Purple shirt and a copper's shoes

George Hawkins

The taxi driver, on hearing that I had been to see George Hawkins, said: "I feel sorry for him."

This is an extraordinary thing for a Wellington taxi driver to say. What Wellington taxi drivers have to say about politicians - and they have a lot - is along the lines of, "He's a moron". Or "He's tough; he's a good one".

I didn't, obviously, go to see George Hawkins because I felt sorry for him. But I was beginning to.

Being felt sorry for is for politicians a loser's look. As is the PM sticking up for you against the bullying opposition. It makes you look like the little boy being teased by the horrible kids next door.

But let's not get carried away. I really wanted to see him because the sight of an MP squirming in the line of fire is a spectacle we find riveting.

This is not nice. But it is true.

It was most unlikely, I was told, that we would be seeing Hawkins. His office had the snip about what had been written about him and, said the press secretary, the minister had had quite enough scrutiny. He didn't need any more.

But here we are at the Beehive and the Police Minister walks into his office wearing shoes as shiny as a copper's and a shirt that is an unlikely shade of purple for a bloke attempting to avoid scrutiny.

He would, no doubt, say that this is nonsense. Just to be a stirrer, at the end of the interview I ask his press secretary whether he'd had much difficulty talking Hawkins into doing the interview.

Only a bit, he says. And Hawkins splutters a bit in return. I'd asked him whether it was true that he was terrified of the media and he said,"Well I used to work for them so I know what they're like". He was once, briefly, a press photographer.

"So, you are terrified," I said. And he said, smartly, "Not at all. If I was you wouldn't be talking to me."

Fair enough too. But it has to be said that at the outset he appeared about as keen on talking to me as he would to have dinner with Ron Mark, the NZ First MP who has been giving him stick in the House about policing matters.

Partly, you suspect after observing for a while, that his immobility - he sits very still; his face is hard to read - is to compensate for the stroke he had in the 1990s.

He has "very little control in my right side". He says about the stroke that "I don't talk about my disabilities. I don't think people should make allowances for disabilities.

"I mean I limp along and my voice is far different from what it was, but it's my voice and that's what they get. That's what I put up with and unfortunately for others that's what they have to put up with too."

While he says, "It's just one of those things," and "I can talk, so why worry?" it must be annoying to have people look at him a little sideways.

Still, he is a politician and he's had worse things to put up with.

He has also dealt out worse things. It is Hawkins who once, in an act of pure parliamentary theatre, flung 30 pieces of silver at Peter Dunne when Dunne left the Labour Party.

I wonder if there is, lurking beneath his "why worry" persona, a theatrical nature. "Oh that was just politics," he says. In fact he thinks that it is his lack of theatrics in the House which is "one of my problems. If they gave out Oscars in Parliament they'd have to get a trailer for Winston to take his home each year."

That's a cheap shot, but it's not a bad one from the MP dubbed the fumbler. He is often criticised for his performance in the House - and those criticisms have escalated in the past weeks over his handling of the police handling of 111 calls.

He claims to be unconcerned. Certainly he does a very good impression of being so.

"Oh," he says casually, "I think most of the commentators do it from ignorance. I'm quite happy facing an election at the end of the year and I will again remind the people of Manurewa [of his electorate work] who are actually very warm towards me."

The good people of Manurewa cannot, however, I remind him, keep him in Cabinet.

He shrugs: "Oh I think the extent of the vote we get all goes into a mixture of how your colleagues think about you in the Labour Party. In the Labour Party it's not one person picking a Cabinet, it is the caucus picking a Cabinet and," airily, "I have wide support".

The caucus, if you believe Hawkins, is something akin to one big love-in where everyone supports everyone else. Why, Annette King, he says has been helping him in his quest "to give up as much of the food I shouldn't have. She used to say, "You can't have that, you shouldn't be eating that". How strict of her.

"Oh, she used to take the odd chip herself so I wouldn't eat it. Very caring."

He doesn't sound like a man who has been bullied mercilessly. He sounds like a politician without a care in the world. The uncharitable would say that Hawkins has been stuck in the mire before - so he ought to know how to wade out of it.

I wonder whether he thought Helen Clark was as caring as King when she said he was a victim of bullying. "Well, I heard that on the radio and I think that in the end an opposition will do what an opposition will do."

Which is to say he didn't think he was bullied? "Well, what I'm saying is that whatever is chucked at me in the House I will stand up to."

Right, well, that's as clear as that mire. I try asking him that if he wasn't being bullied, did it bother him that the PM said he was being bullied?

This simply makes him laugh very hard. "Look, what the PM does is always wonderful. In fact, if you asked me to find a fault, I couldn't."

You can't help but think that either he ought to be more worried about his recent portrayal or that he's decided to pretend not to be. His office obviously was.

I ask him if he'd like to have another go at his response about women being more worried about car crashes than being attacked, but he wouldn't.

When I say it sounded a bit, to put it mildly, flippant, he says, "Well sometimes reality can sound different from what you want it to."

He is of a sanguine nature. He is "one of those people who get out of bed each morning and think "Great, another day'."

Why not? he says. "What worries have I got?"

He has been a politician for long enough to know next week someone else's foot will be in their mouth. He says that "certain events" in his life - he doesn't like to talk about the death of his son or anything personal - have taught him that the smaller concerns have been "relegated to their proper place".

He's extremely proud of the fact that he is "the longest-serving Minister of Police for donkey's years".

He is almost as proud of the fact that he has learned to wash his own socks and not take them home for his wife to wash, like "a lot of MPs".

He says "donkey's years," and "neat" and his tough old pollie's face goes all soft when he talks about how he's been married to Jan for 38 years.

He's an old-fashioned electorate politician, a bloke's bloke: "I still know how good a beer tastes at the RSA with good company".

What he is really enthusiastic about is going down to his garage and working on his model of "New Zealand rail in the early 60s. From Papakura to Huntly. It's one 64th scale."

He's a cagey old politician. I learned that much. And this: best of luck to anyone attempting to bully him. I feel sorry for them.