From the archives: The Christopher Luxon-led coalition government has now marked its first 100 days in power. We’ve turned back the clock 20 years to March, 2000 when, sitting at a Deve Brasserie, a now-closed cafe in Kingsland, Auckland, Steve Braunias talked with then PM Helen Clark on her own first 100 days in office. There are some familiar themes.
Talk about an exclusive. The first crisis that Helen Clark has truly suffered since becoming the first woman to be elected Prime Minister can now be revealed: the apparent loss of Monty Adams, the photographer whose lovely campaign photo of Clark so flabbergasted Winston Peters that he wondered whether it was Clark’s daughter. Her interrogation is quick, exact. “He’s leaving the country? When? Why? Where’s he going? To do what?” Dunno. It was in the paper a few weeks ago. She blinks, slumps her shoulders. “Best I’ve ever had. Hmm. Have to find a new photographer,” Clark babbles to herself. Situation vacant, then, but don’t her advisers tell her anything?
Such a down way to end the interview. Clark had arranged to meet for morning tea at her favoured meet-the-press venue - Deve, a cafe in Kingsland, Auckland, which does a nice Mediterranean marinated-sardine dish, and has six tables set aside for customers to smoke in splendid peace. It seemed politic to sit as far away as possible. Wearing a charcoal Jane Daniels suit with a hanky sticking out of her pocket, Clark marches in, orders a big white tub of latte, endures the lesser photographer, and then sets about giving another command performance.
The new PM comes to her first 100 days in power this week. How was the honeymoon for her? “Fast. Fast.” Yes. Yes. Barely 24 hours has drifted by since the November 27 election without Clark leading our newshour, one way or another; removing the heads of TVNZ chair Roseanne Meo, Timberlands guerrilla Kit Richards, and Police Commissioner Peter Doone (now just another schnook in the Prime Minister’s Department, a kind of ghost who earns), raising the pension and the minimum wage, saying a lot about national identity (out with gongs and her presence at Waitangi, in with a Māori anthem and something called quality television), chairing a new Cabinet committee that aims to improve health, housing, employment and education among Māori and Pacific Island communities (raising this subject in the interview is the only time that Clark, the latte socialist, sips at her coffee) … and somewhere along the line, she has pledged to save the whales.
Next? Well, stay tuned to the next thrilling instalment of the Hawkesby-in-$5.25m-payout-shocker. As for the fate of Work and Income chief executive Christine Rankin - on the morning of this interview (Friday, February 18), it had been revealed that Winz had trouble processing student loan payments.
Journalist: Ms Rankin in the news again. Clark: “Mmmmm.” Journalist: Winz has made a bloody dog’s breakfast of student loans. Clark: “Mmmmm. That’s what it is. And it is a major failure of administration. They assured the last government they could handle it.” Journalist: You’re not going to tell me, but is her head the next to roll?
Clark: “Couldn’t possibly comment. I mean, she has had a number of expectations placed before her by the present minister [Steve Maharey, Social Services], and I’m sure successfully administering this was among them.”
Forgive the bloodlust, but surely the sound you have just heard is of an axe being sharpened.
Clark gives such great eye contact. She would be hell to work for. Her blue gaze demands and expects; her mouth is cynical, she sighs when bored; she likes to begin her latest instruction by saying, “So. Now.” When she listens, her top lip rests over and slightly beyond her bottom lip, so that she looks like she’s about to gulp. And when the Prime Minister laughs, she honks like a most delighted goose. She laughs a lot.
That never seemed very likely before she took office - power becomes her. Fact: Helen Clark, 50 on February 26, rocks. The quips, the ease of her most savage attacks, the relentless opinions; it’s like we are finally seeing the real Helen Clark. “Mmmmm. I don’t have to prove anything any more.” She seems witty all of a sudden. “I’ve always been witty. It’s just never been reported, because there was a chip in most people’s minds about me which said Helen Clark was austere, gloomy, had no sense of humour...” A bore. “Yeah. Well, no, I’ve never been called boring. Never been called boring,” she repeats, rather stunned. “But I’ve had that sort of thing put over me for years, and it wasn’t until I got the top job that people were able to see past that.”
Muldoon and Lange, though, were superb Opposition leaders; how does Clark now compare herself? Impossible to judge, she says, because she became Labour leader after MMP. “It was just a completely different situation than any Opposition leader before had ever found themselves in. And it was very, very difficult.” After calling her a bore, it seems easy to describe her as a miserablist during her time in the shadows of Bolger and Shipley administrations. She responds, “The important thing of being in Opposition is not to let it scar your personality ... I regard myself as a happy person. I mean, I’m basically a successful person.”
Well, she is running the country. The reviews have been good. “Utterly focused... upfront ... razor-sharp logic” - John Armstrong, the Herald. “Genuine ...stunning ... bold” - Michael Laws, Sunday Star-Times. “Muldoonist” - somebody or other in the Act Party.
Her grand inquisition of the public service, or the state sector, most obviously and loudly TVNZ, has proved a terrific crowd-pleaser as Clark twists the ears of the previously untouchable snouts in the trough. Hear the news presenters squeal, see a flustered Paul Holmes mutter that he’ll leave the country - Clark talks about national identity, and yet she might be ridding us of a national icon. “Oh, no, he’s retracted that,” she retorts, and then she who must be amused delivers a series of honks.
All right, it is hilarious. But isn’t the whole TVNZ thing just a vaudeville debacle? “It is a vaudeville debacle.” She clearly likes that phrase, because the honking once again rattles the teacups. Expect Clark, as Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, to push through funding for theatrical productions of vaudeville debacles. “It’s a farce of monumental proportions! And I find it disgusting. Disgraceful. “I find it disgusting that PR agencies are set on the government by a state corporation (TVNZ). It puts it in the same feral category as Timberlands. Why should we put up with it? We’re laying down a line of what’s expected. And if you go over that line, you expect to have your neck chopped off. I think these sorts of issues bedevilled the last government, which didn’t seem to have the strength to deal with them. We’re doing our best to deal with them.”
At the expense of serious business? “What was quite novel,” she says about the Labour-Alliance coalition, “was a government coming in and starting to implement its policies. That hasn’t happened for a long time. So there were top priorities with student loans and super[annuation], which we got cracking on.”
Those are two mere examples. Following the election, NZ Herald columnist Colin James wearily predicted that Clark would “look leftish, even radical” as she quickly put through accident compensation renationalisation and Employment Contract Act reforms, but then, “move cautiously, conservatively and within budget”. But she hasn’t moved that quickly at all, nor on defence policy, or state housing rentals.
“Oh, yes, we have,” she argues, and states that “systematic law reform” is already dealing with ACC and labour laws, and that cheaper rentals “should be in by the end of the year”.
In the meantime, such fun and games with TVNZ. Is it just playing at image politics?
“No. No. I have a major problem not only with a major state corporation behaving unethically, but when it arguably crosses the line into unlawful activity, you cannot stand by and say nothing is wrong,” she says, referring to TVNZ’s possible enticement of John Hawkesby from TV3.
“A week ago, TVNZ issued a statement which can only be seen as a blink in the government’s eye. They said nothing was wrong, that everything was fine, and in effect, what the hell were we worrying about? Well, not good enough.
“So. Now. There have to be standards... There will have to be a charter, by looking to a new board to lead charge. There’ll have to be a change in management, culturally. I mean, when you start on an issue like this, from the nether regions of TVNZ, it filters up from the lowliest to the middle levels, with everything you ever suspected about TVNZ, its arrogance, its style, its strategy. And I regard it as all a bit sad. But something will be done. There’ll be a new board. It’ll be better.”
Situations vacant, must accept lousy wages. Notoriously, Clark’s own staff have been denied the kink of lucre enjoyed during National’s term in office. “I don’t believe you should get rich in public service. You don’t go into politics to get rich.” God help us, you don’t even go into TV, it seems, to get rich. “TV3 runs a perfectly credible news service by paying its presenters a fraction of the amount over at TVNZ. Now that might reflect something.
“It also might be interesting to ask whether there’s been any downward effect on the Holmes show ratings while the expensive Mr Holmes has been away, and the less expensive Ms Woods has been on it. I suspect it hasn’t moved a jot.”
So. Now. The noises that Clark and Broadcasting Minister Marian Hobbs have made about TVNZ screening better-quality shows, with more local content - well, whose quality, what do the rest of us get to watch, and where does the government turn to if and when TVNZ subsequently returns less profit?
On the last matter, Clark rather blithely says no social services will suffer as a result.
“TV2 has been a cash cow. No question. But we intend to take less dividend off it, over time... I mean, we’ve already picked up a lot from the top end of income earners, which starts to offset some of that.”
As for the stuff on TV - doesn’t New Zealand have a proud tradition of anti-intellectualism? “It hasn’t held me back! But I don’t think people are as anti-intellectual as is popularly assumed.” Surveys for the previous week state that the highest-rating TV show was something called The Vicar of Dibley. “I can assure you I’ve never watched it,” honks Clark, and then blathers on about “the exciting development of Māori performing arts moving away from traditional forms to acquired forms”, etc.
One of the baits to secure this interview from Clark, despite her schedule - before getting out of bed that day, she made a list of 38 “things to check on”; her appointment after the Listener was to sit astride a 1971 Honda 50 for a quality TV show hosted by Jim Hickey - was to ask her about national identity. It’s a vague, intangible subject, which many of us hoped was a thing of the hand-wringing past, or left as an essay subject for university students. For Clark, it’s a vital issue.
And so she talks about the cultural dangers of Brand New Zealand, of having Sunday lunch a few years ago when a friend worried that her son (“He was, I don’t know, 11, or 10, or 9″) had nothing distinctively New Zealand in his upbringing (”I thought, what a terrible thing”), of feeling “shattered” at the Colmar-Brunton and TVNZ opinion poll that ranked the death of Diana equal with World War I as one of the most tragic events of the 20th century (when exasperated, Clark stutters: “Ah-ah-ah-absolutely unbelievable!”), of the two large portraits in the hallway at her grandparents’ house of family members who died at Gallipoli and at a camp in Wiltshire on the way to France: “That was our upbringing. We knew about that. In fact, I think pretty much up to and including the 70s, most people had a distinctively New Zealand childhood.”
Not any more. But again, whose national identity? Clark has rubbished Te Papa. Is it her national identity that she wants the rest of New Zealand to share? “It is very subjective. But with Te Papa, my concern is basically saying that a good national museum or gallery should not just be judged on drawing a crowd. It should be judged on whether it enjoys the respect of scholars, and art museum critics, which clearly it doesn’t.”
The obvious parallel here is with TVNZ. “Precisely. And so, really, a lot of these core cultural institutions are under the microscope. The National Library, similarly, which has embarked on this philistinism of purging tens of thousands of books ... I mean, for God’s sake.”
She veers back to Te Papa, and its national art collection “which arguably has never been less adequately displayed. Now I resent that. And I’m in a position now to have some influence. But the other issue with Te Papa is not only does it not enjoy the respect of those whose respect I think it should care about,” says Clark, whose favourite reading is the New Statesman and the Guardian Weekly, “although it shows every sign of not caring about it, is just saying [to the government], ‘We’ve put 3.5 million people through, what are you moaning about?’” Clark then says the worst, most terrible three words in her language: “Not good enough.”
History is written by the victor. The Labour-Alliance win on November 27, and Clark’s dream run as Prime Minister (“A honeymoon? Oh, definitely.”), have both been helped by the National Party - with enemies as slack as that, who needs friends?
“The National Party to me is showing no signs of having learnt any of the lessons from election day,” says Clark. Cue a disdainful satire: “Perhaps they didn’t communicate. Fundamentally, their policies were right. It was just the electorate got a bit tired of them. If they just sit there and smile, they’ll be back in three years’ time.”
She would have been a good, sneering punk. “So our opponents are basking in the sunlight, as the NZ Herald so aptly said. You have nothing to fear from a basking tuatara.” The honking goose is away again, but Clark resumes her old seriousness when she adds, “I suspect Act is more realistic.”
At a recent retreat, National MPs reportedly picked out government MPs Steve Maharey, Dover Samuels, Michael Cullen and Marian Hobbs as weak performers in Parliament. But targeting Clark, they told the Herald, would be avoided. “Very wise. Very wise,” she says, the cynical mouth twisting to a happy smirk. When she led the Opposition, Clark steered away from Simon Upton: “As Minister of Health, he was a disaster. But when he was moved out of that [into Environment, and State Services], he was very competent in the House, a very good parliamentary performer. We asked him very few questions.
“But we had such fun with Mrs Shipley, and Mr Bolger.” Happiness is a warm gun; Clark’s smile is almost wistful, nostalgic. “So. Now. They’ll be trying to identify who they can make fun of.” Marian Hobbs, all right, has blundered about, scratched her head, got things arse over face in the House. But, you know, it was only a couple of times. “Everyone learns from their mistakes. She would be the most conscious of it. Must try and do better.”
Yes, must. Perhaps a reminder was on Clark’s list of 38 matters that day. She is already famous for maintaining a tight rein on the business of government. In fact, who else on her staff has opened their mouth to the media? It seems as though Clark is the Minister of Everything. Oh, she huffs, that’s only because of her decision to resume the Prime Minister’s Monday press conference, cancelled by Jim Bolger back in 1992 and not reinstated by Shipley. “So that’s what’s novel. People are seeing the Prime Minister respond to a wide range of issues.”
That’s in public, but the perception is that she assumes an all-knowing, all-seeing identity in the dear old dimly lit corridors of power. How closely is she working with Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton? “Very. Very. There’s nothing he says I don’t know about.” The blue eyes stay absolutely still. She thinks to add, “And nothing I say he doesn’t know about.” A control freak? “No. But I like people to buy into a strategy and stick to it. And that strategy is quite democratically arrived at.” Is that a democracy of Clark and her trusted adviser Heather Simpson? Well, at least that made her laugh.
“I’ve watched a lot of governments come and go. Watched how Australian state government is run. Watched how the Blair Government runs. I don’t think we’re anything like as controlling as that, by the way. And I’ve picked up a few ideas along the way. In addition, we are in a coalition, so we don’t want surprises. We have quite elaborate systems of consultation. It has to go through a proper process. We have the Greens to consider. So there has to be quite a lot of formal control. Our people accept that. They have to,” says Prime Minister Helen Clark, who is such a final person.
This article originally appeared in the March 4 2000 issue of the New Zealand Listener.