Marshall recounts Muldoon invective

Press, 25 September 1989, Page 1

Marshall recounts Muldoon invective

A routine courtesy letter from Sir John Marshall to the Prime Minister of the time, Sir Robert Muldoon, offering him friendly advice immediately after the General Election in 1978, was rebuffed by Sir Robert with what Sir John has described as a “masterpiece of invective.” The incident is recounted in the second volume of Sir John’s memoirs, covering 1960 to 1988, which is published today. The volume contains a sharp assessment of Sir Robert, with whom Sir John had a somewhat prickly political relationship. Sir John writes: “After the 1978 election I had the temerity to write to Robert Muldoon giving him a few ideas and offering him the benefit of my advice and experience. “His reply in the negative was a masterpiece of invective.”

Quoting from what he calls “the choicest paragraph,” Sir John says that Sir Robert wrote: “I believe that throughout your Parliamentary career you failed completely to understand what makes the ordinary New Zealander tick and that while you were deputy leader this failing was concealed by the extraordinary political acumen of the party’s leader (Keith Holyoake).” Sir John comments that the remarks were in stark contrast to what Sir Robert had said about him in his own book “Rob.”

There, Sir Robert wrote that “Jack Marshall was one of the outstanding political figures of our time ...” (For a fuller account of the episode, see page 20.) Sir John was Prime Minister from February to November, 1972, when his Government was defeated by Labour in a landslide election. Sir Robert served as Sir John’s Minister of Finance, but their relationship was never an easy one. Two years after the election defeat, Sir Robert, aided by colleagues, displaced Sir John from the leadership of the Opposition in a swift and lethal manoeuvre. Sir John retired from Parliament at the next General Election in 1975.

Sir John records in the book, on a note of some disappointment, the moves by which he was toppled. He writes: “There had of course been criticism of my role as Leader of the Opposition from time to time, but not at this time ... I was no doubt lulled into a false sense of security.” Extracts from Sir John’s book will appear in “The Press” this week, beginning with the chapter on Sir Robert today. Other /chapters cover Sir John’s judgment on W. B. Sutch, the former head of the Department of Trade and Industry; his opinion of his predecessor, Sir Keith Holyoake, and his account of why he came to oppose the Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand in 1981.

On Sutch, one of New Zealand’s most controversial civil servants, Sir John offers little that is new but comes ultimately to a negative conclusion. In 1975, Sutch was tried, under the old Official Secrets Act, with passing information to the Russians. He was acquitted, but many felt that the explanation he gave of his conduct was unsatisfactory, a view Sir John shared. Sutch was head of the Department of Trade and Industry when Sir John was Minister. Sir John writes: “... those who penetrated the facade, as I did during the years he was with me, found a strange, frustrated, arrogant, secretive man with, a brilliant quicksilver mind, facile, ingenious, crafty, devious, deceitful.” Sir John describes the National Government’s refusal to -stop the Springbok tour in 1981 as “a cynical decision of political opportunism” based on the judgment that it would help them hold more marginal provincial seats than it would lose them city seats in the General Election later that year. Reflecting on the violence, disruption, and bitter division that occurred during the tour, Sir John writes: “I have never been so ashamed of the party I once led as I was at that time.”

First extract, page 22