A week before the 1984 election, then-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon and Labour leader David Lange had the chance to size each other up in a historic televised debate.
It made for some famous moments that some Kiwis even found hard to believe, producer Jim Curry says.
Muldoon had held power since 1975, but by the mid ‘80s his grip was weakening and Lange was on the rise.
The debate was chaired by current affairs journalist and presenter Ian Johnstone and produced and directed by Jim Curry.
Curry told Jesse Mulligan it was unique to have the candidates facing each other.
“There was certainly nervousness because we both knew that they knew how important appearing on television was – how you come across on television, it’s important what you say and it’s also important how you say it and to get the message across.”
“It was deliberately set up not so that they would address the audience,” Johnstone says, “but so that they’d address each other and the audience could learn by seeing how they did that, and to that extent it worked splendidly.”
Muldoon and Lange were firm, assertive but also fair, partially in thanks to Johnstone establishing his authority, Curry says.
“Apart from one time, when Muldoon called Lange a demagogue, but apart from that there was very little personal insults, it was just a robust debate.
“We were swans on the surface and paddling frantically underneath, and I think that applied to both of them.
“Lange, in various interviews I’ve been involved with him, he’s quite nervous beforehand and you’d never know it.”
At one point, as can be heard in the clip above, Muldoon is determined to have his say during Lange’s 1-minute allowance to respond. Johnstone butts in: “Quiet please, Sir Robert.”
Johnstone says that was Muldoon’s technique to dominate the debate.
“He quite impressed me, Muldoon, because I was scared. I thought the pair of them would run away on me, that was the risk I had. And once one broke the rules fragrantly, then the other would just do the same. But luckily, they boxed close when they were told to, and they broke when they were told to.
“Remarkably, although they were growling at each other … they were also polite. I mean I remember being surprised when Lange … [said] ‘and I say to you, sir!’, and I’d never heard two politicians call each other sir. In the middle of that one, there’s Rob Muldoon saying ‘I apologise’, well I’d never heard him say that before.”
With Muldoon carrying a wad of papers and Lange pulling out a single sheet, Johnstone had an impression from the get-go that their approaches were going to be different.
“I remember thinking, one of these is going to get bogged down in detail and the other is going to be expansive, and here it was demonstrated in front of me," he says in reference to the debate on food and inflation. (Watch it in the above clip)
“There was a nice sense in which it was also kind of climatic. We’d had 10 years and he dominated everything, and he’d run the country through the TV … then along came at last, this man who in a different way could at least match him.
“But this was the first time that these two bid forces, and remember the polls were probably letting Muldoon know he was on the way down … secondly he was exhausted … and yet still the old bear inside had to be kind of dominated. I think everybody knew that this was it.
“He [Lange] patronised the hell out of [Muldoon].”
Still, Muldoon stood his ground as a formidable opponent, Curry says.
“You could sense during that debate that even he knew the game was up, but he still in my opinion performed very well indeed.
“If you were marking the debate, I think you’d give it to Lange, but not by a huge amount.”
Johnstone says at the time, he couldn’t tell which way the debate was siding more towards until most it had been done, then he felt the mantle shift before Muldoon delivered his famous line. (Watch it in the clip below)
“I began the last piece which was telling people where else they could put questions for a radio debate, and then all of a sudden out of the right hand came this comment and I thought ‘oh my God, Muldoon’s cut loose!’,” Johnstone says.
Curry says Muldoon saw the writing on the wall when he realised his technique didn’t work.
“Within the constraints of the formal debate, my use of reaction shots was limited, otherwise I could be accused of editorialising. But [it’s] the one reaction shot that I eternally regret I didn’t have, because I was on Ian and telling him in his ear that time was up, and of course this ‘I love you, Mr Lange’ came out of the blue … We heard him, but we didn’t see him.”
The comment coming from the often aggressive Muldoon was a bit puzzling and could be interpreted as him acknowledging he’s acted out of love for his country, Johnstone says.
“It’s the sort of thing he’d never say out in the open, he’d expect you to believe that was the case. And or it was him saying, ‘I’ve done all I can and all I can tell you is that I really rather admire what you just said, and I think it too’.
“He never had people being nice to him in this sort of way, if it was nice, because it was equally clever of Lange.
“I think I got more mail out of that than almost any other stuff… and ever since then, I go around in my old age talking to old folks, groups and that’s the thing people always talk about … it kind of is his hallmark I guess, for better or for worse.”
The only way Muldoon knew how to operate was to be combative and so when Lange was seemingly inclusive, he seemed lost for words for once, Curry says.
“People used to come up to me in the streets and say ‘did he really say that?’, because it was hard to believe that Muldoon, the strongman of New Zealand politics, would finish a debate by saying ‘I love you Mr Lange’.
“I think it was either a very clever ploy from Lange or pure luck, but as I say I think Muldoon was genuinely lost for words after that and realised that the game was up.”
