The political rhetoric of David Lange, Labour member of parliament 1977-1996, Prime Minister 1984-1989

Abstract

Wordsmithing is the natural offensive hardware for a defence barrister, a role David Lange left to enter the arena of national politics. His reputation as a performer, as a theatrical, witty and persuasive orator remains, nearly ten years after his retirement from Parliament in 1996. Contemporaries recall the verve, the panache of his delivery; effective voice modulation, cadence, emphatic pause, gesture and grimace. Iconoclastic humour, disarming quips, flippancy and the irreverent use of recognisably apt metaphor calculated to reduce his opponents to figures of ridicule is still admired. Effective verbal dexterity is revealed at its most crushing in his contemptuous ire for the arrogant self-seeking manipulations he observed in the political arena when he entered Parliament as one of the post World War II young radicals, the 'Auckland cabal', he was selected to represent. As the persuasive advocate for and Leader of the Fourth Labour Government, David Lange took the nation into the era of liberal reform. His argument for change from the restrictive regulatory environment, from the politics of conflict to liberated, inclusive, consultative government met the aspirations of an electorate desperate for release from what was promoted by the opponents of the governing National Party as a tyranny of style under the Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon.