Guyon Espiner

He was the first DCI to be in the cabinet, the US cabinet.

So he was in Ronald Reagan's cabinet.

And he'd been Ronald Reagan's campaign director, so, you know, a New York businessman.

I was lucky enough to have lunch with him, a private lunch with him, which was just with the chief of station myself and his bodyguards.

He said to me, you know, the problem, I'm not going to do the accent, the problem with you guys, and he was referring to clearly to Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain.

He said, you have a left-wing culture.

And, you know, you have the socialist left-wing culture, which we don't have in America.

And that means you are more susceptible.

Kit Bennett says he bristled at this lazy generalisation, but under the circumstances, he pushes back gently.

And I said to him, well, to get it in perspective, we've only had three Labour governments since the war.

And he said, how come so many?

And I remember thinking then, that's a bit interesting.

This is not the Communist Party.

This is a kind of a soft socialist, you know, Labour Party.

When the next Labour government arrives in 1984, that is going to have all sorts of ramifications for New Zealand-US relations, the ANZUS Treaty, and for Kit Bennett's.

New Zealand became a pariah, really, and it wasn't because of the nuclear ships thing.

It was because, and I remember being told this, it was because Schultz believed that he'd been lied to by the Prime Minister, David Lange.

to put it mildly.

And with New Zealand, there's some discussion as to whether we might allow nuclear power, but not nuclear weapons.

It's all quite fluid for a while.