Politics, pain & pride GRANT ROBERTSON'S NEW LIFE

His time in Parliament was a labour of love, but now those doors have closed, he reveals anything could happen

- Elisabeth Easther

Former Labour MP Grant Robertson learned a lot during his many years in politics.

“I came to understand that you'll never achieve everything you want to and some great ideas won’t make it to fruition,” says Grant, 53. “And it’s frustrating when some of the things you worked really hard on are reversed by the next government. But having taken a step back, overall I know I did good things and I helped people.”

Raised in Dunedin, Grant’s political career began at the University of Otago and went on to include a stint at the United Nations in New York. But it was when he returned to New Zealand in 2001 and became MP Marian Hobbs’ ministerial advisor that Grant was drawn to the Beehive. Then when Marian retired in 2008, Grant was selected to contest her Wellington Central seat, making him one of our first openly gay MPs.

After three terms in Opposition, Grant was part of the 2017 Labour landslide with Dame Jacinda Ardern at the helm. Two terms in office ensued, with Grant becoming Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. So it was no surprise that when Grant retired from politics last year, he was approached to write a memoir.

“I was initially worried I didn’t have the perspective to write this book — that I was still too close to it all,” Grant says of his biography Anything Could Happen. “But the pace of history is so quick nowadays and I did want to write about what happened - and perhaps more importantly how it felt.”

With a keen eye for observation, Grant writes candidly about his own life, as well as some of the harrowing events his government faced, from the Christchurch terror attack to the pandemic.

Asked whether he wrote the book himself, the answer is an empathic “Yes!”