KEY POINTS:
After David Skilling of the non-partisan think tank, the New Zealand Institute, waded into the climate policy debate he became a hero or a rotter, depending on your point of view. I'd prefer to think he's a rotter because a rotter is always going to be more interesting.
So let's get to it. "Hello, David Skilling, carbon addict," I say. This was Jeanette Fitzsimons' line, he says. "Yes, I saw that when it came out," he says.
He didn't think it was funny. I thought he might. I also thought he might well have predicted that the Greens wouldn't be ecstatic about his New Zealand Institute report, which proposed New Zealand take a "fast follower" approach to climate change targets rather than trying to be a world leader. And if nobody jumps up and down about your think tank's thoughts, you don't get coverage.
"I mean, I think it's unfortunate," says Skilling," I think it's unfortunate language because it mischaracterises what we're saying."
Surely, with his big brain, he saw it coming. "Well, in the sense that climate change is an emotional debate, so in one sense, directionally, it's not surprising that people get het up about it."
Directionally? No, I have no idea what he meant either and it came in the middle of a much longer sentence, which is the way he talks. He is used to talking to people; he's in keen demand as a speaker.
He is not so good at being interviewed, although he has a lot of practice because people are interested in him - and it is partly his job to keep them interested. He would say that he doesn't want them to be interested in him at all, but to be interested in his think tank and the ideas it generates.
He says he'd be more than happy if he never opened another newspaper, or saw another telly news item, with his face illustrating a story. He is not naturally comfortable with being the face of an organisation, but he learned to do it the way he has learned to do everything: through discipline and hard work. He has never had media training or used PR consultants.
He is, I think, a good sort of bloke and not a rotter at all and certainly everyone who has interviewed him seems to think this too. He has been described as genial, and that seems about right. The problem was that, while he knew I wanted to talk to him about him, he never quite got his head around this concept.
I don't think he was wilfully avoiding talking about himself. He's just not interested in it as a topic for discussion. He probably thinks he did talk about himself, non-stop, for an hour. He didn't. He talked about the institute but to him the two are inseparable: he is the institute and it's his job to sell it.
The other thing which makes him difficult to interview is that he poses questions to himself all the time. This is a good trick because it means he can be asked, and then answer a question he's interested in, but it's bloody annoying when it's supposed to be me asking the questions.
His questions and answers to himself are serious and high-minded because he is a very serious, high-minded young thing (he's 36, which makes him a mere baby) and always has been. He was going to be an accountant but didn't like it, so he went back to university and studied economics then got a job at the Treasury.
He did a stint at Harvard, for which he had to bond himself to Treasury because they'd helped pay for his study. Then, the ingrate, he came back and proceeded to start giving speeches and writing reports which collided with Treasury policy.
I thought they must have found him incredibly annoying and wanted shot of him but he found this an amazing notion.
"No, I don't think so. I'm still on good terms with them and still speak to folks in the Treasury and I get on personally just fine with them." Still, he says it was an uncomfortable time because he was bored and "a square peg in a round hole".
You might think to look at him that he has always been an odd fit. He is very tall and thin and it is the one thing everyone knows about him. He gets in first by bringing it up himself, in conversation with the photographer about possibilities for the picture.
"Let's sit on the pavement taking a shot looking up at David to emphasise the fact that he's incredibly tall and skinny." It has been suggested previously, he says, that he be photographed next to the Sky Tower. He is not without humour but always firmly vetoes that particular suggestion.
In fact, he is not at all sensitive about being "six foot six and a half." He thinks this is because he wasn't the tallest 8-year-old or even 15-year-old, he just kept on growing through his university years so you might say he grew into his height. The only time he's at all self-conscious about it is when he's at a do and "you know that you're the face towering above everyone else, so am I uncomfortable about it? No, not particularly, it is what it is."
He is supremely, serenely confident, as you would have to be to set up a think tank in your early 30s with the assumption that people are going to take your ideas seriously. He is saved from arrogance by his thoughtfulness; he regards his role in society as coming from altruistic motives - in his case his Christian faith.
His father was a Baptist pastor who later went back to being an accountant. Skilling has always been a Christian, he never rebelled against it and when I said I thought children of ministers often did he said this was quite possible but he hadn't seen "any research" to prove it. He said this mildly, so I didn't say that I'd never seen any research to show that God existed. He could probably have provided something compelling.
He has always been good and hard-working and conscientious; has never tried drugs or been drunk.
"No, I don't do stuff like that. I probably sound like I'm 56." He says he's not one of these instinctively brainy people, not wanting to be falsely modest ... So he knew he had to work hard and he felt an obligation to do so. "This is going to sound a bit twee but an obligation to contribute ... there's a sense that I take seriously the fact that I've received various gifts and I think that I've been blessed so I take that responsibility pretty seriously in terms of trying to give something back." He goes to St Paul's in Symonds St and the only time he was at all uncomfortable during our hour was when I asked about his faith. I wondered if it was hard to talk about being a Christian and he said, "aah, I think you become a bit of an oddity and I think it's easy to caricature, so do I hide it? [Another of his questions to self]. No, I don't. I guess the way in which faith influences what I do doesn't influence the specific words I use, the topics I pick up, but it's probably a good chunk of the reason why I'm doing the specific work I'm doing."
The Left didn't much like his stance on climate change; the Right did. He won't say which way he votes except to say that he's voted "across the political spectrum, not to the extremes". He says if politicians have tried to cultivate him he hasn't noticed. The institute's view is that "we annoy everyone equally over time".
I thought he might be interested in what the perception of his politics might be, but he wasn't much. No research on it, quite possibly. I asked, a little desperately, what he did for fun and he laughed. "Ha, ha. Well, I do media interviews."
I'm glad he had fun. He seems a nice chap for a carbon addict - he unplugs things at the wall, by the way. And if I felt a little superfluous to requirements at times, that's what you get when you attempt to interview a think tank.
