How the PM’s decision played out
It was on a flight back from New York in September that John Key told wife Bronagh he had decided to step down as prime minister.
When the news was finally broken to the public, it came as a political bombshell to nearly everyone who knew Key.
Close staff who had been with him since the beginning were told only on Sunday. Tears and shock were the response when he told the rest of his staff yesterday morning.
Ministers were called up one by one to hear the news. And it was not until 12.15 pm – just 30 minutes before the public announcement that he was going – that Key broke the news to his back-benchers, via a conference call, that by next Monday they would have a new leader and he would be gone.
But retirement was a conversation he and Bronagh had returned to on and off all year, Key said.
The first conversation was at their Hawaii holiday home last Christmas. ‘‘[Bronagh] said: ‘What are you thinking?’ I just said I wasn’t 100 per cent sure. Part of me thought we should do a fourth term. But I just had to be really sure I could go the distance if I was going to do it.’’
They discussed it again midyear. And this time Key had firmed up in his view that going out while he was still on top was the right thing to do. The polls were all going National’s way and it felt like it was a good time to ‘‘transition’’.
They got on their flight back to New Zealand from the Security Council in New York, and by the time they touched down in Auckland, it was ‘‘a done deal’’, Key says.
‘‘So we’d been going back and forth a bit. I just said to Bronagh if I’m going to go I have to go by the end of the year.’’
Bronagh’s one piece of advice to Key was: ‘‘Just make sure you made the right call.’’
None of the couple’s close friends were brought in on the secret. Children Max and Stephie, whose ‘‘fame’’ as the children of a prime minister has broken new ground in New Zealand politics, were told only two weeks ago.
But there was one person Key had brought into the loop much earlier; his deputy and right-hand