Several people linked with political parties founded by Mr Anderton, who died early yesterday, made that point yesterday, and praised him as a "man of principle" and courage.
He had helped keep alive a tradition of left-wing views, through his refusal, in 1989, to support the sale of the Bank of New Zealand, and his subsequent resignation from the Labour Party, and founding of the New Labour Party and the Alliance Party, they said.
Former Alliance Party co-leader Victor Billot, of Dunedin, said Mr Anderton’s courageous resignation and his founding of the New Labour Party and the Alliance Party had made a "very major impact" on New Zealand politics.
His "major achievement" had been that he "really stopped" the Labour Party’s then drift towards being a "right-wing, free-market" party, and his "personal leadership" had been influential "at a critical time" in the 1990s.
"He pulled New Zealand politics back towards the middle ground."
A former deputy prime minister in the Clark government, Mr Anderton had proved as politically influential, in the long term, as some prime ministers.
His views and those of the Alliance had been "vindicated" in many of the policies adopted by the recently-elected Sixth Labour Government, although the Alliance favoured more rapid policy progress, Mr Billot said.
Critics had once attacked Mr Anderton as "Stalinist" and a "loony left-winger".
But he was far from a radical left-winger, and was a man of traditional Labour beliefs, a committed Catholic and former businessman and exporter, Mr Billot said.
University of Otago Emeritus Prof Jim Flynn, a former Dunedin North Alliance Party candidate and long-serving former member of the party’s national executive, was "very sad" to hear of Mr Anderton’s death.
"Jim Anderton was always a highly principled advocate of people in New Zealand that he felt got a raw deal — I call them ‘dispossessed’," Prof Flynn said.
