who’s basically a chilled out entertainer.” – David Brent, The Office

During the 2011 election campaign John Key hosted an hour long talk radio show on Radio Live. It was called The Prime Minister’s Hour. Key interviewed Sir Peter Jackson, Sir Richard Branson and Richie McCaw. (The All Black captain played a pivotal role in National’s media strategy during election years; a search on Knowledge Basket, a media aggregation database, shows that from 2010 to 2011 we saw a 200% increase in news stories about Key and McCaw; it dropped away for the subsequent two years then increased by 171% during 2015). Members of the public phoned in to discuss issues like the rescheduling of Coronation Street, and to congratulate Key on how well he was doing his job.

The Labour Party complained to the Electoral Commission. They argued that the lack of balance – where was Phil Goff’s one hour talkback show where callers told him how great he was doing? – meant it amounted to free advertising from MediaWorks, part of which was once owned by Steven Joyce, a senior Minister in Key’s Cabinet, and to which the government had extended a $43 million loan the previous year. The Electoral Commission referred the complaint to the police, an organisation that can never run away fast enough when called upon to investigate the many alleged breaches of electoral law by National and Labour over the years. They declined to prosecute.

Key’s defence of the show was twofold. Firstly, there was no need for balance, because the show was called ‘The Prime Minister’s Hour,’ and it wasn’t his fault that he just happened to be Prime Minister when MediaWorks created the show. Secondly, how could it possibly be a political advertisement when he wasn’t even talking about politics?

Key spent a lot of his time as Prime Minister not talking about politics: basically being a chilled out entertainer, appearing on breakfast TV and breakfast radio and women’s magazines and evening infotainment shows where the hosts would engage him very lightly on the issues of the day. “We’ve got the mix about right,” Key would assure them, perhaps adding that he was “looking at a range of options,” before hurrying on to discuss the rugby or the latest celebrity news story. He could – if pressed – discuss policy details. His discussions with Radio New Zealand host Guyon Espiner often played out like this:

Espiner: I’d like to ask you about this policy.

Key: Yeah, I haven’t been briefed on that so I can’t speak to it.

Espiner: Because Andrew Little has criticised –

Key: Well he’s wrong and I will now speak about why that is and what the policy means at length, almost as if I have actually been extensively briefed on it.

The eminent American political scientists Chris Achen and Larry Bartels estimate that about 3% of voters in western democracies cast their votes based on policy and ideology, and that these are all members of ‘the political class’: party members, activists, intellectuals etc. Everyone else – ie, for electoral purposes, everyone – is interested in and motivated by other factors. The economy, famously, is one; the personality of the party leader and the ability of voters to trust and identify with that leader is another.

Left-wing politicians and commentators come from an intellectual tradition in which economic class is paramount; when Key rose to become leader of the opposition they felt sure that Key’s enormous wealth would prevent ‘ordinary Kiwis’ from identifying with him. Labour deputy leader Michael Cullen dismissed him as a ‘rich prick’. A Hansard search of Key’s time as Prime Minister identifies 388 matches to the term ‘rich mates’ and they are almost all instances of Labour MPs attacking Key for alleged cronyism.

It never worked; the public never turned against Key because of his wealth, but his adversaries just couldn’t believe it wasn’t working so they just kept doing it. Surely in the wake of the global financial crisis and the publication of The Spirit Level and Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century, the backlash against economic elites would come?

There is a backlash happening across western democracies, but to the confoundment of the left most of the backlash is against left-wing cultural and intellectual elites rather than right-wing economic ones. Key is very different from Donald Trump in many very significant ways, but identical in this: they’re both very rich but culturally proletarian. Trump genuinely loves wrestling and stock car racing; Key loves rugby and does not bother to hide his utter lack of interest in high culture (Helen Clark’s favourite movie was The Motorcycle Diaries, a critically acclaimed Argentinian film about a young Che Guevara finding his revolutionary soul. Key’s is Johnny English, a critically reviled spy spoof in which Rowan Atkinson wanders about covered in poo.)

You hear a lot about class politics in left-wing circles, and even more about identity politics, and there’s this huge debate about which of them is the right way to communicate values and win over voters. You don’t hear much about cultural politics, even though left-wing intellectuals have spent the last hundred years analysing culture and its intersection with politics and capitalism. Cultural identity and cultural signifiers seem to be important to a lot of voters – possibly because it’s something they know a lot about: they can judge politicians on their authenticity in a way they can’t do with policy and ideology. When British Prime Minister David Cameron forgot which football team he affected to support the entire country erupted in shocked disbelief. Key said many odd and artless and sometimes just plain unpleasant things during his time as Prime Minister, but he spent a huge amount of his time practising cultural politics, connecting with voters across the class and identity spectrum, and he never made a cultural gaffe.

John Key at the 2014 budget debate. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
John Key at the 2014 budget debate. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

“These people, some of them are rapists, some of them are child molesters, and some of them are murderers and these are the people that the Labour Party is saying are more important to support than New Zealanders who deserve protecting when they come back here.” – John Key, New Zealand Parliament, Questions for Oral Answer. November 10, 2015

Ask normal people what they don’t like about politics and they’ll usually talk about Parliamentary Question Time. Politicians screaming at each other and being thrown out of the House. Obscure points of order. Sprays of spittle illuminated by the expensive down-lighting.

There used to be a logic to it: if an MP behaved awfully enough they might get some media coverage – a few seconds on the TV news, or a mention from a political commentator in the paper the next day praising them for being ‘strong in the House.’ But most of that coverage has vanished with the media who reported it, and now Question Time is merely a hundred and twenty one – give or take – very highly paid, generally intelligent and well-meaning people being repellent to each other in a handsomely furnished room, with barely anyone watching.

And no one was more repellent than Key. There was the ‘rapists and child molesters and murderers’ comment above, in response to Labour MP Kelvin Davis accusing him of being ‘gutless’ for his refusal to stand up for New Zealand citizens resident in Australia being imprisoned in detention centres after a retroactive law change. Other low points include Key himself daring the opposition to ‘get some guts’ and support his decision to deploy kiwi troops to Iraq, as if it was Key himself off to fight ISIS; the Prime Ministerial Speech to the Throne, traditionally an occasion for the leader to set out his government’s policy agenda for the year, but in his second and third terms Key didn’t really have one of those so he spent his speech telling the Opposition that they were morons and losers, in highly colourful language; and then there was one of the great contributions to political debate in New Zealand – the invention of Prime Ministerial ‘hats’. If Key was caught behaving in a manner unethical to the office of Prime Minister he would, retroactively, decide that he wasn’t the Prime Minister when he did this. He was someone else: leader of the National Party, or just an ordinary bloke, maybe.

Most successful politicians have a chameleon-like quality. They are whoever they need to be in any given social situation, and the people they’re with almost always perceive the performance as real. Ronald Reagan was once asked if being an actor helped his political career, and he replied, ‘I can’t imagine how anyone who wasn’t an actor could do this job’. In his biography of Lyndon Johnson the historian Robert Caro often describes the mercurial nature of his subject. As a young Congressman Johnson would stand in his office screaming at his staff, a merciless and autocratic tyrant, only to be interrupted by a phone call from a powerful ally, and his demeanor would change, instantly, to a calm, reverential flatterer, and change again as soon as the phone was back on the hook.

What was unusual about Key is that he was often praised by political commentators for being genuine, yet it was possible to witness his radical transformation on a daily basis. You could watch the Prime Minister joking around on breakfast TV, a lovable goofy dad, and then watch him roar with laughter in the House as he joked away questions about climate change or child poverty: an obvious monster.

I sometimes wonder if Question Time transforms our politicians into monsters. Key was awful in the House, but only slightly more so than average, and less loathsome than some of the longer serving MPs. What does it do to them to have to stand up every day and claim that they ‘stand by their statements’ and then argue that something they’ve said actually means the opposite of what it obviously means, or that some statistic they’ve once cited is now meaningless, only to embrace it a week later when the political winds change again? I understand the adversarial nature of the system, and the theory that Question Time is ‘holding the government to account’, but that obviously isn’t working. It seems like a contest deliberately designed to turn decent, well-meaning people into dissembling, untrustworthy, heartless liars.

And you have to win at it if you want to run the country.

Key with supporters during the 2014 general election campaign. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Key with supporters during the 2014 general election campaign. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The 19th Century French economist Frederic Bastiat once wrote a famous celebration of the free market. Consider the city of Paris, he argued.

Here are a million human beings who would all die in a few days if supplies of all sorts did not flow into this great metropolis. It staggers the imagination to try to comprehend the vast multiplicity of objects that must pass through its gates tomorrow, if its inhabitants are to be preserved from the horrors of famine, insurrection, and pillage. And yet all are sleeping peacefully at this moment, without being disturbed for a single instant by the idea of so frightful a prospect.

That’s the magic of competition and free exchange, Bastiat claimed, and the neoliberal – or neoclassical, or laissez-faire, or whatever – reformers of the New Zealand economy in the 1980s and 90s believed very strongly in that magic and that the efficacy of markets should be extended to as much of the economy as possible.

“Hold on a minute,” a left-wing critic of that philosophy would say. Consider what happens to all that food flowing into Paris after it’s been eaten and digested. It passes into a monopolistic, state-owned, socialised sewerage system that functions just as well as the free market – arguably even better, because there’s none of the inefficiency of competition or the profit motive. Surely we should extend that model to as much of the economy as possible?

I think John Key’s small-c conservative take on all this would be “Actually, at the end of the day, you’ve got the market and you’ve got the state, and they both have their uses. But they’re both pretty critical and they interact in complex ways, and good government is about making incremental changes to them that hopefully add up to big gains over the longer term but don’t disrupt the status quo too much.”

“That’s very convenient for those that benefit from the status quo,” the left-wing critic would reply. And they’d be right. But Key wasn’t a change agent, as his biographer Roughan pointed out. He was a conservative who believed in incremental improvements rather than radical reform, and if that happened to benefit him and his caucus, and the parties membership and donor-class… well, that’s just politics, right?

This isn’t the worst way you can govern a country, as I suspect the various western democracies voting radical authoritarians into power are about to find out. But it did mean that most of the serious problems facing New Zealand, which could only be addressed by large-scale reform, never got fixed under his watch.

It’s frustrating, given Key’s obvious political genius, that he only addressed it to winning at the superficial elements of politics: raising money, winning elections, mocking the opposition as it self-destructed, getting good coverage, being popular. Understanding the game and then beating it. To me the most quintessential Key policy is his reform of the Emissions Trading Scheme: Key and his Trade Minister found a brilliant way to rort the international carbon trading system, buying hundreds of millions of dollars of quasi-legal Russian and Ukrainian carbon credits. It was an ingenious way to prevent New Zealand from having to reduce our carbon emissions, which would have lead to all sorts of reforms and costs that might have compromised Key’s popularity.

Now some other sucker will have to deal with carbon neutrality and climate proofing our infrastructure, along with fixing the sustainability of the superannuation scheme, and low productivity, and child poverty, and the broken housing market, and the broken tax system, and the cost blowout of our aging population on the health system, and so on; Key gets to retire with all of the political capital he accumulated through evading all of those problems intact. John Key won at politics. Good for him. But another few winners like that and we’re done for.

Danyl McLauchlan is a Wellington-based writer. His novel Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley is out now, and he blogs at the Dim Post.

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