Fridays With Jim: Conversations About Our Country With Jim Bolger by David Cohen

Author:David Cohen [Cohen, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Presidents & Heads of State, Political Science
ISBN: 9780995123021
Google: graEzQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 53867010
Publisher: Massey University Press
Published: 2020-01-15T09:21:37+00:00

Sir Douglas Graham and Jim with Sir Robert Mahuta and Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu at Tūrangawaewae Marae after signing the Tainui settlement in May 1995. The Treaty of Waitangi settlement process would become one of Jim’s most enduring points of political pride.

I mentioned Helen Clark earlier because if you go back to the Lange era, you see a prime minister being almost entirely subsumed by Roger Douglas, changing his mind dramatically and embracing neoliberalism, and turning Labour Party policy on its head and embracing policy many saw as to the right of the National Party. And being proud to do so. There was such a chasm between what he said before that 1984 election and what he did afterwards, in particular his subservience to Douglas and his economic policies and pursuits before the 1987 financial crash brought it all to an end. Looking back, the Rogernomics era lasted little more than three years.

Ironically, if we hadn’t had the snap election in July 1984, which brought the electoral cycle forward by a few months, then the 1987 election would have been held after the ’87 October financial crash. Almost certainly that would have been a three-year Labour government rather than a six-year one. It wouldn’t have been too different to the one-term Kirk–Rowling era. The unanswered question for many is, would Labour have succeeded in 1975 if it hadn’t been for Kirk’s unexpected and sudden death? So Helen’s was really the first stable Labour-led government, probably since the first one in the 1930s, since the Savage and Fraser era.

Other Labour leaders in their own time were different, too. Geoffrey Palmer had other skills. I think he found being prime minister really difficult. That’s not belittling him. He’s got many, many skills and is still a big contributor in other areas, but I don’t think being prime minister was ever going to be a part of that. Clearly the Labour Party decided as much when they replaced him after a few months. And I don’t think Mike Moore was ever going to be a successful long-term prime minister, either. He was too volatile.

In the era of Donald Trump, though, that might have worked; Mike was certainly volatile enough in his positions and his presentations, but the New Zealand electorate wasn’t going to buy that. In Washington I worked with him to gain the support of the US in his and New Zealand’s campaign for him to become the director-general of the World Trade Organization. So in terms of Labour leaders, in positive terms, that’s Fraser, Savage and Clark. David Lange as prime minister certainly gave New Zealand profile, with his erudite defence of New Zealand’s anti-nuclear position in the Oxford Union debate. I said at the time all New Zealanders could be proud of the performance. I think historically that’s it.

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