Helen the Hacker?

Hacker?

DEPUTY Prime Minister Helen Eli zabeth Clark, 39, has an unfairly austere public image but she prefers to be regarded as a workaholic that gets unpopular things done effi ciently. She was branded “Helen the Hacker” on a recent radio talkback show because of her almost brutal cost-cutting measures as Health Minister.

But in her own Auckland urban electorate, Mt Albert, her supporters re gard her as “St Helen”, an irony given that she has imposed the death sentence on a local maternity hospital of that name, sparking a protest campaign by thousands of women.

Raised on a Waikato farm, Clark’s family was strongly conservative. She de fiantly joined the Labour Party at Auck land University and became a moderate

ly left-wing stalwart.

Clark contested her first election as a

25-year-old junior politics lecturer but

lost. She remained a party activist and organiser, working with former party president Jim Anderton who is now leader of the fast-growing New Labour Party.

Elected to Parliament in 1981 after marrying medical sociologist Dr Peter Davis, she became a strong anti-nuclear campaigner. Husband Davis two years la ter edited a book, Social Democracy in the Pacific , which examined the forma tion of popular, class-based social demo cratic groups in the region and “Melane sian socialism”.

After Labour came to power in 1984, Clark chaired the parliamentary foreign affairs committee.

Initially outside the cabinet because of her links with Anderton, Lange prom oted her to Housing and Conservation Minister in 1987. Two months after tak ing office she blocked a gold mining venture in the Coromandel area where feelings are running high over plans by foreign mining companies regarded as threatening the environment.

But Clark enhanced her reputation as a tough minister with the health port folio, managing a controversial shake-up of the country’s medical authorities and public health system.

A strong advocate for women’s rights and pay equity, she has on several occa sions launched caustic attacks on the sex ism of several of her male minister col

leagues.

“She is so dry,” once remarked Lange, “that she is combustible.” □