Wellington - One year after John Key became the most inexperienced politician to be sworn in as prime minister of New Zealand, he is still soaring in the opinion polls - despite the apparent death wishes of some of his closest allies. Key, 48, had been in parliament just six years and leader of his conservative National Party only 24 months when he won a general election to oust the nine-year Labour government of Helen Clark on November 8, 2008.
Despite being the richest member of the 122-seat House of Representatives, he successfully projected the image of being Mr Ordinary, pleasant and congenial, to voters weary of Clark's no-nonsense, schoolmarmish dominance.
Denied an overall majority, he used his congeniality to woo other parties into supporting a minority centre-right government, ranging from the Nationals' logical partners in the rabidly free-market Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT) to the Maori Party, which represents the nation's poorest and most under-privileged indigenous people.
A year on, as the Nationals ride high in the latest opinion poll with the support of 57.3 per cent of voters, against 32.4 per cent for Labour, his smoothly running government has been ruffled by members of both supporting parties.
Impatient with the premier's laid-back style, Rodney Hide, the feisty leader of ACT and a minister outside cabinet, told a group of his supporters this week that Key "doesn't do anything" and had achieved nothing in his first year except float the idea of a national cycleway.
As Hide apologized to Key, a Maori Party member of parliament, Hone Harawira, was revealed to have sent an expletive-riddled email in which he said white New Zealanders "have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries."
Key, who made the party's two co-leaders ministers in his government, said Harawira's comments were "outrageous and deeply offensive to a lot of New Zealanders."
Both Hide and Harawira were already under scrutiny over overseas trips they made at public expense.
Hide, 52, was revealed to have taken his 31-year-old girlfriend with him on an official fact-finding visit to Britain that was timed to coincide with her brother's wedding near London.
The taxpayer picked up the bill for her fares and accommodation, despite Hide's nickname of The Perkbuster that he gave himself when he first entered parliament 12 years ago.
Harawira was leading a parliamentary delegation to the European Union, again taxpayer-funded, in Brussels when he took a day off from official meetings to take his wife to Paris.
Unrepentant, he said he paid for the extra travel himself, adding, "A man would be dumb to go to Europe and not take the opportunity to visit such a wonderful city. I'm glad I did it."
Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia said Harawira, who made a similar side trip on a previous official trip to Australia, had damaged the credibility of the party.
Key had earlier been embarrassed by publicity over his deputy and Finance Minister Bill English claiming more than 900 New Zealand dollars (650 US dollars) a week for living in a house owned by a family trust after designating it a ministerial residence.
English paid the money back before the watchdog auditor general ruled that he should do so.
Key, who made his millions abroad as a foreign currency dealer before entering politics, told reporters he paid for his wife to accompany him on overseas trips, even though she could legally be publicly funded, and eschewed other prime ministerial benefits because he could afford it.
It was a comment that underlined his nice guy image. "Mr Key's ease with people locks in friends and disarms enemies," wrote veteran political commentator Colin James. "It is hard not to like him."
New Zealanders agree. He was the preferred prime minister of more than 55 per cent of voters in the latest New Zealand Herald-DigiPoll, with Phil Goff, Clark's successor as leader of the Labour opposition, favoured by only 6.2 per cent.
