Ross Vintiner was David Lange’s press secretary from 1983 to 1988. On the 40th anniversary of the election that swept Lange into power, he reflects on one of the most beloved – and complex – figures in New Zealand politics.
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I first met David Lange in Siberia. Not the Russian region. Down a squeaking corridor in an annex to the old parliament buildings, sat a colossus: the deputy leader of the New Zealand Labour Party. David was some distance from his leader as if separated by the Urals from a purgatory place for dissidents. This was “Siberia”. It was 1981, and David was out of sorts with the determined Labour leader Bill Rowling, having ousted Bill’s mate Bob Tizzard two years earlier as deputy leader, and just failing to do the same to Bill late in 1980.
I was a publicity officer for the Labour caucus from early in 1981, election year, with experience in journalism, corporate public relations, government service – and a working-class background blotted by too many years at university.
David and I were opposites. We met over a press statement on justice, his shadow portfolio. He quizzed me like a lawyer does a client, leaning back that enormity with some delicacy on a huge squeaking chair, a higher register than that from his Siberian corridor. He already had fame. David had the ability to persuade or demote anyone, save the then prime minister, Robert Muldoon – and the majority Labour caucus and wider party.
There he sat, cautious, swirling paper on his desk, eyes and head wandering around the room, avoiding the draft in front of him that he had spent seconds reading. David Lange was sizing up this 29-year-old, 10 years his junior; me 72 kilograms, him 100 kg more; me with a part law degree and full tickets in political science and journalism, him a Masters of Law; me the son of a unionised freezing worker, him the Christian Socialist doctor’s boy; me from provincial Temuka, he from metropolitan Auckland and cosmopolitan Māngere; me who had never been in politics, he with vast experience of intra- and inter-political encounters; me with a sense of humour, he with the cryptic and crippling wit, word play and memory beyond compare; me the theoretical socialist wanting a new New Zealand, he the social conservative with a passion for social justice, extolling a nostalgic New Zealand; me the fallen, he the Methodist believer; me the libertine, he the married family man. That much was clear on the surface, belying a maelstrom of beliefs that David could unfurl and rollick on occasion, such as his social justice maiden speech to a rapt parliament in 1977.
To the draft press statement. Amid his verbal and bodily pirouettes, suspicions, differences, and my nervousness and trembling case for the need for a statement at all, he found common ground, struck out a paragraph, rose from the suffering chair and smiled with that insightful look, huge eyes shining, and with just enough of that stentorian bass voice, said: “Let’s see what happens.” I was on notice. I left the room with images of him dancing, perhaps singing as he had done in Christian choirs. He got page two coverage.
As the 1981 election approached, the head of the research unit, Dr John Henderson, a Rowling biographer, offered me up to travel with David on the campaign trail. That was daunting enough. More so because, on enquiry, Rowling’s office told me: “You’ll be fine, just keep David under control.” Nothing further.
Day one, David and I in New Plymouth. Getting there, he spilled out from his aircraft seat and, on arrival in his crumpled black suit, drank a large bottle of Coke and ate a double scoop of chips. At the hall, there were more cakes than audience members. Local Labour was not enthusiastic. With sweat and some discomfort, David spoke to, not from, my speech. It questioned Muldoon’s Think Big programme and raised the hopes that a Labour government would bring new opportunities, largely undefined. Muldoon had Think Big, the Springbok tour, and himself; we had a dictionary manifesto and Bill Rowling.
Later that night, despondent, David drove through the night to his family in Māngere. During the campaign I met that wonderful family, and he treated me to a fundraising dinner with the Indian community, a far warmer event than New Plymouth. Our perfunctory, solus campaign eked out. We largely met Rowling’s aim: he won more votes than Muldoon, but not government, with no trouble or significant help from us.
Early in 1982, David telephoned me and said he would be absent from parliament, and we needed to talk. We did talk. Obliquely. Lange code. He would have an operation, undefined. He was “ready”. He wanted me to be ready. I listened. I wished him well and discussed the need for an image change. He agreed. I felt trusted, a confidant to a new man taking shape.
When David became leader of the Labour Party in 1983, I was in Sri Lanka. I returned and, without an interview, started working full-time for him. It was not easy. He was in demand – speeches mainly, which tied us all down. The usual attacks on Muldoon. Commentary. Mistakes. His first major speech as opposition leader to the American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand was carefully prepared. I was not with him and, not for the last time, he departed from script and entertained the idea of nuclear-powered vessels being acceptable, whereas Labour’s policy was no nukes.
Thanks to the adroit Michael Cullen MP pointing me to a reference in Janes Fighting Ships that American nuclear powered naval vessels were almost certainly nuclear armed, I got David to agree to a corrective media statement and briefings to meet what Muldoon claimed was the absence of a Labour nuclear policy.
In preference to conflict and point scoring in parliament, I proposed Labour go positive, to talk about potential, opportunity, consensus, even hope. A government in waiting. We devised the campaign for the regions to repair the relationship with the Labour Party and to sell David to provincial New Zealand and its influencers. The two of us for six weeks plied the road and regional towns with charts and nightly meetings during the chill of 1983.
David spoke of his belief in the state to intervene and provide health, education, welfare; to grow social justice and the economic pie for all. To be the son of a railway worker, and earn a PhD. He spoke of Norman Kirk, who took the hand of a Māori child on the Waitangi marae years earlier. He wanted Māori to realise their aspirations. In global affairs he wanted to make New Zealanders proud..
Both our confidences grew. Significant local and some national media images and voter highlights emerged – Lange jetting down braided rivers, a big man of action; shoppers welcoming his walkabouts; a draft speech of hope in the making. Movement and optimism. Beliefs that hinted at his father’s Christian Socialism, the aims of his mentor, the Hyde Park orator Lord Soper, and the goals of the Labour Party.
A Wellington press gallery black out resulted, as predicted. What we got back was the Labour Party, provincial seats, and an election strategy and draft plan. Priceless.
David had agreed to Brian Edwards, the foremost television maestro, assisting with his television media training. With his large frame and tendency to shift on his seat and to use too many words, David the orator was too big and mobile for the television screen. He learned to use his television assets of voice and those powerful eyes.
Despite progress on several fronts, I was aware of senior journalists in the press gallery who were unconvinced by David’s depth and readiness to be PM. David knew it too. We tried a few soft interviews. They largely failed. He avoided the media sceptics, as he did his detractors, until they challenged him. Then he made himself clear. The bullied boy, the courtroom lawyer, the politician overrode the kindly. Ambivalence then fortitude.
David’s generosity was boundless. One Friday, late in 1983, he left the office and purchased a return ticket for me to our shared land of dreams, India. Generally, he cultured an informal office of fun with deadlines and devotion.
The David Lange I knew was overflowing with beliefs. They were not always neat and coherent or packaged. They were heartfelt, often expressed with tinges of proselytising and learned experiences. He felt social justice without defining it; he knew the power of the state could help overcome sickness, poverty, and inspire those downtrodden, to provide the hand-up through education for the jobs now and not yet invented. To make New Zealand truly independent in a divided, cold-war world.
As 1984 quickly rolled forward, David’s instincts of a fading economy and government grew. The wage and price freeze imposed by Muldoon attempted to outlaw inflation and its fellow travellers, debt and sky-high interest rates. Siberia again. Muldoon was unable to run an economy, let alone get a majority, with a failed coup against him in 1980 and Marilyn Waring and Mike Minogue deserting him. Muldoon played his highest card when Waring obliged with her support for Richard Prebble’s private members bill to make New Zealand nuclear free. The bill was defeated. We surmised Muldoon used Waring as the excuse to call a July vote to avoid catastrophic economic and political exposure in the July quarter economic figures.
That largely explained Muldoon miscalculating Lange’s readiness for election. Labour’s campaign was in draft; party funding was meagre but sufficient. The dramatic performer was waiting in the wings, the policy not so much; the opponent was wounded. Muldoon’s drunken night of electoral poker in June 1984 was met by a calm assessment by David, Richard Prebble, Roger Douglas, later Geoffrey Palmer, occasionally Mike Moore, and me. It was a gift: Lange and Labour were ready to lead and govern.
Brian Edwards and I talked to David about his opening televised speeches. We decided on cue cards with a crafted script gleaned from taped sessions where David framed his pitch. For the opening, let the performer and the momentous Christchurch Town Hall throng emote the television audience of voters at home. In the minutes before the speech, David and I conferred. This was his moment. He was ready to deliver what is still regarded by many as the finest election opener of modern times. It filled David with the confidence and direction to reach out to a divided and depressed electorate wanting change. Bob Jones simply added to that momentum.
The final debate between Muldoon and David was tense. We had rehearsed ideas and lines. In the car ride out to Avalon television studios, I jokingly said to David, “Perhaps you should thank Muldoon for his service.” In closing, he framed that line so convincingly that a spent Muldoon expressed love for him, and a tear appeared in his eye. He was at an end. The landslide to Labour was sweet – until Muldoon conceded.
The financial and constitutional crisis – and the visit of George Shultz, the US secretary of state – that immediately followed the 1984 general election meant that Mangere Hotel became the incoming kitchen cabinet HQ for a few days. David became chair of the board of the same MPs as election night, along with David Caygill, Michael Bassett and me. David sat in counsel. He explored the situation, weighed his options, delegated, decided.
In these few days after the election, the economic, domestic and foreign policy direction of the fourth Labour government was largely set. Treasury briefing filled in the gaps in economic policy. Devaluation was the first card played, and in its wake floating the dollar and allowing deregulation, ending price controls and subsidies, and introducing GST. In foreign policy, Shultz offered what he considered a reprieve for Lange to change his mind on banning nuclear ships. In fact, it was a thinly disguised threat. Lange did not concede Labour’s policy to Shultz, as testified by the only official in the room, foreign affairs secretary Merv Norrish.
Then came Muldoon’s demise, after David’s historic television interview with Richard Harman of TVNZ’s Eye Witness. Muldoon refused to act to devalue on the incoming government’s instructions and said so on camera. In response, David unleashed on Muldoon. Richard Prebble and I sat in awe in the small Beehive studio. The next day, Muldoon capitulated to the incoming government’s demand, thanks in part to pressure from his deputy, Jim McLay.
David possessed a loyalty to those he trusted. Roger Douglas was highly trusted, as was the kitchen cabinet. He chose staff he trusted. However, it is a short distance and long walk from the old parliament buildings to the Beehive, as the next years would show.
The first term of the fourth Labour government was on speed. Policy and decisions were constant. Bringing the people along with the most reformist government since the 1930s was not an easy task. Economic policy was largely defined post-facto of the election and its aftermath. Roger’s “crash through” approach, and a raft of reforms in social areas, the environment and gender rights, were hardly explained, or given time to be questioned, before the next decision was announced.
I organised a coordinated policy release report to cabinet. It developed over time to include packaging communications, including paid advertising campaigns.
A prime and pending decision was the nuclear ships issue with the United States. Australia’s Bob Hawke and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher had made plain their views in person to David that New Zealand should abandon its anti-nuclear policy. At home, the anti-nuclear movement was growing, along with public opinion.
Early in 1985, David took up a longstanding invitation to visit the Tokelau Islands. I remained in Wellington with acting PM Geoffrey Palmer. I was the recipient of news the Americans had leaked their wish for the USS Buchanan to visit New Zealand waters, which David but not Geoffrey Palmer was aware of.
I went to Pago Pago, American Samoa to meet David on his return from Tokelau. I was carrying advice on the proposed ship visit from Palmer and the chief of defence staff, as well as the views of various Labour MPs, and recent media coverage. After reading the papers, in our conversation, I presented the case to David for not only leadership on this ship-visit issue in New Zealand but also the world. It was the essential meeting point with an increasingly disconcerted Labour Party. A chance to lead on an issue of vital public concern in a world under the nuclear yoke. He pondered. When we came to land in Wellington, David turned to me and said, “It’ll be OK”. It was.
Good leadership means largely doing a few things right, fewer things wrong, to paraphrase Warren Buffet. A good leader builds trust and credibility. I argued that it was not possible for any New Zealand PM to credibly declare a US vessel was or was not nuclear armed. The US would neither confirm nor deny nuclear weapons on board. Doubt would undermine public trust in that PM. How could that inspire and unite a nation?
In his decision to ban nuclear ships from New Zealand, David Lange’s leadership matured. I saw his mental coagulation, his weighing of options and consequences in that RNZAF Boeing 727. In the end, David’s belief-set, what was right, Palmer’s case, my urging, was melded into a leadership decision that defined him and his government.
Cabinet did not formally debate David’s case to refuse the USS Buchanan visit (and generally no cabinet vote was taken in the first term of government). There were clear detractors of being anti-nuclear, particularly Douglas and Moore who saw economic and trade difficulties ahead. The caucus, Labour Party and most of New Zealand were pleased, even proud. As the fallout from the decision came, Labour’s polling rose on every new bullying threat from the United States. David was on top of the world.
There were fallouts, however. I understood his struggles. He hit the world stage in a whirling sway of words, images, love, support, establishment disdain, open- and closed-door criticism from so-called allies (one of which terrorised Auckland harbour). Yet there he was, invited to most top tables, save the White House. He was a rock star. Then he came back to New Zealand, and he faced questions about the number nine bus to Māngere. Naomi and his three kids adored him, but they had to live with his fame, his job, and an exhausted and time-poor husband and father.
Likewise, his role as leader was under pressure. Russell Marshall, his former flatmate and later his minister of education, worried David had no time for his colleagues, certainly his caucus. They all wanted a piece of this gregarious human being. He tried evening dinners with colleagues, but they faded as demands on him grew. He began to seek solace in very select, sympathetic listeners, including Margaret Pope, or just endure it alone.
David could be persuaded. Usually by evidence, as was his training. Margaret held views, as did other advisors. Her principal job as speech writer was to reflect David’s views. She did. Margaret was an easy target for his cousin and critic, Michael Bassett, to later blame for exerting undue influence. For example, in the case of the speech notes prepared by Margaret for the Oxford Union, David added 50% more of his own, at times Biblical rhetoric (he was debating Pastor Jerry Falwell). The David I knew could agree and disagree, change and add to advice.
David was the master of crises. When the French agents blew up the Rainbow Warrior in July 1985, David’s instincts and leadership were played out in a spy thriller that took the nation with him. The same with the Fiji coup, the sinking of the Mikhail Lermontov, right through to Cyclone Bola and the exit from ANZUS. Managing crises requires decisions, not always those favoured by officials, and David’s sour relationship with the military turned rancid over his insistence during the Fiji coup that force should be prepared to ensure the safety of New Zealanders stranded in Fiji.
David could suffer from avoidance, the result of procrastination. He avoided personal conflict in the main, although not in parliament or from critics. He avoided me in Pago Pago until he could not. He avoided difficult colleagues. He sometimes let decisions sit until he could properly address them. Some relationships suffered.
A case in point was Gerald Hensley, his head of the department of PM and cabinet. David agreed with me that Gerald, who had worked for Muldoon, was not suitable to head the advisory group. I recruited Dr John Henderson to replace him, a trusted head. David never really explained to Gerald his reasons for removing him and perhaps generously, appointed him coordinator of domestic and external intelligence. After David died, Gerald became an open and published critic of David.
But on the big issues – the Rainbow Warrior bombing, the rebel All Black tour to South Africa, the first Fiji coup, the Māori loans affair, the Oxford Union debate, and others mentioned – David was determined and decisive.
His relationship with the media was largely positive. David fed the domestic and global media. His press conferences were a performance. When tested, he relied on those stern eyes, sometimes pungent lines, other times wit. For example, in a testy interview with an Australian journalist who presumptively asked what David would do after being PM, David replied he would be a jockey or flip hamburgers in Wagga Wagga.
As 1987 quickly emerged, the election loomed. David asked me to manage his election campaign. The design was not hard as he wanted the chairman of the board to return to Wellington, the incumbency factor. I managed the advertising and liaison with the Labour Party. Risks were another matter.
First, Rogernomics was hurting many. It came to my attention that Roger Douglas and his somewhat siloed office were planning speeches during the campaign. Roger wanted the second term to push forward with economic change. David was not convinced; he preferred a social policy dividend for the suffering endured.
Second, while there was a weak National Party and leader who agreed with much of what the government did, Jim Bolger could duplicitously state the opposite to appeal to those hurt by changes wrought by Labour.
Third, scandal. I was well aware of David’s affair with Margaret Pope, and I approached him on the subject. He obfuscated. I made my case based on risk, further aggravated by his penchant for alcohol.
All three risks were mitigated during the campaign. John Henderson took care of Roger’s office; Jim Bolger bungled his lines; a printed rumour in Australia purported David having an affair with an Indian woman, who turned out to be his goddaughter, diverting and puncturing any claim that would arise about Margaret. David had little time to drink. The campaign was full of image, little substance.
It mainly worked. Labour won by an increased majority in 1987, the only time since World War 2. There was little celebration and no thanks for the campaign management. If only his colleagues, the party and public knew the stratospheric risks entertained and mitigated.
The post-election contretemps grew between David and Roger and his supporters. Accusations flew. Roger’s lot decided to blame Margaret Pope, not David. They got it wrong. David’s main advice to challenge and debate Roger’s flat tax came from Brian Gaynor, a member of the PM’s advisory group, doing his job. David dismissed the flat tax because he understood its social injustice, its inequity on top of GST and a mountain of change that did not always advance the interests of those whom a young David Lange had fought for. Roger’s argument to end privilege was turned on its head.
The fourth Labour government changed everyone. In exhaustion and despair at the way the intractable spat between Roger and David was being handled, I left the building in February 1988. David and I kept in touch for a time, although his energy was directed at an internecine battle for survival with his cabinet colleagues. He later left parliament, dejected.
David also left a legacy, never equalled since. He had regrets, yet the independent foreign policy he championed and other policies brought freedom, major disruptions to old advantages, new beginnings in social policy, gender equality and environmentalism, and a new sense of national pride bordering on nationalism. There was hurt, too. But his highly proficient team in government advanced so many sectors. These ministers were far more than a generational shift; they revolutionised change from an inward to outward looking country. Much of what we are today is due to these changes. David helped create and lead a new New Zealand.
I remain a fan. The David I knew was complex, hugely intelligent, witty and talented in so many ways. He has no rival. He was solo and social, instinctive, too quick for most, photographic in memory, sometimes distant or confrontational, even to those close to him. To some, David could be hurtful and practise avoidance. His former cabinet friends turned opponents said he lacked belief, claiming he was misled by others. Critics said he was just the mouthpiece for Roger.
That was not my experience. He knew right from wrong. He could smell social justice. He understood suffering and was the chairman of the board to end it and its corollary, unfettered advantage. He took advice from various sources and made up his own mind. Of course.
David had an ego, one he used to lift, to inspire, to fulfil others. He could also be humble. If his detractors were disappointed that he no longer heeded them, they misunderstood who he really was, and what they had become.
To me, he was equally rewarding and challenging to work for. David invested trust and gave me huge freedom to do my job, and quickly addressed false steps. He was not always easy to manage. However, his abilities, achievements and complexities meant you needed to work even harder with him, my last statement to his detractors. David was a great prime minister. On balance, he got more decisions right than wrong. More so, David was a generous and loving person who not long before his death said to me with a smile, “You were there on the long march. What a march it was.” It was.
