Barack Obama and John Key at the Apec meeting in the Philippines. Photo / AP
Barack Obama and John Key at the Apec meeting in the Philippines. Photo / AP
John Key returns from an overseas trip tomorrow after what has been a tumultuous week in global and domestic affairs. NZ Herald political editor Audrey Young has been with him and shares an insider's view of the Prime Minister's week.
In light of John Key's announcement that he will resign as Prime Minister of New Zealand, we take revisit some crucial moments throughout his leadership.
Saturday Morning: Whenuapai
It is a frosty start to a long week with John Key. Several of the travelling media, including me, have been highly critical of Key, not so much for accusing the Opposition of backing murderers and rapists but refusing to apologise after offence was taken.
The outwardly pleasant and relaxed Prime Minister has a bloody-minded streak to him and when that switch is on, he digs in and thinks it will all blow over, and it eventually does.
Key climbs aboard the Boeing 757-200, kissing the cheeks of familiar Air Force cabin crew who have fed and watered him over thousands of air miles on other trips.
Key and his staff head to the front cabin: Taha MacPherson, his chief foreign affairs adviser; Sarah Boyle, political adviser; and fledgling press secretary Michael Fox, a once-promising young political journalist hired by the PM's Office last year.
Steven Joyce is aboard too, a perfect companion for Key in Vietnam, not just because of his ministerial credentials but also because of his status as a successful party man.
The RNZAF safety briefing adds a new message: keep out of the VIP area. We assume it is directed at the media and not Jim Bolger and the trade delegation in business class.
It's chocks away at 9am from Whenuapai and it's a safe bet Key will keep a comfortable distance from the media until the next morning in Hanoi.
The tradition is he joins the media at the bottom end of the trip, down the back of the plane when everyone can kick up their heels.
Wrong. I'm woken by Key's voice a few hours later. He is down the back of the plane having "ice-breaker" conversations. He works the pack: Newstalk ZB, RNZ, TV3, Sky News, NZ Newswire and the NZ Herald, talking about nothing memorable.
Just talking. Trying to neutralise any lingering hostility towards him at the top of the trip and eliminate any sense of awkwardness Not a word is said by him about rapists and murderers. There is no point asking him to rationalise his own bloody-mindedness.
It is left unsaid, but the visit to the back of the plane closes that chapter, for now. Time to move on.
Key returns to first class. Lunch is served. Time for another lie-down.
Saturday Afternoon
We are woken again, this time by Key and Joyce and his staff summoning the media pack to a standing area further down the plane to discuss something serious.
This is unprecedented. Key says his office has been on the phone to report a major terrorist attack in Paris at several venues.
More than 100 have been killed at a concert. The attacks are ongoing. The French borders have been closed. He will talk to us on the record at the stopover in Darwin when he has found out more.
He disappears to the VIP room to make more calls and emerges with Joyce for the stand-up.
He says little of substance. But just talking at times like this, to express shock, horror, support, even if it is to say he knows little, is comforting to the public. It helps him to connect to the public, too, when it might be feeling insecure.
He talks as Key the Prime Minister and effortlessly switches to Key the parent, with his own daughter, Stephie, there. She is safe.
Photography is banned in the Darwin military-movements terminal, except when you need a picture of the PM on the phone in a crisis.
Newstalk ZB's Barry Soper gets a pic on his iPhone, and more: his request for Key to talk to ZB's Leighton Smith is turned down by the press secretary. Soper texts Key personally and gets the okay immediately.
Journalists file stories, audio and video back to New Zealand, and only then does the flight to Hanoi continue.
Sunday: Vietnam
Key is staying at the Metropole, a famous old hotel, which burst back into the headlines a few years ago with the excavation of the bunker used by guests, including activist singer Joan Baez, during US bombing raids of Hanoi in the Vietnam War, or as they say in Vietnam, during the war against the United States. Joyce is especially taken with the Baez connection.
Most visits abroad, Key has two "stand-ups" a day worked into his schedule in which he is asked questions on domestic issues and those relevant to the place he is visiting.
He almost never declines to answer a question. He almost never gives a brief answer. In the absence of any action or decision required by the Government, Key dispenses with being Prime Minister and becomes commentator, giving his opinion on anything and everything. In Vietnam, though, there is only one topic: terrorism.
Monday: Vietnam
The Paris attacks cast a shadow over the two days in Vietnam. His visits to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, the presidential palace, a spring roll-making competition with Joyce at the Koto cooking school, the Hanoi air traffic control all seem like interludes to the main business of the days, stand-ups where he can comment on the latest developments.
He is well-versed in the high churn of modern news cycles in which virtually anything the Prime Minister says can become a news story, particularly on commercial radio and on news websites. Key is happy to feed that beast.
Tuesday: Philippines
Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the audience at the Apec leaders' summit in Manila. Photo / AP
In the Philippines, the fog of Paris is dissipating. Key's first stop in Manila is a high-level panel discussion at a pre-Apec CEO summit on trade and investment in the Asia Pacific region.
This is his patch - he is respected not just as a Prime Minister but also as a former currency trader. He sits alongside the CE of Hong Kong, the head of the Asia Development Bank and the head of Fedex.
Key is relaxed to the point of looking nonchalant. If he were any more relaxed he would be sliding out of his white leather chair.
Suddenly, during the Q and A, Key comes up with a new idea - forget the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (pronounced F-Tap), a longstanding Apec policy, and just get everybody in Apec who's not in the TPP to join if they can accept current standards.
It's policy on the hoof. If this is trade theology, as some call it, then Key is certainly the proselytising high priest.
Key is staying at the Peninsula Hotel, the scene of a failed coup in 2006 when renegade soldiers occupied the hotel.
Apec newbies Australia's Malcolm Turnbull and Canada's Justin Trudeau are staying there, too, allowing Three Eyes of the Five in the intelligence alliance to get to know each other.
Wednesday: Philippines
Jonah Lomu and John Key.
We are at the Peninsula waiting for Key to arrive at the 7am stand-up when Sky News' Wellington reporter tells us Key was in the hotel bar the night before having a few with the Aussie journalists. (The New Zealand media are at a much cheaper hotel some distance away.)
The stand-up with Key has just finished when the shocking news arrives that Jonah Lomu has died suddenly. Key comes back to talk to the media.
He needs no preparation. It is only three weeks since he attended a fundraising dinner with Jonah at the Rugby World Cup.
He conveys the devastation so many are feeling about the shy, brilliant kid who earned the love of his country for the sort of man he grew into.
It is pitch-perfect. He makes a connection to the people grieving for Jonah.
But life and the TPP must go on. Key attends a meeting of TPP country leaders chaired by US President Barack Obama, a couple of other meetings, the Apec gala dinner, followed by drinks back at the hotel with Turnbull to talk about the plight of Kiwis in Australia.
Thursday: Philippines
John Key and Richie McCaw. Photo / Instagram
Rumours are rife that Richie McCaw is about to announce his retirement. At the 7am stand-up at the Peninsula, Key says the nicest things about McCaw, the things everybody thinks. In a rare and pleasant departure from custom, he declines to talk about a knighthood.
Afterwards, TV3 asks the press secretary if Key could do a down-the-barrel-of-the-camera piece for Story before he leaves the hotel. There's no enthusiasm. The reporter texts Key who says yes immediately.
Apec protesters are out in force but are quelled by water cannons, and Dolly Parton's Islands in the Stream and Katy Perry's Roar being played at full volume.
The leaders get to discuss and issue declarations about terrorism, the global economy, regional trade and climate change, but the most intriguing snippet is a Facebook posting by ABC, which captures on an open mic a private conversation between Obama and Turnbull at the TPP meeting about "their favourite world leader", of all people, John Key.
Turnbull calls him "a role model" and Obama calls him "a wonderful guy" and "a good friend". Key bashfully answers reporters' questions about it but he doesn't admit to being humbled or flattered. He returns the compliments.
Friday: Philippines
Breaking news: We are waiting in the Peninsula for Key to arrive at the 7am stand-up when Sky News' New Zealand correspondent tells us she and other Aussies came across Key barefoot and in his dressing gown in the hotel lobby on Wednesday night.
(Mate, you're jokin?) She is serious and starts quoting pieces that Aussie journos have written about it.
Turns out Key had recognised his new best mates from the previous night's encounter at the bar and they got chatting about politics, as you do in your dressing gown in the lobby, and about how Turnbull was doing.
Key's verdict on Turnbull is that he is "a bolter", which in Melbourne Cup terms means a damned good thoroughbred who will last the distance - for up to 10 years as Prime Minister, Key reckons.
It is a relief to the Kiwi journos to learn he was not wearing pyjamas under his robe but togs - he was returning from a swim in the pool and didn't realise there was a more discreet way back to his room.
Key is asked at the stand-up if he is aware a world leader had been spotted in his dressing gown in a hotel lobby. He quips it would not have been a world leader. "Possibly a junior world leader."
