GayNZ.com offers its own unique bottom-up view of David Lange’s career:

“In a GLBT-related piece of political irony of Shakespearean
proportions, the infamous Sir Robert Muldoon sowed the seeds of
his own political destruction when he unwittingly paved the way for his nemesis,
David Lange, to enter the
political ring.

“It all started in July 1975 when a police officer spoke to the
Hon. Colin Moyle, MP and Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Science in the
third Labour Government, after noticing him lingering suspiciously around a
Harris Street, Wellington, public toilet – a well-known cruising beat in those
pre-Homosexual Law Reform days…”

Muldoon referred in Parliament to Moyle “being picked up by the police
for homosexual activities… Colin Moyle resigned from
Parliament… His departure paved the way for David Lange to be elected as the
next MP for that south Auckland seat.”

GayNZ is being slightly unfair to Muldoon. He defended National MP Marilyn Waring’s sexual orientation
and was also prepared to support the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Muldoon had also known the
information for a long time and only raised it after Moyle attacked his former
accounting firm. Much of the damage to Moyle also came about from his
inconsistent explanations as to what had occurred eighteen months earlier, and
the failure of his leader to support him.

The GayNZ report is also slightly wrong, as Moyle had resigned
from Parliament to re-contest his seat, but realised he’d made a mistake when David Lange put his hand up for
pre-selection, and the Labour Party jumped at the offer.

The Moyle Affair took place in a period when all Australian police
forces had their special branches spending a lot of time keeping their eyes
peeled for homosexuals, viewing them all as possible communists.

Of course, it might be a complete coincidence, but in the year
between the Moyle Affair and Premier Don Dunstan’s famous falling out
with Police Commissioner Harold Salisbury, one Mike Rann moved from being a New Zealand political journalist
to working for Don Dunstan.