RIP Hamish Price

Very sad that Hamish Price has died. I’ve known him for almost 30 years. My strongest earliest memory of Hamish was at a public meeting in Loaves and Fishes Hall in Wellington where he loudly asked Winston Peters if he would apologise to Selwyn Cushing (whom he had been found guilty of defaming). Winston got Hamish evicted.

Hamish was Nikki Kaye’s campaign manager for Auckland Central all four successful campaigns. It is fair to say that being Nikki’s campaign manager wasn;’t the easiest job in politics, but Hamish would spend months working full-time for no pay to help get Nikki over the line.

He had a wicked, often inappropriate, sense of humour. He blogged for a few years as Insolent Prick and not even his friends could work out when he was being serious and when he was trolling.

Despite his ability to be extremely undiplomatic, he also had the ability to be very diplomatic. He was one of the brightest people around on foreign policy and trade (his father was a diplomat) and he was a very trusted advisor to Todd McClay in the Key/English Government. He went out of his way to be as bipartisan as possible, and I recall him saying he always pressed MFAT to give Jane Kelsey access to documents etc – despite their different worldviews.

In the 2020 election he hit the spotlight while with Judith Collins, and his blue shoes even got their own Twitter account.

A nice tribute to him from Kate Freeman and also from Aaron Gilmore.

He had been battling Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma this past year, and generally responding well to treatment. But sadly it spread quickly, and he died very suddenly. He will be missed by his many many friends.

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