Key to the Kingdom

John Key can thank many things for his rise to New Zealand's top job — not least the receptionist skills of his sister. Liz Cave was the face of a large Christchurch clothing company in late 1998 when the then president of the governing National Party, John Slater, came visiting on business. Knowing him a little, she summoned the courage to say, "Would you mind if I asked you a personal question?" Not at all, replied Slater. "I have a brother who lives overseas," Cave told him. "He's planning to come back and he may be interested in going into politics. Who could he talk to?"

Political power brokers hear such questions a lot, of course, and most finetune a response that's polite yet noncommittal. In this case, however, Slater was inclined to do more. Cave seemed to know everybody and could instantly recognize voices on the other end of the phone. "She was a receptionist par excellence," says Slater. "I thought, She's a pretty smart cookie, so I assumed her brother would be out of the same mold." John should talk directly to him, he told Cave, and he gave her his card.

Key rang Slater a few days later from London, where he was head of foreign exchange for investment bank Merrill Lynch. It would be a few years before Key could extricate himself from the world of finance, and he entered Parliament in 2002; he became the party's leader four years later. And on Nov. 8, the political career launched by that call culminated in a resounding election victory for Key and National, ending nine years of Labour rule under Helen Clark. On the night, hundreds of supporters gathered outside Key's mansion in the affluent Auckland suburb of Parnell. "That doesn't normally happen in this country," says Slater, "particularly in an area where the residents are not very demonstrative." Though he may not score highly on charisma, Key has inspired many New Zealanders, who see in him a combination of decency, cleverness and determination that they believe could make him one of the nation's best prime ministers.

Others worry about how far to the right he'll take a country that maintains one of the world's most comprehensive welfare systems. "I just utter one fear," the vanquished Clark said on election night, "and that is that all we've worked to put in place does not go up in flames on the bonfire of right-wing politics."

Like many on the left, Clark isn't much reassured by the fact that Key himself once relied on welfare. Seven years old when his alcoholic father, George, died of a heart attack, young John and his two elder sisters were raised in a state-provided house in Christchurch by their Austrian-immigrant mother, Ruth, who made ends meet by working long hours as a cleaner. "We always ate and we were always happy," says Key's sister Sue Lazar, "but there wasn't a lot of money for clothes or anything like that."

Ruth eschewed boyfriends from her husband's death until her own in 2000. There were no male role models in her children's family life. "Mum was the only person who had any influence on John whatsoever," says Cave. Their mother ran a tight ship and hated being lied to. If she ever suspected dishonesty, she would chase the culprit through the house wielding a slipper.

While Key may have started out on Struggle Street, he quickly showed a knack for finding avenues to greener pastures. One afternoon during his mid-teens, he announced to his family that he was taking up golf. "No one we knew played the game," says Cave, "certainly no one in our neighborhood. But he said businessmen played golf and he needed to learn it now so he would be ready."

It was around this time that young John set himself two life goals: to be a millionaire and to be Prime Minister. Through currency trading, he realized the first before he was 25. Some two decades later, with an estimated fortune of $40 million, a wife and two children, he'd no sooner ticked off the second goal than he was pushing for the handover from Clark to be fast-tracked so he could attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Peru from Nov. 22.

Former National president Slater is unsurprised by his protégé's impatience or his success. "I could see from our first meeting that he was headed for big things," he says. "He's got a very frank and friendly manner. He has no pretensions. When you consider his path in life, he's a guy who can relate to anybody."

Key campaigned from the center, but many of those now trying to get his ear would like the party, now resplendent in the robes of power, to adopt what Slater calls "its natural position in terms of philosophy." Many self-made men never lose their empathy for the underprivileged; others figure that if they could haul themselves out of poverty, others should be able to do it too. While he pledged on election night that his government would serve the interests of all New Zealanders, Key also noted that the people had voted for a "more prosperous, more ambitious" country. And some of his pre-campaign statements paint him as quite the ideological warrior. It shouldn't surprise anyone if, before long, Key chases down some of Clark's welfare darlings with the proverbial slipper.