There's a saying in my family ` 'Clarks never give in,' so we are very stubborn. People say they went too far on prostitution decriminalisation and too far on X, Y, Z. I think there's a lot of rewriting of history, and life is full of tough choices. You had courts freeing people who hit kids with pieces of four-by-two, cattle prods ` terrible violence. Pre '84 New Zealand was something of a Western Albania. There was always going to have to be an adjustment. Labour always shakes things up. Once Dr Cullen said, 'The Government's gone skiing.' (LAUGHS) That's a good line. I don't think I micromanaged, but I did keep an eye on everybody. He didn't ask for sharing the prime ministership or anything like that. Might have been loosely floated. (CHUCKLES) He loosely floated the idea of being prime minister? You didn't want the changes you made to go up in a bonfire of neo-liberalism. Did it? Not in a bonfire, no. Kiwis, in the end, quite like having the government not having all its own way. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 I still am approached every time I go out in the street in New Zealand from people saying, you know, 'You were my hero and my childhood,' you know. 'I was a small girl,... Is that right? '...and you were the top.' Yeah. You get a lot of that? Yeah. It still happens. Still happens. But that time at the top as New Zealand's first elected woman prime minister nearly didn't happen at all. Helen Clark defeated Jenny Shipley's National-led Government in 1999 to kick off her three terms in power. But just a few years earlier, her party had tried to force her out as leader. With her personal support at around 2% in opinion polls, Labour decided her time was up, and on Tuesday the 28th of May 1996, just before the weekly caucus meeting, they knocked on her office door and asked her to stand down. They did. They did, and I said, 'No,' because I didn't believe that there was a better option, 'but if you wanna go that way, 'the caucus is being held in half an hour. Put the motion.' I went down to the caucus. No motion was put. So you called their bluff, really. Mm. Strategically got the better of them in that sense. You knew they didn't have definitively the numbers... Correct. ...or definitively a candidate. Correct. Koro Wetere has said that he dug a hole in the chair, given his nerves at that meeting. (LAUGHS) CHUCKLES: Do you remember? Oh, I think it would have been tough for Koro to be on that delegation. Well, it was five against one. Yeah. Well, I think I had someone there in support ` probably David Caygill. What does that tell us about the way that you operate? There's a saying in my family ` 'Clarks never give in,' you see, so we are very stubborn; from old Yorkshire stock, and we don't give in. You know, if you want to take me on, take me on, but don't try and intimidate me out, because I won't be intimidated out. Once in as prime minister, the stubborn streak came with her. As a former protester against the Vietnam War and an active player in New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance, Helen Clark was determined to pursue an independent foreign policy. She started by scrapping the entire combat wing of the air force. As I recall, we'd had the Skyhawks for decades, and they'd fired one shot in anger over the bow of a fishing boat. So that didn't really point to a need for replenishing with a new generation of planes. A country of four-point-something million people can't afford much by way of military hardware. You look at countries in the NATO Alliance ` I mean, on their own, they can't afford full standalone forces. They do it as part of an integrated force. But there were we, we're in no active military alliance, and they're looking at what you need to do to get value for money, so we were prepared to invest in the transport arm. There were big upgrades of Orions and Hercules, and transport planes bought for the air force. And then, I think the SAS was well looked after and actually used, which was not so usual in the past. Was that move to reconfigure the military part of your view about New Zealand's place in the world? You mentioned it may have been more possible because we weren't part of a strategic alliance. So, does it fit into your view of a shaping of an independent foreign policy? The independent foreign policy was something that was a touchstone for me throughout my adult life, and I was very influenced by Norman Kirk, of course, and the positions he took on apartheid rugby tours and nuclear-free issues, the withdrawal of forward defence from Singapore and so on. So, as prime minister, I was always going to be wanting to see how you could advance the independent foreign policy and see the values that I believed New Zealanders had reflected in the way they defended themselves and asserted themselves internationally. But her government's foreign policy posture was about to be tested. Having claimed New Zealand was in a benign strategic environment, the world changed on September 11 2001 with the Twin Towers attack. This is CNN breaking news. We have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre. War in Afghanistan was coming. New Zealand quickly sided with America. The SAS was offered up immediately for a combat role. It was a turning point, I think, that kind of ideologically motivated attack on a major urban centre. And clearly, it had come from people, you know, who hid out in caves and villages in Afghanistan, and they needed to be removed from where they were. So, do you think it was successful? Well, I think taking al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan was successful. But then,... I think the historical record would show that... the US attention then shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, which is a completely different kind of project, and there were years for the US of being bogged down in Iraq when Afghanistan actually needed ongoing support and attention. But when you look back and perhaps the families of those who served and some who even lost lives there, you'd say to them, 'It was worth it.' Was it good? It was the right thing to do? For those who served on my watch, yes. There were reports subsequently that the SAS had handed over captured Afghanis or Taliban to the US who had then been mistreated. Was any of that raised with you as prime minister? Was that something that was on the radar at all? Very low on the radar. I recall... some allegations, but I don't really recall them going much distance either. I mean, obviously, it would be a concern if people were mistreated after being handed over, but it didn't really fire as an issue. As I say, the odd question, which Phil Goff would have handled. So, we go to the other major conflict, which you've referenced there ` Iraq 2003. How much pressure was there on New Zealand and on you as prime minister to join the so-called 'coalition of the willing'? You see, I don't think there was any pressure. I don't think anyone would have thought for a moment that a Labour government would agree to that. But it agreed to the other fight, though. But it was a completely different fight. With Iraq, you had absolutely no evidence that it had anything to do with anything that had happened in Afghanistan, which it didn't have. And secondly, the so-called evidence of the weapons of mass destruction never added up. I used to see the intelligence reports that we had. I used to see the EAB analyses. I went to New York in late 2002, and on that visit, I paid calls at the UN headquarters to Hans Blix, who was the head of the monitoring mission for the UN at the time. As the weapons inspector. Absolutely. The weapons inspector. I saw Kofi Annan. I saw the head of Department of Political Affairs. Not a single one of them believed there was any evidence that was substantive at all about weapons of mass destruction. And I came back to New Zealand with it firm in my mind there was no evidence, and you never should act without some evidence. So, you referenced the EAB, which was the External Assessments Bureau at the time. They had intelligence and possibly some of the same intelligence that was being viewed in Britain and America, right? And you said it didn't add up. Well, I was very influenced by the discussions in New York, and also by one other private informant I had, who I won't name, who was very close into the operation of the UN mission of verification. But... (SIGHS) it just wasn't convincing. Secondly, the UN community wasn't convinced. It went to the Security Council; it couldn't get through. So, New Zealand is not in the habit of bucking decisions of the Security Council. That's not been our position. So... on the facts ` just a no-brainer not to go near it. And so you didn't feel that pressure? No. There was some tension, though, with the US. I recall the incident where you'd said that this would not have happened if Al Gore had been in the White House. There was a subsequent apology for that, wasn't there? So... I can't even remember that. (CHUCKLES) The truth is it probably wouldn't have, but who knows? I mean, American foreign policy has traditionally had a lot of bipartisan elements in it, so we can't say. Looking back on that decision not to involve New Zealand in that conflict in Iraq, would you regard that as one of the more significant points in your prime ministership? Well, I think... (SIGHS) Was it a significant decision? I think it was a decision that just couldn't have been any other way. Look, I came out of the Vietnam War student generation that did not support New Zealand having military engagements which weren't based on good analysis or on widespread global support. I've never been a pacifist, but I'm also very conscious that when you make decisions to deploy, you're putting somebody else's child in the way of danger, so those decisions had better be well based. It wasn't only America testing the Labour Government's foreign policy; Australia had a favour to ask too. That same year, the Tampa, carrying hundreds of refugees sought entry into Australian waters. John Howard refused, but it ended up a major entry in the Clark legacy. I remember that episode very well too, and remember it happened just before 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban. So,... boat off Australia somewhere. The news media's mesmerised with 432 or whatever people sitting on the deck in open weather. I get rung by the Norwegian prime minister, because it was a Norwegian-flagged vessel. He says, 'Is there anything you can do?' I say, (CHUCKLES) 'We'll look at it.' And then, after several days, the New Zealand media got tired of covering the Australian angle, so some bright spark from the press gallery came to my press secretary and said, 'Well, what would New Zealand do in such circumstances? Would New Zealand admit people?' And my press secretary said to me, 'Well, what do you want me to say?' And I said, 'Uh...' (CHUCKLES) I said, 'Why not give the response that one assumes that we would escort the vessel into port 'and process people according to the international conventions on refugees, asylum seekers.' So that response went back, and as soon as that hit the wires, Alexander Downer's office, or Downer himself, rang the New Zealand High Commissioner in Canberra and said, 'Oh, I see your prime minister's got a perspective about how this should be handled. 'Would you like to take some?' (CHUCKLES) So the High Commission went into a spin and phoned home, and next thing I know, MFAT's on the line to the Prime Minister's office saying, 'We've had this call from Mr Downer asking if New Zealand is able to help.' So I said, 'Ah. (CHUCKLES) Well, maybe we should think about what we could do.' So officials were convened. Immigration was very worried about it, because they said it would set a precedent for boats coming here. I said, 'What boat has ever come here since our forebears came on sailing ships? 'I mean, we are so remote.' From time to time, there's been scares about boats coming ` they never come. It's too far. So there was hardly a precedent, and the greatest number of asylum seekers we'd ever had was 12 on one plane, and that stopped as well when we began the advance passenger processing post 2011. So I didn't think we were in any great danger of attracting boats of asylum seekers by doing something humane for the Tampa people, so eventually, we made the decision that we would offer to take all the family groups and the children under 18. It's really interesting in terms of the leadership decisions that you make there. You made the decision, it sounds, based on principle. You ignored, if you like, the advice from Immigration, or challenged it. That could have given you an easy out. Oh, sure. Sure. We could have said, 'No, no, no. Don't go near that. We'll get boats of people.' (CHUCKLES) But boats hadn't come, as I say, since our forebears turned up on the sailing ships. That was not going to be the problem. And politically, at the time, as you say, there wasn't much in it for you either, was there? The first sort of shock-jock polls were horrible ` maybe 89% against taking these people. And you'll remember the anti-rhetoric was always about queue jumpers ` 'These people are jumping the queues over people who are sitting patiently in refugee camps.' But when the decision was made and the reasons were set out, public opinion did change quite significantly. And over time, I think, one of the really nice things about New Zealand is that people took the Afghan refugees, particularly the minors, to their hearts and followed the stories of what happened with these boys. Did all right, didn't they? They did very well. One of them won a spelling bee competition. They did very well. One of them represented New Zealand overseas at something. Soccer, I think. People went into the professions. They went into the police. They did extremely well. That's an example of... you leading rather than following public opinion. Yep. Was that something you tried to do often, or do you pick your battles on things like that? Well, I think you pick your battles, but I think if you look back through those nine years, we were a transformational government. (CHUCKLES) We made a lot of big changes. And a number of them were leading public opinion, but always on the basis of principle that you felt something needed to be done and get out and make the case for it. You know, there used to be an old saying about, you know, 'The Trotskyite is someone who sees a crowd and rushes to the front of it with a flag.' That wasn't us. We would say, 'What's the right thing to do?' and, you know, 'Can we make the case for that?' and go out and make it. While Labour supporters liked the foreign policy, things on the economic front weren't so rosy. Helen Clark and Finance Minister Michael Cullen were determined to halt the advance of 15 years of neo-liberal economics. Because I don't think the best values have guided us in New Zealand in the '90s, and I want to change that. The business community, though, was openly scathing about the Labour-Alliance government, which immediately faced what became known as the 'winter of discontent'. They were very, very aggressive. Fundamentally, they didn't like the 1999 election result. Probably didn't like the other election results where we won much more either. So they dug in. And like rust, opposition never goes away. I mean, you know, the truth is there'll always be opposition to what you do. The business community, or elements of it, did get very organised that winter, and we had to have really extensive outreach and meetings, which is not to say that we won a whole lot of friends or supporters but at least more understanding, I guess, of where we were coming from. And you offered up a couple of sacrificial lambs, if you like ` paid parental leave, there were a couple of others that the Alliance wanted, and you said, 'Over my dead body.' You told the business community through the media, 'This ain't gonna happen.' Well, Rome wasn't built in a day. We eventually came to paid parental leave and a number of things, but New Zealand term of government ` three years ` is short, so you gotta work out what's going to be the priority this term. And going beyond that, if it involves expenditure, is not so easy. Jim Anderton's role ` he had the Kiwibank idea. (CHUCKLES) It sounds as though he needed to convince you guys quite a bit. Did you oppose Kiwibank, initially? Well, I needed some convincing about Kiwibank ` that it could be a success. But, you know, Jim really was very, very convinced about that, and Michael Cullen did the economic case, and it seemed to stack up. Actually, it was a raging success. So that was a new state asset, if you like. You'd made a blanket provision on coming into government that you were gonna put a freeze on asset sales. Why did you do that? I felt that the New Zealand state had built up assets over a long period of time and invested a lot in them, and if they were being run competently through state-owned enterprises, then you should keep them as a revenue generator and an asset for the New Zealand public. So that was the position, and I think we ran some pretty good assets, and actually bought one back, which was Air New Zealand. One or two. - (BOTH LAUGH) - KiwiRail? And the rail. And the rail, which also did quite well on our watch. And Air New Zealand, I think, has been a runaway success. A lot of money put into KiwiRail, wasn't it? Some people claimed you paid too much, but... I don't` I don't think so. Look, we need KiwiRail. It's a no-brainer to run heavy goods up and down rail lines rather than wrecking your roads with undue heavy traffic. Mm. So, that was one of the aspects that you put a break on ` 'Rogernomics' and Ruth Richardson, if you like. A lot of the fundamentals of the post '84 economic world were left untouched, though. Yes, but that... (SIGHS) that... wasn't an issue for me. I think... what I appreciate is that pre '84 New Zealand was something of a Western Albania. (CHUCKLES) It was a bit unusual in Western economy terms. Now, the adjustment when it came, went very far and very fast without the, you know` enough of the structural supports for adaptation of the economy and workers' skills and new sectors. But, in the end, you're not gonna slap a whole lot of tariffs and duties back on. You're not gonna nationalise what was sold by expropriation. I mean, that's off the table. So you get on, you know, and work with the reality as you find it to say, 'OK, what do we actually need to change around here in policy terms? 'How do we support New Zealand to lift off from here?' But you are a fan of globalisation, are you not? See, I think that's too simple a statement. I think it has happened, but it has happened in a way which has made the world free for business but not with the supporting measures in place for people and communities. And you pay a long-term price for that in social cohesion and social indicators and with widening inequality, which has happened in our own country. Mm. Is it your view on reflection that those moves made by the Lange-Douglas Government, and then continued by Bolger-Richardson, Bolger-Birch, were actually the right policies, but just done too fast without enough supporting mechanisms to help the people affected? Is that your position? Well, I mean, without going into the detail of every policy, fundamentally, I think New Zealand needed a set of macroeconomic policies, which were more in line with what we were accustomed to seeing in, say, continental Europe. So there was always gonna have to be an adjustment, but the issue is how you do an adjustment ` how do you support people, economic sectors to adjust to that? That's where I think that the big gaps were. And did you speak out against it at the time? Back in the '80s,... I was actually very opposed to the direction the policy was taking for 1984. There was huge divisions within the Labour Party policy council. That's interesting. So, you knew about the... We knew where Roger was going, right? And, in the end, Geoffrey Palmer, who was a great draftsman, was brought in to write a policy, which could have meant anything... It was vague. ...and did. It was vague. It was fudged. It was fudged, because the party could not agree with the direction Roger wanted to go, but, of course, there were forces that didn't want to say the opposite. Wow. So you're going into an election knowing` Yeah. Very worried. Very worried. And the policy that voters were reading is meaningless. Well, it was drafted by a lawyer to mean anything and did. And, you see, I think that's one of the issues that was a huge preoccupation for me campaigning for government in '96 and '99, was that the trust in politicians was at an all-time low. People voted for Labour; they didn't expect what they got. They voted for National in 1990, no ifs, no buts, no maybes, the surcharge will go; they didn't expect what they got. There was no signalling of huge welfare cuts and all the stuff that happened in the mother of all budgets. So trust was extremely low. No one believed anything anybody said, and you had to be very clear ` 'This is what I'm gonna do, and this is what I'm gonna stick to, to rebuild trust in politics.' Helen Clark was left out of the 1984 Labour cabinet, and so had a ringside seat as the Lange-Douglas Government fell apart. In technicolour. (BOTH CHUCKLE) Was it that dramatic? No, it was horrible. It was horrible that... Remember, I wasn't in the cabinet in the first term. Was that a blessing? Probably, a blessing in disguise. When I came into government in '87, I was given the housing portfolio. And when David called me in to speak to me, he said, 'It's your job to save state housing.' And what I found, you know, I didn't particularly like. And David, you might recall, had the cup of tea, and the cup of tea put the brakes on what had been in an economic statement,... which officials then went away and worked on through the summer. And one of the things Treasury was driving when I was Minister of Housing, pursuant to that statement, was the sale of state housing stock, and I said, 'No way, Jose.' So, look, I could go and probably write a long history of the misery of being a minister in that part of the second` of the Fourth Labour Government. And I remember very, very tense cabinet meetings. There was one where David Lange left because of the pressure. He came back. Roger left. I mean, it was a very` Actually left the room? Left the room. Very, very polarising. Very unpleasant. You talk about the cup of tea and Lange's vetoing of the flat-tax package, and that brings us to early 1988, when January that year, Lange makes the statement that it isn't going ahead. As I understand it, you come back from a summer holiday and find officials ploughing ahead... Yes. ...with these moves. Is that true? It's absolutely true. And I recall coming back from probably a couple weeks' break, touching base with the housing officials and asking what they were doing and saw these papers. I said, 'But this can't be,' and I went to see David and said to him that I just could not implement those policies, so if that's what he wanted, bye-bye. (CHUCKLES) But he said, 'No, no, no. Stop it.' So you could have quit cabinet over that? Oh, absolutely. There's no way I was gonna sell state houses. I never believed in it. In fact, I tended to build rather a lot. How fascinating. So, in a way, Lange's backing of you means that we're sitting here, talking about your decade as prime minister. Yeah. Absolutely. How do you view the economic legacy of your government? Well, I personally think we handed over an economy in pretty good shape. Of course, we didn't have to suffer the full extent of the global recession. We had one year of it. But as I say, the public debt position was so solid with no net Crown debt, that that was a good place to start. I think we'd done a lot to diversify the economy, a lot of investment in skills, so I feel that we handed over a going concern. And do you think that you benefited quite a lot from an international tailwind, or would you think that your government's interventions played a significant role in that? I think we also made it our luck. Sure, I mean, there were some reasonable years there in that first decade of the century, but we made some good investments as well, which I think paid off. House prices doubled over your term; they've doubled over the term of the National Government as well. It wasn't seen as a bad news story, I remember, throughout the 2000s. Do you look back and think, 'Hm, maybe we should have seen that this was going to be an issue ` 'you know, the rise of the million-dollar house in Auckland and the problems associated with that.' Do you think you missed a trick there? It might have been less of an issue because we kept up the public housing investment. Maybe more could have been done. It just wasn't really presented as a huge issue that required attention. And you're right. If you were an existing property owner in Auckland, say, you weren't particularly unhappy by the prices going up, but over time, that becomes cumulative, and for the new homeowner, quite prohibitive. You're an Aucklander. I mean, I know that you live most of your life internationally now, but you're an Aucklander; you know the city very well. You must be a little bit alarmed to come back and find that a young couple might need the thick end of a million dollars to buy a property, which you would have seen as very modest in your time. Well, my husband bought his house in Anglesea St, Freemans Bay, for $40,000 (CHUCKLES) in the 1970s. What's it worth now? (CHUCKLES) Well, look up the property valuation. 2 or 3 million. I mean, that's the reality. These were very, very cheap houses. But again, look, you don't expect to have your dream house with your first house. So I think, for this generation, the first property probably needs to be an apartment, not the house and the land on it. I think we have to calibrate expectations, but what, obviously, is of concern is homeless families. I feel passionately about social housing. I feel passionately about being able to provide a roof over the head of every family in New Zealand, and that needs a lot of attention right now. You said on election night '08 that you didn't want the changes you'd made to go up in a bonfire of neo-liberalism or right-wing change. Did it? (LAUGHS) Well, not in a bonfire, no. I think the history of New Zealand has been of Labour governments which made a lot of progressive changes, and in order to get elected, National Party's agreeing not to change too much, and life goes on. So some of the things we did which were controversial at the time, they've never changed. That's New Zealand, isn't it? You have innovating governments ` they come; they do a lot things; they run their course. Next one comes in ` doesn't change a lot. And it's been Labour who shakes things up. Labour always shakes things up. Labour certainly shook things up on the social front ` smoking in bars was banned, prostitution was legalised and civil unions were introduced. Social conservatives marched on Parliament, and low- and middle-income workers were given tax credits under the Working For Families package. See, New Zealand with the neo-liberal era did see inequalities widen. Now, what you can show conclusively with Working for Families is that it narrowed the gap. And I think that's, you know, positive for a country ` to be able to, you know, reduce the gap between rich and poor. Undoubtedly, it did, and the official figures and researchers show that. They also claim, and I looked at the office of Children Commissioner numbers on this, that leaving office in 2008, according to their numbers, still 230,000 children in poverty. Why was it not extended ` Working For Families ` to the children of families who relied on welfare payments? Because it had the component of the in-work payment, and that recognises that there actually are costs for going to work ` have to get yourself there, you have to be clothed for it, etc. So there was a differential, and... Can I interrupt you there? Was it only that, or was there a philosophical component that says there should a greater reward for going to work? Well, there should be a greater reward for going to work, that is true. I'm not personally of the view that... many people choose to be unemployed as a lifestyle, right? That's a classic conservative criticism of social security. Most people, given a chance, will work. The problem is that if wages are very low and the cost of transport and the cost of being in work makes it... you're no better off being in work, you have a problem. So you have to ensure that people are better off. So at that point, someone makes a rational economic decision not to work because they are worse off by doing so. And they could be. They could conceivably be worse off, including the cost of childcare. That's why the 20-hour free childcare was also a very important component of the overall package. Do you stand by that today ` that decision not to include those children of beneficiaries in those gains? Absolutely, because I think the strong philosophy was around the in-work payment. I think the broader issue is, you know, whether, with more finance available, one might have boosted the basic level of the benefit. Why did you not raise the level of the benefit? Well, you know, we had to make spending decisions too, and we were never flush with money, right? (CHUCKLES) We had a growing economy. We also had a lot of things to invest in. You could argue that if the benefit doesn't rise, apart from the inflation adjustments, and wages are rising and people with kids and work are getting Working For Families, that you're actually increasing the inequality gap at that point. What do you say in response to people who might argue that, despite your efforts in those other areas, that you actually helped entrench that inequality? I don't think so. I mean, I'm absolutely convinced that we would have done, you know, the adjustments for Working For Family levels as the years went by. What's happened to them since, I couldn't say, but I've no doubt that Working For Families, taken also with all these other social wage investments did reduce inequality. Perhaps the most controversial social change in the Clark government wasn't a Labour idea at all. Green MP Sue Bradford's cause became known as the 'anti-smacking bill'. Helen Clark backed it, and many believe it cost her politically. Deep down, people don't want to see children treated the way they were being treated and getting... the perpetrator getting away with it. You had courts freeing people who hit kids with pieces of four-by-two, cattle prods ` terrible violence. And case law had built up these bad, bad precedents, so it had to be dealt with. Children are not property to be dealt to by parents however they feel like it. Children have rights. Do you believe that you got punished electorally, though, for that? Well, not particularly. You see, I think there's a lot of rewriting of history around some of this stuff. People say, 'Well, you know, they went too far on prostitution decriminalisation. 'They went too far in civil unions, went too far on X, Y, Z.' All of these things happened before we were elected a first and a second time. So I think if you fast-forward to the reasons for not being re-elected, people do get tired of governments. They get tired of the same face. Doesn't matter what sort of job you're doing, eventually, they want something new. You know, it's like a consumer commodity ` you want to try something new ` so you have to look at it in that perspective. The smell of the new car, I think. The smell of the new car. Exactly. So, the narrative is that it was too nanny state, some of the things you mentioned, and then they bolted on to that that somehow you were trying to tell people what showerheads to use or what light bulbs to use and that the state was in your house, and it was in your lounge, telling you not to smack your kids. There was the narrative build up around it, wasn't it? Do you think that that did take hold? Well, that was the narrative. It took them a long time to get to that kind of narrative, but, in the end, I think there's just the desire, as you say, for the smell of the new car, try something different. I mean, there'll be a day when you can't buy any old light bulb in New Zealand, (CHUCKLES) because no one's going to produce them, right? So, you know, everything has its time. Just on smacking, though ` maybe my question's redundant if you don't believe it was a big political cost, but I'll ask it anyway. I wonder why you didn't cut your political losses and say, 'Let's ditch our support for this smacking bill.' Oh, I think that would have lacked integrity, because violence against children is an issue in New Zealand. John Key's engagement in that was interesting, wasn't it? He accepted your invitation, if you like, and then he shared the stage with you... Yeah. ...for the announcement. I wonder whether that was something of a turning point. Did you`? You see, that's the way the media saw it, but think of the counterfactual ` the counterfactual of abandoning the bill and having all the liberal and socially progressive people who always stuck in with Labour thinking, 'Will they sell their soul for anything?' I mean, in the end, there's no choice. You have to say, 'There's an issue here, and we're gonna deal with it, 'and we'll then look at how we broaden the support for this.' That's very interesting from a leadership perspective, and it's consistent throughout the day that we've been talking. You make a decision on principle ` what's right ` then you try to soften and sell the message. Sell the message. (CHUCKLES) Is that right? Well, yeah. I mean, you have to go out and be prepared to sell things. I mean, I think, you know, going back to the Tampa decision, I mean, I walked into that with, you know, 89% of the snap polls saying, 'Don't accept these people.' And the polling on smacking wasn't a lot better. No. Awful. Awful. But, in the end, you know, you've gotta work out where you pitch your tent. And there's an old saying ` I come from a farm ` 'Better be hung for a sheep than a lamb,' you know? For all the dominance Helen Clark is credited with, it's easy to forget that she always ran a minority government. She proved herself adept at MMP politics, creating coalitions left, right and centre. Before she could do that, though, she had to rebuild a broken relationship from the past. Well, Jim Anderton was a very old friend of mine, going back to my early days in the Labour Party. We were on local government campaigns together. We were on the Labour Party executive together. We were in parliament together. And then he took a different attitude to how to respond to the Rogernomics era. He left. I didn't, because I thought it was better to try to work for change from within, change the party in the direction. Eventually, I got my chance to do that. But because he left, and he was a, you know, charismatic politician, Jim had a following, and he took good and committed activists with him, and it drained votes from Labour for '93 election and for, of course, the '96 election. And it was apparent to me that in the proportional system, you had to think differently about how you put together governments, and that if we were going to keep fighting the Alliance ` with whom we shared a lot in common ` we would never form a government, and that was irresponsible to the people who really needed a Labour government and the people who believed in what we stood for, so the opening came in a discussion I had with Sandra Lee, where we agreed that we should actually try to get together to work out what we could do. She went back to Jim. Jim said, 'Let's give it ago.' How did you build up trust again? Because there'd been some pretty bad things said, hadn't there? You might remember, one of my phrases always was 'Let's move on. Move on,' you know, 'Never look back.' (CHUCKLES) 'No regrets. Move on.' And so we buried the hatchet. But then it fell apart for the Alliance over the deployment of the SAS into Afghanistan. You decide, with the polls looking pretty good, in mid '02, to go to the country. Was that an opportunist move? Well, I mean, there was certainly an opportunity, and... there were issues starting to be raised about the stability of the government because the Alliance clearly had some significant internal issues. So, the decision was made to go, you know, what, three, four months early, and that definitely paid off electorally with a, you know, increase in vote. You'd hoped for a majority in 2002. Your polls said it was possible. I wonder whether you were thinking, 'We can actually crack the MMP glass ceiling and get a majority,' while` I think with MMP, it was probably never realistic. Whatever the polls said, there's a kind of balancing thing. You know, Kiwis, in the end, quite like having the government not having it all its own way, having to talk with others, so that plays out. It did in 2002 and again in 2005. Labour had to deal with others to form government, and its choice of partners surprised. The Greens were left out as Helen Clark turned to Peter Dunne and Winston Peters. MMP was evolving. Coalition agreements were brief and loose ` a far cry from the deal that Winston Peters had done with Jim Bolger in the first MMP government of 1996. What we learned was that the long-negotiated, detailed coalition agreement was not a good idea. We also negotiated with Winston for nine weeks, and he made his choice, and it wasn't us, because we had some bottom lines we wouldn't cross. What were they? One was that he would be Minister of Finance, which National conceded, and we didn't. I don't think we could, because as a Labour government, you always have that suspicion that you're weaker on the economy whether you are or not. It wasn't quite that, was it? Because Birch was the finance minister. Peters was the treasurer. But we couldn't concede that, because we would have been coming in from opposition in a weak position with 28% of the vote, with a predisposition for people to say, 'Labour's good in social policy and weak on the economy.' It would have been a chain round the ankle from the start, so not a goer. What was the other? There were other issues. I don't recall what they were now, but` He didn't ask for being` sharing the prime ministership or anything like that? Oh... Might have been loosely floated, but not` that wasn't the sticking point. I think finance minister was the sticking point. He loosely floated the idea of being prime minister? Can't really recall. I mean, he used to have others do legwork for him, like Peter Williams, so things often came through back routes. Right. But that was floating around. I don't think that was ever a serious proposition. But a proposition, nonetheless. Well, was it ever a proposition? It may have been loosely floated ` not in negotiations. And would it have been something you would have entertained? No. No, you can only have one prime minister. As a new prime minister with six Maori seats, Helen Clark was very focused on Maori issues. But they came to dog the Clark Government. There was a Pakeha backlash to its closing the gaps policy to reduce disparities between Maori and Paheka, then a Maori backlash over the foreshore and seabed. And there was also Don Brash. There has been a divisive trend to embody racial distinctions into large parts of our legislation. In this country, it should not matter what colour you are or what your ethnic origin might be. The new National leader struck a chord with his speech on race relations at Orewa in January of 2004. Horrible. Horrible. Scratching itches. And he would have done a lot of opinion polling on that and knew it would strike a chord. Why do I say that? Because we had opinion pollsters too, and we knew that policies which aimed to support Maori to rise were not popular. As I said, we didn't change the policies; we ended up changing terminology. Did you think when that speech was delivered, because I know that myself and a lot of others in the media misread the reaction to that. We did not think it was going to resonate widely, and we got that wrong. Did you get it wrong too? No. No, I thought, knowing what we knew about basic public attitudes, that it would strike a chord ` not very pleasant chord. What are you recollections of that immediate aftermath? Because there was a 17-point poll rise, I remember. It was horrible. Yeah, and it... you know, fuelled his... lifting of the National Party to being a very, you know, tough opponent for the 2005 election. Well, let's look at your reaction to the speech, because in some ways, it was same as the reaction to the closing the gaps negativity. You went away to try to politically heal the problem that you found yourself in. You appointed Trevor Mallard as a race relations minister. He went through, line by line, eradicating things that could be seen to be race-based funding, replacing them with needs-based funds. Inequalities. Reducing inequalities became the terminology, but was also a driving force of the government. But you didn't really take the same attitude you did to the Tampa or smacking, perhaps, in that way. Because you're faced with something unpopular. No, I think` You didn't just say, 'You're wrong, Dr Brash,' you actually did go away and try to position yourself in a way that was closer to what was being said. Was that fair? I think you're looking at the bigger picture. You know, 'Can you do more for New Zealand, 'including Maori out of government or in government? 'You're not gonna change the policies that are lifting Maori. 'So, how, politically, are you gonna manage this problem?' And, you know, in the end, we came through it, but, you know, it was a very unpleasant set of forces that he unleashed, which we somehow had to overcome. But soon, it was Maori saying, 'We must overcome.' CROWD CHANTS: Two, four, six, eight. MAN: Don't you bloody legislate! Nearly 20,000 marched on Parliament after the government stopped Maori from going to court to test their ownership rights over the seabed and foreshore. It was one of the most controversial episodes of Clark's leadership. She is unrepentant. Now, for me as a Kiwi, the right to be able to walk along the sea coast is pretty precious, without somebody saying, 'Get off my land.' (CHUCKLES) And I also, you know, come from a background where people came to New Zealand from a class-ridden England, and it was getting away from all those old barriers that ordinary people had. So, did you think that the right to visit the beach was under threat? I think it would have been had the whole thing played through with land rights being given over the foreshore. Do you think that Maori would have prevented other New Zealanders from going to the beach? Well, I mean, it's all speculative, isn't it? But there were some areas where settlements had returned land, where people could no longer go. So you're very dependent on goodwill. So where something is clearly public estate, those issues don't arise. You don't regret your actions on the seabed and foreshore at all? No. No pause for thought there at all. No. You prevented the position of being able to go to court, though. The decision was that this could be... these rights could be tested, and you intervened and legislated away that right. That's a pretty big call. Well, it was a call, and it wasn't an easy call, but again, you know, here we are, years later ` how much substantially has changed about the position? (LAUGHS) Well, I suppose it's gone from` So, I think, in a way, it's stood the test of time ` that we're all in it together. Yeah. I guess it went from being Crown land to the position that no one owns it under the... (CHUCKLES) And? (LAUGHS) As I say, the outcome's the same. You got a lot of flack from that. Your party` well, part of it dropped away. Sure. A lot of flack. But again, what's the counterfactual ` to have a campaign against you, like the anti-smacking campaign, where you told that people won't be able to access the beach any more, and that's seen as a birthright of Kiwis. So always look at the counterfactual. Life is full of tough choices. And they marched on Parliament in their thousands. True. And you called them 'haters' and 'wreckers'. No, I didn't. No, I did not. No, fair call. You called Hone Harawira... Correct. ...and some of his mates 'haters' and 'wreckers'. I never called the crowd that. No, you didn't. That's fair. Yeah. You didn't talk to them either. No, and generally, I didn't go out and address crowds as prime minister. You talked to Shrek the sheep instead, from memory. (CHUCKLES) Well, I mean, see, that was the way it was put, but actually, Shrek was a phenomenon, by the way, and it so happened that the farmer from Bendigo brought him up that day. It wasn't, sort of, a deliberate choice ` 'I'll see Shrek and not the others.' I generally did not go out the front to any protest rally. But seriously, and at risk of repetition, there's nothing about the handling of that that you would do differently? Not on the advice that we had. I mean, if someone had given the brilliant advice that it could be classified as not belonging to anybody, that might have been quite helpful, (CHUCKLES) but I don't recall ever having such advice. Losing Tariana Turia ` that must have been a big blow. Yeah, it was sad, because I'd worked very closely with Tariana, but, you know, those are the breaks. And Helen Clark had many breaks over her time. She was the most successful Labour leader since World War II, beating Jenny Shipley, Bill English and Don Brash as National leaders. But during her third term, the tide turned. National's new leader, John Key, was young and popular, and with the global financial crisis washing up on New Zealand's shores, his finance background was pitted against Clark's lifetime in politics. She said the 2008 election was about trust. The electorate gave their trust to John Key. What's it like to lose power? Well, if you were surprised by an election loss, that would be devastating. Did you still want to be prime minister at that time? Sure. No, I wouldn't have won if I didn't want to, you know, carry on. Did you always intend to resign from the Labour leadership on the night if you were going to lose? You've been in parliament 27 years. You've had nine years as prime minister. Seriously, you're not gonna go into opposition and campaign to come back. You know, if the electorate's spoken, that's fine. You know, it's been a great ride, but that's it. You draw a line under it. I think there were, you know, plenty of people there who could have stepped up. But it's a very tough job being leader of the opposition. And it's not that easy to win in one term either. So, when you don't win, and then you start, you know, burning leaders, it doesn't make it any easier to win, and it can take parties a while to find the right formula. Did you underestimate John Key? No. Never. You called him an 'empty vessel'. (LAUGHS) Did I? (LAUGHS) Yep. No, I didn't underestimate him. You knew you were up against someone who was a strong opponent? I think, you know, John had very good personal skills, good media performer, smart, so he was always gonna be a strong opponent. How would you describe your leadership style? Well, I think I was prepared to take a position and work to take people with me. I think we did run a, you know, strong, collective cabinet decision making, but I was prepared to lead in that, and to go out and front decisions, and I would lead on what the position taken should be. Some would call you a micromanager in style. I remember once, Dr Cullen, in response to a question about what the government would do about some issue, said, 'The Government's gone skiing.' (LAUGHS) That's a good line. It was a good line. Is it true? No, I don't think I micromanage, but I did keep an eye on everybody, and I think that our government being disciplined and together is extremely important. There would be areas of policy where I'd delve right down, but, you know, the day-to-day things people were doing in their portfolio, ticking on, no, I wasn't across, but I definitely was across all the big policy decisions, because they came to cabinet committees. How much power does the prime minister have? I think it depends a lot on the person ` whether you're prepared to lead, to be proactive, to... yeah, be prepared to really take the system with you. You were, weren't you? Yeah, I was prepared to use the power that you had. I mean, we don't have a written constitution, so nowhere is it written down what are the powers of the prime minister. It's partly` It's your personality. It's the skills that you've got. It's how you use the office. And once you say something in public, it's pretty much gonna happen, isn't it? Yeah. (CHUCKLES) But again, you know, that means that what you say in public, you need to have thought about. How much does being prime minister take a toll on personal life, on family? Well, my sisters say it was a very happy day for them when I ceased to be prime minister, cos they were kinda sick of it. Yeah, no, of course, your family tends to take these things much harder than you do yourself, because if you've been in politics a long time, you know, you've built a brick wall around that kind of thing. You had to deal with quite a bit. Oh yeah. Gender-based stuff too, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. Nasty stuff. Even as prime minister of New Zealand, did that still...? It sort of receded for a while, and then, I think in the 2008 campaign, it came back. You know, the bumper sticker of 'ditch the bitch' from the far south (LAUGHS) was observed. So there was a bit of that. And did that ever get under your skin? You think... 'How pathetic,' really, but, you know, again, when you've been in government for a long time, things start to accumulate ` you know, the series of grievances, and, you know, there comes a point when those will overwhelm other things you do and take you out. What do you wish you knew then that you know now? First thing you need to learn is that the opposition isn't just gonna go away and cry into its milk, and that sort of takes us back to the discussion about the 'winter of discontent'. The... advocates, you know, around the Business Roundtable and Employers' Federation carried on as though the electorate had never spoken in 1999, and probably, we underestimated that. So you learn that kind of thing ` that you always have to make your case. Doesn't matter you just won the election, you've gotta mandate. You have to keep making the case. You can't let it slip. You have not expressed any regrets to the specific issues I've mentioned. Maybe I've not hit the right box, if you like. Are there any regrets at all that you`? No. I have no regrets. Never look back. I take the view that, you know, I'm quite a considered person. I look at the evidence. I look at the counterfactual. I look at the issue of principle involved, and I make a decision. I don't then agonise for years over whether that was the right decision. I move on. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017