Mike Moore: 'I'm a bit of a contrarian'

Mike Moore, former boss of the World Trade Organisation and Prime Minister, still likes to call on the child within. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Mike Moore has a new book out, his 10th, so it seemed a fairly obvious idea to go and see him. He was in Washington last week, so we had an email exchange in which he said "yes" to an interview, and would I like to go to his house in Maraetai for a cup of coffee?

I'd been there five minutes when he said: "So, why are you interviewing me?"

I waved his book. "Oh, the book," he said, as though he'd never seen the thing before. What a funny question to ask. "Interviews are indignity to a corpse."

What could he mean?

"I thought I'd been dead for some time."

He does like to get in first. If you're self-deprecating you might not be so readily accused of being defensive. It's also a line he used about Jim Anderton, whom he got into a spat with over a column he wrote a couple of years ago in the Herald.

Anderton said Moore's books had given much pleasure to the many children who had coloured them in. Moore said Anderton dyed his hair. "No, I said, 'His hair goes black with worry every election year'."

This was all very silly and childish. "Yeah. We are what we are and we are where we are and it is what it is."

How very philosophical. "Oh, I always have been. I was once warned: 'You're only taken as seriously as you take yourself. Stop making jokes. Be grave, be pompous, be ponderous'."

And how had he done? "I'd probably get a pass mark, but not an A."

Presumably he is grave in his "international career". He is often overseas, doing whatever it is he does. It's hard to define. He says he's a "do-gooder". This is by way of a poke in the eye to those who say he's a right-winger.

And to those who held up placards saying "Mike Moore Starves the Poor", during the protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle in 1999, when he was Director-General.

There is a picture in his book of a protester, dressed up as Mike Moore as an ogre-ish starver of the poor. He seems to regard the tag as a peculiar badge of honour.

"Well, because the opposite is the truth." But if people believe it, isn't that a problem? "Probably, but maybe that's why I keep talking." And making jokes.

He once wrote "unemployed" on his arrival card at an airport in Canada. "Never tease bureaucrats, particularly those who wear tight uniforms. Those guys have no sense of humour."

It's a lesson he's unlikely to learn. "That's the child in me." He says he is, "60 going on 14".

While he made our drinks, I had a nosy at some papers he had lying around. I got a right ticking off, as though I was the child. But, honestly, he's a former Prime Minister with a journalist in his house. He gave me a bit of a swipe. "Why are you going through my bloody papers?"

If he will leave stuff lying around ... "Yeah, but not people who may report on ... exclusive deals that have not yet been done." He huffed, pompously. But I didn't take it seriously.

He also told me off for not asking enough about his book, which is called Saving Globalization, so there's a bit about it. I did ask how he got Madeleine Albright to write a glowing blurb and I'd better put it in.

It is: "Mike Moore's insights are relentlessly sensible, brilliantly presented and sure to infuriate those who conclude democracy is either inefficient or unfashionable." This also saves me writing anything about a book which, according to him, I haven't read.

I wanted to know how he got that blurb and he said, "Maybe the book's worth it".

To pay him back for the swipe, I said, "She wouldn't be interviewed in her slippers, would she?" The former Prime Minister, who was wearing his slippers, said, "She certainly wouldn't allow people to come and open her files and go through confidential documents."

These confidential documents are, apparently, about an exclusive deal for some foundation he's setting up, but he wouldn't tell me anything else.

Although "the Herald knows". I am the Herald! 'That's not what I hear," he said, cryptically. What did he mean? He just grinned, smugly. I suspect he hasn't got a clue, either.

He is the former PM - and there is no point trying to get in with a joke about the duration, 60 days, he'll beat you to it every time - the former Director-General of the WTO, former Foreign Minister, former Deputy Finance Minister.

Who is capable of silly, childish nonsense, as the Anderton spat demonstrates. "It was a lot of fun. And then all these serious poo-faced people started writing letters to the editor that I was getting deeply personal. Now one of the big tests of society is humour, and it's called, in medical terms, insight."

Medical terms? Was he being serious? I have no idea. He can be very serious (see list above) and he wants to be taken seriously and is sometimes miffed he isn't. But then you think: poo-faced? Did he really say that?

He did, and, minutes later, got very emotional telling stories about his heroes. He stood up and gave a stirring re-enactment of his old mate Willy Brandt, former Chancellor of West Germany and leader of the Social Democratic Party, going to Poland to lay a wreath.

"He was the first German leader to go to Poland and ... he said, 'I felt the hatred, it was electric ... and all the demons and ghosts are there, and I walk up and I fall flat on my hands and knees and I weep ... and the soldiers put down their guns'."

This is a moving story; he is obviously moved. But, just as I am wondering how to ask why he's telling me this, he says: "Pixie dust!" Um, pixie dust?

"The biblical word of grace. Something happened, not planned, not opinion polls, not focus groups. The soldiers put down their guns. Humanity!"

His computer beeped to announce an email. "More bloody apologies."

For what?

"Piss off," he said. Then, without missing a beat: "So, I've had a great life. In meeting so many of my heroes."

David Lange once described him as behaving like a pinball machine that had been assembled by a colour-blind mechanic, a description nobody should try to better.

He thinks that's "pretty good". Did it mean he's a bit scatter-brained? "Well, this is the thing they like to use on me."

They being those "who are not supportive of my fine self. These criticisms are made by people who can't sing, can't write poems, can't do any bloody thing. Conservative people and the new conservatism is the old left".

He could, and no doubt would, go on about the old left and how the far left are actually the far right, all day, if I let him. We had a silly and childish little exchange about who was bossiest: "You're bossy", "No, you are".

He thought I was scatter-brained. I asked him daft questions. About whether he was now a right-winger (answer: no; long answer: read the book).

And how, because he once said he could get $10,000 for a breakfast talk, he was like the supermodel who said she wouldn't get out of bed for under $10,000. He started it.

He told me about being approached by a business school (he won't say which one) and saying "you can't afford me. But I'll give you a week of my life, though".

I said, what do you mean, they can't afford you? He said "I'm very expensive", but then got haughty when I agreed. "But I said, 'I'll give you a week of my life for nothing. I do half my work for nothing ... I heard from someone ... [that the business school bods had been told] 'You mustn't go near Mike Moore. He's not popular in Wellington'."

He said he did "care a bit" about that. I asked why he might not be popular and he said, "I don't know. It doesn't matter."

He'd just said it did. "Well, it does. You'd like to think you can influence things and do something for your country. You know, I am a patriot."

It is a running theme: that he feels unappreciated at home. "It may surprise you, but in certain places I go to, people say: 'Good to see you, Mike."'

But he also told me that people shout, "Mike, you w***er" from bus stops.

Now, look, why does he always do this? He comes across as having a chip on his shoulder and he said, twice, that he did, a "working-class chip".

I read a quote, from a Colin James review of one of his books, which noted this: "... the chip on the shoulder at not being taken seriously here at home by fellow-politicians, journalists and intellectuals ..."

He said: "Can Colin spell intellectuals?"

That was being childish again. "No. I'm answering him in his own language 'cos I won't take it. I will always fight back. But, probably a bit of truth to that."

Never mind. They like him in Gabon. They gave him the Commander of the Equatorial Star. I had to Google it. (It's in west central Africa.) "From President Bongo."

This sounds like an Evelyn Waugh satire. The 14-year-old in him must think it's as absurd and funny as I do, but he said, mustering dignity: "I respect friends too much to comment on that."

He said, "I don't know why the interview is going this way. I thought we were going to talk about the book."

I said: "I'm here to talk about the person who wrote the book, and that, unfortunately for you, is you." He said: "Too hard to read the book, eh? Ha, ha."

To attempt to out-boss him, I persevered, and asked what he thought his profile was. He answered by telling me what a stranger once said: "I know you. You used to be Mike Moore."

If I met him again, I'd say exactly that, except I'd add: But which one?

He said, "I'm a bit of a contrarian. I suspect that if everyone agreed with me, I'd say, 'Well, it shows how bloody stupid you are. I was having you on'."

I'm more than happy to let him have the last word - because, on that astute observation of self, I couldn't agree with him more.