75 Facts About David Lange

David Lange was the attorney-general of New Zealand from 1989 to 1990.

David Lange was born and brought up in Otahuhu, the son of a physician.

David Lange became a lawyer, and represented poor and struggling people in civil rights causes in the rapidly changing Auckland of the 1970s.

David Lange became a prominent debater within parliament, and soon gained a reputation for cutting wit and eloquence.

David Lange became the leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition in 1983, succeeding Bill Rowling.

When Prime Minister Robert Muldoon called an election for July 1984 David Lange led his party to a landslide victory, becoming, at the age of 41, New Zealand's youngest prime minister of the 20th century.

David Lange took various measures to deal with the economic problems he had inherited from the previous government.

David Lange fulfilled a campaign promise to deny New Zealand's port facilities to nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered vessels, making New Zealand a nuclear-free zone.

David Lange retired from parliament in 1996, and died in 2005 from renal failure and blood disease at the age of 63.

David Lange was born on 4 August 1942 in Otahuhu, a small industrial borough since absorbed into Auckland.

David Lange was the oldest of four children of Eric Roy Lange, a general practitioner and obstetrician and grandson of a German settler, and Phoebe Fysh Lange, who trained as a nurse in her native Tasmania before she migrated to New Zealand.

David Lange's autobiography suggests that he admired his soft-spoken and dryly humorous father, while his demanding and sometimes overbearing mother tested his tolerance.

David Lange received his formal education at Fairburn Primary School, Papatoetoe Intermediate School and Otahuhu College, then at the University of Auckland in 1960, where he graduated in law in 1966.

David Lange attributed his talents with oratory to the need to compensate for his clumsiness during his intermediate school days.

David Lange worked from an early age and held a number of jobs; in the third form he performed a paper-round for The New Zealand Herald in Mangere East, and later changed from delivery-boy to collecting the money.

On 13 March 1967 David Lange was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand.

David Lange gained a Master of Laws in 1970 with first-class honours, specialising in criminal law and medico-legal issues.

David Lange was convicted, but the conviction was overturned on appeal by Lange.

David Lange was inspired by Amos' stand and following his example would later pass a law banning the visit by nuclear propelled or armed ships to New Zealand.

David Lange joined the Labour Party in 1963, and helped in the campaigns of Phil Amos in 1963 and Norman Douglas in 1966.

In 1974 his cousin Michael Bassett suggested that David Lange should stand on the Labour ticket for the Auckland City Council.

David Lange then stood for Labour in Hobson in 1975, and came third.

David Lange saw off more experienced candidates to win the Labour candidacy.

David Lange won the Mangere by-election, retaining the area for Labour.

David Lange then represented Mangere, a working-class Auckland electorate with a large Maori population, in the New Zealand Parliament.

On becoming an MP, David Lange quickly made an impression in the House as a debater, a wit, and the scourge of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon.

David Lange succeeded in the challenge, narrowly defeating Tizard 20 votes to 18.

David Lange succeeded Rowling as parliamentary leader of the Labour Party and as Leader of the Opposition on 3 February 1983.

David Lange commented that the party went into the election with an unfinished argument for an economic policy.

David Lange led Labour to a landslide victory, helped by vote splitting between the National Party and the New Zealand Party.

However, before David Lange was sworn in as Prime Minister a foreign exchange crisis arose, which led to a constitutional crisis.

David Lange was sworn in as New Zealand's 32nd Prime Minister on 26 July 1984, becoming, at the age of 41, New Zealand's youngest prime minister of the 20th century, a record later surpassed by only one other, Mike Moore in 1990.

The currency crisis and devaluation of the New Zealand dollar spurred on the reform drive of Roger Douglas, who David Lange made Minister of Finance in the new government.

David Lange made his name on the international stage with his steadfast leadership in the anti-nuclear weapons movement.

David Lange's government refused to allow nuclear-capable ships into New Zealand's territorial waters, a policy the country continues to this day.

In February 1985, David Lange famously rejected the arrival of the USS Buchanan, supported by a recommendation from the acting prime minister Geoffrey Palmer.

David Lange argued for the proposition that "Nuclear weapons are morally indefensible", in opposition to the American televangelist Jerry Falwell.

David Lange regarded his appearance at the Oxford Union as the high point of his career in politics.

David Lange's speech included an often-quoted statement made in response to a question posed by another debater:.

In 1987, David Lange's government passed the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987.

In June 1986 David Lange obtained a political deal with France over the Rainbow Warrior affair, presided over by United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

In return, David Lange agreed that French authorities could detain the convicted French agents Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur at the French military base on Hao Atoll for three years.

David Lange's government was re-elected at the August 1987 general election, the first time a Labour government had won a second term since 1938.

David Lange toured the country throughout the campaign and faced, for the first time, protests against his government, especially in provincial areas.

David Lange stated that he gave himself the portfolio to "draw a line in the sand" against the influence of the "Treasury troika", and in accordance with his wishes to emphasise social policy in his second term.

David Lange was criticised for his reaction to the coups d'etat in Fiji in May and September 1987.

David Lange noted with bitterness that Douglas took advantage of the crash to "rubbish" his stated ambitions to have the government focus on social policy, and push for more economic reforms.

In 1988 consensus on economic policy amongst the Labour leadership finally broke down, with Douglas resigning after David Lange overruled his radical flat income-tax and universal basic income proposal.

However, the caucus re-elected Douglas to the Cabinet on 3 August 1989, and David Lange interpreted this as a vote of no-confidence in his leadership.

David Lange tendered his resignation five days later on 8 August 1989.

David Lange became the first elected Labour Prime Minister who neither died in office nor was voted out in an election.

David Lange often became caught up in how he was seen to perform and would often avoid confronting angry ministers by using a rear entrance.

David Lange was re-elected at this election as the member for Mangere.

David Lange was a supporter of changing New Zealand's flag, and wrote in 1994: "[a] stranger who saw the Australian flag and the New Zealand flag outside adjacent buildings would assume that some British hotel chain was advertising deluxe and standard rooms".

In failing health, David Lange retired from Parliament before the 1996 general election.

David Lange was a New Zealand Rugby League board member and served as the organisation's Vice-President.

David Lange put on such an extraordinarily good performance of carrying on and saying I was introducing scorched earth policy.

In 1996 David Lange sued the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over an alleged defamation that it broadcast about him.

In January 2006, Archives New Zealand released to the Sunday Star-Times newspaper a box of David Lange's previously classified documents.

David Lange was deeply influenced by Soper's interpretation of Christian socialism.

In 1989 David Lange announced in a brief press statement on 10 November that he was separating from his wife of 21 years.

David Lange had three children, Roy, Emily, and Byron, with his first wife Naomi, and one daughter, Edith, with his second wife Margaret.

David Lange married Margaret in Glasgow on 12 January 1992 while holidaying in Britain.

David Lange's brother Peter is a widely respected New Zealand potter.

David Lange has won numerous arts awards and has exhibited widely in New Zealand and overseas.

Bassett published a book in 2008 about the Lange government entitled Working With David: Inside the Lange Cabinet.

David Lange suffered all his life from obesity and the health problems it caused.

In 2002, doctors diagnosed David Lange as having amyloidosis, a rare and incurable blood plasma disorder.

David Lange entered hospital in Auckland in mid-July 2005 to undergo nightly peritoneal dialysis in his battle with end-stage kidney failure.

David Lange's declining health resulted in the bringing-forward of the publication of his memoir My Life to 8 August 2005.

David Lange died of complications associated with his renal failure and blood disease in Middlemore Hospital in Auckland on 13 August 2005, just five days after the publication and interview, and nine days after his 63rd birthday.

David Lange is buried at Waikaraka Cemetery and the headstone has the simple inscription "David Lange 1942 ~ 2005".

David Lange was bestowed with the matai, or Samoan chiefly title, of Tagaloa, a title from the village of Le'auva'a.

David Lange turned down the knighthood that is customarily offered to former prime ministers.

David Lange received the Right Livelihood Award in 2003 for his strong fight against nuclear weapons.