"Good afternoon, you're listening to RNZ. I have with me the leader of the Labour Party, fartoomuchpressure. Welcome to the studio."
"Thank you, it's good to be here."
"We'll get right into it. You're campaigning for a third term in government, is it time that someone else had a go? Have you had your chance?"
"Well, I actually have to agree with you on those points, although only in part. I think I've had my chance to prove to the New Zealand public my value to them in government, the proof will be whether they choose to return us to power. Every term we get new people in government and old ones leave. I don't think it's time for me to go. There's more I can do."
"Do you think though that there's a point where you have to say that you've done everything you've set out to do? If there are things you haven't done, maybe you'll never get to do them?"
"I don't think so. I'll never finish everything I set out to do. There's always more to do. Some things can't be done, some things find other solutions. And there's always something new to do. I think having experience in government, knowing how to deal with new challenges is just as important as having new ideas. And it's not as if you can never come up with something new after you go into government."
"When you say that 'I'll never finish everything I set out to do' does that mean you think all politicians have to break promises?"
"Well, in my time in government I've learnt that you can never keep every promise you make. And in fact, it's something I learnt a long time before I became a politician. I think the important thing is that you make promises with good intentions and never promise something you know you can't keep."
"Does that mean you're taking policies to the public you know could get thrown out?"
"Government, particularly in an MMP system, where all our governments have involved coalitions or confidence and supply agreements, is built on compromise. In an MMP election you have to take policies to the public and say "this is what we're going to take to the table". It's up to voters to take a look at what the parties are offering and to put their support behind it."
"Do you think you need voters need to take parties' election campaigns with a grain of salt, then?"
"Oh absolutely, and sometimes quite a heap of it. As I was on my way here this morning, I saw a billboard claiming that my governments had raised spending by $4 billion more than we actually had! I don't know if you remember the $12 billion hole but this is on another level. You can check the facts yourself, and I encourage voters to do so. In the last two terms, the government has increased spending by $11.5 billion, revenue in that same time increased by $11.7 billion - that part of the opposition's advertisement is correct. I'll tell you what's really galling; the ACT party voted for most of it! It's one thing to promise stuff that later has to change because the circumstances have changed but to lie about stuff that's already happen is extraordinarily dishonest."
"Do you think you've been honest in your campaigning?"
"Oh, absolutely, I think lying achieves nothing. It often works. You'll remember the dancing cossacks back in the nineteen seventies. That worked a treat! But it didn't achieve anything, all that happened was that we went backwards. Honesty is the only way."
"Ok, we're running out of time before the news, but we have time for one more question; what's the one message you want voters to take away from your campaign?"
"If voters take one thing away from my campaign I think I want it to be that we're a party for the future. If you're a party like Labour - the oldest political party in New Zealand - it can be easy to get stuck looking at the past but I want voters to know that we're always looking to the future. We want New Zealand to be a better place a hundred years from now, not just in three years time when we're up for re-election." "Ok, thank you very much."
"Thank you."