Profile: New Zealand's Teflon Prime Minister bows out on top

"Teflon John", the nickname has stuck to New Zealand's unflappable Prime Minister John Key when little else did.

Key, who announced his shock resignation on Monday, will be bowing out on top in terms of his approval ratings and leaving a gaping hole in the country's political landscape.

The self-effacing Key has sold himself and the country over eight years in power on his outward optimism and ability to shrug off trouble traits that have carried him on a rags-to-riches rise.

Key will be remembered for steering New Zealand through its economic recovery after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the disastrous Canterbury earthquakes that killed 185 people in February 2011.

But he also leaves the country with a raft of problems many of them persisting from the previous center-left Labour Party government.

These include a ballooning housing crisis that is rippling out from Auckland New Zealand's largest city with a third of the population child poverty, and persistent criticisms of expanding economic inequality.

Most recently doctors, police, teachers and other essential public servants have been voicing growing agitation at diminishing resources after eight years of government belt-tightening, while Key has talked up the prospect of tax cuts.

Along with these issues, Key's government has successfully weathered public disapproval over unpopular policies such as the sell-down of state-owned utilities and an embarrassing failed bid driven by Key himself to change the national flag.

With his center-right National Party rarely polling much short of 50 percent unprecedented for a third-term government in New Zealand its success is often attributed to Key's uncanny ability to brush off any contentious issues.

"SMILING ASSASSIN"

Born in Auckland on Aug. 9, 1961, Key was a boy when his father died. His mother moved Key and his two sisters to Christchurch, where she worked multiple jobs and raised her children in a state house.

Key went on to Canterbury University where he completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1981, before going straight into investment banking.

It was a career that took him to Singapore and London as a foreign exchange dealer for Merrill Lynch, and made his fortune, but also earned him the nickname of "The Smiling Assassin" after he was told to sack 400 staff at the company's London office.

He was invited in 1999 to sit on the Foreign Exchange Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and he also studied management at Harvard University on two occasions, all of which established him a reputation for sound business sense.

In 2001, he returned to New Zealand with his wife, Bronagh, and two children, to fulfill a long held ambition to stand for Parliament. He won the mainly rural Helensville seat in Auckland in 2002 with a majority of 1,589, before rising quickly through the ranks, becoming deputy finance spokesman and then finance spokesman.

In the 2005 election, he again won Helensville, this time with a majority of 12,778. He continued as finance spokesman before being elected party leader in November 2006.

His optimistic exterior, he has admitted, did not suit him on the Parliamentary Opposition benches, where, he told North and South magazine in July 2011, "you're always picking holes in things."

HARD TIMES

In 2008, National ended a Labor Party-led administration after nine years and Key became Prime Minister.

Key's first major test came with the Pike River Mine disaster, when 29 men died in November 2010 and he established a reputation for providing a sympathetic and responsive government.

This was strengthened after the earthquake that devastated New Zealand's second city of Christchurch in February 2011.

While, the record commodity values of New Zealand's pillar agriculture sector that saw the country through those times have since slipped, the country still maintains an enviable rate of economic growth among developed nations.

Last month the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development forecast growth of 3.5 percent this year and 3.4 percent next year before declining to 2.6 percent in 2018 for New Zealand.

The independent New Zealand Institute of Economic Research the next day forecast annual gross domestic product growth was expected to average over 3 percent over the next five years.

But the economic indicators have been mixed for some time.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut the official cash rate to an historic low of 1.75 percent in November as inflation continued to track near zero, while warning of an unsustainably high exchange rate and the continued risk of financial instability from an overheated housing market.

And New Zealand's unemployment rate fell below 5 percent for the first time since 2008 the year Key came to power in the September quarter, but critics have raised concerns over the reliability of the figures that came with a change in the data-gathering method.

SMEAR TACTICS

When the pressure is on, Key has made an art of shrugging his shoulders and casually dismissing his troubles as irrelevant, coasting through with no discernible hit to his approval ratings.

This upset many supporters in 2013 when he shrugged and said he would ignore a citizen-initiated referendum calling for an end to asset sales, despite two-thirds of voters opposing them.

He used the approach again with claims published in a book before the 2014 general election that the government used underhand tactics and worked with right-wing "attack bloggers" to smear and embarrass opponents.

The fallout claimed the resignation of Justice Minister Judith Collins, who has since returned to Cabinet with the Police and Corrections portfolios.

Key has also had to hedge around his previously steadfast position that New Zealanders were not being subject to mass surveillance by the country's electronic spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau.

U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden gave a compelling argument before the 2014 election that the U.S. National Security Agency was already capable of reading New Zealanders' e-mails a point on which Key conceded Snowden "might well be right."

Elsewhere on the global stage, he has also sent troops into Iraq albeit in a non-combat role to train Iraqi troops in the fight against Islamic State insurgents and overseen growing military links with the United States.

Last month the U.S. Navy re-entered New Zealand waters for the first time in 30 years since New Zealand enacted legislation to ban nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed vessels.

Meanwhile, Key's personal campaign to change the New Zealand flag which features the British colonial era Union Jack was soundly rebuffed by the public in a referendum earlier this year.

He was also ridiculed internationally after having to apologize to a waitress whose ponytail he repeatedly pulled on numerous visits to an Auckland café.

But the embarrassments failed to stick and his poll ratings remained high, giving rise to the term "Key derangement syndrome" or "KDS" to describe the outraged frustration of his critics and opponents.

STRUGGLING OPPOSITION

While Key has undoubtedly been one of New Zealand's most consistently popular prime ministers, he has arguably been one of the most divisive too.

Key has maintained an everyman persona, always ready to pose for selfies with schoolchildren and to share in a joke even when he has been the target as he has been with radio station pranksters.

But recently the public has shown signs of growing indifference to Key's "regular bloke" New Zealand-style charm.

His campaigning on the ground failed to retain a National Party seat in a by-election early last year and he failed to make any impact for another National Party candidate in a by-election in Auckland this month.

Since the last general election he has repeatedly held out the prospect of imminent tax cuts despite some public services being obviously overstretched.

This also seems to have irked Key's deputy and Finance Minister Bill English, who has had to add the rider "if circumstances permit."

The main opposition Labour Party has struggled to dent Key's approval ratings. It is on its fourth leader since Key came to power and has rarely edged above 30 percent in opinion polls.

Key said Monday that he had never seen himself as a career politician and he would be resigning as a Member of Parliament next year.

"On that day, I shall walk from these buildings for the last time, a richer person for the experience and privilege of being here, and hoping and believing that New Zealand has been well served by the government I led," he said.

On that day too, New Zealand will begin its assessment of how much richer the country is for his legacy. Endit