No politics at the dining table, thanks

HELEN CLARK’S light lunch in Wellington was supposed to be all about global poverty – but it was overtaken by her former colleagues getting their teeth into David Shearer.

The former Labour prime minister was served a biscuit, six crackers, carrot sticks and a lollipop – a meal costing 60 cents –to highlight the fundraising event Live Below The Line. Participants take on the challenge of living on $2.25 a day for five days – the equivalent of extreme poverty.

Miss Clark, who administers the United Nations Development Programme from New York, is in New Zealand on holiday. But she must have felt as if she had never been away as she was pursued throughout the day by questions about the Labour Party leadership.

Questioned in Nelson earlier in the day, she did not appear to be privy to Mr Shearer’s decision to quit but recalled her own tough baptism as Labour leader in the 1990s.

‘‘I remember Easter of the first year I was leader of the Opposition,’’ she said.

‘‘The political editor of TVNZ went on the screen and said I wouldn’t last the year,’’ she said.

‘‘I eventually hit 2 per cent and the Labour Party polling went as low as 14 per cent. It’s hard-hat time when this happens.’’

Later in the day, she was asked by 3News for her reaction to Mr Shearer’s departure, and replied: ‘‘I’m very happy to be out of New Zealand politics.’’

At the Volunteer Service Abroad headquarters in Wellington, she told her Below The Line audience that the 60c lunch would allow them to imagine what it would be like to have so little to eat.

‘‘We have poverty here in New Zealand but it is relative poverty.

‘‘No-one lives below the $2.25 a day. No-one even lives under $5 a day.’’

A goal to ‘‘cut poverty in half’’ should be reached by 2015, she said, and she hoped the world would be ‘‘ambitious enough to talk about eradicating poverty’’ after the deadline.