Audience Of 35 For Keynesian Candidate

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31225, 24 November 1966, Page 18

Audience Of 35 For Keynesian Candidate

“The other parties refuse to come to grips with the increasing illegitimacy rate because it is too controversial,” the Keynesian Progress Party candidate for St. Albans, Mr M. D. Sadler, told a meeting in the St. Albans School Hall last evening. There was an attendance of 35. About a dozen persons left during Mr Sadler’s address, one elderly man saying, “Sorry—l want to go and hear Keith Holyoake.” To counter illegitimacy, Mr Sadler advocated the provision of information on birth control to senior secondary school pupils. Parents should have the right to exclude their children from this instruction, he said. “People should not be forced to follow a certain view on sexual morality just because of avoidable consequences,” he said. “I don’t think the old religious ideas on chastity still hold.” He admitted his views on sexual morality were purely personal, but he hoped his party would issue a statement on the subject soon. Speaking on Vietnam, he said that as New Zealand troops were there, they should be used as a lever to try to alter United States policy. New Zealand could tell the United States that the troops would be withdrawn if

bombing of North Vietnam and South Vietnamese villages did not stop. The Keynesian party supported the enclave policy proposed by 20 liberal United States senators: instead of aiming for a military victory, efforts should be concentrated on building up democracy and prosperity in areas already held by the South Vietnam Government. Mr Sadler outlined a scheme for the compulsory saving of 6d in the £ for the establishment of industry in under-developed countries. These countries could build factories by deficit financing; New Zealand would supply plant and machinery; and the manufactured products could be sold in return for New Zealand exports. The plan would help to provide more secure markets for New Zealand, he said. He compared a National Party pamphlet with the comedian Peter Sellars’s “party political speech.” “What cannot be excused is the National Party’s . . . use of vague waffle and smear to get by on all occasions,” he said. “The basis of Social Credit on this earth, with its glorious promises, is very similar to that of nineteenth-century Christianity, with its promises of heavenly rewards to come.”

The Labour Party thought in terms of isolated industrial development whereas the Keynesian party thought of industry in co-operation with under-developed countries. “We think one should aim for a four-day week, with the fifth day devoted to cultural activities, etc.,” he said. “We would like to see a really major multi-storey building development around areas at least the size of four football fields, to be used for gardening and recreation. It would have been far better if the £9m spent on the tunnel had been spant on such a project.”

One of his party’s policies was to encourage the good employer and the honest worker, he said. To end his speech, Mr Sadler read an extract from his “unpublished novel set in Fiji.”