page_title: Robert Muldoon
section_title: Early life and family
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Muldoon / Early life and family
caption_attribution_description: English: Wedding of the Muldoons on 17 March 1951.
context_page_description: Sir Robert David Muldoon GCMG CH PC was a New Zealand politician who served as the 31st Prime Minister of New Zealand, from 1975 to 1984, while Leader of the National Party.
  Serving as a corporal and sergeant in the army in the Second World War, Muldoon completed his training as an accountant and returned to New Zealand as its first fully qualified cost accountant. He was first elected to the House of Representatives at the 1960 general election as the Member of Parliament for Tamaki. Muldoon served successively as Minister of Tourism, Minister of Finance, and Deputy Prime Minister. He became Leader of the Opposition in 1974 and soon led the National Party to a decisive victory in the 1975 general election.
  Muldoon came to power promising to lead "a Government of the ordinary bloke." He appointed himself Minister of Finance. His tenure as Prime Minister was plagued by an economic pattern of stagnation, high inflation, growing unemployment, and high external debts and borrowing. Economic policies of the Muldoon Government included national superannuation, wage and price freezes, industrial incentives, and the Think Big industrial projects.
context_section_description: Robert David Muldoon was born in Auckland on 25 September 1921 to parents James Henry Muldoon and Amie Rusha Muldoon (née Browne). At the age of five Muldoon slipped while playing on the front gate, damaging his cheek and resulting in a distinctive scar.
  When Muldoon was aged eight, his father was admitted to Auckland Mental Hospital at Point Chevalier, where he died of parenchymatous syphilis nearly 20 years later in 1946. This left Muldoon's mother to raise him on her own. During this time Muldoon came under the strong formative influence of his fiercely intelligent, iron-willed maternal grandmother Jerusha, a committed socialist. Though Muldoon never accepted her creed, he did develop under her influence a potent ambition, a consuming interest in politics, and an abiding respect for New Zealand's welfare state. Muldoon won a scholarship to attend Mount Albert Grammar School from 1933 to 1936. He left school at age 15, finding work at Fletcher Construction and then the Auckland Electric Power Board as an arrears clerk. He studied accountancy by correspondence.
  In 1951 Muldoon married Thea Dale Flyger, who he had met through the Junior Nationals. The couple had three children, Barbara, Jennifer and Gavin. Lady Muldoon, who died at age 87 in 2015, was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1993 New Year Honours and made a Companion of the Queen's Service Order in the 1986 New Year Honours.
caption: Robert Muldoon married Thea Flyger in 1951.
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