Cartoon showing Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk as a barman kicking out the defeated Jack Marshall and his deputy, Robert Muldoon after the 1972 election
John Key’s prime ministerial parliamentary apprenticeship is the shortest since David Lange’s. Like Lange, he is one of the few recent PMs without prior Cabinet experience.
‘This ain’t a damn beauty contest. If you come into politics to be popular, then you’ve picked the wrong sport’, Jenny Shipley declared. New Zealand’s first woman PM came to power in 1997 after staging a carefully planned coup against Jim Bolger.
New Zealand’s most openly republican PM, Jim Bolger presided over major electoral reform and Treaty of Waitangi settlements and outflanked Cabinet opposition to funding the new national museum.
‘Gentleman Jack’ Marshall, for long – too long, he felt towards the end – Keith Holyoake’s deputy, spent mere months as PM, but served Cabinet well for two decades.
‘Kiwi Keith’ Holyoake, the first officially designated deputy PM (1954) was our third-longest serving leader.Although criticised for sending troops to the Vietnam War, he is now seen as ‘the most dovish of the hawks’, doing the bare minimum to keep America happy.
Holland became PM in 1949. A year later he abolished the Legislative Council, and in 1951, after winning the Waterfront Dispute, he increased his majority in a snap election.
Established at a conference in Wellington on 13-14 May 1936, the National Party was to dominate New Zealand politics in the second half of the 20th century.
The watersiders’ militancy had isolated them from most unionists and Walter Nash’s Labour Party Opposition sat uncomfortably on the fence, denouncing government repression but refusing to back either side.
After 14 years of Labour government, voters were tired of continuing shortages and regulations. The National Party would be in power for 29 of the next 35 years.
Venn Young (left) stands with two National Party members in 1980. In 1974 Venn Young introduced a Crimes Amendment Bill to legalise homosexuality for those 21 and over but failed to get it passed into law.
