Austere, tough, and cockroach-like in her ability to survive political fallout, yet in her 28-year Parliamentary career Helen Clark inspired a legion of loyal staffers

I’m not the right person to assess Helen Clark’s status in the pantheon of New Zealand politicians. My view is that her ranking will be stellar but the professional political historians will make more judicious and detached considerations in the decades to come.

When people learn that I worked for her for 12 years, they ask ‘what was she like?’—the assumption being that she was flintily (scarily, even) tough and uncompromising. Well, she could be. But she was more often inspiring, and someone who motivated great loyalty–demonstrated by the longevity of her staff. The formidable Heather Simpson joined her ministerial office after Helen became a minister in 1987, and was still there at the end of her premiership 21 years later. Their relationship was based on great respect for each other’s talents and abilities, and an understanding of any foibles. But what was most striking was their fierce commitment to the social democratic project and making New Zealand a better, fairer and more just place.

That commitment inspired others. Mike Munro stayed a decade in his chief press secretary role. To media he deliberately cultivated a detached professionalism, but one which masked his intense personal loyalty to Helen and to Labour. Key backroom strategist Dot Kettle bailed early after 12 years.  Long-serving executive secretary Jane Leicester was there for a mere 14 years, leaving only when the role become untenable with caring for her elderly mother. Soft.

If staff were loyal to Helen, she repaid it. She could be tough. She hated mistakes and could be brisk when blunders were made. Just ask Trevor. But she was quick to forgive (although I’m not sure she ever forgot). What she appreciated most was staff and colleagues fronting up to errors and learning from them. But she was harder on herself than on anyone else.

She also demanded far more of herself than she did anyone else in terms of sheer work hours. Many ministers develop late night work habits—a product of Parliament’s late sitting hours demanding their presence in the precinct. Many require staff to remain in their offices as long as they are there, whether to work or simply as a drinking companion through long evenings. Helen didn’t.  She told people to go home, especially those with young families, and rarely expected anyone to keep anywhere near the hours she did (except on overseas trips, which were feats of endurance at times). It is hard to think of many world leaders who would continue working in their offices until the early morning without a single staffer present, but that’s Helen’s modus operandi.

Her frugality is legend. The accoutrements of office barely register with her.  Her Prime Ministerial office was more a repository for piles of reports, papers and books than the polished official sanctum of New Zealand’s leader. A visit to her and Peter’s Mt Eden home of the last thirty-odd years displays a couple utterly without affectation, bereft of material luxuries. They live comfortably, but with a humbleness which is striking.

Helen’s personal briefcase is a case in point. It was an old, cheap, battered, black, cardboard/plastic-y coffin of a briefcase–and lasted until last year when it finally died (perhaps it was an omen). When she first became a minister she found it in her new office, where it had been left behind (there was a name label inside inscribed by some obscure private secretary to Geoffrey Palmer).

For the next two decades, the same battered case went around the world, like a security blanket. Filled to the gunwales, the weight of a young child, it was always close to hand. Protecting it was crucial. Every important paper was in there. She rarely let it out of sight. The only time it came close to being lost was in Perth, when the head of our DPS assured her he’d carry it from her car to her hotel room. He then put it down on the hotel forecourt and promptly forgot about it. Fortunately it was rescued before local security blew it up. I’m not sure Helen ever knew.

So now she’s off to New York. If the staff in the Office of the Administrator of the UNDP have any airs and graces, they have just three weeks to shed them.  And if anyone there has an old, battered-but-treasured briefcase, they should hide it.

(As a footnote, when the battered briefcase died, Helen got another long-time staffer, senior private secretary Alec McLean, to track down the maker, a factory in the Hutt Valley, for a replacement.)