August 29, 2024 • 19 mins
Norman Kirk was elected Prime Minister in 1972, bringing the Labour Party back to power after 12 years of National Party rule.
His two years in office were seen as radical at the time in how he sought to reshape New Zealand’s place in the world, and his legacy has endured as one of the country’s most popular Prime Ministers.
However, on August 31st 1974, Kirk died after a lengthy but private illness with obesity and heart problems.
Today on The Front Page, as we near that 50th anniversary since his death, we’re joined by Victoria University of Wellington professor of history, Jim McAloon, to discuss the legacy of Kirk’s life and death.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kyoda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Norman
Kirk was elected Prime Minister in nineteen seventy two, bringing
the Labor Party back to power after twelve years of
(00:26):
National Party rule. His two years in office were seen
as radical at the time in how he sought to
reshape New Zealand's place in the world, and his legacy
has endured as one of the country's most popular prime ministers. However,
on August thirty first, nineteen seventy four, Kirk died after
(00:49):
a lengthy but private illness with obesity and heart problems.
Today on the Front Page, as we near that fiftieth anniversary,
we're joined by Victoria University of Wellington Professor of History
Jim McAloon, to discuss the legacy of Kirk's life and death.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Jim, you've co.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Written a history of the Labor Party. Can you take
us back to nineteen seventy two. Labour had not been
in power since nineteen sixty right. Why had they struggled
to win over the public in that time?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Partly because at the beginning of the sixties they needed
a process of renewal. In nineteen sixty the party leader
was Walter Nash. He had just been defeated as Prime Minister.
He was seventy eight years old. At that point. There
was a large part of the caucus and cabinet who
(01:46):
had been in Parliament for a long time, and there
was a seats that a new generation was being blocked,
and that new generation came through in the early sixties,
and Norman Kirk was was part of that new generation.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
That's one reason.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
The other reason is that Keith Holyoake and the National
Party pretty much governed from the center. I mean, Holyoak
was a very astute, very pragmatic politician. I think his
instance were genuinely centrist. He wasn't a right wing nidiologue.
And I think that that managed to keep a large
part of the elector at on side for much of
(02:23):
the sixties, at least till about nineteen sixty seven sixty eight.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
What was it about Norman Kirk's arrival was the party's
leader that kind of transformed things and made the party
electable again.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I suppose, yeah, Well, the transformation took a while because
Kirk became party leader in nineteen sixty five. At the
age of forty two, which was young in those days.
He defeated the incumbent leader, Arnold Nordmeyer. Now Lordmeyer had
been in Parliament since nineteen thirty five, he was in
his early sixties by the time Kirk defeated him. He'd
(02:58):
been a very good and very successu full minister in
both the first and Second Labor governments, but as Finance
Minister in the second Labor government he had been responsible
for some fairly strict measures to deal with an economic crisis,
and Kirk, no doubt was ambitious and I think took
the opportunity to ease lord Meyer a side. But Kirk
(03:21):
himself was an unknown quantity at that stage. He hadn't
been a minister, He did not immediately grab the public's attention,
and his first election as leader in nineteen sixty six
really didn't result in too much gain for the Labor Party.
I think over the next six years he learned what
(03:44):
was necessary to be a successful party leader and more
a successful prime minister. They almost got there in nineteen
sixty nine, but combination of events I think, perhaps including
a bit of trouble in industrial or relates, perhaps made
just enough voters cautious enough that Keith Holyokes graped back
(04:06):
end for a fourth term. But really that fourth term
the writing was pretty much on the wall and Kirk
was setting the agenda. By nineteen seventy seventy one, he
was also increasingly able to capture the spirit of the age,
especially some of the concerns of the younger generation voters
in their early twenties around care for the environment, around
(04:29):
foreign affairs, particularly a parthe eight, and nuclear weapons testing
in the South Pacific. And I think too he espoused
a vision which was fresh and compelling by nineteen seventy two,
of more social justice, more cohesion, and I think to
what he might have called a more independent sense of
(04:52):
New Zealand's nationhood and all that was evident in the
brief time he was Prime Minister as well.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
But yeah, it took him a long time to become electable.
And it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I don't think any party leader now would be allowed
two defeats before going on to a third win.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
What is it that in fact has urged the people
of New Zealand to change sides complete I think tonight
you could describe this as a victory for the little
people of the country. The average families, the people who
are working in the factories, from the farms, the people
who are inclined always to be overlooked. Have been seriously
concerned about the erosion of family life, the drift of
(05:30):
the community towards a sort of want in materialism. I
think you could say.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
How would you describe Kirk's political ideology or philosophy.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I think compassion, fair shares and solidarity were key parts
of it. He had been really influenced by his impoverished
childhood in the Great Depression, so he firmly believed in
the welfare state and an equal opportunity.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
But I think he also.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Believed that society he as a whole, had a duty
to ensure that no one was left behind, and I
think that was a key part of his vision. Increasingly, two,
I think his vision for New Zealand was edging toward biculturalism.
There's that famous photo of him with that young Maryana
priest at Waitangi in nineteen seventy three, and I think
(06:21):
to his political philosophy or vision also as I see it,
meant an independent position for New Zealand, not abandoning old
relationships but making new ones, particularly in the Commonwealth, particularly
in East Asia and in Africa, and that was where
some of his foreign policy initiatives came to the fore
(06:44):
I think I would also say that this was all
general principle, but he was I think, perhaps less disciplined
in his ideas of how to achieve these things. I
think he was not particularly successful in economic terms. Fortunately,
his finance Minister, Bill Rowling, was extremely capable. But Kirk
(07:08):
didn't like to be reminded sometimes that even in good times,
economics is about choices and if you have X, you
can't have all of why, and so sometimes he got
a bit impatient with that, and I think his political
approach was much more about general principles than a finely
detailed ideology, if I can put it like that.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I think he found the economic reality so damn frustrating.
You know, the things he wanted to do, and he
wanted to just get them done.
Speaker 6 (07:38):
Like many others had felt that he had got the
role of governing the country by the scruff of the neck,
and he appeared wanted to go in a direction that
he believed that ordinary people had a chance.
Speaker 7 (07:49):
I think people who didn't work with them more known
very well tend to semi canonize it and make him
out to be a plaster saint, which he certainly was not.
He was a man of volcanic rages, a very shrewd politician,
with all the connotations that that appled, but he was
also a man of tremendous generosity, great humanity.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
When Kirk is spoken about, he's often discussed as being
quite popular. Is that fair or has that kind of
been colored by the fact he did, in fact die
after only a few years.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
He was very popular at the time. Certainly when he
became Prime Minister. I think there was a genuine feeling
of a new beginning. Labor enjoyed a large parliamentary majority,
and I think the expectation was that they would be there.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
For several terms.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Now, Kirk was genuinely popular during nineteen seventy three and
into nineteen seventy four. It's unfortunate, really unfortunate that his
ill health in nineteen seventy four coincided with the end
of the post war good years and the beginning of
the major recession following the oil shocks of nineteen seventy three.
(09:00):
It's impossible to know what would have happened if he
had lived, but of course, dying in office did give
him a posthumous reputation that's very, very hard to shake.
You know. I don't want to diminish his popularity or
diminish the positive dimensions of his prime ministership, but there
(09:23):
is a bit of nostalgia around Kirk that I think
sometimes gets a little bit uncritical.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
One of the reasons why Kirk is remembered more so
than I suppose other prime ministers around that era is
that he did, unfortunately die in office. How much of
a shock was it when that happened, because from reading
about his final days, it does kind of sound like
he had kept things pretty under wraps.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
He absolutely had, I think among his colleagues and perhaps
among informed observers. There's a classic photograph of him at
the May nineteen seventy four Party conference where he looks
very very ill, big man, but and that photograph looks
absolutely gaunt.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
But for all that, I.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Think he did, as you say, keep things under wraps.
And there was a I think in those days there
was more discretion in journalism, and it's always the case now,
and that's sometimes a good thing. The more inquiring approach. Now,
you know, it is a matter of public interest of
the Prime Minister is not healthy.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
But I think I suspect Kirk.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Was deceiving himself as well. On one level, I think
he knew he was ill, but on another level, I
think he perhaps wasn't really able to face that. Certainly
in public terms, his death was a huge shock. It
was one of those do you remember where you were
when you heard moments? Yeah, he died on a Saturday
(10:49):
evening and I yes, in those days without instant media,
it was announced on the TV and the radio, but
then I think most people picked it up the next day.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
The Third Labor Government made Whiteitangi Day a public holiday
right and created the Waitangi Tribunal. Was that rather radical
at the time given the tensions and arguments we still
have over the treaty today.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Depends who you ask about radical. Start with making day
in a public holiday, Kirk wanted to call it New
Zealand Day. I think he hoped that the Treaty to
Tenaity would be a focus of unity, and interestingly it
was Muldoon's National Government that changed it back to Waitangy Day. Now,
the campaign to make Waitangy Day a public holiday had
(11:43):
been there for years among the Mali members of parliament anyway.
Speaker 6 (11:47):
Edit.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Tita cart and the grandfather of Renal, who was in
recent parliament, had been campaigning for that for a very
long time, and that Batman was picked up by mart
Ju Data, the member for Northern Mary from nineteen sixty three,
and he and Kirk were pretty close. I think it
was not presented as a radical initiative. However, it's important
(12:10):
to remember that there had been increasing protest at Waitangi
in the very early seventies before the public holiday was declared,
and as I say, I think Kirk and Rata hoped
that it would in part be a focus of unity instead.
But I think also Tillercartny and Rita had perhaps in
some way envisaged that making the day a public holiday
(12:33):
would also focus attention upon the documents and in the
longer term push a reckoning with colonial history, and that
certainly happened now the way Tangi Tribunal initially was not
perceived as that radical.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Again, it was very much.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
An idea promoted by Martyur Data with Kirk's support. I
understand that Rata wanted it to have due restriction back
into history, but he could only get through the Labor
Party Cabinet and caucus. At the time, the idea that
the Tribunal was only concerned with present events, so it
(13:12):
couldn't address things that the Crown had done before nineteen
seventy five. So initially the Tribunal didn't seem to be
a lot of use in Mardi eyes, and it was
pretty unadventurous in how it approached things as well. But
that changed in nineteen eighty three when Edward Taihaku Deaduri,
who was the first Mary judge of the Mardi Land
(13:34):
Court and then first Marty to be Chief Judge of
the Land Court and as such also chair of the
Waikani Tribunal, started changing things even within the restrictive framework
of the nineteen seventy five legislation, simply by taking a bolder,
bard entirely sound approach to the issues, and also here
in cases on Marai. So I think in both cases
(13:57):
you might say that the public holiday and the tribunal
were long term projects. The impact took a good while
to be realized, and I don't find it implausible that
on one level, data and perhaps Kirk had an intuition
that that would be the case, that will do this
(14:17):
and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
And you also mentioned dealings with East Asia. Kirk also
is given a lot of credit for creating an independent
foreign policy for New Zealand. How significant were these changes.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yes, I think that was a lot of that was
in the context of the Commonwealth, which over the decade
of the nineteen sixties, as decolonization and independence in most
of Britain's former colonial territories became the rule, the.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Commonwealth really shifted from the.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Old white dominions club Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa,
or they left before they were thrown out, into a
generally multicultural and multilateral organiz and I think that was
very much Kirk's vision, and his relationships with Commonwealth leaders
like shaped Mujiburahman in Bangladesh, newly independent Worth Lee Kwan
(15:12):
Yu and Singapore, and perhaps particularly in Africa with Julius
Neri of Tanzania, with whom Kirk was very close.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
I think that was all.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Part of a realignment of New Zealand's foreign policy, and
it also I think reflected Kirk's intuitive grasp that at
is a Pacific nation, and that was also of course
reflected in his vehement opposition to the testing of nuclear
weapons by France and the South Pacific.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
What we have the opportunity to do now is to
make a new beginning within the Commonwealth on an equal
association of nature. Leakwan, new Prime Minister of Singapore and
the personal friend, remembers the impression he made at the
Commonwealth Prime Minister's Conference in Ottawa.
Speaker 7 (15:56):
What came show at.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
The end of EP the honesty of the man, the
sincerity with which he held his convictions, and that you
could rely on what he said to you as history
of position.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Kirk's death has also been associated for some decades now
with conspiracy theories that he was perhaps assassinated or killed
by foreign powers, the CIA being a popular theory. How
did these theories come to embed themselves in the public consciousness.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
When something dreadful and shocking happens. I guess it's a
natural tendency to look for sinister courses.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Iever, I can put it like that.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah, you get the same with the murder of President
Kennedy in November of sixty three. You get it, to
a lesser extent with the murder of his brother Robert
and June of sixty eight and yeah, I guess it's
a way of coping with the fact that sometimes life
is just random and really shitty. I think too, given
(17:01):
that Kirk, like those others I've mentioned, seemed to be
heading in a progressive direction, Yeah, it's perhaps natural also
to ask oneself, well, who were their enemies? But yeah,
I think there's never so far as will we have
been a really good case that there was anything more
than the fact that Norman Kirk's health was not that great.
(17:23):
And as I said, although perhaps on one level he
was in denial, on another level he often seen and
Margaret Hayward's secretary records this, Yeah, I won't make old bones,
he says. So, Yeah, on one level, I think he knew,
And when you look at what we now know about
his medical history, it doesn't seem really that surprising. Bearing
(17:45):
in mind too that fifty years later, I speak, medical
care has advanced and he may well have been able
to deal with things better.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Labor went on to lose the nineteen seventy five election
quite badly in the face of the challenge from Robert
Muldoon and national If Kirk had survived, and I know
this is gazing into a crystal ball. Do you think
things would have turned out?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, maartifacturals are very difficult, aren't they. I think the
qualification has to be if Kirk had survived and been
in good health, Given that, I think he would have
put a much better chance of defeating Muldoon in the
National Party.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
This is not to denigrate Bill.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Rowling, who I think was a very good prime minister,
but in terms of image, Muldoon was making all the running.
And then it's also important to remember that the National Party,
of course had a much better funded campaign and labored it.
That said, I think Kirk would likely have won the
(18:51):
second term in nineteen seventy five with a much reduced majority.
I suspect if he had been at the height of
his powers. I like to say that in some respects
I think Kirk and Muldoon were both very dominant personalities
in Parliament, in cabinet and caucus. By its very much
(19:12):
out there. I like to say though, that in some
ways I think Norman Kirk represented the better angels of
our nature and Muldoon sometimes played to the worst.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Thanks for joining us, Jim. That's it for this episode
of the Front Page. You can read more about today's
stories and extensive news coverage at enzidherld dot co dot z.
The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sils and sound
engineer Patti Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
(19:46):
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.
Kyoda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Norman
Kirk was elected Prime Minister in nineteen seventy two, bringing
the Labor Party back to power after twelve years of
(00:26):
National Party rule. His two years in office were seen
as radical at the time in how he sought to
reshape New Zealand's place in the world, and his legacy
has endured as one of the country's most popular prime ministers. However,
on August thirty first, nineteen seventy four, Kirk died after
(00:49):
a lengthy but private illness with obesity and heart problems.
Today on the Front Page, as we near that fiftieth anniversary,
we're joined by Victoria University of Wellington Professor of History
Jim McAloon, to discuss the legacy of Kirk's life and death.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Jim, you've co.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Written a history of the Labor Party. Can you take
us back to nineteen seventy two. Labour had not been
in power since nineteen sixty right. Why had they struggled
to win over the public in that time?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Partly because at the beginning of the sixties they needed
a process of renewal. In nineteen sixty the party leader
was Walter Nash. He had just been defeated as Prime Minister.
He was seventy eight years old. At that point. There
was a large part of the caucus and cabinet who
(01:46):
had been in Parliament for a long time, and there
was a seats that a new generation was being blocked,
and that new generation came through in the early sixties,
and Norman Kirk was was part of that new generation.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
That's one reason.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
The other reason is that Keith Holyoake and the National
Party pretty much governed from the center. I mean, Holyoak
was a very astute, very pragmatic politician. I think his
instance were genuinely centrist. He wasn't a right wing nidiologue.
And I think that that managed to keep a large
part of the elector at on side for much of
(02:23):
the sixties, at least till about nineteen sixty seven sixty eight.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
What was it about Norman Kirk's arrival was the party's
leader that kind of transformed things and made the party
electable again.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I suppose, yeah, Well, the transformation took a while because
Kirk became party leader in nineteen sixty five. At the
age of forty two, which was young in those days.
He defeated the incumbent leader, Arnold Nordmeyer. Now Lordmeyer had
been in Parliament since nineteen thirty five, he was in
his early sixties by the time Kirk defeated him. He'd
(02:58):
been a very good and very successu full minister in
both the first and Second Labor governments, but as Finance
Minister in the second Labor government he had been responsible
for some fairly strict measures to deal with an economic crisis,
and Kirk, no doubt was ambitious and I think took
the opportunity to ease lord Meyer a side. But Kirk
(03:21):
himself was an unknown quantity at that stage. He hadn't
been a minister, He did not immediately grab the public's attention,
and his first election as leader in nineteen sixty six
really didn't result in too much gain for the Labor Party.
I think over the next six years he learned what
(03:44):
was necessary to be a successful party leader and more
a successful prime minister. They almost got there in nineteen
sixty nine, but combination of events I think, perhaps including
a bit of trouble in industrial or relates, perhaps made
just enough voters cautious enough that Keith Holyokes graped back
(04:06):
end for a fourth term. But really that fourth term
the writing was pretty much on the wall and Kirk
was setting the agenda. By nineteen seventy seventy one, he
was also increasingly able to capture the spirit of the age,
especially some of the concerns of the younger generation voters
in their early twenties around care for the environment, around
(04:29):
foreign affairs, particularly a parthe eight, and nuclear weapons testing
in the South Pacific. And I think too he espoused
a vision which was fresh and compelling by nineteen seventy two,
of more social justice, more cohesion, and I think to
what he might have called a more independent sense of
(04:52):
New Zealand's nationhood and all that was evident in the
brief time he was Prime Minister as well.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
But yeah, it took him a long time to become electable.
And it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I don't think any party leader now would be allowed
two defeats before going on to a third win.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
What is it that in fact has urged the people
of New Zealand to change sides complete I think tonight
you could describe this as a victory for the little
people of the country. The average families, the people who
are working in the factories, from the farms, the people
who are inclined always to be overlooked. Have been seriously
concerned about the erosion of family life, the drift of
(05:30):
the community towards a sort of want in materialism. I
think you could say.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
How would you describe Kirk's political ideology or philosophy.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I think compassion, fair shares and solidarity were key parts
of it. He had been really influenced by his impoverished
childhood in the Great Depression, so he firmly believed in
the welfare state and an equal opportunity.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
But I think he also.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Believed that society he as a whole, had a duty
to ensure that no one was left behind, and I
think that was a key part of his vision. Increasingly, two,
I think his vision for New Zealand was edging toward biculturalism.
There's that famous photo of him with that young Maryana
priest at Waitangi in nineteen seventy three, and I think
(06:21):
to his political philosophy or vision also as I see it,
meant an independent position for New Zealand, not abandoning old
relationships but making new ones, particularly in the Commonwealth, particularly
in East Asia and in Africa, and that was where
some of his foreign policy initiatives came to the fore
(06:44):
I think I would also say that this was all
general principle, but he was I think, perhaps less disciplined
in his ideas of how to achieve these things. I
think he was not particularly successful in economic terms. Fortunately,
his finance Minister, Bill Rowling, was extremely capable. But Kirk
(07:08):
didn't like to be reminded sometimes that even in good times,
economics is about choices and if you have X, you
can't have all of why, and so sometimes he got
a bit impatient with that, and I think his political
approach was much more about general principles than a finely
detailed ideology, if I can put it like that.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I think he found the economic reality so damn frustrating.
You know, the things he wanted to do, and he
wanted to just get them done.
Speaker 6 (07:38):
Like many others had felt that he had got the
role of governing the country by the scruff of the neck,
and he appeared wanted to go in a direction that
he believed that ordinary people had a chance.
Speaker 7 (07:49):
I think people who didn't work with them more known
very well tend to semi canonize it and make him
out to be a plaster saint, which he certainly was not.
He was a man of volcanic rages, a very shrewd politician,
with all the connotations that that appled, but he was
also a man of tremendous generosity, great humanity.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
When Kirk is spoken about, he's often discussed as being
quite popular. Is that fair or has that kind of
been colored by the fact he did, in fact die
after only a few years.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
He was very popular at the time. Certainly when he
became Prime Minister. I think there was a genuine feeling
of a new beginning. Labor enjoyed a large parliamentary majority,
and I think the expectation was that they would be there.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
For several terms.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Now, Kirk was genuinely popular during nineteen seventy three and
into nineteen seventy four. It's unfortunate, really unfortunate that his
ill health in nineteen seventy four coincided with the end
of the post war good years and the beginning of
the major recession following the oil shocks of nineteen seventy three.
(09:00):
It's impossible to know what would have happened if he
had lived, but of course, dying in office did give
him a posthumous reputation that's very, very hard to shake.
You know. I don't want to diminish his popularity or
diminish the positive dimensions of his prime ministership, but there
(09:23):
is a bit of nostalgia around Kirk that I think
sometimes gets a little bit uncritical.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
One of the reasons why Kirk is remembered more so
than I suppose other prime ministers around that era is
that he did, unfortunately die in office. How much of
a shock was it when that happened, because from reading
about his final days, it does kind of sound like
he had kept things pretty under wraps.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
He absolutely had, I think among his colleagues and perhaps
among informed observers. There's a classic photograph of him at
the May nineteen seventy four Party conference where he looks
very very ill, big man, but and that photograph looks
absolutely gaunt.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
But for all that, I.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Think he did, as you say, keep things under wraps.
And there was a I think in those days there
was more discretion in journalism, and it's always the case now,
and that's sometimes a good thing. The more inquiring approach. Now,
you know, it is a matter of public interest of
the Prime Minister is not healthy.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
But I think I suspect Kirk.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Was deceiving himself as well. On one level, I think
he knew he was ill, but on another level, I
think he perhaps wasn't really able to face that. Certainly
in public terms, his death was a huge shock. It
was one of those do you remember where you were
when you heard moments? Yeah, he died on a Saturday
(10:49):
evening and I yes, in those days without instant media,
it was announced on the TV and the radio, but
then I think most people picked it up the next day.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
The Third Labor Government made Whiteitangi Day a public holiday
right and created the Waitangi Tribunal. Was that rather radical
at the time given the tensions and arguments we still
have over the treaty today.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Depends who you ask about radical. Start with making day
in a public holiday, Kirk wanted to call it New
Zealand Day. I think he hoped that the Treaty to
Tenaity would be a focus of unity, and interestingly it
was Muldoon's National Government that changed it back to Waitangy Day. Now,
the campaign to make Waitangy Day a public holiday had
(11:43):
been there for years among the Mali members of parliament anyway.
Speaker 6 (11:47):
Edit.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Tita cart and the grandfather of Renal, who was in
recent parliament, had been campaigning for that for a very
long time, and that Batman was picked up by mart
Ju Data, the member for Northern Mary from nineteen sixty three,
and he and Kirk were pretty close. I think it
was not presented as a radical initiative. However, it's important
(12:10):
to remember that there had been increasing protest at Waitangi
in the very early seventies before the public holiday was declared,
and as I say, I think Kirk and Rata hoped
that it would in part be a focus of unity instead.
But I think also Tillercartny and Rita had perhaps in
some way envisaged that making the day a public holiday
(12:33):
would also focus attention upon the documents and in the
longer term push a reckoning with colonial history, and that
certainly happened now the way Tangi Tribunal initially was not
perceived as that radical.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Again, it was very much.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
An idea promoted by Martyur Data with Kirk's support. I
understand that Rata wanted it to have due restriction back
into history, but he could only get through the Labor
Party Cabinet and caucus. At the time, the idea that
the Tribunal was only concerned with present events, so it
(13:12):
couldn't address things that the Crown had done before nineteen
seventy five. So initially the Tribunal didn't seem to be
a lot of use in Mardi eyes, and it was
pretty unadventurous in how it approached things as well. But
that changed in nineteen eighty three when Edward Taihaku Deaduri,
who was the first Mary judge of the Mardi Land
(13:34):
Court and then first Marty to be Chief Judge of
the Land Court and as such also chair of the
Waikani Tribunal, started changing things even within the restrictive framework
of the nineteen seventy five legislation, simply by taking a bolder,
bard entirely sound approach to the issues, and also here
in cases on Marai. So I think in both cases
(13:57):
you might say that the public holiday and the tribunal
were long term projects. The impact took a good while
to be realized, and I don't find it implausible that
on one level, data and perhaps Kirk had an intuition
that that would be the case, that will do this
(14:17):
and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
And you also mentioned dealings with East Asia. Kirk also
is given a lot of credit for creating an independent
foreign policy for New Zealand. How significant were these changes.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yes, I think that was a lot of that was
in the context of the Commonwealth, which over the decade
of the nineteen sixties, as decolonization and independence in most
of Britain's former colonial territories became the rule, the.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Commonwealth really shifted from the.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Old white dominions club Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa,
or they left before they were thrown out, into a
generally multicultural and multilateral organiz and I think that was
very much Kirk's vision, and his relationships with Commonwealth leaders
like shaped Mujiburahman in Bangladesh, newly independent Worth Lee Kwan
(15:12):
Yu and Singapore, and perhaps particularly in Africa with Julius
Neri of Tanzania, with whom Kirk was very close.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
I think that was all.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Part of a realignment of New Zealand's foreign policy, and
it also I think reflected Kirk's intuitive grasp that at
is a Pacific nation, and that was also of course
reflected in his vehement opposition to the testing of nuclear
weapons by France and the South Pacific.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
What we have the opportunity to do now is to
make a new beginning within the Commonwealth on an equal
association of nature. Leakwan, new Prime Minister of Singapore and
the personal friend, remembers the impression he made at the
Commonwealth Prime Minister's Conference in Ottawa.
Speaker 7 (15:56):
What came show at.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
The end of EP the honesty of the man, the
sincerity with which he held his convictions, and that you
could rely on what he said to you as history
of position.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Kirk's death has also been associated for some decades now
with conspiracy theories that he was perhaps assassinated or killed
by foreign powers, the CIA being a popular theory. How
did these theories come to embed themselves in the public consciousness.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
When something dreadful and shocking happens. I guess it's a
natural tendency to look for sinister courses.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Iever, I can put it like that.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah, you get the same with the murder of President
Kennedy in November of sixty three. You get it, to
a lesser extent with the murder of his brother Robert
and June of sixty eight and yeah, I guess it's
a way of coping with the fact that sometimes life
is just random and really shitty. I think too, given
(17:01):
that Kirk, like those others I've mentioned, seemed to be
heading in a progressive direction, Yeah, it's perhaps natural also
to ask oneself, well, who were their enemies? But yeah,
I think there's never so far as will we have
been a really good case that there was anything more
than the fact that Norman Kirk's health was not that great.
(17:23):
And as I said, although perhaps on one level he
was in denial, on another level he often seen and
Margaret Hayward's secretary records this, Yeah, I won't make old bones,
he says. So, Yeah, on one level, I think he knew,
And when you look at what we now know about
his medical history, it doesn't seem really that surprising. Bearing
(17:45):
in mind too that fifty years later, I speak, medical
care has advanced and he may well have been able
to deal with things better.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Labor went on to lose the nineteen seventy five election
quite badly in the face of the challenge from Robert
Muldoon and national If Kirk had survived, and I know
this is gazing into a crystal ball. Do you think
things would have turned out?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, maartifacturals are very difficult, aren't they. I think the
qualification has to be if Kirk had survived and been
in good health, Given that, I think he would have
put a much better chance of defeating Muldoon in the
National Party.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
This is not to denigrate Bill.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Rowling, who I think was a very good prime minister,
but in terms of image, Muldoon was making all the running.
And then it's also important to remember that the National Party,
of course had a much better funded campaign and labored it.
That said, I think Kirk would likely have won the
(18:51):
second term in nineteen seventy five with a much reduced majority.
I suspect if he had been at the height of
his powers. I like to say that in some respects
I think Kirk and Muldoon were both very dominant personalities
in Parliament, in cabinet and caucus. By its very much
(19:12):
out there. I like to say though, that in some
ways I think Norman Kirk represented the better angels of
our nature and Muldoon sometimes played to the worst.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Thanks for joining us, Jim. That's it for this episode
of the Front Page. You can read more about today's
stories and extensive news coverage at enzidherld dot co dot z.
The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sils and sound
engineer Patti Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
(19:46):
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.
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