The return of ‘Luigi’s ferret’: Why Michael Laws wants to be an MP again after 30 years

He then pointed to what’s considered one of Luxon’s biggest challenges, without assigning it to anyone in the party.

“If you’ve got a communication problem, you probably need to sort it out.”

It’s been 30 years since the Cromwell resident, Otago Regional Councillor and broadcaster for The Platform was an MP.

Laws knows he doesn’t have a chance of winning Waitaki, a safe National seat, but he’s also number six on the list of a party well above the 5% threshold.

This means the 69-year-old is about to give up his Central Otago lifestyle for the bustle of Parliament.

In a wide-ranging interview, Laws told the Herald why populism is the backbone of democracy, what’s wrong with the public service, and why he has the moral high ground, following his resignation from Parliament three decades ago over a fictitious signature, to claim NZ First as the “conscience” of the coalition.

His second stint as an MP will also mark the renewal of a political partnership with party leader Winston Peters that started in the 1980s, when Laws was his senior researcher and press secretary.

Laws then joined Peters in Parliament as a fellow National MP after winning the Hawke’s Bay seat in 1990 and 1993, before following Peters to NZ First in 1996.

His role, as described at the time by the Herald’s head of business Fran O’Sullivan, was “Luigi’s ferret”.

“Luigi was the pejorative term she used for Winston because his hair was in such a wavy way that he looked Italian,” Laws said. “The ferret was somebody who goes and searches for the rabbit.”

His favourite ploy was for Peters to make what seemed an outrageous claim that Laws, using the Official Information Act (OIA), had evidence to support. They would then await a denial before producing it.

Those were halcyon times when the OIA was actually a transparency tool, instead of something that can be easily sidestepped or an opportunity for government departments to collude with ministers.

Fixing this is one of his reasons for standing again.

One of the key strategies for Laws in his early days in Parliament was to popularise Peters by making him a leader of popular emotion.

“I have never found populism to be a bad thing,” Laws said.

“I’m sick and tired of the liberal elites and the ideologues who argue that populism is some sort of tyrannical mob rule. It’s not. If you are not translating the public will into action, you are sabotaging democracy.”

Isn’t there sometimes a tension between evidence and populism?

“No, there isn’t. Because what happens is that populists who gain political power then decide to ignore populism, and decide to become authoritarian in their responses.”

It’s been a long-held position for NZ First to have social issues decided by referendum. This “gets rid of the elites, the lobby groups, the self-interested identities seeking some form of special favour”.

“That’s democracy in its finest representation.”

It can also be, as described by western philosophers and America’s founding fathers, “the tyranny of the majority” risking the repression of minority groups.

Laws called this a “lazy, inadequate, anti-intellectual phrase”.

“It’s used by elites to argue why a special part of the community should be given a special favour.

“You either live in a democracy or you don’t. We trust the common sense of the common people. They’ll make better decisions than the bureaucrats of Wellington.”

This leaves little room for leading an unpopular path that’s “the right thing to do”. This phrase is associated with former Prime Minister Jim Bolger and his pioneering of Treaty of Waitangi negotiations and settlements in the 1990s.

At Bolger’s funeral last year, Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro described this work as “a game-changing moment in our history”, even though it wasn’t popular with National’s base or some of Bolger’s Cabinet colleagues.

Was it wrong for Bolger and his Treaty Negotiations Minister, Sir Douglas Graham, to start this process without a public mandate?

“Yes, and they needed one,” Laws said.

“That’s why it didn’t work. That’s why the resentment is there. They weren’t prepared to trust the New Zealand people with entering into the conversation.”

The same thing happened with co-governance under Dame Jacinda Ardern’s Government, he added.

“If you are going to move in any radical direction, you need to describe what the problem is that you’re trying to solve. Share that with the public. Socialise the ideas that you want to promote, and then allow genuine feedback into it. That didn’t happen,” Laws said.

“And one of the greatest problems that we’ve got going forward now is the state of our race relations in this country.”

When his candidacy for this election was announced, Laws caused a stir when he said he’d want Broadcasting and to scrap Radio NZ.

He told the Herald those comments were “puckishly playful” and he’d be happy for Act’s Paul Henry to take Broadcasting.

Instead he has his eye on the public sector and local government.

“The greatest threat to democracy isn’t foreign players. It’s not far left or far right groups. It’s unelected bureaucrats,” he said, pointing to upcoming report No, Minister, from the NZ Initiative.

The report includes a survey of 718 public servants. A strong majority (70%) said they served the public rather than the elected government, while as many as four in ten said ministers shouldn’t make the final calls on policy.

“They actually think they run the country. It’s about time to disabuse them of that concept,” Laws said.

Whether those views are then translated to conduct undermining ministers, and to what extent, is unclear.

Laws would like to see ministers appoint chief executives, instead of the Public Service Commission.

“We’ve got to get back to pre-State Sector Act [1988], in which the minister’s call the shots and the public sector are there to say, ‘Well, if you are going to do that, can we suggest some ways that you might be able to?’

“But to obfuscate, frustrate, and deny, and then be allowed to mislead Parliament and still keep their job – anybody in the private sector would be gone.”

He alluded to the immigration scandal and Nic Blakeley, head of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

“How do they keep their jobs? Makes me very angry [Blakeley offered to resign but the Public Service Commissioner didn’t accept it].”

Whether Laws gets to be a minister in a re-elected coalition remains to be seen.

The election is tight, with polls showing that Luxon, if re-elected, might be without senior ministers Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop and Paul Goldsmith.

This would not only leave the party weaker in terms of Cabinet talent, but also remove two of Luxon’s speculated successors, strengthening the hands of potential successors who do return to Parliament.

It might also increase the appeal of a shared Prime Ministership.

When the Herald put being Prime Minister to Winston Peters, following his public meeting in Invercargill last month, he didn’t dismiss it.

“About 38% wanted me to be the Prime Minister in the 1980s. Truly,” Peters said.

“The reality of it all is it’s for them to decide in this vote ... Like anybody who knows about steeplechasing, if you don’t get over the first hurdle, you can forget about the next.“

Laws said leadership would “inevitably” be a part of any coalition negotiations, but it was “an emboldened NZ First and Act” that would lead to “more conscience, steel, more definite decision-making”.

“I don’t know that you need to be prime minister to make sure that happens.”

Peters also had a stint as Treasurer, which he negotiated with National following the 1996 election. Wouldn’t control of the finances provide NZ First with more ability to push through its agenda?

Laws referred the former chair of the Financial Markets Authority, who is number eight on NZ First’s list.

“Who’s got the best claim, better than any, for Finance Minister over the last 20 years? Craig Stobo.

“NZ First brought in Craig Stobo for a reason. They’ve given them a very high list place. They’re not going to ignore those skills.”

It might seem a bit rich to hear NZ First described as the coalition’s “conscience” from Laws, who resigned from Parliament and from the Napier City Council in 1996 following the Antoinette Beck affair.

That was the name signed on a cheque for polling work that Laws had commissioned as a Napier councillor, but no such person existed.

Nor was it a good look because a company doing the PAYE work was part-owned by Laws’ wife at the time, Karen.

In his political memoir, The Demon Profession, Laws described the use of the fake name as a “minor late-night prank”, while the company made no profit as the work was essentially done as a personal favour to him.

The Audit Office noted that Laws had failed to declare a pecuniary interest, characterising it as “an honest mistake”. But he took the blame for Parliament being misled on the issue and resigned.

How would he respond to anyone who replied to his “conscience” description for NZ First with the words “Antoinette Beck”?

“I’d say you’re an idiot basically because there were no laws broken, no crimes committed.”

Laws said Parliament’s Speaker at the time, Sir Peter Tapsell, tried to talk him out of resigning because he considered it a relatively minor transgression.

“But I believe in the three As: accept you’ve done something wrong, apologise, and atone. I can now reoccupy the moral high ground and say, ‘I atoned. Have you?’ In public life now, if you make a transgression, you’ll often find the acceptance and the apology but zero atonement.

“I know that I can talk about it because I’ve walked the walk.”

He pointed to Ruth Dyson, who in 2000 resigned her ministerial warrants for the then-Labour Government after being caught drink-driving.

“Did she resign from Parliament? No. Had she broken the law? Yes. And there are plenty of examples like that if I was to take you through the last 30 years.”

Laws didn’t quit the game altogether, writing NZ First’s policy platform for the 1996 election, as well as running its campaign.

“It was my decision at the end of 1996 to step away. The best decision I ever made was resigning from Parliament. I restored my integrity, which had been lost,” he said.

“And what have I done since then? I’ve become a writer, a broadcaster, hosted my own TV shows, raised three small children, run a business, been a mayor [of Whanganui, or as he would say, Wanganui].

“In other words, I had not just one life, but about three or four. I look back now and say, thank God – [leaving Parliament was] one of the best things that ever happened.”

And now he’s ready to return.

“You’ve probably worked out that I’ve got lots of ideas. And you’ve probably worked out that I’m not going to Wellington just to eat my lunch.”

Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.