FF:NZ David Lange. 1942-2005

Well, wasn't expecting it quite so soon. But David Lange will be missed. That interview on Campbell Live lst week was amazing (the audio's available as an mp3 downnload on http://www.publicaddress.net (Hard News section).

The anti-nuke legislation is quite a legacy to have left this country. And I wonder if all the publicity recently about his illness (and now death) will have a positive impact on Labour's polling?

Anyway, Rest In Peace David...

 

Yea, a bit sooner than I thought too.

Wonder if this pulls a few more of the Labour voters back.

 

hmmm ... I have mixed feelings about David Lange. Obviously, he was a great wit, a skilled orrator/debater, and someone who really put New Zealand on the world political stage with New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance.

But he was also the head of the government which introduced New Right economics to New Zealand, selling off assets, resulting in mass unemployment and the resulting social problems that caused. I was at intermediate and high school throughout that period, and remember it being a period of incredible selfishness. There were a lot of people making a hell of a lot of money in property development etc., but at the same time it seemed like all my friends' parents were losing their jobs and really struggling. I feel like that goverment was so driven by implementing an ideology that they actually forgot about what the practical ramifications of those decisions would be on the New Zealand public.

 

Lange was strongly personally opposed to some of the reforms, and he definitely wasn't oblivious to the social cost. He did resign from parliament when they reelected Roger Douglas to cabinet.

But yes, I have memories of the early nineties at primary school, when unemployment was hitting record highs. A lot of kids were coming to school hungry, because they'd slashed the unemployment benefit below what parents could feed a family on.

If all that had taken place in the 50s, they'd probably have been a communist revolution.

 

I think it's easy for Lange, Clarke et. al to distance themselves from those policies this far down the track, but the point is, that government was voted in by people expecting socialist economic policies, and what the country got was the exact opposite. I appreciate that Hlen Clark did do some poitive things during that time, like save State Housing, and as you say, David Lange did resing from parliament. But I look at those two terms as an idealist social experiment which this country is still paying for 20 years later.