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John Key: I won't take a traditional role after being PM

PLUS: PM says while Helen Clark is 'amazing,' UN Security Council might "want more secretary and less general."

Sun, 25 Sep 2016

Prime Minister John Key, who’s been in New York this week to address the United Nations General Assembly and chair a meeting of the UN Security Council, says he won’t be taking a traditional path after his stint as prime minister comes to an end.

Speaking to Q+A’s Corin Dann, Mr Key said being prime minister was his focus and he intended to win the next election.

But at the point when he was to leave, any new role “won’t be at the United Nations and won’t be as an ambassador for New Zealand, those kinds of traditional paths that you’ve seen former prime ministers go down, and that’s because it’s just not my area of interest and I don’t think it’s my area of speciality."

Earlier, in an NBR AMA, the PM said he would probably do something "with a commercial focus" after leaving the Beehive.

On Helen Clark's UN Sec Gen bid
Asked if Helen Clark was maybe too strong a leader for UN Secretary General, Mr Key replied, "Well, that’s always a risk, isn’t it, that they want more secretary and less general."

He added, "That’s the potential argument. Now, we’ve tested that as much as you can with the leaders that I talk to and the P5 leaders [the five permanent members of the Security Council, who will choose the next UN Secretary General], and we’ve said to them while she is a much stronger leader, we believe, than maybe others that have assumed the role. On the other side of the coin she’s very careful. She has amazing understanding. She understands the delicate nature of international relations, and that’s one of the things that happens when you’re prime minister. You can’t just shoot from the lip every five seconds, because if you do, you can cause all sorts of long-standing issues, and so she understands all that. And I think in the end, again, if they don’t get a stronger leader over time, it just makes the United Nations look more ineffective."

On Syria
Mr Key talked to Mr Dann about the UN and efforts to make peace in Syria, saying the big players – Russia and the US – came at the issue for different reasons.

“In Russia’s case, they probably want to prolong Assad and they’ve got issues in the region. In the United States they don’t want to see Syria as a failed state and they care a lot about the plight of those refugees, which is not to say the Russians don’t care about them. That’s probably not their primary focus yet.

“Let’s be honest – Putin wants to be relevant on the world stage. He wants to prove he can fix things and you have to come to Moscow to make things happen. It’s all partly about Vladimir Putin and how he sees himself,” Mr Key said.

“But the point is – I think they will get to a solution in the Security Council and the work we do at the UN can actually support that over time.”

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John Key: I won't take a traditional role after being PM
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