Challenging the Status Quo: A Political Memoir

‘Next Tuesday we’re going to elect a new deputy leader and it’s not going to be you,’ said Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to his Associate Minister of Finance, Derek Quigley, late one evening in February 1981, shortly after Quigley had co-led the abortive Colonels’ Coup that sought to topple the PM.

A farmer and lawyer, Derek Quigley had entered Parliament just five years earlier as National MP for Rangiora. After his falling out with Muldoon he was an advisor to the Lange/Douglas Labour government, then a cofounder of the ACT Party. Re-elected to Parliament in 1996, he became chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Defence Select Committee, whose report Defence Beyond 2000 became the ‘blueprint’ for the Clark Labour government’s defence policy.

Challenging the Status Quo is a principled conservative’s insider history of New Zealand’s evolving maturity from its golden years when it was beholden to Britain to its status as an independent nation in today’s uncertain world. It highlights some of the successes and failures of the country’s key politicians during that progression and illustrates what needs to be done to avoid the mistakes of the past.