YouTube interview featuring former New Zealand Prime Minister John Key reflecting on major crises during his career. In this excerpt he identifies the Christchurch earthquakes as the most significant crisis he faced, contrasts it with crises of other prime ministers (e.g., Jacinda Ardern and Helen Clark), and begins recounting the sequence of earthquakes and their impacts.
Thinking back on your career, if you had to pick a crisis, what one stands out and what were the lessons you learned from that? Yeah, I mean, for.
Obvious reasons, you know, not just because I'm here. The Christchurch earthquakes was, you know, most prime ministers have something pretty big. Jacinda obviously had Covid. Ironically, actually, Helen Clark didn't have a big thing in her time. She had the tsunamis, actually, which didn't affect New Zealand, but she came back for those. But Yevaran typically gets something. And the Christchurch earthquakes were the thing for us. And, you know, as many people in the room will remember, if you lived here for a long time in a test suit, you know, the first ear earthquake actually took place at about 3 or 4 in the morning. And the incredible thing everyone said was, oh, it didn't, you know, no one died. It didn't affect anyone really. There was a bit of disruption and a bit of damage, but nothing really, really serious. So it was only when the second, you know, the big earthquake actually happened.
