What Was I Thinking: A Memoir

by Paul Henry

  Finally we ploughed to a halt. The deafening noise ceased and all you could hear was the whimpering of the injured. Two men carrying buckets ran across the runway to the plane. They were the airport’s fire service.

  The next day we were on a flight to Nairobi. I was starting to feel some uncertainty in the belly area because I had had a big feed the night before. We took off in our small plane for the two and a half hour flight to Wilson airport, 5 kilometres south of Nairobi. After about an hour the person in the seat in front of me, whose belly was in no doubt, exploded. Within milliseconds an unbearable stench filled the plane.

  My first thought was: ‘Thank God it’s not me.’ My second thought was: ‘I think I’m going to explode, too. Just let me make it to the airport, just let me get into a toilet in the airport.’

  I was almost gagging and had another hour and a half of this to look forward to. Shit continued to seep out of this man. His seat was touching my knees and my feet were under it. It was certain that no one was going to leave that plane without at least having some of his shit on them. When we finally landed and the door opened, people crawled over each other’s heads to get out and away from him and the horror. I didn’t explode until much later that night, back in my room after dinner.

  That trip embodied all that was both good and bad about being an international correspondent. You’d go to something, you would face death, you would see the worst of the world, you would see the worst deprivation, you would see the most wondrous beautiful things. And take Imodium to be sure you won’t explode.

  I decided I wanted to stop the travelling after nearly dying — ironically, not far from home.

  When I went on a trip I left my car in Auckland and drove home to Homebush when I got back. The longer I spent being an international correspondent, the worse my driving got. I was going faster, taking corners more quickly and one night on a back road I took a corner too fast and shot off the road and over a bank.

  ‘That was my fault,’ was the pointless thought that went through my head. I didn’t consider for a moment that I would be hurt. Look at all the incredibly dangerous experiences I had survived. And sure enough, within moments I was on my feet and able to stop a passing farmer who helped me get the car back on the road, and I drove it home with bits hanging off it. But I knew I couldn’t keep doing that.

  “I HAD ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED BY POLITICS, AND THOUGH I HAD NEVER SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED RUNNING, I CERTAINLY HADN’T RULED IT OUT. ‘GOD, I COULD BE A GOOD POLITICIAN’, IS A PHRASE THAT RAN THROUGH MY HEAD REASONABLY FREQUENTLY. IT SEEMED TO ME ILLOGICAL THAT YOU COULDN’T ACTUALLY GO INTO PARLIAMENT AND ACHIEVE SOMETHING. WHY WERE SO MANY OF THEM A WASTE OF BLOODY SPACE?”

  * * *

  I HAD ALWAYS BEEN fascinated by politics, and though I had never seriously considered running, I certainly hadn’t ruled it out. ‘God, I could be a good politician’, is a phrase that ran through my head reasonably frequently. It seemed to me illogical that you couldn’t actually go into Parliament and achieve something. Why were so many of them a waste of bloody space? And this was in the days when they weren’t nearly as big a waste of space as they are now.

  I had been living in the electorate for some time when a couple of Wairarapa National Party people approached me to stand.

  ‘I’m not even a member of the party,’ I said coyly.

  ‘But you’re a National supporter,’ they pointed out, and indeed I was. At least, my political beliefs were more closely aligned with the philosophy of the National Party than any other party. National was going to have to work its way around the fact my non-membership meant that I technically didn’t qualify to stand for them, but they were confident that they could do that.

  Part of the appeal was that my peripatetic lifestyle had meant much less family time than I was happy with. Everywhere I travelled I met journalists whose families had been left in tatters by their careers and, as much of a domestic strain as politics would be, it was more stable and less life-threatening than being a foreign correspondent.

  The people who wanted me to stand were confident that I’d win selection, even though they didn’t know who was going to be up against me, if anyone, at that point.

  I went to see Derek Lowe, with whom I had discussed the possibility of politics over the years. With Derek in his office was someone I at first took to be the Angel of Death but who turned out to be Stephen Joyce, who now owned the company.

  We sat on the Couch of Death, enjoying Derek’s panoramic view of Auckland Harbour, and it soon became apparent that politics or not, the role of international correspondent was not one that Stephen saw having long-term relevance to Radio Pacific. In short, everyone thought it a good idea for the role to be terminated. In short, I was fired. That made it much easier for me given how I always feel I am letting people down when I resign. I would much rather be sacked.

  I instantly forgot I was ever a foreign correspondent and set my sights on winning the safe seat of Masterton, then held with a majority of more than 8000 by the Deputy Prime Minister, Wyatt Creech, who had decided to become a list MP. Masterton had been in National hands for a good number of years.

  The other person vying for selection as the National candidate could not have been more different. For a start, he belonged to the National Party — in fact, had been a conscientious hard worker and party stalwart of many years. He was generally regarded by many as in line to succeed Wyatt. I was the outsider to start with, who people had heard of because I had a media profile and had run a business and created jobs in the area. For reasons still known only to themselves the committee selected me as the National Party candidate for Wairarapa in the 1999 general election. To be honest, I was clearly the better man. Once selected, I took a year off any work commitments and put what money I had into the campaign.

  I had a few things I believed in that I should have told voters and the party straight off, but the nature of political campaigning in New Zealand is that you moderate things. I should have let the electorate know very clearly that I believe New Zealand used to be a country populated by people who were engrossed in building it, and who knew that if they didn’t build it, it wouldn’t exist. They were building a future for themselves and their children. I believed we should all still think like that.

  But in just a few generations, we have become a country full of people who expect to be handed things on a plate; of people who wonder why their grandparents didn’t build roads and other infrastructure that would last forever, and expect someone else to do it for them now. Thankfully some people still do those things, but individual initiative is thin on the ground, which is extraordinary because arguably we’re all still pioneers. People think they have a right to a good life that will be created for them, and with that has come distrust of people who seem to be better off.

  I didn’t want to be a list MP. I was standing for an electorate and I should have been cut loose to win it over. If I had said more of what I believed, it might have been different. I think I said just enough to burn off some people. After that, I was reduced to a large extent to being an apologist for the stupid things National had done over the last nine years.

  I support what National stands for, not what they do. Anyone who reads the party constitution — which an alarming number of people in the organisation haven’t — would be likely to think it sounded like the way to go. Ultimately I don’t care who people vote for. I care about how New Zealand is run. I was one of the biggest supporters of some of the things that Labour did because they were the right things to do. Also it helps that I’ve got a strong social conscience and there’s nothing in the party constitution that would indicate you shouldn’t have a strong social conscience.

  The campaign launch didn’t bode well. The highlight was John Falloon’s honky-tonk rendition of ‘God Defend New Zealand’ on the piano, a guaranteed crowd pleaser. The guest speaker was the Minister of Finance, Bill English, and when he spoke you could see people looking around, hoping desperately that John Falloo
n was going to come back and give us another tune. Even I almost fell asleep during Bill English.

  A candidate meeting in Dannevirke was typical of what went on in the campaign. The sort of people who go to political meetings in the Wairarapa are exactly those people with a pioneering spirit I was after. They were hard workers in the rural heartland, but they’re older people. They are also the last people you would expect to vote for a candidate like my extremely high-profile transsexual Labour opponent — and former Today FM employee — Georgina Beyer. But it turned out that if you were a voter in the Wairarapa in 1999 who wanted to send a National Government a clear ‘fuck you’ message, a transsexual Labour candidate was exactly who you would vote for.

  At the meeting were Georgina, myself, Cathy Casey for the Alliance, some fool for the Greens and a greater fool for Act.

  The audience were there to listen to people who could safely say anything they wanted, knowing they would never have to deliver on their promises, and to wait for the National guy to stand up so that they could boo me because I represented all the evils of an incumbent government and the tide was going out on that.

  The Alliance speaker essentially promised a public hospital at the end of every street, and she was applauded. The Labour candidate agreed that would be a great idea and said the Alliance couldn’t do it but Labour could. The Act candidate fumbled his way through the most extraordinary load of bollocks you could possibly imagine. So no surprises there. And I glazed over for the Green candidate. Everyone was met with rapturous applause, except for the Act candidate.

  I walked on stage to the sound of booing. I looked out at the audience and knew we were on the same side. They were people who worked like navvies on their farms every day.

  ‘I’m appalled with you,’ I told them. ‘You just applauded a woman who has said that you can look forward to a public hospital at the end of every street. You’re not stupid, are you? You must know that that will never happen and yet you applaud her.’

  I pointed out that when people are asked what qualities they want their politicians to have, honesty is always near the top of the list. ‘Evidenced today is the fact that you don’t want honesty at all. You want to be sold a lie. We cannot afford the sort of health system the Labour and Alliance candidates are promising. In fact, New Zealand can probably only really afford one public hospital for the whole country, plus a lot of very fast ambulances. So let’s talk real. You people have worked bloody hard for everything other people are taking advantage of, and you’re now applauding when those people who haven’t worked very hard want to take more of the wealth that you’ve built up.’

  My electorate people were appalled, but I knew there wasn’t a vote in that room for me to win. They worked hard and were great, but they were used to Wyatt and I still don’t think they had come to terms with MMP. The whole political landscape was changing very quickly — I was one of the first candidates in New Zealand to use the internet to campaign. That was never going to be a huge hit for me, though, because no one had the internet. It was another option but it was really not much more than a website address that was twice as long as my car.

  Wyatt Creech came to several meetings to support me, and so he could be seen to be passing on the mantle, but he was also Deputy Prime Minister and his time was limited. He was busy overseeing National’s whole campaign and helping a lot of other new candidates.

  He took me to the local fast food chicken outlet once to try to convince me I would win. ‘Look, like all candidates just starting out, I know you’re worried,’ he said. ‘I know you think you’re going to lose but it won’t happen. You don’t overturn an 8000 seat majority.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but Wyatt just have a look at where they voted last time. Look at where that 8000 majority came from last time and you’ll see that it doesn’t exist anymore.’ All sorts of things were happening to that vote. People were dying off for one.

  ‘Look, you’re going to lose a few thousand, but you’re in an electorate where you can afford to lose a few thousand. You will be the next Member of Parliament in the Wairarapa.’

  For a split second I was completely at ease. Then I reverted to reality.

  ‘Is it possible that I know more about this than all these people?’ I said to Rachael. There were analysts and a huge party organisation. They couldn’t all be idiots. But they failed to look back prior to the last election, when Wyatt had lost. He only got in after a lot of legal to-ing and fro-ing and with a slim majority. Wairarapa was all over the shop.

  Healthcare, education and welfare

  Medicine and the social policy around it interest me greatly. There are three things we know for sure about healthcare: (1) We have very good state healthcare in this country; (2) It isn’t as good as it should be; (3) It is never going to be as good as people want it to be.

  It would be good if healthcare and education and the justice system, which are all core things, could be taken away from political parties. We should acknowledge the minimum we will accept and work towards an ideal we all agree on. But first, we have to realise how lucky we are and then, in our own reasonable, non-victimising way, fight both to retain what we have and to improve it.

  Generally, I love user pays, and I hate non-user pays. But I am happy as a non-user to pay tax for some things. You have to pay for people who, for one reason or another, have been dealt a bad hand through no fault of their own and need help. Obviously you want a good health system, you want good stopgaps to look after people, you want good social policy.

  Apart from those things, all I want to pay for is what I use. I’m prepared to pay a proper price for that and I would be able to afford to if I wasn’t sucked dry paying for all the things I don’t use.

  But the killer was the combination of anti-government resentment and Georgina Beyer’s huge profile. She was the first candidate with any appeal who Labour had put up for some time. People saw her as the courageous underdog and me as the rich arsehole. And they failed to see that, thanks to MMP, they could have had both the underdog via the party vote and the arsehole via the electorate vote.

  The Alliance candidate, Cathy Casey, was also funnelling people to Labour. She was a great friend of Georgina Beyer and the author of her book, which was released during the campaign. It was the first time she had represented the Alliance in the electorate as their candidate, replacing Dave McPherson, an extremely popular politician whose massive support from the previous election was clearly not going to stay with Cathy.

  The Minister of Senior Citizens came to help me by addressing a meeting. It was almost like he was working for the opposition, though it’s not hard to make old people stampede. It seemed to me like he didn’t even understand his own portfolio let alone anyone else’s. Often when I was in the company of sitting MPs I found myself thinking something was very wrong. I knew more about politics than anyone else in the room.

  I would also admit it when I didn’t understand policy fully. I read all the policy documents, but they sometimes made no sense. I expressed doubts. At that point my colleagues said, ‘The policy’s not that important.’ Then I realised that I had a better grasp of policy than any of them because I at least understood the impact of the policy. I could understand what people were worried about. I didn’t know dates and document numbers but I could answer questions by telling people what I believed and what I wanted to do for them.

  Prime Minister Jenny Shipley came to help. That may have been my idea, but it was not a vote-winning manoeuvre at this stage. I took her around some schools and a couple of businesses. We made the most of photo opportunities, and the media followed along obligingly.

  I got to sit in her car and it infuriated me that she didn’t have the New Zealand flag flying. I thought then and there, one day I’ll be the Prime Minster and I’ll have the New Zealand flag flying on my car all the time, even when I’m not in it. Why bother being Prime Minister if you’re not going to have your country’s flag flying on the official car?

  I h
ad a New Zealand flag flying on my old $6000 Volvo, which was painted with my election advertising. I still have the New Zealand and US flags flying at my home. I got a lot of flak just for driving a Volvo, even though it was the cheapest car I ever owned. People used to boo as I drove around the district. Whether they were booing me, the car or the flag I’m still not sure.

  However, Jenny Shipley was very generous with her time, and we ended the day back at Homebush with a do for about 80 key supporters. It was very pleasant but I remember it most because the girls climbed up onto the landing on our big staircase in the vestibule when she finished making her speech, and Sophie thanked her and handed her a New Zealand flag that she had bought in the two-dollar shop the day before.

  The family were brilliant throughout. The girls turned up to dreary functions in their party frocks and Rachael worked hard to keep the day-to-day domestic worries in the background. I was so proud of them. We had campaign headquarters at the house, which wasn’t easy. I didn’t focus enough on the family that year because I was very worried about the election slipping away from me. I was in to win. Campaigning wasn’t a part-time job. I used to look at my rivals and see them doing their day jobs while electorate organisations were doing the work for them.

  My father came to visit me once during the campaign. He was based between Singapore and Australia at the time. It was typical of him to just turn up every couple of years or so. ‘I’m in New Zealand. I’m in a rental car, I’m on my way down’ or ‘I’m in Wellington, I’ve just arrived. Can you come and pick me up?’