T he idea for putting together a collection of conversational interludes with Jim Bolger came to me a couple of years ago, when I was researching a story about New Zealands diplomatic and trade history. Part of the brief had involved taking an hours drive north from my home in Wellington to the coastal town of Waikanae to spend a Friday morning with the man who had been our countrys thirty-fifth prime minister.
I felt that, as a former political leader, corporate player and a one-time ambassador, he could deliver some insightful comments. This he did with familiar aplomb.
Familiar is the word, too. Jim pardon the deviation from usual journalistic style rules, but this is a first-name-basis book is now in his mid-eighties. Its as if he has always been with us.
Oh sure, these days the hair is more vividly white. Those pale blue eyes have now acquired a more benign look. And, yes, he occasionally slips into referring to himself in the third person, in a slightly more crackly voice than that youngish new Cabinet minister used in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But the Bolger gusto, always one of his great signatures, is still there. See him out mowing the lawns or gardening in the large section he shares with Joan. Listen to him holding forth on one or other of his pet themes the eclipse of the white global class, say, or the environment and theres no doubting the energy level.
Yet something else that struck me at the time was how little has been published over the decades about the actual man. Its a surprising omission: Jim Bolger has been in the public eye on and off for the past half-century, most notably as a three-term prime minister, and yet we dont know him and his interesting paradoxes all that well. A man from an orthodox party who is yet not an orthodox thinker. A quintessentially New Zealand leader from a relatively unusual background among New Zealand chiefs. A business leader who has moved in the wealthiest circles yet comes from an economically tough personal background. An academic leader who dropped out of school early. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, hes never really been a status quo kind of guy.
Youd think we would already have all that good oil. Actually, not so. The basic details of that public life are well known, and en route to the pantheon of political trivia. Any winning team in a pub quiz could tell you, for instance, that James Brendan Bolger, the son of Irish immigrants, was born in the Taranaki village of Opunake in 1935. His parents farmed rock-strewn land. He left school early to help them. Later, he married a young teacher, Joan Riddell; started his own family; and bought a sheep and beef farm in the King Country. The couple would eventually have nine children.
Unsurprisingly, he became involved with Federated Farmers, which was to be the springboard for a political career. He entered Parliament in 1972 as the National MP for the newly created seat of King Country. Three years on, the Opposition surged into office.
For most people of a certain age, Jim came to prominence as a minister of labour serving under Robert Muldoon. It was an era in which the country sizzled with industrial disputes; at any one time there were as many as 30 roiling the economy. Compulsory unionism, which Jim would later be instrumental in dismantling, was the order of the day for workers. In an appointment that would probably be considered odd by todays standards, he was also an undersecretary for Maori Affairs.
If only catching votes was so easy.
The advent of television was pivotal to his political ascendance. Norman Kirk, whose one-term Labour government Muldoon had toppled in 1975, was the first New Zealand politician to really use the medium, and Muldoon later made it his own. Jim had neither the screen power of his leader nor Kirks oratorical flair, but he looked appealing enough, and his background in debating was (and still is) an advantage.
Most strikingly, according to historian and former Labour minister Michael Bassett, he could be fearless when the occasion demanded, as much in Parliament as he had been when representing farmers. While extolling the virtues of his constituency, he revealed a sense of history, and understood the inevitability of change, Bassett has noted. That kind of perception is not always the hallmark of farmers. Nor, Bassett also noted, was he reluctant to break with tradition; despite the convention that new MPs should give only light and frothy maiden speeches, in 1972 he used his to launch a spirited attack on the newly elected government of Norman Kirk.
Jim became leader of the National Party in 1986. In the first few years he had the opportunity to study the relatively brief premiership of Geoffrey Palmer and the ridiculously briefer one of Mike Moore. Taking notes came naturally to somebody who, according to his former press secretary, Jim Burns, undoubtedly made mistakes, but never made the same mistake twice.
No doubt part of Jims success story was the dire state the Labour government found itself in by the late 1980s. Its economic reforms had proved a mixed blessing at best. Squabbles and ideological ructions were rife. This all helped National secure its largest ever victory in the 1990 election, but so too, obviously, did its turbo-charged leader who, despite never doing wonderfully well in the public opinion polls, ticked off all or most of Michael Bassetts seven essential attributes for leadership: high ambitions, rude good health, intelligence, good [self-] education, the ability to come across well on television, a supportive home environment, a cheerful temperament, the capacity to make tough decisions and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to give a sense of a better world.
Among the achievements of Jims stewardship of the country as prime minister was the introduction of a mixed member proportional (MMP) representation system. He helped negotiate a number of pioneering Treaty of Waitangi settlements, including with Ngi Tahu and Tainui. He persuaded his party to embrace Labours signature anti-nuclear policy and, most critically, his government brought the countrys accounts back into balance. He nudged New Zealands perception of itself away from being a satellite of Europe and towards being a fully fledged member of the AsiaPacific region.
Considerably less successful were his attempts to promote republicanism, an argument he made on local terms rather than on the Irish experience that informed his conviction. Although, here again, good instincts possibly saved him from going out on a limb as the partys next three-term leader, John Key, did on the flag issue, and pushing for a referendum he could not possibly hope to carry.
In 1990 National was elected on the promise of delivering a decent society but would be known for delivering what many regarded as a decidedly indecent Budget, a famously austere one delivered by Jims right-hand-woman, finance minister Ruth Richardson. Her 1991 Budget slashed government spending, which was arguably needed, while also undermining the softer brand National had been trying to project in the wake of the right-wing economic policies of the previous ninth-floor crowd. This was something the new government did not need.
