A friendlier Clark to visit our shores

Claire Harvey, Contributor, Jakarta

Not so long ago, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark was not a big fan of Indonesia.

"Indonesia is a particularly broke economy which looks to other wealthier countries to bail it out," she said disparagingly in September 1999.

Back then, Clark was opposition leader and Indonesia was facing the wrath of the world community for failing to rein in the pro-Jakarta militias who were killing and terrorizing East Timorese civilians.

Clark wanted the world to put pressure on Indonesia, and felt the economic forum of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation, where Indonesia was then seeking help to cope with the monetary crisis, was the right place to do it.

The Helen Clark who arrives in Jakarta tomorrow is a much friendlier figure.

The Prime Minister, leader of the New Zealand Labor Party, has already established a rapport with President Megawati Soekarnoputri and this two-day visit is aimed to help smooth the differences over East Timor, refugees and human rights which have dogged relations between Jakarta and Wellington.

Like Megawati, Helen Clark is a pioneering female politician. But Clark, 52, is a much less flamboyant leader than the Indonesian president.

The daughter of dairy farmers, Clark was born in the central North Island town of Hamilton in 1950.

A serious, studious young woman, she was educated at boarding school and studied political science at the University of Auckland.

"I was academic, worked really hard because I've always really enjoyed academic work," Clark has said of her student days. She has described how 1960s pop music made little impact on her and once admitted seeing other students smoking marijuana - but not trying a puff herself.

But even in her earnest youth Clark was an individual thinker.

To her parents' angst, she joined in protests against the Vietnam War and against the presence of US military bases on New Zealand soil.

Clark became an academic after graduating from university but the political urge was strong and she was deeply involved with the left-wing Labor Party.

By 1981, she was a member of Parliament for an inner-city seat in New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland.

In those days, Clark was an unfashionable beast - a Labor politician who did not support the rampant free-market deregulation which the party was embracing.

Clark felt the policy, dubbed "Rogernomics" after Treasurer Roger Douglas, was unjust.

"If the market is left to sort matters out, social injustice will be heightened and suffering in the community will grow with the neglect the market fosters," the young MP told Parliament in her maiden speech.

That was not a message the government leaders wanted to hear. Clark remained on the backbenches for the next 6 years, speaking out about the importance of social welfare while senior members of the government privatized more and more public assets.

She was mocked within and outside the party as "Red Helen", an old-fashioned leftie who stubbornly failed to recognize the brilliance of Rogernomics.

Clark was also deeply opposed to nuclear power. A vocal anti- nuclear activist in the 1980s, when New Zealand earned American wrath for banning US nuclear warships from visiting Kiwi ports, she even suspected the American government was bugging her phone conversations.

In 1987 Clark became Minister for Housing, coming in from the outfield as Prime Minister David Lange began to recognize the weaknesses of Rogernomics. But three years later Labor lost office and had seemingly lost its way - it had abandoned its traditional working-class roots but seemed to have no coherent alternative.

For the next nine years Labor languished in Opposition. In 1993, Clark decided it was time to make her move and toppled Labor leader Mike Moore, who had just been defeated in elections.

The overhaul of Helen Clark's public image was well on the way. Often characterized as a dour, humorless, boring policy nerd, she used the years in opposition to broaden her interests.

Clark climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with her husband, academic Peter Davis. She took up cross-country skiing, studied foreign languages and adopted a much more media-friendly look; a softer haircut, tailored clothes, even a little makeup.

In 1999, Clark defeated National Party Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, who had come to power in an ugly coup as the desperate Nationals struggled to hold on to power.

As the country's first elected female Prime Minister, Clark feminist credentials are impeccable. But some question how well Clark, who has no children, can really understand the New Zealand family.

"I'm not going to make myself ordinary," she has said. "If ordinary means I have suddenly got to produce a household of kids and iron Peter's shirts, I'm sorry, I'm not interested."

Clark has always taken a keen interest in Indonesia. She has repeatedly urged Jakarta to bring to justice the killers of New Zealand peacekeeper Leonard Manning, murdered on patrol in East Timor. Clark complained that the six-year sentence given to one of Manning's killers in 2001 was too lenient and expressed her unhappiness in March this year when three alleged accomplices were acquitted.

In recent weeks Clark has hinted New Zealand - which took some of the refugees emanating from Indonesia during Australia's recent crackdown on people-smuggling - might look at taking more refugees from Indonesia.

She returns home on Tuesday to begin in earnest preparations for New Zealand's general elections, due in November. But Clark isn't looking too worried - her popularity is the highest for any New Zealand prime minister for the last 15 years.