Chapter 17
Labour’s accession to government in 2017 marked a remarkable recovery for a party which just a month or two earlier had looked dead and buried. It also marked a remarkable, almost unthinkable, rise for Jacinda Ardern, who at the beginning of the year had no inkling that she might be Prime Minister by the end of it.
Annette King was at the centre of much of it, first as she handed over the deputy leadership to Ardern, and then when she advised Andrew Little as he made the decision to step down as leader, and then finally acting as a mentor for Jacinda Ardern during the heated election campaign.
While it also marked the end of Annette’s long and storied political career, her final chapter as an MP was to end in triumph, not abject defeat which blights the end of so many politicians’ careers. Initially, though, it was a difficult time for Annette as new speculation surfaced about her position as deputy leader.
The momentum, if you can call it that, probably began in January 2017 when the New Zealand Herald’s long-serving political editor Audrey Young wrote an article suggesting Annette was past her use-by date. But the column was not critical of Annette. ‘Annette King has done a brilliant job. She has been invaluable to Little in his first two years and was the right choice at the time. Elevating Ardern any sooner than that would have been a mistake — potentially distracting and destabilising to Little — as I said 14 months ago when Little was assessing whether to make King’s short-term assignment longer-term.
‘But things have changed since then. The National Party change two months ago and the next reshuffle in May could lead to fresh faces in education and health (Nikki Kaye and Michael Woodhouse). The Greens too have a slate of strong young women candidates in Hayley Holt, Chloe Swarbrick and Golriz Ghahraman. It means Little and King would be foolish not to rethink the deputy’s job. King could not be forced out. Her standing is too high and any disunity would cripple them. But King standing aside in the interests of the party should secure her one of the highest list rankings and the right to choose her job, should the party lead the next government,’ Young wrote.
In October 2015 Young had written that Annette was the right person to be Labour’s deputy leader. Now, however, she was saying it was time for her to go. A month earlier fellow Labour MP Phil Twyford had approached Annette and told her he too thought she should step aside. It was then Twyford suggested that Ardern replace Annette as deputy leader. Annette mentioned it to Andrew Little. He gave no indication he wanted a change so she forgot about it. But Annette recognised one factor that now complicated things. She had announced she was standing down as the MP for Rongotai, intending to stand as a list candidate only in 2017.
Then the Mt Albert by-election in February 2017 to elect a replacement for former leader David Shearer thrust Ardern into the limelight. She won an easy victory and an expectation started to develop among Labour members at least that maybe the new MP for Mt Albert should also be the party’s deputy leader.
For Little, weighing up the deputy leader’s role was a balancing act. He was a huge fan of Annette. His election as leader after the 2014 general election was not without controversy. He was not the favourite of his caucus colleagues and won the leadership under Labour’s new voting system, which gave a say to the wider membership and the union affiliates. Put crudely, without support of the unions Little would not have been elected leader. Had it been a vote of just MPs, Grant Robertson would have been leader. Little was aware of this and needed someone who could help pull the caucus together. He says he needed someone with experience as his deputy, particularly given he had only been in Parliament a year.
‘I think it was also, you know, the manner in which I became leader was a surprise to a lot of people and I think I needed someone who had a good command in the sense of confidence of most of the caucus.’
He says he was aware there was a viewpoint he had been elected by the unions. ‘I had to be conscious of that and I think my whole thing was we needed a unifying leadership and it was a compromise to do that, but I think part of the equation was to have someone like Annette there to work with me so that’s why I got her up.’
It was imperative Labour put behind it the tensions around leadership which had dogged its previous six years. And there was still the prospect of more leadership wranglings given how few MPs had voted for Little. Annette was one of those who had voted for Robertson, although she also gave Little an assurance before the vote she would support him if he won.
From Little’s perspective, he and Annette formed a good leadership team. ‘She just commands a level of confidence that brings people together. I guess partly with experience and being around for a long time, there’s a whole lot of bullshit and she doesn’t get drawn into that . . . she gave me good advice about a variety of things.’
Appointing Annette deputy was just one of the steps Little took to bind the caucus together.
Annette says: ‘He came in, he realised, with a very small majority and he then set about to actually engage with everybody and to put people into positions and to draw the caucus and party closer together. He did a lot to calm down that division and I credit that to him. He made that his job and I was right alongside him working along with the caucus to make them feel much more united than we’d been for a long time.’
Matt McCarten also helped as Little retained him as chief of staff when he succeeded Cunliffe as leader, says Annette. McCarten ‘did things that were quite practical about getting staff to work together, making things open plan, getting a better environment for people to work in. They sound like little things but actually people were in their little cells before that and he was bringing people together. He was less interested in what the cost was in money terms than what he could do to make it work better and he was very helpful to Andrew in that respect.’
She says there were still a small number of people upset Cunliffe had gone as leader, but retaining McCarten, who had been appointed by Cunliffe, helped mollify them. As well, Robertson helped bind the caucus together by immediately backing Little.
When Little did appoint Annette as his deputy leader there was an expectation that it was an interim measure, just while he came up to speed as leader. In fact, at the very beginning Jacinda Ardern’s name had also been floated as a possible deputy when King was first appointed.
‘I actually said to everybody all the allocations I’ve made, they’re for a year. I didn’t want to give a guarantee to anyone actually that they’ve got a role for the next three years; it’s theirs to do what they like. In that first year Annette and I, the complementarity was so good, we worked so well together, that I thought why upset the equation, so at the end of the first year my decision was to keep her on,’ says Little.
But while they worked well together and no one questioned Annette’s performance in the role, Little struggled to connect with voters and Labour’s polling remained dismally low. As Labour continued to struggle in the polls, some within the party began to question what needed to change.
At the end of 2016 Little has no recollection of people approaching him about the deputy leadership, but he acknowledges support for Labour was still not shifting in the polls. Then came the Mt Albert by-election on 25 February 2017, which appeared to build an almost unstoppable momentum behind Jacinda Ardern. By this time, too, an increasingly desperate Labour was polling furiously to see what circuit breaker could lift the party’s fortunes. There was just one answer: Jacinda Ardern.
‘To be honest there was some polling research that showed that I did better when Jacinda and I appeared together. It wasn’t so much a comparison with Annette. It was me on my own or me with Jacinda and there was a sense that the research showed that people responded better to me when I was with Jacinda rather than me on my own. . . . We didn’t do a direct comparison with Annette but, yeah, those facts came together,’ says Little.
Little says he then raised it with Annette. ‘Before the by-election I said, because this is coming through, I’ve got to think about this. It’s become a consideration for me, so she knew that. Then when the by-election result came through I said it’s reached a point where I think I really have to make a change. She was good because she’s no nonsense, no fuss about it and she said she’d like to take responsibility for the decision, her judgement, and she’d announce it accordingly and she did.’
Jacinda Ardern was upset by the speculation about the deputy leadership and uncomfortable when the change was finally made. She recalls when Annette was first appointed deputy leader there had been conversations about which of them should get the job. They talked openly to one another about it and it made ‘absolute sense’ when Annette was appointed deputy leader.
‘Then there was that conversation that got started in the media again about whether or not it would change. I felt uncomfortable when that happened. I don’t know where it was coming from, certainly not from me. And I was uncomfortable about the pressure it was putting on my friend who was doing a great job and I felt like somehow I was being used as leverage against her, which I was uncomfortable about . . . so I did keep talking to her during that period. Some of the articles did say harsh stuff and then I’d see Annette pushing back and some interpreted that push-back harshly, but I never did. I just think . . . we were both being put in a very awkward position.’
Annette never felt any malice towards Ardern, although there may be some others in the Labour caucus for whom she might not have such fond feelings. But for her, as well, the debate around the deputy leadership and her decision to quit led to another decision. After 33 years since first being elected to Parliament, she decided she would quit politics altogether.
When she told Little she was going to announce her resignation as deputy leader, the next day he said to her he wanted her to stay on as health spokesperson.
Close colleague and friend Trevor Mallard says while it worked out well for Labour in the end the change was tough on Annette. ‘There was clearly a leadership problem. Andrew is someone for whom I have enormous respect and he’s a really good minister, but it just wasn’t working for him as leader and I think it was fanciful to think changing the deputy leader would have sorted that out. Thirty years ago in a different age, much less presidential time, maybe it would have made a difference, but actually the team stuff doesn’t work these days. It is very much a focus on an individual. Annette knew and we knew that it wouldn’t have made, wasn’t going to make any difference changing to Jacinda and Jacinda was not keen on that job, certainly not keen on the next one, and so as I say Annette wasn’t happy with the change and wasn’t happy with the pressure that led to the change.’
Steve Chadwick, no longer in Parliament and by then mayor of Rotorua, was one of those trying to convince King to step down. ‘Our generation’s gone and I learnt that. You’re gone and you’re out of there. You can’t keep telling them what to do. When you’ve got a good idea you can lob that one in. But I kept saying to Annette, “Annette you’ve got to go, you’ve just got to go”,’ says Chadwick.
Mallard: ‘I still think it’s a pity that she retired. I think she could have added quite a lot of ballast and experience to the government. Sitting in the Speaker’s chair you notice there’s a lot of inexperience on both sides of the House. You know, with only Judith Collins in the Opposition ever having asked an Opposition question off their front bench and none of the Clark policy committee in the Cabinet. I think three years of Annette could have strengthened the government. So I do think it’s a pity and I think the government would have been stronger with her. But I think she felt at the time a pretty strong rejection and decided to pull up stumps.’
Paul Tolich, a long-serving Labour Party member and on its New Zealand Council, says many in the party wanted Annette to stay on in Parliament. ‘But I think she knew it was time to go. Always best to go out on top. The absolute essence of her is the fact that she stood aside for Jacinda to take that role [as deputy leader] because she knew it was in the interests of the party,’ says Tolich.
Annette wasn’t bitter about the pressure she faced to stand down and put all her efforts into helping Jacinda Ardern as deputy leader and then leader. Mallard says: ‘That is Annette. Notwithstanding her personal disappointment she was never bitter towards Jacinda and she was supportive of her in her deputy leader’s role and got in behind her and sort of gave advice there, and when the leadership change happened obviously she became, well, a minder.’
On Wednesday, 1 March 2017, Annette announced she was stepping down as deputy and retiring from politics. Few were surprised by the deputy leadership announcement but most, aside from Little, were shocked Annette was leaving politics. Ardern was one of those caught unawares by the finality of Annette’s announcement. She knew Annette was stepping aside as deputy, but it was only Wednesday morning on a caucus conference call meeting she found out Parliament’s longest-serving woman MP was going for good. ‘She told everyone on the caucus call what she was going to do and that she was resigning. I just remember being very close to tears on the phone because I felt in part I had contributed to it and it really threw me.
‘And we were about to do [the news conference] with Andrew about me replacing her. And, yeah, I was dealing with the shock of this person I really respected, and wanted to very much still be part of it, resigning. So that was hard. But it didn’t take long for it to fix itself. You know, like I say, Annette makes a decision and that’s that, no grudges, no hardship, just move on and that’s what she did.’
Annette was not always happy with the reportage of her resignation and in part it came from comments she made just a day or so before making the announcement when she got angry at suggestions she should leave.
Ardern’s election as deputy leader gave Labour an im-mediate boost but no one, certainly not Annette King or Ardern herself, thought she would take over as leader.
After the fillip of the Mt Albert by-election and Ardern becoming deputy leader the days got shorter and darker as summer gave way to autumn and then winter. And by winter Labour’s days were even darker. Little faced some tough questions as he grappled with the challenge facing him as leader of the Labour Party. Annette King was one of his key advisers.
‘She was someone I spoke to a lot about my performance and the focus on the poll ratings. I was making my decision. When we got that week or so that began with a series of very low poll ratings, and I’d already foreshadowed after the first one that this is serious and when Jacinda’s initial response was “No, don’t”, I spoke to Annette a fair amount and the night I made my decision I had several conversations with her.
‘She was very good, and she had got feedback from a number of senior and not so senior MPs and she didn’t say to me time to go, she just said this is where the sentiment is at and we agreed that. She said to me, “You could stay on and stare it down and it might all turn right. That’s a risk. Equally, it’s a risk to step aside and let Jacinda in, but actually the indications are that Jacinda could pull it off.” So I talked it through with her and in the end made my decision that Jacinda would step up.’
Ardern says she did not get too involved in discussions about the leadership. ‘I did have some discussions with her during that period because we didn’t know what Andrew was going to do. It was a very short period, of course, 26 July roughly to 1 August. I think he may well have had conversations with Annette. From my perspective, I literally gave a view to him and then stood back so I wasn’t involved too much in wider conversations he might have had with other members.’
Annette had several phone calls with Little discussing the state of the party, the dismal poll ratings and his leadership. He was desperately worried about the polls and the state of the party.
‘He phoned me, phoned me several times, and he still phones me actually, and he said that “things aren’t good. I’m worried about where we’re going and I’m thinking about my future” because he said something public. . . . He really is uneasy about his position. That was a Sunday. He phoned me I think on that Sunday night and we were having the caucus on the Tuesday.
‘I spoke to him again on the Monday and I didn’t think he’d go at that point. I thought he was going to stay, and I sort of encouraged him. You know, we’ve got the election campaign, we’ll put our energy behind it now we’re behind you. Nobody is saying you have to go and then of course I listened to the radio on Tuesday morning and Radio New Zealand were reporting that he said that he was staying as he came through the airport. And then so I heard that and thought he’s decided he’s going to stay. Got to the office and everyone was running around. He’d told Jacinda by then he was going and of course it immediately trickles down to others that the announcement was going to be made that he was going.’
Little did what few politicians are able to do and recognised that under his leadership, for whatever reason, the party was not going to do well enough to put itself in a position to form the next government. If that were the case, it would face a fourth consecutive term in Opposition. Putting his party before his own political ambition, Little fell on his sword. For him, the decision was easy.
‘I guess it was Leigh, my wife, found it quite difficult. I get quite clinical. I’ve never been in this for me and I’ve never had an ego so big I can’t see past myself, and in the end it is about the party and I had to think about, with the turnover and the prospect of new people coming in and nine years of National and the kind of policy programme we’d got together, I had to weigh up whether I was putting that at risk or whether Jacinda had a better chance of getting that up, and in the end I just accepted I wasn’t getting the cut-through, wasn’t getting the poll ratings that were needed and that Jacinda offered a better prospect. Once I worked through that, I made the decision.’
To those who knew Little well, it came as no surprise.
Annette had identified Little as a potential party leader as early as Labour’s annual conference in Auckland in 2012 when he stood and spoke strongly in defence of then leader David Shearer, who was under attack from supporters of David Cunliffe. As well, though, she remembers Little acting responsibly and firmly when he was party president dealing with Chris Carter who had been suspended from the Labour Party caucus in 2010 following a dispute with then leader Phil Goff. Carter was then expelled from the Labour Party in October 2010 for breaching the party’s constitution by bringing the party into disrepute.
‘As the deputy I was on the New Zealand Council the day that Chris Carter had to appear before the council and Andrew was the president. He was masterful in his handling of it and straight and strong, and I saw then that as president he could do this,’ says Annette.
And Little had appointed her his deputy even though he knew King had not voted for him as leader. The two did have one spat when Annette warned Little early in his parliamentary career to keep his hands off her seat of Rongotai. There were suggestions, because he lived in the electorate, that he had his eye on it. Little has a slightly different perspective on it, saying he and his family moved into Island Bay when the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, of which he was national secretary, moved its national office to Lyall Bay. Then he was elected to Parliament as a list MP.
‘Then the rumour mill, as happens in the Labour Party, “Oh, he’s come to get the seat,” but I wasn’t thinking of Rongotai at all at that point. She may have said that, but I hadn’t thought about Rongotai. And I hadn’t been involved. I got involved in the south Wellington branch, Tolly [Paul Tolich] and others were there. But I didn’t have much time to get involved in the local branch of the party,’ says Little.
But the two got on well and worked closely together as leader and deputy leader. Annette does not for a moment doubt Little’s ability, commitment or capacity for sheer hard work. But in the end, as he recognised, somehow he just could not connect with voters.
‘He worked so hard, tried so hard. But he wasn’t the same person you saw speaking at that conference or as president. I don’t know whether it’s because everybody tried to change the leader into what they want or whether there’re too many instructions, too much advice, so he never just relaxed into the role,’ says Annette.
After a tumultuous seven months in 2017, and with just seven weeks to go to the general election, Little stood aside for the woman who, at the beginning of the year, had had no expectation of leading Labour into the election.
Even Annette, who had witnessed Ardern’s connectedness with voters during public meetings and campaigning, was still shocked by the transformation in the Mt Albert MP when she became leader.
‘He [Little] nominated her to be leader and she walked out of there and gave the most amazing press conference of any leader we’d had since Helen [Clark]. She almost changed her persona immediately. She walked out of there from being the deputy, always supportive, to taking the leadership and giving funny and sharp answers.’
Within days, Labour went from also-rans to contenders. The real election campaign had begun and Annette, even though she was retiring, was at the centre of it.