Gosche Mark: Obituaries — Rt Hon David Russell Lange ONZ CH John Finlay Luxton QSO Hon John Howard Falloon CNZM Rod David Donald 
Gosche Mark: Obituaries — Rt Hon David Russell Lange ONZ CH John Finlay Luxton QSO Hon John Howard Falloon CNZM Rod David Donald 
[Volume:628;Page:60] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 It is a great honour to be able to place on record my tribute to the Rt Hon David Lange. All of us counted him as a colleague and I was very proud also to be able to call him a friend. I will say a few words about the other members but I want to start with David. I will pick up on some of the words the Prime Minister said in terms of the fishbowl in which Prime Ministers live in this country. Very few of us will ever know about that. A number of people still living know about the scrutiny that Prime Ministers come under—equally the families of Prime Ministers know about that. 
Perhaps by way of explanation I will say a little about the public ceremony we held for David in Auckland during the election campaign. It was a wonderful tribute to David that so many members of this House stopped campaigning in order to pay their respects to him. Why did we have the tribute in that manner? I know that there was some criticism from this part of the world as to the appropriateness of that ceremony so I want to say a few words in explanation. It goes back to the fishbowl effect that the families of politicians and the families of Prime Ministers in particular have to live in. 
The Lange family were extraordinarily grateful for the opportunity to plan that function and the way it was held. For so many years as the family of the Prime Minister they were required to toe the line and behave in the way in which Prime Ministers’ families are supposed to behave. For once they could organise a tribute to David that fitted with their wishes and they also believed with his desires. So it is very fitting that we also share the tribute to David with other former colleagues today. I am sure he would absolutely approve of the House doing it in this way. 
 I want to pay a tribute to Margaret and Edith to Roy Byron and Emily to his brother and sisters and many cousins who were close to him as family members and to Naomi and the Mangere Labour Party people who supported David through his career. We should pay tribute to them as well because without them we as New Zealanders would not have had the David Lange we so enjoyed as a leader and a friend. 
David was from Otahuhu actually. Although he lived in and represented Mangere for such a long time I remember him as the boy from Otahuhu—a very big boy in my eyes because I was a bit younger than him—and I remember the Lange family well because I was brought into the world as so many people were by his father. There are Lange babies throughout the world who can all remember who delivered them. So Otahuhu was a very special place for David and I know that many of the people from that home town of his would also want through me to pay their tribute to him. David also encouraged me into this world—so his father brought me into the world as a baby and David encouraged me into this place. I think I should thank him for that; I am not sure sometimes. He was an inspirational person to so many people in so many ways. 
As Rodney Hide has said we remember David Lange as a Prime Minister but I want to talk a little about him as a person and as a man after he left politics. It was at that time that I got to know him much better. He was a person who as others have said was a great orator but he was also a person who coming from that family background had an absolute sense of service to others. That is what I think so many people will remember him for in their own personal ways—particularly the people in the Indian community and the Pacific community to whom he was so close but also all those people he represented firstly as a lawyer. Many of them still owe David Lange the fee they never paid. He could remember them and how much they owed and loved telling those sorts of stories to anybody who would listen. David as others have said virtually worked for nothing in those times as a lawyer. He did it out of that sense of service passed on to him from those two very powerful parents of his. 
I can remember in the months leading up to his death going to the school that was Otara Intermediate when David was there which has since changed its name to Papatoetoe Intermediate. David could not then even walk up the steps he was so ill. But he went there to unveil a plaque on the classroom he had spent some time in as a foundation pupil of Otara Intermediate. As only David could do he regaled the children with a story of how he had broken the window of that classroom when he was a pupil. But he also remembered that he had never had to pay for it so he thought the school might have given him the bill while he was there. 
There are so many stories that so many people can share about David but I am not even going to try. I think he was possibly the forerunner of the PC eradicator for anybody who knew him heard him say things that none of us could get away with. They are not the sorts of things that I want to put down on the  
Hansard 
 record. 
David never stopped helping people until the very last. He described his role in his last years in Parliament as being the highest-paid social worker in New Zealand but I do not think that many people in Mangere who received help from him would have thought of it in that way at all. After he left the official role of the highest-paid social worker in Mangere he carried on helping people throughout New Zealand and as Dr Brash has said it was sometimes in ways that people would never have realised and certainly would never have heard about in terms of the people to whom he would offer that friendship and help. Certainly in my own situation of the last 3½ years David was an amazing support to me and my family. 
I want to say a few words therefore about Rod Donald’s passing. I am sure the Greens will be familiar with some of the wicked humour as Winston Peters would have been in terms of being the butt of David’s humour—as Winston Peters was in David’s valedictory speech—and the Greens will be familiar with some of the wicked things David said about them. I will not repeat them but he would feel I think that it was totally apt to be sharing this occasion with our farewells for Rod. 
Although David might give you a clip round the ear in the way that only David could in his sense of humour—in terms of slinging off at people their beliefs or whatever—it was never done with any venom hatred or dislike; it was done in such a wonderful humorous way. Of course David’s humour turned back on himself was probably some of the best. So he would feel absolutely that it was apt to be farewelling the other colleagues here today. As Roy his son said to me David loved informality. He loved to ignore all the pomp and ceremony he was supposed to be part of as a Prime Minister and I am sure that he would want to pay his tribute to Rod Donald and the Green Party as he would feel it appropriate to do. 
So to Rod his family and to the Green colleagues who are here I say that we all feel very deeply the loss of our friend Rod Donald. I came in here in 1996. We were the first intake of MMP politicians and the place has never been the same. So we can say to Rod: “Well done.” just for doing that alone. 
I feel a great amount of grief for the loss that his family are suffering. I have some feeling of loss myself because of the age—48—at which Rod has passed away. It is the same age as my wife Carol’s. 
I hope that the passing of these two wonderful men might help the public of this country to understand a little bit more about politicians their sacrifices and lives and the families who also sacrifice so much. We are honourable and worthy of respect when we are dead. It is funny that it takes as much effort as that. I wonder why we are not honourable and respected the day before we die. 
I hope that the New Zealand public will take some notice of the passing of these two people who were men of principle men we could respect. They and the others we have acknowledged here today were very strong believers in parliamentary democracy and worked extraordinarily hard in their parliamentary careers to make this country a better place. 
So in closing I want to say farewell to the four colleagues we are paying tribute to today but particularly I say farewell to my very good friend David Lange. I miss him greatly.