Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on the death of former Prime Minister Jim Bolger

A flurry of tributes from current and former politicians for former Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, who died yesterday.

The 90-year-old died peacefully, surrounded by family. 

He served as Prime Minister between 1990 and 1997.

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper looked back on some memories with the former leader.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Barry Sober, Senior Political Correspondence with US Barry, Hello, good afternoon, Heather. Okay,
Jim Bolger so sad day, Yeah it is.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
He's been ill for quite some time and in fact
was very close to death several months ago but pulled through.
And I heard just the other day when I talked
to you on air about it, that has repalliative care
at Wellington Hospital. So he died yesterday amazingly surrounded by
his nine kids, his wife Joan, and his eighteen grandchildren,

(00:29):
so you know there was rather a large crowd exactly.
And look, I met Jim Bolger in the seventies when
I was the industrial roundsman for TV and Z and
he was the Labor Minister for Rob Muldoon, and I
remember being quite astounded that he, when I was a
young man, of course, invited up for a drink in

(00:51):
the Labor Minister's office and we did that on a
number of occasions, as you mentioned earlier. But it just
goes to show the power of television in the politician's
mind that they immediately adopt a television journalist, as he
did me to a fairly large extent. He used to
mimic Jim Knox, who was the president of the fol

(01:12):
in those days, and then expect to sit down the
next day and have a meaningful discussion with him, and
Jim was none too happy. This is Jim Knox was
none too happy about that. One of the more interesting
stories here there is him meeting Nelson Mandala in Hurrara
in nineteen ninety one. There was a Commonwealth heads of
government meeting there and I was with Bolger and he

(01:36):
was We were mixing with the leaders as a cocktail
function and making an exit almost Bulger was a bit
tired of the small talk, and a man, an African man,
came through the exit door and said to me, are
you with a prime minister? And I said, well, that's
our prime minister there, and he said can you introduce

(01:57):
this man who's coming through the dow now? To him
was now Mandela and Bolge was very quick. The very
next morning he booked almost immediately for breakfast the next morning.
And my abiding memory of that was that I was
shoved out of the way at this cocktail function Philly,
forcibly by none other than Bob Hawk, who can't of

(02:17):
swathe through the crowd because he wanted to be in
on the Mandela thing. But Bolgier got a bit of
a coup there. And then several years later went to
Mandala's inauguration in nineteen ninety four, and I was with
him again. There he got a souvenir bottle of wine
of Nineberg Cabinet Savignon, and it was a large one.

(02:39):
And later and a half and os happened to be
at the lunch and said to Bolgia, where'd you get
that from? He said, oh, that waiter over there gave
me it as a souvenir. So I thought, bucket this.
I'm going to go over and talk to the waiter
as well. Went over. He gave me one. Well, Bolger
drank his. I think Philly soon after getting back to
the country, I've still got mine head.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
You realize, you realize it's going to be sour.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
But it's got the presidential seal on the bottle. He
would have the bottle wide, isn't it. No, No, I
think it's a it's now a family helom appreciated by
no one else. Carry on, carry that's true. But look,
parliament's adjourned for the week now because they sat this

(03:24):
afternoon in honor of Jim Bolger. A number paid tribute
to him. Here's Labour's Chris Hopkins, followed by Winston Peters.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Jim Bolger's life is full of contradictions. Has government sold
the Bank of New Zealand and then he was the
inaugural chair of the new government owned Kiwibank. Has government
ushered in the Employment Contracts Act, and then subsequently he
chaired a working group that led to the establishment of
fair pay agreements. His government did more to weekend unions

(03:53):
than just about any other. But then in his later
years he lamented how small unions had become and the
effect that that it had for woking people. He sacked
Winston Peters from his cabinet and then formed New Zealand's
first MMP coalition with Winston Peters as his deputy Prime Minister,
a government that transpired to be remarkably stable, much to

(04:13):
the frustration of the then Labor Party opposition. I do
want to acknowledge Winston Peters today, the only remaining member
of the House who served in government with Jim Bolger
during the time that he was Prime Minister.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
We formed the first MMP government. He put difference aside,
shook hands on that agreement, and more importantly, he kept
his word. Today we can and must acknowledge that Jim
Boulder contributed to a time of enormous difficulty economically and
changed to New Zealand. But a far god importance than this,
we acknowledge the passing of a husband, father, and grandfather, Jim,

(04:51):
May God bless you.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
So Winston was quite emotional, I think about it all.
But Chris Hopkins wasn't quite right. It wasn't. He was
the only person in the House today that had served
in a government with Jim Bolger's leader was Jerry Browne.
Was also came into Parliament in the first MMP election
in nineteen ninety six, and he remembers a party in

(05:16):
the Speaker's Lounge after winning that election when Doug Kidd
was in the chair which he occupies today, which JU.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
Loved gatherings of people. He enjoyed, as any true Irishman would,
the opportunity to be with other people, and I recall it.
Shortly after the formation of the nineteen ninety six government,
Doug Kidd invited a number of senior ministers and members

(05:42):
to the Speaker's lounge for ongoing discussions which you can
imagine involved a lot of you know, well, basically they
loved their whiskey, and Doug pointed at me and said,
you come too, So I did, but I found out
I was any there to be the waiter, and I
was quickly dispatched by Jim Bolgia to go and find

(06:04):
he in Revel, who played a guitar, and he said,
get Revel, get his guitar, get him back here. We're
going to sing some songs. He loves singing. But then
he dragged everybody out onto the balcony just outside the
speaker's lounge, drinks in hand, some smoke is scending above
their heads, and then led the group in a resounding

(06:24):
rendition of Danny Boyd. And you just think this off
could have prime in us to do that today. The
reality is that he was able to be himself with
those who he worked with, and too often I think
we have to hide that away because of the malicious
nature of social media these days.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Barry, Thank you very much, Barry So for seening your
political correspondent.

Speaker 4 (06:45):
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