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Former Minister Russell Marshall Dies Aged 88
Russell Marshall, the Methodist minister who became a Labour Cabinet minister, has died aged 88.
He held a variety of Cabinet posts in the Lange and Palmer administrations of the 1980s and served as High Commissioner to London in the early 2000s.
Marshall was born in Nelson in 1936 and was educated at Nelson College before training as a teacher and then as a Methodist minister.
He graduated from Trinity Methodist Theological College in 1960 and was a minister until 1971.
Although his father had been the secretary for the Nelson Labour Party, Marshall did not join the party until he was 32 and was quickly spotted by the Labour leader, Norman Kirk.
He was asked to stand for the Whanganui seat in the 1972 election, which Labour won in a landslide victory.
Along the way, he lost his Christian faith and became an atheist but credited his church background with shaping his political career and his stance on social issues such as homosexual law reform and apartheid.
His liberal views led an opposition politician to refer to him as the Red Reverend.
RIP Russell Marshall: a longtime parliamentary colleague from #Whanganui who served as Minister for Education & then Foreign Affairs in 4th Labour Govt; was later NZ High Commissioner to UK. Always a principled voice. @NZinUK @nzlabour @MFATNZ https://t.co/lJxswz7l1Z pic.twitter.com/CJnDXVW8sU
Advertisement - scroll to continue reading— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) January 18, 2025
When Labour took power in 1984, Marshall entered Cabinet as minister of education and environment.
Later, he held the foreign affairs and Pacific Island affairs portfolios.
There were several difficult issues during his watch as foreign affairs minister, including coups in Fiji, the after-effects of the Rainbow Warrior bombing, and the country's nuclear-free policy.
He retired from politics just before the 1990 election, disillusioned with the adversarial nature of parliament.
He said in his valedictory speech that he had come to believe much of what happened in the chamber, as distinct from the select committees, was almost totally meaningless.
After leaving politics, he continued his formal education, graduating with a BA from Victoria University in 1993.
He took up several public positions, including chair of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO, and chair of Education New Zealand and the New Zealand branch of Polytechnics International.
He was a member of Commonwealth Observer Groups in Lesotho, Seychelles and South African elections and a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Trust.
He became pro-chancellor and then chancellor of Victoria University and served as New Zealand's high commissioner to London from 2002 to 2005.
Marshall was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977, the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal in 1990, and became a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2001.
In a post on X, former prime minister Helen Clark called Marshall a "principled voice".
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