Editorial: Our people who made a difference in 2003

The annual deliberations at this newspaper to find a New Zealander of the Year are never easy. Our criteria remain the same - a person of exceptional achievement benefiting the country and people. We sift dozens of nominations down to a final list of 10 before debating, arguing and second-guessing each other until we agree on the individual most deserving.

Politicians and previous winners are excluded, meaning two of the biggest newsmakers of the year, Helen Clark and Peter Jackson, did not feature.

But this year's Herald New Zealander of the Year, author and historian Michael King, was the name present in every discussion, the person whose personal and professional qualities stood above his peers and countrymen and women.

The accolade necessarily focuses on his life and work in the year almost finished. Yet, as often happens, the particular year crowns decades of profound achievement and outstanding character. Neither pointy-head nor populist, King has written a book, the Penguin History of New Zealand, which is so good that it inspired one Herald reader to suggest it ought to be bought, now, for every school pupil in the land.

It is a work as humane, unpretentious and enlightened as its creator, thoroughly contemporary but deep in outlook. It is a work of scholarship accessible to the "ordinary" reader, a new look at our history for lay folk.

Already, 30,000 copies are in households across these islands. No doubt many will open gifts in just under a week which will in turn introduce them to King's gifts and his importance as a New Zealander.

Recovering now from chemotherapy for throat cancer, King exhibits much of his spirit when, in our interview today he reveals his own nomination for New Zealander of the Year - his two oncologists.

Our field of nine other contenders is eclectic, spanning the arts, commerce, science, sports, entertainment and medicine. The qualities which we recognise today, though, are wider still - courage, wonder, creativity, family, New Zealand identity, freedom of expression, and vision.

Dr Richard Faull led a team which discovered that our adult brains create new cells and can repair themselves, signalling hope for sufferers of diseases such as Parkinson's. Niki Caro, directed the year's "second movie" in New Zealand eyes - Whale Rider to the juggernaut of Return of the King - a tonic for the soul. And she did it with integrity and beauty unsurpassed.

Tellingly, the finalists from the world of sports are all women: Anna Rowberry, the Silver Ferns' world championship winning captain who came back from oblivion through determination and will power. And the Evers-Swindell sisters, Georgina and Caroline, who are world champion double-scull rowers for the second time in succession. Their success is inarguable in a truly global sport.

Pieter Stewart, the woman who made Fashion Week happen, would qualify under any number of criteria - commerce, success, creativity, identity, wonder and probably courage, too. The music industry here had no greater success than Scribe, the young hip-hop artist who simultaneously had a number one single and album - the first to do so.

Dr Bruce Twaddle makes the Herald's list of contenders for a courageous stand for patient care and, it turned out, freedom of speech. In the business community one Kiwi made the running, and finished first: Graeme Hart is the rare guy who went across the Tasman and pulled it off.

So there it is - a highly subjective list of achievers who made a difference in a year when it was easy to focus on one or two major disappointments. Some of those achievements will last longer than others. Of all of them, Michael King's is the one most likely to endure and inspire for generations.