Who is John Key?
On Saturday July 26th July the NZ Herald published the second part of an in depth study of John Key. Buried towards the end of the main article in this coverage we find what the three journalists assigned to research and write these stories concluded about the central question of who the man is and what he would like to do if he became prime minister.
"Labour labels Key slippery and jumps on any difference in anything he says. Such as when, the day after taking over as leader of National, he told Radio New Zealand he firmly believed in climate change and always had. Labour unwound to mid-2005 when Key told the House the Kyoto Protocol was a hoax, and that he was somewhat suspicious of climate change.
Key tries to to ignore the attacks although they seem to irk him. "They try to claim really two things: inconclusive and slippery, that's their latest word," he says.
"Firstly they're factually incorrect: I've lived an entire career where the mantra is your word is your bond. the fact that I'm in tune with public opinion doesn't mean I'm slippery." The difference between the 2003 Key and the 2008 Key, however, raises the question of which John Key is the real Key. Which Key would be Prime Minister.
Key admits to being more cautious about the phrases he now uses ....
In a somewhat unusual simile, he likens it to being a magician with a magic wand.
"You know, you don't quite realise how powerful it is until you get to pick the wand up and you realise very small movements have quite strong and far reaching reverberations," Key explains.
"My underlying philosphies remain the same."
So his beliefs remain the same, the difference is in the language?
"Yeah, I think that's largely correct."
This is a startling admission which suggests that the real John Key is actually the John Key who originally entered Parliament, not the version we see today."
page B6, NZ Herald July 26, 2008
In the paragraphs preceeding the passage quoted above, the Herald journalists had listed things Key had said in earlier years, the "2003 John Key". He had said that it didn't make much sense for the Government to own three-quarters of the electricity generation industry. He could see "no compelling reason to own Air New Zealand". He said New Zealand was "missing in action" from the war in Iraq. In 2002 he said there had been "enormous growth in the number of people on the DPB, and where people have been, for want of a better term, breeding for a business". In 2003 he suggested that MPs should look at the United States, "which has a minimum of two weeks holiday a year, and the economic prosperity in the US is so much greater than New Zealand's".
After the most comprehensive study of John Key to date, we must conclude that this is the real John Key.
Alister Barry, July 2008