Q+A: Helen Clark
HELEN CLARK: I’M NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE MĀORI
PARTY NOT SUPPORTING MY BID FOR UN SEC GEN
Ex New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark says she’s
received support from a “great stadium of Kiwis” for her
bid to be the UN Secretary General, and she wasn’t worried
about the Maori Party withdrawing their support for her
bid.
“Well, they flip-flopped, didn’t they, so, look,
it’s neither here nor there in this contest. You never
expect 100% support for anything. I think that the high
level of support and interest from Kiwis has been absolutely
phenomenal,” she told Q+A’s Corin Dann.
Miss Clark,
who is currently administrator of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), said she was not going to rate
her chances at the moment but conceded it was a “very
tough geopolitical contest”.
“Is it time to move from
the traditional low diplomatic profile of appointees to
someone with a leader profile like myself? These are the
issues that the Security Council members are thinking
about,” she said.
END
Q
+ A
Episode
29
HELEN
CLARK
Interviewed by CORIN
DANN
GREG Helen Clark is not
giving up on her campaign for the UN's top job, despite her
poor showing in the secret ballots so far. Ms Clark compared
the race to the shoot-out at the OK Corral, the famous gun
battle between lawmen and a gang of outlaws in America’s
Wild West.
And when Corin met up with her in New York
this week, he asked what that meant for her
chances.
HELEN Well,
look, there’s a pack. There’s a couple of candidates who
are doing bit better than others, but then there’s a group
that are quite closely bunched. And the issue has been to
keep standing and to sustain the level of support, which
means that when the coloured ballots come out, where
permanent members indicate their vetoes, to still be
standing for that
time.
CORIN Are the
big players, the big veto players, are they going to veto
you?
HELEN We
don’t know of any hard veto. What we know from previous
selections of secretary generals is that the cards are
played here and there, sometimes the start of the
negotiation or a discussion; sometimes they’re the end
game. So a lot is unknown about how this will play
out.
CORIN Are you
happy with the support that you’ve been getting from the
New Zealand government and John
Key?
HELEN Total
support from the New Zealand government, from the Prime
Minister down. Murray McCully has also been extremely
active, the whole Foreign Ministry and, of course, the great
stadium of Kiwis at home, where there’s been incredible
support in so many
ways.
CORIN Look,
there has been a lot of support from home, but not everybody
has supported you. The Maori Party has come out and said
that it doesn’t back your candidacy all these years on
from that issue of the foreshore and seabed. Is that
disappointing for
you?
HELEN Well,
they flip-flopped, didn’t they, so, look, it’s neither
here nor there in this contest. You never expect 100%
support for anything. I think that the high level of support
and interest from Kiwis has been absolutely
phenomenal.
CORIN I
just wonder whether you were hurt by that and whether that
hurt your chances. I mean, there are obviously a lot of
countries with indigenous groups. I mean, they might well
vote against you because of
that.
HELEN No, I
don’t think it registered on the Richter scale here, and,
of course, Maori voters are found among the followers of all
political parties, not least the one that I used to be in,
so they’re prominently associated with
myself.
CORIN So
where do you put your chances at the
moment?
HELEN Look,
I’m not even going to go into probabilities. This is a
very tough geopolitical contest. There are many factors in
it. One should not take anything personally about anything
that happens in this contest, because I believe I have
widespread respect within the General Assembly. The
issue’s going to be is it the time for someone like me
from a region of the world which has never had a secretary
general but hasn’t ever staked a claim before? Is it time
to move from the traditional low diplomatic profile of
appointees to someone with a leader profile like myself?
These are the issues that the Security Council members are
thinking
about.
CORIN You
yourself have alluded to the fact that maybe the UN
doesn’t want a strong, capable leader. Is that hurting
your chances that you’re seen as perhaps too much of a
reformer?
HELEN Well,
the traditional profile is the low-key diplomatic, but I
think many people look at the challenges the world is
facing; they say the UN actually doesn’t seem to be doing
so well on a number of fronts, particularly peace and
security. So is it time to bring in someone with leadership
skills, with the Rolodex created from years of operating at
a top leader level to lead the organisation to work with the
member states to be more
effective?
CORIN If
you look at Syria this week, the UN looks ineffectual. Where
is the UN Secretary General on this issue? What can they do?
What are they
doing?
HELEN Well,
I think there probably is more space for the UN in a number
of the crises and not just at the point of the crisis or six
years into a crisis, as we’re heading for with Syria. It
really goes back to the work the UN can do to mobilise
support for building more peaceful, more inclusive
societies. Most of the problems that have ended up on that
Security Council agenda are fundamentally problems of
development, of developing the kind of institutions and
society which will talk its differences out and not fight
them
out.
CORIN Here’s
the really interesting thing, though – we are entering a
phase, aren’t we, where developed countries are seeing a
real backlash from middle class, from lower working class
who aren’t getting ahead in this age of globalisation. Are
we going to see this return to protectionism, anti-migrant
sentiment? It’s a real worry, isn’t
it?
HELEN I think
we need leadership on these issues. Migrants are a source of
wealth both to the countries from which they come, because
remittances are so important, and to the countries they are
coming to. The truth is that many developed countries have
demographics which are ageing very very rapidly. They need
new people in the workforce. So leaders have to step up and
make these points, that migration can be good for both the
source and the receiving
countries.
CORIN Look
at New Zealand. Even the Labour Party in New Zealand is
starting to question the numbers around migration and push
that issue strongly. It is really starting to take hold in
New
Zealand.
HELEN Well,
we’re a country founded on migration, since the great
canoes came down from Polynesia. We were the last
significant land mass on Earth to be populated by human
beings, but once we started coming, we kept coming across
the rich diversity of humankind. So is New Zealand the
better for migration? Of course it is. It is the better for
having accepted refugees? Of course it is. Would its
development have stalled if it hadn’t had migrants? Of
course it would. Let’s make the leadership case for
this.
CORIN Are you
worried that the Labour Party in New Zealand, for example,
is starting to raise those issues about
migration?
HELEN I’ve
no idea what the level is. I’ve no idea what any political
party is saying about
it.
CORIN But the
general
message?
HELEN But
what I’m saying is that without question migrants have
been an asset to New
Zealand.
CORIN I
mean, the other factor we’ve got, of course, is Donald
Trump, Brexit and that sentiment that is rising around the
world, that dissatisfaction, a lot of the blame going
towards migrants. How do you cope with
that?
HELEN Again,
I think you have to come back to the facts, that migrants
come to fill places in the workforce where often there
isn’t the local labour supply. In New Zealand the migrant
system has long been skewed towards points around skills and
other factors, so it’s been a calibrated system. In this
country, a lot of the very poorly paid service jobs are done
by migrants. I remember having a conversation with a
prominent American business leader when I was prime
minister. He said, ‘I just hope they don’t send the
migrants home. How would we cope? We wouldn’t have the
workforce here.’ This is the
reality.
CORIN Should
New Zealanders be worried about a Donald Trump
presidency?
HELEN I
wouldn’t even want to comment on the American campaign.
There’s always a track when we’re so exposed to what’s
happening in American politics, probably hearing more about
it than we are about our own society at the moment and
it’s almost like everybody gets personally involved, but I
have to keep a high level of
detachment.
CORIN Fair
enough. What do you think about the state of social
progressive movement around the world at the moment? How
does it move
forward?
HELEN Well,
I think there’s always been people prepared to write off
political movements or parties, but what goes around comes
around. People try something for a while; it doesn’t work;
they try something else. They try something; they get sick
of it; they try something else. The truth is that the modern
politics in democratic societies has become a bit like a
consumer exercise. You try something; you try something
else. I think parties just have to roll with the punches and
keep putting out policy that they think will be good for the
country and do their best to sell
it.
CORIN But I
just wonder – is the left really a broad church any more?
For example, you managed to run a broad church when you were
leader of the Labour Party. How necessary is
that?
HELEN Oh yes,
it’s
possible.
CORIN Necessary?
HELEN And
it’s necessary, because to win an election in New Zealand
or probably any Western society, you must command the centre
ground. You have your strong core of supporters, but you
must get the centre ground voters, and I think I was
successful in that for quite a lot of
years.
CORIN Any
parting advice for Andrew Little as he tries to navigate his
path
forward?
HELEN Well,
my advice is just get out, be yourself and promote the
policies that you really think will make a difference for
New
Zealand.