Opinion - Our new Prime Minister has more than enough ability to handle the reins of a potentially unruly beast, writes David Slack.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern and Greens leader James Shaw. Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller
Somewhere around the twentieth second of the new leadership, an aghast life member of the press gallery had the first question for Winston Peters. It was, paraphrasing: "Are you sure this slip of a girl can do this job when she's so very young and so very inexperienced?"
There's youth and relative inexperience, and then there's enormous age over which the same limited experience is piled up over and over again. You put the same tired old questions over and over, your great fixation is forever the most favourite of all press gallery spectator sports: who's being hired, who's being fired, where's the blood in the water?
It only gets you so far.
Can this slip of a girl do this job when she's so very young and so very inexperienced? Anyone who has seen her in action has the answer without reservation: no question.
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She has a particular skill and a flair for shepherding and moving a discussion along, for kindly challenging and encouraging, for carrying a disparate group forwards towards consensus and action.
It's an exciting thing to see, and if she can translate that capability to her newer and larger role - and anyone watching her stepping into the role of leader so completely and assuredly in that first press conference would have to say, well that's got to be feasible. Well, if this coalition of the unwilling-to-accept-the-status-quo can find common cause and energy, it all could become real.
Meanwhile farewell Bill English, and Steven Joyce, and Paula Bennett, and Gerry Brownlee. And farewell Jonathan Coleman and maybe now the crisis in health will be dealt with in a more humane and less fiscally harsh manner.
Did Bill and Steven misread the electorate? No, they correctly read the hopes and dreams and anxieties of 44 percent and hoped those aspirations might spill over into at least a part of the remainder; the ones who don't, in fact, stand much chance of seeing things getting better without a change of government.
"New Zealanders have seen the country going in a positive direction," the outgoing Prime Minister advanced hopefully.
Winston recognised a different mood, a different anxiety. He arguably saw what was unseeable for the 44 percent who voted for the status quo.
How do they feel? Are they all as aghast as the press gallery life member and Mike Hosking, broadcaster of Remuera?
Or were they just fearful? This writer heard many variations on a sad song expressed with some hesitation, but fervently held: "I wanted to vote for her but I worry about our equity."
Meaning: "We've borrowed a fortune and if things go south we don't know what we'll do."
No-one wants to lose, but maybe no-one has to. Not with a fairer, more inclusive approach.
"Just 10 or 12 weeks ago she was the deputy leader of a fading opposition," English quietly marvelled in his concession press conference. Now she is Prime Minister and the man who has made it possible may be her eminence grise; he may be her bete noire; he may be part of what she promised: a government for all New Zealanders.
* David Slack is an author, columnist and speechwriter. He was a speechwriter for prime ministers Geoffrey Palmer and Jim Bolger.
