Matt McCarten: Rebel in the Ranks

By MARGIE THOMSON

There is nothing dry or dull about Matt McCarten's life story. It races along with terrific frankness and while, of course, it tells of a wrangling life lived in the heated echelons of our political process among some of the Left's most driven personalities, it is somehow much more than bluster and war stories.

For someone who has made his name as a wheeler and dealer, it is good to be reminded of what drives a personality such as his. For McCarten it is shockingly simple: his experience growing up in an orphanage in physically difficult and emotionally deprived surroundings, followed by his attempts to beat his mother's extreme poverty while pursuing an education gave him his "keen sense of right and wrong and social justice".

McCarten didn't find out he had a father until he was 5, and he was 14 before he knew he had a mother. She didn't know she had him, as she was told he had been born dead. He grew up in a succession of orphanages, some kind, others brutal.

Tormented by illness that turned out to be a serious but easily treatable allergy, plagued by rats, having to deal with bullies among children and staff, he learned to stand up for himself and formed his own ideas early about power relationships and self-preservation.

He illustrates well the link between those beginnings and the path he laid out for himself in adulthood, and his tale forms a cogent argument for the dual consideration of nature and nurture in the development of a person's character.

His recounting of union tussles, Labour Party politics, Alliance politics and, of course, Jim Anderton (who emerges as a difficult man to work with and who will doubtless feel extremely edgy while reading this book), are colourful and fascinating, but it's those early chapters that are an eye-opener. A vote catcher? Who knows, but it's a lot more interesting than watching the worm.

Random House

$29.95