We Need to Talk About Norman: New Zealand's Lost Leader

Why do we need to talk about Norman? Because although Norman Kirk was prime minister for barely 21 months some 50 years ago, he still speaks to us. His belief in the state as a force for good and his style of leadership could and should be powerful guides for politics in the 21st century. Kirk was not a supporter of the neoliberalist ideology that has given us widening inequality, rising poverty and the virtual obliteration from public debate and policy-making of the workers who create this country’s wealth. His idea of a healthy country was, famously, one whose citizens could realistically expect to find “someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for”. But the social contract central to politics in his day has been broken, and state and society are now run almost exclusively on business lines. This book, by veteran journalist and political commentator Denis Welch, is aimed at recovering what Norman Kirk stood for – a sense of government with a clear moral purpose, in which there is daylight between public service and the commercial world.