‘A National-Green coalition would be good for NZ’
Jim Bolger was National Prime Minister for seven years until the party staged a caucus room coup while he was out of the country in 1997. Jenny Shipley took over. His new book is written from conversations he had with author David Cohen.
TRANSITION PERIODS are challenging. From my experience in working with him when he was Minister of Energy, Simon Bridges is a perfectly good person and he was a good minister, but he was unable to get cutthrough with the electorate just as, three years earlier, Andrew Little was unable to get cut-through and was replaced as Labour leader by Jacinda Ardern.
This time it was National’s turn to make a late change in leader when they elected Todd Muller to lead them into the election. I’ve known Todd for many years. He worked in my office for three years when I was prime minister. Todd is able and smart and, importantly, he has shown that on key issues like climate change he is able and willing to work across party lines when appropriate and in New Zealand’s interests.
I formed a coalition Government of sorts after the 1996 election, which was going well until Jenny Shipley took over as prime minister and it soon collapsed.
I don’t know how many ‘mini’ coalition agreements I signed with people going out to form their own party. What we had in New Zealand after the 1993 referendum which supported a move to MMP was two or three groups of National MPs setting up to become that pivot party that could go either way and be part and parcel of the government almost forever. The German model. All sorts of people headed off to do just that, which made it a challenging time to hold a government and caucus all facing in the right direction.
THEN THERE was Winston Peters. Winston was in my first Cabinet as Ma¯ori Affairs Minister and I was expecting, hoping, that he would put his considerable skills to developing policies focused on lifting the achievement and outcomes for Ma¯ori. Unfortunately during his time in my first Cabinet he often went out on an issue contrary to party policy and was disloyal to the party on a regular basis. I put up with it for a long time but eventually I told Winston that I was reshuffling the Cabinet and he wouldn’t be in it. As history records, he went out and started New Zealand First, which to me is a local populist version of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again, but, having said that, Winston in my view has far better developed political skills than Trump and has been a successful Minister of Foreign Affairs. Maybe I should have given him that portfolio first!
But he’s done well. He was out for one term, but he clearly is enormously influential in Jacinda Ardern’s Government. Winston himself has now found a different niche in the political spectrum. I chat with him infrequently, but whenever we do there’s no difficulty chewing the fat on current issues.
Jenny Shipley’s tenure as leader was short and unsuccessful as she lost the next election by a big margin. My colleagues never told me exactly why they wanted to change the leader when they did, so I can’t really tell you with any certainty what it is they were seeking, why they wanted Jenny. But it didn’t work. Jenny was quite a different person to [former Finance Minister] Ruth Richardson, although I think they were quite close, not least because of the obvious Canterbury connection.
Jenny was a capable minister but I never saw her as my successor. She was competent and she handled most things well. That’s why she was a minister in my Cabinet, which I tried to make much more diverse than the 1970s.
I was looking to balance the National Party’s presentation to the world. Yes, we still had a very small number of women MPs at that stage. The good news now is that it’s a much more balanced caucus, not near 50 per cent yet, but compared with when I started and where it is now, a lot of progress has been made. That also made Jenny an automatic choice to go into my first Cabinet. But I was surprised that caucus thought that she was the solution to whatever they thought their problem was.
Maybe it would have been better to discuss it with me. I mean, it took them another four leaders to find someone who could win an election — and I’d just won three.
I WAS overseas when the coup happened. After my official duties were completed we set off for home with no inkling of the plotting that had been going on in Wellington while we were away.
It has always surprised me that no one called and gave me a heads up on the plotting.
I thought it was a huge mistake, obviously. But it wasn’t just ego. I knew as much as anyone that it was going to be hard to win the next election, to win a fourth term. The plotters claimed they had the numbers. Maybe so. I had one or two colleagues, especially Paul East, a perceptive friend and ministerial colleague, saying ‘Well, we should test that, Jim.’
And I thought, ‘No, bugger it.’ I was tired. I’d just come back from the other side of the world. I’d been working hard for the party for years. If that’s what they do when I’m out of the country, I thought, I’ll leave them to run it themselves and see how good they are.
So why did it happen? I sometimes wonder if it had something to do with a series of speeches I gave to the party’s regional conferences in 1997 in which, instead of just attacking the Opposition, I set out a new concept to address many community issues. I called it ‘social capital’, utilising the community to offer solutions to their own issues, from unemployment to homelessness. It was an idea that was being advanced by Professor Robert Putman at Harvard University, whom I later met when I was in Washington. I think some in the caucus thought I had wandered too far away from bread-and-butter issues.
But no, I wasn’t angry at the plotters. It was more like frustration that they were so naive to do what they were doing. If they wanted to have a new leader and they had a rational reason, they would have been wise to come and talk to me. I’d actually been leader for nearly 12 years. I did know a little bit about it. But that’s politics.
Now John Key was interesting. He had a natural, easy, welcoming persona. He played that leadership role well. He reached across divides.
He had a soft word on most issues. He led New Zealand through some difficult times, including the financial crash of 2008 and the terrible Christchurch earthquakes. His departure a year before the triennial election was a surprise to me. Clearly he’d decided that he’d had enough of it.
His was a short career in politics — short, successful and at the top. I suppose, if you can do that, then that’s the way to go.
I think his decision to move out on his own terms showed careful thinking about his future and what he wanted to do. You can’t hold that against him. The party was less than impressed for a while, because they knew he was a major selling point.
The National Party is looking to where its coalition partner might be in the future. I think it should be with the Greens, but it would take some time to see whether the Greens would be interested.
After the last election I appointed myself to reach out to a few senior people in the Green Party. Some were interested, but the majority weren’t. That’s a pity because I believe a National-Green coalition would be good for New Zealand.
Eventually I told Winston that I was reshuffling the Cabinet and he wouldn’t be in it.