Minister on the mat

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Political opponents are scoring points off Marian Hobbs' stumblings. But this singular woman is destined to get the last laugh, finds CARROLL DU CHATEAU.

Seven sitting days into the parliamentary year, the Minister for the Environment, Biosecurity and Broadcasting is looking slightly crumpled around the edges.

Despite sessions on the soapbox with anti-Springbok tour activists Hart during the 60s, followed by two decades facing stroppy seventh-formers and their parents, Marian Hobbs has met her match.

Every afternoon - particularly since she confused former TVNZ chairwoman Rosanne Meo with CEO Rick Ellis during a question about news presenter John Hawkesby's payout - Hobbs has been targeted at question time. The Opposition senses her instinct to overexplain, her sometimes-fragile grip on some of the finer points of her three complex portfolios. And there's no mercy.

Simon Upton's parliamentary gossip and discussion sheet, Upton On Line, includes Hobbs in his selection of MPs singled out by the Opposition - like gazelles separated from the herd - for public mocking.

As the former environment minister points out: "While seasoned maulers like Tony Ryall and Richard Prebble circle for an early kill, fear will start to haunt the eyes of those appointed to tasks beyond their wits."

Tellingly, Upton makes an exception for 52-year-old Hobbs. This MP, he says, is a forceful speaker and an MP of truly positive countenance.

But she will have to prove herself before the National and Act guys stop going after her. Prebble, who she beat in Wellington Central, regularly guns for Hobbs inside and outside the House. Right now, adorning the lampposts down Bowen St and Lambton Quay are posters - attributed to Prebble's Rebels - sporting a photo of Hobbs' head on a fat, furry body. They are headlined: "Who's the fifth Teletubby? Answer: Booboo."

To survive, Hobbs must dig deep into her signature sense of humour and perspective built from a background of Catholicism, the Communist Party, university activism, communal living, school teaching and kids. Above all, she must avoid the temptation to run off at the lip.

She sits in her green leather parliamentary chair three rows behind Helen Clark, looking - as some cruel wit said - like a half-unwrapped parcel. Hobbs, now a Quaker, is not particularly interested in clothes. She wore the same scarlet outfit yesterday. And despite the early-to-bed, early-to-rise regime beginning each day with breakfast at Bellamy's at 7.30 - imposed on her this week by speaker Jonathan Hunt in an effort to improve her performance - she's forgotten not just her shoulder-pads but her makeup as well.

What Hobbs definitely hasn't forgotten is her enthusiasm, her ability to reduce the most complex issues to basic questions of values, her guts. "I've got the record," she says. "Every day for seven days I got a question. And yesterday I began to enjoy it. My stomach didn't tighten up."

Clark says she worked very hard to get Hobbs into cabinet. "She's a woman of enormous intelligence, drive and motivation." And, no, the Prime Minister is not seriously disturbed by Hobbs' stumbles in the House. "What would really disturb me is if she still slipped up after nine years, like the former Prime Minister did. Now it's just a question of getting her skills right for this job.

"It's horrible the way they exploit any vulnerability. When Marian explained to me why it [her blundering] was happening she said that 'because I've been a teacher I keep wanting to explain to people.' But in this environment the more you say, the more you give people room to attack."

Clark's other advice to green ministers like Hobbs is to prepare long and hard for left-field questions. Cut the lunches, use the time for preparation - strictures with which Hobbs has no problem.

"Sure, she [Clark] has high expectations," Hobbs says, "but they're no higher than mine. Any misery comes because I don't meet my own standards."

As Clark points out, this is a mid (make that late) career change for Hobbs. Four years ago, after 25 years as a teacher - while raising children - and seven as principal of Avonside Girls' High School in Christchurch, Hobbs jumped ship.

In May, 1996, she won a plum job as principal of Wellington Girls' College. But she never took it up, instead moving into Parliament on the Labour list.

Her political progress had been speedy: a blooding in the 92 Selwyn bye- election against David Carter (National) when she came a dismal third to the Alliance; election in 96, followed by three years of flying white-knuckled over Cook Strait to service the Kaikoura electorate, plus sitting on the Opposition back benches and regulations review select committee during the week; and a fragile win (1482 votes) against Richard Prebble in Wellington Central last November.

The porcelain-complexioned Clark in her elegant blue suit, whose startlingly quick answers flick seamlessly between brain and lips, is right. Keep the answers short. Don't give them room to move.

And Hobbs is learning. Today's questions start from an innocuous inquiry from Opposition broadcasting spokeswoman Katherine Rich about Radio New Zealand's employment policies. This brings a flurry of supplementary questions revolving around the Brian Edwards' affair, ending with a twister from Peter Dunn: "How does the minister resolve the conflict between her murmurings and witterings and what might happen, and her formal responsibilities regarding not directing the board on operational and staff matters?"

Slammed back Hobbs: "Can I make it quite clear? No murmurings, no witterings and instructions to the board to resolve the matter."

She had the last laugh.

So who is Marian Hobbs, and why, after just three years on the back benches, has she been given three of the most ticklish and demanding portfolios - broadcasting, environment and biosecurity?

It's because she brings several important qualities to the Labour ranks. First, she's brainy enough to get her head around the complex scientific, ethical and political arguments surrounding bioethics, genetic engineering and public broadcasting.

Second, she has an integrity and passion that is in short supply.

Third, despite her problems with Prebble and Co, Hobbs has a tremendous ability to get on with people.

Fourth, despite her fumbling under pressure, political commentators say her ability to make speeches that capture the imagination of a crowd with her dreams for this country hasn't been seen since the days of David Lange.

Along with "veritas," meaning the search for truth, Hobbs' guiding principle is the Quaker adage, "To find the good in every person."

As she says, "My philosophy was to build from the strength in every child. I can apply it in this life too - by not looking to be critical but to find people's good points and to build from them."

The formula worked brilliantly during Hobbs' teaching career. When she was principal of Avonside High School, A bursaries increased by 500 per cent in four years.

Elizabeth Crayford, a young teacher at Hagley High when Hobbs was department head, remembers an inspirational and enormously warm teacher who had a needlepoint picture of the White House on her wall with the words: A woman's place is in the House - of Representatives.

"She had a huge capacity for work," Crayford says. "Despite having a pre-schooler and a primary school child she was studying for an MA in education."

Claudia Wysocki, principal of St Margaret's in Christchurch, describes Hobbs' prodigious ability to get to the heart of educational matters: "I admired her as a principal and as a very sound person. An independent thinker, refreshingly honest who earned the love of her kids and the respect of the parent body."

As the daughter of Lesley Hobbs, a respected journalist whose photo appears in the 1949 Parliamentary Press Gallery and who wrote The 30 Year Wonders, Hobbs is media savvy.

"I have some sympathy for the fact that you're just doing your jobs," she says, hooting with laughter, "but I also know you sozzles."

Pardon? Sozzles? Just a Hobbesque expression.

The new career works well from a personal point of view, too. Her second marriage, to maths teacher Geoff Norris, has broken down. At 17, daughter Claire is in her last year at a Christchurch high school and will go to Wellington's Victoria University next year.

"She loves Wellington, the restaurants and cafes," Hobbs says. "I'm busy looking for a place for us to share."

This isn't the first time Hobbs has changed tack. But despite what could appear as some wide and flaky swings, her integrity remained intact as she moved from Catholicism to communism to the Society of Friends.

"I became a Quaker in about 1987," she says. "I probably stopped being a Catholic after leaving school and meeting sex.

"But those spiritual things lie within you. When I turned up at a Friends' meeting house in Christchurch I found everyone whose values I valued sitting there."

What are those values?

"Lack of hierarchy, lack of dogma, God is community, the need for truth, good objective discipline, inclusiveness."

Alongside the spiritual journey runs a seam of political growth starting with Hobbs the student radical marching for Hart in the days before it was fashionable, joining the Communist Party, setting up Christchurch's alternative independent state school Four Avenues. As well, with husband Walter Logeman, she helped to set up the city's longest-surviving inner-city commune, Chippenham.

By 1981 she had a deep, sincere interest in Maori issues and is now fluent in the language.

Mattie Wall, who was at Canterbury University in the late 1960s, remembers Hobbs, with her long brown hair and rangy figure reminiscent of Bernadette Devlin, as an inspirational speaker on campus.

"She and David Caygill were the radicals," Wall says. "She was notable for her fiery but good-natured and good-humoured debate. She took the issues very seriously but she didn't take herself too seriously. I have huge respect for her and what she is."

Debater and author Jim Hopkins talks about how they were two of the wild and abandoned souls who gravitated to the university debating society, where Hobbs used to argue "with perhaps greater emphasis on passion than detail."

The third journey involves Hobbs' family life. Despite two broken marriages and a period when she sank into suburban neurosis, eating too much, watching Days of Our Lives (which got her into more trouble in the House) while bringing up her first child, Daniel, family is fundamental.

Despite her great love for her son, "those were the most miserable years of my life." It probably didn't help the marriage much that husband Walter wanted six children.

Her second marriage, to Norris, unexpectedly produced Claire. Again, Hobbs and Norris chose the radical path - a bilingual kohanga reo start for Claire and, after a year's maternity leave for Hobbs, full-time parenting for Norris.

These days Hobbs turns up at official functions with various "friends," the most recent a chap from Blenheim who accompanied her to an America's Cup race in Auckland.

Hobbs' views are set in a rigorous Catholic education. The Dominican convent where she boarded from the age of 10 taught pupils that of the three vocations in life - religious, married and single - the highest was the religious calling.

Hobbs' mother had wanted to be a nun and two of her four children tried religious life. Hobbs' elder sister, Judith, lasted 12 years in the convent before running away dressed in a candlewick dressing-gown and a night veil. Her sensitive book, Breaking the Habit, was ground-breaking.

Her brother, Emmet, spent some time in a seminary before moving to a highly entrepreneurial business career which includes one of New Zealand's first biotechnology companies, Genestock.

Three of his children from his first marriage to Aileen O'Sullivan - Christopher, Rebecca and Katrina - work on Shortland Street. Emmet and his second wife, actress Sara Pierce, live in Britain where Hobbs is setting up companies to span Europe.

"I love my brother," Hobbs says. "He's the family capitalist."

Only Marian, the youngest, and her sister Gillian, a librarian at the University of Canterbury married to Don Bevan ("probably the brightest of us all") avoided the convent - in Marian's case only because her confessor advised against it.

Even today she takes "supervision" on clarifying issues, evaluating how well she is living up to her standards, and how effective she is in her job.

And, despite the question-time gaffes, she is performing well. Last night, after preliminary work which RNZ chief Sharon Crosbie describes as "scrupulous," Hobbs took the Broadcasting Amendment Bill through its final stages ("I'm not a virgin any more.")

With other cabinet members, she put her weight behind the appointment of Ross Armstrong in place of Meo at TVNZ.

It is typical of Hobbs that she didn't let Armstrong's strong National Party links get in the way of his appointment. Nor did she let the fact that they were on different sides when Armstrong was guiding New Zealand Post through pre-deregulation manoeuvrings dampen her admiration for the way he worked.

"I look past the Nat thing and I see a set of values that gives Ross steel," Hobbs says.

Although she agrees that refocusing TVNZ and Radio New Zealand on the public duty side of their respective mandates will be complicated, she goes back to her guiding principles: "A search for truth and a strong belief in community and that individuals have the ability to live well in a healthy community.

"In broadcasting, that translates into providing a way for people to find their place in society."

It is Hobbs' second and third portfolios which have the potential to erupt far more ferociously. Despite her able mind, Hobbs does not have a scientific background, and she's hanging out for April when Emmet promises a high pressure-course when he returns from Britain.

Again, her views go back to principles of community: "We've damaged the environment and must change how we live. We talk about so-called green things like climate warming, then throw our hands in the air because it's too big to handle. We have to break down these problems into smaller pieces. My goal is to convince people that improving the environment is attainable at individual level, and to make them feel responsible.

"Because genetic modification is a complex issue, people get afraid. What we need is some clear, unemotional, informed discussion so we can find the truth, find a clear way forward that we're comfortable with."

As Hobbs points out - her rich voice becoming hoarse with tiredness despite the early nights - science is always going to change its mind, always push the boundaries.

"We were taught to put our babies to sleep face down on a sheepskin - that's the scary thing for us, science is always going to change."

Despite the tiredness round the eyes, the droopy shoulders (maybe just the missing shoulder-pads) Hobbs is having the time of her life.

"I'm now 52 and I'm still learning new things, experiencing new challenges," she says. "And, hell, I find it exciting."