National one year on: Key rewrites political rulebook

Says John Key: `If you want perfection, then politics is the wrong place to look.' Photo / Mark Mitchell

Dressed in a starched, light blue Rodd & Gunn shirt and crisply pressed, dark khaki chinos, John Key is the very model of the modern business executive sacrificing his Saturday at home to make headway on mounting paperwork at the office.

Image matters. The Prime Minister's staff are using Key's rare presence in Wellington on a weekend to schedule media interviews marking National's first year in office. You get the feeling, however, that Key would be garbed in smart casual attire regardless of his afternoon appointments with journalists and photographers.

It is a non-threatening, corporate uniform which makes Key look conventional, mainstream and just one of a crowd - attributes which seem to help him quickly get on the same wavelength as his audience, regardless of its makeup.

Key's sheer ordinariness has fooled opponents into making first impression assumptions that there is little substance behind the confident, smiley face he presents to the world.

Key would not claim to be an intellectual. But he is very bright. Those who have worked closely with him speak of a capacity to absorb mountains of information and a laser-like capacity to focus on what needs to be done.

He is anything but ordinary. The chief executive of New Zealand Incorporated is nothing short of a political phenomenon.

As one Beehive operative of long experience puts it, Key is rewriting the rules of New Zealand politics. That is a sweeping statement. But it goes some way to explaining why public support for National - confirmed in today's Herald-DigiPoll survey - has climbed to unprecedented highs for a ruling party in its first year of government and, just as crucially, continues to remain at that level.

Key cites his Government's fulfillment of manifesto commitments and steering the country through and (he hopes) out of economic recession as crucial in consolidating support for his party. Cabinet ministers readily acknowledge, however, that National's post-election dream run is overwhelmingly down to Key's strong rapport with voters - especially females who shunned National in the past.

Labour Party insiders grudgingly agree, but with a subtle twist in the language: National's popularity rests on Key's popularity. When the latter starts to fade, the former will quickly evaporate.

Or so Labour prays. Labour, however, has made a bad habit of underestimating Key.

One of the principal ways he is seen to be rewriting the rules is by applying a "will it work" test to policy proposals rather than first asking whether they sit comfortably with National Party ideology. Key's willingness to search for ideas outside conventional boundaries is in tune with an electorate less hung-up about ideology than in the 1980s and 1990s.