Lisa Owen interviews Labour MP Andrew Little

Headlines:

Andrew Little says voters wanted “greater clarity” about Labour’s potential coalition partners and the party should have clearly spurned Internet-Mana

He says Labour shares “a lot of things“ with the Green Party, as well as New Zealand First.

“We shouldn't have had anything to do with Internet Mana. We didn't make that clear, and I think people were then a little bit suspicious of us…”

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Lisa Owen: You're with The Nation, and lawyer and former union boss Andrew Little reckons he has the creds to unify the fractured caucus and says he'd dump some of the party's flagship policies to woo back voters. So could the twice-beaten New Plymouth candidate be the dark horse in the leadership race? Well, Mr Little is with me now.
Andrew Little: Good morning.
You would've heard David Shearer saying there that if David Cunliffe were to be re-elected as the leader of the party, it would be divisive, highly divisive, for the caucus. Do you agree with him?
Well, I think it would be difficult, but this is a democratic process involving the party, the caucus, the affiliates, and in the end, the principle we live by is we live with the democratic outcome, and I think people would find a way to work. We all know what the task is ahead of us, which is about rebuilding Labour, reconnecting, and we would all just have to muck in and find a way to do that in the most constructive way possible.
Do you think everyone could do that?
We don't have a choice. We've lost three elections in a row. Our vote has been going down. We're down to 32 MPs. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel. So I think we've just gotta keep focused on the task ahead. We have to be honest with ourselves about what lies behind the situation that we're in, and we've gotta muck in and make it better.
So, you've thrown your hat into the ring. What's wrong with the other two candidates that makes you think Labour needs you instead?
I'm standing because I think I have something to contribute. I've got a proven track record of leading an organisation, of change, of engaging with people and turning organisational performance around. Listen, the feedback I've had this week has been absolutely phenomenal, and a lot of people who didn't vote Labour or who have previously voted Labour and haven't this time, the message is pretty clear — it is a combination of the policies that we had; they just didn't like some of the things, and the superannuation age is one of the key things. And they wanted a clearer understanding about what Labour stood for, stands for, and greater clarity, for example, about who our coalition partners might have been.
OK, we're going to come to that, but I just want to ask you, you're pitching yourself as stable and steady. Does a prime minister, though, need to have pizazz as well? Do you need pizazz to be a prime minister?
You need to have a good sense of judgement, and you need to have a sense about what sort of New Zealand that we want. We don't have at the moment.
Are you the anti-personality candidate, if you like, in the sense, say, that Shane Jones was all about the personality when he ran for the leadership? Are you the counter to that?
People are looking for a style of leadership that is about setting out a very clear direction for the country. Listen, there are real concerns that a lot of New Zealanders have about things like growing inequality, the fact that people who work really hard can't get ahead, young couples who save and save year after year and still cannot get into their first home — those are real issues. And people want to hear about what the New Zealand that we all want to live in and to have is going to look like, not just next year, not just focus group by focus group, but actually in 15, 20 years’ time. People are thinking about the success of their kids and what that looks like and what a successful New Zealand would look like.
You mentioned clarity around coalition partners. That might not have worked for you in the election. So under your leadership, would you get closer to the Greens or further away from them, as Shane Jones was pushing?
The critical lesson I think we need to learn from this election is that voters want to have at least some certainty, some clearer direction about who our coalition partners might be, and I think we were too unclear about it. How that might work and who that might be, that's a discussion that we need to have over the next two or three—
But your personal view, should you have made it clear that the Greens were— as they offered— a deal before the election to campaign together?
We share a lot of things with the Greens, stuff on social policy we share, some of the environmental policy we share. We share a lot of stuff with New Zealand First in terms of economic policy. Manufacturing was a classic one. We share something with each of those parties. There are other parties there too that we kind of talked about I think we probably have less in common with. We shouldn't have had anything to do with Internet-Mana. We didn't make that clear, and I think people were then a little bit suspicious of us, and that, I think, bounced back on us.
So were they, as Dotcom said, 'poison', Internet?
Well, he said that.
Yes. For your brand too.
New Zealanders looked at that whole thing. They didn't like the idea of a very wealthy individual writing out a massive cheque, funding a campaign that was really about his self-interest and a bunch of other people signing up to it. People were really uncomfortable with that. And I think our failure to be a little bit clearer about that — we actually rejected that too — didn't help us.
All right, thanks for joining this morning, Andrew Little.

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