Prime Ministerial Readiness

Yep. Well, because I think in fairness that John Key was set up to be fairly comfortable in the job thanks to Labour because they had negotiated the free trade agreement with China. And I went up to Beijing with Helen Clark. Interestingly, Winston Peters was the foreign minister then, but it was a no-show. And I've got to say, the Chinese were quite surprised, but it didn't come as a great surprise to me. So she signed it and Phil Goff signed it and John Key benefited from it because he was facing the global financial crisis. which wasn't as bad as what we see at the moment, but was pretty bad. And you'll remember during the first three years of his term, he was dubbed the Prime Minister of the rock star economy. So New Zealand did pretty well thanks to China, thanks to Labour at that time, and thanks to John Key having an ability, I guess, to capitalise on that. Prior to that, of course, Helen Clark was, she was a class act of her own really. I knew Helen when she came into Parliament as a fresh-faced early 30-year-old and she, you know, she was idealistic, she was driven by Labour. I was in the Princess Street branch of the Labour Party here in Auckland, which is known as the breeding ground for Labour politicians. She waited and saw how to govern, in my view. She saw the Longy Douglas fallout. She just waited and waited her time and even though when she became leader of the opposition she couldn't. find any popularity out there in the public arena at three percent she was waited on to move on by the people that ended up the closest to her Michael Cullen and Ed King you couldn't say more was close to her but and what did she do very bright she embraced them when she had a position of power and promoted them to the front bench and they remain loyal