KEY POINTS:
Steve Maharey has two cellphones - one for his old job as an MP and the other for his new job as vice-chancellor of Massey University.
During an hour-long interview neither makes a noise. He pretends he's turned them off, but then admits that he hasn't.
"But they
rang all day yesterday," he insists.
He remembers the days as a minister when he would walk from one meeting to another, his staff trailing behind him, all taking turns to get things signed off by him. Now "I have time to stop and talk".
For the past five months he's been stuck in a strange hinterland between the two jobs.
He gave a string of emotional interviews last October when he announced he would not stand again this year, explaining that the death of his wife in 2004 had started pushing him towards the career change.
He's stayed on since then to make up the voting numbers, but in many ways he's already left the building.
He has started talking about Labour as "they" and "them", as if he's some observer watching from the sideline. He has also "de-tuned" from the strategy committee, where he drove social policy initiatives as one of the linchpins in the Clark Administration.
His head has returned to the loftier world of academia. He goes on, earnestly and at length, about the role of the media in the new age, the Third Way and the need for the major parties to lay out "what the Americans call 'the narrative"'.
Maharey has quietly backed away from involvement in Labour since he announced his resignation, "detuning" himself from the strategy groups in which he drove Labour's social policy initiatives.
His place has been filled by Darren Hughes, but Helen Clark says this doesn't mean her "thinker and ideas person" won't be missed.
"Eighteen years is a long time through thick and thin. Steve and I were very close, and I was very sad when he told me he wasn't going to run again."
So the Prime Minister still sometimes texts and "we talk about life", but he's quite serious about his new job, in which he must be independent for the sake of the university.
"Everyone has personal views, of course. But the university has to be independent and it will be."
He even passes up the chance to take cheap shots at the National Party. He goes so far as to admit to a guilty secret - he quite likes Maurice Williamson, standard bearer of the old right, whom he describes as "endearingly honest".
But a man can only go so far. When Labour's chance of winning the election comes up, his answer is amusingly ambivalent.
"I think they've got a chance of winning the election, to be honest with you. They've got a chance of not winning as well."
If it's the second, he prescribes a dose of navel-gazing.
He has reread his maiden speech, delivered in 1990 when Labour was last involved in a serious bout of navel-gazing after being routed by National.
He says now there is little he would change. The only "major" shift in his politics since he was a teenager was a conversion to environmentalism.
"It wasn't a big issue when I was young. I was brought up in the Barry Crump tradition - if it was under the ground, dig it up and if it was above the ground, cut it down."
This, he says, was "essentially what it meant to be a New Zealander, wasn't it?"
Although his views haven't otherwise changed, politics has. So, in the spirit of his return to the lofty spires of Palmerston North, he plans to deliver a little lecture to his colleagues in his valedictory.
He says a new chapter is opening in New Zealand after a settling, consolidating period after the 1980s.
"I want to talk about where politics needs to go. The two major parties, going into the election, need to be mapping out in a very bold, decisive way where the country should be going.
"Now I think there is a real need to say 'what's the big picture here for what the country will look like in the 21st century.' What's next?"
He's building a new eco-friendly home in Palmerston North, and has a pinched nerve in his neck from digging holes in the garden.
He is also planning a book - not a romp, like Pam Corkery's Political Confessions ("don't you dare") but an analysis of politics over the past 20 years with some "human interest" to get it a wider audience than Massey University students.
He thinks it's dangerous for departing politicians to be unprepared to move on.
"You just have to move on. It's a sad thing when you see politicians who don't, but somehow think things can continue the way they were, or that their role will still be important."
His office has been stripped and packed into boxes. The only remaining personal touch is a Che Guevara postcard.
"That's not Che," he says, deadpan. "That's me when I was younger."
He insists he has fooled people with this suggestion, but no, he got the card in Cuba two years ago.
"Why people of my generation ever thought that he was a wonderful person I now in hindsight can't figure."
He admired Che, "well, when I was a revolutionary, of course. Spontaneous revolution. I used to throw myself at police and stuff when I was young."
Protests these days are "petty compared to us", he boasts.
There could be a return to those heady days of shouting against the system. He's now 55, and although he claims "70 is the new 50", any change to the retirement age will be a call to arms.
"Anyone touches that and I'll be part of Grey Power in a second."
STEVE MAHAREY
* Age 55.
* Death of his wife Liz Mackay in March 2004 prompted him to search for a new career.
EDUCATION
* MA, Massey University.
CAREER
* Former lecturer at Massey University.
* Labour MP Palmerston North. Former Cabinet minister whose portfolios included broadcasting, research, science and technology, Crown research institutes and the Education Review Office.
* He is to leave politics to become vice-chancellor at Massey University.
* Labour MP 1990-2008.
