Woman of steely resolve in good times and bad

By Brian Rudman

"Tough as old boots" is how one former political colleague admiringly recalls Helen Clark.

A beautifully tempered samurai sword is the more elegant description of her politics professor and long-time confidant Bob Chapman. He says she is "very flexible, a little soft where it ought to be, with a very hard edge."

This image of the hardy warrior queen is not the vision most voters have of the new Prime Minister, despite her penchant for cross-country skiing and conquering Mt Kilimanjaro for fun.

But speak to the civil servants and politicians who have worked with her over 20 years and what quickly emerges is a formidable, single-minded, wily, intelligent and hardworking battler for her cause.

"Very conscientious," recalls Dr George Salmond, Director-General of Health when she was minister in 1989-90.

"She has an incredible capacity to grasp detail and she was a very hands-on and interested minister. She very quickly gained an in-depth knowledge of the portfolio and managed it very skilfully at a time when the management of social portfolios was not at all easy."

Former Prime Minister David Lange agrees, referring to her "capacity to manage and direct by a clear, calculated rationality which is very hard for emotional political types to understand."

It was something he had difficulty coming to grips with himself, once famously quipping that Helen Clark was so dry she would be combustible.

Her toughness was demonstrated - and developed - between 1987 and 1990 as one of the few left-leaning ministers in the Lange Government.

With some respect, Mr Lange says "she was the only minister who kept Roger Douglas off her patch in housing. She totally out-foxed and outmanoeuvred him and protected her turf."

The same, he says, was true with health.

Another example of this steely resolve was her decision to sack the Auckland Hospital Board without even a whisper to her husband and board member, Dr Peter Davis, or to fellow board member Judith Bassett, wife of her cabinet colleague Michael Bassett.

It's a theme taken up by Professor Chapman. "It was interesting to see her develop the kind of spine that could hold out against the Douglasites.

"She accepted responsibility, she found her own niche and she defended it with tooth and nail and came out of it in the kind of position she could use to rebuild the Labour Party into something quite different from what she had become a minister in."

Mr Lange feels we have reached the season in politics where Helen Clark's steady, "rather ruthless" analytical style of managerial leadership is what New Zealand needs.

He says she knows where the levers of power are in a way not many MPs do.

David Caygill, who was her deputy in her first two years as leader, talks of her skills as a team leader, even in the difficult years between the leadership coup in 1993 and the 1996 election, where a good campaign helped legitimise her position. He rejects the suggestion of some that she does not suffer fools gladly. "That's not particularly true of Helen. No, she sets high standards as a manager of a political team, but she's not super-critical or interfering."

Michael Bassett, Helen Clark's predecessor in the health portfolio, recalls her as a rather tougher operator than that. "She is tough, as you can see from the television debates, and she can be very direct. Oh, and she never forgets. She's got a memory like an elephant. If someone irritates her, she never forgets."

Her reputation as a hard taskmistress predates her political career, going back to her role as tutor in political studies at Auckland University. But she was always hardest on herself. Professor Chapman says she had a general expectation that everyone worked hard. She would go out of her way to help students when they needed it, and, consequently, tended to expect them to work hard, too.

For those who have to deal with her in coming months, Dr Bassett advises that "Helen is first, last and foremost a realist. She is incredibly intuitive at working out just what is possible at the particular moment."

What will be possible in the coming three years, of course, will be determined by her relationship with her new deputy, Alliance leader Jim Anderton.

The pair used to be inseparable allies dating back to their local body politicking of the 1970s. Her wedding party took place at Mr Anderton's Remuera home.

Inside the Lange caucus they were part of an increasingly diminishing minority of leftists fighting the Rogernomics tide.

Helen Clark fought Rogernomics from within, clinging to the old trade union principle that if you don't hang together, you hang separately.

She kept the fight internal, Mr Anderton took it outside, much to the fury of the Douglas majority.

Helen Clark left Mr Anderton to it, declaring that she did not want to be "trapped in a ghetto with one or two people," and that she had not "come this far to be burned out in a hail of gunfire."

For nearly a decade, hardly a civil word passed between them.

In 1993, when she seized the Labour leadership, there was no phone call or letter from Mr Anderton.

"What was I supposed to congratulate her about?" he asked at the time. He would see her, if he had to, about work, "but not because it's Helen Clark. If I have to talk to Genghis Khan or Darth Vader, I will."

Compared with that, their present relationship is positively romantic. The question on everyone's lips is: will Mr Anderton be able to remember his place?

"It's not going to be easy," says Dr Bassett, "but Helen has more experience with Jim. One thinks of the marriage vows - for better or worse, for richer or poorer - and I think that probably if anyone can handle Jim, she can.

"Jim's problem, of course, is that he doesn't really defer to anybody. No organisation is any good unless Jim is running it. That will be the bottom-line problem she will struggle with."

Mr Caygill is more sanguine, saying he holds no fears about the relationship. "What I do know about politics is that you don't necessarily have to be deeply fond of someone in order to be able to have a good working relationship.

"What you do have to have is a good knowledge and respect for each other. Helen and Jim have campaigned in the past couple of years in a way which suggests they have that kind of relationship. I'm sure both are committed to making it work. They wouldn't have got this far without being able to make it work."

Professor Chapman also believes that if anyone can do it, Helen Clark can.

"To say Jim and his prominent followers are enthusiasts for their own point of view is an understatement. Consequently, it requires a person who is highly intelligent and who really understands where they are coming from and where she must stick and say, 'No farther.'

"It's possible for intelligent people - and Jim's certainly intelligent - to work out some medium position."

Professor Chapman says MMP politics "is the hardest kind to work in. It involves a great deal of self-abnegation. It demands putting up with compromises you would really rather not have to.

"For idealistic people, this containing themselves when they can only obtain half the load, or a quarter - it's very hard ..."

He says Helen Clark has been through a lot of heat and heavy fire and understands the limitations of the situation.

"She'll try her level best."