“Dog-fights over Govt leadership”

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32776, 29 November 1971, Page 2

“Dog-fights over Govt leadership”

(New Zealand Press AAiociation)

HASTINGS, November 28.

The country ’s problems could not be solved while dog-fights for party leadership were going on, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Kirk) said at a public meeting in Hastings last night.

Mr Kirk said there was no basis for principle, no leadership, no certainty of decision, and no conscious awareness of where the Government wanted to go, except to stay in office.

Problems were piling up, and just enough was being done to tide things over while seven people were knifing each other in the back, both privately and in public, over who should take over the leadership. What was needed was a clear declaration of objectives in leadership, encouragement and fostering of the whole concept of nationhood. No member of the Government offered objectives for which the people could strive. How could there be leadership in a party that was split down the middle, asked Mr Kirk. Government members were fighting each other over their own political am-

bitions. “That is a kind of luxury the country cannot afford at this time,” said' Mr Kirk. The National Development Conference was directing the whole of its thinking to (wealth, no matter how it affected housing and family ! life. “That sort of planning disclosed a lack of social knowledge and human understanding. The emphasis on monetary values was a betrayal of human rights. \ “If we ignore our social (problems, we will build in -New Zealand a society of I greed and a society in which I wealth would accumulate, and those accumulating it I will be terrified of losing it (because of the social forces generated.” He said that sort of thing! had already happened in; America, and he did not think l the people of New Zealand

wanted it to happen in their country. Mr Kirk also said the dollar had lost 54 per cent of its buying power since 1957. When a family man bought a pound of meat it would be an offence for the butcher to give him short weight. Short weight from the grocer was also an offence.

“If you are paid for your work a dollar that since 1957 has lost 54 per cent of its purchasing power, that is the sort of measure that is liable to end up in a knighthood for someone,” he said. Mr Kirk said that the people who worked the hardest were being knocked back by the Government’s taxation policy. Overtime was not worth while, because of the taxation it attracted.