In 1979, Arthur Allan Thomas had been in prison for nine years. He had settled into his routine at Pāremoremo of working in the garden. If he still had hopes of release, they must have been starting to fade. There was a note of this in a poignant letter he wrote to Minister of Justice Jim McLay, about this time: “I know little about justice and even less about politics but Ido know that Iam an innocent man and that although the pieces of evidence that convicted me have withered and fallen away over the years my convictions stand still as firm and undoubting as ever.”
McLay, a 34-year-old criminal lawyer from Auckland, had been leap-frogged into one of the top positions in Cabinet after the National Party had won re-election the year before under the magnetic but divisive leadership of Robert Muldoon. Muldoon ran his party and Cabinet like an All Blacks coach of the old school: he was disciplined, ruthless, and usually efficient.
McLay had Auckland pedigree –he was a half-brother of aprevious attorney-general, Peter Wilkinson; his parents were friends of the recently appointed chief justice, Sir Ronald Davison. He’d joined the National Party at 18 and had worked his way up, winning the traditional Labour seat of Birkenhead for National in the 1975 landslide. On the liberal wing of the party, he was thought of as something of a reformer.
When McLay arrived in his ministerial office in the Beehive after the election, among the pile of congratulatory notes from friends and legal colleagues was the letter from Arthur Thomas and one from a well-known judge. After the customary recitation of praise, the latter ended with an unexpected rider: “I hope you will take note of the Arthur Allan Thomas case and his conviction.” McLay put the letters aside, but they stuck in his mind – he knew he would be hearing more about the Thomas case.
