What was it like to have Robert Muldoon and David Lange as bosses?

I learnt this from my very first experience. A few weeks after joining the then Department of External Affairs, I went to Prime Minister Walter Nash to seek approval to establish an agricultural college in Samoa. So why did my superiors decide to use a junior officer to get the PM’s signature on the paper? I presume it’s because they thought if someone carried it into his office, there was a good chance he would bring it out again, rather than have it sit unsigned in Nash’s famous “compost heap”.

The Prime Minister stared at the plans and asked why a bike shed was needed. Visited by inspiration, I said it was because the students rode bikes, and he seemed satisfied. Then, just about to sign the submission, he paused. “But are they starving in Samoa, Mr Hensley?” he asked, suggesting that aid money should go only where people need food.

He went into a kind of reverie, saying, “What I would like is to have enough aircraft to drop a bag of flour on every village in Java.” While I was pondering which was worse – the threat to the inhabitants of Java or the prospect that my very first assignment was going to be a failure – he signed the paper and handed it to me with one of his sweet smiles.

The two prime ministers I knew best, Robert Muldoon and David Lange, were totally unalike, opposites in every respect except for this unpredictability.

Muldoon had no interest in the “vision thing”; he was a manager with the limited aim of keeping things “tidy”, to use a favourite word of his. He was unwilling to change anything unless he had to, and for him, the breath of life was the detail of administration, the day-to-day wielding of power. “Mr Hensley, I have been in government and I have been in opposition, and believe me, government is better.”

The work required to master the daily demands of governing took all his time. I never saw him with a book. Even at weekends, you would find him sitting on a couch surrounded by papers, and this relentless focus on work enabled him to dominate his ministers and government completely.

In contrast, David Lange was not much interested in power. For him, the breath of life was the appreciation and indeed admiration of others. He did not so much preside over his Government, let alone manage it, as comment on it as it went by. His comments were clever and witty, but being amusing is not much fun on your own, so he liked to have an audience to hear his jokes. No prime minister enjoyed a press conference more than he.

The two PMs had an entirely different approach to the officials who worked with them. Muldoon was indifferent to what they thought; how effective they were was his only test. He thought and even said that both the Prime Ministerial Advisory Group, which I headed, and myself probably voted Labour, but the possibility did not bother him in the least.

He wanted results from his staff, not emotional support. He understood and observed the professional divide between elected and non-elected officials. My predecessor as advisory group head, Bernard Galvin, said when handing over to me, “He will usually call you Mr Hensley. If he is cross, it may be Mr e-r-r. But if he ever calls you Gerald, watch out.” This proved good advice. I remember him calling me Gerald only twice, with the slightly shifty look prime ministers get when they know they are pushing the limits.