PM forces smile, arrows and all

Topflight students FEMKE MEINDERTS and MICHAEL CHRISTIANSON hear about the heat in the kitchen while consumers are reassured that there is gain as well as pain in tariff cuts

The look on the Prime Minister's face said it all.

Amid fallout from Jenny Shipley's worst credibility blunder, here was someone who understood how lonely it is at the top.

The sympathetic words of wisdom came from the president of the Auckland Institute of Technology, Dr John Hinchcliff, while welcoming the besieged Prime Minister to the Apec Student Company Achievers Forum.

Quoting an Indian philosopher, Dr Hinchcliff said "you can tell how significant a leader is by the number of arrows in the back." As a smile of relief passed across Mrs Shipley's face, he added "I'm sure our Prime Minister could resonate with that thought."

"Leadership is complex," Dr Hinchcliff told the group of international and New Zealand student achievers. "I think its complexity is largely underrated. None of us can meet all of its demands."

While many of the young achievers' successes would be in private or in small arenas, he said, their failings would be fully exposed to the rest of the world.

"And it makes it difficult ... whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. In fact, sometimes I think the CEO's position is like an aerial or a lightning rod where all the anger of the firmament comes through to your office, so it can be quite lonely being an administrator ...

"The challenges are to balance work and your play, to keep respecting people even though they tear you to pieces, to find ways of cooperating. The best way to destroy an enemy is to cooperate with them, and really to speak with hope."

Mrs Shipley, who later refused to answer questions from a New Zealand Herald reporter on the $1 million John Hawkesby payout debacle, had words of wisdom of her own for the students.

"To be an entrepreneur," she said, "you have to understand where the beginning is and the potential that can flow from it until it is really something extremely big.

"So I know you have a huge task, just as I do. I relish my task despite the arrows in the back ...

"See challenges as something that simply need to be dealt with, managed and got past."

* Michael Christianson and Femke Meinderts are seventh formers from Rangitoto College in Auckland and Sacred Heart Girls' College in Hamilton. They were chosen from 150 nominees to cover meetings associated with the Apec conference.