This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

No-one saw it coming. Not even the press gallery did, even when called in early for Monday’s briefing from New Zealand Prime Minister John Key—who unexpectedly announced his resignation. This takes effect on December 12 when the National Party caucus will elect a new leader and, in effect, a new prime minister.

Key will later leave parliament altogether, but close enough to the general election to avoid a byelection in his electorate of Helensville.

We can speculate about hidden or ulterior motives, or even a caucus spill. But, for the time being, we may just take Key at his word: that he is standing down because he wants to take the toll off his family. He never saw himself as a career politician, so longevity in the job was never an end in itself.

Key’s legacy

Key will certainly be remembered as the prime minister who led New Zealand through disasters.

He came to power just after the global financial crisis of 2008. He did not impose strict fiscal austerity, choosing instead to borrow and spend.

He saw the country through the horrific Canterbury earthquakes, the worst natural disaster since 1931, and the Pike River coal mine explosion that killed 29 people. Just recently, another earthquake struck, in Kaikoura, and Key was out there in the helicopter to boost local morale and promise government support.

On becoming prime minister, Key made a controversial pledge that New Zealand superannuation would not be touched so long as he remained in office. This was not quite what one expects from a center-right government.

So, now that he is going, we can anticipate a full-on scrap within government ranks about whether the new prime minister should attack that entitlement in some way, possibly as an election policy.

Key is, by training, a currency dealer; that’s how he made his fortune. And so he would no doubt hope to be remembered as a leader who boosted New Zealand’s economy and improved its chances in the world as an exporter. But with the Trans-Pacific Partnership now virtually a dead duck—thanks to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump—he may not have a lot to crow about.

All the same, Key has been a remarkably popular politician, serving as prime minister since November 2008. But his popularity in some opinion polls was beginning to slide, even though the National Party brand is still riding high—at 48 percent support recently, up from 47 percent at the 2014 election.

So, Key quits while he’s ahead. He has loved the job, but has had enough and wants to leave with integrity on his own terms. He leaves as a leader, and not in defeat.

What’s next?

Many expected Key to lead the National Party into the next election, due in late 2017, and hence bid for a fourth term in office. But, by stepping down now, he makes a clean break and allows his successor to establish their leadership in the new year.

This need not come as a shock. Any sensible leader should think ahead about moving on and leaving the field open for a competent successor. Unfortunately, few leaders do it this way, and their political lives “end in failure”—as British MP Enoch Powell once rather brutally put it.

So, it’s now “game on” for the next prime ministership and for the next election.

The opposition Labour Party has just won an important byelection. That was a morale-booster, and now the contest at the next election is looking more promising for Labour leader Andrew Little.

Key’s successor is still unknown, but he has strongly endorsed his deputy, Bill English, to succeed him.

English is much more of a career politician, having entered parliament in 1990. He led National to a disastrous defeat at the 2002 election, when the party gained less than 21 percent of the vote. But English has performed well as finance minister; he is seen as a compassionate conservative and a sensible economic thinker.

The next prime minister, whoever it is, has post-earthquake reconstruction to think about and inherits an economy that only appears on the surface to be doing well. It’s largely boosted by immigration numbers and a construction boom, thanks to a shortage of housing supply and an asset bubble.

The New Zealand economy is no rock star when it comes to labor productivity, and too many Kiwis are being left behind in real economic terms. Many are struggling to make ends meet; many young people are simply giving up on the Kiwi dream of secure home ownership and a decent chance for starting a family. Homelessness, house prices and inequality will surface as critical issues at the next election.

The Labour Party has a new spring in its step, thanks to Key’s decision to step down. The outcome of the next election is not as clear as some pundits were thinking it was.

Grant Duncan is associate professor for the School of People, Environment and Planning at Massey University.

(Newsweek)

I don't often choose to spend my precious leisure time on fiction that features sexual violence or violence against women. Which is not to say I think books, films and TV programs should never cover those themes. In fact, if a drama aims to reflect the realities of life for a broad range of ‘ordinary’ characters, then these storylines might seem conspicuous by their absence, because violence is part of far more women's and girls' ordinary lived experience than we sometimes acknowledge.

But for me there is a distinction to be made between the writers and program creators who put time, research and consultation into trying to tell an empathic story, and those that use women's bodies like props and glamorize violence against them.

It's probably not surprising then that I've never watched Last Tango in Paris. Until this week, I knew next to nothing about it except the little that told me it wasn't for me. Yet now it feels uncomfortably close to home.

Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider star in Bernardo Bertolucci's film 'Last Tango in Paris'. Schneider has recently revealed she felt "a little raped" in the movie's notorious sex scene, which she was not fully informed about in advance.KEYSTONE/GETTY

"I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can't force someone to do something that isn't in the script, but at the time, I didn't know that."

These words from Maria Schneider (in a 2007 interview with the Daily Mail) sound like those of so many rape survivors as they contend with the ingrained social attitude—so pervasive it's next to impossible not to internalize—that women are responsible for men's behaviour towards them. "She / I should've screamed out… should've bitten him… shouldn't have been so drunk... shouldn't have gone back to his apartment"—and on and on the well-worn, victim-blaming excuses for men's violence go.

Like many survivors, Maria Schneider battled with mental health problems for the rest of her too-short life, used drugs as a coping strategy and sometimes wanted to die. And like many sexual violence survivors, she was fierce and strong, an advocate for other women, a warrior. As survivors sometimes do, she confided that she felt “a little raped” by Last Tango director Bernardo Bertolucci and co-star Marlon Brando; but, as sometimes happens, the confidante she chose—in this case, the world—didn't listen, or tell her it wasn't her fault. Nor did the world validate her feelings by acknowledging that her experience of being anally penetrated by a stick of butter without her consent, and sexually humiliated and hurt on camera for the entertainment of others, was “real rape” and she needn't apologize for defining it as such.

So now that the confession of one of her antagonists has been heard by the world, how will we respond? Simply by doggedly pointing out that no penile penetration was involved in the making of the film, as if that makes everything alright?

As I write this, during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign, it occurs to me that, rightly, most people would refuse to watch, buy, screen or distribute a film depicting the torture of a dog if they knew the dog was really, intentionally hurt in its creation. But how many people will now show or watch, buy or sell Last Tango in Paris, knowing that it depicts the real sexual violation of a real woman?

We know, from the example of Roman Polanski, if nothing else, that being a self-confessed rapist isn't a barrier to prestigious awards or to A-listers queuing up to be in your films. I'd like to believe that the Twitter reaction to Bertolucci's confession indicates a turning tide, but until we all start actually boycotting instead of glorifying known abusers, we will continue to dishonor the memory of Maria Schneider and to fail all sexual violence survivors.

If we want to end abuse and exploitation in the creative industries, as elsewhere, we need to stop colluding in it, and we need to stop sending the message that men's creative output is more valuable than women's lives.

Katie Russell is a freelance writer with 12 years' experience of working and volunteering in the Rape Crisis movement.

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