John Roughan: And this man's actions speak louder than words

How does Hillary do it? I'm not talking about making it to the summit; I'm wondering how he has survived there, all these years on the oxygen of our admiration.

Scarcely a week goes by without some organisation in this country - a school, a park, a charity, a heritage body - holding a function to foist another honour on the man. It has been happening now for 50 years. To any ordinary mortal the oxygen would have become intoxicating long ago.

Hillary's sheer modesty is a quality we take for granted. We read without surprise that when told he had been knighted during the descent from Everest his first thought was that he could no longer walk around Papakura in his old overalls. He would need a new pair.

From anybody else, that would sound contrived, or light-hearted at best. From him it sounds like the plain truth.

And it passes without much comment in this country that the 83-year-old chose to mark the anniversary this week with Sherpas and climbers in Kathmandu rather than among the chandeliers in London with surviving members of the expedition.

To say much about it would betray the Hillary style. His actions speak adequately. I'm trying to avoid the phrase "living national treasure" but what else do you call someone who embodies, we like to think, the national character?

Do all countries find someone to idealise like this? Lindbergh in the United States springs to mind. Australian's put the late Sir Donald Bradman on a similar pedestal but, great cricketer that he was, Bradman seemed to be a dour, unapproachable bloke most of the time.

Sir Ed is always welcoming and willing to offer a view on anything if asked. And he must know the risk he runs in a country quick to turn against anyone it suspects is becoming too big for their boots.

In 50 years of public life Sir Edmund has never uttered anything that was less than well-considered, as far as I can recall. And that is truly remarkable.

It is an achievement that has escaped Nelson Mandela, the most internationally revered of national figureheads these days. Speaking against the impending attack on Iraq, Mandela attributed American defiance of the United Nations to the fact that the Secretary-General is black.

Another who could lay claim to 50 years of faultless common sense is the woman who marks the anniversary of her coronation on Tuesday. But the Queen errs on the safe side, saying practically nothing of consequence, ever.

For a long time now Hillary has been our de facto figurehead. It was the opening of the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games, I think, that exhausted my interest in our distant monarchy.

Although I'd been an enthusiast for the constitutional stability provided by the Crown and admired the Queen's ability to avoid political controversy, I nevertheless imagined she might say something that day to match the moment.

She didn't. She delivered a few spiritless sentiments in that familiar tired monotone and it struck me that that is all she ever has done. It is some sort of achievement, I suppose, to be placed above the political fray for 50 years and never let slip a memorable opinion. But I think we had a right to expect more.

This isn't a good week to say so, with the demise of an Australian Governor-General, but the Queen's representatives have generally been much better value than the monarch herself.

After New Zealanders began filling the role, we got a succession of appointees who, within their neutered constitutional office, managed nevertheless to contributed something of substance to national life.

There was Sir David Beattie, who quietly battled with Prime Minister Muldoon to receive a petition at Waitangi, then Sir Paul Reeves, who dared question "trickle down" when Rogernomics was rampant. He was followed by Dame Catherine Tizard, who was never dull, and Sir Michael Hardie Boys, who went to Waitangi when Helen Clark would not.

Hillary would surely have had a term in Government House had he not lent his name to the "Citizens for Rowling" campaign at the 1975 election. Commentators afraid of political committment held that to be a monumental gaffe on his part. It wasn't.

The safely neutral view is that democratic decisions can never be wrong. But sometimes they are. The New Zealand electorate was excited by a seriously malign politician in 1975. Americans have succumbed to something similar today.

Those like Hillary who saw the malignancy in Muldoon were not "naive", as commentators decided; they knew the odds, they did what they could.

World figures of similar quality are standing up now against the mad, vindictive arrogance that has overtaken America since September 11, 2001. Helen Clark should stand more strongly with them. Certain things are more important than a bilateral free trade agreement.

Clark was overpraised before she had proved her staying power but she is proving it now. Her standing in the polls for a fourth consecutive year begins to compare with the best of prime ministers.

Like Hillary, she remains remarkably modest about it.

They represent two strains of impressive leadership. One conspicuously proficient, the other personifying the national spirit. Both have an instinct for the grand gesture and sensible comment. And both of course have walked on mountains.

The lean, lantern-jawed New Zealander we saw on film and photographs this week was familiar even to those who never knew 1953.

Maybe you have to climb so high to learn to keep your feet on the ground.