David Lange and his public image

Press, 5 January 1980, Page 11

David Lange and his public image

By

GENEVIEVE FORDE

David Lange doesn’t put his f popularity down to any personal qualities he might 3 l)ave. . The ' affable Methodist from Mangere became the deputy leader of the Opposition in November, only two years after he entered Parliament. He began ; registering on the popularity scales as soon as he reached the . Labour Party back benches in 1977, and there is a dis-, tinct possibility, that he will before long become one of the largest and most popular prime ministers this country has ever had. Why is he so popular? “Because I came into Parliament when there was intense interest in the Mangere by-election. If I’d come in at a General Election, there may well have been this movement but not as accentuated as with a by-election. “Also, because I was fresh to the political scene. I came in at a time when the Labour Party had had the blues and was beginning to assert itself again. The party pushed me. I was used exten-

sively as a platform speaker in ’77 and ’79. “I think you've got to work out where the effect of public opinion polls lies in all this and what influences them. I’m always reminding myself that a nine per cent poll means that 91 out of 100 haven’t picked you. ■. , “Also, they " are not making their judgment on parliamentary performance but bn utterances outside the House. Television- is the most important element. Early On I learned a lot about television.” Do you know any tricks? «■ “One of the tricks ,is simply hot to be tricky. People are impressed and remember’ 1 riot' what' you say but what you? look like. It’s weird. The ’first thing I did was on the Mental Health Act. I was asked a series of questions about people escaping from mental hospitals. I didn’t mention the Law Society, or the- Ombudsman, or solicitors. “A few days later I got a letter from someone who entirely agreed with what I said; that you

shouldn’t waste time complaining to the Law Society about a solicitor but to go straight to the Ombudsman — not one word of which I had mentioned. “People see what they like arid like what they see.. When you work out what constitutes popularity I don’t think you can resolve it into anything other Than a feelmg people have' about you.” David Lange lives in a m ediu m-sized, wooden house in Mangere Road which he enjoyed renovating (he says he is an enthusiastic home building improvements man and that “neat wallpaper .is about the only thing I am a perfectionist about”) and a comfortably Overgrown garden. He was bom the oldest of four children, a few yards up the road from where he now lives, at a maternity hospital which is now an old people’s home. His father was the local doctor — “he had a very exhaustive baby practice” — and his mother came from Australia. Both were Methodists.

The next children to David were twins, Peter, a potter, and Margaret, a “primary school teacher with music qualifications, at Papatoetoe,” and Annette, who is married with three children, and lives in Tasmania. The pursuit of money was certainly not one of the family values. “It wasa funny sort of background. Certainly middle class as far as - income

went,” David Lange says, “but as far as wealth was concerned, it wasn’t there by my father’s choice. “I went to Otara Primary School, Otara Intermediate, and Otahuhu College in Mangere Road. It was over the back fence from King’s College — a very, very good quality private school.” ' Other doctors’ sons went to King’s, but Dr Lange chose not to send his sons there.

His father was not a member of the Labour Party, but David Lange

recently discovered that his grandfather was one of the founding members of a branch of the party in Thames at the beginning of the century. When he was growing up in Otahuhu, the area had a large number of railway houses in it and the main employment was provided by the railway workshop, the brewery, and the freezing works. He used'to go round the

houses with his father and from the age of three was taught to say that when he grew up he would work at . Westfield . (the freezing works) chucking livers down a chute — “and I did, to please my father.” He left school in 1959 “after doing two postschool certificate years. I did pass exams but I certainly wasn’t given to scholarship, nor was my undergraduate career anything but a process of accumulating units and working in law offices. I

was one of- the last who went through law school part-time.” In 1970. he went back and did a master’s degree in law after finishing his bachelor’s degree in 1966. He got first-class honours.' Why did he do it? “My father graduated from Otago and did a fel-lowship-at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh — not that that’s very relevant, because he came home and delivered babies.. But I probably disappointed him in? my cavalier approach to the requirements' of the law school. I thought I would put in a hard year and get a good degree. . _ He had started his uni-, versity career in 1960; he joined a- law office in 1961 wher he stayed until 1967, “when I decided to get out of it completely for a year.” He went away “through the East and ended up in the United Kingdom” where he worked at first in the accounts division of an insurance company which did international risk insurance — “I learnt a lot about computers and

accounting” — and then for the Westminster Bank in Threadneedle Street in “the City” for three months, “floating companies and selling shares.” It was in London, at the Methodist Mission, that he met his future wife, Naomi,, a slight, dark-hair-ed Englishwoman who worked at the • mission. They married and ; returned to Auckland, arid “'David went into practice at Kaikohe, 160 miles npirtm.of Auckland, at a branch' office on the Hokiariiga'-l Harbour. “I did things like / riding,'a horse' four miles • ■ ■ • : > ' -4’ '

and a half over a sandhill where there was no road access, to a client. Those were exciting days; the tail end of remoteness." He returned to Auckland, did his “scholarship . year,” and nine years,ago “took 'over Allan Nixon’s practice in criminal law and ran that till February. 1977, the day I was selected for Mangere.” The practice was “more or less given to me— a rats and mice. .practice. You dealt with the small stuff.—al - S though'l did a couple, of ■ murders I think I did : three.” ~