New Zealand's prime ministers, ranked

The Detail looks at the New Zealand prime ministers who shone; the ones who changed the nation; and one who helped change the world. It's not the one you think.

It is far too early to judge the leadership of Christopher Luxon, with just a year behind him in the top job.

That is why he has been left off the list of 23 former prime ministers ranked from the best to the worst since the first one gave himself that title. (Our leaders were Premiers until Richard Seddon in 1893.)

Also left out were prime ministers whose tenures were considered too short to judge.

The rankings come from three historians asked by The Listener to do the job, and on The Detail we talk to two of them, Otago University professor of history Dr Erik Olssen and Victoria's Dr Jim McAloon.

McAloon says there are a lot of issues facing Luxon and a lot of challenges he has to meet, but it is too early to say how well he will do at meeting them.

"Perhaps all I will say is that some of our most successful [prime ministers] - Fraser, Clark, Keith Holyoake - all had very long political apprenticeships, which Christopher Luxon has not had. And I think there's something in that, that those successful ones knew thoroughly how the system worked. They'd done their apprenticeship.

"Mr Luxon may develop into a successful prime minister, but 12 months in it's just too early to say."

The three judges did not always agree on the rankings, but all picked the same number one - World War II's leader, Peter Fraser.

Fraser was respected and trusted by Winston Churchill, was instrumental in establishing the United Nations, then oversaw post war reconstruction. He was possibly, in the words of the third historian, Dr Michael Bassett, who has written a biography of Fraser, "the biggest single figure in the creation of New Zealand's welfare state".

But being thrust into an emergency situation and handling it well does not necessarily mean you will feature highly on this list.

Dame Jacinda Ardern may be the darling of the rest of the world, but she is near the bottom of the heap in this exercise - Bassett and Olssen both put her at 21 out of 23.

McAloon was more forgiving and placed her at eight.

"One of the maxims that runs through this exercise is that some prime ministers are lucky and some are unlucky," he says.

"I guess before Covid you would have said that Jacinda Ardern, on balance, was lucky. But then Covid was one crisis too many and the ongoing nature of the pandemic and the resentment that built up in some quarters at the measures taken to deal with that, as well as a great deal of old-fashioned sexist vituperation I have to say, in the end I think pushed her into the unlucky category.

"I'm not wanting to exaggerate her virtues or pretend that she didn't have flaws as a politician ... but maybe there's a bit of an example there of a prophet not being honoured in their own country, as the old line has it.

"I do give Ardern credit for trying to change the language of politics."

Also on the podcast, we talk about the prime minister whose face was plastered on hundreds of thousands of New Zealand homes, the tricky personalities, the victims of our golden age of satire, and the wars that made leaders shine.

Plus, which PM has a university named after him? And did "King Dick" Seddon really try dirty tricks to stop women getting the vote, but then take credit for it when it happened?

You won't hear every prime minister's name in the podcast, but if you want to pore over the details of the rankings, grab a copy of The Listener from 16 November and read Eric Frykberg's cover story. It is also available online, but is paywalled.

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