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I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when we've confronted these things we've been able to talk them through, and I'm sure we will with this issue as well.

So I think that we're in a very heightened and somewhat unusual period of politics and polling around the countries that New Zealanders take close interest in.

This is the difficulty about talking about it without sounding big-headed, but you cannot speak of New Zealand now without my involvement in what it has become.

I've had a quiet fascination with New Zealand for most of my life.

I think that generally New Zealand is respected for the positions it takes because it thinks them through.

There's a very go-to kind of attitude in New Zealand that stems from that psyche of being quite isolated and not being able to rely on the rest of the world's infrastructure.

New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.

I think that's what all New Zealanders who are fair-minded want - a good chance for everybody to get ahead, whether it's education or housing.

I support a constitutional conversation, as the Labour Party does, which will allow New Zealanders to evolve a more mature and stable constitutional form, but that's not something that I, as Labour Party, would want to impose, either on the party or on the public.

If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.