Cullen - a shy, brainy bloke at heart

Michael Cullen says that "a Minister of Finance ends up being almost role-played into being somewhat aloof". Picture / Mark Mitchell

One day out door-knocking, the Deputy Prime Minister encountered a kid who shrieked, "I've met Mr Finance" and ran back inside. "Shrieked" is my contribution to the story Dr Michael Cullen has just told. I'm sure that should he knock on your door you will find him to be utterly charming.

Although it might have been interesting to observe the other Cullen, in full hissy mode, the idea was rather daunting. I know he can be strict with the media, so I decide to get on his good side by apologising on behalf of some of us for talking up his Budget. He says "That's all right. You're the only one who's ever apologised."

The talking-up of his Budget made him very cross indeed. I was game enough though, after moving my chair back a safe distance from where he's sitting behind his nice big Finance Minister's desk, to say: "What would happen if somebody was to accidentally use the words 'chewing-gum Budget' in this office?"

"Oh, that doesn't worry me," he says beaming. Of course it doesn't. How stupid of me to hand him an opportunity to explain the damn Budget again at length and to get in a dig at National about how their tax cuts would amount "to three packets of chewing gum".

And he's not going to hand me a hissy fit on a plate in election year, is he now? He's in campaign mode - what a lovely Labour-red tie - and rather good he is at it, too.

For a shy fellow. That he is shy is supposed to be a revelation.

"Probably this'll come as a surprise to you, I'm actually a rather shy person," he says. I had asked him whether he was naturally good at campaigning, but I'm still not quite sure why he is telling me this. And I am not particularly surprised: Cullen has a certain reserve that often signals a sort of shyness. I am interested to know why he thinks it would come as a surprise. He says, "A lot of people think I'm actually a bit too much upfront. But actually, that's a classic bit of compensation."

What is unexpected in a "Come on, mate, pull the other one" sort of way, is his next revelation into the character of the Finance Minister: "Probably people would be surprised at how actually ordinary blokeish I am."

I had thought that the "house renovation" listed under "leisure activities" on the Parliament website might be one of his little jokes. It is not, he assures me.

"I mostly enjoy sort of whacking things down and playing around and building things and ... watching rugby."

He leans forward to reveal that "I'm not very PC either".

I say: "Do you think people think you are PC? Is that why you've told me this?"

He says, "I think some of the public think we're all PC in a way". Then he gives a little talk about how PC is an irrelevant phrase and so on. What it often means, he says, "is we're doing something people don't like in some areas".

"Like making us smokers smoke outside," I grumble.

He gets very strict and says, "That is not PC, that's about trying to actually protect people's health. My father died of emphysema. I gave up smoking shortly afterwards; I was a smoker for 25 years."

This is tricky of him because it leaves me thinking, "Well, I'm sorry about his father," but also that I've been tsked at for being stupid enough to smoke and for being too stupid to realise that the Government is just trying to help me.

He tsks more obviously at another point in the interview. We've been talking about what makes a good politician, because he should know having been one since 1981 and he says, "Very few would have all the skills. I don't know any politician I can name who has every skill to the absolute nth degree."

"Oh, surely Helen does," I say.

"Oh, don't be naughty," he says, "Don't be naughty. Helen herself wouldn't claim that."

This was quite thrilling because this is exactly the tone he uses in the House when some opposition MP has made an idiot of themselves.

Cullen is good in the House. He has that mercurial quickness, which alongside the elder statesman gravitas he has grown into makes him a good debater. He likes its intimacy, which he likens to a rather large living room. In which he can, from time to time, be quite rude to the assorted guests.

Before going to see the deputy PM, I'd had an interview with the National deputy, Gerry Brownlee. I told Brownlee that Cullen was my next appointment and he said: "You'll enjoy that. He's very personable."

How interesting that, in campaign time, an opposition MP would say such a thing. Especially when you consider that one of the most common observations about Cullen is that he's remote, a little lofty.

The deputy job is a good one for such a type. He says, "I am more suited to be the deputy". He says he is not "highly gregarious" but also that "a Minister of Finance ends up being almost role-played into being somewhat aloof". And he has never, "not really, no" wanted to be Prime Minister. I wondered if he thought he was perceived as being too brainy to be the leader and he took mock umbrage at this. "Oh, I wouldn't say that about Helen, no."

"Is he brainier than Helen? Is anyone brainier than Helen?" I ask.

"I'm sure you'd find somebody, somewhere. I think we probably regard ourselves as peers in that respect."

In any case, being brainy "is not a disqualification for being a politician. It used to be regarded as such and I think it still is in the National Party." (Don Brash excepted, he might concede).

It's not good being too personable as the deputy anyway, especially in election year because you can't be upstaging the PM. The role of deputy is to make the PM look good, isn't it?

Well, to support her "wherever, whenever she wants that support. Okay, so if she wants me with her on a particular day, at a particular function, that is my job to be there to support."

Because it's Helen people really want to see, I say, "They don't really want to see you, do they?"

When I asked Brownlee, he said, "Not particularly, no". Cullen says, dryly, "I wouldn't put it quite so crudely as that. I mean one has to maintain one's self respect."

This is play-acting at being pompous. But you come close to treading on that self-respect by asking about a widely reported incident: that Richard Prebble once reduced Cullen to tears.

"No he didn't," he says. "That's nonsense, it's absolute nonsense."

He says he did cry once in caucus, sometime during those fraught years of 1988 or 1999. "That was simply about the way we were tearing ourselves apart."

So it is not the crying he's bothered about. It's the thought that Prebble could have reduced him to it. He tells, with obvious relish, a story about how he and Prebble "nearly had a stand up fight in caucus ... He suddenly realised I was bigger than he is. He sat down."

How very ... macho. And so, in the end, what a surprising fellow the Minister of Finance turns out to be.