Mood mellow over memoir

Press, 26 September 1989, Page 1

Mood mellow over memoir

By

BRENDON BURNS

in Wellington

Sir Robert Muldoon was last evening celebrating his sixty-eighth birthday and his reselection as National’s candidate for Tamaki in the next election. He took time out from a quiet dinner with his wife to rebuff the assessment made of him in Sir John Marshall’s memoirs, extracts of which are being run by “The Press.”

Sir John describes Sir Robert as aggressive, abrasive, unable to accept blame, and a master of denigration. Last evening, Sir Robert said Sir John had never forgiven him for the change of leadership. “Jack was bitter from that time in 1974 and as time went by and he got older, it consumed him,” he said. “It’s all a bit sad really. It had festered inside him.” Sir John had been a very good Cabinet Minister under Sir Keith Holyoake. “He was never a leader and never could have been,” said Sir Robert. Sir John did not have the personality for leadership. “He was a chap who believed, you know, that some were born into privileged positions and he was one of the lucky ones. You know, we’ve got one or two of them around now of course.” Sir Robert confirmed that he had raised the prospect of legal action against the publication of Sir John’s memoirs. He said Sir John in an earlier publication had made references to him that were both wrong and derogatory. At this point, he has only seen extracts of the book carried by Auckland newspapers. “My feeling is it’s not so much defamatory as just abusive.”

He said one extract suggested he had claimed to have divine leadership. r “I wish I had,” he said, with his distinctive chuckle. “But to say that even if it’s not true is not defamatory.” Then, he added, “Well, it might be defamatory to God, for picking up somebody like me.”

Sir Robert’s jovial mood, in the face of the book’s criticism of him, seemed to spring at least partly from two events yesterday — he turned 68, and no-one contested his National Party nomination for the Tamaki seat

“At least the people in Tamaki don’t believe Jack Marshall,” he said. Would the next Parliamentary term, which ’will see him into his seventies, be his last?

“Oh, good Lord no,” he said. Sir Walter Nash had become Prime Minister at the age of 74 — although he was not a good one, said Sir Robert.