The plan was to hang up the suit-and-tie, fly the family to Florida, buy a yacht and sail into the watery american sunset.
Covid put paid to that but Green MP Gareth Hughes has an awesome back-up - he’ll be marooned on an island and boating the kids to school every morning.
“All I want to do know is spend time with my kids and get close to nature.”
He’s getting his wish - and then some.
Green MP Gareth Hughes chairing the Justice and Electoral Select Committee Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Listen to Gareth Hughes’ exit interview with The House
It’s also a post-parliament detox that will allow him to do some serious thinking and research - something not easy to do while running the MP treadmill.
“In the Greens we approach it full-on, ...we’re working mega-hours. And every time I would leave my kids when they were fast asleep in the mornings or I’d come home and they were asleep at night it broke my heart and after a while those bits of broken heart add up and I’m just glad to be spending more time with them.”
The difficulty with governing and keeping the electorate happy is that politics “tends to be about reactive, short term thinking.”
So looking back on his ten years, while happy with the victories he has achieved Gareth Hughes has come to the conclusion that he’s been aiming too far down-stream.
“I’ve been fighting the symptoms, not the causes. I’ve spent twenty years now sort-of chopping off the head of the hydra and another issue grows back. ...I think we need a systems change. It’s kind-of like we need to press CTRL-ALT-DEL on this operating system that runs society and reinstall a new system that’s fit for the age.”
So he plans to sit quietly for a while and dream up some better fixes. Among the issues - climate change is an impending crisis but Hughes is still optimistic; seeing increases in clean energy and more fossil fuels kept in the ground as policy outcomes worthy of giving hope.
“I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved, and just personally that I can leave here with my integrity intact.”
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
There are still things he wants to see done though. The Kermadec Marine Reserve is unfinished business [that Labour and Green couldn’t find partners to push through].
He also wants stronger climate targets and more support for Kiwis to go low-carbon.
And then there’s one more small thing...
“We need to get rid of this thing called neo-liberalism. I’m 38, I’ve spent my whole life... in the shadow of those decisions that Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson made. It was a system that was set up to value prices, markets, individualism. This flawed sort of psychology that we were all in competition with one another, when actually we know that we are a social animal. We are a constructive, positive, collaborative species.”
On the upside Gareth Hughes sees New Zealand as capable of making solid progress because most MPs are basically decent people.
“When people turn on the telly it looks like we don’t get on at all. But behind the scenes and often when the cameras are away we do get on really well together. And I do believe most people here are doing it for the right reasons. They’ve got the wrong policies, but they’re doing it for the right reasons.”
“I wish people could see that politics doesn’t always have to be this sort-of bare knuckle street fight.”
“A part of our country that they don’t have in Australia, that we should be thankful for, is that our politicians on-the-whole get on really well, and are good people.”
Gareth Hughes chairing one of Parliament’s Select Committees Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith