SEVENTH GENERATION
92. Thea Dale Flyger
was born in 1927.
She was married to Robert David Muldoon in 1951 in Auckland,
New Zealand. Robert David Muldoon
(1) was born on 25 Sep 1921 in Auckland, New Zealand. He was educated
Mt Albert Grammar School in 1933 in Auckland, New Zealand.
(1) He served in the military in Nov 1940 in 3rd Batallion of the
Auckland Regiment.(1) While Robert was
in the Army he studied accountancy, and was admitted to the New Zealand Society
of Accounts in 1942. He was posted in Trieste, Italy towards the end of the war.
He died in 1992 in Auckland, New Zealand. He was a Prime Minister of New Zealand.
In 1949, he became the chairman of the Young Nationals. In 1954, he stood for
National in the seat of Mount Albert, and did not win it. He also lost in 1957.
In 1960, he stood in Tamaki, and won, beating Bob Tizard.1 He was the member
for Tamaki until he retired from politics in 1991.
In 1972, the National party, under Holyoake, lost to Labour. In 1974, Muldoon
took over from Holyoake as the leader of the National party, and campaigned for
government in 1975. A government being in for a single term was completely unheard
of in those days. The 1975 election result exactly reversed the previous Labour
landslide, with National beating Labour 55 seats to 32. It is very unlikely that
National would have won without Muldoon's personality and his very vigorous campaign.
Sir Robert was nicknamed "Piggy Muldoon", and there are a number of
theories on how this started. One story is that it came from a fictitious New
England mayor called "Biggy Muldoon" who was re-elected while serving
a prison sentence.2 It also may have originated from an association with piggy
banks3, because, as his first great task in the National government, he administered
the changeover to decimal currency in 1967. The nickname is also obviously partly
due to his distinctive appearance and notorious laugh. (Heh Heh Heh).
According to Spiro Zavos1, Muldoon got the scar on his left cheek at the age
of five in his parents' garden. He fell on a gatepost, and gashed his cheek.
He was an extremely powerful, charismatic, and intelligent person, and he always
stated his opinion without being afraid of what people would think. He was known
for his honesty and integrity. It is said that he had an almost superhuman memory
- he did not like to lose an argument, and he always knew the facts. He worked
very hard, and did not have time for people who had not 'done their homework'.4
He understood the medium of television far better than any other politician at
the time.5 People who have met him say that when he walked into the room, he
had a very powerful presence, which belied his short stature.
He was a man that people either loved or hated - there was nothing in between.
Spiro Zavos said, "Even his enemies pay him the respect of hating him rather
than disliking him." He had an enormous following, sometimes known as "Rob's
Mob", which included a lot of the elderly and farmers, but he also had quite
a following of "young nationals".
In 1981, when South Africa's Springbok Rugby team was scheduled to tour New Zealand,
the anti-tour movement asked him to deny them entry visas. He refused to do so.
The anti-tour argument was that South Africa was a country whose politics condoned
racism, and therefore we should be boycotting them. Muldoon's argument was that
it was wrong for a government to interfere with anyone's right of free movement.
Towards the end of his reign, he was accused by some of running the country almost
as a dictatorship. Although he did not really subvert the democratic process,
many people around him preferred to do what he said.
He was a believer in government regulation, but this was quite orthodox thinking
in the 1970's. He introduced the New Zealand National Superannuation scheme,
giving universal superannuation at age 60 without a means test, for which he
gained enormous popularity. The currency was at a fixed value, and you had to
have permits to import and export goods. After the oil shocks in the seventies,
he introduced the short-lived "carless days", where every car had a
day of the week on which it could not be used. Later, he also introduced a "wage
and price freeze" as a rather unorthodox measure to reduce inflation. The
Muldoon administration paid farmers generous subsidies in the form of "SMP's"
- supplimentary minimum prices. Many people said that this was because his greatest
support was from rural areas. There was also a large array of import and export
tariffs.
One large issue in the early eighties was "Think Big", where the government
spent huge sums of borrowed money on large projects such as the Synfuel plant,
which is the largest plant of its type in the world, converting natural gas to
petrol, and the Clyde dam (which was not completed until the mid 90's). Muldoon
is often attributed as being responsible for these schemes, but Bob Jones argues
that they all stemmed from Treasury6. Unfortunately, (correct me if I'm wrong),
none of these projects has ever made a profit while in government ownership.
Muldoon is often accused of economic mismanagement, but this commonly held view
is probably wrong. It is distorted by the fact that the entire world underwent
a radical shift to right-wing economic policy in the mid eighties. His management
of the economy has to be seen correctly in its historical context: it was really
not dissimilar to that of other countries such as Australia, the US, Britain
and Germany at the time.7, 8
In 1984, the Labour government led by David Lange came in and radically changed
the country's economic policies, in keeping with the way the world was changing.
New Zealand's shift to the monetary right was probably more rapid and extreme
than any other country in the world. Labour sold many of the government's inefficient
beauracracies, such as Railways and the Post Office (which administered the telephone
network). They also eliminated very nearly all subsidies and tariffs within a
six year period.
He retired from politics in 1991, and had a stint on talkback radio. He also
starred as the narrator for a stage production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Thea Dale Flyger and Robert David Muldoon had the following children:
+138 i.
Barbara Frances Muldoon.
+139 ii.
Jennifer Dale Muldoon.
+140 iii.
Gavin David Muldoon.
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