RIP Gerald Hensley

Gerald Hensley has died aged 88. He was the head of the PM’s Department to both Muldoon and Lange, then was Co-ordinator of Domestic and External Security and finally Secretary of Defence. A very patriotic public servant.

You can read some of his interactions with Muldoon here.

Hensley wrote a book about serving various PMs, and one of my favourite was when he wrote about the attempt to save ANZUS. Basically a deal had been done with the US that they would send a ship that clearly wasn’t nuclear armed or powered and that Cabinet would allow it to visit, even though the US would not publicly state it was non-nuclear.

The officials had Lange all prepped to take it to Cabinet and were dismayed when he came back and told them Cabinet had vetoed the visit. Hensley and co were aghast at how the PM could have failed to get it through his own Cabinet. Lange responded that they didn’t understand that in Cabinet he was in a minority of one on this issue.

Hensley in his book truly noted that Lange’s predecessor would have regarded that as a comfortable working majority

The other strong memory I have is when he took part in a TV show, game playing how NZ would respond to a potential terrorist attack. The scenario was that radical Australian Aboriginal activists have taken over an Australia boat in NZ waters by force.

Hensley talked about how the SAS would be dispatched to retake the ship, rather than let the Australians do it. The host then turned to a Maori activist (I can’t recall her name) and asked her what she would say if her son was in the SAS and called her as he felt conflicted about the mission.

She replied that she would tell him that the Aboriginal activists were his brother and cousins and in no way should he or other Maori members of the SAS take part.

The host then turned to Hensley, seeing this as a potential trump card or huge issue, and asked how he would respond.

His response was along the lines of:

“In my experience, members of the SAS don’t call mummy about their deployments”

It was the highlight of the (interesting) show.

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