Helen Clark talking to Chris Carter about his book

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Former Labour MP Chris Carter says former Prime Minister Helen Clark has been talking to him about the book he is planning to write about his time in her Government.

Speaking today on TV3’s “The Nation”, he said Ms Clark had phoned him yesterday “to discuss the book and we talked about resources and the way I'd do the book.”

“She's not going to help me write it, but she’ll no doubt be a critic of it, but I'd expect no less from her,” he said.

Mr Carter goes before Labour’s New Zealand Council on Monday to face possible expulsion from the party over his comments earlier .this year about leader, Phil Goff.

He said he planned to fight the expulsion.

“I'm going to make a strong case about yes I stuffed up,” he said.

“Yes I did an inappropriate thing, but hey Richard Prebble called David Lange mentally unbalanced, you know Phil Goff and Annette King tried to roll Helen Clark, none of them were kicked out.

“I don’t want to have my membership taken off me.

“I’ve spent 20 years in the Labour Party, I've worked very hard to fight it, I'm absolutely fighting it, I'm fronting up, and you know I've never been a person afraid to front up

Mr Carter said he wants his lawyer Deborah Manning to replace him as Te Atatu MP when he resigns at the next election.

He described her as a “young Helen Clark.”

But he denied her claims made in a series of calls to news media that he had been on suicide watch after he was expelled from Labour’s caucus.

“The suggestion that I was mentally sick is not true.

“The statement that I was exhausted and stressed is certainly true and my actions reflected that, they were irrational, they were ridiculous and stupid.”

But he maintains that Mr Goff cannot win the next election for Labour.

He accused him of continuing to fudge on issues like GST and Paul Henry and of being a figure form the 80s.

Mr Carter also talked about his close relationship to Helen Clark.

“I think that Helen was a person that was quite well known to the public, but there are aspects of her personality, her humanness and her humanity which I think a lot of people didn’t see,” he said.

“When Gottlieb (Braun-Elwert) her mountain climbing guide died in the hut (near Lake Tekapo) with her you know that had such a profound effect on her, and she wept, she was profoundly affected by that for weeks and months afterwards.”

Mr Carter said he had no idea what he would do when he left Parliament but he was really interested in journalism and “I might become a journalist”.

To read the full transcript click here.