Simon Collins: David Lange's isolation in his last years

In February last year, I visited David Lange at his Mangere Bridge home, Waterlea, to get some letters signed for the Bruce Jesson Foundation, which he then chaired.

When I got there, his daughter, Edith, was playing outside in her pyjamas with her mother, Margaret.

When I left, Margaret was on her hands and knees pulling out weeds around the swimming pool.

The house was once grand. It is now run down, but it's still big, and with big grounds, lots of trees and a beautiful tree-lined drive.

Margaret took me in and called David. An elderly woman with a British accent whom Edith called "Gran" (Margaret's mother) had just made a cup of tea, so I was offered one.

I was ushered into David's office - a fantastic old colonial-style room with a grandfather clock, a fireplace, a big desk, and a leather sofa with a coffee table at which guests were received.

The room was dominated by bookcases all around; the only bookcase I got a close look at was full of travel books.

There was a modern work of art in pride of place over the fireplace, and there were various mementoes of his time in office around the room, including a candlestick from Rajiv Gandhi, a rather lewd female hips-shaped sculpture from the Seychelles, a model ship from Mauritius and two photos of David meeting Queen Elizabeth (he introduced them as photos of "my aunt", because that is whom Edith assumed the Queen to be).

There was a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi on the wall near the entrance to the kitchen, and on the opposite wall a framed set of bus route signs that used to be scrolled around the bus depending on the route it was taking that day ("Eden Park", "Sandringham Rd" and others around that part of Auckland).

There was also a TV near the fireplace and there was a Listener on the coffee table, open at that week's programmes. David said TV should be banned in houses with children because there was so much rubbish on it - perhaps he watched it by himself in this study while Edith did something more useful somewhere else?

He was very weak. At his last comedy performance with Gary McCormick and Tim Shadbolt in Auckland a few days before, he had had a fit of nausea when he was about to go on stage at 8pm, and had to pull out. However, he later went on about 8.30pm and completed the rest of the evening.

Surprisingly, it sounded as though he did it for the money - he said each show netted each of the three performers about $1200. Later, when we were talking about Mike Moore, he said Moore was still getting paid through a couple of Government sinecures and something from his friend the Premier of South Australia, Mike Rann.

Lange clearly couldn't afford to get his house renovated in one go; it seemed to be being done in stages, with the front verandah still half-done.

He may have been spending a lot on medicines. He had had another blood transfusion the previous week, and was completely "buggered" after the McCormick show.

He said the illness, or the drugs, made him semi-blind (he had to struggle to read the letters I took him to sign) and forget names, but he seemed mentally alert and as witty as ever, though physically tired so the wit was more of an effort.

It was soon after Don Brash's "Orewa 1" speech. He thought Brash would live to regret what he said, even though the polls suggested that the public liked it - because there was still an "old Tory" strand of decency in the National Party which believed in helping the disadvantaged and would be alienated by the new line.

He thought Helen Clark should reshuffle her Cabinet to bring in some new faces and give Trevor Mallard a sabbatical in some kind of role where he didn't have to act the hard man.

He had met Philippines anti-globalisation campaigner Walden Bello in Sweden, where they had both recently received prizes from the same world peace institute. He was impressed both by Bello and by Auckland University Professor Jane Kelsey's recent Bruce Jesson Lecture which celebrated the victory of the Third World at Cancun and chided New Zealand for still siding with the industrial countries that were trying to push agricultural producers into lopsided free-trade deals.

He was generous about Mike Moore, who had visited him in hospital two months before: he said the World Trade Organisation must be regretting giving Moore the first three years and Supachai the second three years of the current term, because Supachai "did nothing" at Cancun, whereas Moore "would have been working the corridors all night banging heads together".

He seemed very isolated. He was totally up with what was going on in New Zealand and internationally; for example, he was certain Clark planned to appoint Annette King Speaker of the House when Jonathan Hunt went to London as high commissioner.

But he said he wasn't really up with the Clark Government in the sense of being consulted or socialising with ministers: "They don't talk to me".

Edith was playing by herself, not with friends - David had tried to teach her how to cut shapes out of magazines or newspapers, as he had learned in his "strict Methodist family" when he was growing up.

He had been sent books by a couple of writers - a book on cars by Peter Gill; Tom Newnham's autobiography; and a slim book on some literary topic by someone else. Michael King had been in touch a couple of times to swap notes about cancer.

He had enjoyed reading Graham Reid's interview with political scientist Barry Gustafson in the previous day's Herald - he seemed to have an affection for Gustafson despite the fact that the professor had abandoned Labour and become a leading light in the National Party.

But he was too sick to socialise much, and probably he never was the kind to spend much time with friends or have people over for a meal or a drink. He was more like an astute observer from afar, still interested and well informed but no longer involved.

Even his family, apart from Edith and Margaret, seemed far away: his son Roy in Melbourne and his daughter in Britain.

Even when he was Prime Minister, Lange was a lonely man. He fought Roger Douglas as a loner, effectively rebelling unilaterally against most of his own Cabinet. Although his oratory and his empathy for ordinary people raised him to the pinnacle of politics, he never had the stomach for the minutiae of wheeling and dealing which real politics requires.

* Simon Collins reported on the Lange Government for the Herald in the parliamentary press gallery from 1985-90. He is now the Herald's social issues reporter and a member of the Bruce Jesson Foundation.