By Crikey reporter Lucy Morieson

Actor Sam Neill is one of New Zealand’s biggest exports. He’s also a very political animal, and this week he launched Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark’s election campaign – you can find the full transcript of the speech here at Margo Kingston’s webdiary.

Neill is passionate about his country – he makes wine in Otago and champions the cause of local film and television – and he is as strongly anti-Don Brash, the opposition National Party leader, as he is pro-Clark. “I’ve been quoted before as saying a Don Brash-led government would put this country back 20 years,” he says. “I was wrong. It’s more like 30 years.” And aside from towing the anti-US line – “we should never blindly follow our friends and allies if the cause is not just” – he promotes an anti-Iraq stance, calling the war a “bloody fiasco.” “It is cruel, misguided, counter productive, illegal, and founded on lies, and if Don Brash had his way, we’d be there by lunchtime.”

He promotes the idea of a multicultural New Zealand, saying his own family is not untypical: “we are Pakeha, Maori, Asian, even African American.” Which is why, says Neill, he’s backing Helen Clark and her government. A government, he says, “that is prepared to listen, to look for consensus, that refuses to marginalise minorities, that seeks to bring us together, and take us forward to a peaceful and harmonious, secure future.”

It’s hard to imagine an Australian actor making a comparable effort.