David Lange

**David Lange**
--	--	Personal Details		--	Birth:	4 August 1942 in Thames, New Zealand	--	Death:	13 August 2005 in Auckland, New Zealand	--	Marriages:	to Naomi Joy Crampton to Margaret Pope	--	Children:	Four	--	Religion:	Methodist	--	Background:	Lawyer	--	Political Details		--	Electorates:	Mangere	--	Order:	32nd Prime Minister	--	Political Party:	Labour	--	Premiership		--	Predecessor:	Robert Muldoon	---	Term of Office:	26 July 1984 to 8 August 1989	--	Duration:	5 years, 13 days	--	Cause of Departure:	Resignation	--	Successor:	Geoffrey Palmer

David Russell Lange (IPA: lɔŋi) CH, ONZ (4 August 1942 — 13 August, 2005), served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989. He headed New Zealand's fourth Labour Government, one of the most reforming administrations in his country's history. He had a reputation for cutting wit and eloquence. His government implemented far-reaching free market reforms, some of which he later came to oppose and regret. New Zealand's nuclear-free legislation, perhaps his most lasting legacy, symbolised for many a pacifist identity for New Zealand.

Early life

Lange was born in Thames, the son of a doctor of German descent. His relatives suffered prejudice during the First World War due to their German ancestry, and Lange himself would face a political rival in 1984 who tried to discredit him because of his German heritage. The family moved to the south Auckland suburb of Otahuhu where Lange grew up. He received his formal education at Fairburn Primary School, Otara Intermediate School and Otahuhu College, then at Auckland University, where he graduated in law in 1965. He paid his way through university by working in a meat-freezing works, his first encounter with the working-class people he would later represent. In 1968 he married Naomi Crampton. He gained a Master of Laws in 1970, then practised law in Northland and Auckland for some years, often giving legal representation to the most dispossessed members of Auckland society.

Lange suffered all his life from obesity and the health problems it caused. By 1982 he weighed 165 kilograms, and had surgery to staple his stomach in order to lose weight. He attributed his talent for caustic wit and repartee to the need to defend himself against bullying in his youth.

Political career

Lange entered the New Zealand Parliament as the Labour MP for Mangere, a working-class Auckland electorate with a large Māori population, in 1977 in the Mangere by-election. On becoming an MP, Lange quickly made an impression in the House as a debater, a wit, and the scourge of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. He succeeded Bill Rowling as Parliamentary party leader and as Leader of the Opposition on 3 February 1982. When Muldoon called a snap election in 1984, Lange led Labour to a landslide victory, becoming at the age of 41 New Zealand's youngest prime minister of the 20th century.

Upon coming to office, Lange's government uncovered a skyrocketing public debt, the result of Muldoon's policy of government regulation of the economy, including a wage- and price-freeze and regulation of the exchange rate. Such economic conditions prompted Lange to remark: "We ended up being run very similarly to a Polish shipyard". ^* Lange and Minister of Finance Roger Douglas engaged in a rapid programme of deregulation and public-asset sales, which brought criticism from many people in Labour's traditional support-base.

Commentators coined the term Rogernomics for these policies, drawing connections with Reaganomics and with Thatcherism. After the government's first term (1984-87), significant divisions started to form in the Labour parliamentary caucus, with Lange becoming uncomfortable with the extent of the reforms, while Douglas and Richard Prebble wanted to push on.

The worldwide stock-market crash of 19 October 1987 damaged confidence in the New Zealand economy. In 1988 consensus on economic policy amongst the Labour leadership finally broke down, with Lange dismissing Douglas after he proposed a radical flat income tax. After losing many members, the Labour Party finally fractured, with Jim Anderton MP forming a breakaway New Labour Party, which later merged into the Alliance Party.

During his tenure as Prime Minister, Lange engaged in competitive motor-sport, appearing in the New Zealand One Make Ford Laser Sport series.

During his term of office as Prime Minister Lange also held the positions of Minister of Foreign Affairs (1984 to 1987) and Minister of Education (1987 to 1989). After Geoffrey Palmer became party leader and Prime Minister in 1989, Lange became (from 1989 to 1990) Attorney-General, Minister in Charge of the Serious Fraud Office and a Minister of State. In failing health, he retired from Parliament in 1996. His Labour Party colleague Taito Phillip Field succeeded him as the Member for the Mangere electorate.

The Queen made Lange a Companion of Honour in 1990 and created him an Ordinary Member of the Order of New Zealand on 2 June 2003.

International affairs

Lange made his name on the international stage with a long-running campaign against nuclear weapons. He refused to allow nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships into New Zealand waters, a policy that New Zealand continues to this day. The policy, developing in 1985, had the effect of prohibiting United States Navy ships from visiting New Zealand. This displeased the United States of America and Australia: they regarded the policy as a breach of treaty obligations under ANZUS and as an abrogation of responsibility in the context of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. After consultations with Australia and after negotiations with New Zealand broke down, the United States announced that it would suspend its treaty obligations to New Zealand until the re-admission of United States Navy ships to New Zealand ports, characterising New Zealand as "a friend, but not an ally". The perceived "crisis" made front-page headlines for weeks in many American newspapers, and media quoted many United States Cabinet members as expressing a deep sense of "betrayal".

Erroneous claims sometimes suggest that David Lange withdrew New Zealand from ANZUS. His government's policy may have prompted the US's decision to suspend its ANZUS Treaty obligations to New Zealand, but that decision rested with the U.S. government, not with the New Zealand government.

Relations with France became strained when French agents of the DGSE bombed and sank the Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985 while it lay moored in Auckland Harbour, killing one person. In one of the highlights of this period, a widely-televised Oxford Union debate in 1985 showcased Lange, a skilled orator, arguing for the proposition that "nuclear weapons are morally indefensible", in opposition to U.S. televangelist Jerry Falwell. (TVNZ has made available an audio of Lange's speech.)

In June 1986, Lange obtained a political deal over the Rainbow Warrior affair with France, presided over by United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. France agreed to pay compensation of NZ$13 million (US$6.5 million) to New Zealand and also to apologise. In return, Lange agreed that French authorities could detain the convicted French agents Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur at the French military base on Hao Atoll for three years. However, the two spies had both walked free by May 1988, after less than two years had elapsed.

Post-resignation

In 1996 Lange sued the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation) over an alleged defamation that it broadcast about him. The ABC used the defence that there exists in the Australian Constitution an implied right to freedom of speech on political matters, and the High Court of Australia concurred.

In a key New Zealand defamation case (Lange v Atkinson ^* 3 NZLR 385), Lange sued political scientist Joe Atkinson for representing him in the magazine North & South as a lazy prime minister. In a 1998 judgment, and on appeal in 2000, the courts affirmed a new qualified privilege for the media to discuss politicians when expressing the criticisms as the "honest opinion" of the author.

Lange received the Right Livelihood Award 2003 for his strong fight against nuclear weapons.

In January 2006 Archives New Zealand released to The Sunday Star-Times newspaper a box of David Lange's previously-classified documents. ^* This revealed New Zealand's ongoing involvement in Western alliance espionage, and a threat by the United States to spy on New Zealand if it did not back down over the nuclear ship ban.

Personal life

In 1989 Lange separated from his wife of 21 years and admitted to a long-running affair with his speechwriter, Margaret Pope, whom he later married. The matter became extremely public, with both Naomi Lange and Lange's mother attacking his behaviour in public. He later became reconciled with both. He had three children (Roy, Emily and Byron) by his first marriage and one (Edith) by his second.

In the 1990s Lange's health declined, with diabetes and kidney disorders, mostly resulting from obesity.

In 2002, doctors diagnosed Lange as having amyloidosis, a rare and incurable blood plasma disorder. He underwent extensive medical treatment for this condition. Although initially told he had only four months to live, Lange defied his doctors' expectations, and remained "optimistic" about his health. He entered hospital in Auckland in mid-July 2005 to undergo nightly peritoneal dialysis in his battle with end-stage kidney failure. On August 2, he had his lower right leg amputated without a general anaesthetic, as a result of diabetes complications.^*

His declining health resulted in the bringing forward of the publication of his memoir My Life to 8 August 2005 (ISBN # 0 67 004556 X). TV3 broadcast an earlier pre-recorded interview (with John Campbell) on the same day.

In his last interview, given to the Herald on Sunday from his hospital bed, he made a potent intervention in New Zealand's 2005 election campaign by saying he "wanted to get out of bed and get a wheel-chair to Wellington" to stop any relaxation of his ban on nuclear ships.

Lange died of complications associated with his renal failure and blood disease in Middlemore Hospital in Auckland on 13 August 2005.

Quote

In an interview with The New Zealand Herald (published on 3 July 2004) the Herald asked Lange:

Do you think if the election of 1984 had not been a snap election, there would have been time for the opposing forces within the party to have successfully blocked the reforms or to have severely limited them?

Lange replied:

"You have to talk about why things happened the way they did. You can't actually explain my political life except by a series of situations rather than by some carefully constructed, rigidly progressed ascendancy. You could not imagine two more unlike rides to the top as I had and Helen Clark had: hers the principled, extremely hard-working, fearless really persistence in the face of all sorts of adversities and personal assaults. Whereas mine was some sort of divine roulette. Even entering into Parliament was not one of your created, structured planned-for episodes. I mean one minute I was a clapped-out two guinea legal-aid lawyer and the next minute I was in Parliament. The by-election of 77 saw to that ... I got there in terms of the Labour Party for all the wrong reasons, for all the reasons which weren't part of its tradition. I'd never been a tract writer; I'd never been a philosopher; I'd never taken part in extraordinary industrial dispute activism; I'd not been in any of that background but I was able to mix it in what had become, conceived to be, the new front line of politics - the ability on television to convey confidence and assurance without saying anything. And that is very important ... was plunged into this extraordinary awareness of a crisis in foreign exchange and reserves and having to take steps that were the absolute antithesis of anything that I would ever have expected the week before. If the people of New Zealand thought it was a bit odd, for me it was absolutely staggering ... I had thought of getting the agencies like the IMF, the World Bank to come in and do a de facto receivership. In fact I said so more or less publicly - let us get some external analysis of where we are rather than one which is tainted by my self-interest and by Muldoon's clear self-interest. But it was rendered unnecessary. He put on such an extraordinarily good performance of carrying on and saying I was introducing scorched earth policy. By the time Muldoon had finish^* a couple of television appearances, the general public was completely satisfied we were in a mess ..."

External links

Transcript of speech that "Nuclear Weapons are Morally Indefensible", Oxford Union debate, 1 March 1985
Audio recording of speech that "Nuclear Weapons are Morally Indefensible", Oxford Union debate, 1 March 1985
Interview with John Campbell
Amyloidosis Australia, Information on Amyloidosis in Aust/NZ
Biography on Right Livelihood Award recipient