He meant the policing issues. How so? ‘Well,’ he said, ‘now that you’re talking to me about it, I suppose that was the critical point. Because when I emerged from that, I read this book by the Dalai Lama. It was only a pamphlet; I just happened to be reading it somewhere. Basically his argument was, don’t fight negative battles. It made me realise that I’d fought so many negative battles. It was fighting enemies, you know, from being a cop and thinking about all these guys behind trees. At that point, my kids would actually say … yes, that was when I changed.
‘I figured my kids love me, my dog loves me, my horse loves me, and I’ll go and do some positive things and maybe make my life more enjoyable.’
And what he was talking about now – wanting debate on police powers – that was a positive thing, too, wasn’t it? ‘I think it is,’ he said. ‘See, I could so easily get on the plane next week, go back to Prague, and think, Who cares about New Zealand? But I do care.’
He took a call on his mobile phone. He said later, ‘That was Pita Sharples.’ Last night, he said, he met with John Minto. ‘For the first time ever, we shook hands.’ A historic moment: Meurant, the Red Squad plod, in a peace and reconciliation moment with Minto, the most famous anti-apartheid protester from 1981. That had been arranged by a civil liberties group wanting him to address a rally. Once again, the phones were ringing. Lazarus was back by popular demand.
[October 28]
20 David Cunliffe
The Goodness of People
You could tell at once what was going to happen when an old couple approached newly promoted cabinet minister David Cunliffe on the main shopping street in Titirangi. It was the day after Cunliffe was given the health portfolio, and his ranking rose to seventh in cabinet. New Zealanders are a fundamentally decent people; we excel at the slap on the back and the hip-hip-hooray; the couple were going to congratulate him, wish him all the best. It would be a small, good moment in a politician’s life.
‘Hello there,’ said Cunliffe, a tall, trim fellow, forty-four, with short gingery hair and a boyish, rather pleading face. He was dressed in clothes bought from Rodd & Gunn. His shirt was tucked in. It was easy to imagine him as a kid – a smart, eager, untroubled presence, toothy and freckled. He grew up in the Waikato, then in Pleasant Point in South Canterbury, as the son of an Anglican vicar. Later, when I asked him about his father, he said, ‘He was a very gentle man. Possibly sometimes too gentle, and possibly sometimes too willing to believe in the goodness of people.’
The couple drew closer. Cunliffe was sitting in the passenger seat of his ministerial car parked outside a café. He wound down the window and leaned his head out. He was in a very cheerful mood. The previous night, he had celebrated his promotion by taking his two sons, aged six and two, on a Halloween trick or treat.
The old man stepped up to the car and peered inside. A small, hapless moment in a politician’s life was in progress.
‘You’re in the government,’ he said.
‘Yes. I’m David Cunliffe, MP for New Lynn.’
‘Labour or National?’
Cunliffe moved his shoulders a little bit further back into the car. He has been a Labour MP since 1999. Titirangi is in his electorate. But it was a good question: Cunliffe describes himself as both a capitalist and a socialist. He is the grand-great-nephew of Richard Seddon. His father was a ‘passionate supporter’ of Labour. ‘I guess I grew up with the Labour Party in my veins,’ he said during our interview. When I asked Cunliffe what the story of Jesus meant to him, he said, ‘The power of that story is the power of love, and how love can be brought to bear on everything, from loving an individual to making changes in social structures that make a difference in people’s lives.’
As a high school student, he won a scholarship to an exclusive international college in a castle in Wales: ‘I got really fascinated when I was there with how the world works and the systems that make the world go around, and why some people end up poor and others rich.’
He studied politics at Otago but wasn’t politically active. He began his career as a foreign affairs diplomat – postings in Australia, the Pacific, Washington – but left when he won a Fulbright scholarship to study at Harvard Business School. When he graduated, he was handpicked by the Boston Consulting Group. His minister’s salary is now $225,000; he earned more as a business economist.
Cunliffe’s years working on the dark side have aroused suspicions among Labour traditionalists. When I asked him whether he had remained a Christian, he said, ‘Yes, and for some of my Labour Party colleagues it helps them to understand that I come to the party out of a pretty moral Christian socialist tradition that includes Vogel, and Walter Nash, and Michael Savage.’ This reminded me of political commentator Ian Templeton’s verdict of Cunliffe: ‘The prime minister rates him for his personal skills – surprisingly, given his vainglorious propensities.’
‘Labour,’ said Cunliffe, answering the old man’s question.
‘Hmmm.’
There was a silence. Cunliffe said, ‘I’m the new health minister.’
‘Hmmm.’
When I asked Cunliffe about his mother, Cunliffe said she was a hospital matron ‘and when I was teenager I was studying sciences, and hoping that one day I might be a doctor, so it’s kind of ironic I’m now the health minister.’
After the second ‘hmmm’ on the street in Titirangi, there was another silence. Cunliffe said, ‘And how are you today?’
It may be no wonder that Cunliffe wasn’t recognised by his constituent. He lives with his wife Karen – they met at Otago University when he was twenty;
