Jim Bolger greets South African president Nelson Mandela in his Beehive office, November 1995. Photo / NZ Herald
Jim Bolger’s death at 90 marks the end of an era in New Zealand politics. Audrey Young reflects on his remarkable life and legacy. Read tributes to our country’s 35th Prime Minister here.
Jim Bolger, who left school aged 15 with no qualifications and rose to become Prime Minister, has died, aged 90.
The last of the true farmer Prime Ministers, he led New Zealand for seven years and the National Party for 11 years.
Bolger had been undergoing dialysis several times a day since suffering kidney failure last year. But he celebrated his 90th birthday in May with his wife, Joan, and nine children.
One of Bolger’s most important legacies was to conclude the first of the Treaty of Waitangi settlements between the Crown and iwi.
Bolger has suggested that his Celtic history, including “the oppressive landlords of Ireland”, enabled him to empathise with the hurts and concerns of Māori and groups who had not had a fair deal.
“Something within me – perhaps it is my Irish heritage, which is that of a nation oppressed for centuries – demanded that I listen to the Māori story, speak with those who wanted to talk about the grievances and determine in due course what could be done,” Bolger wrote in his book A View from the Top.
Bolger also ushered in the MMP electoral system, although it was first advanced before he took office.
He was forthright in his views, occasionally expressed with a sense of hubris, and acquired the nickname “The Great Helmsman”.
It was given to him with a sense of irony after a visit to New Zealand’s America’s Cup base in San Diego, but was welcomed by his press team because it replaced the unflattering “potato head” and “spud” nicknames.
James Brendan Bolger was born in 1935 in Ōpunake, Taranaki, the son of Irish immigrants, Daniel and Cecilia, who arrived in New Zealand from County Wexford in 1930. His Irish Catholic roots remained important to him throughout his life.
He left school aged 15 without having sat School C to work on the family dairy farm at Rahotu.
He married Joan Riddell, who had gone to school at Pungarehu about three kilometres away and had returned to teach there.
The young couple moved to the King Country and bought a beef and cattle farm. They had nine children: Dan, Paul, Brian, Stephen, Bernadette, Fiona, Rachael, Matt and Aidan.
Bolger became involved in farming politics before he was first elected to Parliament in 1972. He went on to lead New Zealand from 1990 to 1997 before being ousted as Prime Minister by Jenny Shipley.
The turbulence following his ousting contributed to the collapse of National’s coalition with New Zealand First, which was formed in 1996.
The coalition was the first Government under the MMP electoral system and had been formed despite Bolger having sacked Winston Peters from cabinet in 1991, before Peters formed New Zealand First.
When it became clear that Bolger no longer had the numbers to remain Prime Minister, he negotiated with Jenny Shipley to become the next ambassador to the United States, a job he held from 1998 to 2001.
He was not especially popular as an incumbent Prime Minister and was often underrated.
After the tumult of the Fourth Labour Government, he was regarded as a steadying figure and an able pragmatic political manager. He was not an intellectual but was highly intelligent, a strong debater and a good negotiator.
He was sometimes mocked for his subconscious habit of picking up the accents of foreign leaders he had just met. But in many ways, he was more widely appreciated after he left office and was willing to enter national debates on inequality and race relations.
Bolger was not afraid to go against the grain from time to time to express strong opinions.
He was a committed republican and introduced a New Zealand honours system to replace the British system.
He eschewed a knighthood on his retirement from politics but was made a member of New Zealand’s highest order, the Order of New Zealand.
He was appointed Chancellor of Waikato University in 2007 and held the post for 12 years. In 2019, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the university.
After returning from his ambassadorial role in the United States in 2001, he worked for two Labour Governments, accepting posts that irked National at the time.
By dint of chairing NZ Post, he chaired the newly created state bank, Kiwibank, for the Helen Clark-led Government and led a working party to refine the policy of Fair Pay Agreements for the Jacinda Ardern-led Government.
His acceptance of both jobs raised eyebrows in the National Party because they were leadership roles in policy areas that National opposed.
Bolger had a lifelong interest in industrial relations, however, having been Minister of Labour in the Muldoon cabinet, in the days when ministers frequently became involved in mediating industrial disputes.
Under his Government, Bill Birch introduced the Employment Contracts Act, a law which would dismantle the national awards system to replace it with an enterprise bargaining system, and effectively weaken the unions.
The late Ken Douglas, the former Council of Trade Unions President, described the industrial relations reforms as the most radical review of labour relations since the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act in 1893.
But he also invited Bolger to speak at the CTU conference in 1991, the first National Prime Minister to be invited.
In 1983, Bolger was President of the International Labour Organisation.
Bolger revised his view of neoliberal economic policies, saying that what growth they had produced had gone to those at the top. And he expressed support for the role of unions.
After the 2020 election, Bolger said in a television interview that what was needed was “reimagining capitalism”, not just in New Zealand.
“Clearly the model that’s been pursued across the world now is dividing societies,” he told TVNZ’s Q and A.
“Some are getting obscenely rich, and others are going to the food kitchens. That’s a dangerous position for a society.”
Bolger was first promoted by Muldoon in 1975 when he became Under-secretary to Duncan McIntyre in Maori affairs, and he chaired the Maori affairs select committee. It was through that work that he first met Dame Whina Cooper, who led the 1975 land march.
She also arrived unannounced in his office while he was Prime Minister to remonstrate with him over the sacking of Winston Peters.
The Tainui settlement law was passed in 1995, with the Royal assent being signed by Queen Elizabeth when she was in New Zealand for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm).
The heads of agreement for the Ngāi Tahu settlement was signed off just before the 1996 election and passed into law in 1998.
Both settlements were concluded with the unwavering support of both Treaty Negotiations Minister Doug Graham and Bolger.
Doug Kidd, who was Fisheries Minister, recounted a cabinet discussion about various settlements in the book The Bolger Years. Citing the strife and trouble it was causing, an unnamed minister had questioned Bolger at cabinet: “Why on earth are we doing it? ”
Bolger’s answer: “Because it is the right thing to do.”
In the same book, Ken Douglas recounts the irony that on the day of Bolger’s valedictory speech at Parliament, Taranaki Māori were presenting him with a taiaha because of the contribution he had made to Māori in New Zealand, while on the forecourt, Taranaki farmers were protesting on their tractors.
One of the more contentious policies of the Bolger Government, the $1 billion fiscal envelope for treaty settlements, attracted widespread opposition from Māori and was formally ditched in the coalition agreement with New Zealand First.
Early in the Bolger Government, it had also negotiated the Sealord deal, a pan-tribal agreement for commercial fishing giving Māori 20% of the quota.
Bolger’s political route to leadership was not smooth.
He was first promoted to the cabinet by Muldoon in 1977, but moved against him the next term.
Bolger was a key member of the so-called “colonel’s coup” in 1980 – an unsuccessful attempt by senior ministers to oust Muldoon while he was overseas, but their intended replacement, deputy leader Brian Talboys, lost his nerve.
Bolger’s personal ambition was evident in 1984. Muldoon’s winning streak as Prime Minister ended with the snap election, and Bolger stood for the National leadership against the then deputy leader Jim McLay.
McLay won, and Bolger was made McLay’s deputy. But Muldoon’s open opposition to McLay undermined his leadership and stymied any attempt to unify the caucus. Bolger eventually moved against McLay.
The catalyst for the coup against McLay was the demotion of Bill Birch and George Gair. On March 26, 1986, Birch, Gair and National senior whip, Don McKinnon, presented McLay with a letter signed by more than half the caucus asking him to step down.
Jim Bolger took the helm, and Gair became his deputy. In a crucial contest soon after the 1987 election, Don McKinnon beat Ruth Richardson to the deputy’s job by one vote, but Richardson gained the finance portfolio.
McKinnon remained deputy leader to Bolger through to the end.
And Bill Birch remained the closest of allies and friends to Bolger to the end.
Bolger led National to the 1987 election but the cracks in the Fourth Labour Government had not started appearing by that time, and National was consigned to a second term in Opposition.
By 1990, the divisions within Labour over its economic reforms had been laid bare, and Bolger led National to a landslide victory, the party’s largest ever.
The large caucus – a majority of 39 seats – led to its own management problems for the Bolger, with sections of the caucus rebelling against some of the tougher economic policies it introduced.
It was a highly controversial first term for Bolger as Prime Minister and came very close to being a one-term Government. Bolger had campaigned in 1990 on “the decent society” and a reprieve from radical change under Labour, which claimed to have posted an $89m surplus in election year.
But the day after the election, Bolger received an emergency briefing from Treasury to say the Government-owned BNZ was broke and would collapse unless it was bailed out.
The officials went pale when they heard Bolger’s response.
“Well, why shouldn’t we just let it crash?” Bolger said, according to his book A View from the Top.
The official explained that the BNZ had around 40% of the commercial market in New Zealand on its books. If it fell over, much of the commercial community in New Zealand might go with it.
Bolger backed the rescue package, which was delivered in a December mini-Budget by Finance Minister Ruth Richardson, including a $620m bailout for the BNZ, cuts to the dole, an increase in state house rents and the cost of prescriptions.
The so-called $89m surplus became a $3.3b deficit, even with the cuts.
Superannuation became a big issue throughout the 90s, and one of Bolger’s biggest regrets was National’s broken promise over the superannuation surtax, which had been introduced by Labour in 1985 on other income of pensioners.
Bolger had promised to abolish the surtax, “no ifs, no buts, no maybes”, but instead, National increased it as a response to the financial crisis.
It became a political football throughout the 1990s, and the surtax was abolished in 1998 as a result of the coalition agreement with New Zealand First.
After the landslide of 1990, the 1993 election was a very close run thing, and Labour leader Mike Moore came close to making Bolger a one-term Prime Minister. That was the election night when Bolger famously said “bugger the pollsters” because the polls had predicted a clear win for National.
Bolger, however, received the message that change was needed, and he replaced Ruth Richardson in Finance with Bill Birch. On the back of Richardson’s programme, in 1994 Birch posted New Zealand’s first surplus in 17 years.
On the Foreign Affairs front, Bolger had a key partner in Don McKinnon, and together they strongly promoted interests in Asia and the Pacific. Bolger also took up a strong stance against nuclear testing in the Pacific.
One of the highlights of his career was hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Auckland in 1995, which was attended by Queen Elizabeth II and President Nelson Mandela.
The meeting was thrown into immediate crisis when Nigeria executed environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa on its eve, resulting in its immediate suspension.
Bolger attended Apec summits from 1993, but by 1999 when New Zealand hosted it, he had been replaced by Shipley and was out of politics.