No thorn too sharp

It's a dim and drizzly Christchurch afternoon.

The paradise ducks almost have Cranmer Square to themselves - if not for the traffic swishing damply past and the photo-shoot of a trenchcoated public servant.

The photographer asks the slim 72-year-old woman to face the other way. She twirls her umbrella and the flash fires a few more times. Suddenly, a car pulls over and parks and a woman rushes across the long, soggy grass of the inner-city park.

The woman hands over her business card, gushing: "We're very proud to have you here in Christchurch."

Smiling politely, the public servant points at the reporter and photographer and responds: "Don't tell me, tell them."

Once again, Dame Margaret Bazley's reputation precedes her - and she manages to turn a situation to her advantage.

Bazley's appointment to head the Environment Canterbury (ECan) commission, after the Government controversially sacked the regional councillors in March, was no surprise.

If there's a thorny issue, she's brought in. Despite being "retired" from the civil service for almost a decade, Bazley has gone on to chair the government's legal aid review, was a member of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance and was the head commissioner for the damning inquiry into police conduct.

Tough jobs for a tough lady.

She has overseen the restructuring of departments, faced down unions and contradicted prime ministers. She's received bullets in the mail and death threats. There was also a high-profile split with former Department of Work and Income chief Christine Rankin, which culminated in Bazley testifying against her one-time protege at the Employment Court in 2001.

She's obviously not trying to win popularity contests.

But interspersed with tales of her steely pursuit of the government-of-the-day's agenda are the personal touches. Bazley apparently bakes for favoured employees and pulls homemade Marmite sandwiches from her ever-present handbag.

(Her ECan commissioner expenses for May show she spent a mere $13 on dinner one night, which she reveals was soup and a piece of bread.)

Bazley has strong links to Christchurch. She cut her teeth in management here, being appointed matron of Sunnyside Hospital in 1965, at the tender age of 27.

In some ways, her ECan appointment is a homecoming.

Bazley is in the former chairman's lounge on the first floor of the Aoraki Building at ECan's Christchurch headquarters. She's dressed in a blue knitted jersey with matching pearls and a chic black jacket.

Bazley's Wikipedia page says she's a keen supporter of the All Blacks and the English Premier League football side Chelsea. "I don't know about Chelsea, but certainly the All Blacks," she says.

It turns out she was at the Springboks game at Wellington's Cake Tin a few weeks ago and regularly attends All Blacks games in Dunedin and Christchurch. Her partner, Lyle Shanks - who died of cancer last year - was "absolutely mad" on rugby. (She divorced husband Steve Bazley in 1978.)

Bazley has already booked her Rugby World Cup quarter-final tickets for Wellington.

More searching questions get short, staccato responses.

How are the All Blacks looking for the Tri-Nations? "Very, very good."

Any players she'd rather see in the team? "I tend to be an admirer of whoever is performing well."

What about favourites? "I'm always a fan of Dan Carter."

It can be hard to get an unguarded word from bureaucrats. Bazley even avoids ruffling rugby feathers.

Bazley moved from Dunedin to Christchurch in 1965, being promoted to matron of the women's side of the psychiatric hospital.

"I still think it's one of the most exciting jobs I ever did," she says.

Four years later she unified the facility, which had been segregated by gender - both staff and patients. At 31, in the early 1970s, she was managing a large number of men.

"That was an incredible opportunity for a woman at that time . . . which has stood me in good stead ever since."

Under the "inspirational" leadership of medical superintendent Dr Edwin Hall, Bazley helped transform Sunnyside from a "locked" facility, more like a prison, into a world- leading, therapeutic hospital.

"In those days the patients were there for long periods . . . and I have great affection for many of the people I worked with there."

She's still in touch with her former secretary.

You can sense Bazley's pride and single-mindedness, but years of bureaucratic "avoiding the point" seems to have ironed out much of the colour and inner reflections.

And then, surprisingly, colour emerges. A slight tinge of green.

The benign question is: How did it feel to come back to Christchurch?

"I love the South Island. I'm a keen tramper and I just think Fiordland is the most special place in the world. And I'm also a very keen gardener - I had a wonderful garden in Christchurch.

"I've always tried to recreate my Christchurch garden and I never could. I've finally bought a place in the Wairarapa where I've created my Christchurch garden."

She continues: "Once you actually move across the strait you don't move back, so in many ways this has been a bit of a bonus, actually being able to come down here and work again. I'm really looking forward to the evenings getting long enough to get around the [Botanic] Gardens."

What keeps Bazley from her garden during the week is her four jobs - she's head commissioner at ECan, a Waitangi Tribunal member, chair of the New Zealand Fire Service Commission and Registrar of Pecuniary Interests.

She can't remember ever applying for a job - they've always been offered to her.

The one that has eluded her, she reveals, is the chief executive of the Department of Conservation. "The opportunity's never come my way," she laments. "I think I'm a bit old now."

In 1965, Bazley was "tough" and fitted the "serious" matronly stereotype, says Barbara Hall, wife of the late Dr Hall.

"She wasn't soft about anything with people," she says. "She was very hard-working and a good nurse. She soon got the respect of a lot of the old nurses there."

Some senior nurses objected to her but the better ones were all supportive, Hall says. "I was surprised she was so young. But she was a very capable person - it didn't seem to bother her that she was taking on quite a big job."

Environment Minister Nick Smith picks up on Hall's theme.

"She's incredibly tough but equally has got a soft side to her, which those who have worked with her have experienced," he says.

Smith was the Associate Minister of Social Welfare when Bazley was the department's director-general in the 1990s.

- © Fairfax NZ News