Locke Keith: Obituaries — Rt Hon David Russell Lange ONZ CH John Finlay Luxton QSO Hon John Howard Falloon CNZM Rod David Donald 
Locke Keith: Obituaries — Rt Hon David Russell Lange ONZ CH John Finlay Luxton QSO Hon John Howard Falloon CNZM Rod David Donald 
[Volume:628;Page:64] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 Yesterday I spent some time in Christchurch with my dear friend Rod in his beautiful home and spent some time with his lovely wife and his daughters. It was just so sad looking at Rod so still and so at peace and realising the tragedy that he and his family and us had so much more to do together so many more good times ahead. There was so much that he wanted to do. 
I will say a little more about Rod later but at the moment I am hearing Rod in my ear saying: “Don’t talk just about me talk about David. He’s important too.” I think there are some similarities between the two people. It has been referred to already that their deaths have struck a chord in the New Zealand people. Both lacked the airs and graces that are commonly associated with politicians. They were very down-to-earth people and as has been indicated they both had a sense of humour. There was nobody quicker with a quip than David Lange. Both were seen as people politicians down-to-earth ordinary MPs and in the case of David Lange a Prime Minister. David Lange to me championed the underdog from the time he was a lawyer in Auckland. I really appreciated Pita Sharples’ speech about how David Lange could mix with everyone in society and help everyone in society. I think he always saw himself in that way even through his period of being an MP and Prime Minister. 
I was very fond of David Lange although I got to know him only after he left Parliament and before I entered Parliament. He would come into the Trade Aid and One World Books shop that I was managing and have a little chat. He was always quite supportive of my political endeavours even though I was not in Parliament at that stage just as he was supportive in his later life of what we can call the broad left. He formed close associations with people like a previously harsh critic Bruce Jesson. They had a very close relationship and he was proud to give the inaugural Bruce Jesson memorial lecture to The Bruce Jesson Foundation in the year 2000. He was not averse to giving friendly advice to people like me in the Green movement and on the left. Most recently he sent me an email giving me some very useful advice on the Ahmed Zaoui case. 
I think David Lange was a very humble man. He went through an amazing journey from being a people’s lawyer to being Prime Minister through tempestuous times and he turned in his last years into a quiet thinker for the left making a little contribution there. Some people blame David Lange for the role he played in the new right revolution in New Zealand but I like to think of him as the man who did take a cup of tea and did stop things short and who in his later life developed a critique of the new right revolution. I think it is instructive to read his Bruce Jesson lecture given a few years ago. 
I think that the thing the Green Party remembers most is the role David Lange played as Prime Minister in making our country nuclear free. That was not very easy because he was up against some very strong resistance from the foreign affairs mandarins. We saw that at the time when USS  
Buchanan 
 was steaming towards New Zealand and which way New Zealand would go was in the balance. He came down on the side of the people and established the basis for our nuclear-free legislation. The thing that impressed me too was that during that time he identified with the very large people’s movement in New Zealand out on the streets campaigning for a nuclear-free New Zealand. 
When the  
Buchanan 
 was steaming towards New Zealand my sister Maire Leadbeater was instrumental in organising a big demonstration in Queen Street against it coming here. I was quite pleased to hear that shortly after that after the decision had been made to reject the  
Buchanan 
 David Lange sent my sister a note thanking her for organising that protest. Of course later on he had to resist further pressures from foreign affairs in terms of establishing the legislation. Foreign affairs did not want him to go overseas and deliver the Oxford Union lecture which to me was very important not just in us being a nuclear-free country but in taking our nuclear-free campaign to the world. That is something we continue to do. It is very much a part of us becoming proud New Zealanders—a part of our journey towards real nationhood. 
David Lange continued to do that in other ways too. It is quite interesting that when Nicky Hager published his book  
Secret Power 
 on Echelon and the satellite communications and interception station at Waihopai David Lange volunteered to do the introduction. He was concerned as to whether that station was serving our national interest. He said that there were things he had not been told about regarding its real functions. That links up with Rod Donald a little because Rod Donald and I had several times been engaged in protests outside the spy station at Waihopai. 
In fact just a few days ago the group that organises those protests the Anti-Bases Campaign sent a little circular to Rod and myself asking whether we would be coming back this January when the group is having another protest. Murray Horton who is the main figure in that campaign added a cheeky little note in the communication to Rod Donald asking: “If you had become a Cabinet Minister would you still have been coming to the protests?” and last Friday Rod scrawled on the correspondence to be returned to Murray the words: “I sure as hell would have come.” I think that shows us that Rod was a very out-there politician. As has been noted by Jeanette Fitzsimons and others he was a champion of peace and human rights around the world. He worked with me on a lot of those issues. He held the Tibetan flag on the steps of Parliament and worked on many other issues during the campaign against sporting contacts with Zimbabwe. I could also mention Algeria because he was so proud when I introduced him to Ahmed Zaoui in Mount Eden Prison and he backed to the hilt the campaign for Ahmed Zaoui to be a refugee in New Zealand. 
He has been described in some obituaries as the pragmatic person in the Green Party and that can be a compliment or not. It is a compliment if he was seen as practical and hands-on which are all things that he was but he was never pragmatic in the sense that he did anything contrary to his ideals or the ideals of the Green Party. He was always such a strength in supporting us not pulling back on things we held dear and believed in. He was never for example for us pulling back on the issue of marijuana decriminalisation because we believed in it and we had to fight for it even if it meant we might lose some votes in certain sectors of the community. 
Those who used the term “pragmatic” possibly meant I think that he was perhaps bolder than the rest of us. He engaged flat out with all and sundry in the community. He would go around the country and all the small towns and he would be as bold as brass. He would go to the editor of a local newspaper and lecture him or her on the single transferable vote (STV) or the Buy Local initiative. Whatever the issue of the day—you name it—one would find a few days later that his picture would appear in the paper with a story. He was great in his boldness and ability to communicate to bring people in. Similarly he got the mayors on board in some of those campaigns—STV etc. He would just bowl up to their offices. 
There were a lot of things about Rod Donald beyond his being just a parliamentarian that others may not have seen such as the work he did building our party on the ground. He went all over the country helping people not only organising the campaigns but everything through the 3-year cycle. Jeanette Fitzsimons mentioned that he was always on his cellphone. He was constantly at work encouraging and helping people. One of the hardest things I have found is the fact that I will not get another call from Rod. I cannot believe I will not get another cheery call with a bright idea a suggestion a bit of encouragement or a bit of a plaudit for something I might have done that had a bit of an effect. That is the Rod I will remember—an energetic out-there person. 
So farewell my dear friend. We will miss you terribly but you will be in the hearts of all of us in the Green Party and you will be an inspiration to the Green movement in New Zealand forever and also to the Green parties around the world which miss you as well.