David Lange

David Russell Lange (4 August 1942 – 13 August 2005) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 32nd prime minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989.

Lange was born and brought up in Ōtāhuhu, the son of a physician.

Lange was born on 4 August 1942 in Ōtāhuhu, a small industrial borough since absorbed into Auckland.

He was the oldest of four children of Eric Roy Lange, a general practitioner and obstetrician and grandson of a German settler, and Phoebe Fysh Lange, who trained as a nurse in her native Tasmania before she migrated to New Zealand.

The family had lived in New Zealand for so long that the original pronunciation of their surname, lan-ge, "had all but been forgotten"; Lange himself would pronounce it as long-ee.

Lange's autobiography suggests that he admired his soft-spoken and dryly humorous father, while his demanding and sometimes overbearing mother tested his tolerance.

His cousin Michael Bassett reflected that Roy "knew how to avoid trouble rather than confront it", and David developed a similar aversion to conflict.

Lange received his formal education at Fairburn Primary School, Papatoetoe Intermediate School and Otahuhu College, then at the University of Auckland in 1960, where he graduated in law in 1966.

He attributed his talents with oratory to the need to compensate for his clumsiness during his intermediate school days.

Lange worked from an early age and held a number of jobs; in the third form he performed a paper-round for The New Zealand Herald in Mangere East, and later changed from delivery-boy to collecting the money.

The following year he delivered telegrams, before applying to work at the Westfield Freezing Works in the role that would initially pay his way through university.

The poor work conditions at the freezing works provided an opportunity to identify with the misery of fellow workers, and an appreciation for the impact of strikes on ordinary workers.

In 1961 he started a job as a law clerk at Haigh, Charters and Carthy, a role that had varied work and clients, including the Communist Party.

Lange joined the Labour Party in 1963, and helped in the campaigns of Phil Amos in 1963 and Norman Douglas in 1966.

On 13 March 1967 Lange was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand.

After his admission he spent months travelling across Australia, Asia and Britain.

On 3 August 1968, he married Naomi Crampton.

He became a lawyer, and represented poor and struggling people in civil rights causes in the rapidly changing Auckland of the 1970s.

He gained a Master of Laws in 1970 with first-class honours, specialising in criminal law and medico-legal issues.

Lange practised law in Northland and Auckland for some years, often giving legal representation to the most dispossessed members of Auckland society – he assisted the Polynesian Panther Party (and, by extension, the Pacific Island community) to disseminate legal rights information and legal aid during the '70s dawn raids.

In 1974 his cousin Michael Bassett suggested that Lange should stand on the Labour ticket for the Auckland City Council.

The Council was dominated by conservative interests and the only Labour candidates elected were Jim Anderton and Catherine Tizard; Lange was "...halfway down the field .... which was better than I expected."

Lange's father Roy, who was a doctor at Ōtāhuhu, had delivered Bassett.

The two would later have strong disagreements, prompting Lange to remark, "My father had delivered him, and it became plain in later days that he must have dropped him."

In July 1976 Lange was involved in the legal defense of former cabinet minister Phil Amos after he protested the visit of the 20,000 tonne American cruiser USS Long Beach (CGN-9) in his small yacht the Dolphin by impeding its entry to Auckland Harbour.

The cruiser was forced to stop mid-stream to allow grappling hooks to be thrown to pull the Dolphin clear.

Afterwards Amos had been arrested and charged with obstruction.

He was convicted, but the conviction was overturned on appeal by Lange.

Amos' protest instantly became a headline-grabbing piece of political drama, bringing public attention to the anti-nuclear issue.

Lange was inspired by Amos' stand and following his example would later pass a law banning the visit by nuclear propelled or armed ships to New Zealand.

After serving as legal advisor to the Polynesian Panthers, Lange was first elected to the New Zealand Parliament in the Mangere by-election of 1977.

He became a prominent debater within parliament, and soon gained a reputation for cutting wit (sometimes directed against himself) and eloquence.

Lange became the leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition in 1983, succeeding Bill Rowling.

When Prime Minister Robert Muldoon called an election for July 1984 Lange led his party to a landslide victory, becoming, at the age of 41, New Zealand's youngest prime minister of the 20th century.

Lange took various measures to deal with the economic problems he had inherited from the previous government.

Some of the measures he took were controversial; the free-market ethos of the Fourth Labour Government did not always conform to traditional expectations of a social-democratic party.

He also fulfilled a campaign promise to deny New Zealand's port facilities to nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered vessels, making New Zealand a nuclear-free zone.

Lange and his party were re-elected in August 1987; he resigned two years later and was succeeded by his deputy, Geoffrey Palmer.

He retired from parliament in 1996, and died in 2005 from renal failure and blood disease at the age of 63.

Prime Minister Helen Clark described New Zealand's nuclear-free legislation as his legacy.