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16 November

Note: All transcripts are copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used PROVIDED attribution is made to TVONE and Agenda

ANDREW LITTLE.

RAWDON Labour Party President Mike Williams has not surprisingly been silent since last Saturday's election, his trip to Australia to investigate John Key became a major campaign issue, now he's standing down, and the man he said earlier this year on this show would succeed him, Engineers' Union Secretary, Andrew Little, has confirmed he's going for the job. Mr Little has just returned from observing Barack Obama's campaign in the United States and joins me now. Good morning Andrew we'll talk about Barack maybe in a minute but first of all what went wrong?

ANDREW LITTLE – Secretary E.P.M.U.

Oh I think it would be a little bit presumptuous of me at this point to suggest what went wrong on the Labour campaign, I think we were up against a very strong sentiment for change, I think although the feedback we were getting was that people were happy with the range of policies nevertheless people wanted a change in terms of line up of face and what have you so, and I think for the party now the question now is take a bit of time to reflect and look back, I think there's a range of people who we need to talk to, people who traditionally might have supported us but either didn’t vote this time or changed their vote, take a bit of time to listen and discuss and debate before we sort of work out where to from here.

RAWDON Who were those people?

ANDREW Well if you have a look at the polling and the poll results you look at a large number of people in key seats key areas, South Auckland typically amongst them and Maori seats where people just didn’t vote.

RAWDON Why didn’t they, why wasn’t the turnout better in your heartland seats?

ANDREW Well there's two – well possibly a range of possible explanations, one is that people thought the outcome was inevitable so they didn’t vote, another is that people were simply confused about what was on offer they didn’t see a great deal of difference in the policy options they saw a difference in line up of personality, they didn’t think that was enough to get out and vote or if they were disenchanted with Labour they weren't persuaded enough to vote for the alternative so simply didn’t vote at all.

RAWDON So when they were feeling some disenchantment it wasn’t helped by the fact there were various possibly defining factors in the campaign certainly in the latter stages of the campaign which may have done a particular amount of damage, do you think that should be held as accountable to what happened?

ANDREW Well I think as the party gets on and discusses it both the parliamentary side and the party organisation side I think those things will become more apparent, you know I think there is an expectation for a longstanding party in government to rise above certain types of issues and what have you and not get particularly negative on some of the personality type issues, that might be an issue that comes forward but I think people are going to have a bit of a chance to get through the raw emotion of the last week or so and then do a little bit of sober reflection as we head down to the end of the year and the beginning of next year as we start to think about the rebuild.

RAWDON Now you say that a lot of traditional Labour voters didn’t really see too much of a difference didn’t really know which way to go so may have stepped out completely, did this thing come down ultimately to the personalities involved, I mean personality politics was talked about a lot, did people genuinely see John Key as a more attractive proposition?

ANDREW Yeah I mean possibly, I think when you’ve had you know a leader like Helen Clark in place and a co-leader like Michael Cullen in place for the length of period they’ve been there, they’ve fronted every major policy, every major decision, every major announcement, people do just start to look around and say well maybe it is time for a different face, somebody different in our living room, it sort of comes down to that personal connection,, and I think you know all credit to the National Party they ran a very good campaign, they had a very credible front person in the form of John Key.

RAWDON So should Helen Clark take the blame?

ANDREW I don’t think Helen Clark should take the blame I think to the extent there's any blame that needs to be attributed I think the party needs to look back and just look at whether it's policy issues, whether it's organisational issues and I know for a fact that there are organisational issues involved, I think there was this overwhelming sentiment that had built up for some time, more than a year or so, of people saying we want something different, we want a different personality.

RAWDON And then the campaign decided to target the trust issue you’ve just said John Key was very credible so that was a completely wrong tactic wasn’t it to go for trust, particularly with the Mike Williams' affair going to Australia.

ANDREW I was out of the country when the Mike Williams' affair as it's called was being unfolded, but I think in terms of trust issue I think there was an obvious question here which was as the world and therefore as New Zealand enters into a very difficult economic situation here is a party, the Labour Party who's been in government for nine years, has performed very well economically, very credibly economically, and therefore who would you trust to lead us through a very difficult economic situation, this is the party that significantly reduced public debt, started the work on building our capital base, deepening our capital through things like the Cullen Fund, KiwiSaver, and the obvious question to ask was who would you trust to take us through a difficult time economically?

RAWDON If you had been President at the time would you have gone to Australia, as a sort of last ditch attempt, or at least that’s what it came across as to try and ram the trust message home, would you have gone?

ANDREW I'm not quite sure what the objective of that exercise was, and as I say I wasn’t around when it was being run out and I simply don’t know enough about it, I think I would have been very careful about putting some information out there that was intended to attack or undermine a person's integrity if that wasn’t absolutely unequivocal.

RAWDON So it could have been pretty unwise of Mike Williams and maybe Helen Clark to have taken that approach although she says she didn’t know?

ANDREW I'm not quite sure what involvement Helen Clark had in that but I think that’s an issue that the party will go over in terms of when the New Zealand Council meets later this year, it'll go over those sorts of issues.

RAWDON Now you keep talking about the fact you were in the US at the time what did you learn from watching Barack Obama's campaign?

ANDREW I think well first of all his campaign started a long time ago, I mean you might arguably as some people say that his campaign for presidency started 17 years ago, but in terms of more recently when he announced his intention to nominate for President in February 2007 he had in addition to building an incredible team around him, he had a very clear plan about using technology, using modern techniques, the social networking sites, using those to build a community, to leverage off that to build a fund raising machine, using techniques pioneered by Al Gore and Howard Dean before him, and he created this incredible machine. Now he had context and time and a range of other issues on his side that really created less a presidential campaign more a movement that was unfolding in the last months of that election campaign. So I think in terms of modern political campaigning there's certainly a lot more that we can look to and learn from there than we have done in the past.

RAWDON You talk about time, now we've got three years till the next election, if you do become President in the next week or so and this is announced, is that where your focus is gonna now be, looking forward to the next election, to the next campaign given what you’ve learned out of America, or are you now going to be focusing more on trying to sort of rebuild where the party's sitting politically?

ANDREW Oh I think it's both, I think there's no question we have to look at organisational issues on the day in those electorates where the turnout wasn’t so great, those electorates where we know there was some confusion about the get out the vote activities on the day, we need to look at that, we need to look at our own fund raising. I think the days of the large single donations and large corporate donations are pretty much over and then in terms of the policy issues that’s really a matter for the parliamentary side and Phil Goff will need to work on those, but for the party organisation itself we need to look at the branches, see what happened, see what support they did or didn’t have.

RAWDON So on the fund raising side you're talking about Labour Party supporters ten dollars here 15 dollars there that sort of idea rather than waiting for the big one off gesture sort of donations?

ANDREW Yeah and we've done a bit of that with the Labour Century Fund which was small contributions over a lengthy period of time, repeated contributions, the small giving sort of parish church type sort of approach, but I think we can be more systematic about it, but more importantly we can build some activities that generates the opportunities to do that sort of small giving.

RAWDON Alright you mentioned Phil Goff will obviously be looking at the policy areas, but you know in three years time this incoming government is gonna be judged on how they handle the economic crisis, so what does Labour have to do to counter that, because this is what you have to be thinking about right now.

ANDREW Well I think Labour's got its core principles about the place of people in the economy and I think we all recognise the need for the government's gonna have to play a very astute and very smart role over the next three years and possibly longer as we deal with the fallout of the world economic situation. The one thing that Labour stands for and the Union Movement stands for is making sure that in dealing with those difficult economic issues that people and working families in particular aren’t marginalised and aren’t sidelined in the way that public policy deals with those difficult issues, and so Labour will be keeping an eye on that and the Union Movement will be as well.

RAWDON Right, because I mean the reality is that the new leadership of the Labour Party sits pretty right of the party you know, you’ve got Phil Goff and Annette King who were effectively supporters of Roger Douglas 20 years ago over David Lange, David Cunliffe's not exactly sitting on the left side of the party, so do you see part of your role as in trying to stabilise it, to make sure that the left side of the party does remain anchored into the party philosophy?

ANDREW I think the left right divide issue is overplayed somewhat in Labour, I think Labour is and has been under Helen Clark's leadership a much more united and unified party than certainly it was in the 1980s, we got through the schism of the 1980s and I think all components of the party have worked pretty well for a lengthy period together and I don’t see that changing under Phil and Annette.

BRIAN FALLOW – New Zealand Herald

Andrew there was one issue that was strangely quiet during the election I would have thought was tailor made for Labour which is ACC privatisation, neither the Union Movement nor the party seemed to make a big deal of it, was that deliberate or what was happening there?

ANDREW I'm not sure I agree with that Brian, I mean there was a day long seminar organised in Wellington a month or six weeks ago wholly on the issue of ACC and Sir Owen Woodhouse was there and he presented and spoke and it was about affirming the place of ACC and the important role a publicly owned ACC plays in terms of workplace accident compensation as well as rehabilitation what have you. ACC is one of those issues that unions take very much to heart and I think the Labour Party does as well. I think a lot of discourse and debate on ACC throughout the campaign was simply sidelined by other issues and it's interesting you say that there wasn’t a great deal about it, I saw a lot of material about ACC appearing in various media statements and what have you.

BRIAN Yeah but I didn’t as a consumer of news, it seemed to be crowded out by other things and yet I would have thought that this was one area that you might have got over this perception of Tweedle Dum And Tweedle Dee.

ANDREW Yeah and we can generate stuff and do activities but we don’t decide what gets reported in our media, so there were activities organised around it, there was plenty said about it, I know that in many of the meetings I went to ACC was an issue that questions were asked about and there were discussions about it. The exercise that the EPMU undertook during the election was our work rights check list, ACC was a part of that, we evaluated the parties in parliament at that time on it, and we got that material out to our members, so there was stuff around ACC and it still remains an important issue to us.

NEVIL GIBSON – National Business Review

Andrew unions are going to be on the back foot for the next few years and I really want to ask you in your role as a trade unionist rather than running the Labour Party how you see things panning out because obviously your suggestions are gonna be put through a critical mincer aren’t they and you'll have less say.

ANDREW Well I think – I mean John Key did make some interesting overtures this week, he met with Peter Conway of the CTU and Brenda Parlett and talked about some issues there, there was the issue about KiwiSaver and the changes that the National Party have promoted about that. Obviously issues like the 90 day dismissal period is gonna be a thorny issue for us but equally I think there are going to be plenty of issues that we do need to have debate and discussion and discourse with the government on, I think the context that the Union Movement has with people particularly in National probably less so in ACT, those contexts are strong enough for us at least to be part of a discussion, I think John Key also indicated that when it comes to economic issues he wants to hear from both Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions, so we'll continue to play a role but the National Party is as the party in government is not the party that trade unions have historically or typically supported so the debate might be a little different, but I don’t foresee we will be and I think it would be a mistake if unions were completely left out of that discussion and debate, and in fairness to John Key and Bill English I don’t see them saying unions won't be consulted at all on key issues.

RAWDON How hard will it be for you to effectively divide your role, on one side you're going to be sitting there as President of the Labour Party on the other side you're going to be negotiating for the EPMU with the National Party, is that gonna be difficult?

ANDREW Listen I think probably for the National Party they may see some conflicts there that will be difficult again, my personal contacts of people in the National Party are such that I'm confident that I can have a decent discussion with people about it I think and experience I had probably two or three months ago I got an invitation to speak to a business group in Auckland, an invitation unfortunately that I couldn’t pick up but the invitation came from Catherine Judd who's the President of the ACT Party, now when I looked at that I didn’t for one moment think this is Catherine Judd ACT Party I'm not gonna have a bar of it, I saw it as an invitation to participate in a discussion about a policy issue that we clearly have an interest in and had I not had another commitment would have been keen to have picked it up and I told Catherine Judd that, so I think – I expect people will have a level of maturity enough to see that I in terms of EPMU Secretary can continue to make an offering on issues, but I don’t also – I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some possible tensions and difficulties with that.

BRIAN Is there anything on National's agenda that really scares you as a unionist?

ANDREW I think probably what it comes down to is some underlying values on the Industrial Relations front, I think if you have a look at the range of policy promises that the National Party went into the election on there is a lot of crossover and you know we know in fact as the campaign wore on or as the year wore on they simply compromised on a range of issues that made them I think more palatable than might otherwise have been the case, but I think when it comes down to it there is an underlying set of values which is that when push comes to shove, when things get really difficult they are more likely to be more willing to sell out on protections of working people's interests than not, and that’s the fundamental difference.

NEVIL Andrew there's been a bit of a rise in union radicalism especially among casual workers and the low paid and obviously that’s a challenge to yourself as well as the establishment, but how are you gonna win back all the workers who have deserted Labour in places like the West Coast? I mean there's only less than half a dozen seats where Labour won the list vote.

ANDREW Yeah when I look at some of those areas I think – I know from our union in particular we've got pretty strong membership down there, I think people on the West Coast, I know our mining members will be looking askance at the fact they now have two MPs on the coast, one is a National Party MP the other is a Green Party MP, so I'm not sure that’s what the miners necessarily would have liked to have seen, so we'll continue to do what we do, work closely with our members, and we'll continue to advocate their interests and deal with their issues as we always do. I think one of the things that is likely to happen as we go through more difficult economic times is issues like job security, things like redundancy and redundancy provisions and benefits are going to come more into play. I think the reality is that if you're in a union you're more likely to have some provisions and benefits in relation to redundancy that enable you to get through a difficult time, if you're not in a union you're less likely to have those sorts of provisions.

RAWDON Are those the sort of concerns you're hearing from the union at this stage, is that where the focus is?

ANDREW I think certainly our members do express concern and anxiety about job security, particularly you know we're a big union in the manufacturing sector, and even though we now have a dollar that makes us arguably more competitive in terms of exporting the reality is world wide demand is so depressed that you know the manufacturing sector is unlikely to do particularly well for a longer period yet.

RAWDON Do you think 5.7% which is the forecast for unemployment, do you think that’s realistic or do you think it's gonna go higher?

ANDREW I think it's hard to say, we're round about just over 4% now, it's interesting in the US you know you’ve got their starting point at the moment is an unemployment rate of over 6% and it can only get worse there, in fact it is getting worse by the day. We start a little bit further back which is a good thing. I think that a lot will depend on what happens with our principal export sector the primary production dairy sector and although we know commodity prices have been coming off we also know that the dollar going down it makes our produce a little bit more attractive in overseas markets and I think it's gonna take a while to see how that balances out, but I think we are expecting unemployment to go up and I think what's gonna be important is the policy responses into that, to make sure that mitigates and ameliorates the worst of that.

RAWDON Andrew Little thanks very much for joining us.