Speaker 1: Kyoda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Norman
Speaker 1: Kirk was elected Prime Minister in nineteen seventy two, bringing
Speaker 1: the Labor Party back to power after twelve years of
Speaker 1: National Party rule. His two years in office were seen
Speaker 1: as radical at the time in how he sought to
Speaker 1: reshape New Zealand's place in the world, and his legacy
Speaker 1: has endured as one of the country's most popular prime ministers. However,
Speaker 1: on August thirty first, nineteen seventy four, Kirk died after
Speaker 1: a lengthy but private illness with obesity and heart problems.
Speaker 1: Today on the Front Page, as we near that fiftieth anniversary,
Speaker 1: we're joined by Victoria University of Wellington Professor of History
Speaker 1: Jim McAloon, to discuss the legacy of Kirk's life and death.
Speaker 2: Jim, you've co.
Speaker 1: Written a history of the Labor Party. Can you take
Speaker 1: us back to nineteen seventy two. Labour had not been
Speaker 1: in power since nineteen sixty right. Why had they struggled
Speaker 1: to win over the public in that time?
Speaker 3: Partly because at the beginning of the sixties they needed
Speaker 3: a process of renewal. In nineteen sixty the party leader
Speaker 3: was Walter Nash. He had just been defeated as Prime Minister.
Speaker 3: He was seventy eight years old. At that point. There
Speaker 3: was a large part of the caucus and cabinet who
Speaker 3: had been in Parliament for a long time, and there
Speaker 3: was a seats that a new generation was being blocked,
Speaker 3: and that new generation came through in the early sixties,
Speaker 3: and Norman Kirk was was part of that new generation.
Speaker 4: That's one reason.
Speaker 3: The other reason is that Keith Holyoake and the National
Speaker 3: Party pretty much governed from the center. I mean, Holyoak
Speaker 3: was a very astute, very pragmatic politician. I think his
Speaker 3: instance were genuinely centrist. He wasn't a right wing nidiologue.
Speaker 3: And I think that that managed to keep a large
Speaker 3: part of the elector at on side for much of
Speaker 3: the sixties, at least till about nineteen sixty seven sixty eight.
Speaker 1: What was it about Norman Kirk's arrival was the party's
Speaker 1: leader that kind of transformed things and made the party
Speaker 1: electable again.
Speaker 3: I suppose, yeah, Well, the transformation took a while because
Speaker 3: Kirk became party leader in nineteen sixty five. At the
Speaker 3: age of forty two, which was young in those days.
Speaker 3: He defeated the incumbent leader, Arnold Nordmeyer. Now Lordmeyer had
Speaker 3: been in Parliament since nineteen thirty five, he was in
Speaker 3: his early sixties by the time Kirk defeated him. He'd
Speaker 3: been a very good and very successu full minister in
Speaker 3: both the first and Second Labor governments, but as Finance
Speaker 3: Minister in the second Labor government he had been responsible
Speaker 3: for some fairly strict measures to deal with an economic crisis,
Speaker 3: and Kirk, no doubt was ambitious and I think took
Speaker 3: the opportunity to ease lord Meyer a side. But Kirk
Speaker 3: himself was an unknown quantity at that stage. He hadn't
Speaker 3: been a minister, He did not immediately grab the public's attention,
Speaker 3: and his first election as leader in nineteen sixty six
Speaker 3: really didn't result in too much gain for the Labor Party.
Speaker 3: I think over the next six years he learned what
Speaker 3: was necessary to be a successful party leader and more
Speaker 3: a successful prime minister. They almost got there in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine, but combination of events I think, perhaps including
Speaker 3: a bit of trouble in industrial or relates, perhaps made
Speaker 3: just enough voters cautious enough that Keith Holyokes graped back
Speaker 3: end for a fourth term. But really that fourth term
Speaker 3: the writing was pretty much on the wall and Kirk
Speaker 3: was setting the agenda. By nineteen seventy seventy one, he
Speaker 3: was also increasingly able to capture the spirit of the age,
Speaker 3: especially some of the concerns of the younger generation voters
Speaker 3: in their early twenties around care for the environment, around
Speaker 3: foreign affairs, particularly a parthe eight, and nuclear weapons testing
Speaker 3: in the South Pacific. And I think too he espoused
Speaker 3: a vision which was fresh and compelling by nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: of more social justice, more cohesion, and I think to
Speaker 3: what he might have called a more independent sense of
Speaker 3: New Zealand's nationhood and all that was evident in the
Speaker 3: brief time he was Prime Minister as well.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it took him a long time to become electable.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting.
Speaker 3: I don't think any party leader now would be allowed
Speaker 3: two defeats before going on to a third win.
Speaker 5: What is it that in fact has urged the people
Speaker 5: of New Zealand to change sides complete I think tonight
Speaker 5: you could describe this as a victory for the little
Speaker 5: people of the country. The average families, the people who
Speaker 5: are working in the factories, from the farms, the people
Speaker 5: who are inclined always to be overlooked. Have been seriously
Speaker 5: concerned about the erosion of family life, the drift of
Speaker 5: the community towards a sort of want in materialism. I
Speaker 5: think you could say.
Speaker 1: How would you describe Kirk's political ideology or philosophy.
Speaker 3: I think compassion, fair shares and solidarity were key parts
Speaker 3: of it. He had been really influenced by his impoverished
Speaker 3: childhood in the Great Depression, so he firmly believed in
Speaker 3: the welfare state and an equal opportunity.
Speaker 4: But I think he also.
Speaker 3: Believed that society he as a whole, had a duty
Speaker 3: to ensure that no one was left behind, and I
Speaker 3: think that was a key part of his vision. Increasingly, two,
Speaker 3: I think his vision for New Zealand was edging toward biculturalism.
Speaker 3: There's that famous photo of him with that young Maryana
Speaker 3: priest at Waitangi in nineteen seventy three, and I think
Speaker 3: to his political philosophy or vision also as I see it,
Speaker 3: meant an independent position for New Zealand, not abandoning old
Speaker 3: relationships but making new ones, particularly in the Commonwealth, particularly
Speaker 3: in East Asia and in Africa, and that was where
Speaker 3: some of his foreign policy initiatives came to the fore
Speaker 3: I think I would also say that this was all
Speaker 3: general principle, but he was I think, perhaps less disciplined
Speaker 3: in his ideas of how to achieve these things. I
Speaker 3: think he was not particularly successful in economic terms. Fortunately,
Speaker 3: his finance Minister, Bill Rowling, was extremely capable. But Kirk
Speaker 3: didn't like to be reminded sometimes that even in good times,
Speaker 3: economics is about choices and if you have X, you
Speaker 3: can't have all of why, and so sometimes he got
Speaker 3: a bit impatient with that, and I think his political
Speaker 3: approach was much more about general principles than a finely
Speaker 3: detailed ideology, if I can put it like that.
Speaker 2: I think he found the economic reality so damn frustrating.
Speaker 2: You know, the things he wanted to do, and he
Speaker 2: wanted to just get them done.
Speaker 6: Like many others had felt that he had got the
Speaker 6: role of governing the country by the scruff of the neck,
Speaker 6: and he appeared wanted to go in a direction that
Speaker 6: he believed that ordinary people had a chance.
Speaker 7: I think people who didn't work with them more known
Speaker 7: very well tend to semi canonize it and make him
Speaker 7: out to be a plaster saint, which he certainly was not.
Speaker 7: He was a man of volcanic rages, a very shrewd politician,
Speaker 7: with all the connotations that that appled, but he was
Speaker 7: also a man of tremendous generosity, great humanity.
Speaker 1: When Kirk is spoken about, he's often discussed as being
Speaker 1: quite popular. Is that fair or has that kind of
Speaker 1: been colored by the fact he did, in fact die
Speaker 1: after only a few years.
Speaker 3: He was very popular at the time. Certainly when he
Speaker 3: became Prime Minister. I think there was a genuine feeling
Speaker 3: of a new beginning. Labor enjoyed a large parliamentary majority,
Speaker 3: and I think the expectation was that they would be there.
Speaker 4: For several terms.
Speaker 3: Now, Kirk was genuinely popular during nineteen seventy three and
Speaker 3: into nineteen seventy four. It's unfortunate, really unfortunate that his
Speaker 3: ill health in nineteen seventy four coincided with the end
Speaker 3: of the post war good years and the beginning of
Speaker 3: the major recession following the oil shocks of nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: It's impossible to know what would have happened if he
Speaker 3: had lived, but of course, dying in office did give
Speaker 3: him a posthumous reputation that's very, very hard to shake.
Speaker 3: You know. I don't want to diminish his popularity or
Speaker 3: diminish the positive dimensions of his prime ministership, but there
Speaker 3: is a bit of nostalgia around Kirk that I think
Speaker 3: sometimes gets a little bit uncritical.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why Kirk is remembered more so
Speaker 1: than I suppose other prime ministers around that era is
Speaker 1: that he did, unfortunately die in office. How much of
Speaker 1: a shock was it when that happened, because from reading
Speaker 1: about his final days, it does kind of sound like
Speaker 1: he had kept things pretty under wraps.
Speaker 3: He absolutely had, I think among his colleagues and perhaps
Speaker 3: among informed observers. There's a classic photograph of him at
Speaker 3: the May nineteen seventy four Party conference where he looks
Speaker 3: very very ill, big man, but and that photograph looks
Speaker 3: absolutely gaunt.
Speaker 4: But for all that, I.
Speaker 3: Think he did, as you say, keep things under wraps.
Speaker 3: And there was a I think in those days there
Speaker 3: was more discretion in journalism, and it's always the case now,
Speaker 3: and that's sometimes a good thing. The more inquiring approach. Now,
Speaker 3: you know, it is a matter of public interest of
Speaker 3: the Prime Minister is not healthy.
Speaker 4: But I think I suspect Kirk.
Speaker 3: Was deceiving himself as well. On one level, I think
Speaker 3: he knew he was ill, but on another level, I
Speaker 3: think he perhaps wasn't really able to face that. Certainly
Speaker 3: in public terms, his death was a huge shock. It
Speaker 3: was one of those do you remember where you were
Speaker 3: when you heard moments? Yeah, he died on a Saturday
Speaker 3: evening and I yes, in those days without instant media,
Speaker 3: it was announced on the TV and the radio, but
Speaker 3: then I think most people picked it up the next day.
Speaker 1: The Third Labor Government made Whiteitangi Day a public holiday
Speaker 1: right and created the Waitangi Tribunal. Was that rather radical
Speaker 1: at the time given the tensions and arguments we still
Speaker 1: have over the treaty today.
Speaker 3: Depends who you ask about radical. Start with making day
Speaker 3: in a public holiday, Kirk wanted to call it New
Speaker 3: Zealand Day. I think he hoped that the Treaty to
Speaker 3: Tenaity would be a focus of unity, and interestingly it
Speaker 3: was Muldoon's National Government that changed it back to Waitangy Day. Now,
Speaker 3: the campaign to make Waitangy Day a public holiday had
Speaker 3: been there for years among the Mali members of parliament anyway.
Speaker 6: Edit.
Speaker 3: Tita cart and the grandfather of Renal, who was in
Speaker 3: recent parliament, had been campaigning for that for a very
Speaker 3: long time, and that Batman was picked up by mart
Speaker 3: Ju Data, the member for Northern Mary from nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 3: and he and Kirk were pretty close. I think it
Speaker 3: was not presented as a radical initiative. However, it's important
Speaker 3: to remember that there had been increasing protest at Waitangi
Speaker 3: in the very early seventies before the public holiday was declared,
Speaker 3: and as I say, I think Kirk and Rata hoped
Speaker 3: that it would in part be a focus of unity instead.
Speaker 3: But I think also Tillercartny and Rita had perhaps in
Speaker 3: some way envisaged that making the day a public holiday
Speaker 3: would also focus attention upon the documents and in the
Speaker 3: longer term push a reckoning with colonial history, and that
Speaker 3: certainly happened now the way Tangi Tribunal initially was not
Speaker 3: perceived as that radical.
Speaker 4: Again, it was very much.
Speaker 3: An idea promoted by Martyur Data with Kirk's support. I
Speaker 3: understand that Rata wanted it to have due restriction back
Speaker 3: into history, but he could only get through the Labor
Speaker 3: Party Cabinet and caucus. At the time, the idea that
Speaker 3: the Tribunal was only concerned with present events, so it
Speaker 3: couldn't address things that the Crown had done before nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five. So initially the Tribunal didn't seem to be
Speaker 3: a lot of use in Mardi eyes, and it was
Speaker 3: pretty unadventurous in how it approached things as well. But
Speaker 3: that changed in nineteen eighty three when Edward Taihaku Deaduri,
Speaker 3: who was the first Mary judge of the Mardi Land
Speaker 3: Court and then first Marty to be Chief Judge of
Speaker 3: the Land Court and as such also chair of the
Speaker 3: Waikani Tribunal, started changing things even within the restrictive framework
Speaker 3: of the nineteen seventy five legislation, simply by taking a bolder,
Speaker 3: bard entirely sound approach to the issues, and also here
Speaker 3: in cases on Marai. So I think in both cases
Speaker 3: you might say that the public holiday and the tribunal
Speaker 3: were long term projects. The impact took a good while
Speaker 3: to be realized, and I don't find it implausible that
Speaker 3: on one level, data and perhaps Kirk had an intuition
Speaker 3: that that would be the case, that will do this
Speaker 3: and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: And you also mentioned dealings with East Asia. Kirk also
Speaker 1: is given a lot of credit for creating an independent
Speaker 1: foreign policy for New Zealand. How significant were these changes.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that was a lot of that was
Speaker 3: in the context of the Commonwealth, which over the decade
Speaker 3: of the nineteen sixties, as decolonization and independence in most
Speaker 3: of Britain's former colonial territories became the rule, the.
Speaker 4: Commonwealth really shifted from the.
Speaker 3: Old white dominions club Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa,
Speaker 3: or they left before they were thrown out, into a
Speaker 3: generally multicultural and multilateral organiz and I think that was
Speaker 3: very much Kirk's vision, and his relationships with Commonwealth leaders
Speaker 3: like shaped Mujiburahman in Bangladesh, newly independent Worth Lee Kwan
Speaker 3: Yu and Singapore, and perhaps particularly in Africa with Julius
Speaker 3: Neri of Tanzania, with whom Kirk was very close.
Speaker 4: I think that was all.
Speaker 3: Part of a realignment of New Zealand's foreign policy, and
Speaker 3: it also I think reflected Kirk's intuitive grasp that at
Speaker 3: is a Pacific nation, and that was also of course
Speaker 3: reflected in his vehement opposition to the testing of nuclear
Speaker 3: weapons by France and the South Pacific.
Speaker 5: What we have the opportunity to do now is to
Speaker 5: make a new beginning within the Commonwealth on an equal
Speaker 5: association of nature. Leakwan, new Prime Minister of Singapore and
Speaker 5: the personal friend, remembers the impression he made at the
Speaker 5: Commonwealth Prime Minister's Conference in Ottawa.
Speaker 7: What came show at.
Speaker 2: The end of EP the honesty of the man, the
Speaker 2: sincerity with which he held his convictions, and that you
Speaker 2: could rely on what he said to you as history
Speaker 2: of position.
Speaker 1: Kirk's death has also been associated for some decades now
Speaker 1: with conspiracy theories that he was perhaps assassinated or killed
Speaker 1: by foreign powers, the CIA being a popular theory. How
Speaker 1: did these theories come to embed themselves in the public consciousness.
Speaker 3: When something dreadful and shocking happens. I guess it's a
Speaker 3: natural tendency to look for sinister courses.
Speaker 4: Iever, I can put it like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you get the same with the murder of President
Speaker 3: Kennedy in November of sixty three. You get it, to
Speaker 3: a lesser extent with the murder of his brother Robert
Speaker 3: and June of sixty eight and yeah, I guess it's
Speaker 3: a way of coping with the fact that sometimes life
Speaker 3: is just random and really shitty. I think too, given
Speaker 3: that Kirk, like those others I've mentioned, seemed to be
Speaker 3: heading in a progressive direction, Yeah, it's perhaps natural also
Speaker 3: to ask oneself, well, who were their enemies? But yeah,
Speaker 3: I think there's never so far as will we have
Speaker 3: been a really good case that there was anything more
Speaker 3: than the fact that Norman Kirk's health was not that great.
Speaker 3: And as I said, although perhaps on one level he
Speaker 3: was in denial, on another level he often seen and
Speaker 3: Margaret Hayward's secretary records this, Yeah, I won't make old bones,
Speaker 3: he says. So, Yeah, on one level, I think he knew,
Speaker 3: And when you look at what we now know about
Speaker 3: his medical history, it doesn't seem really that surprising. Bearing
Speaker 3: in mind too that fifty years later, I speak, medical
Speaker 3: care has advanced and he may well have been able
Speaker 3: to deal with things better.
Speaker 1: Labor went on to lose the nineteen seventy five election
Speaker 1: quite badly in the face of the challenge from Robert
Speaker 1: Muldoon and national If Kirk had survived, and I know
Speaker 1: this is gazing into a crystal ball. Do you think
Speaker 1: things would have turned out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, maartifacturals are very difficult, aren't they. I think the
Speaker 3: qualification has to be if Kirk had survived and been
Speaker 3: in good health, Given that, I think he would have
Speaker 3: put a much better chance of defeating Muldoon in the
Speaker 3: National Party.
Speaker 4: This is not to denigrate Bill.
Speaker 3: Rowling, who I think was a very good prime minister,
Speaker 3: but in terms of image, Muldoon was making all the running.
Speaker 3: And then it's also important to remember that the National Party,
Speaker 3: of course had a much better funded campaign and labored it.
Speaker 3: That said, I think Kirk would likely have won the
Speaker 3: second term in nineteen seventy five with a much reduced majority.
Speaker 3: I suspect if he had been at the height of
Speaker 3: his powers. I like to say that in some respects
Speaker 3: I think Kirk and Muldoon were both very dominant personalities
Speaker 3: in Parliament, in cabinet and caucus. By its very much
Speaker 3: out there. I like to say though, that in some
Speaker 3: ways I think Norman Kirk represented the better angels of
Speaker 3: our nature and Muldoon sometimes played to the worst.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Jim. That's it 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 z.
Speaker 1: The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sils and sound
Speaker 1: engineer Patti Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
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