1984 New Zealand constitutional crisis

[3][4] On the morning of Sunday 15 July, Reserve Bank officials (Reserve Bank Governor Spencer Russell, deputy Roderick Deane, and Treasury Secretary Bernie Galvin) met with the head of the Prime Minister's Department Gerald Hensley, and agreed that the currency market could not open on Monday unless there was a devaluation.

The Reserve Bank officials also wrote a letter to Lange, and a senior Treasury officer unofficially briefed the incoming Finance Minister Roger Douglas on the situation.

[5] After their meeting on Monday morning, Russell and Galvin boarded a flight to Auckland in order to advise Lange, and Deane reluctantly briefed Labour's Deputy Leader Geoffrey Palmer, before escaping from waiting journalists through a back door.

The meeting, which also included Douglas and his incoming associate finance minister David Caygill, took place at Auckland International Airport.

Lange then travelled to unrelated meetings with the U.S. Secretary of State in Ohakea and the Australian Foreign Minister in Wellington, before returning to Auckland.

Muldoon had his press secretary issue a statement that this was untrue, and agreed to a television interview with Richard Harman that evening.

[10] On the morning on Wednesday 18 July,[11] after an emergency caucus meeting, Muldoon relented and agreed to devalue the currency upon Lange's wishes.

[1][12] Cabinet member Jim McLay and Labour party MP Geoffrey Palmer had key roles in persuading Muldoon to step down.

[11] In a 1994 documentary on the crisis, former Cabinet minister Hugh Templeton confirmed that McLay, working with Bill Birch and Jim Bolger, was ready to approach the Governor-General, Sir David Beattie to have Muldoon removed as Prime Minister (Beattie had suggested he could remove Muldoon prior to the Cabinet meeting on 19 July).

This mini-series, written by Greg McGee and Tom Scott, starred Mark Mitchell as Lange and Ian Mune as Muldoon.