Tim Groser, National party, List

Tim Groser

Did Don Brash's example of a late career switch give you any inspiration?

No. I've been thinking about it for 30 years. The thing that clicked it is a letter from a very senior [overseas] minister who heard me give a speech one day and said "why are you wasting your time here? You should be in politics". And I thought, "Why not?"

It's a very different career.

It brings together two sides of my own interests and personality - an abiding interest in good policy plus my early background as a professional actor. I was a professional actor from the age of 8 right until I was 23. Both my parents were professional actors. I've done soap operas in New Zealand, Downstage, radio. I came up with Paul Holmes and Sam Neill through the system and I just guess that politics brings those two together.

What was the soap?

Close to Home.

And what were you?

I can't remember. It wasn't a large part.

Jim Sutton said he thought you had been a Labour person.

I had a Labour Party background. My background is remarkably similar to Don Brash's. We both came out of Christian socialist families and unfortunately studied economics and, in the process, changed our young views. I was a Labour supporter up until the age of about 21.

How did this courtship happen? Who approached you and was it a big decision?

It was a huge decision for me. Who approached me? Well it arose in a dinner party conversation involving people I won't mention, in Geneva, and then Judy Kirk, the president of the National Party, sent me an email and said "Do you want to take this further?" And I've been dealing with Judy Kirk.

Was it Fay or Richwhite?

No it wasn't but don't go through the list of every New Zealander in Geneva please, because I'll stop answering. I got a concrete offer from the National Party board on Wednesday at three o'clock and at four o'clock I told Simon Murdoch [Foreign Affairs secretary] that it was my intention to stand and the cleanest thing would be for me to retire from the public service.

What else have you done?

I was ambassador in Indonesia. I've been in Treasury, the Prime Minister's advisory group, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade under different names, I've been chief negotiator for New Zealand in the last round, the Uruguay Round, and I was CEO of Asia 2000.

Would you like to be a trade negotiations minister?

That's way into the future. It would be deeply inappropriate for me to say that.

What happens in eight weeks in Geneva?

On August 1 [last year] I finally got the key ministers - Jim was in the room, he was one of the key ministers - to a paper that dramatically changed the negotiations [of the Doha round] for the better. It included the elimination of export subsidies and a whole lot of other valuable things. Since then I have been working to build up the level of specificity, if you like, the detail into this and I have to produce the same deal again in eight weeks time. I have got the raw material to do it and I intend to do it.

Come hell or high water?

Come hell or high water. There is a quotation that appeared about me in Unlimited. It said one of the chief negotiators said "Groser's style is a mixture of almost obsessive determination, single-minded effort and huge good humour." That's fair.