KEY POINTS:
When Ian Templeton arrived back in New Zealand from London in 1957 to take up the position as the Auckland Star's parliamentary correspondent, the Press Gallery was a very different place to what it is today.
Some veteran reporters began the day with a stiff gin and didn't stop drinking. There were no women's toilets - because there were no women reporters - and all-night sittings were a regular event.
Fifty years on the drinking is much reduced, many of the reporters are women, all-night sittings are a thing of the past ... but Ian Templeton, now 78, is still at Parliament.
His 50 years of work as a political reporter will be honoured tonight, with a special dinner in Parliament's Banquet Hall. Prime Minister Helen Clark, National leader John Key and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters will speak, as will several of Templeton's former colleagues.
Templeton's half century in the capital has seen him write about 13 Prime Ministers and 17 general elections for 12 newspapers, including serving as New Zealand correspondent for several overseas titles. The Auckland Star is long gone, but Templeton's writing - these days mainly for the Trans Tasman newsletter - is still keenly followed.
"He has acquired a capacity for objectivity and balance that is quite exceptional among gallery journalists," former colleague Bevan Burgess said. "People who need to know because they are making decisions, therefore, have placed a lot of weight on keeping in touch with what he has been doing and saying."
Burgess joined the Press Gallery two months after Templeton, part of a new generation of younger journalists. Having worked overseas for five years, Templeton brought back innovations such as colour writing: a novelty at a time when much political reporting consisted of long verbatim reports of the major debates of the day.
"People used to want to know what happened there, and the fact that they wanted to know in a sense made politicians take it more seriously," Burgess said. "They weren't any less frivolous than they sometimes are now perhaps, but it mattered far more to editors and readers and making it interesting also mattered."
Templeton was based in Wellington, and the Star would send down a correspondent to cover Parliament when it was in session. For the first few years of Templeton's time in Wellington that visiting journalist was Mike Brett.
Brett would bunk at the same Bolton Street boarding house as many of the Auckland MPs, and says at that time journalists were much closer to politicians than they are today. For example, poker games were a regular event after gallery parties, with Prime Minister Keith Holyoake and senior MPs among the players.
"We travelled with [Labour leader] Walter Nash and his secretary and driver in the car for a week when he was leader of the Opposition. You wouldn't do that now."
Peter Scherer, a former New Zealand Herald editor, was a competitor of Templeton's during 12 years working in the Press Gallery, from 1960 to 1972.
"The competition was as fierce as any I have known on a given round," Scherer said.
Scherer was full of praise for the achievements of a rival who went on to become a long-time friend.
"Nobody has matched Ian's longevity at the gallery. He must have enjoyed himself or he wouldn't have spent half a century there."
