Experience counts.
I appeared to briefly flabbergast John Banks on Friday when I asked him for a lift from the radio station to the venue for the now infamous ‘cup of tea’.
Cheeky? You might say that, but it made sense: He’d just, at 2:00 pm, finished a session (along with ‘official’ National Party Epsom candidate Paul Goldsmith) as a guest on Willy & JT’s always excellent RadioLIVE political hour … and he was obviously heading to the café for his ‘catch-up’ with John Key (date with destiny?) at 2:30. So I asked for a lift.
Anyway, I know Banks from my time in the press gallery and have interviewed him in the lead up to this election:
“Mr Hay is an enthusiastic apparatchik of the ACT party, and that’s fair enough … but there’s been no deal” — John Banks
… was a memorable soundbite from our interview about the controversy sparked when the ACT Party New Plymouth electorate chairman tackled John Key on the campaign trail demanding he pull Goldsmith out of the race for Epsom as quid pro quo for ACT not standing a candidate in the race for the marginal New Plymouth seat.
Banks is, whatever else anyone may say about him, an effective communicator. He is relentlessly ‘on message’.
As he (very kindly) drove me to Newmarket on Friday, we talked about some of the lessons experience teaches — to both politicians and journalists.
Our conversation, rightly, remains off the record, but I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing this maxim he quoted, saying his mentor Rob Muldoon used to impress it upon the National Party caucus:
On message
At volume
Over time
— Sir Robert Muldoon’s secret of effective political communication
That’s what John Banks does.
Then, this morning on my way into town, I saw this near Gillies Avenue:
Banks’ campaign is doing the basics well. Does he deserve to win? That’s not a question for me to answer, but he’s putting the work in.
– P
I saw more of the ACT/ Banks picket holders on the box the other night. My pick is they are hire a supporter. Paid to do this.
Sorry Craig – the supporters are the real deal. Act On Campus is probably the most industrious young political group active in NZ. ACT may sit on 1.5% in national polls, but in youth they’re striking a chord.
http://www.facebook.com/actoncampus
I remember John Banks as being unapologetically pro Sir Robert Muldoon policies, and a reactionary conservative. ACT was a libertarian party. These are ideas at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
I don’t get it…
Rgds,
*p*
Yes, you remember correctly.
I was in the Press Gallery when John Banks was Police Minister — and, in my observation, a writhing, bombastic sackful of tory Laura Norder clichés.
He was a Muldoonist, sure, but for all the right reasons, it seemed to me: personal loyalty (fealty?), respect for power, and awe for the populist political force that was Rob’s Mob. People *loved* Muldoon because he was good to them … the Nats looked like the ‘natural party of government’ for a long time.
Of course Muldoon’s eastern bloc style controlled economy had to eventually bust (ironic that he got in on Dancing Cossack imagery, dismantling Labour’s 1972 compulsory Superannuation) but it was a glorious time to be a Nat or a young Nat, I’m sure.
Muldoon, even in semi-retirement, had an aura that was almost palpable. The few times I interviewed him (as an older lion) he had a chilling effect on me. Honestly. The guy had something.
He was very straight with me, though. ‘I’m always on the record,’ he said to me when I asked if we could talk off the record pre-interview.
Banks is a creature of his time and, in my view a true blue Nat. Pragmatic. Democratic. Right wing conservative. He has, it seems to me, racist and homophobic streaks. His appalling pronunciation of Hone Harawira’s first name [saying Hony like Tony] appears to me to be a deliberate dog-whistle to his red neck mates. Disgraceful.
The National Party appears to have taken over the skeleton (carcass?) of the ACT Party … a little bit like China will eventually, inevitably, subsume ‘rogue province’ Taiwan, perhaps?
ACT’s desperate need for the ‘cup of tea’ and its cloying adherence to ‘Brand Key’ for *survival* shows they’re not the force they once were. Even that was fringe.
Still, that’s politics.
– P
Peter, you say:
“Muldoon, even in semi-retirement, had an aura that was almost palpable.”
Sir Robert Muldoon came to our University class and spoke to us in 1990.
Indeed, his aura was immense. I have never heard a speaker so powerful, and yet he spoke very softly, such that everyone strained to hear his every word. It was simply a mesmeric performance.
Mr Muldoon was, of course, an intimidating, threatening bully, who effectively ran the country singlehandedly as a very nasty, tinpot dictatorship. Worse, his policies were a blight on the NZ economy, setting it back for decades.
Pre 1984 and Mr Lange, the only politician who had the courage to consistently take Sir Robert Muldoon on was Richard Prebble. Tom Scott, in media land, was one of the few to challenge Sir Robert from the Fourth Estate. For their efforts, I feel somehow grateful.
Mr Banks is a pragmatist. ACT was founded by Sir Roger Douglas, and I don’t believe that pragmatism is part of his make-up. I suppose the change in ACT (becoming an off-shoot of National) suits Mr Key and the National Party, but I don’t think the reduction in choice serves NZ well.
Oh well,
*p*
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