Paul Holmes: Key's trader skills come to fore

Peter Jackson has delivered success for New Zealand. Photo / Supplied

You have to hand it to him. That was a brilliant bit of footwork by the Prime Minister this week. You cannot deny John Key the glory.

He did it. He saved New Zealand as a destination for The Hobbit movies. There seems no doubt that it was touch and go. It became touch and stay.

Warners touched us up big time but the movies stay.

We were under threat not just from anyone, but from one of the great Hollywood studios who were about to decide not to spend $670 million here and provide work for thousands of people all round the country. Warners suddenly realised the leverage they had and applied the pressure.

So the movies had to be saved. Had to. Not just for the money but for our peace of mind.

The Tolkein movies have as Phil O'Reilly, chief executive of Business New Zealand said on Q+A last Sunday gone to the heart of New Zealand. They have more than become our property, as it were. They have become us. We are extremely proud of them.

We love what they say about us, not only in terms of the landscape and the gorgeous country that is ours but also in terms of what they say about our creative ability, our creative people and their extraordinary professionalism.

And we had to save Sir Peter Jackson, a once in a generation film-making genius. I still don't know how he grew up amongst us or Sir Richard Taylor.

Both are men of extraordinary daring and vision. Somehow Jackson got the idea he could make movies in New Zealand that looked like the best and most expensive movies made in Hollywood.

He wasn't interested in the art house introspective small budget stuff about being Maori or Pakeha. I still find it an amazing story.

Jackson actually got the idea into his head that he could make the Lord of the Rings series and do it here. Off he went to Hollywood. I think he took some beautifully crafted models with him, some Middle Earth stuff.

He proposal was, he once told me, for two movies. Suddenly the Americans who were buying into the idea suggested he do three.

There are three books, Peter, so why not do three movies, they said. Next thing it was all on. The Return of the King, the third of the trilogy, equals Titanic and Ben Hur as the biggest Oscar winning films of all time.

Each movie won 11 Oscars. Peter Jackson's achievement still seems when you think of Hollywood, when you think of the British film industry or the German or the French or the Russian or the Swedish film industries unbelievable.

So the Government had to act.

We couldn't lose that kind of money from an economy on its knees. The money roared and we toppled. Why not? That's business. The money is the power.

It's simple. If ever John Key had to be the trader it was this week. Of course Warners were going to wind up the price. Like, they're slow with a buck? And John Key pulled it off and got some good baubles thrown in. Both sides emerge with honour.

He made it clear he wasn't going to write cheques for money New Zealand didn't have.

He not only saved a massive New Zealand film but he saved a massive New Zealand industry.

In doing so he might even have made New Zealand more attractive to the big overseas studios looking for places where they won't get shafted by unions. And getting the publicity material about New Zealand on the DVD is a brilliant stroke. It was a great idea. It made for a great deal. New Zealand wins something too.

It wasn't just the union silliness, of course, that caused all the trouble, or that Australian Monster Who Never Spoke and who looked like Herman Munster and it wasn't just the sight of Helen Kelly out with Robyn Malcolm at one of the flashest restaurants in Wellington that drove the studio nuts.

The New Zealand dollar played a part. But the bumbling union nonsense gave Warners an excuse to gild the lilly.

ANYWAY, FAR away from all of that, life at the farm is also a whirl. We have five dogs: Ralphie, Louis, Winkelmeister, Buzzy Boy and Flossie. We have five lambs requiring three or four feeds a day which keeps my wife very busy with bottles, milk powder and teats.

If they don't get fed on time they scream terribly. The two older ones who've worked out where the food comes from camp outside the front door, chewing their cuds until the next feed. Their names are Leila and Lola.

Leila was very little and not supposed to live. She is named after Deborah's friend Leila MacDonald who is very strong. Now Leila-the-lamb is a screamer. The two younger ones are Lucy and Lilly.

And there arrived on Wednesday my favourite lamb, a little chocolate coloured fellow. But he seemed very afraid and his behaviour was a little odd. We've worked out he is blind.

And down by the stream where he loves to feed on the watercress is Barney Button, our new kune kune pig. Barney Button got the ring through the nose last week and is not entirely happy about it. He will get used to it just as, I suppose, I shall get used to a pig in my library.

Barney already thinks he is one of the dogs and he and Flossie have become special mates. The lambs think they're dogs too and they all hang round in the evening going Baaaaa Baaaa and Woof Woof and Oink Oink while the chooks gurgle off to bed to make another egg.

My wife adores her animals. She is in heaven. And as the sign says on the window of the Kitchen Studio in Hastings where she is planing a new kitchen, Happy wife, Happy life.