Labour's Mr Fixit makes his mark

Mike Williams has steered Labour through troubled times. Picture / Dean Purcell

When Mike Williams was elected Labour Party president four years ago, he said the party needed "a profoundly boring president".

Not an unreasonable statement given that the flamboyant term of his predecessor, Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey, was spiced up with talk of CIA plots to kill Norm Kirk and the occasional baring of buttocks.

Williams, of course, is anything but boring, as he facetiously confirms in an interview this week. "Dull as ditch water," he hoots with a raspy smoker's tone.

He is conducting the interview while driving to Ponsonby from his lifestyle block in Waitakere, where he has taken a break from preparing his speech to the conference to pick up a pair of trousers being altered by a seamstress. (The trousers were accommodated outwards to allow for the 55-year-old's middle-age spread.)

It seems an odd thing for a millionaire to do, but he explains that they are not just any trousers. They are part of a $2000 Ermenegildo Zegna suit his childhood friend Paul Holmes persuaded him to buy.

"You see it advertised in Playboy," he says, then adds "not that I read Playboy."

When Williams and Labour exalt "boring" they are reflecting Labour's obsession to stay trouble-free, as a party haunted by the way it tore itself apart in the 1980s and the ensuing electoral disaster.

That is why the weekend's party conference over which Williams presides should almost certainly run well. In the party that has perfected discipline almost to the point of unnatural harmony, trouble is identified and dealt with, or to.

The paranoia over disunity is all the more heightened as the party moves into election year. Whenever there is a whiff of trouble, Williams is at the heart of it.

He was close by Dover Samuels in his darkest political days. And he was with John Tamihere. From the outset of his difficulties, Williams was beside the former cabinet minister, counselling him and advocating for him to the media.

Williams knows how to be a friend to someone, even if he's not, and, as so many of his Labour cohorts remark, he is as comfortable on the shop floor as the boardrooms where he touts for funds.

Tamihere knows Williams was there for the interests of the party as much as mateship but his appreciation runs deep.

"He didn't need to front-foot it for me but he did."

Williams is more sanguine. He says he has a two-paragraph speech that he gives after elections to newly elected MPs.

"The first paragraph is, 'Here is your automatic bank transfer form; we want 4 per cent of your salary; this is not a choice; it is compulsory'.

"Paragraph number two is, 'Whatever happens to you in your period at Parliament, we are on your side'. That is a default position of the party council."

Former Alliance leader Matt McCarten, who was Williams' presidential partner during the Labour-Alliance coalition, paints Williams' aptitude for pastoral care in more brutal terms.

"If you are going to cut someone's throat, you need someone to manage them who they trust. He'll hold your hand while Helen cuts your throat and you don't blame Mike. If you are going to get shafted, you don't feel so bad getting shafted by Mike."

McCarten respects him and considers him the most successful of any Labour president he has known. But McCarten can identify a weakness in this apparent model of a modern party president.

"He can be quite rude and abrupt to people he doesn't like. I've seen it in action. He can't hold back his contempt for someone. His political enemies are his enemies."

Williams doesn't share that assessment. "I don't suffer fools gladly. I've got a hell of a lot to do and my time can't be wasted."

He is a master multi-tasker. As well as being Labour Party president, he is a director on five boards, mainly with an energy or transport focus: Transit, New Zealand Railways Corporation, Auckland Regional Transport Authority, Genesis, and the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences.

His talents are spread thinly but he is said to be valued on the boards, because of his connection with other boards and his direct channels to Government.

"They think I talk to Helen [Clark] and they think I talk to Pete [Hodgson], and they are right."

Williams had no interest in energy or transport when he was approached to become involved, but they were two of the biggest problems confronting Auckland.

"The way you solve big problems, like running out of electricity and traffic congestion in Auckland, is to smash them up into a lot of little problems.

"It's like fundraising for the Labour Party," he says. "There is no one king hit. There are 500 answers. That's how you win elections, too, one person at a time."

Williams says Labour is ready for an election at any time. There is a good deal of money in the party's coffers, candidate selection is nearly complete, the list ranking could be done in six hours if necessary.

He says the healthy state of the party's finances is due to action taken 18 months ago.

"We reviewed the party's financial situation and decided it was unsustainable."

MPs' tithes were increased from 3 to 4 per cent of their salaries, and electorates' levies were increased by 25 per cent. He hopes to raise $500,000 by the end of the year. Membership is up but he has not reached his target of 20,000 yet, he says.

Being president was a full-time job when he started. Now it's not. He has begun to "dabble" in film investment, although no projects yet have working titles, and database consultancy work.

Labour might have been denied the talents of Williams. On August 13, 1977, he was almost electrocuted while demolishing an old toilet out the back of his Ponsonby flat.

The toilet was not isolated so when he touched a pipe he received a shock. He was thrown to the ground and his heart stopped beating for nine minutes. "Luckily, the pipe burst and poured cold water over my head which caused my body to think I was drowning and shunt all the available oxygen to my brain."

He had an out-of-body experience "but when I talked to the shrink after the event he said that's absolutely par for the course".

But it was a life-changing experience and before long he left his English and history-teaching job at Pakuranga and went overseas, before returning to organise his first election campaign for former Hastings MP David Butcher. He then became a party organiser specialising in marginal seats.

He made his fortune by selling successful companies he set up in the 1980s, a direct mail and marketing company and a market research company.

His white-collar career was a break from family tradition. "I am the first male of my family since we arrived in New Zealand who is not a metal banger," he says.

His forebear John Williams, who arrived "in 1860-something", was a blacksmith from Kent, his son was a blacksmith and Williams' father was a fitter and turner. Williams has no explanation for his swarthy looks.

"As a doctor once said to me, 'You don't know what your great-grandmother got up to with that nice-looking Maori boy who looked after the horses'. Ironically, there is a picture of my great-great-grandmother with a nice looking Maori boy who looked after the horses."

His childhood began in the Wainuiomata valley where family legend has it that when he was 3, he got his tongue stuck to the icy gate while waiting for his father to arrive home. His mother freed it by pouring warm water over him. He can't remember it. If it's not true it should be.

It seems a very Williams story: a rascal of a kid, a hoot, a laugh, a little daft, a little trouble, a quick answer. Profoundly boring? Profoundly never.