Palmer the Smart

LIKE David Lange, Prime Minister Geoffrey Winston Russell Palmer is aged 47 and he is another liber al lawyer with a commitment to human rights. But their similarities end there.

Long a loyal deputy to Lange, the se rious and self-effacing Palmer had been overshadowed by the ebullience of his predecessor. Trying to find epithets that weren’t dull, one newspaper editorial de scribed the new leader thus: “His strengths are his astonishing capacity for detail, his intellectual breadth, his luminous honesty of pur pose, the fact that he retreats to the evi dence before decision-making, and his

loyalty.”

While Palmer concedes “my style of communication isn’t as brilliant as [Lange’s]”, he insists it would have been difficult to follow his predecessor’s wit and oratorical skills.

“But,” observed the New Zealand Herald wryly, “the difference lies in Pal mer’s desire to call a spade a tool for digging up the ground.”

Rather than Left or Right, Palmer occupies the Centre of the Labour gov ernment and regards himself as some thing of a technocrat. He is regarded as typical of the liberal, well-educated pro fessionals who now dominate the Labour government.

His wife, Margaret, a childhood sweetheart, is a self-employed psychotherapist. The couple turned down the official prime ministerial resi dence Vogel House, preferring to use it only for functions.

Their son, Matthew, who has econo mics and law degrees, recently departed from New Zealand’s Treasury for the United States to do post-graduate studies at Yale University; their daughter, Rebe

kah, is a journalist on a student news paper at Wellington’s Victoria Uni

versity.

Himself the son of the editor of the Nelson Evening Mail, Geoffrey Palmer had edited the same student newspaper, Salient, while he studied for political sci ence and law degrees.

After completing a law doctorate at Chicago University, Palmer became a law professor in universities in lowa and Vir

ginia.

In 1968 he wrote a white paper on accident compensation which provided a basis for New Zealand’s model system introduced six years later. Many of the principles he laid down then have been incorporated in the July budget or will be introduced before next year’s general election.

Palmer entered politics in 1974 and five years later was selected in a by election to the urban seat of Christ church Central. As Labour’s deputy leader in 1983 and Deputy Prime Minis ter the following year, he carried out the

legal and administrative spadework

necessary to launch Rogernomics.

In fact, Palmer wrote the State-Owned Enterprises Act, drafting the framework enabling state corporations to become “successful businesses”.

He has also steered parliamentary re forms which he advocated in his 1979 book Unbridled Power? But he failed to push through his proposed Bill of Rights and proportional representation in the electoral system.

Palmer believes the state should be prepared to intervene in the market to ensure fair access to all citizens to health care, education and social welfare. He advocated legal recognition of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi in a step towards

genuine partnership with the indigenous

Maori people. □