John Key's first 100 days

JOHN KEY is busy but bland, friendly but unexciting. He joked after the election that he would "keep his happy, smiley self". He also promised he would bring in 27 new policies in his first 100 days. Key has kept his word and his temper. The world economic crisis deepens and the PM's tone and his oy-oy vowels haven't changed.

Key was cursed by coincidence - being elected at the same time as Barack Obama, the most charismatic politician of his time. Key's lack of charisma is striking. His victory speech was neither a call to arms nor a shared dream of national uplift. It was just boyish delight that he had got his childhood wish. But what had New Zealand got?

The critics said Key was much more dangerous than he looked: inside the meringue there were bones. He was a far-right radical dressed up in beige. Or he was slippery John, the man who smiles and lies. His first 100 days in power suggest the first charge is false. His policies have been mostly middling, or small-c conservative.

Key has also made a fetish of keeping his promises. He issued his 100-day plan before the election, he told the Sunday Star-Times, to give people "the confidence that we had a plan and that we would implement it with urgency". The plan aimed at the global economic crisis - but it would also help quash the doubts about Key's honesty.

Is this enough? Key has shown himself a managerial leader rather than an inspirational one. He has shown promise at managing his odd coalition with right-wing Pakeha and left-leaning Maori. But critics complain that he has failed to show voters the big picture or the wider plan, let alone a vision. In all this, he is like a friendlier version of Helen Clark.

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY political scientist Jon Johansson says the Key government "lacks a really clear definitive statement that explains what the government is about, where they want to focus and why. In the absence of that, everything to me looks ad hoc".

Key likes to refer to the government's "rolling maul of Jobs and Growth initiatives", but Johansson finds the metaphor unpersuasive.

"A rolling maul is but a tactic, a means to an end, and I haven't seen in Key's speech any sense of what his ends are, let alone his markers for progress," he told the Star-Times.

Auckland political scientist Barry Gustafson says Key hasn't explained the big picture to the voters. "Right back to the election campaign, they were not hammering sufficiently the seriousness of the [economic] problem." The government was now spelling out "some chapters of its programme. I think we needed a summary of the book first".

Act's Sir Roger Douglas, a big-picture man if ever there was one, said earlier this month: "It's time to look to the longer term - to stop fiddling with cents and start looking at dollars. New Zealanders must ask themselves whether the plan Mr Key outlined today does that."

Key doesn't accept this at all.

"We spent the entire election campaign talking about the fact that the economy needs a change, it needs to become more productive, more efficient and more flexible," he says. "And our job in the recession is to preserve as many jobs as possible, but to make constructive changes to the economy so that when we come out of the recession we're running faster than our competitors."

He also points to a speech he gave earlier this month outlining the government's economic plan. But this, in fact, was precisely the one the critics talked about. The PM peers down his end of the telescope; the critics look through the other. And the critics have been tough on the plan, saying it is much too timid.

Last week's $500 million spend on infrastructure, said opposition leader Phil Goff, was "a drop in the bucket". Pundits have been making the same point for weeks: the Key government is a chicken-livered Keynesian, not prepared to spend enough to blunt the forces of recession. Many have made the comparison with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's $42 billion stimulus package. "We are going to move heaven and earth," promised the Aussie.

Key, on the other hand, was just shifting a few rocks around.

Key says this isn't fair. "It's not an apples-for-apples comparison," he says. Rudd was announcing a tax cut programme; National had already announced one. Rudd's announcement covered his whole infrastructure programme; Key's announcement was only part of his. In fact, the Key government plans to spend $4.5b extra on capital works over the next three years.

The government brags that this makes its stimulus programme among the biggest in the western world relative to the size of the economy.

"On the best data we have had, we still believe that we're more stimulatory than Australia, and in the top-five and possibly the top-three in the OECD," says Key.

This is a vital point that goes to the heart of the government's programme. So who is right? Key's boast about being number three is a reference to a study that is now out of date. In December the OECD issued a report showing that New Zealand's fiscal stimulus was third after Iceland and Denmark. But much has changed since then. Last week, for example, the United States approved its huge $1.5 trillion programme.

However, Treasury estimates that New Zealand will do more to stimulate its economy than Australia, despite appearances. This year New Zealand's policies will be just slightly less of a stimulus than Australia's, and next year will be nearly twice as large as a proportion of the economy.

This, of course, depends on the government sticking with its promises. But if it does, it will be moving even more of heaven and earth than Rudd. Whether that is enough to keep the economy going, of course, is anyone's guess.

KEY PRESENTS his government as middle-of-the-road. "New Zealand is a country where fortunately the vast bulk of the country inhabit the middle income range. We're quite considered people, and I don't think they want extremes at one end of the spectrum or the other, and I believe that the government's make-up reflects that."

Last week he slapped down Douglas's radical right plan for a two-stream system, where wealthy folks get low taxes in return for looking after their own health and welfare. The idea, says Key, is "fundamentally flawed".

At the same time, he emphasises the good relationship he has with the Maori Party - and what they have gained from the deal with Maoridom's traditional foe. The government kept the controversial Maori clauses in the Resource Management Act. The Maori Party "submitted very heavily on that, and, at the end of the day, we took on board their comments", says Key.

And Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples had played "an active role" in getting the three Treaty of Waitangi settlements announced by the government last week. "He negotiated with [iwi] over the January period. It definitely helped."

Key's ease and affability have no doubt helped keep the coalition on the road. Business colleagues recalled that he would always be given the most difficult clients to deal with. How long this peace and harmony lasts, though, remains to be seen. The decision to raise the minimum wage by only 50c an hour - a decision that Key presents as a middle path - has disappointed many Maori Party voters.

And rage is mounting among the green groups. Key presents the RMA reforms as merely streamlining the planning process, not altering the environmental outcome.

"We're not arguing that developers should have carte blanche to create any monstrosity they want with no pushback from the community or affected parties," he says.

Forest & Bird's Kevin Hackwell replies: "If you're wealthy or powerful, whether you're a corporate or an individual, then these changes are going to make life a lot easier for you. If you're a medium or small-size business there's very little in it that is going to help you at all. And if you're a community group or an individual, then it's heavily weighted against you."

Key's easiness and unflappability are great strengths. He turned his broken arm into a PR triumph and he gained kudos when he stood up to two bullies who tried to manhandle him at Waitangi. He says he wasn't bothered either by the critics who attacked him for going on holiday at his Hawaii bach in the middle of global turmoil.

Key says he took his cellphone, laptop and two briefcases of papers with him. "I know I didn't stop working while I was away." He needed to clear his head after a gruelling year, he said, so he could make quality decisions as prime minister.

Right now, while the honeymoon continues, most people will probably think this is reasonable. But in time, Key's strengths will become his weaknesses, as always happens with politicians. His house in Hawaii is now an accepted symbol of common Kiwi aspirations. Later, as the economic trouble deepens and many lose their jobs, Key might come to be seen as the "rich prick", to use Michael Cullen's brutal phrase, and his happy, smiley self a goad and an annoyance.

- © Fairfax NZ News