Editorial: Leader who enriched the nation

Life, for David Lange, was a joyride. As Prime Minister he loved nothing more than to hurtle about by racing car or roller-coaster. Finding himself with a free hour in a travel itinerary he was liable to haul his entourage to a fun park, jollying officials and press reporters into joining him on the rides, eyes glinting, suit-coat flapping, caring not a whit what anybody thought. His political leadership had something of the same character. He presided over a period of change more rapid and hair-raising than perhaps any the country has known.

The role of Mr Lange in the achievements of the fourth Labour Government has become overshadowed by his contribution to its downfall; but it is time to restore the balance. For three years, the party's Prime Minister and Finance Minister formed the near-perfect political partnership, sharing an excitement for the new economic liberalism of the times. For Mr Lange, the excitement lay in the release of the national spirit; for Sir Roger Douglas, it was the logic of free markets. Mr Lange was the orator that Sir Roger was not. Sir Roger was the swot Mr Lange was not. Sir Roger directed the economic strategy, Mr Lange gave it popular life.

The quick, jovial prime minister with the rotund phrases and booming voice was never to everybody's taste but he was never boring, either. He could be profound and amusing in the same sentence. He could acknowledge with palpable feeling the pain his policies were causing and ridicule wonderfully the fool's paradise New Zealand had been. Yet part of him always dwelled in old New Zealand. His speeches celebrated the simple, homely, helpful community he had known as the doctor's son in Otahuhu. It was a small-town society that had disappeared long before his Government removed the subsidies from the Otahuhu railway workshops and freed the price of milk yet Mr Lange wanted to retain its spirit somehow.

If that seems a contradiction, the Lange character was rich in them. He could be generous and cruel, clever and clumsy, ponderous and shallow, considerate and disloyal, likeable and lamentable ... all at once. Perhaps he developed an outsized personality to fit and, if possible, overcome the early handicaps of his physique. He cut an unlikely figure for a serious political candidate in 1977 when Labour chose him to fight a byelection in Mangere. David Lange's rise to the Labour leadership was rapid but not easy. Although his political talents were quickly obvious to the party and the public, he was not, and never really became, a party insider. Those were the years of the wage and price freeze, "Think Big", the Cold War was worsening; United States warships were anchored in the middle of the Waitemata.

At the same time, free-market policies were beginning to appeal to foreign governments, but few outside the Labour caucus then knew that serious market liberalism was under discussion within its ranks. Parliament and the press were preoccupied by strikes on the energy projects, anti-nuclear bills and Sir Robert Muldoon's efforts to maintain his single-seat majority. On June 14 he gave in and called an early election.

The campaign was largely decided once Mr Lange delivered a stunning televised opening from the Christchurch Town Hall. Sir Robert pulled a rabbit (he thought) from his hat by producing a Douglas paper advocating devaluation. It caused a run on the currency which ensured that Labour came to power in a crisis that served perfectly to launch the new government upon drastic economic reform.

Another issue of far-reaching consequences confronted Mr Lange on the morning after the election. United States Secretary of State George Shultz was arriving for an Anzus meeting and wanted a word with a Prime Minister-designate who had tried and failed to soften his party's opposition to nuclear-powered ships the previous year. Six months later, the US tested the water with an ageing, conventionally-driven ship of unspecified weaponry. The Prime Minister, under concerted pressure from the party, refused to receive the ship and made himself persona non grata with Washington and its allies. Once the anti-nuclear chariot was set for him, he rode it with aplomb.

By the time he came to seek a second term his partnership with Sir Roger Douglas was coming under strain. David Lange was always liable to turn on people and policies, even his own. Early in the second term he publicly repudiated an already-announced decision to flatten tax rates, making his move when Sir Roger Douglas was overseas. The Finance Minister rushed home to defend the decision; Mr Lange went car-racing.

The Government's public standing, that had made it the first post-war Labour Government to win a second term, took a dive in opinion polls. But the flat tax sabotage was only the first of a succession of statements made in cavalier disregard of his Cabinet. Before the year was out, leading reformers Richard Prebble, Sir Roger and Revenue Minister Trevor de Cleene had left the ministry.

The public bloodletting had probably put paid to the Government's prospects of a third term but in desperation the Labour caucus re-elected Sir Roger to the Cabinet in July 1989. Its decision left Mr Lange little choice but to resign, which he did to much public sympathy but not a little relief in the Labour caucus. He had presided for five exhilarating and turbulent years. His contribution to our current prosperity is immense but for the rest of his life he never seemed at ease with his legacy. History may judge it better than he did.