Foreign correspondent and National Press Club member Tony Haas recently assigned himself to Germany in order to research his German forebears and especially his grandfather Ludwig Haas, one of the very few who could have prevented the Second World War.
His grandfather was the Democratic Party leader during the era of the Weimar Republic. Ludwig Haas’ reputation had been established immediately after World War 1 when he had actively campaigned against accepting the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. He argued that the punitive reparations would inevitably detonate further conflict, which they did.
Ludwig Haas died in 1930. Before he died he urged his son, Tony Haas’ father, to put as much distance as he could between himself and Germany.
This Karl Haas quickly did. He settled in Pahiatua, New Zealand, and began a new life as a farmer.
In Germany Tony Haas met civic officials in Karlsruhe, part of his grandfather’s old electorate. They urged him to produce a book entitled Ludwig Haas: Active Citizen. So called because of Ludwig’s active civic conscience which might have averted World War 2.
In the meantime Tony Haas will include the episode in his own autobiography centred on his long-time reportorial beat. It will be entitled Being Palangi: My Pacific Journey.
In the photograph, and back on his home turf, Press Gallery member Tony Haas (centre) is pictured in Parliament with former New Zealand Herald proprietor Michael Horton and Judith Tizard MP at the opening ceremony under National Press Club auspices of the Triangle Stratos television channel.
Robin Bromby’s career spans more than half a century. He began as a cadet on The Dominion, Wellington in 1962 and he remains today under full power as the influential commodities correspondent of The Australian. In New Zealand he was a key man in ushering in the Rupert Murdoch era and for a while helmed the tabloid Sunday Times. He was a reporter on the South China Morning Post, and the Melbourne Herald. He is a noted documentary author with his books published by Doubleday and Simon & Schuster. These include histories of New Zealand and Australia with several specialist books on rail transport. He is the author of Mining Investors Handbook, and of a standard work on World War 2 logistics.
Fiona Duncan was for many years in the advertising department of Wellington Newspapers Ltd and was responsible for numerous special projects, especially in establishing the company’s leadership in technology special features. On moving to Sydney she became involved in the digital sphere concentrating on internet targeted marketing.
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For a generation from Washington Connie Lawn every week day morning brought to the radio listeners of the world’s remotest English-speaking nation news from the White House.
New Zealanders time zones ahead usually heard the breaks before their counterparts in the United States. Connie Lawn was as much a part of the New Zealand way of life as their rugby version of football or a sheep shearing gang.
Then she was gone, and with her the intimate first-person portrayals of the decisions and the decision makers at the fulcrum of the Western World. Connie Lawn had been scythed aside in one of the ritual restructurings that are part of mainstream broadcasting everywhere. In this particular rite of passage she was replaced by local content, mostly in the form of contrived news notably sport.
If Radio New Zealand was finished with her, Connie Lawn was not finished with New Zealand. For the best part of the intervening generation her voice in the southern latitudes was rarely stilled.
Being heard, for example, in regular bulletins on Radio Live. Since the advent of the internet she is a regular contributor to Scoop, the nation’s version of the Huffington Post.
She has been unofficial ambassador for New Zealand pointing in the right direction through the Washington maze fellow journalists, listeners, business people, diplomats, in fact, anyone at all who asks for help.
In 2006 she was presented in Parliament with the National Press Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award. You may not always agree with what Miss Lawn says. But you are never left in any doubt about what she is saying. Outlining in her acceptance speech her own journalistic career in Washington which started in 1968, and which subsequently encompassed marriage and motherhood she dwelled on the trade’s willingness in that era to give opportunity to women.
Now, in contrast, she noted, there were so many other and different career opportunities available for young females.
“Women can have better things to do,” she told her audience in the Parliamentary auditorium. “There are now so many careers for women outside journalism,” she insisted to her listeners many of whom had anticipated a feminist anti discriminatory appeal.
A few years later she was presented by Ambassador Mike Moore at the New Zealand embassy in Washington with the Honorary Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to New Zealand-U.S. Relations.
Now though the woman who always chose to compete on equal terms with everyone finds herself battling an enemy who she knows is each day getting the upper hand.
For the past years, since she was 65, she has been afflicted by Parkinson’s Disease which most cruelly of all has robbed her of her voice. Though not of her ability to type her regular insightful bulletins to The Huffington Post, and Scoop, among others.
She applies full disclosure to her affliction. Not for sympathy. But because “it makes me stagger and I do not want people to think that I am drunk.”
For Connie Lawn, honours tend to arrive unsought. She is now the Dean of the White House Press Corps, following the death of Helen Lawrence. She has rubbed shoulders with every president from Lyndon Johnson onward, has interviewed more international icons living and dead than practically anyone else on earth. Has skied most of the world’s signature ski slopes and in New Zealand had a race horse named after her. Connie Lawn’s career proves that any obstacle is just an opportunity in disguise and should be treated as such.
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"The National Press Club has the value of being inclusive." Life Member Rt Hon. Jonathan Hunt ONZ
Among those who have spoken to the National Press Club in recent years have been: |
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HE Syed Ibne Abbas |
Dr Liam Fox Ian Fraser Victoria Gaither Nicholas Garland Sir Douglas Graham Nicky Hager Christopher Harder Cynthia Heimel Paul Henry Gerald Hensley Chaim Herzog Charlton Heston Claire Hollingworth Marc Holtzman Michael Horton Barry Humphries Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt Glenda Jackson Paul Johnson Sue Kedgley Thomas Keneally John Key MP Peter Kittakachorn Air Vice Marshall Robin Klitscher Philip Knightley Winnie Laban MP Rt Hon Lee Kuan Yew HH The Dalai Lama Rt Hon David Lange Connie Lawn Judy Lessing Lord Levene Bernard Levin Andrew Little MP Gerald Long Dr Sharon Lord Carolyn Machado Peter Mahon Ron Mark MP HE Otto Mattei Dame Judith Mayhew Murry McCully MP Gerald McGhie Patrick McGovern Hon Don McKinnon Tony Molloy QC Sir Nick Montagu Tony Molloy QC Mike Moore, MP Trevor Morley Malcolm Muggeridge Viscount Monckton |
Dame Thea Muldoon |
Hon solicitor: Jack Hodder LLM
Lifetime Achievement Award Holders
Peter Arnett, Sir Geoffrey Cox, Pat Booth, Frank Haden, Connie Lawn, Sir Terry McLean, Graham Stewart MNZM
Life Members
Denis Adam, Tim Birch, Paul Cavanagh, Catherine de la Roche, Gavin Ellis, Rt Hon. Jonathan Hunt ONZ,
Jack Kelleher, Ralph Lenton, Warren Page, Pat Plunket, Paul Prince, Derek Round MNZM, Graham Stewart, Sir Christopher Harris
Executive Committee and Member Information
The National Press Club Inc President Peter Isaac - Journalist
Vice President
Peter Bush QSM,CNZM - Photo-journalist
Secretary/Treasurer Bryan Weyburne - Retired businessman
Lifetime Achievement Award Holders
Peter Arnett, Sir Geoffrey Cox, Pat Booth, Frank Haden, Connie Lawn, Sir Terry McLean, Graham Stewart MNZM
Life Members
Denis Adam, Tim Birch, Paul Cavanagh, Catherine de la Roche, Gavin Ellis ONZM, Rt Hon. Jonathan Hunt ONZ, Jack Kelleher, Ralph Lenton, Warren Page, Pat Plunket, Paul Prince, Derek Round MNZM, Sir Christopher Harris