Farewell to Parliament's carousel

BY COLIN ESPINER

This is my 372nd column as political editor of The Press. It's also my last.

It will be eight years ago next month that my editor asked me to write a weekly column on politics from Wellington. It seemed a good idea at the time.

Eight years isn't such a long time, but looking back on all those weekly columns is a sobering reminder of just how much has changed.

When I arrived in the parliamentary press gallery the Alliance Party was still in Parliament. So was New Zealand First and Winston Peters.

Bill English was the leader of the National Party and Don Brash was the governor of the Reserve Bank.

Rod Donald and David Lange were still very much alive, Richard Prebble led the ACT Party, the Maori Party was simply Labour's Maori caucus, Helen Clark was prime minister and John Key was just a wealthy upstart carpetbagger freshly returned from London and Merrill Lynch.

 

No-one knew what a Paintergate was, let alone a corn one.

 

Shane Ardern had yet to test the steps of Parliament with a tractor, the foreshore was just something you played beach cricket on, and no-one paid any attention to the Exclusive Brethren. Or Bob Clarkson's testicles.

 

One of the luxuries of hindsight is seeing what you wrote that turned out to be right - and what you got wrong.

 

I dismissed ACT leader Rodney Hide's chances in Epsom, and he's never let me forget it.

 

I anointed former ACT MP Deborah Coddington as the party's next leader, and he's never let me forget that, either.

 

I did, however, manage to pick Key as New Zealand's next prime minister as early as December 2006 (hardly prescient, you might say) and Paula Bennett as the next Minister of Social Development.

Any political correspondent learns from his or her audience, however, and I am indebted to the readers who took the time to keep me on the straight and narrow.

In particular, the tireless efforts of J Macbeth Dann, of Westmorland, Christchurch, to alert readers of the letters column to the dangers of my "ceaselessly blue-tinged" commentary.

"Colin Espiner's article on the US elections is one of the most thoughtful and balanced he has written all year, " Dann wrote of a piece I filed from America in October 2006, adding: "You could leave him there and replace him with a less-biased political editor."

 

Dr Cathy Casey, of Auckland, policy co-ordinator of the Alliance Party, wrote once of her disappointment at my view that her party was "dead and buried" - just before it was shown the door by voters at the 2005 election.

 

T C Cotton, of Spreydon, assisted me on several occasions by filling in the blanks of my knowledge of 20th century by advising me to "stay well away from it" while another Spreydon-ite, Kevin Flemming, corrected my knowledge of Velvet Underground lyrics.

My description of Wigram MP Jim Anderton as a war horse under Clark's thumb prompted him to put pen to paper, huffing that he had not been a member of Labour's caucus since 1989.

"As something of an old journalistic war horse himself, one would have thought that Mr Espiner would have noticed that at some point in the last 19 years."

 

I even got up the noses of Clark and her deputy, Michael Cullen.

"If journalism is about establishing the truth, Espiner's report failed miserably, " wrote Clark's former chief press secretary Mike Munro, on one occasion.

Cullen himself wrote complaining that "Mr Espiner seemed to have been listening to a totally different Budget to the one I delivered" after a slightly scathing review of the former finance minister's 2006 effort.

As long as the condemnation continued from all sides of the political spectrum, I generally felt I was getting it about right.

There's a popular view that journalists are cynical and bitter; press gallery journalists doubly so.

Yet I've found I've become less so over the years. When I started writing about politics I thought all politicians were venal and self-serving. Now I believe only some of them are.

Most of the 122 MPs who sit in Wellington each week at your expense genuinely want to make the country a better place.

They may be misguided, sometimes silly, occasionally foolish. But very few are genuinely bad.

The silliest of the lot, for my money, was the independent MP (formerly United Future) Gordon Copeland. He once argued in favour of a form of what could only be described as perpetual motion by suggesting surplus water from hydro power stations be pumped uphill again to make additional electricity.

Copeland also got conned out of the leadership of his own political party and overlooked voting on the very piece of legislation he left United Future over - Sue Bradford's child- discipline law.

 

Picking a loser from my years watching politics isn't as easy.

There have been countless embarrassments, numerous ministerial resignations, and several MPs who ended up in jail.

 

But the one who stands out for me is former National Party leader Don Brash. He left a lucrative and well-respected post at the Reserve Bank to walk the plank of politics; a life for which he was eminently unsuited.

His polarising views on race relations and welfare and his schoolmaster style just about made him our most unlikely would-be prime minister, however, before a combination of hubris, some humiliating gaffes and the earnest efforts of the Exclusive Brethren did him in.

Brash left politics with his private and public life splashed through newspapers and has spent the years since in a bid to reclaim the respect in which he was once held.

My winner? It's such a cliche to say Helen Clark, but who else can such an accolade be awarded to?

She dominated politics during my time at Parliament, alongside probably only Winston Peters and Brash, and she was more successful than either.

Few party leaders can claim three straight election victories and love her or loathe her, Clark altered the paradigm of New Zealand politics.

She forced National to the political centre, introduced most of the social policies this Government now promises to keep, and elevated political management to an art form.

Clark got the relatively rare opportunity to leave politics at a time of her own choosing rather than face the executioners' noose and fooled us all with her denials she was interested in a job at the United Nations. Turns out there was a Plan B after all.

Special mention must go to the supporting actors; Cullen, who paid off the country's net debt whatever you think of his politics, former Green co-leaders Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons for proving green politics could be mainstream, and Deputy Prime Minister Bill English, for getting up again every time he's been knocked down.

 

The story of English's political life is still being written, but few politicians have gone through quite so many highs and lows before their 50th birthday.

As leader of National he was awful, but he's somehow managed to crawl his way back from a bloody leadership spill to within touching distance of the ultimate prize - the premiership.

Will he ever make it? I personally doubt it, but in some ways he is more influential where he is.

 

Peters was the most mercurial politician I came across. He could be very rude. He once called me a moron. He could also be incredibly charming.

Peters would argue till death that black was white, and vice- versa, usually after a drink or two. Peters was easily the most talented politician I saw, but also the laziest. The results were therefore never dull.

Peters was hated, respected and feared in equal measure. He was such a political colossus that it took until months after his demise to accept that he was really gone. Or has he?

I shouldn't leave out United Future leader Peter Dunne. After all, he's the only MP who has remained the leader of the same political party throughout my time in the press gallery.

And he's done so without any changes whatsoever. Same party, same views, same hair. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

 

I've left John Key till last. Although he's been in Parliament the entire time I've written on politics, he hasn't dominated political life until relatively recently.

He's been a work in progress; an understudy, a relatively blank canvas still being painted.

Key has been successful - so far - by observing what worked for Clark and what didn't.

By compromise, everyman appeal, self-deprecation, humour and humility.

He is bright, business-like, and prefers big picture to details. He doesn't suffer fools or sweat small stuff.

Key could yet be a great prime minister.

 

The question is whether he wants to be.

He hasn't got Clark's hunger, which might be a good thing. But I wonder whether he'll tire of politics before it tires of him.

All politicians want a legacy, but few manage to achieve one.

Most, like those who write about politics, get forgotten pretty quickly. That's probably as it should be, as there are too many political retreads around already.

There's nothing as ex as an ex-MP, Michael Laws once said, and he should know.

If today's news is tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper, goodness knows what that makes today's political journalist.

But I reckon I know some politicians with a few suggestions.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Comment on this story below.

- © Fairfax NZ News