Funeral at town hall

Tomorrow's funeral service for Labour Party president Michael Hirschfeld will now be held in the Wellington Town Hall because Parliament's Grand Hall is too small to accommodate all those wishing to attend.

Mr Hirschfeld's death at his Kapiti Coast house on Tuesday came just days before the wedding of his 24-year-old son Daniel and two weeks before a planned heart bypass operation intended to make him strong enough for a kidney transplant.

Mr Hirschfeld, a millionaire businessman who had chaired plumbing supplies business Mico Wakefield and the Shipping Corporation, was elected president of the Labour Party in 1995 and was re-elected unopposed in following years.

He had had diabetes since childhood and was on dialysis and awaiting a kidney transplant at the time of his death.