Labour Saving: A Memoir

by Michael Cullen

In this clever, witty and detailed memoir, Hon Sir Michael Cullen describes his lengthy political career, including his major economic policies. Among the many highlights are the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, also known as the Cullen Fund; Kiwisaver; and the Working for Families package, which sought to reduce inequalities. He also had the unenviable task of steering the economy through the onset of the GFC, drawing on the surpluses created during his careful stewardship of fiscal policy from 1999. He was also a key negotiator in Treaty of Waitangi claims, a stage of his political life of which he is deeply proud.As one of Labour's most trusted and senior party members, he has had a box seat during the highs and lows of the party's fortunes. In Labour Saving Sir Michael outlines his strong philosophy of egalitarianism and his social democratic approach to politics.

Genres: Politics

Kindle Edition

Published June 1, 2021

Reviews

[Claude Tellick · Rating 3 out of 5]

a thoroughly comprehensive and detailed account of the career of one of new zealand’s most prolific and able policy makers. at times very dense with said policy making, and if i wasn’t such a nerd i might even call it dry. this book gives great personal insight into some of the most tumultuous few decades in new zealand political history. this was a very rewarding read but to call it captivating would be somewhat disingenuous.

[Simon Mee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel quite defensive about the wider reception to Labour Saving. We have been gifted with insights into the political and legislative process by a 9-year Minister of Finance. It’s a detailed appraisal and advocacy of the policies of two Labour Governments, with the later being particularly underrated with what it managed to achieve. That Labour Saving seems to have passed New Zealanders by with a collective shrug kind of niggles at me.

I accept that time pressures (Cullen was dying as he wrote this) probably precluded some tougher editorial decisions but what we have is a magnum opus, a retelling that I doubt will be replicated for the Fifth Labour Government.

"Centre" and "Left", not just "Centre-Left"

These two very simple basic beliefs are buttressed by two ultimate values that I see as the aim of political action: security and opportunity.

Cullen wants to get across his two conceptions of the Labour Party:

- it is a party of the Centre; and

- it is a party of the Left.

While it is common to run those terms together, Cullen is right to distinguish each descriptor. While the Roger Douglas pulled the Fourth Labour Government in a neo-liberal direction in significant ways, Cullen demonstrates that it still:

- made genuinely left leaning social and economic changes; but

- “kept the hand on the tiller” in terms of competent fiscal management

Cullen’s nine years as Minister of Finance in the Fifth Labour Government goes much further in achieving the above, reflecting Cullen’s own cogently stated governing philosophy while balancing the claims of other parties on whose votes Labour depended under MMP.

You should read Labour Saving in light of what Cullen is trying to get across. I agree there are (possibly overly) detailed descriptions of draft legislation and the focus tends to be on those within his purview rather than a comprehensive overview. However, I personally find his explanations (with minor exceptions) very clear. Viewing the details within the aforementioned guiding framework:

- Cullen sets out how those changes made sense from a leftist perspective; and

- how they were economically achievable and/or demonstrated good stewardship.

Cullen, the fiscal conservative sets limits on the leftward tilt. Cullen believes in free trade and the markets generally, and describes the Greens as having a tendency to scientific fuzziness as well as implicitly criticising their unwillingness to support NZ Super’s engagement with international equities markets.

Labour Saving is an implicit rejoinder to voter apathy – the government you choose makes a difference. Sure, Cullen thinks the Centre Left one is both better for you and more rational, but the Minister of Finance would hardly say otherwise. The goal of the book also makes defensible the “devil in the details:, particularly with employment law which remains one of the biggest points of difference between the competing ideologies. I suspect this is because the law is (relatively) easy to amend, and (relatively) easy to show results.

Intellectual Snark

While there is plenty of legislative nuance in Labour Saving, there is one thing that seems to receive limited remark – Cullen has got claws:
The Mother of all Budgets had produced more miscarriages than any other in New Zealand’s history.

Labour Saving evidences why Cullen was given plenty of rope to strangle others (yet rarely himself) in the House. Cullen’s insults are on the line in terms of personal attacks, but he seems to – just – toe it, even with the backhanded compliments:

Without labouring the point, Trevor could be said to have had wide experience as a practising heterosexual.

There’s a real sense of perception to Cullen’s judgements, as well as an ability to convey things with what is left unsaid:

My other ex-student to achieve some prominence in national politics was Michael Laws, who could not be described as any kind of loyalist.

I worry this is something that reviews fail to convey – while you could see them as ungracious, they reflect the dynamics at play in politics, and the things that turn on personal foibles, or even perceptions of those foibles. Cullen was in all the right places with a first class intellect, so they are worth taking onboard and even laughing with at times.

I do wish to go gentle into that good night. Raging against the dying of the light is a pointless exercise, certainly after a reasonably long and very fulfilling life. I am not fighting a battle against my cancer. It will do what it will and, in the meantime, I will do what I can. Death is no more than the space we make for others to live.

I can’t quite give Labour Saving five stars. Too much of that rating would be tied up in my perceptions of unfairness in its current lowly rating (and readership). It does get stuck at times into “one damn thing after another” and Finlayson structured his own book better. Despite that, it is a good book because it tells you what Cullen thinks good governance means, and he’s the kind of guy to be listened. It’s also much more readable than a number of the reviews imply, and it is a part of New Zealand history that we should engage with more.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gave it a skim for the most part as it’s pretty heavy on financial and economic policy that doesn’t float my boat, but despite the skim I am left with a sense of Cullen’s intelligence, transparency and integrity and that he did a lot in his time in politics for the betterment of the NZ population.

[Gabrielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I ever feel imposter syndrome again I’m going to remind myself of this day, the day I finished the driest political memoir I’ve ever attempted.

There is a lot going for this if you want a summary of Hansard 1984-91 and 1999-2008. I highlighted huge passages about health sector legislation so, you know, I’m part of the problem re it’s aridity.

Would have welcomed more about his personal life (dude had a raging affair with a fellow MP in the 80s which led to them both leaving their partners and getting married - this is the stuff of legend) and less about how much of a stellar employee the chief executive from TEC (Janice) was. And forever grateful he doesn’t mention the time he caught a lift with someone in the beehive in 2008 who in an awkward attempt to make small talk asked him what he had just bought from the pharmacy.

[Jonathan Corfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Cullen (1945-2021), former deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Attorney General, Minister of Social Development and Minister of Tertiary Education amongst a host of other portfolios, died last week.
We tend not to mourn too many politicians, possibly because their ideologies don't align with ours or they just come across oozing smug.
Michael Cullen oozed smug.
But Michael Cullen was clever, had a capacious intelligence, a ready wit and was immodest enough not just to know it but to write it down in a memoir. This sounds as if I'm lining him up for a hatchet-job but over the course of his career he did a lot of good. It's just that some of the good he did was from knee-capping people in the debating chamber in such a way that, if you weren't on his side, was quite brutal.
Take this for example:
"But I did say that in the context of the Orewa speech 'seemed to indicate that Don Brash had been asleep for well over a century and had woken up to discover, much to his surprise, that Māori had not died out. And he was not comfortable with that."
Okay, I included that because it made me laugh like a drain, but I can imagine Don Brash reading that and blinking with slow and injured comprehension.
This memoir is particularly good of you are interested in the history and workings of parliament from 1981 to 2008. There's not terribly much about Cullen personally. What there is is a personal assessment of the intents, capabilities and behaviours of a raft of political names over that time. Friends get praised, foes get pilloried. If you are in the National party and get mentioned without being knifed, as Christopher Finlayson does, it means Cullen had a grudging respect for you. There aren't many though...
He left a number of legacies that we'll be reliant on and whose presence makes the country a far more stable prospect: Kiwisaver, the Super Fund etc. He also leaves a comprehensive memoir that will probably only be of interest to political tragics.
After reading this you can describe Michael Cullen in a number of ways: immodest, smarmy, keenly intelligent, principled, a good steward of our economy for nine years, witty, assiduous... you can't say that he wasn't born to be a politico and I wish there were a few more like him.
Bastard.

[Grant Hodgson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed, some might say too detailed, account of a remarkable and accomplished political career. While it could be seen as too self- congratulatory, there is at least, a lot of real achievements to be self-congratulatory about! One gets a real insight into the pace and intense burdens of being a Minister of Finance in even such a small country as New Zealand, and of the importance of having a clear sense of the historical context of policy making, and of having a clear process for clarifying the goals, guiding principles, and desired outcomes of policies being developed and implemented. Cullen is mainly genial and positive in his recollections, occasionally waspish, but usually with cause. He unaccountably omits two occasions when I was able to tease him face-to-face, the first when a budget secret had been released early, I met him marching along Lambton Quay, and hailed him “ Aha, a man ahead of his time!”, and the second some time later when I bumped into him in Thorndon New World, he with a shopping basket containing milk and bread etc, and he laughed off my remark that I hadn’t realised he conducted the CPI survey personally!
This book is useful reading for any student or observer of NZ politics. One only hopes that he has sufficient time to reflect on, and expand on the sections explaining his political philosophy, the role of government, and the clear lessons to be learnt from his experience , ( and that obviously have been learnt, by Grant & Jacinda) on how judicious steering of the economy along Keynesian lines represents comprehensive refutation of austerity policies.

[Tanya TL · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I pick up a memoir, especially a former politician's, I'm looking for indepth analysis of people and events, and not really a list of things they did while in power. So this book was a bit dry for my liking, although it does a good job of listing out the notable work that Cullen did in government and also in opposition. But I thought it was lacking a lot of the vibe I got from 9th Floor by Guyon Espinor and Tim Watkins which was what I was after. He does have a sly sense of humour and that comes out a bit especially when describing other MPs but for the most part, it was just a list of things he did and who he worked with.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a dry but informative read, Michael Cullen's is the architect of some of New Zealand's most productive policy's and schemes, such as Kiwi Saver, National superannuation. Sir Michael MP for St Kilda (Dunedin) has enriched New Zealander's lives. I'm not a labour supporter but I can appreciate that Michael Cullen was an integral part of forming the New Zealand we currently live in. This was written while Michael was critically ill and therefore he delivered an honest and poignant narrative.

[Andrew Ritchie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very heavy on policy detail, this is definitely one for those interested in the formation of policy over a long period of time, the heavy detail makes it quite a dry read.

For me it was a book of two halves with the second half, when Cullen was in government being far more interesting.

Cullen gives an interesting insight into the difficulties of coallition govermnent and frustrations of a new govt obsessing over undoing good that a previous party had achieved, sometimes seemingly just for the sake of it.

Cullen achieved a lot in his career and this covers those major milestones well.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is his memoir but not much interesting unless you were a politician at the same time or are very political minded

[John Priest · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book.

Got a little policy/nerdy at times.

[Quinn Vugler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book - very funny and Insightful