Of elation? ‘An expression of elation, and almost a sycophantic expression.’
The way Bain was greeted by a cheering media – that was odious, yes? ‘I think it’s reasonable to characterise it that way.’
Did he flick that night between Close Up and Campbell Live? ‘Yeah, I did. I did.’
Who was the more odious? ‘Without a doubt, Campbell Live.’
I said that it was a close race, but that Sainsbury was more odious by a nose. He said, ‘Well, I thought Campbell Live had it by more than a nose. But I think there were odious aspects to our coverage as well. Without doubt.’
It was impossible to talk about the comparative odiousness of television presenters without bringing up the name Paul Holmes. I asked Henry whether he held up Holmes as a warning.
‘No. But perhaps he should be. Perhaps he should be. I hold him up as one of the greatest broadcasters in this country. I have huge admiration for his work. But it’s a very interesting question: should he be held up as a warning? Is he happy? Do we know? It’s hard to imagine he would be, isn’t it?’
Ruahine School in Dannevirke and the Eketahuna Hamua Hall on State Highway 2: what did those two places mean to Henry? He was puzzled, but made a guess: ‘Something to do with my election campaign?’ Very much so. In the 1999 general election, when Henry ran as the National Party candidate against Georgina Beyer in Wairarapa, the polling booths at the school and the hall were two of the few where Henry gave Labour’s successful candidate, Georgina Beyer – who became the world’s first transsexual MP – a sound thrashing.
He said, ‘I should have given her a hiding in every booth.’
How did he lose what was considered a safe National seat? ‘That’s easy. I lost because of the National Party’s stupidity and arrogance … A week before the election I was sitting down in some chicken takeaway place in Masterton with the deputy prime minister, Wyatt Creech, and I said, “Oh God, Wyatt, this isn’t going well,” and he said to me, “There is no way you, or the party, are going to lose.” It was this whole National Party thinking that actually meant they deserved to lose. It was so pervasive.’
Henry then found other reasons for his loss – voter misunderstanding of MMP politics, Beyer’s high profile, and his decision to follow bad advice. I asked whether bad advice led him to make his infamous declaration on the campaign trail about Beyer’s sex change: ‘I’m still a man!’
He said, ‘Oh, that was just gross misreporting. I mean, no, I did say that, but if I’d been counselled correctly I’d have been advised not to take part in that interview.’
The journalist, he said, had fed him a barrage of questions along the lines of, ‘Georgina Beyer’s been through such pain and anguish. What have you done?’ ‘So I said, “I’m still a man, so clearly nothing.” The funny thing is someone from the National Party was with me when I answered that, and we walked away afterwards, and I said, “We just fucked up.” And they said, “No, that was brilliant!”’
I asked him if he would have liked making it into parliament. He said, ‘I’d have loved it. Absolutely loved it. It was a real shame, especially when I see what a golden opportunity in the National Party that would have been. I mean, there was so much dead wood that needed to be culled. A lot of them are still there! I could have flown to the top. I could have achieved significantly. And I would like to think that National still wouldn’t be in opposition had I got in. But of course you never really know …’
The man who might have changed the face of New Zealand politics. Was this incredible gall, or just happy chatter? It was probably both. He was such a fantasist.
He told a story. He said, ‘I was devastated when I lost at the election. And this panic comes over you – how will I feed the family? But there were lovely things that happened that year. The prime minister came to my house in the country. Jenny Shipley, yeah. And we had a beautiful Gone With The Wind staircase, it was a magnificent home with a great big formal lounge and great big formal dining room, and halfway through the evening, we probably had eighty loyal National Party members there, my daughters were dressed up beautifully, they were really young, too young to know it was important, but young enough to know it was exciting, which is how I would have liked to have been able to treat the evening, and Jenny Shipley stood at the bottom of the staircase, at the first rung of this lovely staircase, and gave a speech, and one of my daughters got up and gave her a little New Zealand flag which she’d got in a $2 Shop, and actually that one moment was almost worth the entire year’s campaigning.’
I really had to ask him whether he knew himself very well. He said, ‘I’m worried to search myself too much. When I start to, I stop. I don’t have to look far to see potential problems.’
He said his father died two years ago. Did they get on? ‘No. No. He was never around.’ Was there an issue of forgiving him for leaving home? ‘No, because I admired him so much. The enormous admiration I had for him clouded the fact that I never really determined whether I should love him or not.’
Did his father love him? ‘I hope so. I think towards the end, he started to appreciate me. I think. I think.’
[July 8]
6 Pauline Jespersen
The Good Samaritan
The funny thing is that a few days before the July storms that shattered the Far North – flooded homes, closed roads, fallen
