Silent witness reflects on Cabinet

By KEVIN NORQUAY

The common thread linking the Cabinet of every Government over the past 16 years snapped at midnight last night, when Cabinet Secretary Marie Shroff left the job.

Mrs Shroff has guided Labour and National Governments, majority and minority Governments, three first-past-the-post Governments and three elected under MMP.

As Cabinet Secretary she was responsible for the operation of the Cabinet and the Executive Council and for related constitutional advice.

She was an oasis of neutral political advice to the Cabinet, taking minutes as the Government Executive pondered the nation's future.

With her job over - her role as Privacy Commissioner started at 12.01 am - Mrs Shroff was willing to unseal her lips, just a little, about her role as a silent observer in the Cabinet.

"I'm always on the outside, absolutely neutral and absolutely discreet. It's a bit like being the stage hand [in a play]. You're in it, but you're not of it.

"Once I learned to handle it it didn't get to me. The first couple of years were particularly difficult, and it did get to me a bit."

She has served Prime Ministers David Lange, Geoffrey Palmer, Mike Moore, Jim Bolger Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark, and guided four Governors-General since November 1987.

National minister Sir William Birch called her the Cabinet referee, a person who knew all the rules and reminded people of them.

She went to an estimated 717 Cabinet meetings, signed 22,000 Cabinet minutes and witnessed several historic events unfolding and many momentous decisions being made.

When Mr Lange and Roger Douglas fell out bitterly over economic reforms in 1988, she was there in the background, less than a year into her role.

When MMP was about to change the face of politics before the 1996 election, her fact-finding trip overseas spotted potential potholes for New Zealand.

When Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters stormed out of the National-New Zealand First coalition in 1998, Mrs Shroff was on the spot to tell Prime Minister Jenny Shipley the constitutional implications.

She saw and heard things that would have been headline news, but kept them behind Beehive doors, saying nothing outside her office.

Careful to speak in generalities, she pinpointed the 1987-1990 Labour Government as a high-stress point. New to the job, she was not as adept as she would be later at sealing herself off from political battles.

She feared for some MPs' health as Mr Douglas and Mr Lange fell out over economic reforms, and the sacking of Cabinet minister Richard Prebble heightened tensions.

"I had a baptism of fire. That was a very bad year. Because I was incredibly green and there was this amazingly tense situation, it was fraught.

"The Prebble sacking was the first time a minister had been sacked in living memory, and I had to give advice on that."

Even when Labour lost the 1990 election to National there was no relief because Ruth Richardson delivered the divisive "mother of all Budgets".

Then came MMP, coalitions and coalition breakdowns. Mrs Shroff provided constitutional advice after the first MMP election in 1996, when vexed coalition negotiations left the nation without a Government for nine weeks.

To the outsider her job might sound like 16 years of hell.

Not so, said Mrs Shroff, laughing. She's sorry to be leaving a fantastic, fascinating job - one of the best in Wellington, if not the country.

Long hours and pressure were more than compensated by advantages such as "constant interest, contact with some of the best minds in New Zealand, watching the Government operate and assisting it to operate".

She rejected the oft-expressed view that politicians are a bunch of lazy, self-interested, no-hopers.

"They are incredibly hardworking. It is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. That pressure reflects itself into our work; we feel some of the pressure they feel.

"Sometimes I think, 'My God, why do these people stay here?' They are under so much pressure. That applies not just to Government but to the Opposition in other parties as well - it's huge.

"It's a pity the culture of the public towards politicians in New Zealand is to try to denigrate them, because actually what we need is good honest people in politics, and on the whole that's what we've got.

"New Zealand has got a highly honest political system when you compare it with other countries, and also hard-working politicians.

"Often some of the toughest tests now arise from the fact that politicians are better informed and better educated than they were 30 years ago, so politics has become a very tough game with very clever, well-informed people in it.

"That doesn't mean they don't behave sometimes in ways that people don't like. Of course they do."

She has plenty of respect for Mr Bolger and Helen Clark.

Their skills in Cabinet convinced her that a spell as Opposition leader is a prerequisite to being an effective prime minister.

It probably "gives them plenty of practice at resolving disputes and chairing different meetings, and finding compromises on policy issues that people can live with".

Mrs Shroff was determined to protect the neutrality and credibility of her office so it could best perform its vital behind-the-scenes role of keeping the Government running smoothly.

She is proud it was never accused of political bias.

Recent Opposition criticisms that civil servants were politicised over issues such as Corngate and police prosecutions involving MPs do not wash with her.

"It's just the political tennis match; these things happen from time-to-time. This is not new."

She was at pains to say the job was not all political gloom and doom. There were jokers in each Cabinet, whose witty one-liners brightened even the most serious meeting.

Mrs Shroff las left her Cabinet Secretary job most proud of her part in getting MMP running smoothly, and setting up a unique New Zealand honours system.

She also rewrote the huge Cabinet Manual, and had it put on the internet.

She will be able to read it there should she ever start missing her old job.


- NZPA