On September 20, John Key swept to victory to become
one of New Zealand’s longest-serving, most popular Prime Ministers. Rocked by
claims of ‘dirty politics’, the 2014 election campaign was one of the most brutal
– and riveting – in recent history. But what was Key really thinking and
feeling in the weeks before New Zealanders went to the polls, and was he really
as calm and confident as he appeared to be on the campaign trail?
These were questions that political journalist and
biographer, John Roughan, wanted to put to the Prime Minister when he
interviewed him for the updated 2014 Election Edition of his bestselling book, John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister. What Roughan found was a John Key in remarkably
good shape, unfazed by the release of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics and the hacking and spying allegations which had threatened
to derail his re-election campaign. This mood was in stark contrast to how ruffled Key had been by the John Banks ‘tea tape’ drama in 2011. What
changed?
Key was clearly buoyed by his strong showing in the
polls and the overwhelmingly positive reception he received while on the road. He
sensed that support was better than in 2011 or 2008, describing it as ‘the
selfie election,’ writes Roughan. Key’s confident demeanour throughout a bloody
campaign was anything but stage-managed. Indeed, both he and Stephen Joyce took
a fatalistic approach to all the controversy, adopting the motto, ‘expect the
unexpected.’ Remarkable, given the daily drip-feed of unknown material shaping
the election agenda and grabbing media attention.
One of the biggest grenades of the campaign went off when
yet another Cameron Slater email came to light, this time, implicating Minister
of Justice Judith Collins. Key calmly slept on the information before texting
Collins the following morning and then accepting
her resignation. It was a defining and cathartic moment for Key, seemingly swinging
the campaign away from ‘dirty politics’ and back to issues of policy. And then suddenly it was over, and Key was
re-elected to serve a third term.
John Key has
been called a political phenomenon. Having scaled the heights of one career, as
a foreign currency trader, he came home from the world's financial capitals to
start another. Six years after entering Parliament, Key was Prime Minister –
the most rapid rise of a New Zealand politician in our lifetime. In this
updated edition of John Key: Portrait
of a Prime Minister, Key shares
his account of defining moments in his career, including the bruising 2014
election campaign that nonetheless saw the National Party increase its majority
in government.
The updated of John Key:
Portrait of a Prime Minister is published by Penguin
Group NZ on October 30, 2014; the first edition of Roughan’s book, published in
June 2014, has now sold in excess of 20,000 copies.
About the author:
John Roughan is a journalist who has been observing and writing
on New Zealand politics for the past 40 years. Born in Southland and educated
in Christchurch, he graduated from Canterbury University with a degree in
History and a diploma in Journalism. He began his newspaper career on the
former Auckland Star newspaper before travelling extensively, working
on newspapers in Japan and the United Kingdom at the time of the election of
Margaret Thatcher. On
his return, he joined the New Zealand Herald and was posted to the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Wellington in
1983. There he covered the dramatic final years of the Muldoon era and the
beginning of the Lange-Douglas Government’s rapid reforms of the New Zealand
economy. In 1988 he became the New Zealand Herald’s chief editorial writer and in 1996 he was invited to write a weekly
column which continues to appear in the Weekend Herald.
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