National Party Conference Speakers On TV For First Time

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30809, 22 July 1965, Page 6

National Party Conference Speakers On TV For First Time

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 21. Hotel accommodation will be at a premium in Dunedin next week-end when 450 delegates and observers arrive for the two-day 29th annual Dominion conference of the National Party, the first held in Dunedin since 1959.

Almost all Government Ministers and members of Parliament will attend for the first day, Saturday, but there will be a noticeable thinning out of Parliamentary delegates when most return on the Sunday to be present at ceremonies to mark the centenary of Parliamentary Government in Wellington on the Monday.

The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) will attend the conference, and will give the customary leader’s address on the Saturday night. He will leave Dunedin early on the Monday morning in time) to be present at the Parlia-1 mentary celebrations. 55 Remits Delegates will have before them this year an agenda of 55 remits. As in 1963 and last year, the main bulk of them will be dealt with in four working committees, which will report their conclusions to the full conference. Ten remits will be dealt with entirely in plenary session. These include two on defence, two on liquor licensing, three on party matters—election campaigning, party subscriptions and public relations—and others on the term of Parliament, lottery profits, and a second television channel. This year’s conference will mark the National Party’s first experience of full television coverage. Instead of “catching the chairman’s eye” and speaking from their seats in the Dunedin Town Hall, delegates will have to move up to a central rostrum in front of the stage and speak under the glare of television lights. A camera on an elevated platform in the centre of the

hall may film their contributions, depending on the judgment of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation 1 programme director Mr Waldo Maguire. The delegates themselves will not know whether or not they are being recorded. Others constantly under the glare of lights will be the main official grouping on the platform notably the Prime Minister, the party president. Mr J. S. Meadowcroft, and the general director, Mr R. F. Wilson. The N.Z.B.C. is sending a television “team” of nine to the conference from Wellington. They will work under the direction of Mr Maguire, who has had some 10 years' experience in directing similar political programmes for the 8.8. C. in Britain. There will be three other Ministerial addresses besides that of the Prime Minister, the speakers being Messrs Marshall. Eyre and Kinsella Held in conjunction with the conference will be Dominion-level meetings of the party’s Maori Advisory and Organisation Committee and its junior section.