180
Notable People in the History of New Zealand
his newspapers, the Wanganui Herald and Yeoman, he advocated the yeo-
men ideal, that is, a country based on small family farms rather than great
estates. Ballance also wanted to improve the lot of urban workers, but
despite being influenced by such land radicals as John Stuart Mill and
Henry George, his commitment to the ideal of self-help prevented him
from becoming a socialist. He entered parliament as MP for Rangitikei in
1875 and served as colonial treasurer in the Grey ministry from 1878 to
1879.
As minister of lands in the
Stout-Vogel
government he provided
some help to stepping-stone farmers in 1886 and 1887. In July 1889 he
won leadership of the opposition and slowly built a coalition of skilled
workingmen, small-town merchants, and small farmers who eventually
emerged as the Liberal Party in early 1891. As the first Liberal and second
free-thinking premier (Sir Robert Stout was also a self-confessed agnostic),
Ballance introduced both a land tax and a modest income tax in 1891.
More importantly, he appealed successfully to the Privy Council in Lon-
don to break the stranglehold of the Legislative Council or upper house.
After appointing such humble men as printers and boilermakers to this
body, the Liberal reform program proceeded much more smoothly. Bal-
lance was very able but very cautious and resisted attempts to give women
the vote despite his wife Ellen's being a prominent suffragist. The histo-
rian is left with the feeling that he was somewhat lucky to die when he
did because it took tougher politicians such as John McKenzie and Richard
Seddon to make hard changes in 1893-1894.
Clark, Helen (1950- ). Politician. New Zealand's second woman prime
minister and easily the most dominant political figure in the early part of
the twenty-first century, was born into a conservative farming family in
the Waikato, south of Auckland. After taking a degree in political science,
she became a staunch advocate of social justice and social democracy.
Much to the horror of her parents, she threw herself into Labor Party
affairs from a young age. She served on the executive committee of the
New Zealand Labor Party in 1978 and won the Mt. Albert electorate in
Auckland in 1981, which she has retained ever since. She rose to the rank
of deputy prime minister in 1989 and held the portfolios of Health, Con-
servation, Housing, and Labor in the fourth Labor government. She won
leadership of the party in late 1993 after Mike Moore lost the election.
Despite some poor polling and being written off by most political com-
mentators, she performed well during the
1996
election and held onto the
leadership. Eventually, she got her chance in 1999 and has proved to be a
tough and pragmatic politician. She has held Labor and its coalition part-
ners together, won over big business and pursued an independent foreign
policy without totally alienating the United States. Although she has dis-
appointed her more left wing supporters, she remains easily New Zea-
land's most popular political leader. Unless some great catastrophe occurs
she seems likely to lead Labor to a third term of government in 2005.
Genetic engineering and potentially divisive racial issues exacerbated by