The Press WEDNESDAY, JULY, 30, 1969. National Party Looks To The Polls

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32053, 30 July 1969, Page 16

The Press WEDNESDAY, JULY, 30, 1969. National Party Looks To The Polls

Party conferences do not win elections and the most confident and inspiring forecasts of success are not portents; but they can help to oil a political machine and set the mood of an election campaign. Last week-end the National Party let slip no opportunity to make its conference serve these ends. The main purpose of such meetings is usually to allow representatives from all electorates to battle out collective opinions on all manner of topics and present them to the party leadership. Taking a lead from the Ministers who spoke to the conference, the delegates, for the most part, saw to it that their submissions were temperate, manageable, consistent with over-all policy, and consistent with each other. Rural electorates had their way with a handful of remits designed to assist fanners. Only one was contested in the full conference; support for a subsidy on fertiliser was won by the narrowest margin. Urban electorates had no difficulty in winning both the interest and support of farmer delegates for remits that most concerned city dwellers. The Minister of Labour, Mr Shand, returned to the theme of industrial relations with which he impressed last year’s conference. His advice prevailed when the delegates voted on remits dealing with union membership and industrial unrest. Young members of the party seem to have gained a footing in the conference for which they no longer have to fight rather self-consciously. Although spirited conflict was not absent from the debates, the divisions of opinion in the conference related to subjects rather than factions. Very few of the objects of policy approved by the conference would have seemed out of place in a conference of the Labour Party; but if this thought occurred to any delegates last week-end they were regularly reminded from the platform that the party had its own, distinctive, ideas about how to achieve ends on which most electors are agreed.

The main outcome of the conference was not, however, the list of approved remits: these, and other remits passed at the last two annual conferences, will no doubt be considered for. inclusion in the party’s election manifesto. The recommendations of the National Development Conference have clearly provided another important source of policy; for the nature of the planning envisaged by the N-D.C. fits happily into the party’s view of how best to advance the welfare of citizens and the growth of the economy. The main outcome was that delegates and observers received a briefing for the General Election campaign. Even the most cynical observer of this conference would have to admit that the Parliamentary section and the Dominion council of the party were remarkably effective in this department They set out to demonstrate that the Government has been making the right decisions and that it is equipped to go on doing so for another term. The party leader, Mr Holyoake, made one of his best conference speeches; and the reaction of his audience, both on and off the conference floor, left no doubt that he remained in the minds of delegates an unchallenged leader. This was a conference very different from that which met in 1967 after by-election set-backs in the midst of economic recession and from that of 1968 when the party was still not sure whether it was in the wilderness. Although electoral boundary changes and their probable effects on the voting still nag at the hopes of the party, the conference did much to restore its self-confidence.