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The real Malcolm Turnbull exists – in Auckland

Tim Dick

John Key provides a lesson to all Australian leaders: after a decent stint, secure your place in political history by going before you're pushed.

If John Howard is the exemplar in the negative, the leader who stayed too long, the New Zealand Prime Minister's declaration that he will leave office next week is a rare instance – far too rare – of a successful leader leaving unforced at a time of his choosing. No recent national leader on either side of the Tasman has achieved what Key will soon pull off.

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NZ PM John Key's surprise resignation

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announces his resignation at a press conference on Monday. Vision courtesy ABC News 24

And there's no Australian prime minister in any danger of needing to heed Key's lesson. His eight years at the top of the Beehive is longer than the tenure of the last four Australian prime ministers combined. He won office early in Kevin Rudd's first tenure as prime minister, and Key's successor will be just the third leader of New Zealand in 17 years.

While Key has been prime minister, Australia gave him five counterparts, and the odds of the latest, Malcolm Turnbull, deciding to follow Key and leave after winning three elections in a row are surely slim.

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Key also has a lesson for Australians, at least those who bother to know something of the leaders of neighbouring nations, and as far as New Zealand's more progressive politics can influence this side of the ditch.

His lesson is that electorally successful conservatism can come with a reasonable cloak, it doesn't have to be harsh, it doesn't have to be consistently mean. In other words, the real Malcolm Turnbull can exist, and he does. He just lives in Auckland.

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Like Turnbull, Key is immensely rich and largely self-made. He was raised by a single mum in a housing commission house, and made a fortune in offshore finance. Unlike Turnbull, his accent is as broad as those of his constituents, and he came to office with a thumping mandate, managed his cabinet well, and maintained his popularity with a consistency of which Australian leaders would scarcely dare to dream.

Any leader makes mistakes, and Key made plenty. A prime minister pulling a waitress' ponytail was a dreadfully painful one – not to mention an assault on an innocent worker. He was tempted to play the clown too often, although more often than not his humour came off without international incident. He lost the flag debate, and led at a time of a large increase in inequality – a terrible problem seen in many Western economies.

Yet despite the domestic criticism, he has continued a remarkably stable period of usually sensible administration, with his National-led government picking up where Helen Clark's Labour left off. It is an experience that should be the envy of much of the democratic world.

Australian politicians only occasionally take heed of the New Zealand experience; they should take much more. In the past 20 years, it has become a more self-assured country, one that continues to deal with its past by addressing Maori grievances, one that responsibly deals with its international obligations and one that has a culture of open government from which Australia could and should learn a great deal.

If events make the leader, Key has been plenty tested: the Pike River mine disaster, the global financial crisis and three catastrophic earthquakes. But leadership isn't just about reacting to events. It's about achievement and timing. When to do something, and when to stop. Key knows when to stop.

I interviewed him twice; once as opposition leader, once in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake in which 185 people died. He likely won't remember either, but I will never forget the second.

Halfway through our interview, held in an office in a safe building at the city's Antarctic airport base, a large aftershock struck. The ground rolled for likely a far shorter period than I felt it did, but it firmly shook us both.

Yet Key didn't skip a beat, concentrating on finishing his message to an international audience. He got the job done, said his goodbyes, and left the room.

Tim Dick is a Sydney lawyer and former Herald journalist.

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