Michael Joseph Savage Memorial

This guide to the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial in Auckland follows the country's first Labour prime minister, who hid a fatal diagnosis through an election campaign to keep pushing pensions and state housing, and died in office in 1940 as huge crowds lined his funeral route. It traces how his clifftop tomb came to stand on Bastion Point, land held by Ngati Whatua, and the decades of dispute that followed, including a 506-day occupation in 1977. Listen at the reflecting pool for the best view of the mausoleum.