Speaker 1: Kiota. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. On
Speaker 1: July twenty sixth, nineteen eighty four, David Longe was sworn
Speaker 1: in as the thirty second Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: His ascension into the country's top job came after Robert
Speaker 1: Muldoon's infamous snap election ended his nine years in power.
Speaker 1: Best remembered for enshrining New Zealand's nuclear free status, longee
Speaker 1: also oversaw controversial economic policies that ultimately divided his caucus
Speaker 1: and saw his time on the Ninth Flow only last
Speaker 1: five years. With this Ruby Jubilee, prompting reflections on Longy's
Speaker 1: leadership and the legacy of the Fourth Labor Government today
Speaker 1: on the front Page, where Joe By, one of the
Speaker 1: few journalists who was there at the time and is
Speaker 1: still working today, Newstalk's had be senior political correspondent Barry Soaper. Barry,
Speaker 1: let's start with an ending. A large part of the
Speaker 1: myth of Muldoon is how it all ended with the
Speaker 1: snap election. I understand you actually got a concession out
Speaker 1: of him before the polling booths had actually even opened.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Was fascinating because that particular election campaign was for Muldoon,
Speaker 3: one of being off a space most of the time.
Speaker 3: And when it came to the final address in Auckland,
Speaker 3: I said to Muldoon as he was making his way in,
Speaker 3: can I have an interview with you? And he said yep.
Speaker 3: I got up to his room an hour after he
Speaker 3: had finished speaking, was shown in and here was this
Speaker 3: little man slumped in a chair with a bottle of
Speaker 3: red wine lying on its side, looking disheveled. And I
Speaker 3: Ginia reflected with a microphone in front of him and said,
Speaker 3: mister Muldourn, do you think you've won the election? And
Speaker 3: Muldourn shook his head from side to side, and I
Speaker 3: said to him prime and as the this is radio,
Speaker 3: you've got to talk. Do you think you've won the election?
Speaker 3: He said, And I couldn't believe my ears. This is
Speaker 3: on the Thursday night before the poll, so he had
Speaker 3: conceded defeat essentially on that night. The rest of the
Speaker 3: media had discarded his address because it was like many
Speaker 3: of the others he had given during the campaign, and
Speaker 3: went to the pub. And by the time I got
Speaker 3: to the pub very late, I told them that I
Speaker 3: had a scoop and that Muldoern had conceded defeat David Longi,
Speaker 3: and they couldn't believe it. Muldourn called a news conference
Speaker 3: at eight o'clock the next morning, I think it was
Speaker 3: so he soved up pretty quickly. He was on the
Speaker 3: airwaves with the interview that I had with him and
Speaker 3: denied all knowledge of it, said that he was taken
Speaker 3: out of context, and of course he wasn't. The question
Speaker 3: was quite simple. Have you won the election?
Speaker 1: He said, nap, after nine years in power where he
Speaker 1: had never won the popular vote. Was the country just
Speaker 1: sick of Muldoon by then?
Speaker 3: Oh? I think absolutely they were tired of Muldourn. And
Speaker 3: I don't think the country appreciated economically just how bad
Speaker 3: it was. I mean, we lived what I would say
Speaker 3: in an ice box. Everything was frozen. Wages were frozen,
Speaker 3: prices were frozen, interest rates were frozen. You know, something
Speaker 3: had to give. You'll remember that, Rob Muldourn. He stayed
Speaker 3: on an office for several days after the election, essentially
Speaker 3: refusing to vacate the Prime Minister's cheer, while embassies around
Speaker 3: the world were being asked how much cash reserves did
Speaker 3: they have. And meanwhile you had David Longi who wanted
Speaker 3: to call in the IMF and other world bodies who
Speaker 3: essentially put New Zealand and receivership. He decided against that
Speaker 3: on advice, fortunately, and we survived, but survived through very
Speaker 3: difficult times in the new government.
Speaker 4: That doesn't give you much time to run up to
Speaker 4: an election, prom Minister.
Speaker 5: Doesn't give my apparish much time to run up to
Speaker 5: an election, does it. There is no way mister Longey
Speaker 5: could have had enough members in the House to govern
Speaker 5: the country. This is really what I thought about, that
Speaker 5: he's a buffoon.
Speaker 1: July nineteen eighty four saw the country vote for change
Speaker 1: in the form of David Longie. What are some of
Speaker 1: your earliest memories of him?
Speaker 3: Well, I remember very early on when David Longy got
Speaker 3: into Parliament. He used to wear this big brown suit.
Speaker 3: He had relatively long, lank black here and he wore
Speaker 3: these very heavy rimmed glasses. And I remember going to
Speaker 3: a party that long he was at and he was
Speaker 3: at that stage backbencher in Parliament, and he looked rather
Speaker 3: forlorn and lonely sitting in the background, and I went
Speaker 3: over and had a chat to him and realized that
Speaker 3: this man was extraordinarily clever, had a great way with words,
Speaker 3: and little did I know that not too long later
Speaker 3: he would be the Prime Minister of Museum.
Speaker 1: Given there was this snap election, was Labor actually prepared
Speaker 1: to take power.
Speaker 3: I don't think they really had appreciated just how serious
Speaker 3: the finances of the country were in eighty four. After
Speaker 3: the snap election, the country really was and completely dire
Speaker 3: strait and something had to be done. So Roger Douglas
Speaker 3: came in, because you remember Rob Muldern sat in the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister's office refusing to devalue the dollar, and that
Speaker 3: was the big argument at the time that the dollar
Speaker 3: needed to be devalued, it was too high, and eventually
Speaker 3: that was the valued. But of course that opened up
Speaker 3: all sorts of problems. For example, mortgage interest rates had
Speaker 3: gone from the cap put on them by Rob Muldoon
Speaker 3: of nine for the first mortgage and eleven percent for
Speaker 3: the second as high as twenty two percent. So people
Speaker 3: really that might have been struggling in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 3: they were in dire strait. After the Roger Douglas David
Speaker 3: Longey government.
Speaker 1: Came into power, what was it like after those Muldoon
Speaker 1: years Barry, which are generally noted in the history books
Speaker 1: as being a bit grim politically and socially. Did Longie
Speaker 1: inherit a mess to clean up.
Speaker 3: Of a bigger mess than I think we've ever seen, well,
Speaker 3: certainly than I've ever seen in this country. There were
Speaker 3: all sorts of things going on as well, because our
Speaker 3: foreign policy Labor Party had gone into that election, the
Speaker 3: snap election, on the anti nuclear stance, and George Schultz,
Speaker 3: the Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan, had happened to
Speaker 3: be in town in the following week and he met
Speaker 3: with David Longe, and I think it was made known
Speaker 3: to him quite clearly that New Zealand was going to
Speaker 3: be anti nuclears. So the American visits of their warships
Speaker 3: into our ports were banned, along with a number of
Speaker 3: other things, and even propulsion was banned, even though David
Speaker 3: Longe was a bit softer on that, and the suggestion
Speaker 3: news that when he had that chat with George Schultz,
Speaker 3: he said, give me six months and we can sort
Speaker 3: through the idea that propelled ships would not be allowed
Speaker 3: in port. But then that furned up with the likes
Speaker 3: of Margaret Wilson, who later became Speaker but was the
Speaker 3: president of the party at the time. They weren't prepared
Speaker 3: to live with that. So essentially it was not just
Speaker 3: a financial issue that the new Labor government had to
Speaker 3: clean up. It was also the international foreign policy issue
Speaker 3: that David Longie had to go on the I'm pulled off.
Speaker 1: Well, when people think of Longie, they do think of
Speaker 1: that nuclear Free New Zealand part hey in particular that
Speaker 1: Oxford University debate. Would you agree that's probably the core
Speaker 1: part of his legacy.
Speaker 3: Well, I think one thing that will be remembered. Certainly
Speaker 3: David Longiy will be remembered for that. His performance was amazing.
Speaker 3: But it was not surprising to some of us that
Speaker 3: knew that David Longi had such a quick wit. I mean,
Speaker 3: here was debating Jerry Poulwall and won the debate not surprisingly.
Speaker 3: But when one of the young Oxford University students got
Speaker 3: up to challenge Longie.
Speaker 6: What I should like to know, sir, is why you
Speaker 6: don't pull out of the Answers alliance for whether you
Speaker 6: are snuggling up to the bomb or living in the
Speaker 6: peaceful shadow of the bomb. New Zealand benefits, sir. And
Speaker 6: that's the question with which we would like an answer, sir,
Speaker 6: and I'm going to give it to you.
Speaker 4: If you hold your breath for a moment, make it
Speaker 4: smell the uranium moment as you leave you.
Speaker 3: If it was a moment. I think eached in New
Speaker 3: Zealand's history that David Longe was not just a good orator,
Speaker 3: but a superb one. And I do remember one incident
Speaker 3: of how Quickie was. So I remember a reporter yelling
Speaker 3: out to David longee in his way into a caucus
Speaker 3: meeting Prime minister. Prime minister a word, and Longe looked
Speaker 3: at him and said, wombat and walked into the caucus.
Speaker 1: The other key bit of legislation would be the economic
Speaker 1: reforms that came to be known as Roger nomics. Can
Speaker 1: you briefly explain what that actually was and why it
Speaker 1: was so controversial?
Speaker 3: Well, it was controversial because, like I said earlier, you know,
Speaker 3: we saw interest rates shooting through the roof, We saw
Speaker 3: New Zealand having to borrow the way that never borrowed before,
Speaker 3: and the country was generally in a pretty poor state
Speaker 3: in terms of the fact that we had been living
Speaker 3: in an ice box and the ice had to thaw.
Speaker 3: So those early years of the Longe government were really tough,
Speaker 3: although people didn't know what they had in store for them.
Speaker 3: They got back in in eighty seven and that's when
Speaker 3: everything started. That's when they started the asset sales program
Speaker 3: that was basically deshore up what were the books that
Speaker 3: had failed, and they sold off a number of state assets.
Speaker 3: And in that eighty seven period, of course, we had
Speaker 3: the falling out very publicly with David Longe and Roger Douglas,
Speaker 3: ending in David Longe's resignation and the succession of first
Speaker 3: of all Jeffrey Palmer and then Mike Moore as the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister.
Speaker 1: The Herald this week resurfaced an interview from our colleague
Speaker 1: Audrey Young. She did it with Longie in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, just before his death. Asked about taking heat
Speaker 1: from the left and the right of the political spectrum,
Speaker 1: Longi responded with, this is the difficulty about talking about
Speaker 1: it without sounding big headed. But you cannot speak of
Speaker 1: New Zealand now without my involvement in what it has become.
Speaker 1: My judgment of that is that it is change for
Speaker 1: the better, and my instinct tells me that if it
Speaker 1: hadn't been for our administration, there would have been calamity
Speaker 1: after calamity. What's your response to that, Well, I think there.
Speaker 3: Were two aspects to that comment, but certainly you can't
Speaker 3: talk about New Zealand without thinking about David Longie and
Speaker 3: that comes down and it's still enduring. Of course, is
Speaker 3: the anti nuclear stance. But the other thing I think
Speaker 3: is probably more important was the foundations that Roger Douglas
Speaker 3: made for the economy in New Zealand. Now those foundation
Speaker 3: stones have never been shifted by success of government, and
Speaker 3: that's more than forty years on and I think that's
Speaker 3: the most important lasting legacy, although the anti nuclear thing
Speaker 3: probably engages more New Zealanders.
Speaker 1: Finally, Barry, do you think David Longie was a good
Speaker 1: prime minister.
Speaker 3: I think the combination of David Longee and Roger Tuglas
Speaker 3: tackled what was a very difficult situation and it was
Speaker 3: essential that the issues of the day were tackled in
Speaker 3: the way they were. As a good prime minister, I
Speaker 3: think David long was not a great leader of his
Speaker 3: cabinet because there were faction and throughout his leadership, ending
Speaker 3: with of course him standing down. And even then Longe
Speaker 3: had a good turn of phrase. I remember him sitting
Speaker 3: on the stage with Jeffrey Palmer and Jeffrey was singing
Speaker 3: David Longy's praises and Longe looks at Jeffrey and said,
Speaker 3: Jeffrey changed my mind. And of course that had everybody
Speaker 3: rolling with laughter. So he had a great sense of humor.
Speaker 3: But as a Prime minister and as a leader of
Speaker 3: his own people in cabinet, I don't think he was
Speaker 3: certainly anywhere near the best that I've seen my time there.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Barry, to further discuss David Longie
Speaker 1: and the Fourth Labor Government's legacy. We're joined now by
Speaker 1: Victoria University of Wellington politics professor Lara Grieves and started
Speaker 1: by putting that Longy quote to her as well. I
Speaker 1: should note Lara's pet roosters make a few appearances.
Speaker 2: I mean, twenty years have obviously gone by since that quote,
Speaker 2: and if we were to reassess that and kind of
Speaker 2: look at the way that different prime ministers and finance
Speaker 2: ministers since then have positioned themselves, they've kind of copied
Speaker 2: his lead. So thinking about Ruth Richardson and Bolger and
Speaker 2: all of them who came after him, they've kind of
Speaker 2: said the same sort of thing about their legacies and
Speaker 2: that they also said that they were facing a financial crisis,
Speaker 2: and Longie definitely faced a financial and constitutional crisis. I
Speaker 2: think it's kind of a way that politicians position their
Speaker 2: legacy because we never can really know what would have
Speaker 2: happened if say Muldoon hadn't called the snap election, would
Speaker 2: have happened to say Bill English was Prime Minister during COVID.
Speaker 2: We can't know those sorts of things. So I think
Speaker 2: in hindsight you can say, well, actually I saved us.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think a lot of people will
Speaker 2: be more critical, especially in the twenty years that have passed.
Speaker 1: We spoke to Newstalks at Bees Barry So but he
Speaker 1: didn't think David Longi was a great leader of his
Speaker 1: party or his cabinet due to some factions. Would you
Speaker 1: agree with that.
Speaker 2: He's a really interesting figure, right because he was clearly charismatic.
Speaker 2: He clearly had that presidential type quality. Most key we
Speaker 2: seem to have a story about, like seeing him bumping
Speaker 2: into him and being good one on one. Most people
Speaker 2: have seen his quips, seen like his fluidity and debates
Speaker 2: and in media interviews. So he's a liked, beloved figure.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to politics, it's not just the
Speaker 2: razzle dazzle, the baby cacussing. There's also a component of
Speaker 2: being in government, being the prime minister, as in the
Speaker 2: primary minister, who has to run cabinet, who has to
Speaker 2: keep a cabinet and a party together. And I think
Speaker 2: there are real criticisms of his leadership. From the left,
Speaker 2: we see criticisms that he did let Roger Douglas kind
Speaker 2: of go down his own ideological pathway and perhaps Longie
Speaker 2: didn't have those people management skills. And from the right,
Speaker 2: you know, his potentially criticizes not having that substantive policy
Speaker 2: direction himself. I mean, I guess that's a left wing
Speaker 2: criticism too, But there's definitely ways that you can critique
Speaker 2: him and critique his record.
Speaker 1: What do you think David Longee's legacy is. Is it
Speaker 1: just the nuclear, free energy and rogenomics?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that when we teach New Zealand politics,
Speaker 2: we often pull up Michael Joseph Savage and the creation
Speaker 2: of the welfare state. The second thing we bring up
Speaker 2: is the fourth labor government, and rogenomics, the neo liberalism
Speaker 2: and David Longee and we always play the uranium on
Speaker 2: your brief that clip. We always play that, that's what
Speaker 2: we do, that's what we fundamentally teach. There go, there's
Speaker 2: the first year class. But the other thing that I
Speaker 2: think is often overlooked as well as Longi's role in MMP,
Speaker 2: which was more incidental than anything mistaking and then promising
Speaker 2: a referendum, but part of that government. I mean, one
Speaker 2: of the things that we can see today and their
Speaker 2: legacy is that we do have the immunp system. And
Speaker 2: I've been studying electoral reform around the world and looking
Speaker 2: at different countries and it's really hard to get across
Speaker 2: the line. So that's been I think a bit of
Speaker 2: an incidental legacy of that government. One of the things
Speaker 2: I have to say is someone who's written a bit
Speaker 2: on policy history as well, is they did get some
Speaker 2: sort of landmark policy work underway, like the Royal Commission
Speaker 2: on Social Policy, which is this giant break of a thing,
Speaker 2: but to me, it represents one of the most well researched,
Speaker 2: most considered, most consulted on policy reports ever in our history.
Speaker 2: So there are pieces of work like that that that
Speaker 2: government did as well that are potentially overlooked but actually
Speaker 2: hold up well to history when you read them.
Speaker 4: Now, he had skills that were incredible. Really. I remember
Speaker 4: taking a report to him one day, four pages and
Speaker 4: he gets a report and you go, oh, that looks
Speaker 4: all right, I wrote, and I thought you have read that.
Speaker 4: You can't have, so I thought, I'll ask you a question,
Speaker 4: but well, you know, I put it nicely.
Speaker 1: Damn well, you're a bit of night you know. Do
Speaker 1: you think we'll ever see that kind of chalk and
Speaker 1: cheese type relationship between a prime minister and a finance
Speaker 1: minister every gain?
Speaker 2: Perhaps not so much because of MNP, and because like
Speaker 2: what used to happen as Labor and National had to
Speaker 2: be these broad churches, so they had to bring in
Speaker 2: varied people on the left and very people on the
Speaker 2: right to some extent, whereas now we have minor parties.
Speaker 2: So if someone does have a different economic view, you know,
Speaker 2: there's many options on the right. If someone has a
Speaker 2: different economic view on the left, there's many options. They
Speaker 2: can go to the Greens, they can perhaps go to Spartimadi,
Speaker 2: depending on who they are. You know that there's other
Speaker 2: options there for them. So it's I think I'm likely
Speaker 2: to see that again, partially because of our electoral system
Speaker 2: now that you have these parties are less broad tense.
Speaker 2: We also see as well in New Zealand politics, our
Speaker 2: political parties tend to have become a bit more I
Speaker 2: guess whipped, or a bit more kind of in behind
Speaker 2: the leader in a way, and you have a lot
Speaker 2: less kind of independence and a lot less sort of
Speaker 2: backbenches and people within cabinet because of you know, changes
Speaker 2: around MP speaking out against their leader. So I would
Speaker 2: say that we're probably not going to get that kind
Speaker 2: of politics again unless there is some kind of other
Speaker 2: substantive change there.
Speaker 1: Do you think David Longie's enduring popularity is warranted?
Speaker 2: I think so. I think that, you know, so much
Speaker 2: of our politics now is about what Raymond Miller is
Speaker 2: called the presidentialization of New Zealand politics. We have that
Speaker 2: cultive leadership culture, personality type idea, and in this case,
Speaker 2: David long is one of the big ones who was
Speaker 2: a real character. He had that good kind of ability
Speaker 2: that I think is important in New Zealand politics. You
Speaker 2: got to take the pest out of yourself a bit,
Speaker 2: you know, you had that in space. You had that charisma,
Speaker 2: being able to connect to people one on one, and
Speaker 2: you think that that kind of character, whether you like
Speaker 2: the substantive policies that they put in place or didn't,
Speaker 2: I think that celebrity part of politics. He really does
Speaker 2: have that down and that long term likability, that long
Speaker 2: term liked political figure.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Lara. That said, for this episode
Speaker 1: of the Front Page, you can read more about today's
Speaker 1: stories and extensive news coverage at enzidherld dot co dot nz.
Speaker 1: The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and sound
Speaker 1: engineer Patti Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
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Speaker 1: tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.