On the road with the (non-dancing) Queen

It’s Wednesday morning and I’m sitting in a café on Sandringham Road, in Helen Clark’s Mount Albert electorate. It’s in between a massage parlour and a pizza joint so I guess most options are covered.

I have a higher motive, though - I’m waiting to have a chat with our Prime Minister, who is on her usual manic schedule. I’ve had a taste of this over the last day or so, following her around a few engagements in Hamilton and Auckland.

Say what you like about Helen Clark, she works like a trouper. Yesterday started around 8am when she climbed in the car to drive from her home to Hamilton.

She then proceeded to visit a childcare centre, a combined chamber of commerce/Women’s Business Network lunch, a KiwiSaver call centre, had coffee with the Waikato Times’ editor, Bryce Johns, walked around Hamilton Press, dropped in to Hamilton City Council for an “informal mix and mingle’’, addressed the Association of University Staff’s Women’s Conference, opened the new Waikato “hub’’ office for Labour MPs, and attended a Labour fundraising dinner that went until 10pm.

I forgot to mention that in between this she does several “stand-ups’’ with local media, climbs into the row over Housing NZ’s attempts to evict a tenant in her electorate, and comments on the state of the dollar and the arrest of a terrorist suspect at Brisbane Airport.

She and I also have a chat over a cup of tea at the childcare centre. The Prime Minister is engaging at a personal level, and enjoys chatting with the media. Like any good politician, she uses us as a sounding board and also slips the odd idea forward that she might want to pursue - not that it came from her, of course.

At one point, local MP Dianne Yates appears, hovering at her shoulder, anxious to steer her boss away to more illustrious company than myself. Clark dismisses her with a wave of her hand: “Not now, Dianne.’’

The PM is a master at working a room. Clark’s press secretaries say they can always tell when she’s ready to move on because she looks across at them, which is their signal to get her away from whatever loony (or press gallery journalist) has cornered her. If she doesn’t look up, it means she doesn’t want to be interrupted.

Anyway, after all this she climbs into her ministerial limo and heads back to Auckland, arriving at 11.30pm. Probably time for a Milo with Peter and then to bed, after preparing for the morning round of interviews on radio. Then off to open a public health conference, back to her electorate office for a profile interview with The Listener’s Bill Ralston.

And then me. If it were anyone else I’d be amazed if they could string two words together after 24 hours like that, but I’m sure the prime minister will be her usual professional self.

One of the most common remarks I hear about Clark is “I don’t know how she does it’’. To that I would sometimes reply “I don’t know why she does it.’’ It does sometimes appear like a thankless job, and not always as interesting as it appears on telly. A lot of the time she has to give speeches to dull conferences, talk to dull people, and appear interested in their solutions to the world’s problems.

Up here in Auckland everyone wants to talk about the roads, and having just navigated my way up from Hamilton and then negotiated my way around the CBD I’m not surprised.

She’s also expected to have the answers to problems most of us wouldn’t have a clue how to solve, like how to bring down the dollar, how to lift productivity, how to combat global terrorism, and most tricky of all, why frogs have sticky tongues.

The last question comes courtesy of a three-year-old at Hillcrest Childcare Centre, where Clark reads the children a story containing this and other gems. The kids and the teachers then all stand and sing while flapping their arms around and jumping up and down.

The PM stands with her arms clasped firmly by her side, smiling wanly. She’s been in this situation far too many times to be foolish enough to join them. She knows she’d be up on YouTube within the hour, probably to the tune of Dancing Queen, alongside Pete Hodgson and Trevor Mallard.

It’s a very, very long way until the next election but these days on the road seem to stretch out right through to November 08.

Having now spent some time in the company of both Clark and National’s John Key, I can report that both seem to have the stamina, the will power, the charisma, and the intellect to make the next election a fascinating contest.

I’m just worried about whether we journalists will be able to stand the pace.