Revised biography reveals what John Key thought about ‘dirty politics’

On September 20, John Key swept to victory to become one of New Zealand’s most successful and popular Prime Ministers. Rocked by scandal, the 2014 election campaign was one of the most brutal – and riveting – in recent history. But what was Key really thinking and feeling in the weeks before New Zealanders went to the polls, and was he really as calm and confident as he appeared to be as he hit the campaign trail?

These were questions that political journalist and biographer, John Roughan, wanted to put to the Prime Minister when he interviewed him for the updated 2014 Election Edition of his bestselling book, John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister. What Roughan found was a John Key in remarkably good shape, unfazed by Dirty Politics, the hacking and spy allegations which threatened to derail his re-election campaign. This mood, in stark contrast to how ruffled Key had been by the John Banks ‘tea tape’ drama in 2011. What changed?

Key was clearly buoyed by his strong showing in the polls and the overwhelmingly positive reception he received while on the road. Key sensed that support was better than in 2011 or 2008, describing it as ‘the selfie election,’ writes Roughan, Key’s confident demeanour throughout a bloody campaign, anything but stage-managed. Indeed, both he and Stephen Joyce took a fatalistic approach to all the shenanigans, adopting the motto, ‘expect the unexpected.’ Remarkable, given the daily drip-feed of unknown material shaping the election agenda and grabbing media attention.

One of the biggest grenades of the campaign went off when yet another Cameron Slater email came to light, this time, implicating Minister of Justice Judith Collins. Key calmly slept on the information before talking to Collins the following morning, saying ‘This thing has turned up and we’ve got to deal with it’, before accepting her resignation. It was a defining and cathartic moment for Key, seemingly swinging the campaign away from ‘dirty politics’ and back to issues of policy. And then suddenly it was over, and Key was re-elected to serve a third term.

John Key has been called a political phenomenon. Having scaled the heights of one career, as a foreign currency trader, he came home from the world's financial capitals to start another. Six years after entering Parliament, Key was Prime Minister – the most rapid rise of a New Zealand politician in our lifetime. In this updated edition of John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister, Key shares his account of defining moments in his career, including the bruising 2014 election campaign that nonetheless saw the National Party increase its majority in government.

The updated of John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister is published by Penguin Group NZ on October 30, 2014; the first edition of Roughan’s book, published in June 2014, has now sold in excess of 20,000 copies.

John Roughan is a journalist who has been observing and writing on New Zealand politics for the past 40 years. Born in Southland and educated in Christchurch, he graduated from Canterbury University with a degree in History and a diploma in Journalism. He began his newspaper career on the former Auckland Star newspaper before travelling extensively, working on newspapers in Japan and the United Kingdom at the time of the election of Margaret Thatcher. On his return, he joined the New Zealand Herald and was posted to the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Wellington in 1983. There he covered the dramatic final years of the Muldoon era and the beginning of the Lange-Douglas Government’s rapid reforms of the New Zealand economy. In 1988 he became the New Zealand Herald’s chief editorial writer and in 1996 he was invited to write a weekly column which continues to appear in the Weekend Herald.

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