War zones more comfortable than Labour Party - Shearer

Outgoing Labour leader David Shearer has told TV One’s political editor Corin Dann that he feels both relieved and disappointed to be stepping down as head of the party - but also that he hopes for a spot on the front bench once the current leadership tussle is resolved.

Mr Shearer resigned as leader in August, ending months of speculation about his leadership.

“Oh, in one respect relieved, obviously, because it takes a huge weight off your shoulders, and in other respects disappointed, of course. You know, I put a lot into it and I would have liked to have continued on,” he says.

But he says he found both the pettiness of politics and being in Opposition frustrating.

“A lot of it was petty. A lot of it was venal. I think politicians from all sides come in to make a difference, to actually get something done, and what you get caught up with, particularly as the leader, is, you know, point-scoring and that sort of pettiness. And I just found it boring, I found it beneath me, and I wasn’t very good at it because of that. Other people thrive on it. They love it. I mean, that’s the thing they love about— the arena of politics. For me, I found it a bit below me,” Mr Shearer says.

But he also battled disunity within the Labour party, which ultimately lead to him stepping down. He says whoever takes over from him as leader must have the full backing of the party. Labour is currently holding an electoral process within the party to elect a new leader. The three candidates standing are David Cunliffe, Shane Jones and Grant Robertson.

“What we need to see is whoever wins, we all need to get behind that person. Certainly from my point of view, whoever wins this competition, I will give them 100% support, and I don’t care who it is. Well, I’d say I do care who it is, but if that person wins, then we get in behind them, and we can't do anything else, because if we don’t do that, then we won't win. It’s as simple as that. The most corrosive issue for us in the Labour Party has been disunity.”

And he says he often felt more comfortable in war zones than he’s felt in politics.

“I always felt, oddly enough, more comfortable in a war zones than I did in the Labour Party— not so much in the Labour Party but in politics. I mean, obviously in politics you're getting sniped at from all directions. In a war zone, you can generally tell who the good guys are and who are the bad guys.”

And he says he doesn’t regret holding up two snapper in Parliament, a stunt that happened just days before he resigned. He says fighting to protect recreational fishers snapper quota has brought back many of Labour’s previous supporters.

“You're out there by yourself and you make the calls. And if they work, you know, you get the plaudits, and if they fail, you get the blame, and that’s just the way it is. On the fishing issue, though, I actually went out fishing last Tuesday and caught 16 snapper with a couple of mates, and I’ll fight that on the beaches till the very, very end. And the whole idea of that is it was meant to be a bit of a laugh. And if anybody looked at that, what they didn’t realise was that the group that had walked away from Labour were male, white, middle-income – the kind of guys that were lining up on the fishing issue. And they got in behind us. That was gold for us, and many of the people in Beltway just didn’t actually recognise that.”

And on the matter of Syria, Mr Shearer, who has years of international experience in humanitarian affairs and conflict resolution, says Prime Minister John Key must support the UN Security Council in creating the space for whatever retaliatory action needs to happen, rather than backing the United States in what would be a mostly unilateral strike on Syria.

“That’s not going to work. I mean, first of all, it will be hated by the Arab street right across the Middle East. Secondly, it could actually propel Assad into a role of being picked on by a big— You could actually enhance his reputation. Thirdly, it could really damage the burgeoning relationship with Iran with its new leader. Fourthly, Israel is a proxy for the United States. Who knows, there could be some attacks against them. Fifthly, the relationship with Russia absolutely collapses, and Russia instead of being wedged into a corner by weapons inspectors that demonstrate that it was the Syrian regime that caused these attacks and Russia having then to come and respond in the Security Council, you give them an out. It has so many bad consequences that it’s not worth doing and I don’t think New Zealand should support it.”

Watch the full interview here.