Scottish migrant rose to become NZ’s Speaker
When Robin Gray was newly elected to Parliament in 1978, Invercargill MPNorman Jones had a quiet word with him. The people of Clutha, he said, have elected you for the person you are, not the person they expect you to become.
Gray, who has died aged 90, took that to heart, serving Clutha from 1978 to 1996, as the man they had already come to know; committed to family and Christian service values and one who, although convivial company, had developed a lifelong empathy for the lonely.
Expectably or not, he also became Sir Robin Gray, a widely respected Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives from 1990 to 1993.
As he was taking up that role, he offered some advice himself for newbie Southland backbencher Bill English: ‘‘Never forget where you came from.’’
Nobody could forget where Gray came from. New Zealanders had long since won his heart, but his tongue forever whirred back to his Scottish birthplace.
It’s one of those merry tales of Parliament that, in his own novice term, he was once challenged in full oratorical flow by a point of order from his own party leader, Robert Muldoon. The old warhorse grinningly reminded the House that, by tradition, someone speaking an incomprehensible language was entitled to a translator.
Gray had arrived in 1952 under government-sponsored assisted migration – though anyone who might have called him a ‘‘£10 Pom’’ was clearly aiming a bit low on the map.
Born in Kirkcudbrightshire, in southwest Scotland, he developed an early interest in politics, arguing with his father the merits of socialism and the importance of supporting the vulnerable. His values didn’t change but, as he aged, and as his father had predicted, his politics did.
Though no great scholar, he passed his exams, studied Latin envisaging his future as a church minister, and developed a taste of leadership as a school prefect and feisty hooker.
Soon came compulsory military service in Tripoli and other places in Europe. He rated it one of the best things to happen in his life, putting it this way: ‘‘I understand people better and I understand loneliness, homesickness, humanity, success and failure, and how to be loyal through thick and thin irrespective of how difficult the circumstances prove to be.’’
It was in Tripoli that he was asked if he wanted to migrate to Australia. Close, but not quite. He liked the look of sheep farming in New Zealand and arrived to take up a job on a farm in Crookston, West Otago.
He worked for three years playing footy for Heriot and West Otago, was a member of the Masonic Lodge and the Presbyterian Church, where he was no stranger to a kilt.
He bought a farm in Waitahuna West and became ever more active in his community, which paid off well when he met Mary Thomson at a Young Farmers dance. They married in 1957.
He had joined the National Party the year before and, 15 years later – 11 of them as electorate chairman – he contested the seat when sitting MPPeter Gordon retired. Gordon had a strong majority, but new boundaries had brought the Labour stronghold of Mosgiel into the electorate. Mary joined her husband doorknocking and, at least according to family legend, very likely won the election for him.
City life was foreign to Gray, and his years on the government backbenches, 1978-81, were lonely; sharing a Wellington flat with three other new members, deeply homesick for Mary, whom he phoned three times a day.
Two weeks before the 1981 election, while the couple were driving to a candidates meeting in Mosgiel, she was struck by a fatal aneurysm. Re-elected but bereft, he threw himself even more into constituency work – the concerns of his community helping him to deal with his own grief.
He also chaired the health and social welfare select committees, during which time Muldoon remarked to him that Parliament needed good administrators as much as good legislators. In 1984, he became junior whip; in 1987 senior whip; and in 1990 the first Speaker nominated by the Government but seconded by the Opposition, an indication of respect from both sides of the House.
If the expectations of absolute fairness and impartiality sat easily with him, the requirement to understand more than 4000 standing orders that govern the House was initially challenging for someone with no legal background and a school record that wasn’t the shiniest.
But common sense and pragmatism counted for a lot. He was traditionalist enough to enjoy the ceremonial pomp of the Speaker’s role, to the point of resisting moves to more casual conduct in the chamber; disliking members referring to one another in their speeches by name rather than by the title of their electorate. I t stung him that he was not given a second term as Speaker, the role going to Labour’s Peter Tapsell. That was a practical move because National’s majority was too slender to give up a vote to that neutral role. Though he accepted it, understanding the need for stability of government, it was at the cost of a position he’d enjoyed.
Knighted in 1994, he found real satisfactions in his subsequent roles as minister of state, and associate minister of foreign affairs and trade, with special responsibilities to the Pacific Islands.
He visited many countries, representing both New Zealand and the Commonwealth. But he never forgot where he came from.
His last political speech, in 1996, was to the United Nations General Assembly in
New York, where he had that morning signed on New Zealand’s behalf the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty calling for an end to all nuclear testing.
This lofty setting, he later acknowledged, was something he found less intimidating than his first political speech as the new Clutha MP, to a small group on a wet day at the Tahakopa Hall.
Retired to Mosgiel, he remained active in a giddying array of local organisations – the Mercy Hospital Board, Strath Taieri PHO, Taieri Family Mental Health Service Committee, Mosgiel Elderly Care, the Dunedin City Council holdings company and Otago Hospice, and a particularly busy Justice of the Peace, to name but a fistful.
A lifelong lover of a good debate, he wasn’t above winding up children Linda, Shona and Andrew, their partners, and grandchildren.
The family tried not to take the bait, but it wasn’t easy. Not long before his death, as grandson Alex was leaving the room, Sir Robin looked over to others and said: ‘‘He bites like a big dog!’’ It wasn’t a complaint.
In his valedictory speech to Parliament, he acknowledged it had cost him only £10 to come to New Zealand and that taxpayers had footed the rest of the bill.
Some people might still be looking for a return on their money, he lightly added. ‘‘For me, coming to New Zealand was a privilege. I was allowed to progress according to my desires, my ability – without fear, favour or prejudice.’’
In his parting messsage, he urged MPs always to keep the door wide open for others to enter. – By Michael Fallow