Satirically, the occasion was Helen Clark’s launch of a Families Commission campaign called, ‘What makes families tick?’ Tamihere came along to audition as Labour’s prodigal son.
It was his first public appearance after he had so spectacularly stuck his foot in his mouth with comments in Investigate magazine. His personal attacks on his colleagues were outrageous, beyond the pale. The media were out in force at Otara to inspect the prime minister greeting her disgraced MP. It was brief: Clark gave him a quick kiss, lunged back, went about her business. I found Tamihere afterwards, backstage, standing in shadows, his teeth still bashing at the stick of gum. I mentioned Clark’s kiss, and asked, ‘How was it for you?’ He had another attack of the giggles and said, ‘Thank you very much!’ Then he legged it, a manic creature released from that tense, staged appointment.
I don’t think I ever saw him in outline. He was more like a quick sketch, a blur. When I met him again on Thursday at the studios of Radio Live, where he co-hosted an often wildly entertaining afternoon talkback show with Willie Jackson, I lost sight of him altogether.
He made a remark about ‘evolving’. He talked about the joys of ‘being back on the street’. He was beautifully dressed, his eyes flickered, his smooth skin really did glow; boyish at forty-eight, he was friendly and mischievous, and his words came out in a gabble. His train of thought chugged all over the shop. In short, he was bewildering. Was this the same guy who was once the media’s favourite Maori? Every story about Tamihere must mention that he was once made New Zealander of the Year by North & South, Man of the Year by Metro, and Person of the Year by The Sunday Star-Times; he had attracted a great deal of excited talk that he might become New Zealand’s first Maori prime minister.
It came to nothing. Tamihere survived the Investigate debacle, but voters sent him packing at the 2005 election. He is back where he began when he first shot into national prominence – reappointed into his old job as CEO of West Auckland’s Waipareira Trust. Unshackled from parliament, no longer a slave to Labour Party loyalty, he is a free man and he can say what he wants. Radio Live pay him to do exactly that. On air, Jackson tempers the mania, sets out the traffic cones; alone, Tamihere puts his foot to the floor, and takes his hands off the wheel.
How much preparation does he put into the show? ‘I’d be bullshitting if I said we did any preparation.’ Is he having fun? ‘Shit yeah. And it’s a very good policy development tool. It adds immeasurably to my thinking. Some of our sessions have absolutely been on fire, like when we opened up the lines and talked about prostate cancer, and men’s health, and wellness checks.’ Did the subject of prostate cancer make good radio? ‘I don’t bloody care.’
He said, ‘The show provides a very wide platform of engagement because of where Willie’s politics take him, and where mine have evolved for me, so I almost count it as a therapeutic thing.’
It was hard to tell whether the therapy was working. If he seemed like a wreck that day in Otara, exhilarated with the notion that his betrayal of Labour colleagues filled his ears with the sound of his political career whooshing down the gurgler, then on Thursday he seemed uncertain and unsteady with the freedom of his status as an outsider.
Tamihere likes to talk in sporting analogies. I asked him that if national politics was like a test match, how would he rate talkback radio? ‘It would probably be top senior A level.’ Might he return to national politics? ‘Never say never. It’s always a possibility.’
Immediately after his Investigate interview, he gave a mea culpa performance on Close Up, and stated that he would be a Labour Party member ‘until the day I die’. Is he still a Labour Party member unto death? ‘I’ve yet to take out my financial membership again for this year.’
On Radio Live, Jackson’s politics are fairly easy to identify, but Tamihere’s are more … difficult. He said, ‘You’re starting to sound like Helen Clark! That’s what she used to say! The key to my politics is … it’s no longer the politics of left and right. There are some things the Old Right talk about which are absolutely right.’
Such as? He talked for a long while about ‘the middle-class capture of welfare programmes’, how he thought ‘private-public sector partnerships are absolutely essential to unlock the talent in this country’, and the necessity of raising teacher’s salaries ‘but the quid pro quo of that is that there have to be some performance measures. It’s just like state houses. They’re not a lifetime right. There’s only 60,000 of them. And you get into situations where there are four income earners in the place with a renter down the back! I know these sorts of things, because I’m in the community.’
How did he rate National leader John Key? ‘Let me put it to you this way: I would sleep quite easily if he was in charge of the country’s chequebook.’
In his second term as an MP, Tamihere was promoted to number nineteen in caucus, and given several ministerial portfolios. The rising star. But he stood down from his cabinet posts in 2004, when he was accused of financial impropriety at the Waipareira Trust. Just after he was cleared of any wrongdoing by
