Joanne McNeill: Looking back at PMs past

Joanne McNeill looks back over the history of New Zealand's prime ministers. Pictured is John Key.

I've been trawling the back catalogue of elected Prime Ministers of my lifetime to see if their profiles add up to a handy formula for the role.

The first PM I recall clearly was Sir Keith Holyoake (National 1960-72). Pompous with a impossibly plummy accent, notoriously once he claimed his favourite childhood book was Dickens' Origin of the Species (sic).

(Note for bewildered readers who might have strayed inadvertently on to this page from Talkbackistan; Darwin wrote the Origin of the Species.)

Norman Kirk 1972-74 - large, leftie, Labour - signalled a merciful end to compulsory military training and New Zealand involvement in Vietnam. When he sent a frigate to Mururoa to protest against French nuclear testing it felt as though at last our country was demonstrating the kind of rational, independent, non-aligned foreign policy a crazy war-mongering world sorely needed. Kirk's untimely death in office was tragic. Conspiracy theorists who believe he was assassinated exist to this very day.

Sir Robert Muldoon (1974-84. National) was a nuggety pugilist with a lopsided slimy laugh, on the wrong side of every issue from nuclear weapons to Springbok tests. His sheer cheek (narrating the Rocky Horror Picture Show) and quotability, "Emigration to Australia raises IQs on both sides of the Tasman" had to be admired grudgingly though.

The election of David Lange - Labour 1984 -89, larger than life, articulate, witty, clever, socialist and anti-nuclear - was cause for celebration but everything turned to custard when his government failed to repeal the Marsden Point strike-based employment contracts legislation, which began the steady erosion of New Zealand's hard won employment conditions, and Sir Roger Douglas systematically dismantled state institutions, monetary controls and import restrictions thereby killing local manufacturing and any vestige of strategic self sufficiency.

Jim Bolger (National, 1990-97, father-of-nine, notable word mangler) bailed out the BNZ and presided over Ruthanasia (an even more rabid variant of dog-eat-dog Roger Douglasitis) and the Building Act 1991, which begat the architectural curse of leaky, eave-less, mock-Spanish McMansions.

Helen Clark - 1999-98, Labour, austere, asthmatic, all trouser suits and stentorian tones - germinated the new puritanism, which still infects us, with the lucrative contracted health and safety industry and the academic fun-police. Her strange downfall was signing an artwork she could not relax enough to produce. A simple drawing of a road-cone would have done nicely.

Undoubtedly John Key - National Pry Minister, elected in 2008, slick escapologist, rich-lister, Bolgeresque garbler of smart-aleck remarks and keen salesman of what remains of the family silver to the highest overseas bidder, with an apparent penchant for ponytails - will meet his electoral downfall eventually too.

No common theme by which to identify the next incumbent leaps out immediately, although Pakeha males with vocal quirks clearly predominate. It would not surprise me, though, if at the next general election NZ First holds the balance of power, Winston Peters (wily, sociable, silver-tongued, senior, Maori, pin-striped, populist) is granted a one-term shot at the prime ministerial baubles (in recognition of his long service), as a stop-gap measure while we all relax until the clear emergence of a fresh contender with the courage, creativity and credibility to sail the ship of state into the calmer, fairer waters beyond global capitalism.