Political post-mortems - and lessons from the past

A new book lifting the lid on the National Party in opposition has revealed more about the struggles, scandals and scraps that were heavily reported at the time. Mediawatch asked a former political reporter who dug into Labour’s years in The Wilderness what we learnt from political post-mortems like these - and if the media focus on failings has become too intense.

When Christopher Luxon appeared on RNZ’s Morning Report last Wednesday to be questioned for the second day in a row about his MP Sam Uffindell, host Guyon Espiner read out a roll-call of National candidates gone rogue over recent years. 

Andrew Falloon. Hamish Walker. Jami-Lee Ross. Todd Barclay. Jake Bezzant. Even Aaron Gilmore - now only known for once asking ‘Don't you know who I am? almost a decade ago - got a shout-out.  

“That sounds almost farcical... and I probably left a few out,” Espiner told Luxon. 

If he did, they’ll be in Blue Blood, The Inside Story of the National Party in Crisis. 

The new book by Stuff reporter Andrea Vance covers the party’s problems after it went into opposition in 2017 until settling on its current leadership. 

While this past week has certainly been unsettling for the party too, the book covers times when hardly a week would go by without stories and commentary about disunity in the party ranks - and the lurid conduct of some of its unsuitable MPs coming to light.

Coverage of all that was intense at the time, but some behind-closed-doors stuff in the book wasn't known until now.  

For instance, Blue Blood spilled some of the beans on the full internal review of the National Party's 2020 election defeat which former leader Judith Collins had kept to her own inner circle. 

There are also insights from the party's people and staffers. Some are on-the-record and some are anonymous comments quoted in the book, that are un-broadcast-ably frank. 

In the New Zealand Listener Danyl McLaughlin called it “the story of how the natural party of government failed to govern itself” while Newsroom reviewer Steve Braunias declared it “National’s autopsy report”

But the party clearly hasn't actually died - as last weekend's annual conference and this week's positive poll result clearly showed. 

Do the details of past struggles really matter now? 

“There's a real tension between the soul of the National Party versus (being) the party of John Key, which I very much see as a party that exists only to exists to hold power,” Vance told TVNZ’s Q+A recently.

Andrea Vance also told the Spinoff podcast Gone by Lunchtime enough time had gone by now that it had been cathartic for some of the sources to speak to her about it all. 

“Those people wouldn't have talked to me about (those) things at the time because they didn't know how it was going to play out,” she said. 

Labour’s disunity and revolving door leadership in opposition post-2008 has been told in The Wilderness, a five-part podcast for Today FM by host Lloyd Burr. 

Lloyd was a newbie at Newshub (formerly 3 News) when the party began turning over four leaders before the current one took over. 

“There was no real historical record (of that time) apart from a few things online. I think it was quite an important moment because the rise of Ardern was weaved throughout The Wilderness,” Lloyd Burr told Mediawatch. 

For an audio-based podcast, it was harder to get people on tape - though some sources did speak to him off-the-record. 

"A lot of the characters are now in government, or working for government or consultants for government  - or working for consultants for the government. So they didn't want to brass anyone off," he said. 

Andrew Little was prepared to talk to Burr about his rise and fall as a leader, but his short-lived predecessors were not.

Instead, their time at the top of the party is analysed by Lloyd’s former fellow political reporters at Newshub - Duncan Garner and Tova O’Brien (now both fellow Today FM presenters) and his former political editor Patrick Gower. 

In The Wilderness Tova O’Brien told Lloyd Burr that Little, David Shearer, David Cunliffe and Phil Goff could all have been good Labour Party leaders. 

“On paper, they looked like they were going to be great. Phil Goff looked like he was meant to be a prime minister (with) every single step he'd taken,” she said. 

So with hindsight, did political reporters over-dramatise problems within political parties - and one-off gaffes? The episode about David Cunliffe is titled: Sorry for being a man.

National and Labour both remained mass-movements during their low-polling years in opposition - with enduring national structures, tens of thousands of members and financial backers. Both have bounced back from defeat and years in the wilderness.

“The dramatising only comes from political reporters’ passion because that's our life. This is what we live every single day we are at Parliament alongside these politicians,” Burr said. 

“You've got personalities going up against each other, you've got people leaking against each other, there's internal feuds - for the most part that is quite dramatic,” he said. 

“David Cunliffe’s time was pretty damn dramatic and he was only leader for less than a year." 

“They leaked stuff to us or asked you to go for a beer or whiskey. They know that they're in opposition for ages until they can sort their stuff out,” he said. 

Parties in opposition are preoccupied with their own electability and path to power and consequently worry a lot about how the political reporters portray them. 

Did the intense focus on the Labour leaders’ problems make it harder to succeed - and hasten their demise? 

“You're probably right, we do hasten the demise. But it's probably a demise that was inevitable anyway,” Burr said.  

“David Shearer was the perfect example. He was great on paper, given what he'd done in his past. But in front of a camera or a group of journalists and he faltered,” he said. 

“Success breeds success, but failure also breeds failure. He got over-managed and he had his spin doctors and media trainers all came in . . . and that just made him worse,” Burr told Mediawatch. 

“It sounds brutal and ruthless, but a huge part of your role as Opposition is selling yourself. If you can't front up to the media and string a sentence together, or you can't defend your policies or some wrongdoing or some scandal in an articulate way, then maybe you're not the right person for the job,” he said. 

In Blue Blood, Andrea Vance catalogued the bad news for the National Party in opposition - but also how polls later showed support holding up or plunging. 

Do political reporters feel like they’re covering a never-ending popularity contest - and analysing the political strategy of politicians seeking to win elections rather than the important issues of the time? 

“It kind of was like that. It was like deja-vu because you just had (Labour Party) leadership contest after leadership contest after leadership contest. But when you're a political reporter and you're in Parliament and you're living and breathing politics, you do put far more focus on that than it deserves,” said Burr.

“Looking back now is like: ‘Wow, we did put a lot of coverage into something that probably wouldn't be so important to the general Joe Public,” he said.  

“Looking in at politics now, I understand what ‘beltway’ means . . . and in the grand scheme of things (some things) weren’t even a story. But in the moment, it is everything. It's so much more fun to cover a party that's falling apart than a government that's not,” he said. 

“Labour were branding themselves as a government in waiting at the election in 2011 and in 2014. They weren't. They were a complete shambles - so it was important for us to tell that story. And I stand by that,” he said. 

In The Wilderness episode of Phil Goff’s leadership - Show Me The Money - Burr describes how policies he championed like capital gains tax and removing GST on fruit and vegetables were dismissed as political folly by rival parties and political reporters and commentators alike. 

Duncan Garner recalls Phil Goff looking to his notes for details of the CGT policy during a live interview - and bluntly telling the Labour leader to look him in the eye and give him the details without notes.

“The aggressive style...  that's kind of the way that things were at TV3. And it's a great style for the kind of news that you produce. If you want to be the prime minister and you've got a big game-changing policy that's going to change quite a lot  - like a capital gains tax - you need to know the fiscals behind it. That was the basic premise of that,” said Burr.  

In the recent Australian election, the Greens Adam Bandt was applauded for telling a reporter asking a ‘gotcha’ question about wage inflation to: “Google it mate.”

“I loved that. Politicians here could use that a lot,” said Burr. 

“But your job is to give them a prolonged job interview to make sure that they're the right person to run the country,” he added. 

The Wilderness, a Today FM podcast by Lloyd Burr available via Rova and on most major podcast platforms.

Blue Blood: The Inside Story of the National Party in Crisis was published by Harper Collins in July 2022