I always keep a sense of humour, says Clark

Despite continuous pressure, Helen Clark keeps a little corner of her life that she's not followed in. Picture / Jeff Brass

You couldn't shut the taxi driver up when he heard I was off to see Helen Clark. "I think after the last week they're in for another term after this one, eh?" The Nats had gone too far this time. "You can throw words like corruption around, that's OK, but," he tut-tutted, shaking his head in disgust, "with all this stuff about her husband. Well, that's just not on."

Maybe I should have shared his sentiments with Clark half an hour later, as she burst like a maitre'd through her double office doors, beating her press secretary to the chase and ushering me inside her ninth floor office.

But the driver's belief that National is the one bagging her husband Peter Davis, when in fact not a public word has been uttered by National to deride the professor, is just what Labour would have him believe.

These are murky days. If politics was a hand-knitted jersey, it would be so fiercely spun as to be a matted mess at the bottom of the washing machine. They are days of private eyes and mudslinging, where all sides are claiming the moral high ground and we, the public, are left wondering what on earth is really going on.

That's partly why I'm here, sitting over the coffee table from Clark, a large bunch of lilies between us, asking our prime minister to explain, but also because it's almost a year since Labour formed a coalition Government with United Future and New Zealand First - an anniversary that may well be marked by one of the dirtiest periods in our political history.

Clark casually plonks herself down on a black leather chair opposite me, offers a wide, self-conscious smile, and skews the coffee table so her knees are facing mine.

She's normal. She's nice. She has sparkly eye make-up on and a blue plastic bracelet given to her by someone at a shopping mall this morning. Clark Of The People. But not Clark unmasked.

The blueberry muffins, which sit uneaten and unoffered on the other end of the coffee table, are a clear indication that this, like the muck-raking and political attacks of the past week, is all about business.

This is not a woman who "lost it", as some suggested when she lashed out and called Don Brash "cancerous" and "corrosive" last week.

Somewhere, among all the mud and the muffins, is a masterly plan.

Nevertheless, it can't have been an easy week for Clark - having her intensely private husband dragged into the fray, and even having to defend her ageing parents from prying media calls.

"Oh," she booms, when I ask if she's feeling OK, or if she is feeling terribly stressed. Then she laughs, one of those deep "He, he, he, he" kind of laughs. "I always keep a sense of humour."

She knew it was all on when the first article appeared last week about the showdown in the National caucus over Don Brash's alleged affair.

"I rang my husband and said 'I feel now that there will be retaliation. I think we have to steal ourselves for the rumour mill which has been building up a head of steam to erupt around us'. And that proved to be prophetic."

Sure enough, early that Saturday a photographer sprung Dr Davis as he meandered to the letterbox to get the paper. The next day, he was splashed over a Sunday newspaper's front page. Clark instantly blamed the National Party, while mounting a ferocious defence of her husband.

The stakes were raised. Two days later she launched a stinging attack on Dr Brash calling him a "cancerous and corrosive" influence on politics.

But what exactly did National have to do with the attack on her husband? Clark lists golf clubs, law firms, accountancy firms - all National Party circles, she says, which had gleefully made sure the rumour was well known.

Besides, she says, "You've got three senior journalists saying it was raised with them by National MPs". The implication being that it was inevitable, with National's help, that the rumour would eventually get out.

So, with Brash's alleged affair still hovering, and National's accusation that Labour is corrupt over its election spending, New Zealand has stooped to a new low in personal politics. They're even writing about us overseas.

All the while the Auditor-General is quietly working on his final report, due in three weeks, which will declare what, if any, funds were misspent by Labour in the run-up to last year's election. Is this about creating an environment where criticism about the report could get lost in the mud-slinging? Is this all just a big distraction? "Not really," Clark says. "It'll come out, and it'll stand on its merits at the time. I think we've made it pretty clear what we think about it."

So it's not a strategy of Labour's to distract us? "NO, no, no, no, no. We're dealing with the other issues as they arise. And really the escalation of the rhetoric started with their extreme behaviour over the election spending issue when they started using the word corrupt, which we have to dismiss out of hand."

Will she call a truce with Brash then? Not, she says, if National keeps calling Labour corrupt.

Does Clark accept that ordinary people are feeling angry and alienated? "I don't think most people are into the detail of it at all. All they hear is noise, and there's been a lot of noise. But fundamentally, what's underneath is that it's about power. We won the election, and the National Party finds that very hard to accept."

Indeed they did. Just over a year ago. October 15 will mark the first anniversary of the Labour/NZ First/United/Progressive coali-tion Government.

It had its critics. Despite their parties' being decimated by National's comeback on election night, NZ First and United Future found themselves holding the balance of power. With only a tiny (50-48) lead over National, Labour soon realised it would have to forego a coalition with the Greens and form one with the parties in the political middle - who refused to come on board with the Greens - instead.

Does Clark sometimes have to divorce her human side when dealing with intense political situations, such as telling the Greens their dreams of being in government are over?

"It was distressing to have to do that. In the end, you have to tell people that if we insist on you being in government, there won't be a Labour-led government".

Working with the Greens in the future, however, remains "a strong option for us". What followed, however, was "an amazing year" says Clark, which put heaps of extra money into the hands of families students and older people, and which continued to "defy the pessimists" and see the economy grow.

Which brings us to today. Does she think we really have entered a new era where politicians' personal lives have become fair game for public consumption, or is this just a blip in time? "The widespread view among the commontariat," Clark laughs heartily again, "which I share, is that it's not an issue unless it is in stark contradiction to the public pose someone has adopted. That's when the media will move in. Because they see hypocrisy."

Does she think Brash brought the media attention about his affair on himself when he issued a press release saying he was going home to work on his marriage? (Reporters had known about the alleged affair for months, but had not, till that point, written about it.) "Funnily enough," says Clark, appearing deep in thought, "it was restrained up until the press release." Did he bring it on himself, then? "I wouldn't want to go down that track. I think when you're in a leadership position in a political party, the chances are, if you're not purer than driven snow, it's going to come out sometime."

That's a shame, I say, because it makes for a boring Parliament. She laughs. "Well, it might. But I think it's a discipline we accept in these positions. I'm a specialist in sitting on half a glass of wine for an evening. I'm quite happy with that. Sparkly water is even better."

Anyway, she can always take a holiday, and usually does, overseas. But really, New Zealanders are very nice people who come up to her and shake her hand and call her Helen and never, really, cause her problems when she's out and about.

She even goes to the supermarket in her gym gear at the weekends to pick up a rotisserie chicken.

People whisper, and kids giggle, but she loves it - partly because in those undiaried moments she doesn't take her personal security with her. "I keep a little corner of my life that I'm not followed in," she explains, "unless it's by the Exclusive Brethren," at which she laughs so heartily that she makes a huge snorting noise.

Clark has found herself vindicated as Dunedin private eye Wayne Idour admitted late in the week, after initially denying it, that he was hired by the Exclusive Brethren to spy on Davis, Clark and other senior Labour ministers. Idour hit back, saying Labour had also hired spies to dig through National MPs' trash, an accusation Clark says is rubbish.

It's all a horrible invasion on private lives but politically, as much as Labour can link National, the Brethrens and now Wayne Idour together in the same sentence the better.

But the attack on Davis is a new low. As Clark points out, she has never put him or her parents into the public eye. "I've never done that because I've always been conscious that politics goes in cycles, and you don't want people to be exposed when there are different things happening."