Coates Joseph Gordon Matatoke Northland Nz 1932 1942

edmondsallan -Hello -In July 1932 Coates attended the Imperial Economic Conference, Ottawa, as leader of New Zealand's delegation. After weeks of careful negotiation, the dominions gained a 10 per cent preference over other exporters to Britain for a range of agricultural goods. Coates played a key role in discussions, chairing the group dealing with dairy produce. He did much to promote the success of the conference as a whole, regarding it as a landmark in the economic and constitutional development of the empire.

By the time Coates returned to New Zealand, pressure was building from agricultural interests for devaluation of the New Zealand currency. Coates's farming background convinced him it was essential to boost producers' incomes. Urban commercial interests, Treasury and Downie Stewart opposed this argument. Cabinet eventually accepted Coates's viewpoint and on 20 January 1933 Downie Stewart resigned. Coates became minister of finance. From then until November 1935 he was the driving force in the government. He worked long hours, was methodical, and was always considerate of his staff and officials, who in turn respected him.

Coates spent much of 1933 sorting out with the banks the repercussions of devaluation. He introduced his Small Farms (Relief of Unemployment) Bill to help workers on to the land, and later in the year Parliament passed his Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bill which established a central bank – partly state-owned, partly private – to assist banks to pool their reserves and to take over the issue of banknotes. Over time the Reserve Bank was to become a central feature of governments' monetary policy.

Coates gave himself a degree of independence from Treasury by establishing a brains trust within his own office, consisting of R. M. Campbell, W. B. Sutch and Horace Belshaw. With their help, in 1935 the Mortgage Corporation of New Zealand was established to help farmers refinance loans at lower interest rates while spreading any risk for bonds that were issued by the corporation. With the Rural Mortgagors Final Adjustment Amendment Act 1935 further steps were taken to reduce farmers' overheads in the hope of restoring profitability to the rural sector. The government also took the power to regulate dairy marketing internally.

Conservatives were outraged at the state's encroachments into the marketplace. In October 1934 William Goodfellow of the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company employed A. E. Davy to start a new political party, the Democrat Party, in opposition to the coalition. Coates shrugged off the criticism; as ever he was impervious to ideological debate, seeking only to do what seemed likely to bring New Zealand out of its economic crisis. To this end he was obliged, also, to go quickly to London in April 1935 to forestall an attempt by the British government to withdraw from the meat quotas negotiated by each dominion at Ottawa. He succeeded in patching up an agreement that ran through until 1937.

Back home the government's popularity was low, despite clear signs of the economic recovery Coates had been working for. On 27 November 1935 the coalition went down to a humiliating defeat, Coates almost losing his Kaipara seat. The Democrats split the anti-Labour vote but won no seats. It was Michael Joseph Savage's Labour government that came to power with 53 seats, the coalition being reduced to 20. Once more Coates was out of office, his income drastically reduced, and his family without a home. He was nearly 58, seemingly fit and unbowed by many years of gruelling work.

In March 1936 a group of Coates's friends and constituents held a function in Dargaville in his honour. It was a thanksgiving occasion for his years of service, and Coates was presented with a cheque for £1,000. This enabled him to buy and modify a Public Works Department house, which he erected on the farm. At the end of 1936 his family moved north. Coates's lifestyle slowed somewhat. He and Rodney re-established their partnership, G. & R. Coates, Breeders of Stud Hereford Cattle and Stud Southdown Sheep.

Politically, Coates lowered his profile, although there remained journalists and political supporters who believed him the best-qualified person to lead the New Zealand National Party, which was established by a merger of Reform and United in May 1936. Certainly Coates was much in demand as a speaker, and was the shrewdest parliamentary critic of the government. Within the National Party caucus, however, there were new faces, many of them anxious to break with the political past.

The worsening international scene and the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 led Coates to offer his assistance to the government. He was drawn into the confidence of ministers, and Peter Fraser, who succeeded Savage as prime minister on the latter's death in March 1940, formed a close personal friendship with him. By May 1940 the National Party was urging the formation of a national government. Fraser would not agree. Instead, he asked Coates to join a war cabinet consisting of three government ministers and two from the opposition – Coates and Adam Hamilton. On 16 July Coates was sworn in as a member of the Executive Council. Fraser, realising that Coates had an appetite for hard work and was loyal, commissioned him to look into all aspects of defence preparedness, and the two were in daily contact. Coates travelled the country urging an end to partisan politics, a view that further endeared him to Labour and distanced him from his former National colleagues, especially from the new leader, Sidney Holland.

From mid May until late July 1941 Coates was in the United States and Canada searching for war supplies to boost New Zealand's meagre stocks. In November he was in Fiji discussing the islands' state of readiness to withstand a Japanese attack that seemed increasingly likely. In February 1942, with New Zealand at war with Japan, Coates held discussions in Canberra with Australian prime minister John Curtin and his cabinet about supplies and the need to improve strategic co-operation in the south-west Pacific.

On 30 June 1942 Coates became minister of armed forces and war co-ordination in the short-lived War Administration. When it collapsed because of the withdrawal of National Party members following a controversial settlement of a miners' strike in Huntly, Coates and Hamilton accepted Fraser's invitation to continue in the War Cabinet. Coates now worked even more closely with Fraser, especially over the decision to keep the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force fighting in the Middle East. Coates was openly critical of Holland's reasons for ending the War Administration and there was now an open breach between him and the National Party. In May 1943 Coates began preparing to stand again for Parliament as an independent National candidate.

A strenuous workload meant that Coates had great difficulty getting home at weekends. Nevertheless, he regularly took the express to Auckland on a Friday evening, motoring three hours to Matakohe on the Saturday, then returning on Monday. His heart was beginning to give trouble although he never complained, and only a secretary knew that he had consulted a heart specialist. A lifetime of heavy smoking caught up with him on the afternoon of 27 May 1943 when he collapsed and died in his Wellington office. It was his Labour colleagues and constituents, more than those in his own party, who mourned his passing. He was survived by his wife and daughters.

Assessments of Coates after his death were universally generous. Fraser called him 'a statesman of the front rank' who on the battlefield and elsewhere 'proved himself to be of the truest steel – a trusted counsellor, a true friend and comrade, an intrepid leader'. Newspapers referred to his arresting physique and prodigious energy. Others called his work with roading and electricity generation his enduring monument. Yet it was his courageous approach to the depression, when all about him seemed to have given up hope, that made him a transitional figure between the Liberals of the Seddon–Ward era and the more active state that became a feature of New Zealand governments after 1935. In reading this historical ancestry of " Gordon " I have to admire the man . When you look back and remember where he was born, his youth , the war , then parliment , ask where did he find the time ? He did it all. Till we meet again - Regards - edmondsallan