OBITUARY Priscilla Jane Williams QSO

17 June 1940–17 June 2024

Priscilla Williams QSO, a leading New Zealand diplomat, died on 17 June 2024. As one of our earliest women ambassadors, she blazed a trail through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She was committed to quality advocacy on behalf of New Zealand and, in particular, to the strategic advantage of multilateralism for advancing the interests of our distant, trading, liberal democracy and its regional Asian and Pacific partners. In her long career Priscilla led New Zealand’s responses to numerous trans-boundary problems — climate change, human rights, regional poverty and trade disadvantage — while forging strong bilateral relationships.

Priscilla Williams was a direct descendant of three Anglican bishops. Her great-great-grandfather was William Williams, an early church missionary and te reo Anglican scholar and New Zealand’s first bishop of Waiapu; her great-grandfather Bishop Leonard Williams was the third bishop of Waiapu; and her grandfather Bishop Herbert Williams was the sixth bishop of Waiapu; Herbert’s son, Canon Nigel Williams, was her father. Priscilla was born in Wanganui in 1940, after her parents returned from Malaya to take up a parish position in Marton.

With her beloved older sister Sheila, Priscilla attended the prestigious Nga Tawa Diocesan School, which later honoured her as a female role model. From 1958 to 1961 Priscilla attended Victoria University of Wellington (Te Herenga Waka) graduating with an MA in history. A revised version of her research essay for that degree, ‘New Zealand at the 1930 Imperial Conference’, was published in 1971.

When she first applied to join the Department of External Affairs’ diplomatic service in the early 1960s, Priscilla was advised that she would have been accepted ‘had she been a man’. The following year she was invited to re-apply by the secretary of external affairs, Alister McIntosh, because of a shortage of male applicants due to the dip in war-time births. She was officially taken into the diplomatic stream as a ‘research assistant’ as this was still the period when women were given a lower rank on recruitment, expected to resign upon marriage and almost never given overseas postings.

It is difficult to imagine how high the barriers to women’s professional success were at that time. While the department was comparatively progressive, McIntosh was cautious and rigorous in building its quality and had decided to employ women as a temporary measure rather than lower its entry standards. With Priscilla more than meeting the criteria, her exceptional career took off in November 1961. She was sophisticated, intelligent and energetic, ready to continue the intellectual nationbuilding of her forebears, combined with her Yorkshire mother’s direct and practical caring approach. She got the measure of people and complex situations quickly and was an excellent judge of people.

McIntosh had recently expanded New Zealand’s overseas offices into South-east Asia. Priscilla was well prepared to take up her first posting at the high commission in Kuala Lumpur in April 1964 after a year looking after foreign students attending New Zealand institutions under the Colombo Plan for Pacific and Asian Commonwealth countries, and a year as the Southeast Asia desk officer in the department’s Asia Division. In Kuala Lumpur she undertook political and aid work.

Priscilla forged her long multilateral career on her return to Wellington in October 1966, with a two-year stint in the United Nations Division before being posted in January 1969 to the New Zealand Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, where she represented New Zealand at the United Nations Second Committee (Economic/Development) and the Third Committee (Human Rights/Social). At that time Priscilla was one of few women diplomats on the world stage and in 1972 was a member of New Zealand’s delegation to the First World Environment Conference, Stockholm. Its declaration set the agenda for efforts to address global environmental degradation, an issue to which she was committed throughout her long career.

Back in Wellington (1973–76), Priscilla had various management roles (including heading the ministry’s Property Division) and in 1975 was a New Zealand delegate to the First United Nations World Conference on Women in Mexico, and then to the UN General Assembly in 1975, representing New Zealand at the First Committee (Disarmament).

A three-year posting to Bangkok as deputy head of mission and consul-general followed, with accreditations to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Her travel was prodigious, in Asia and the Pacific and elsewhere.

After a time as head of Information in head office in Wellington, Priscilla was appointed high commissioner to Tonga (July 1983–October 1985), one of a handful of women serving as heads of mission. In Tonga she oversaw the construction of a new chancery building, which was opened by Prime Minister David Lange in 1985.

From 1986 to 1989 Priscilla served as deputy high commissioner to Australia. This was during the fraught years following the deep differences between New Zealand and its ANZUS partners. This posting reflected the ministry’s confidence in Priscilla’s abilities to help maintain New Zealand’s most important political and economic relationship.

Priscilla’s reliability in getting things done was also recognised by her appointment as high commissioner to India in 1989 to oversee the building of the new chancery in New Delhi (opened in 1992). It was a defining role following the restoration of the important relationship with India that she filled with aplomb after the success of her illustrious predecessor, Sir Edmund Hillary.

In Wellington from 1993 to 1998 Priscilla directed New Zealand’s multilateral activities through a network of New Zealand diplomats at home and abroad, first, as head of the Environment Division and then of the United Nations and Commonwealth Division. A creative thinker, superb networker and formidably experienced multilateralist, Priscilla was generous in sharing her experience and mentoring younger colleagues and new recruits. During her tenure in Environment Division she worked and gained acceptance for the raft of new processes and commitments that were emerging internationally through her representation at many international and regional environmental conferences. These included United Nations Environment Programme meetings, the Conference on Small Island States held in Barbados in 1994 and the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes, leading the New Zealand negotiations on the Pacific Convention on Hazardous Wastes. She contributed the chapter on the environment for the publication New Zealand as an International Citizen (Wellington, 1995) edited by Malcolm Templeton.

Priscilla also represented New Zealand at many international conferences on United Nations and Commonwealth matters, including the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, the World Social Summit in Copenhagen 1995 and the International Habitat Conference in Istanbul 1996. In charge of Commonwealth policy work for the period when New Zealand hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Auckland in 1995 and subsequently when New Zealand was its chair, Priscilla shaped New Zealand’s approach and support for their initiatives.

From 1998 to 2002, Priscilla was New Zealand’s consulgeneral in Sydney, Australia. Further testimony to her formidable diplomatic talents was demonstrated by her role in the commemoration of the Glebe Island Bridge that was about to be re-named the Anzac Bridge with a statue of an Australian digger installed at one end. With her characteristic persistence and persuasiveness, Priscilla succeeded in convincing the local authorities to recognise the New Zealand contribution to the Anzac story by committing to erect a memorial statue of a New Zealand soldier at the other end. The Anzac Memorial and plaque with both countries’ coats-of-arms were officially unveiled by NSW Premier Bob Carr MP on Anzac Day 2000 with Priscilla in attendance.

Priscilla was a true professional, who embraced every posting and assignment with enthusiasm and energy and, occasionally, bravado. In 1994 while leading the New Zealand delegation to the first global Conference on Small Island States in Barbados, she boldly managed to seat herself next to Fidel Castro, whom she succeeded in charming to the consternation of his bodyguards.

With typical humour, Priscilla admitted some of her flashes of inspiration were risky. In Sydney, for example, she memorably arranged for mountain-climbing Prime Minister Helen Clark to climb the Sydney harbour bridge, only to find when they reached the top that lightning struck. Upon hearing of Priscilla’s death, Clark tweeted:

RIP Priscilla Williams: an outstanding NZ diplomat who served with distinction in a range of posts. Priscilla once hosted me in Tonga giving me insights into how effective our hard-working diplomats can be. Priscilla was a great character with a strong sense of humour.

In 2004 Priscilla was appointed a companion of the Queen’s Service Order for public services.

Enmeshed in the intellectual life of Wellington, Priscilla’s pace did not slow upon ‘retirement’ from the Foreign Ministry in April 2002. From 1995 until her death, she was a trustee and honorary secretary of the Henry and William Williams Memorial Museum Trust. Her advocacy for the long-term protection of New Zealand’s history and heritage was significant. She followed a period as an executive member of the Government Superannuitants Association (2006–10) with ten years as an active committee member of Historic Places Wellington.

She lived in a beautiful house in Kinross St bordering the 4.5 acres of the Victorian-era Bolton Street Cemetery, where most of Wellington’s early citizens were buried. She devoted herself to the curation of its historic and aesthetic surroundings, protecting and enhancing its legacy as one of Wellington’s most interesting and beautiful public spaces. She served as president of the Friends of the Bolton St Cemetery from 2005 to 2016 and remained actively involved in securing its future until her death from cancer on her 84th birthday.

Reflecting the love and admiration so many had for Priscilla, St Peter’s on Willis (of which she was a long-time member of the congregation) was packed to its sizeable rafters with friends and colleagues (and many more via zoom). Her death was just days before she was to unveil a heritage plaque for that magnificent wooden Wellington church.

Felicity Wong and Denise Almao

NOTE

1. Priscilla Williams, ‘New Zealand at the 1930 Imperial Conference’, New Zealand Journal of History, vol 5, no 1 (1971).