‘‘Otepoti Dunedin has been my place to stand ever since my parents made that fateful decision to head down this way. I feel at home within its egalitarian roots, its creative energy, its ‘just big enough’ vibe.’’
- Anything Could Happen
Grant Robertson has a big story to tell - MP, finance minister, deputy prime minister during one of the most momentous governments New Zealand has had,
He could have started his autobiography at any of the major events of the Ardern government, such as Covid or the mosque shootings,
Instead he begins, and ends, the story of his life with tales from Dunedin: initially his family moving here when he was aged 6, and ultimately his return to live here aged 53.
‘‘Dunedin is a massive character in the book because it’s such a big part of who I am,’’ Robertson says.
‘‘I wrote this book after I moved back here, and I was sitting and staring out at the harbour when I was writing a lot of it, and I was reflecting on that journey that I was on and had been on.
‘‘I love the city and I love the way that it’s still, 25, 30 years from when I last lived here, it’s still got a lot of the character that I remember from growing up.’’
The family settled in a rental in the St Clair hills before moving to the flat and Pretoria Ave. Robertson went to St Clair Primary School, Macandrew Intermediate School and then King’s High School, where his passion for history, politics, reading and rugby - not necessarily in that order - was nurtured and allowed to flourish.
‘‘King’s was a fantastic school with great teachers,’’ Robertson enthuses.
‘‘We had teachers in areas like classics with Brian Frost and history with Paul O’Connor and so on, where we had teachers who just lit a fire in me, and my brothers, in terms of things we were interested in. It was also a very, in the mid-1980s, a school that was on the up, but it was still a school that had a catchment that had a real mixed bag of kids in it, and so we learned a lot about other people. Yeah, it played a really big role in helping me build my confidence and find the things I was interested in.’’
‘‘During my fifth, sixth and seventh form years I kept a diary. Reading it back as an adult is a humiliating experience. The level of self-indulgence and grandiose self-importance is appalling.’’
It wasn’t a sense of destiny which led to teenage Grant Robertson keeping his inner musings for decades to come: ‘‘I’m a terrible hoarder, that’s what it is,’’ he says, laughing. ‘‘All the books I’ve bought in my life, I think I’ve kept most of them, to the chagrin of my partner. And so the diaries were in these boxes and I came across them during one shift ... I did at that point consciously stop and think, you know what, I might just hang on to these - I think I must have been in politics by that stage - just in case.
‘‘But yeah, they won’t be being published any time soon, I can tell you that.’’
The bits of them that make it into, or which inform, Anything Could Happen - Robertson’s just-published memoir - are fascinating though. The reader, and the original author for that matter, can clearly see future Grant staring out from the eyes of young Grant.
‘‘I try to get that across in the book. I can see the kid who was a bit frightened and a bit scared of a lot of things,’’ he says.
‘‘Over my life, I’ve worked hard to get over that but that sort of imposter syndrome, that’s still there, and I think it’s there for everybody. And also, I’m still a sports nerd. I’m still a bit of a politics nerd.’’
And a music nerd. Robertson grew up watching the Flying Nun label’s ‘‘Dunedin Sound’’ bands and is still a dedicated gig goer and record buyer. The title of his memoir is a nod to that: Anything Could Happen is also the name of a song by The Clean.
‘‘By my fourth form year the word ‘gay’ was one I understood and I was pretty sure that that was what I was. I was also very sure that it was not something I should be telling people.’’
That he was gay dawned on Robertson just as the divisive battle over homosexual law reform played out in New Zealand.
While Robertson was blessed with a supportive family and friends, it was also a staunchly religious upbringing. That, coupled with the inherent peer pressure in an all-boys school, southern conservatism and Robertson’s own insecurities meant that while he wasn’t exactly in the closet, he wasn’t exactly out and about either.
As the book reveals, for Robertson - as well as many other young gay people - alcohol became a self-medicating drug, and it took years for him to develop a mature attitude to drink.
‘‘It was hard, and I didn’t properly come out in the kind of conventional sense of that phrase until I moved to Wellington,’’ he says.
‘‘I struggled a bit with my sexuality while I lived in Dunedin. I told my family, obviously, but Dunedin is not a huge city, and certainly back then didn’t have a particularly big gay scene ... As I say, the day I walked into a dance and saw one of my former school teachers, I knew I was going to have to find bigger pastures.’’
Life at home was not always easy - Robertson’s parents often argued, a young Grant keeping score from the adjacent bedroom. But nothing prepared the family for the seismic jolt of Doug Robertson being arrested for theft as a servant.
When his father’s malfeasance was uncovered and prosecuted, Robertson was a second-year student at the University of Otago: he had left home and gone flatting. The first of the boys his mum had been able to contact, Robertson was tasked with finding his brothers and telling them what had happened.
Robertson has never hidden what his father (who died in 2009) did, and has spoken and written about it before.
Anything Could Happen reveals that although their relationship never fully recovered, father and son remained close, Grant being a frequent visitor to prison. In recent years he has been a strong supporter of Pillars, a charity that provides support to the children of inmates.
The case posed various issues for Robertson - not the least of which was needing to show student support staff a photocopy of the front page of the Otago Daily Times to back up his statement that his father’s income was zero.
However, it was no obstacle to his being elected president of the Otago University Students Association in 1993.
‘‘When I look at Dunedin people, particularly students, I think you’re having a different experience [to his youth] because the world’s different,’’ Robertson says.
‘‘But I can still identify those extraordinary moments of change in someone’s life when they’re at university, when they make new friends, and they see the world differently, and they find out who they are. I look at the students and go, you’re still doing that, even if the environment you’re in is slightly different.’’
Robertson was a diligent OUSA president and continued to work for students in the following years, moving to Wellington in 1984 after being elected vice-president of the New Zealand Students Association.
He took his first tentative steps into national politics soon after, inspired by Helen Clark. He joined the Labour Party and after making the rookie error of turning up to a meeting with a notepad and pen became secretary of the Thorndon branch.
In 1997, Robertson took a job with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and soon after was promoted to a prestigious role at the United Nations.
It was a dream job and Robertson loved living and working in New York ... but there was one thing - or, rather, one person - missing from the picture.
‘‘I had wanted a longer-term relationship for some time but had not met anyone I really connected with. From the beginning I felt differently about Alf. He was so warm, friendly and loving. He instantly relaxed me and made me a better person to be around.’’
In 1998, Robertson, who had long since retired from playing rugby after a very ordinary career as a prop, was cajoled into dusting off his boots to be part of New Zealand’s first gay rugby team. He packed down at No 8, and behind him at halfback was a man called Alf Kaiwai, a Treasury employee.
They soon became a couple, and the separation enforced by Robertson’s move to New York not long after only made the heart grow fonder. Kaiwai eventually joined Robertson in the United States, and the men have been together ever since, Robertson eventually becoming GG (Grandad Grant) to four mokopuna.
Kaiwai is not a man who seeks the limelight and, in Anything Could Happen, Robertson does not seek to push his life partner into it.
However, it is an inescapable conclusion that Kaiwai has been, and still is, a source of ever-present comfort and encouragement.
‘‘Alf has always been incredibly supportive of me,’’ Robertson says.
‘‘Even though he’s not into politics, I think his values are very strong and have a political element to them. The world of politics is not his world, but coming to Dunedin, he’s loving it here, so that’s been a fantastic part of this next stage of our lives.’’
In the 2000s, though, Kaiwai was in New York, far from family and full of homesickness. In 2001 they returned to Wellington for Kaiwai to return to Treasury and Robertson to take up a role as a political adviser to Wellington Central MP (and future Otago regional councillor) Marian Hobbs.
‘‘Marian is one of the most intelligent and considered politicians I have ever worked with. But these qualities did not always translate to a coherent speech in the House.’’
Marian Hobbs was much maligned as a politician - her colourful way of expressing herself and blunder-prone ways did not help. Robertson is the cheerleader for a revision of Hobbs’ career, and credits her for teaching him many political lessons.
‘‘She’s such a principled and passionate person. It made me believe that you could do that and be in politics. She was never a fan of the game of politics, and so I really admired her for that, and she’s a lot of fun as well.’’
From Hobbs’ office Robertson came under the wing of two equally as influential, but far sterner, figures. Brought into then prime minister Helen Clark’s office, Robertson reported to the redoubtable Heather Simpson, a Southlander and former University of Otago lecturer who told Robertson that his job was to count to 61 - a majority in the House of Representatives.
‘‘Heather Simpson rewrote how coalition government works. She took the concept of how you do agreements and how you run coalition governments to a place no-one had done, and set the benchmark,’’ Robertson says.
‘‘Helen is obviously an extraordinary leader and somebody whose intellect and drive and commitment is still, I think, almost formidable ... But then there’s my mum, who I think is the most influential on me, of all of them. It’s her courage and her love and her sense of community and collectivism that I’ve inherited and that I admire her for so much.
‘‘She’s been through a lot in her life, and she’s stuck to her values, she’s stuck to her principles. I think more women leaders would make for a better world.’’
While working on the ninth floor, Robertson met, and hired, another influential woman in his life - a young staffer in New Plymouth Labour MP Harry Duynhoven’s office called Jacinda Ardern.
‘‘I have often taken credit for taking Jacinda from sober Mormon to the whisky-loving, sailor-level swearer that she is today. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I think we were pretty good for each other.’’
Both Robertson and Ardern - whose own memoir was recently released - write about the time they sat down for a coffee at Parliament’s cafe, Copperfields. Well, Robertson was the one drinking the coffee (likely his third that morning), as Ardern was still Mormon enough not to drink it.
‘‘Grant nodded attentively, nodding along as I talked. His eyes were tired but warm, filled with empathy as if he were saying, Hey, I’ve already got the world’s problems on my shoulders, so feel free to share yours with me too,’’ Ardern writes.
‘‘In the years that followed I would see this side of Grant repeatedly, not just with me but with everyone around him.’’
Soon after, Ardern started working for Clark. Still to be formally introduced to her, the prime minister stopped her and asked, ‘‘How do you pronounce the name again?’’. Ardern replied with her own name, only to be told that Clark had meant the name of the official she was about to meet.
‘‘By the time I had walked the 10 metres between Helen’s office and the office I shared with Grant my face had turned beet red,’’ Ardern recalls.
‘‘I didn’t even need to tell Grant that something had happened, he could see it. When I told him about my uninvited attempt to introduce myself he let out a spluttering laugh and slapped his leg. ‘Ohhh,’’ he said between snorts ‘that is so good.’ I knew then that Grant was going to help me get through whatever lay ahead.’’
‘‘The lure of politics and Parliament that I had felt since a young age was well and truly in place. I had learned from three extraordinary women what it was really all about, how to succeed, and why it all mattered. Now it was time to try it for myself.’’
From the outside it might seem that Robertson was destined to be an MP, that it was the goal his entire career had been leading to. He denies that, saying that it took some time before he decided he wanted to be a politician rather than working in politics ... although the anecdote he tells in Anything Could Happen from Simpson’s speech at his farewell do - ‘‘once she worked out that I wanted Helen’s job, not hers, we got on fine’’ - suggests that other people identified his ambitions before Robertson himself did.
‘‘I think it was during that period working for Helen that I really came to the conclusion, OK, I now know what this job actually is, and I think I might probably give it a shot. Up until then, it had been very theoretical,’’ he says.
Robertson secured the Labour nomination for Wellington Central, a seat being vacated by the retiring Hobbs. Timing is everything in politics, and while being elected as a first-term MP as Labour was being voted out of power might not have seemed fortuitous, three terms in opposition schooled Robertson - and fellow class of 2008 MP Jacinda Ardern - in the school of political hard knocks.
They were turbulent times for Robertson in particular, who twice sought the Labour Party leadership and was twice rebuffed: as a result he swore that he would never seek the top job again.
But then, against all odds, with Labour staring down the barrel of another election defeat, then party leader Andrew Little made the election eve decision to step down in favour of Ardern.
Robertson is frank, saying he quite possibly could have quit politics had Labour lost the 2017 election. But, thanks to Jacindamania and Winston Peters, Labour was returned to the Treasury benches.
Anything Could Happen is revelatory about the coalition formation process, and also about how difficult, from Robertson’s perspective, working with the New Zealand First leader proved to be.
Despite having worked on the ninth floor before, both Robertson and Ardern took some time to adjust to the altered circumstances of their return to familiar territory.
‘‘As we sat there angsting about whose advice to take, Jacinda said, ‘Hang on, I’m the prime minister, you’re the minister of finance, we get to decide’. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘we get to decide.’ We were at the grown-ups’ table now.’’
Both the prime minister and her finance minister were young, idealistic and driven ... but Clark and Simpson had taught them the art of coalition politics, and reiterated the mantra that politics was the art of the possible.
‘‘There were a few moments like that early in government where you go, no, this is our decision and we should make it,’’ Robertson says.
‘‘But I don’t think there’s any harm in a little bit of imposter syndrome because you’re questioning yourself as to ‘am I right to be here?’ Am I doing the right thing?’ I actually think there’s a little bit of positive in that.
‘‘I think if the opposite were true, and you were always 110% confident that you were right, I’m not sure that would lead to the best outcomes or the best decision.
‘‘We didn’t always agree in government. I mean, we mostly did, but we didn’t always. In fact, I do write about it a couple of times that we didn’t, but we always tried to resolve those issues between us. I do recall once when we had a disagreement in the Cabinet meeting, and it wasn’t a major disagreement; afterwards I remember one of the others going, ‘oh, mum and dad are fighting’.
‘‘But our friendship was strong. We could disagree about certain issues and certain decisions, but it didn’t take away from that. And I think, ultimately, the friendship became stronger because of what we went through together politically.’’
‘‘I do not believe there was another world leader who understood Covid-19 the way she did. And it showed in New Zealand’s response.’’
Anything Could Happen details quite a lot of what the Ardern government achieved, but it is the Covid-19 pandemic - and Robertson’s full-throated backing of his prime minister - which is the compelling heart of that section of the memoir.
Robertson had a ring-side seat as Ardern, after receiving expert advice on pandemic management, took a series of unprecedented steps, such as closing the country’s borders, ordering a disease-stifling lockdown, and then rolling out a nationwide vaccination effort.
‘‘The New York Times reported that the virus had taken more lives in the past 10 months than HIV, malaria, influenza, cholera and measles combined. In New Zealand the death toll was 25,’’ Robertson notes in his book.
The words ‘‘how soon they forget’’ are unspoken but his intent in citing that statistic is crystal clear.
‘‘You have to make decisions based on a set of values and obviously Covid, we genuinely did not have the information we would normally expect to have to make a decision,’’ Robertson says.
‘‘So you don’t have many options at that point, other than to say, that’s the right thing to do. We would often find ourselves in that spot and that’s one of the many things I admire about Jacinda a lot, is her sense of right and wrong and her ability to say that’s the path we’re going to take. I think, too, you’ve got to both believe in the decisions you’re making, but then you also need to stick to them.
‘‘Again, I credit Jacinda with not wavering, for example, in the Covid strategy, to say this is the right thing to do. I think that’s where the courage comes from, it comes from knowing what’s right and what’s wrong, and that you have a responsibility to take it forward.’’
Anything Could Happen really lives up to its title at this point, as Ardern, Robertson and co are making decision after decision - weighty, monumental decisions - at a rapid-fire pace and with no time for second guessing.
Hindsight is 20-20 and Robertson’s economic management at this time of crisis is being reconsidered daily at the moment by a government that lays today’s economic woes at his feet.
Despite having left politics in 2024, Robertson may well still be the most mentioned person in Parliament in 2025.
Does he resile from anything?
‘‘I still am very proud of what we did, and I still believe it was the right thing to do,’’ he maintains staunchly.
‘‘We didn’t know how long we were going to be in lockdown for. We didn’t know how long the pandemic would have impact on us. We had a philosophy that our goal was to save lives and livelihoods, that we needed to provide cashflow and confidence, and the vast bulk of the money that was spent during the Covid period was on those things.
‘‘It was on the wage subsidy scheme. It was on the small business cashflow scheme. It was on all of the health responses, and so I remain firmly of the belief they were the right things to do. There were individual projects and programmes that didn’t quite turn out the way we wanted them to, but that doesn’t undermine the approach.
‘‘Ultimately, there were no costless decisions.’’
‘‘The online hate was reaching fever pitch. I was receiving threats through most social media channels, and any attempt to communicate about Covid was futile as rational advice and argument gave way to the increasingly vociferous views of conspiracy theorists.’’
Robertson offers a snapshot in Anything Could Happen of the pressure he has come under for his part in the Covid response: the threats, the physical confrontations, the vitriol ... ‘‘I was literally scared to leave my house. Did I really want to spend all my time looking over my shoulder?’’
He contends that the country was not divided by Covid-19: ‘‘The country was divided over the Springbok tour. What we had here was a group of people, and you can pick your percentage, but for me it is still in single digits, of people who were genuinely really angry and really upset.’’
That said, he accepts that the pandemic was a horrendous, unforeseen thing that required the government to do things that its leaders, and its citizens, had never ever thought would happen.
‘‘People found that very challenging to where they were coming from,’’ he says.
‘‘If I look more broadly at some of the other societal issues I do think as a country we've come a very long way on things like race relations, and I get deeply worried when I see that being wound back because I think it's brought us together.
‘‘I suspect the kind of collectivism that underpinned the beginning of the Covid response, perhaps papered over a little bit, that individualistic focus that came from the 1980s and which is still with us. I think New Zealand is a small country and we do well when we do things together.’’
In January 2023 Ardern surprised many - although not Robertson - by resigning, saying that she had nothing left in the tank.
‘‘In 2022 I did start to wonder about her,’’ Robertson says.
‘‘She didn’t say anything until later in the year, but it was such a hard year with the occupation, and it just felt like we were wading through treacle during that period. I could see as her friend that it was taking a toll on her, but I didn’t see it as inevitable.
‘‘When she first broached the idea that maybe it was time for her to move on, I was genuinely torn between, as her friend, thinking, yes, I can see the impact this is having on you, and as her political colleague going, oh my God, we really need you, and you are still the best person to be prime minister.’’
Robertson was facing his own crisis at the same time - botched treatment for a painful back injury had left him briefly fearing paralysis, and then beleaguered with anxiety issues.
Knowing that the prime ministership was about to become available, Robertson found himself reconsidering his decision never to seek Labour’s leadership again.
‘‘Alf said to me, ‘oh my God, you’re going to do this even though you don’t want to, you’re going to carry on, you’re going to do this even though you know in your heart you don’t want to do it’, and I’m like, ‘that’s right’.’’
So, he didn’t. As Robertson says in Anything Could Happen, he decided for the first time in his political career to make himself, his health and Alf his priority.
Robertson stayed on under new prime minister Chris Hipkins as finance minister, doing his best through intense back pain in an election campaign that he now believes Labour was fated never to win.
As soon as decently possible after the election, Robertson announced his retirement from politics, but not before a bravura valedictory speech in which he dwelt at length on his time as minister for sport and recreation - a tenure which the still sports-mad Robertson gives a lengthy chapter in his book.
Looking back, Robertson feels he achieved the oldest cliche in politics - leaving Parliament with the country in a better place than before he arrived.
‘‘I think the story, though, is always going to be about Covid, because we had to deal with something that would have made things very much worse than we found it, and we staved that off. And I can look at ways and areas and different programmes that we did and say, yeah, yeah we were better off here, be it in education or health or housing or whatever.
‘‘How much better off we could have left it without Covid, we never get to tell that story.’’
Most days now I go for a walk alongside the west side of Otago Harbour, on the magnificent Te Ara Moana, the shared cycle and walkway. I never tire of the view. Every day is different as the interplay of sky, land and sea summon up different hues of greens, blues and browns. Along with the wind, the tides, the boats, they are all characters in what feels like a glorious Colin McCahon or Robin White painting.’’
When Robertson decided that that was it for politics, he and Kaiwai were united on moving to Dunedin, where Robertson’s mother Yvonne still lives.
Kaiwai was tracking Dunedin properties online and the couple popped into a few open homes while visiting Yvonne - no doubt startling realtors and prospective buyers in the process.
Then Robertson found out that the University of Otago was looking for a new vice-chancellor, a role he had never contemplated might one day be his ... especially in his rabble-rousing days as student president.
‘‘Obviously, I can’t divorce the experience I had as a student from my role as vice-chancellor. It’s obviously a different role as well. But I’m certainly acutely aware of the experiences students go through.
‘‘It was interesting, earlier in the year, I was talking to a group of students about accommodation issues. One of them at the end of it said to me, it’s so great that you experienced the same things that we are. I think that ability to be able to feel that and say, yeah, I know what it’s like to live in one of these flats that is not particularly well insulated, is good.’’
Possibly the process was more rigorous than usual, given that he had not taken the traditional academic then tertiary administration career pathway to the role.
‘‘It is a different job,’’ he stresses.
‘‘I’ve also, I guess, as I’ve got older, perhaps become a little bit less absolute in some of the things that I was saying 30 years ago, because I can see there’s a bit more shades of grey around some of the things the university has to do ... At 53, I see a bigger picture of what the university has to try to do. I’m deeply concerned about the funding of universities and the fact that the government’s made decisions about the humanities and social sciences, taking them out of the Marsden Fund and so on.
‘‘I’m also the vice-chancellor who then has to get on with implementing the result of those decisions as well, and so that’s probably different than when I was a student.’’
Robertson is pleased that, once more, he has a job that is meaningful. He loves the university and he loves being back home.
‘‘It’s great to be here and I’ve got a bit more time with Alf and a bit more time with friends and family and that sort of thing. I’m feeling pretty good.
‘‘But I’m still the boy who’s a bit worried and scared and questioning, but I want to say, that’s all part of it.’’
The book
Anything Could Happen: A Memoir, by Grant Robertson, is out now, published by Allen and Unwin.
