AUGUST 10 2019 LISTENER 59
prime minister.
By the time Clark, our first
elected woman PM, led Labour
to victory in 1999, women
were having quite a power
surge. During Clark’s era we
had a woman Chief Justice,
Speaker and Governor-Gen-
eral, and the chief executive
of our then-biggest com-
pany, Telecom, was Theresa
Gattung.
Clark was a specially
emblematic battering ram,
having vanquished that most
fearsome of adversaries, the
“preferred prime minister”
poll ratings. She was so van-
ishingly unpopular at first,
a delegation of senior MPs
urged her to step down. She
stared them out, made every
one of them a staunch ally,
and began to win the public
over and reunify the party in
her first election campaign as
leader, 1996.
As PM, she made MMP coa-
litions work as National had
not, including with arch-foe
Jim Anderton and the notori-
ously prickly Winston Peters.
Her administration intro-
duced many controversial
changes that subsequent
governments have dared not
alter, including the Working
for Famlies tax credits, the
Superannuation Fund and the
de-fanging of the Air Force.
Her Waterloo came when
her Government legislated
to prevent iwi from pursuing
title claims to the foreshore
and seabed, weakening
Labour’s bond with Māori
and fuelling the nascent
Māori Party, which later
helped National keep power.
Still, this problem took her
opponents six years to settle.
Across the aisle, National
continued to woman-up.
Former solo-mum bene-
ficiary-turned-university
graduate Paula Bennett was
shoulder-tapped after party
grandees noticed her ebul-
lience and gutsiness. She
ended up as Deputy Prime
Minister to Bill English, and
remains deputy party leader.
Prominent Auckland lawyer
Judith Collins came to be
known as Crusher, since her
law to enable the destruction
of boy racers’ cars so epito-
mised her take-no-prisoners
approach to politics.
That women MPs have yet
to attain numerical parity
now carries the niggle of
a mission yet to be com-
pleted. Any shortage of
Cabinet-ready women, such
as we have now, is seen as
an embarrassment and an
affront to the natural order of
things.
And while tea remains
the vital political fuel and
emollient it’s always been,
tea-making is now an equal-
opportunity duty.March 1991
In early 1991, the Asian
population exceeded
100,000. It rose to exceed
a quarter of a million by- Two years later, Prime
Minister Jim Bolger declared
himself pleased to be an
Asian leader.
The nation’s face was
changing and it made
some Kiwis nervous, as
Winston Peters’ success in
the 1996 election proved.
But that same election
gave us our first Asian MP,
National’s Shanghai-born
Pansy Wong. In her maiden
speech, she described the
long march from the active
legal discrimination of the
period 1881 to 1951: a “path
leading to Parliament ...
paved with tears, blood, hard
work and determination”.
New Zealand, culinarily,
linguistically, politically
and culturally, is becoming
more and more part of the
Asia-Pacific region. Last
Immigration
Crime stories that
shocked the nation
year, aside from returning
New Zealanders,the largest
number of migrants came
from China, followed
by India and the United
Kingdom. The number of
New Zealanders leaving
the country for Australia
peaked in 2012, but in 2016,
that trend reversed for the
first time since 1991, thanks
to our strong economy and
political stability. Since the
start of 2018, however, the
traditional trend has started
to re-emerge.These covers are a small reflection of our nation’s sad history.Would they say it now?
The culture of Parliament was such that women MPs were
often the butt of jokes in the House.
When one female MP had an especially striking new
hair colour – an assertive auburn – she had the misfor-
tune to enter the chamber while Sir Robert Muldoon was
on his feet. He stopped mid-sentence and simply stared
at her, the silence lasting for what seemed an eternity.
Tension built before, to her mortification, he resumed,
“Ah, Mr Speaker, I see the orange roughy has joined us.”
When another MP tried to divert the rhetorical
onslaught of David Lange in full flight by holding up a
card that said “CLAP”, Lange, without missing a beat,
shot back: “Thanks for the warning.”