Life's what they make it

BY MARTIN VAN BEYNEN

Local politics has come a long way from the days when a mayor's spouse was expected to be seen but not heard.

In recent weeks, the wife of Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker, Jo Nicholls-Parker, has been in the headlines for her attractiveness, for sitting in on her husband's breakfast meetings with city council chief executive Tony Marryatt and for putting her lattes and muffins on the council tab. For many, the attention is unjustified and plain silly, given the real issues of the election.

One upshot of the coverage is that voters will no doubt factor in a prospective mayor's spouse in their calculations.

They have seen and heard quite a bit of Nicholls-Parker recently, and many will be wondering what sort of role Carole Anderton, the wife of Parker's main rival for the mayoralty, Jim Anderton, will play if the Wigram MP becomes mayor.

Neither Nicholls-Parker nor Carole Anderton wanted to be interviewed for this article, but more of that later.

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The recent fuss highlights the nebulous expectations of the largely undefined role of a mayor's spouse. If Nicholls-Parker has crossed the line with her office being beside Parker's and her presence at breakfast meetings, she would hardly be the first mayor's spouse to do so.

The role is what you make it, says Canterbury District Health Board member Alister James, a former city councillor who was first elected in 1982.

Lady Hay, the wife of the late Sir Hamish Hay, mayor of Christchurch from 1975 to 1989, elevated the role into a more active one without any controversy, James says.

She had her own office in the council building and had positions in a range of organisations.

"This was a time when being mayor had a large voluntary component, and her work was seen as voluntary," James says.

He remembers Judith Hay, who was highly respected, appearing on her husband's campaign material, and saw them being presented as a package to the voters.

When Vicki Buck was elected mayor, her then husband, Rob McKay, a businessman connected with the Chamber of Commerce, used Lady Hay's former office for a time, but he soon bowed out of most civic affairs.

Former veteran councillor David Close says McKay found the job awkward, and although he continued to support Buck, he decided to withdraw. The marriage foundered during Buck's mayoral term.

When Garry Moore became mayor in 1998, his wife, Pam Sharpe, had four children at home, and she was still working part-time as a nurse.

Although she supported Moore as much as she could with the help of family and friends, she took the main responsibility for running the family, she says.

"I went to a lot of events, but a lot I couldn't go to," she says. "I had to take the kids to dance lessons and all the rest."

In Moore's last term she became head of the Mayoral Relief Fund and was regarded as effective and intelligent. Moore often says he discussed every important council decision with his wife.

"I was his sounding board – a safe place where he could throw ideas around," she says.

"Mayor can be a lonely position."

Sharpe comes from a strong Labour family and has been a party member all her life.

She helps deliver pamphlets at election time, and before her husband took on civic responsibilties she was involved in much voluntary community work.

Moore says having a wife "working with ordinary people in the community who wasn't locked up in local body politics" was an important factor in his life.

Clearly, spouses like Sharpe have a significant influence on their husbands.

Carole Anderton has shown she has some leverage over her formidable partner. In 2006, he made a submission to a hearing on the council's long-term community plan that included most of his wife's main concerns, including the fraying of the city's garden image and the reduction of council representation.

She is on record as saying she has never been "in Jim's footsteps or his shadow".

"I see wives that allow their husbands to be the beginning and end of the world. Poor, timid women at their beck and call," she said.

"Yes, you have to be available, but you also have to have a life," she told a Wellington newspaper in 1996.

It is hard to imagine more different people than Carole Anderton and Jo Nicholls-Parker.

Nicholls-Parker, 40, was brought up in an apparently financially comfortable family in Havelock North and went to private schools. She has dabbled in a variety of fields, including graphic art, computer design, acting, university study in English literature and film and theatre, aromatherapy, art auctioneering on cruise ships, French cuisine, art curating and running an Akaroa homestay.

She met Parker through amateur theatre in Christchurch in 1999. They married in Brisbane in 2007. Her cutting-edge fashion sense always looks stylish and individual, if not always appropriate for the occasion.

She suspended her study towards a master's degree in art curating at Canterbury University to concentrate on her duties as mayoress.

Anderton, about 70, was born in Gisborne in a hard-pressed working-class family. She went to Gisborne Girls' High School, where she was a good swimmer and diver (Nicholls-Parker was a good netballer).

She trained as a teacher and taught in Wairoa until marrying farmer Max Hill when she was 23. They had five children.

Hill became ill, but they kept the farm going until they moved into town when Hill needed dialysis. The farm was sold.

In 1981, she was a widow and a self-taught landscaper when she met Jim Anderton, who was addressing a political meeting. By then she was a stalwart of her community.

`They married in 1984 when Jim Anderton began his first term in Parliament as the member for Sydenham.

Carole Anderton set up a landscaping business in Christchurch and did stints on the Spreydon-Heathcote Community Board and the Christchurch City Council.

She is known for her straight-shooting style and fearless manner. Some might say she is too blunt, a loudmouth. Once, when she was asked what she would do to her husband if she found he was fooling around in Wellington (as was another politician being discussed), she said she would "cut his balls off".

As a politician, she was a champion of the disadvantaged and would back community views against advice from council staff. She has been concerned about Christchurch's slipping gardening culture and has been a strong advocate for council social housing. That did not stop her voting for a council housing rental increase in 2003.

She has been against selling council assets and, like her husband, favours irrigation projects. "She was a very hard worker on council and very astute. She is a very loyal friend and has a big heart," says friend and former colleague Lesley Keast. Friends say Anderton helps disadvantaged families with food and presents, especially at Christmas. "She never seeks a pat on the back," says Keast.

Nicholls-Parker has been "very good to speak to", says Keast of the few occasions she has met her.

Talk has been the main problem for Nicholls-Parker, however. She has rounded English vowels drilled in by elocution lessons and which add to her otherworldly impression. And she says the strangest things (especially in interviews, it seems), which make her seem pretentious and overly self-referential.

For instance, when discussing a possible interview with me, she said: "One can always go back to the past a little and make it relevant to today and the future or one can get involved in some new initiatives in that conversation. I like to make sure I take the right tone on that."

And then: "Give me some time to have a conversation with Bob ... I take myself quite seriously as a human being and, albeit that I might have to play a side support role fulltime, I also want to maintain my credibility as a human being."

She told Press writer Philip Matthews in an interview in 2007 that she had always felt like an outsider and "celebrated it".

"Mostly because," she said, "I hate the fact I'm desperately normal with a desperately normal upbringing. I've celebrated the fact I'm one-eighth Spanish – I've tried to find these oddities to cultivate."

Perhaps a few too many of these oddities have grown into maturity. One well-connected business figure in the city, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says Nicholls-Parker seems to demonstrate a "complete disconnect between reality and fantasy".

However, another prominent businessman, who must also remain nameless, says she is "delightful to have a conversation with".

He understands that some might find her expressions a bit strange but sees them as her being "quirky, naive and inexperienced".

"It's easy to put those things in the wrong light. She and Bob work very hard for the city and she is learning the role," he says.

With the election only months away, many are hoping the mayoral contest does not stray too far from the battle between policies and mayoral contestants that it should be.

No doubt the spouses would agree.

- © Fairfax NZ News