Last Man Standing

Jim Anderton has said he did not leave the Labour Party, rather, all of his colleagues did. The left-wing politician was a successful candidate for Sydenham in Christchurch, before his lone opposition to the Fourth Labour Government’s free-market reforms led him to break away in 1989 and go on to lead Alliance, a merger of four smaller parties. Gerd Pohlmann’s insightful documentary on Anderton’s legacy grants him his due as a man of activist commitment and integrity in the continued pursuit of socialist principles, as the ideology of neoliberalism took hold and a wave of privatisation ensued.

Through a wide lens on the era, we see how a more barbed competitive political environment began to emerge in New Zealand in the ‘90s along with the electoral system transition to MMP, as smaller parties jostled for influence, and how the 1999 coalition government he formed with Helen Clark’s Labour became the most leftwing in a generation. Amid the turmoil of internal party politics, came the need to reckon with a personal family tragedy. The documentary captures both a fraught period in New Zealand’s history, and Anderton’s unbending commitment to community. — Carmen Gray