Kiwi battler's last stand

Matt McCarten has an 'unbelievable' work ethic says his friend Willie Jackson. Photo / Mark Mitchell

When faced with news of a fatal disease patients usually ask their doctors two questions: What are my odds and how long have I got? Answering those questions is not an exact science but doctors do their best, given the gravity of the pronouncement.

With Matt McCarten's liver cancer the answers were "about 4 per cent" and "12 months".

Some time later, they gave McCarten a new prognosis: 50/50. That sort of apparent reprieve would be like busting out of death row for most people but McCarten seemed to accept both verdicts with the same calm equanimity.

"When I was first told, the surgeon seemed more upset than I was," he said. "One in three New Zealanders gets cancer. I see it as a nuisance. I am not defined by it and I don't see it as a battle. I simply receive treatment. So far I haven't taken a turn for the worse and am carrying on with my work."

That work is a continuation of McCarten's commitment to help the working poor, culminating in an high-profile tilt at Parliament in yesterday's Mana by-election. He didn't win - neither he nor anyone else expected him to - but he used the campaign to garner headlines for his union battles.

McCarten, 51, is widely considered one of New Zealand's foremost political strategists. He has masterminded many campaigns, including the Alliance and Maori parties' successful elections to Parliament. It was the 1985 occupation of the Sheraton Hotel with the Hotel and Hospital Workers Union and his subsequent imprisonment that gained him notoriety.

But it was as founding president of Jim Anderton's New Labour Party and his subsequent role as director of the Alliance that McCarten became well known in New Zealand politics.

Aside from an unsuccessful run at the Auckland mayoralty he has usually been a backroom political operator. Is that because of his stutter?

"No, that's just a motor thing, I don't even think about it. I haven't been an MP because I didn't feel I could reach my own standard of what the job is. Most people don't want to do the backroom stuff and I figured if I don't do it no one else will."

Cancer changed all that. Now, McCarten is determined to push his message any way he can before he dies. Winning the by-election in Mana was not the objective. The Mana campaign was a platform for McCarten's single item bucket list: to push for a $15 an hour minimum wage and fulltime jobs for casual workers during the Rugby World Cup. "I was 25 when Rogernomics was introduced," he says. "I thought it would wreck the country then and I haven't changed my mind once in the past 25 years.

"Twenty-five years ago our workers were level-pegging with Australians. Now we are paid an average of $580 a week less.

"The people who will make money out of the World Cup will be overseas-owned hotels. The workers won't be paid any extra for cleaning the rooms - but it is the New Zealand taxpayer who is paying to put the event on."

To some, McCarten is the ultimate leftie trouble-maker and economy wrecker. But his demeanour is at odds with that image. He carries himself with a calm dignity, always tidily dressed in a dark business suit. He describes himself as an economic nationalist.

McCarten says he has never owned anything apart from a few suits and his silver 1999 Ford Falcon sedan. He receives the same modest wage as everyone else who works for the Unite union, where he is general secretary.

Since the cancer diagnosis his daughter Kate, 22, has flown back from the UK to be with him. They are staying at the home of his old friend Willie Jackson. But McCarten has avoided marriage and relationships almost as assiduously as he has possessions.

This has made him less vulnerable if trouble comes his way. He was able to laugh off many threats of legal action because he never had anything to lose.

One-time Alliance colleague Willie Jackson is in awe of his friend's "unbelievable work ethic. Matt will start at 4.30 in the morning and work through to 11pm. He is the most determined person I have ever met," Jackson says.

McCarten is staunch in his views but differs from many left-wingers because he is pragmatic and has a great, dark sense of humour.

"Matt, JT [John Tamihere] and I were going to go on a trip to South America but the holiday was cancelled because Matt's doctors wouldn't let him go. When he told us the news he said he would have to die now, otherwise he would be letting us down," laughs Jackson.

This view - a pragmatic and reasonable man - is echoed by those on the other side of the political fence. "I have always found Matt to be upfront and uncomplicated - what you see is what you get," says former Auckland Mayor John Banks. "Although our politics are poles apart I like him and, more importantly, respect him."

Jackson and McCarten have a deal that whenever they are out together Willie has to shout.

It is the result of the arm-twisting Jackson did to persuade McCarten to organise the Maori Party campaign - something he was reluctant to do, despite being Maori himself.

"I have always been on the general roll, but I do think Maori have the right to be at the top table in their own right," McCarten says.

"I was totally immersed in the union but was persuaded to get involved."

Despite spending days in hospital hooked up to tubes this year, it took some duress to persuade McCarten to publicly disclose his cancer. Finally, disclosure came in his Herald on Sunday column on September 5: It can be boring when someone talks about themselves.

Today I'll take the risk. I know I get into scraps and sometimes overstep the mark in clipping my opponents - and there's always a few of them waiting impatiently for my demise. They may not have to wait too much longer. I was diagnosed a year ago with the killing kind of cancer.

I'm only sharing this as the news seems to be getting out and some people seem to think I'll soon be taking to my bed and softening my political views.

No such luck, I'm afraid.

McCarten's childhood provides some explanation for his attitude to the cancer and to his work. He lived in an oxygen tent for the first six months of his life and is a lifelong asthmatic so has never taken his health for granted. His parents died young, so McCarten always had the feeling he would never live long enough to receive the pension.

"I come from the poor working class and lived in an orphanage until I was 15. Being an asthmatic I read a lot and there was nothing the orphanage could do to make me believe in God. When I wasn't in the orphanage I lived in Brockville, Dunedin. I know where I came from and what I am."

McCarten's biological father was a wino who lived on the streets. The day before he died some other winos had dragged him into a coal shed and Matt went to see him. His father's regret compelled McCarten to seek some purpose in life.

"I don't see myself as a social worker or a kind of missionary. I am a union official who is there to represent people. I don't like do-gooders who think it is a privilege for people to be helped by them. I think it is a privilege to be able to do the work I do," he says, without any hint of pomposity.

McCarten was a rising star in the corporate world after starting with DB Breweries at 20, opening bars and restaurants. The suicide of his boss and his father's wasted life made him question why he was doing it. "I could work for a corporate but it's not for me," he says. "This is a way of life that fits my life and values. Because of the orphanage I have never equated security with assets. In the orphanage you were housed, clothed and fed. That to me was security, we didn't own anything."

If anyone doubts McCarten's ability to make it in the business world they need only look at Unite, the shell union of 200 members he joined in 2003 to represent the lowest-paid workers.

Unite's constituency of fast-food workers, cleaners, hotel, casino, security and part-time staff has now grown its membership to 11,000, making it one of the largest unions in New Zealand. Because of the transient nature of many of its members, Unite has an annual membership turnover of 66 per cent, which means it is recruiting about 600 new members every month. Its turnover is over a million dollars a year.

The mainly white-collar CTU was at first wary of Unite's independence of the Labour Party and the general union movement.

Standing for Mana against Kris Faafoi has again put him offside with the Labour Party but, according to McCarten, Unite is now very much part of the general union movement.

The tensions could easily return: McCarten is now taking his campaign from Mana to any other platform that gets his message heard. For most people a life-threatening disease tends to turn their focus inward.

In Matt McCarten's world, it just means the work is more urgent.

Matt McCarten has written a weekly column for the Herald on Sunday since the paper was launched in 2004.