An extrovert, orator and loner

August 14, 2005
Man of the people ... David Lange.

Man of the people ... David Lange.

As New Zealand wakes to news of the death of one of its greatest prime ministers, Anthony Hubbard charts the career of David Lange, the brilliant school boy who went from poor man's lawyer to international statesman.

David Russell Lange, born Auckland, August 4, 1942, died Auckland, August 12, 2005.

David Lange, a loner who played the wit and the extrovert, led a government of radical reform that permanently altered the political landscape.

Lange was a gifted orator who entertained and charmed the voters while his third Labour government carried out a free-market revolution. Rogernomics brought about profound economic and social changes, as profound as any in the country's history.

Two other initiatives of his administration have had almost as large an influence on posterity. In foreign policy, the Lange government's ban on nuclear ship visits caused a long-lasting breach with the United States, the country's traditional patron.

And the decision to allow Treaty of Waitangi claims reaching back to 1840 caused a momentous change in the relations between Maori and Pakeha. Treaty claims have become a central political issue and will remain so for years.

Lange was a sensitive individual who as an overweight schoolboy learnt to use wit as a defensive weapon. As an orator he won people over with his warmth and his sense of humour. Many sensed his neediness and responded to it, rather as American voters first did with Bill Clinton.

Lange was an instinctual politician, Methodist rather than Marxist, and not in any way methodical in his political thinking. He once explained that he was a monarchist because he had waved the flag and sang in a choir for the Queen during her visit in 1953.

As a pragmatic politician with few fixed beliefs, Lange could connect with many similarly pragmatic voters. The wittiest politician in the country's history could, on a good day, disarm friends and enemies. Tycoon Douglas Myers, a far-right businessman and an ideological foe of Lange's, confessed he took delight in reading the transcripts of the PM's post-Cabinet press conferences.

Lange's strengths were also his weakness - susceptibility to capture by more determined or more ideologically committed colleagues, flightiness and a somewhat erratic judgment, and an inability to build alliances. All these eventually led to his downfall.

David Russell Lange was the oldest of four children born to Roy Lange, a GP in Otahuhu, and Phoebe Lange, a nurse. Roy Lange had a profound and lasting influence on his son. A witty, liberal man, he practised a peculiarly Methodist form of practical socialism or applied Christianity. Many patients from this working class area could not afford to pay him, and Dr Lange did not charge them.

Lange was large and exceptionally verbal, even as a small child. He did not excel at school, preferring to coast despite his formidable intelligence. Mealtimes at the noisy Lange household - the surgery was in the house, and patients were constantly ringing - sharpened his debating skills.

"I've never been in any situation since," Lange says in Vernon Wright's 1984 biography, David Lange: Prime Minister, "where meal-times were anything like as stimulating or demanding as they were in the Lange household."

He took an early interest in politics - at 11, he said, he decided he would one day be Prime Minister - as a means of changing the world and for the verbal jousting. Lange listened to parliament on the crystal set in his upstairs bedroom.

Witty interjections delighted him. At a political meeting the local National MP, Leon Gotz, whose German name gave rise to unpleasant questions, explained that his name was Frank Leon Albert Gotz, and the initials spelled "flag".

A heckler yelled, "Yeah mate, and like all flags you're up the pole". Lange told Wright: "I think more than anything, that's when I decided politics was on."

Lange took a law degree at Auckland University and then went to London. He was deeply influenced in London by Donald Soper, later Lord Soper, a Methodist theologian and socialist. At the Methodist West London Mission, where Soper worked, Lange met his first wife, Naomi Crampton.

In 1968, the newly-weds returned to New Zealand and Lange soon built a reputation as a poor man's lawyer and an exceptionally skilled courtroom barrister, quick on his feet and a master of the plea in mitigation.

In 1977 he entered Parliament after winning selection as the Labour candidate for the safe seat of Mangere. Once again, his wit carried the day. As the last of 16 candidates to speak, the heavily-built politician was introduced as "the person who has had the longest wait of the evening". Lange shot back: "And with respect, the greatest weight too, I think."

Asked what new qualities he would bring to Parliament, Lange replied: "Well, I'm a teetotaller."

Labour at that time was weak from its devastating defeat in the 1975 election, and National Prime Minister Robert Muldoon dominated New Zealand politics. Lange was quickly identified as a saviour for his party and a match for Muldoon. He later confessed that he was bewildered by his sudden popularity.

He used to take refuge from the attention by taking the train from Wellington to his home in Mangere - a 14-hour trip on which he could be alone.

He quickly outshone Labour leader Bill Rowling in the polls and in 1980 his supporters made a leadership coup. It failed on Rowling's casting vote. Labour lost again in the 1981 election, its third defeat in a row, although it won more votes than National.

Lange later said he was glad he did not win the leadership in 1980: "I wasn't ready for it."

In 1983, he became leader and quickly tried to change the party's anti-nuclear policy. He supported the ban on nuclear-armed ships, but had little objection to visits by nuclear-powered vessels. This caused a ruckus in the party, and Lange had to back down.

When Muldoon called a snap election for July 1984, his government was split and the Prime Minister was deeply unpopular. Lange, at 41, seemed a breath of fresh air and the herald of a new generation and a fresh approach to policy.

But the Labour Party was also badly divided over policy, between neo-liberals headed by finance spokesman Roger Douglas and by more traditional social democrats. These divisions, however, were not public, and the party had papered them over by issuing a bland election manifesto.

The story of Rogernomics - where Muldoon's elaborate network of subsidies, regulations and ad hoc interventions was overturned in favour of the market - is well known.

Less well understood is Lange's own attitude to the reforms. He consistently argued that the policies of his government's first term were necessary. The country could not afford to subsidise its main economic activity, agriculture. It "could not continue to be run like a Polish shipyard".

But in a revealing interview with the Sunday Star-Times in 2003, Lange also revealed his own uncertainty about whether the specific reforms were the right ones.

"Oh, I had no idea," he said. "I knew we had to change. I was never confident about the statements about this and that and the other thing."

And he revealed he was concerned for his personal safety because of the huge social upheaval caused by the reforms.

"One of the things that used to haunt me . . . I used to be, not scared, but apprehensive about the effects of the changes on my electorate," he said.

"I always had the feeling that I was going to have my house smashed or my office raided or that people would spit and shout at me in the street.

"I used to go to the Mangere town centre and walk about and test the waters each Saturday, and at this stage Mangere had the highest unemployment and lowest income of any non-Maori electorate in the country.

"And yet these people would greet me in the streets - 'Hello Lange! Hello!' - while they were being sort of kicked to bits."

As the revolution progressed, strains between MPs and the wider party steadily grew. The anti-nuclear policy was one of the few ties uniting Labour, and critics accused Lange of using it cynically. At one point when interest rates and inflation were sky-high, Lange admitted that anti-nuclearism "wasn't a bad policy if you've been in a supermarket recently".

But the politician who had seemed a lukewarm anti-nuclearist ended up as a international campaigner against the Bomb. His speech at the Oxford Union debate in March 1985 was the high point of his prime ministership and even of his political career. It inspired national pride in New Zealand, and helped cement the idea that New Zealand was standing up to the bullies of the Western alliance.

It is also remembered, typically, for the shaft of wit Lange loosed at one of his opponents - he would answer his question, he said, "if you hold your breath for just a moment - I can smell the uranium on it as you lean forward!"

This rising nationalist tide got a further boost when Lange refused entry to the nuclear-capable USS Buchanan. As a result, the US withdrew its security guarantee to New Zealand under the 1951 Anzus agreement. Anzus had long been touted as the cornerstone of New Zealand's defence, but anti-nuclear opinion continued to strengthen in the country.

The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in July 1985 gave Lange another opportunity to ride the cause. New Zealanders noticed that neither America or Britain condemned France for blowing up the Greenpeace flagship.

The decision to allow treaty claims dating back to 1840 was to have far-reaching consequences not necessarily welcomed by the Lange government. Lange said the government had not foreseen the flood of claims that resulted, covering the whole country, nor their scope. "We didn't know what we were getting into," he said later.

Rumours of a split between Lange and finance minister Roger Douglas had begun to spread before the 1987 election, but were denied. In fact, there was a developing argument behind the scenes. Douglas had suggested in April 1987 a programme of user-pays in social services, an increase in GST and a flat tax. Lange rejected it.

In the 1987 election Labour increased its majority, a rare event for an incumbent government, largely as a result of cross-over support from conservative voters.

Lange, who took the education portfolio, was to bring in Tomorrow's Schools, a radical reform that gave power to parents and principals on elected school boards of trustees.

But within a few months, Lange and Douglas were locked in a battle over economic policy that was to finish his prime ministership and sink the Labour government. The specific area of disagreement was over a flat-tax policy announced with great fanfare on December 17, 1987. Lange cancelled it in the New Year without reference to Cabinet or caucus. In 2003 he conceded cheerfully that he had acted "quite unconstitutionally" in doing so.

The second term of the Lange government was marked by increasing dissension, growing economic trouble after the sharemarket crash of 1987, rising unemployment, and mounting unpopularity.

The battle in 1988 focused on the sale of state assets. In November 1988 Richard Prebble, an enthusiastic privatiser, said on television that the PM had been dictatorial, comparing him with the hated Muldoon. Lange said later it was "unbelievable luck" - Prebble had "sacked himself". In December, Roger Douglas also resigned.

Even the anti-nuclear cause was no longer a rallying point. On Anzac Day 1989, Lange gave a dramatic address in the United States suggesting New Zealand should withdraw from the Anzus Council. In effect, this would be a formal burial of the Anzus Pact, although Lange was infuriated by the reporting of it as "withdrawal from Anzus". At the same time a famous photograph of the PM lolling in the grass appeared in Time magazine.

The nationalist gesture had blown up in his face and he had lost his personal dignity. The United States was furious, saying that it had been told the speech would be non-controversial. In New Zealand, it was widely seen as an insult and an offensive mistake, delivered as it was on the day of remembrance of past military sacrifices.

Harvey McQueen, an education adviser in the Beehive, wrote that from the Anzac Day speech onward, "I realised the situation looked terminal (for Lange)".

All those who knew Lange remarked on his personal insecurity. McQueen wrote in his memoirs, The Ninth Floor: Inside the Prime Minister's Office, that "the measure of his self-doubt surprised me. He felt he had achieved little. We would argue with him, but he remained unconvinced."

Even McQueen, an admirer of Lange's admits that he lacked the "inclination" to form alliances and coalitions.

On August 7, 1989, Lange resigned as prime minister. The Labour caucus's decision to re-elect Roger Douglas to Cabinet, he said later, was the last straw. In November that year, he separated from his wife Naomi. Soon afterwards, Naomi rang the Dominion newspaper and named Lange's speechwriter, Margaret Pope, as the other woman.

The 1990 election brought disaster for the Labour government, although Lange was returned to the safe Labour seat of Mangere.

Thereafter, he cut an increasingly sad figure in Parliament. His day had passed, and he was not part of the Labour leadership. He wrote an excellent column in the Dominion, - he was a gifted writer - in which he criticised the Right. Critics said he was rewriting history; had he not presided over the revolution himself?

In 1996 he quit parliament and politics. His valedictory speech was vintage Lange and his farewell was notably warm. He was hailed by all sides of the House.

Thereafter, he continued to make occasional forays into the public eye, although his health was visibly worsening - he had had an angioplasty in 1988, heart surgery in 1995, a coronary bypass in 2001. In 2002 he revealed that he had amyloidosis, an incurable blood disorder.

On each occasion when he seemed seriously ill or close to death, there was a outpouring of public concern and sympathy. In an age of political cynicism, Lange had become that rare thing, a politician who was loved.

Sunday Star-Times, New Zealand
