PORTRAIT OF A WORKER

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25933, 13 October 1949, Page 4

PORTRAIT OF A WORKER

PARLIAMENTARY PROFILE IV

(By Our Parliamentary Reporter)

Of all the 80 members who talk from time to time in New Zealand’s House of Representatives about finance, no one has a closer personal knowledge of money and how to earn it than the National Party’s William Stanley Goosman, member for Piako. His life story might have been written by Horatio Alger, adapted for New Zealand conditions. He is a living refutation of the claims of those who shake their heads and say that the days of starting with nothing and amassing a comfortable fortune have been gone for years. For the last 11 years he has been a member of Parliament, has won for himself a reputation as the party’s most vigorous speaker and as one of its most energetic private members, and assured for himself an important portfolio should the National Party win the election.

Between times, he has taken up racing. Since he began a few years ago his total stake winnings have now reached £lOO,OOO, and his horses still keep on winning important events with monotonous regularity. Nor has it all been luck. He brought to racing the same driving energy he brings to everything else, paid big prices for the best horses and* put them with the best trainers. And he does not bet.

Although Mr Goosman took to racing as a sport and recreation, he still made money at it. He turned to a less profitable sport—golf—when he was 45. put the same energy into that, and within a year had dropped his handicap to 10, after beginning as a complete novice. To keep fit in Parliament he plays 36 holes of golf on most of the spare days he gets. A Remarkable Story His career in brief makes a remarkable story. At the age of 13 and after passing Standard 6, he went to work on a dairy farm for 5s a week. By 17 he was doing a man’s work as a bushman in the back country of the East Coast. It was good money but hard work. Twice he stayed in the back country for 10 months at a time without coming in to town. He saw enough of bushmen and the ways of some of them to resolve then that the money he earned was not going to be wasted on bolstering brewery profits, and since then has been almost a complete teetotaller.

When he was 22, ho turned his back on the bush and with his brother went sharemilking Soon after that he went to the Waikato and farmed first one

property p.t Tamahere and then another at Waitoa.

He worked hard, but in the brief depression of 1920-21 he decided that even harder work was necessary to do well. Ho bought a horse and dray and took on a contract to cart cream—running his farm as well and starting the day’s work in the milking shed. That contract paid, so he bought a truck. Still he prospered, and kept on buying trucks until finally he had one of the biggest cartage businesses in New Zealand—although he still ran the farm, and did the milking himself. The joint work of running a farm and a cartage business was not sufficient to keep him entirely busy, and he turned to road contracting. The company he controlled built many of the roads over which Waikato residents now travel in comfort. In the last war his expert knowledge, acquired by practical experience, was ireely available to the Government when aerodromes had to be built in a hurry. (Many Canterbury people might like to see him turned loose on Harewood.) In Parliament In 1938, to make sure that his spare time was not being wasted, he came into Parliament and has stayed there ever since, first as member for Waikato and. since the boundary changes, as member for Piako. In the House Mr Goosman is a forceful and an entertaining speaker. He is at his best discussing public works, especially hydro-electric jobs, and he and the Minister of Public Works (Mr Semple) have frequent clashes. Although political opposites, they have much in common as men of action who like to see blueprints turned into steel and concrete as soon as possible: and they have a deep respect for each other. They are similar in temperament, and when they do clash it is well worth hearing. Mr Semple still has the edge in picturesque phraseology. but Mr Goosman is learning fast. One reason for his close interest in politics, and his enthusiasm for them, is that he is the nephew of one of New Zealand’s best-known Prime Ministers (Mr W. F. Massey). He believes | in the Massey tradition, and sits not | far from his cousin, Mr J. N. Massey. Mr Goosman has come a long way in the party since 1938. The result of the polls will determine whether he I goes a long way further. If he did it would be a fitting climax to a reI markable career.