Modesty limits biography's lure

Nordy: Arnold Nordmeyer By Mary Logan. Photo / Supplied

Arnold Nordmeyer is widely acknowledged by those who remember him as the finest politician we never had as prime minister.

The principle architect of the social security system New Zealand enjoys today and respected by everyone from Rob Muldoon to David Lange, Nordy was undone by the 1958 Black Budget which he presided over as Minister of Finance, and even more by the political skills of Keith Holyoake, the new leader of the National Party, who successfully cast him as a dour killjoy.

I have to admit I had that image of Nordmeyer when I first met him, as a very young reporter, at a party gathering in the wilds of Murupara - one of the first he addressed after succeeding Walter Nash as Labour leader in 1963.

After phoning my report on his speech through to the Herald, I returned to the hall, had a swig of Lion Red and popped a whole pickled onion in my mouth. Imagine my horror when there was a tap on my shoulder and the dreaded wowser said, "May I introduce myself to the representative of the press."

Needless to say, Nordmeyer, who was anything but a killjoy, was gently amused by the consternation his approach created, waited kindly until I was able to speak and went out of his way to be helpful. That was the sort of man he was. One reason he has never had the recognition he deserved was undoubtedly a reluctance either to build himself up or to pull others down, which led him to decline numerous requests to write to write his memoirs or to co-operate with various would-be biographers.

Eventually, not long before his death, he did agree to co-operate with a member of the Island Bay branch of the Labour Party, in a book to be more about his times than his life, and this work by Mary Logan, a successful short story writer, is the result.

Because of the circumstances in which it was produced, with Logan clearly feeling under an obligation to leave it in the form Nordmeyer wished, it is a frustrating work and far from the biography its subject merits. There is certainly much interesting material, which could be used in such a biography, in the form of gentle comments by Nordmeyer on key events in his political career.

In particular, there is an intriguing description of how Nordmeyer, as a young Presbyterian minister for Kurow in North Otago, and Dr Gervan McMillan, the local GP, developed a welfare scheme for workers on the Waitaki Power Project which became the model for the welfare system created when they both became MPs in the first Labour Government.

But far too much of the book is taken up with wading through the minutiae of his political life, such as the interminable negoitations he conducted with a hostile New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association over the introduction of a state-funded health system. At one point it was all so dull I nearly gave up.

However I did finish and the effort was worthwhile because Nordmeyer was simply such an interesting man. It is, nonetheless, a great shame he placed so many restrictions on his biographer and an even greater shame this book wasn't given a severe editing.

Nordy: Arnold Nordmeyer
By Mary Logan (Steele Roberts $44.99)

* Jim Eagles is the Herald travel editor.