LABOUR SAVING: A Memoir.

• Author: Easton, Brian

LABOUR SAVING: A Memoir

Author: Michael Cullen

Published by: Allen and Unwin, Auckland, 432pp, $50.

In the 40 years since Muldoon's reign, the predominant form of national political leadership has been a dual premiership in which, broadly, the prime minister manages the politics and the co-premier manages policy. The second is often, but not always, the minister of finance and may, or not, be the deputy prime minister. When the two are both able and working together they form a powerful partnership.

The prime minister may have particular policy interests. Jim Bolger was deeply involved in the Treaty settlement process. John Key's were less obvious. Helen Clark's included foreign policy, women's issues and the arts, as well as, particularly at the beginning, maintaining a tight control over her ministers. The exception was Michael Cullen, with whom she had been a junior minister in the disintegrating fourth Labour government (1984-90).

How these partnerships function is hardly recorded. How often did they meet informally, telephone, write or email? Were there trusted emissaries? There are the odd insights. The David Lange-Roger Douglas breakdown told us a lot about when it does not work. We know Bolger and Bill Birch and their families regularly went tramping together. Otherwise there is a virtual silence. Even the autobiographies and biographies tell us more about marriage partnerships.

Alas Cullen's Labour Saving is reticent too. The best that one can infer is that he and Clark had a very strong trusting partnership. There is no hint they ever disagreed, let alone how they worked it through. Otherwise the book is as invaluable, reflective and revealing as any (auto)biography we have had from a retired minister of finance.

It was written in difficult circumstances. In March 2020, learning he had small-cell lung cancer, which was to kill him seventeen months later at the age of 76, Cullen ceased the active public life he pursued after his retirement from Parliament in 2009. He then discovered he had nothing much to do, a lacuna compounded by the COVID lockdown which followed soon after. So the trained historian turned to writing an autobiography.

Unfortunately, he did not have easy access to his papers, which are in the Hocken Library. Not only did he have to rely on his memory and what was available on the web, he was also conscious that he had a limited time for the writing. That means there are some gaps, as well as lapses of memory. I...