Outrageous fortune

Paula Bennett is punching the air with a fist, demonstrating the rock salute she was using on the night of her 40th birthday party in Taupo recently.

Trouble was, her rock salutes were so violent she whacked her hand with the heavy gold bracelet friends had bought her as a present. "I had an injury the next day from doing the great dance thing. I actually bruised all my knuckles and my hand. So I'm so going to the AC/DC concert but we've already discussed that the bracelet cannot go," she says.

The point Bennett is making is she's a bogan. Moving from her childhood home of Taupo to West Auckland in the early 1990s, she didn't have to change out of her black jeans and jersey, let alone renounce her love of fun and 80s music. (When Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury died, she "mourned his death with a vengeance".)

"You see how well Taupo eased into West Auckland!" says Bennett, the MP for Waitakere.

But how well has West Auckland eased into Wellington, the city of long reports and tedious meetings? Sitting on the sofa in her fifth-floor Beehive office, wearing an ornate black and white embroidered coat and azure beads, Bennett is like a tropical bloom in a cold climate. "Mmmm, ha, that's the question," says Bennett, flashing her white teeth. After she spends more than four days in Wellington, she says, "the walls start closing in on me" and she has to get back to her home ground of Waitakere.

Bennett is one of Prime Minister John Key's favourites. After just one term in Parliament, she was fast-tracked into the $20 billion social welfare portfolio, the biggest of them all.

Bubbly, warm and utterly charming, Bennett has a rare ability to connect with the public. But real questions are emerging over whether she has the substance and judgment to be one of Cabinet's effective ministers.

In seven months as Minister of Social Development and Employment, Bennett has already made more headlines than most ministers want to attract in a whole term of government.

There was the brawl between teenage girls that she broke up at a West Auckland mall.

Then, like a plot line from Outrageous Fortune, came the news her daughter had a gang member boyfriend - father to Bennett's grandchild - in prison for violent offences. In 2007 Bennett had given him a home while he was on bail, and in 2008 she offered to take him in when he got out on parole.

Most recently, she appointed Christine Rankin as a family commissioner, despite Rankin's history of scrapping, flouncing and attention-seeking. The appointment brought a barrage of criticism, based on Rankin's tumultuous private life and her opposition to the existing child ¬discipline law.
Now Rankin is sitting like a time bomb on the Families Commission, with the Government crossing its fingers and hoping Rankin will keep her nose clean for the remainder of her term.

But Bennett, who hasn't previously commented on the controversial appointment, says she was attracted to Rankin's ability to speak up. "I suppose when I looked at the composition of the board, I felt that a different voice, someone who was going to challenge and be outspoken, was not necessarily a bad thing. I think it's valuable in every part of life, really.

"If we all accept everything around us without questioning and challenge, and have a level of apathy, then how can we come to robust decisions?"
Did it concern her that Rankin married her fourth husband, Kim MacIntyre, soon after MacIntyre's previous wife, Margo McAuley, had killed herself?

"Look, when I made the appointment I had heard a couple of conflicting rumours," says Bennett, in reference to suggestions that Rankin and Mac¬Intyre had had an affair before McAuley's death.

"And [Rankin] said, I can tell you they're not true and I can go into all the details.' And I said, No thanks, you know I'm not particularly interested in who's-sleeping-with-who-type stuff.'

"And I said, Can you assure me?', and she said, I can give you a complete assurance that none of what is being said is true, there's another story to it.'"
Was there a standard in mind in terms of her personal life that Rankin had to meet? "I think we stand on very wobbly pedestals if we start making moral judgments about other people and their private lives," says Bennett.

Successful government ministers have to master an ocean of paperwork. They have to understand exactly what their department is doing; otherwise, sooner or later, something will blow up in their face. But Bennett, whether intentionally or not, may be cutting herself off from full information about her portfolio.

According to a variety of Beehive, public service and sectoral sources, Bennett responds best to abbreviated information. Officials within the Ministry of Social Development are making efforts to simplify information as much as possible to appeal to Bennett.

Although not all information is being condensed, several sources mentioned efforts to put information to Bennett on one page no bigger than A3 and preferably with only a few bullet points.

Graphics and pictorial representations of information are preferred. In one example, one Ministry of Social Development report was shortened several times on the request of a manager because it was believed this was the only way to get the minister to read it.

According to one chief executive in the NGO sector who met her at an umbrella meeting of welfare organisations, Bennett told them: "I don't read. Don't send me big documents - I don't read them."

The problem, says the chief executive, is that proposals put to the Government do require detail, background and explanation. "How do you convey all that detail and complexity in one page? You have got senior government officials trying to reduce complicated ideas to graphs and pictorials because they know otherwise she won't read them. We are trying to convert quite complex ideas into flow charts and graphs and diagrams. It's astonishing."
S
ome Cabinet ministers are known to like data and statistics. Others prefer narratives and personal examples to get to grips with a policy idea. But all tend to want more written information, not less, says the chief executive, who does not want to be named because it could affect his organisation's funding.
Bennett is indignant at the suggestions she is allergic to heavy reports. "It's just ridiculous - there is absolutely no truth in it whatsoever," she says, rifling through a few reports on her desk.

"You need the information to make the big decisions at the end of the day. Here's one on the redundancy support package, you don't do that in a page with your frick¬in' diagrams. It's a 16-page document!" Here's another 15-page report, her weekly briefing from the ministry, and a 22-page report on universities.
Bennett says people may have misunderstood her drive to dispense with bureaucratic jargon. "I probably do challenge people on language. Probably where it stems from is I'm not good with the platitudes, I like to know what the facts are."

Bennett's sprawling portfolio covers not only income support for beneficiaries, superannuitants and low-income working families, but also the care and protection of children and young people, employment assistance, funding to community service providers, and student allowances and loans. Whereas the previous Labour Government had a platoon of associate ministers to help with the portfolio, Key has given Bennett only one associate minister, Tariana Turia, to help with the heavy workload.

Bennett may be facing some criticisms, but she has also delighted welfare sectoral groups by successfully battling on their behalf in this year's Budget.
Labour had promised $1.47 billion over five years on a "Pathways to Partnership" programme for funding social service agencies, but the promise faced the chop from Finance Minister Bill English. So Bennett, working closely with NGOs, went in to bat and kept the five-year funding against the odds.
In retrospect, was it really such a good idea to start her Cabinet career with a $20 billion portfolio? "Oh look, why not, you know?" says Bennett, laughing.
Then she becomes serious: "I think the thing that surprises me is how much I do know this stuff. If I was to be quite frank, when I sat around the table for those early couple of months with those officials, and when I was going out there and all of a sudden you have access to experts, and some pretty incredible people that are out there working in it are surprised at how much I actually know and my ability to drive it in the directions I think are important."

Bennett's own background means she knows some human truths that cannot be learned from official documents - the smell of poverty, how it feels to be trapped by circumstances and poor choices.

Bennett's life story is remarkable - from a hard-working, middle New Zealand home in Kinloch, Taupo, she became a teenage bad girl and a solo mother at 17. She was on and off the DPB and worked at menial jobs for years, but still had enough grit and determination to buy a home at 19 with the help of a $56,000 Housing Corporation loan.

At one stage she was working part-time during the day at a tourism booking office, then toiling midnight to 8.00am waitressing at a truck stop while someone looked after her daughter, Ana.

Her break came while working as a nurse aide at a rest home, where she was inspired by the owners to enrol in university. At Massey's Albany campus, she not only gained a BA in social policy, but became student union president. It was then she also connected with her Tainui ancestry.
Bennett has said making the decision to turn her life around gave her an enduring self-belief.

"When I looked at my future ... I saw more babies and different boyfriends and pretty tough living, and I decided only I could make that difference to my future and the life I was going to have. With that came an inner strength," Bennett said on Radio New Zealand's One in Five programme.

She went on to become electorate secretary for East Coast Bays MP Murray McCully, a power behind the throne for the past five National leaders.

In 2005, on the strength of a recommendation from McCully, National leader Don Brash approached her and asked her to stand for Parliament. By that time, Bennett was a manager at a recruitment firm. She initially entered Parliament in 2005 on the party list, then took the Waitakere seat from Labour's Lynne Pillay in 2008 by 600 votes.

Bennett's Cinderella story is almost as compelling as Key's own rise from state house inhabitant to Parnell multi¬millionaire.

If Rankin is one ticking time bomb for Bennett, another still not entirely defused is how she handles her future relationship with daughter Ana's boyfriend. Viliami Haloholo, 23, was jailed in 2007 for four years for attacking a party¬goer with a fence paling, leaving the victim with a broken jaw and a 10cm gash to his head. Haloholo was reportedly a member of the Thugs of Canal street gang.

Bennett has worked hard to help Haloholo redeem himself, inviting him to live with Ana and his child at her house for six months before sentencing. In 2007 she wrote in support of him at sentencing, offering continuing accommodation and seeking to avoid a prison term. And in 2008 she wrote to the Parole Board offering to let Haloholo be paroled to her house again.

"He has put his mistakes of the past behind him and I believe that with the support of his partner (my daughter), his family and myself, he will lead a good life and not ever be before the courts again," said Bennett in the 2008 letter.
The letters were controversial because Bennett mentioned her status as an MP in the opening lines of each letter; because she had chosen to take a violent offender and gang member into her home; because as a Cabinet minister there were arguably security issues around her links to a criminal; and because she had failed to tell Key about her sponsorship of Haloholo.

The Parole Board did not share Bennett's faith in Haloholo, turning down his parole bid. It said he was "an identified drug user" in prison and had "numerous incident reports" on his prison file, one just a month before the parole hearing.
Bennett has always refused to talk publicly about Haloholo, apart from releasing a statement saying it was an error of judgment not to inform Key about the matter. Haloholo is due for release in 2011. Does she plan to renew her offer of a home for him next time he comes up for parole?
She initially hedges. "At the moment all you know is what you've read in the papers. I actually think that I deserve - you know, it's not so much I deserve a level of privacy, I believe my family do. So I'm going to respect their privacy."
So, you're not going to say whether you would offer him a home again?
She fudges, saying the letters were "some years ago". Then she concedes one letter was less than a year ago. "I was looking at what I thought was best for my daughter. I suppose I would say no, I'm not going to be offering my home to him."

In Parliament, Labour has marked out Bennett as one of National's weakest links. In Question Time, she shows unusual resilience for a new minister, in the face of a barrage of pressure. The attacks can be vicious - in one debate Labour MP David Cunliffe described her as "floating like a giant blimp in West Auckland".

There is also the inference that Bennett lacks depth. Labour deputy leader Annette King has criticised her for not answering Grey Power questions at a meeting, instead leaving them with the impression that "a loud laugh will solve all the questions put to her".

On the morning I arrive for my interview, staff in her office are breaking into small runs as they dash between rooms preparing answers for the three questions in Parliament she faces that day. Ministerial offices are always highly focused, but here, the atmosphere is unusually tense.
Bennett grew up a scrapper. As the only girl in her household, with two brothers, she has said she had to fight for her rights in the traditional, male-dominated household.

"She had her brothers and her father and she twisted them round her little finger," said Bennett's mother, Lee ¬Bennett, in an interview with the New Zealand Herald.

Paula Bennett has also said that as a child she was a talker, an arguer and a footstamper.

Do those skills come in handy in politics? "Does it ever! Course it does! You've got to be strong around here to hold your own."

At the top of Bennett's work list at the moment is implementing her leader's youth justice changes, which include controversial proposals for military-style "boot camps" for serious young offenders.
Bennett says if there is one project she feels particularly intensely about, it is child abuse and neglect.
Over Christmas, when she was thinking about her priorities for the port¬folio and about child abuse, she says, it "almost got to the stage where you could put your head in your hands, because it's just so hideous, it's just so despairing, and then it's just so big.

"I just decided to concentrate on our most vulnerable, which is our under-twos. At some level, we can look at those that are already being hurt and neglected - they're more likely to be hurt and neglected a second time."

But she says she finds it hard to accept how difficult it is to make a difference. Someone told her a couple of weeks ago it wouldn't matter what she did - there would be some children's deaths she would be unable to prevent.

"I started arguing with them that I just couldn't believe that, that if I accepted that ... then that's just too hard to accept. I must admit that's been swimming around in my head for the last two weeks: how do you stop the random, insane, quite frankly evil person?"
Bennett's position on so-called anti-smacking laws is likely to come under the spotlight, with the Electoral Office publicity campaign about the upcoming referendum on child discipline laws about to start. Bennett recently made comments indicating support for the referendum, which seeks to overturn the 2007 law banning parents from using force against their children for "the purpose of correction".

Asked on talkback radio about her view on the referendum question "should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand", Bennett said, "No, I don't." She said good parenting should be left to parents, "and I don't have an interest in going into people's homes and telling them how to parent".

When asked again about the matter, Bennett's office would only say her position on smacking is "the same as the Prime Minister's". Key has said he will change child discipline laws if there is evidence that good parents are being criminalised for lightly smacking their children.

In her fast track to the top, Bennett has benefited from the drought in female talent within the National Party, which has left plenty of room for talented and untested women.

But in typically disarming Bennett style, when you ask her about women in the National Party it turns into a conversation about shopping. She says she founded a National Party women's group devoted to shoe shopping. "I got a shoe shop [in Wellington] to open up after hours, and the National women went down and bought shoes."

And did they discuss important matters of state and policy over the kitten heels? "Absolutely not. It was just whether that height was good on you and whether you should try them in purple as well as black."

Is there a tendency perhaps for Bennett to undercut her serious side with funny stories like this one? "That's probably a fair criticism. I see the lighter side of life. I think that's what keeps me sane. If you want to say what upsets me, reading the report I read last night about child abuse leaves me almost physically unwell.

"When I go and visit a home and a seven-year-old tells me bed is a bad place for her, and starts telling me why ... I carry that with me ... and probably feel it in my heart. To counter that, there probably is a lighter side that comes out, there is a laugh that's too loud."

Will that have to change, that frivolity, if she is to be taken seriously as a minister? "I hope not. I'll fight to keep it. With all I've got. I don't think I could do my job without having it. Because I deal with the desperate and they're vulnerable, I actually think that it could be overwhelming if I couldn't occasionally laugh too loud."