“I still believe that, as a small country at the bottom of the world if we want people to know us, we need a symbol that is ours.” Had he taken that approach, he would have been following the advice of his late mother, Ruth. “Mum always said you get out of life what you put into it. Yes, you need luck, but you also make your own luck.” Luck was in rather short supply soon after Key started primary school. His British-born father George died suddenly, leaving Ruth with three young children, little support and
even less money. “Dad had owned a series of businesses in Auckland, and when he died Mum went to the accountant who told her ‘Basically, your businesses are broke. I might be able to preserve the family home but not much else’.”
It wasn’t the first time Ruth had dealt with losing everything. She had arrived in England in 1938 as a 16-year old Jewish refugee, following Hitler’s annexation of Austria. Five decades on, Key remembers the experience vividly. “Mum took it personally and sold the family home, repaid as much of the debt as she could, and we moved to a state house in Christchurch. “We were a poor, single-parent household, but it was a house with huge amounts of love and affection. It was a tough background from an economic perspective, but that gave me a better understanding of where people came from.” Ruth’s influence, however, stopped at politics; “My mother was a Labour voter,” says Key. “You can’t change your background.” Key never took his mother’s political advice; treating it a bit like David Lange’s dire warnings to avoid politics. But after 15 years of chasing votes, shaking hands and facing unrelenting scrutiny from every direction, was it worth it? Key doesn’t hesitate.