August 8, 2026 • 16 mins
Back in 2023, former Labour Minister Kiri Allan hit a low point - and had to step down from politics.
After crashing her car while over the alcohol limit, she resigned from Labour and her political career came to an end.
She's shared her story and opened up about what happened that night in Wellington in her new memoir, Go Hard or Go Home.
"I carried a lot of shame, guilt...as the book says, my world shattered down and it's all my fault. So I carried that for quite a long time, and it was very hard to come out of the cave, knowing that you'd let so many people down. So it was a long period of healing."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'd be twenty third of July twenty twenty three, Labor
Minister Kitty Allen hit rock bottom a car crash, a
positive breath test, and then a resignation from parliament. Her
political career was over. But there is more to Kitty
than what happened on that night, more to her story
than what we saw in the headlines or in parliament.
Kitty has shared her story in her memoir Go Hard
(00:33):
or Go Home. Kitty Allen love you to have you
in the studio with us. Good morning, Good morning. When
I picked up this book, I was kind of interested
to see how you would deal with what you kind
of describe as the crash and burn, what the events
of twenty third of July, and you dealt with it.
In the first paragraph of the book, you wrote, my
(00:55):
world is shattered and it's all my fault. And I thought, Okay,
that's how we're just going to deal with this upfront.
So I thought we'd just deal with this upfront in
this interview as well. I hope you don't mind. How
good is it being to tell your story.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Well, I think storytelling is just a really important remore
or way of engaging with people. And this is my story,
and I think it's we've all got our stories to tell,
and this is a little slice of mine. So it's
it's nice to just have the words written on the paper.
I think, what is it.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Like to I mean, obviously you acknowledge, you know, when
you're when you're a politician, if you're in a public
role in New Zealand, you're always going to be of
interest to the media. But what is it like to
see your mistakes on the front page of a paper.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Well, fortunately I hid my eyes from most of that
because it was pretty grueling and I was in a
pretty rough spot at that time. But stepping back from that,
you know, knowing that the whole entire country knows you're
you know, your most vulnerable or worse moments is something
that I carried a lot of shame guilt. I was
(02:04):
very very well, well, it's probably as the book says,
you know, my world shedded down and it's all my fault.
So carry that for quite a long time, or I did,
at least, and it was very hard to come out
of the cave knowing that you'd let so many people
down and so it was a long period of healing
(02:30):
and it's nice to be able to share that with
people because I think, I think, you know, we New
Zealanders or beyond us don't tend to share our stories,
our vulnerabilities, our worst moments. Mine was in the front
papers pages the paper, So why not, you know, give
life to that story and actually take people to wear
(02:50):
the depths of what was going on during that period
of time. But like I said, I just think if
more of us told our stories and shared our stories,
we broke bread together and said, actually, look this is
where I'm at. I'm in I'm in the doldrums right now.
I think that we collectively as a culture would be
just so much one healthier for it because we'd realize
(03:12):
that there's a lot of this stuff happens behind closed
doors and that we're not alone. But two, I think
that we as a society would know better how to
wrap around those that are going through hard times and
hard moments. So, yeah, she's been a right.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
When your mental health did start deteriorating, did you notice that?
Did you realize or recognize the burnout?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Absolutely? Yeah, So they got to a point when you
recognize the burnout. Did I notice the journey on the
way to that breaking point, which wasn't the car crash,
it was earlier than that. I don't. That's an interesting question.
I think that there were pockets of recognition, but you
just keep going and just keep going and chess, keep
(03:56):
going and not stopping and not really dealing with what
was going on definitely culminated in the events that we
all saw on FOW.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Was that because you didn't feel that you could stop
and talk to somebody about it? Was it the feeling
of responsibility that you had on you to to do
the job that you had to do?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Why?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
How do you you know? What was it that sort
of made you put those blinkers on and just try
and keep going.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
For me, suddenly, it was that deep sense of responsibility.
I felt like I was in this very privileged position
to be able to make change for a whole range
of people, and I felt like I was a really
strong advocate for people from communities like mine, and there's
not there wasn't at the time a lot of that
those kind of voices around, you know, the big kids table,
(04:46):
so to speak. So there was a lot of that
just keep going. You're going to have you have to
keep going. And I talked to people here and there,
but I think I think one of was I to
do this again, I'd simply tell myself that there's no
point and being a half a cup, half full or
(05:10):
empty trying to, you know, fulfill all these responsibilities and obligations,
because you get a crash and burn. So I look
out for that. I work with a lot of political
leaders or leaders and other rights, and those are always
the things that we're looking for, trying to spot how
are you, you know, are we carrying that load all
(05:30):
right at the moment? And if not, how can we
take a pause and repivot so that you're going to
be your best self when the time comes. But I
do think again, in positions of leadership, there's a lot
of isolation, and again coming back to that point around,
you know, if we spoke more freely with each other,
shared more honestly with each other, I think we'd be
(05:53):
a lot healthier as a society.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Tell me about July the twenty third, I'm sure it's
a day that you have replayed, or an evening that
you've replayed in your head over and over again.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Oh, it's interesting if you're not moved on. Yeah, kind
of them and you think about it, and you know,
sometimes I have a range of different reactions to it.
Now it's just like, oh, gosh, there was a there
was an event, but it also wasn't I think, you know,
it was the time that everybody in the in New
Zealand saw what was going on. But that wasn't my
darkest day, not by far. And so it was you know,
(06:26):
I have a lot of regret about driving when I
shouldn't have been. And then you know, after after we
got down, you know, when we're dealing with things, Oh,
I just turned into an absolute idiot. I say worse
words than that, but I'll keep them. I'll keep them.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
PG for your act, you do take accountability. In the book.
You say that night you were a dick. You were
probably damn annoying. There we go, Well.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
That's exactly, yes, what I was. So you know, I
regret those things and wouldn't even do those things again.
But also as well, I have come to also apply
kind of like a human leans to that year. Bro,
you totally screwed up, and and that's not the end
of the story. So it's not the end of the story.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
It's not did your party reach out to you during
this time?
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yes, they did year absolutely and I think you know,
I've been asked whether they did all they could and
I just think yes, in the circumstances. It was really
trying circumstances for everybody involved. So I think everybody did
the best that they could have with the tools they
had at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
But you also talk about some other people that reached
out to you that surprised you a little bit.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I did. It's what I love about New Zealand and
New Zealand politics in particular, is that whilst we like
to have a good tussle in the house over ideology,
at the end of the day, they're just people. So
Nicky Kay was one of the first people that reached out.
I had a very senior former national staffer reach out
(07:59):
and these people like held me for days, not just days,
one of them for a year. Every single day would
be checking in on you, you know, from again, from
the Greens to Party MILDI. People just came in and
wrapped and held you. And I love New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
For that, and I think that's because they recognize the
nature of the job that you do. And I was
talking to you about this before the interview. It is
a job like kind of none other, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
It's absolutely like Nah, you know, your cortizo levels are
constantly activated. You are bustling from A to B. You're
bearing a lot of responsibility for the decisions that you make.
You work from get to work at about six in
the morning, you leave at eleven o'clock at night. Those
are the days when the house is sitting, and when
your house is not sitting, then you are running around
(08:46):
your electric trying to touch base and communicate with people
so you can turn that into real conversations back in parliament.
So the job is like no other.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You had very clear objectives for your first term. You worked,
you decided you were going and you were going to
go hard. You worked very hard. In hindsight, is that
the right approach?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I think coaches for different people. For me, I wouldn't
change anything about that. I think what I would change though,
is make sure that I had the right support systems
around me and on my end that I had to
be open to having those so and then secondly, I
think the other thing would be is that when I
felt tired or when there was something then there had
(09:27):
to be a break point just to recalibrate, which I
don't think I did either of those things.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That well, it did have a big impact on you.
You know, your relationship broke up, and you reflect on
this in the book sort of just this nature of
the job and how it impacts politicians. What do you
think is some of the biggest misconceptions that the general
public has about politicians and politics.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Well, one, I think probably one of the misconceptions is
I think that about eighty percent of people who go
into parliament go into parliament because they genuinely want to
make change. Yep. And it doesn't matter whether you're wearing blue, red, black, green,
whatever it is, but a good percentage of people go
in there to genuinely make change. I think it's hard
(10:15):
to see that from the outside though, because well, why
isn't everything changing tomorrow? Well, because things take time. I
think the other thing, too, is that people don't probably
realize how hard people work, because when you're out in
the community, it looks like all you do is go
to events and drink wine and you say a nice
little speech. But all the work happens behind closed doors
(10:35):
and you are grinding, like I said, six am to
eleven pm, you are grinding behind closed doors, trying to
advocate for policy positions that you believe in. You need
to get numbers over the line. You need to take
people with you. That's the kind of most challenging part.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And you did end up with a lot of portfolio.
It's in a lot of responsibility. Looking back, now, what
are you most proud of and what do you regret
not completing great questions?
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I think one of the things I'm most proud of
was being able to stew it in the Maturiki bill.
So yeah, Manoa tia maturiki. We're in that time right now.
But being able to work alongside the likes of Professor
Ani Martamwa and others introduced the first ever Indigenous knowledge
(11:21):
public holiday in the world was something really profound and
I think it's and I look at the impacts of
that now, and people everywhere this year were saying manowatia maturiki.
Everybody that I saw and from different communities, stopping to
reflect on the year they had been breaking bread with
fellow you know, their fellowship with friends and family and
(11:44):
looking at that year ahead. So I think that's something
I'm very proud to have been a part of. I
there was I took a real victims orientated approach and
justice proud of the work that we did there to
provide a lot of wrap around just support for victims
going through that criminal justice process. I'm proud to have
(12:07):
been part of our initial approach to youth justice, which
again ensured that our youngest members of our community who
were committing offenses, that we provided a wrap around service
for them. So it was really three sixty with a
whole ton of agencies, which leads to the biggest regrets
that approach didn't cut through, didn't penetrate in the public domain.
(12:30):
So law and order is always something that rears its
head as a political football, and it was certainly raising
rearing its head that year ram Raids with a particular
incident that was occurring across the country. We could not
get cut through, and so my biggest regret is introducing, Well,
(12:54):
it's a policy I posed for many many months about
lowering that age for people to go through a different
route in the youth justice system. I pose that many
many times, but on the one of the last time,
so I took that cabinet paper to to cabinet. I
lost the table, and therefore it's my job to go
(13:14):
out cabinet collective responsibility. You go out and you sell
the policy, and that was my job. I did it,
and I regretted that miserably. And I think what I
hadn't have thought of was that there were other options
available to me. I could have surrendered my ministerial warrants.
I could have crossed the floor. I could there were
(13:34):
other options available, and I didn't think of them.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Is that just because you're so in it and it's
so all consuming?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yes, I think that's a huge part of it. Honestly,
when you talk about reflections, that was one of my
biggest ones coming away was why didn't you do something
else else? But I didn't? So that's one of my
biggest report.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Well, that's probably what makes us all human, isn't it.
And we've been talking about just the nature of the
job and things, and you took a lot of hate.
You were accused at one point of being a bully.
In hindsight, was it bullying or do you simply believe
that the pub Lick service should have a high standard
that they, you know, work towards.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
I think that I have high expectations of people in
people who serve people within that are state funded to
serve our people. And I don't apologize for having those standards.
I think I'm direct, and I think that I had
a real clear change agenda. And some people loved that style.
(14:33):
It was very clear some people hated that style. Would
I change that approach? Not at all?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Right, Finally, who are the politicians you loved working with?
And who are the ones that you were in least
favorite of Could I seduce it? Maybe Stephen Joyce and
Stuart Nash were on the least favorite list from the book.
You're very polite in the book, though there's not a
lot of, you know, sort of scathing comments about politicians.
To be fair, I think I tried.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Not to put too much of that scathing stuff in.
But you've got to have a villain, and Stewie Nash
seems like a good target. He always brings me up
in his yarns when he's having a yarn about something
and aw that Curry album. So I was like, all right,
you can be used Dewey Nash. No, okay, So politicians
I love to work with. Oh, there's just so much talent,
Aisha Verel, Barbara Edmonds. I loved working with Carmel Ceppoloni.
(15:25):
I loved working with Andrew Little, David Parker, all for
really different reasons. So that's from my camp from across
the Aisle. I really enjoyed working with Mark Mitchell. I
enjoyed working with well Chris bish on some different issues.
Eric Sandford, she was great to work with. I think
(15:48):
that's something that people don't really see a lot more
collegial behind the scenes, but that that Chambers, that's your
football pitch, you know, that's where the rugby game curves.
But again, behind closed doors, there's a lot more common
ground that we have then we really disagree on. That's
my view of New Zealand politics.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Kitty Allen, thank you so much for coming in. It's
been a light to talk to you. Thank you for
the book.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
It was former MP and Cabinet minister Kitty Allen. Her
book Go Hard or Go Home is in stores now.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'd be twenty third of July twenty twenty three, Labor
Minister Kitty Allen hit rock bottom a car crash, a
positive breath test, and then a resignation from parliament. Her
political career was over. But there is more to Kitty
than what happened on that night, more to her story
than what we saw in the headlines or in parliament.
Kitty has shared her story in her memoir Go Hard
(00:33):
or Go Home. Kitty Allen love you to have you
in the studio with us. Good morning, Good morning. When
I picked up this book, I was kind of interested
to see how you would deal with what you kind
of describe as the crash and burn, what the events
of twenty third of July, and you dealt with it.
In the first paragraph of the book, you wrote, my
(00:55):
world is shattered and it's all my fault. And I thought, Okay,
that's how we're just going to deal with this upfront.
So I thought we'd just deal with this upfront in
this interview as well. I hope you don't mind. How
good is it being to tell your story.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Well, I think storytelling is just a really important remore
or way of engaging with people. And this is my story,
and I think it's we've all got our stories to tell,
and this is a little slice of mine. So it's
it's nice to just have the words written on the paper.
I think, what is it.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Like to I mean, obviously you acknowledge, you know, when
you're when you're a politician, if you're in a public
role in New Zealand, you're always going to be of
interest to the media. But what is it like to
see your mistakes on the front page of a paper.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Well, fortunately I hid my eyes from most of that
because it was pretty grueling and I was in a
pretty rough spot at that time. But stepping back from that,
you know, knowing that the whole entire country knows you're
you know, your most vulnerable or worse moments is something
that I carried a lot of shame guilt. I was
(02:04):
very very well, well, it's probably as the book says,
you know, my world shedded down and it's all my fault.
So carry that for quite a long time, or I did,
at least, and it was very hard to come out
of the cave knowing that you'd let so many people
down and so it was a long period of healing
(02:30):
and it's nice to be able to share that with
people because I think, I think, you know, we New
Zealanders or beyond us don't tend to share our stories,
our vulnerabilities, our worst moments. Mine was in the front
papers pages the paper, So why not, you know, give
life to that story and actually take people to wear
(02:50):
the depths of what was going on during that period
of time. But like I said, I just think if
more of us told our stories and shared our stories,
we broke bread together and said, actually, look this is
where I'm at. I'm in I'm in the doldrums right now.
I think that we collectively as a culture would be
just so much one healthier for it because we'd realize
(03:12):
that there's a lot of this stuff happens behind closed
doors and that we're not alone. But two, I think
that we as a society would know better how to
wrap around those that are going through hard times and
hard moments. So, yeah, she's been a right.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
When your mental health did start deteriorating, did you notice that?
Did you realize or recognize the burnout?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Absolutely? Yeah, So they got to a point when you
recognize the burnout. Did I notice the journey on the
way to that breaking point, which wasn't the car crash,
it was earlier than that. I don't. That's an interesting question.
I think that there were pockets of recognition, but you
just keep going and just keep going and chess, keep
(03:56):
going and not stopping and not really dealing with what
was going on definitely culminated in the events that we
all saw on FOW.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Was that because you didn't feel that you could stop
and talk to somebody about it? Was it the feeling
of responsibility that you had on you to to do
the job that you had to do?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Why?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
How do you you know? What was it that sort
of made you put those blinkers on and just try
and keep going.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
For me, suddenly, it was that deep sense of responsibility.
I felt like I was in this very privileged position
to be able to make change for a whole range
of people, and I felt like I was a really
strong advocate for people from communities like mine, and there's
not there wasn't at the time a lot of that
those kind of voices around, you know, the big kids table,
(04:46):
so to speak. So there was a lot of that
just keep going. You're going to have you have to
keep going. And I talked to people here and there,
but I think I think one of was I to
do this again, I'd simply tell myself that there's no
point and being a half a cup, half full or
(05:10):
empty trying to, you know, fulfill all these responsibilities and obligations,
because you get a crash and burn. So I look
out for that. I work with a lot of political
leaders or leaders and other rights, and those are always
the things that we're looking for, trying to spot how
are you, you know, are we carrying that load all
(05:30):
right at the moment? And if not, how can we
take a pause and repivot so that you're going to
be your best self when the time comes. But I
do think again, in positions of leadership, there's a lot
of isolation, and again coming back to that point around,
you know, if we spoke more freely with each other,
shared more honestly with each other, I think we'd be
(05:53):
a lot healthier as a society.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Tell me about July the twenty third, I'm sure it's
a day that you have replayed, or an evening that
you've replayed in your head over and over again.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Oh, it's interesting if you're not moved on. Yeah, kind
of them and you think about it, and you know,
sometimes I have a range of different reactions to it.
Now it's just like, oh, gosh, there was a there
was an event, but it also wasn't I think, you know,
it was the time that everybody in the in New
Zealand saw what was going on. But that wasn't my
darkest day, not by far. And so it was you know,
(06:26):
I have a lot of regret about driving when I
shouldn't have been. And then you know, after after we
got down, you know, when we're dealing with things, Oh,
I just turned into an absolute idiot. I say worse
words than that, but I'll keep them. I'll keep them.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
PG for your act, you do take accountability. In the book.
You say that night you were a dick. You were
probably damn annoying. There we go, Well.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
That's exactly, yes, what I was. So you know, I
regret those things and wouldn't even do those things again.
But also as well, I have come to also apply
kind of like a human leans to that year. Bro,
you totally screwed up, and and that's not the end
of the story. So it's not the end of the story.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
It's not did your party reach out to you during
this time?
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yes, they did year absolutely and I think you know,
I've been asked whether they did all they could and
I just think yes, in the circumstances. It was really
trying circumstances for everybody involved. So I think everybody did
the best that they could have with the tools they
had at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
But you also talk about some other people that reached
out to you that surprised you a little bit.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I did. It's what I love about New Zealand and
New Zealand politics in particular, is that whilst we like
to have a good tussle in the house over ideology,
at the end of the day, they're just people. So
Nicky Kay was one of the first people that reached out.
I had a very senior former national staffer reach out
(07:59):
and these people like held me for days, not just days,
one of them for a year. Every single day would
be checking in on you, you know, from again, from
the Greens to Party MILDI. People just came in and
wrapped and held you. And I love New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
For that, and I think that's because they recognize the
nature of the job that you do. And I was
talking to you about this before the interview. It is
a job like kind of none other, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
It's absolutely like Nah, you know, your cortizo levels are
constantly activated. You are bustling from A to B. You're
bearing a lot of responsibility for the decisions that you make.
You work from get to work at about six in
the morning, you leave at eleven o'clock at night. Those
are the days when the house is sitting, and when
your house is not sitting, then you are running around
(08:46):
your electric trying to touch base and communicate with people
so you can turn that into real conversations back in parliament.
So the job is like no other.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You had very clear objectives for your first term. You worked,
you decided you were going and you were going to
go hard. You worked very hard. In hindsight, is that
the right approach?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I think coaches for different people. For me, I wouldn't
change anything about that. I think what I would change though,
is make sure that I had the right support systems
around me and on my end that I had to
be open to having those so and then secondly, I
think the other thing would be is that when I
felt tired or when there was something then there had
(09:27):
to be a break point just to recalibrate, which I
don't think I did either of those things.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That well, it did have a big impact on you.
You know, your relationship broke up, and you reflect on
this in the book sort of just this nature of
the job and how it impacts politicians. What do you
think is some of the biggest misconceptions that the general
public has about politicians and politics.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Well, one, I think probably one of the misconceptions is
I think that about eighty percent of people who go
into parliament go into parliament because they genuinely want to
make change. Yep. And it doesn't matter whether you're wearing blue, red, black, green,
whatever it is, but a good percentage of people go
in there to genuinely make change. I think it's hard
(10:15):
to see that from the outside though, because well, why
isn't everything changing tomorrow? Well, because things take time. I
think the other thing, too, is that people don't probably
realize how hard people work, because when you're out in
the community, it looks like all you do is go
to events and drink wine and you say a nice
little speech. But all the work happens behind closed doors
(10:35):
and you are grinding, like I said, six am to
eleven pm, you are grinding behind closed doors, trying to
advocate for policy positions that you believe in. You need
to get numbers over the line. You need to take
people with you. That's the kind of most challenging part.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And you did end up with a lot of portfolio.
It's in a lot of responsibility. Looking back, now, what
are you most proud of and what do you regret
not completing great questions?
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I think one of the things I'm most proud of
was being able to stew it in the Maturiki bill.
So yeah, Manoa tia maturiki. We're in that time right now.
But being able to work alongside the likes of Professor
Ani Martamwa and others introduced the first ever Indigenous knowledge
(11:21):
public holiday in the world was something really profound and
I think it's and I look at the impacts of
that now, and people everywhere this year were saying manowatia maturiki.
Everybody that I saw and from different communities, stopping to
reflect on the year they had been breaking bread with
fellow you know, their fellowship with friends and family and
(11:44):
looking at that year ahead. So I think that's something
I'm very proud to have been a part of. I
there was I took a real victims orientated approach and
justice proud of the work that we did there to
provide a lot of wrap around just support for victims
going through that criminal justice process. I'm proud to have
(12:07):
been part of our initial approach to youth justice, which
again ensured that our youngest members of our community who
were committing offenses, that we provided a wrap around service
for them. So it was really three sixty with a
whole ton of agencies, which leads to the biggest regrets
that approach didn't cut through, didn't penetrate in the public domain.
(12:30):
So law and order is always something that rears its
head as a political football, and it was certainly raising
rearing its head that year ram Raids with a particular
incident that was occurring across the country. We could not
get cut through, and so my biggest regret is introducing, Well,
(12:54):
it's a policy I posed for many many months about
lowering that age for people to go through a different
route in the youth justice system. I pose that many
many times, but on the one of the last time,
so I took that cabinet paper to to cabinet. I
lost the table, and therefore it's my job to go
(13:14):
out cabinet collective responsibility. You go out and you sell
the policy, and that was my job. I did it,
and I regretted that miserably. And I think what I
hadn't have thought of was that there were other options
available to me. I could have surrendered my ministerial warrants.
I could have crossed the floor. I could there were
(13:34):
other options available, and I didn't think of them.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Is that just because you're so in it and it's
so all consuming?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yes, I think that's a huge part of it. Honestly,
when you talk about reflections, that was one of my
biggest ones coming away was why didn't you do something
else else? But I didn't? So that's one of my
biggest report.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Well, that's probably what makes us all human, isn't it.
And we've been talking about just the nature of the
job and things, and you took a lot of hate.
You were accused at one point of being a bully.
In hindsight, was it bullying or do you simply believe
that the pub Lick service should have a high standard
that they, you know, work towards.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
I think that I have high expectations of people in
people who serve people within that are state funded to
serve our people. And I don't apologize for having those standards.
I think I'm direct, and I think that I had
a real clear change agenda. And some people loved that style.
(14:33):
It was very clear some people hated that style. Would
I change that approach? Not at all?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Right, Finally, who are the politicians you loved working with?
And who are the ones that you were in least
favorite of Could I seduce it? Maybe Stephen Joyce and
Stuart Nash were on the least favorite list from the book.
You're very polite in the book, though there's not a
lot of, you know, sort of scathing comments about politicians.
To be fair, I think I tried.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Not to put too much of that scathing stuff in.
But you've got to have a villain, and Stewie Nash
seems like a good target. He always brings me up
in his yarns when he's having a yarn about something
and aw that Curry album. So I was like, all right,
you can be used Dewey Nash. No, okay, So politicians
I love to work with. Oh, there's just so much talent,
Aisha Verel, Barbara Edmonds. I loved working with Carmel Ceppoloni.
(15:25):
I loved working with Andrew Little, David Parker, all for
really different reasons. So that's from my camp from across
the Aisle. I really enjoyed working with Mark Mitchell. I
enjoyed working with well Chris bish on some different issues.
Eric Sandford, she was great to work with. I think
(15:48):
that's something that people don't really see a lot more
collegial behind the scenes, but that that Chambers, that's your
football pitch, you know, that's where the rugby game curves.
But again, behind closed doors, there's a lot more common
ground that we have then we really disagree on. That's
my view of New Zealand politics.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Kitty Allen, thank you so much for coming in. It's
been a light to talk to you. Thank you for
the book.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
It was former MP and Cabinet minister Kitty Allen. Her
book Go Hard or Go Home is in stores now.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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