Norman Kirk
Norman 'Norm' Kirk
(6 January 1923 – 31 August 1974) Norm Kirk was a New Zealand politician who served as the 29th Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1972 until his sudden death in 1974.
Career
Kirk joined the New Zealand Labour Party in 1943. He was mayor of Kaiapoi from 1953 until 1957, when he was elected to the New Zealand Parliament. He became the leader of his party in 1964. Following a Labour victory in the 1972 election, Kirk became Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
As prime minister, he set a frenetic pace implementing a great number of new policies. In particular, the Kirk government had a far more active foreign policy than its predecessor, taking great trouble to expand New Zealand's links with Asia and Africa. He opposed colonialism in a UN speech and recognized the People's Republic of China. [[1]]
Kirk strongly protested against French nuclear-weapons testing in the Pacific, in French Polynesia. It led to his government, along with Australia (under equally reform-minded prime minister Gough Whitlam [[2]],removed in a constitutional coup in 1975) taking France to the International Court of Justice in 1972 and sending two New Zealand navy frigates, HMNZS Canterbury and Otago, into the test zone area at Mururoa Atoll in a symbolic act of protest in 1973.
Immediately after his election as Prime Minister, Kirk withdrew all New Zealand troops from Vietnam, ending that nation's eight-year involvement in the Vietnam War.
He was also highly critical of US foreign policy, speaking before the United Nations of the US involvement in the coup d'état in Chile in 1973. [[3]]
Death
During his time as Prime Minister, Kirk kept up an intense schedule, refusing to reduce his workload by any significant degree and rarely taking time off. Kirk ignored advice from several doctors and from Bob Tizard and Warren Freer to "take care of himself" and to reduce his heavy consumption of Coca-Cola and alcohol (beer, plus later whisky or gin), saying he would have a "short but happy life". Though a non-smoker, he had diabetes and dysentery. He died of a pulmonary embolism on August 31. 1974, after a short illness.
None of his collegues were aware of the seriousness of his last illness. His close associate and election campaign manager Bob Harvey said that Kirk was "a robust man" with the "constitution of a horse". He proposed a Royal Commission to investigate rumours that he had been killed, perhaps with contact poison, by the CIA.
In 1999, now Labour Party President (1999-2000) Bob Harvey repeated this accusation during Bill Clinton's state visit to New Zealand. [[4]]
