Happy 80th birthday Richard Northey

City Vision’s Richard Northey recently celebrated his 80th birthday.  After 9 years on the Waitematā Local Board, serving as chair 2019 to 2022, Richard has chosen not to seek reelection, retiring at the close of this term after a 46-year political career since first being elected to the Auckland City Council in 1979.

A belief in the equal and wonderful value of every human being. Seeking equity, social fairness and full opportunity and access to  develop their potential to the full, both for their own benefit and their gifts for us all, has always been a powerful motivator for Richard.

It was fortunate that Richard was able to cover all the details of his remarkable career in his entertaining and enlightening speech at his celebration.   With permission we publish it here.  Happy birthday and thank you Richard from the City Vision team!

Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Ko Richard Northey ahau

I welcome you all here, my wonderful whānau and friends on this occasion. A particular welcome to my brother Tom, who has his 65th birthday this month and has come all the way from England to help celebrate my birthday. Thank you all for joining Robyn and I here on this occasion

There is a photomontage here of photos from throughout my life to date, of people I have known and worked with and events important to me. I am finding this all a really valuable rehearsal for my funeral.

You see my grandfather George Cornes wheeling me, my sister Jill and friend Larry Tremewan in a wheelbarrow. He was a dedicated public servant with a wonderful gentle sense of humour.  My grandmother May Cornes is seen celebrating her hundredth birthday with my cousin Judy Lowry and I. She swam every day at Herne Bay beach and it is no wonder she lived to 101.

My mother, Althea, helped develop my love of the arts. Colin McCahon and his family were frequent visitors as he mentored her development as a painter. She wrote poems and took many photos including a number displayed here. Briefly a Communist Party Member, she helped develop my quests for social and economic equity and tolerance for diversity.

My father, Jack, helped develop my love of rugby, my interest in international affairs and my commitment to the Labour Party and its values, to justice, to due process and to  learning. He had worked in Peter Fraser’s Prime Minister’s Department and became the Chair of the New Zealand Association of University Teachers and then the Dean of the Auckland Law School. Close friends, included MPs Martyn Finlay and Bob Tizard and Academics Bob Chapman and Keith Sinclair, whose family had a bach near ours at Wyuna Bay on the Coromandel Harbour.

I am the eldest of five, my sister Jill, the twins Glenda and Bruce and Tom, much the youngest. You can see us at our home in Orakei, baches at the Wade River and the Coromandel, on Dad’s sabbatical at Oxford and at family Christmases. We all remain good friends.

I have 23 cousins, the Lowrys, the McLeods, the Northeys and the Sucklings and I am glad to see a number of them here today.

My lovely wife Robyn and I have been together for 44 years. We have shared and borne tragedies and triumphs, the stresses of my life as an elected Member of Parliament and Councillor and chair of voluntary organisations and hers also of being a senior manager and then elected member in the health sector, and of helping  bringing up each other’s children together. We have travelled together to marvellous places: Antarctica, the Galapagos, Nepal, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Israel, Jordan, China, New York, Washington, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Indonesia, Singapore, Norway, Russia, Germany, London, Paris, Vienna, Budapest and to the Cook Islands for our honeymoon. We have enjoyed many concerts, plays, operas, films and books together. We remain very best friends and lovers.

Heather was my first wife, and she would be here but has COVID. We studied history and politics together, did our MAs at the same time, were both active in the Student Christian Movement, travelled together around Europe and California and  I admired and was very fond of her. We produced two wonderful children Michael and Miranda. They are not here with us. Miranda, and her partner Adsam and daughter Ingrid joined us from Melbourne in a wonderful family lunch a week ago. Michael’s died after he was run over on a level pedestrian crossing near here.

Robyn’s children Andrew, Fiona and Jonathan have played a big part in my life.  Andrew is  a software developer and has produced the photomontage here. Fiona is a teacher, married to commercial lawyer Peter Missingham and has three smart sons Isaac, Benji and Charlie. Jonathan died from a road crash seven months after Michael’s one.

I owe a very great deal to all of my whānau in all I have been involved in. I believe that everything we accomplish and become we owe to our family, our friends, our colleagues, our community, our country and humanity in general.  The cult of the individual, the belief in personal salvation, hyper individualism, powerful autocrats, and the like are all contrary to scientific knowledge, moral values and commonsense. We are, and must be, all collectively responsible for the nature, culture and accomplishments of our families, communities and nations.

The other values I have believed in, and endeavoured imperfectly to pursue include:

A belief in the equal and wonderful value of every human being. Seeking equity, social fairness and full opportunity and access to  develop their potential to the full, both for their own benefit and their gifts for us all, has always been a powerful motivator for me. Related to this is fully respecting and valuing the diverse characteristics and cultures of all the world’s peoples, irrespective of their ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, age and religious and ethical beliefs. We also need to fully respect and value the other life forms we share our world with. Although competition has a valued place in sport and other aspects of life, it is co-operation, collaboration and mutual respect that are the most ethical and productive means of achieving in the economy and in most aspects of life. Also, the scientific method and firm adherence to ethical principles are much the most certain ways of arriving at truth.

These fundamental values are the ones I have endeavoured to be guided by in making decisions and taking action in all the governance and advocacy roles I have held in my life. Now that I have reached the milestone of 80 busy years of life   I have decided it is a good and appropriate time to step down from governance positions. In particular, after 38 years as an elected Member, I have decided not to stand again for the Waitemata Local Board this October. I intend to keep advocating when moved to do so, to spend more time with Robyn and with my family, to resume reading books, to see more films and live performances and hopefully to take up travelling again.  

My first political acts were delivering pamphlets for father’s and Robbie’s City Council election campaigns and then for Bob Tizard for Parliament for Tamaki in 1957.

My first demonstration was as a 14-year- old to march for No Maoris No Tour in 1960. I became the immigration spokesperson and then Chair of the Citizens Association for Racial Equality. There I had three key objectives : A Race Relations Act- achieved in 1972, a non-racial immigration policy- achieved from the government immigration review I chaired in 1986, and an end to South Africa’s apartheid- after confronting the Red Squad at Hamilton and outside Eden Parkin 1981 I saw the fruits of its ending with the championship winning Parliamentary Rugby team in Cape Town in 1995.

In 1962, just before the Cuba Missile Crisis, I joined the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, door knocked Orakei to get 3000 signatures for a Southern Hemisphere Nuclear Free Zone. I became Chair of the New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and sailed in a flying 15 yacht in front of a nuclear warship, practiced my steering skills to go  on the Rainbow Warrior to the French Nuclear Testing site two days before the French Government sank it, voted in the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Act in 1987 and celebrated the end of nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1995. I later chaired the Peace Foundation and now the Peace And Disarmament Collective Aotearoa. Yesterday’s Helen Clark Herald article alerts us to the dangers and moral hazards our drift back into military alliances is heading us towards.

I joined Labour’s Princes Street Branch of the Labour Party in 1964, became its Orakei Branch Chair in 1965 at my first meeting. I have held most positions in the 61 years since, including being a delegate to the last 62 Labour Party Conferences and Congresses. I think I must be due a bar to go with my gold badge by now.. I was Secretary of the Policy Council for12 years and am still on the International Affairs and the Infrastructure and Local Government Policy Committees and even stood for both Party President and Prime Minister. In 1972 Values Party leader Alan Brunt offered me a Parliamentary candidacy for Values,  but I thought why junk all of my then 8 years of activism and loyalty for Labour

I was on the Homosexual Law Reform Society executive and voted it through Parliament in 1986 after receiving a lot of hate mail. I briefly resigned and walked out of the Labour Caucus when in 1990 when they voted not to add sexual orientation to the Human Rights Act but they were quickly persuaded to reverse this and it was in the Bill introduced that afternoon. 

I went school at Khandallah, Bayfield and Orakei and at Auckland Grammar. I really enjoyed my time at University as a science student, chemistry demonstrator (being paid to demonstrate), an arts student, a political studies thesis writer and a university lecturer. I joined the executive of the Student Christiam Movement not because I was a Christian but because their members were truly inspirational in acting on their beliefs- organising the first demonstrations against South African Tours in 1965, their “Thin Santa” campaign against poverty, and establishing the 1% Action for International Development movement- still to be anything like achieved. I lectured in Political Studies to Phi Goff and some of you for three years and in Planning for two. I was on the Executive of the University of Auckland Society , including being President the last few years until we wound it up last year. 

As then chair of the City Advocacy Committee of the Auckland City Council, I led our Council submissions on the Responsible Gambling Bill and became very concerned about the harm that gambling was doing to many New Zealanders and to their families. I became the Director of Local Government Advisory Services for the Problem Gambling Foundation, then joined its Board, then served as its Chair for 13 years and am still a on its Board and was on the Inaugural establishment Boards for its offshoots Asian Family Services and Mapu Maia. 

I became involved in housing issues as an MP, a City Councillor, associated with the Freemans Bay Housing Co-operative, the Auckland Housing Association and the Tenants’ Protection Association and as a 13-year Chair of the Auckland District Council of Social Service. I was appointed Chair of the Steering Group that established the national Community Housing Association out of what had previously been a very fractious community housing providers sector. I was the inaugural chair of the Auckland Community Housing Trust and served as its chair until the end of 2023.

Since I was seven years old I have been fascinated by astronomy and joined the Auckland Astronomical Society, of which I am still a member. I bought a refractor telescope you can see in action at the Wade and Robyn bought me a more powerful Dobsonian reflector. I served on the Stardome Board for a number of years.  . 

I am the only person who has worked for both the Ministry of Recreation and Sport and the Arts Council of New Zealand. The Ministry of Recreation and Sport was a section of the Internal Affairs Department where I worked as Auckland Community, Recreation and Youth Advisory Officer from 1976 until 1984 when I was elected MP for Eden. In my Internal Affairs work  I became  imbued with, and endeavoured to practice, the principles of Community Development, which remain an important part of my belief system  As part of this role I became a Convenor of Community Volunteers and on the Council of Social and Community Work Training where I met and worked with the lovely and very capable Robyn Thompson, to whom I have since been married for over 41 years.

In 1991 the Arts Council contracted with me to be their Local Authority Liaison officer for two years. My main KPI was to persuade at least one-third of Local Authorities to develop a formal Arts and Culture Policy. At the end, more than half of local authorities had decided to do so as also did a number of iwi. I have enjoyed since being on the then Auckland Art Gallery Board and Pakuranga’s Te Tuhi Board. I once acted the role of McLeavy in Joe Orton’s play “Loot”.

I first stood for the Auckland City Council as a Labour candidate in 1968. I was finally successful in being elected on my fifth try in  January 1979.  My first Councillor  initiative was to work with my Physically Handicapped and Able-bodied Association mates to develop the first Council Disability Rights Policy.  I served 17 years on the City Council and 3 on the first supercity Council as Labour and nine on the Waitemata Local Board, representing City Vision, which I had helped form in 1998.

I have overall stood for elected officer on 23 occasions, winning on 13 occasions and losing on 10 – a success rate of 57%, and I am getting out while I am ahead. Of these 23, 6 were for Parliament. I stood against Prime Minister Muldoon in Tamaki in 1981, and reduced his majority, defeated Aussie Malcolnm in Eden in 1984, holding the seat against Hiwi Tauroa in 1987, losing to Christine Fletcher in 1990, defeating Graham Thorne in Onehunga in 1993 and losing to Belinda Vernon by 228 votes in 1996. In Parliament I chaired select committees that among other things abolished corporal punishment in schools, required consultation with stakeholders about regulations, bought in the Bill of Rights and reformed our electoral laws. 

With our mutual love of rugby my father and I went to Eden Park every Saturday in the season to cheer on the University team. I played for Eastern Suburbs from the 15th grade, Auckland Grammar’s 3D rugby team, and University’s 5th grade second team. So, I tried out for the inaugural Parliamentary Rugby Team for a 1995 tournament in Cape Town, without a great deal of hope, given that, for instance. Winston Peters had played for the Auckland Maori reps. However, in  a final trial Winston ran out of puff, I intercepted a pass meant for him and scored and was selected and not him.  I was the oldest player at the tournament. We beat the British team drawn from 2000 MPs and lords and the narrowly beat South Africa in the key game.  President Nelson Mandela came to congratulate each of us and, knowing of my having been chair of the Citizens Association for Racial Equality, said “I am honoured to meet you sir”.

In 1990 I was invited to the first Interparliamentary Conference on the Global Environment by the Chair, then Senator Al Gore. There is a picture here of my co-chairing with then Senator John Kerry, the Conference workstream on oceans, water resources and Antarctica.  Al Gore later wrote to me: “This strong final product is due in great measure to your hard work and dedication to the cause. It reflects your contribution to the conference.”

Soviet Communist Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev invited the New Zealand Labour Party, among other Social Democratic Parties, to send a delegation to help the CPSU change to become a successful social democratic party in an emerging democracy. The Labour Party sent then President Ruth Dyson and me and our partners. One day we met the members of the newly democratically elected Saint Petersburg City Council. The new Deputy Mayor, one Vladimir Putin, asked me to set out my political philosophy. After my doing so he responded: ”You are far too left wing to be elected here, we won’t be doing that”. I regret I had not spoken more convincingly so his response had instead been: “That is very compelling, I will do what I can for that to happen in Russia”.

At Robyn’s and my meeting with the then Prince Charles we had a lively interchange about gardening. His last words were: “I find well-rotted cow manure is the best answer for everything”.

So, there you have it: the official royal answer to the question of What is the Meaning of Life?

Photos from the City Vision album