Who was John Ballance?
John Ballance was born in 1839 in a cottage next to the Ballance House, Glenavy, Northern Ireland.
His father was a tenant farmer on the Hertford Estate, but John was disinterested in farming.
He left school at fourteen and subsequently was apprenticed to the hardware trade in Belfast.		 At eighteen he left Ireland never to return.
He went to Birmingham, still in the ironmongery business but always striving for self-improvement.
In 1863 he married Fanny Taylor and because of her ill health, decided to join her brother in Wanganui, New Zealand.
He established the “Evening Herald”, later to become the “Wanganui Herald”.
Taken from a portrait of John Ballance by J Lee Cole.
During the Maori Wars of the 1860s, his editorials in the Herald often challenged aspects of military policy relating to land disputes with the local Maori.
Fanny sadly died in 1868 and in 1870, Ballance married Ellen Anderson. In 1875 he succeeded in entering Parliament. The spheres of economy and land use were where he made his reputation – fairness and protection of Maori rights, and influence in the establishment of the modern welfare state.
When he was elected Premier, it was the beginning of the first great burst of social legislation in N.Z. He was instrumental in New Zealand giving women the vote – a world first.
John Ballance’s leadership qualities ensured that his Liberal Party was able to retain office for twenty years. A contemporary cartoon shows him firing the cannon of land tax to dispel the clouds of depression, thus earning him the nickname of ‘The Rainmaker’.
Sadly he died at the age of 54 – the first Prime Minister to die in office. Around the base of his statue in Wellington are the words ‘He loved The People’ – a fitting epitaph for a man of deep compassion, great integrity and high principles.