A fun Friday read, for those of you who can't be arsed working on Thursday.
Tom Scott - hands down best cartoonist in New Zealand - is constantly funny, sneakily insightful, and perpetually distracted. Before he was released into the wilderness of New Zealand's political landscape, he was the Listener's Press Gallery correspondent for a decade. He left that post shortly before I started as a student at kindergarten.
(The interview was done waaay back in January this year, but fortunately hasn't dated much. It was part of a (since abandoned) project on the Press Gallery itself.)
I read [the book you wrote after you left the Press Gallery] Ten Years Inside, and I was captivated by your description of your first visit to Bellamy's [the Parliament restaurant] in 1972. How does it compare now?
It was much better. It was primitive and raw, like something out of a wild-west town. I really loved it. The Bellamy's then had white-starched linen tablecloths and silver service, and everything was cooked in fat. The smell of carcinogens, sweat and beer and body odour... it was great, I loved it. This... [looking around Bellamy's] this could be anywhere, couldn't it?
Do you think the cosmetic changes to Parliament are indicative of more substantive changes?
This is now a large Hamilton bathroom, the whole place. It use to be a West Coast dunny. A lot of people would prefer a Hamilton bathroom to a West Coast dunny, but I like the dunny. The were talking about bowling [the Beehive] and extending Parliament - I would have gone for that option. This is awful. And it doesn't even revolve! If it revolved, it might justify its existence, but it doesn't even do that.
So how do you think the change in style reflects in the politics?
Oh, maybe it doesn't, you just need to draw artificial linkages. If you're straining to [write] an article, you'd make linkages where none exists. That's the role of the journalist late at night, desperate to fill up column space.
Yeah, I thought I had an opener there... ahem, well, in your book, you said that you had a respect for the "outmoded and outdated institutions of Parliament". After all these years, do you still?
Oh yeah, it's got to be clumsy, it's got to be slow, just so that change doesn't happen too rapidly. I quite like all the silly little vanities that make up the Parliamentary day. I love question time, I love walking through the chamber. When I came back to Parliament after working in the building, I had this sort of curious nostalgia for it.
When you work here for a long time, and you fretted late at night, it's curious - the same thing happened when I worked at a freezing work for long hours, and at a psychiatric hospital for long hours - you start to think that the building you're in, the institution you're in is actually totally real, and everything outside it is false. [It's] like you're in some sort of starship, and you've landed on an alien planet - you don't really want to leave, it just becomes your total world. I think that's the real problem with journalists - and the politicians - who stay here for too long.
Do you think they are insulated from what goes on outside?
I couldn't really speak for [the current Press Gallery], because I only know the old codgers. The journalists and the staff are probably more insulated than the politicians - at least the politicians have to return to their electorates.
I know that some of my friends have been here now for an awful long time, and they've become sort of institutionalised, same way a prisoner is. To get them out to another job, they'd have to have little alarms on their legs, they'd have to be rehabilitated back into society very slowly. They can't leave. They're addicted to the place.
Do you think it's something to do with Parliament itself, that it's designed to keep people in?
No, it's just an accident of the amount of time you have to spend here, and the emotions you pour into the job. And also, you think you're important. That's the great thing about politics - everyone thinks they're important here. The way you're treated makes you feel important. Journalists have their badges, attend press conferences, get on planes and fly first-class with politicians...
...and free alcohol?
No free alcohol - you have to pay for the alcohol as a journalist and it's not free. If you're looking forward to free alcohol, you in for a shock. Bellamy's [bar] up here might be closing soon, for lack of people going.
Does that shock you?
Well, compared to the old days, when people drank every lunchtime and every night after work... it was great! I'm not a drinker or a smoker, but I kind of enjoyed it. It was a bit like an old-fashioned country race meeting on everyday, and it was just nicotine and alcohol, all the time.
What do you think is special about being inside Parliament? What do the journalists see inside that you can't get from just reading everything?
You feel you're close to the pulse, you get to see the politicians close-up. There's a great line of Chairman Mao's: You can't smell the flowers from a galloping horse - but you can smell the horse. And in Parliament, you smell the horse.
As part of a politician's [tour], I was in Berlin shortly after the wall came down; I've been to the White House, the United Nations, the British Houses of Parliament; had lunch with Indira Ghandi about a month before she was shot; I got to the South Pole with Jim Bolger, and these are things that an ordinary citizen wouldn't do. There's a compromise [though], because the proximity comes with certain responsibilities, you can't be as... well, you can be vicious once, if you wanted to, but you'd never get on the plane again, so you have to temper what you say, because it's the price of access.
Do you think smelling the horse rather than the flowers is important?
It is when you work at the Press Gallery. You feel the horse's flanks beating beneath your legs, the nostrils are flaring, you're galloping and all the landscapes are blurred, but you're holding onto the leader in front of you and you think 'this is exciting, here I am on it - I'm on the same horse as the Prime Minister' - and it's intoxicating.
Did it distort your perspective?
How else could you do it? You have to be here to cover it. Like most of us down here, I like entertaining stories. It's fantastic, silly little things like Muldoon, on the night of the snap election being so drunk they had to let the air out of his tyres. That's hardly a big political moment, but it's such a telling little human moment. Those sorts of little things... a former Speaker of the House getting women journalists into his room and he wanted to brush their hair! They found it quite strange, sitting in his room, having their hair brushed by the Speaker of the House.
I love those dopey, human eccentricities, really. The grand historical sweep of politics I leave to the rest of the Gallery, really, to Colin James and John Armstrong - you know, clever bastards who read a lot more and study a lot more.
Are the two related? The little human moments and the grand business?
People who are doing grand things have those human moments as well. No one lives a life being essentially profound all the time. I'm sure Helen Clark has sat on the toilet at home and there's no toilet paper - it happens to everybody.
Watching your documentary on David Lange, it seemed like you made a very strong link between his personal life and the political events while he was in Parliament...
David is a classic example of someone whose political life was tied up in his emotional life. The kind of personal turmoils he was going through; his personal strengths and his personal weaknesses were reflected in the way he conducted his office. He was fragile and brilliant, and those things came to bear in the decisions he made and what happened to his government.
It was quite interesting, that doco. These guys [Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble et al.], it was twenty years on, they all knew that David was not well, so they were more honest. I just think they have less vanity now.
Some politicians have said that you don't make any friends in politics. I always thought that these guys were all friends. They all shy away from the word 'friend'. They say 'we were close, and we were good colleagues', but they find it hard to say the word 'friend'.
The Press Gallery have friends, between journalists and also with politicians. And curiously, across the House. Labour and National MPs who've gone overseas and travelled together have formed life-long friendships, even though they have political differences, because they're never going to be competing with each other for leadership of their respective parties. They know that 'this person is not a rival to me', he's on another team, and he'll never be stabbing me in the back to pursue his own career - he'll be stabbing his own colleagues in the back.
With Lange, Douglas and Prebble, do you think they were friends up until the political falling out?
How many divorced couples still speak fondly of each other? It was a genuine falling out, and I think it was a genuine falling out because they were such good friends, and that's why they feel so personally betrayed.
You talked, in your book, about when you were replaced as a columnist for the Listener, and you said that your replacement saw a lot of things she was disgusted with, things that you were beginning to take for granted...
Yeah, I can't remember what they were now. Probably the floggings and the beheadings. Which I use to enjoy, you know, getting blood all over my glasses...
What sort of things do people get desensitised to in Parliament?
The job for a journalist is always to remain as fresh as possible. There was a Budget night, and I thought "I'd done about 15 of these, how can I write about another Budget night with the same sense of excitement and magic as when I wrote my first one?" And when the thrill is gone, to quote BB King, it probably is time to let someone else come in who will sit in the Press Gallery and have that same sense of excitement you had the first time you were there. So, it was time to quit.
Do you still get excited about elections?
Not quite. The two parties are moving closer together and the structural changes to the economy have taken a lot of the excitement out of the race. And we don't have the same personalities! If we had a Muldoon, who, for a while, appeared to be the embodiment of all evil, and David Lange was so colourful - those individual races were very exciting to follow. But Helen is a sensible, hard-working, fiscally conservative person, and Don Brash is an intelligent, hard-working, fiscally conservative person.
I'm a huge fan of Michael Cullen's - I think Michael Cullen's brilliant. And when I was here covering politics a few years ago, day after day in the House, I thought he was just really really intelligent and quite a stunning debater. He's one of the smartest people I've seen in politics. He probably works too hard and become too earnest these days, but he was a huge amount of fun when I was reporting.
Did spending 10 years here change the way you viewed politics?
You age 10 years, you're going to see the world differently anyway. If I worked in an accountant's office for 10 years I... or perhaps I wouldn't? Bad analogy.
There was a time when you think 'well, this is the centre of the universe and I'm a very important person because I work here'. And there was a time in New Zealand when every dinner party in Wellington was politics, and because I worked in the Gallery and I was reasonably well-known, having battles with politicians, I was the centre of attention over politics. But we've matured since then, we've matured as a country, and Parliament is not quite as important as it use to be, and it's not on everyone's lips all the time.
Why do you say that that change is "maturing"?
A lot of the decisions aren't made in politics any longer. All those giddy changes, the social changes, like decriminalising homosexuality - you can only decriminalise it once! It was an important thing to do, and it was very exciting at the time, because there was so much resistance to it.
Did you get a sense of deja vu with the Civil Union Bill?
No, I think it didn't go far enough - they should be able to get married - but I suppose it's as far as they could go this time around. But there was incredible change to get to that point, to actually decriminalise homosexuality. The debate was so fierce and so intense, and so bitter - and I had a great time writing about all that sort of stuff. But you can't decriminalise it again, it's been done.
This country use to play sport with South Africa and there were those big debates raging, and those debates can't rage any longer. That's been sorted. So, in all sorts of ways, society is making the right decisions incrementally. It's very hard to protest against the Vietnam War now - it's finished. Real shame, they were great marches. You can't do those things over and over again.
What about the seabed and foreshore and the hikoi? How does that compare with the Land March in your days?
Race relations has moved profoundly! There's been fantastic improvement. I'm really proud of race relations in New Zealand, and we've come a long, long way. We've got a long way to go, but the debate is very healthy.
Most of the angry people are people over a certain age, and possibly their children. But amongst my Maori mates, they don't feel society owes them anything. And they don't have any connections with the seabed and foreshore, they never thought they owned it. "That bit of land between high-tide and low-tide, that belongs to me, you know?" - no one believes that.
But when I went to school, all the Maori pupils would walk across the ground, staring at the ground. The headmaster said once, 'there's an outbreak of thieving at the school, I know who's responsible, assembly dismissed, would all the Maori pupils stay behind please'. That was in the 1960s. And now you couldn't say that sort of thing and get away with it. It doesn't happen now.
Look at the number of Maori MPs in the House. That guy who got an Oscar. He's a Maori, [but] it doesn't need to be mentioned any longer.
Do you think the row over Seabed and Foreshore was a storm in a teacup?
No, it's an important row. I think the Government handled it badly, I think they should have let the law takes it course. I think we would have got the same outcome without having all the agitation. If there really was a great pool of Maori out there who believed they owned that strip of land, I'd like to find any Maori, anywhere, who's written a statement saying that 'we own the seabed and foreshore' before the row. It was always assumed it was owned by the Crown. The Crown thought it belonged to the Crown. Turned out there was a legal grey area, and people started suddenly saying 'oh, if you don't own it, IT'S MINE!'.
You think that reaction was generated by the media?
No, it was generated by some people who saw an opportunity and took it. And the Government overreacted and did the wrong thing for a while. I think it's calmed down. It wouldn't have calmed down if there was a genuine reservoir of Maori ill-will.
Do you think that talking-heads, adversarial style of journalism contributed...
I would machine-gun all talkback-radio hosts. I would line them up against the wall and shoot them. And then I'd track down the people who ring them up, and shoot them as well. I think newspapers and talkback radio, they have to generate anxiety and insecurity and controversy to generate sales.
I think in New Zealand, because we're small enough and isolated enough, I think there's still a great deal of trust in the community, and I hope it remains.
Do you think the media generated the momentum for the hikoi?
No, that hikoi was fantastic. That was more a response to Don Brash's assertion that there was hardly a full-blooded Maori left. He was saying that because every Maori chromosome in the country has been "diluted" then really the whole idea of Maori and Maoridom was an eroding concept, and we shouldn't pay homage to it.
Human beings have an appetite for controversy and things which break from the norm. [Cabinet Minister under Muldoon] Bert Walker, the only smart thing he said was "364 days a year, the Interislander Ferry sails perfectly; 1 day a year it hits an iceberg and sinks and suddenly it's all the news!" What about the 364 days it doesn't sink? Well, sorry, but the bad news is the only news, really, that's the way it goes.