In a first for Bookmarks, the guest this week is a former prime minister, specifically Jim Bolger who was PM from 1990 to 1997.
He’s recently published a book with journalist David Cohen called Fridays with Jim: Conversations About Our Country.
He shares what he likes to read, watch and listen to when he's not following politics around the world.
Photo: supplied
Bolger tells Afternoons people should blame Massey University for the new book.
“They came to me with the proposition and said, look, you’ve been in the public eye for an awful long time, but people don’t know who you really are.”
He says the book begins with his parents arrival in New Zealand in the 1930s after immigrating from Ireland and follow his early life in Taranaki.
“We built the storyline from there almost up until today. I think it came together quite well. We wanted it to be different, this was to be a conversation and I think, to a fairly large extent, we succeeded in it.”
Bolger says he was no political activist, or even involved with the National Party, when he was living in coastal Taranaki with his wife and five children. He was asked to stand and decided to do so.
In those days, he was advocating for farmers following the devastating reforms of Roger Douglas and David Lange and ended up with high public profile. He wasn’t an adversarial politician, but strongly believed the status quo needed to be challenged.
“What I wanted to do was to change what had failed. And if you’re not going into Parliament to change what’s not working, then I’m not sure what the hell you’re doing there.”
What Bolger advocates now, capital gains tax, progressive climate change action, and treaty settlements (which he got the ball rolling on), would seem to put him more in line with modern day Labour, but Bolger says if he ran again, it would be with the National Party.
“I’d still stand for the same party, but I’d have it doing a few different things. The party I led was doing different things to the party that went before me. Parties evolve, they’re a lifeform if you like. They’re driven by a handful of people, like every organisation is, and I had some very good ones working with me.
“I’m not in the [National] caucus, and I don’t know what they do, but it all depends on leadership.”
Bolger believes that our current capitalist system needs to be reorganised so that it’s more equitable and helps people at the bottom. Put to him that he made welfare cuts, he says Rogernomics completely destroyed the New Zealand economy and he had little choice. Today’s leaders, he says, do.
“People are falling off the edge of society at the moment and we need to do something about it. I’m getting a little tired of passionate speeches from some leaders and nothing much happening.”
Bolger says that politicians are afraid to challenge the status quo and people find change to be a frightening concept.
“And of course, if we’re going to make progress, we’re going to need to change things. If the old order is not satisfactory, then you have to move to a new order and that means change.
“One of the areas a lot of people fall down on, not only MPs, is accepting that change, and sometimes radical change, is necessary to have a better world order and a better society.”
Jim Bolger’s Bookmarks picks
Music
Imagine - John Lennon
Pie Jesu! - Sarah Brightman / Andrew Lloyd Webber version.
Pōkarekare Ana - Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Danny Boy - John McDermott
Books
The Economics of Happiness by Mark Anielski
The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity by Byron Reese
Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia by Albena Azmanova
The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000 by Vincent O'Malley
Films
Invictus (2009)
On The Basis of Sex (2018)
Rams (2020)
