The forgotten PM: How different would NZ be if Norman Kirk lived longer?
From the archives: Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Norman Kirk. In this article from the Listener’s archives, Sally Blundell considers what might have been had Kirk not died in office in 1974. She spoke with veteran political reporter and former Listener deputy editor Denis Welch about Kirk’s legacy - and what contemporary NZ might have become.
Norman Kirk always was a man in hurry. He left school at 12. He worked on the railways, on the ferries, in a dairy factory and at the Firestone factory in Christchurch. He built his own house in Kaiapoi; he scoured the shelves of the local library.
In 1953, aged 30, he became the youngest mayor in the country when he won the Kaiapoi local elections. Four years later, he won the marginal seat of Lyttelton for the Labour Party, and in 1965, successfully contested the party leadership.
By 1972, he had lost weight, bought a better-fitting suit and grown out his short back and sides. He visited the small towns of New Zealand, winning the hearts and votes of “the little people of the country”, he later said, “the average families, the people who work in the factories and the farms, the manufacturers”.
In November that year, this large (over 1.8m tall) working-class man swept Labour into power after 12 years of National Party leadership. Over the next 90 weeks, writes Denis Welch in We Need to Talk About Norman: New Zealand’s Lost Leader, he tore into the business of government “as if there was no tomorrow”. He pivoted the country away from Britain and the US to face Asia and the Pacific. He introduced policies that catered to people in the regions, to pensioners, pacifists, young people (almost a quarter of a million people voted for the first time in 1972) and environmentalists.
But there really was no tomorrow. Kirk’s heart was playing up. While visiting India as prime minister, he had what appears to have been a stroke. What was almost certainly a heart turn came at the South Pacific Forum in Rarotonga in March 1974.
Back in New Zealand, he suffered a blood clot in his lung following an ill-advised double varicose vein operation. By the time he was admitted to the Home of Compassion in Wellington in late August 1974, his heart was enlarged by about 50%, only a third of one lung was working and his liver was swollen.
On the night of August 31, Kirk died while watching British TV series Softly, Softly: Taskforce from his bed. He was 51.
It was a wintry Wellington day, “pissing down with rain, cold as buggery”, said former Labour candidate David Shand, as thousands of mourners filed past a casket draped by a kiwi-feather cloak, the New Zealand flag, flowers, fronds, tapa cloths, a Black Power leather jacket and a wreath sent by Prince Philip.
The rain fell in Christchurch as people lined the streets from the airport to the town hall where Kirk’s body had lain in state overnight.