N.Z. people “becoming timid”

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32895, 19 April 1972, Page 18

N.Z. people “becoming timid”

New Zealanders at all levels were becoming timid, bad mannered and selfish, said Mr A. R. Guthrey, the former Mayor of Christchurch, in an Anzac address to the Christchurch Tin Hat Club last evening. At present, New Zealand had less unemployment, less poverty, less internal disturbances than any country in the world, said Mr Guthrey, but this did not seem to be appreciated.

New Zealand had an absence of graft in high places and political integrity of a high order. It also had a fine Police Force which deserved and needed the public’s active support, said Mr GuthHe said that a trend towards violent protest was disturbing because the situation was becoming difficult to combat without more violence. “What is even more disturbing, is that the supporters of permissiveness and violence are increasingly coming from intellectuals and university students whose training should make them the friends of reason and the enemies of violence.” NEWS MEDIA

Mr Guthrey criticised the news media for providing protesters with too much publicity which, he said, onlv encouraged them. The argument of the protesters seemed to be that as the present system took a long time to redress a grievance, the citizen had the right to short-circuit the legal procedures bv violence, even to destroying the system itself, he said.

"Tolerance and permissiveness are all very well, but how do you keep power from the hands of bullies? What do you do in the real world? Not

the one that would exist if all men were honest and decent, but the one that does exist because some men are not. “Are we to allow dignified and meaningful ceremonies to be disrupted? Are we to allow a handful of selfish people to cause undue economic hardship to thousands of innocent people?” “How tolerant can we afford to be? Common sense tells us that wars will occur in the future. Reasonable pre-

paration does not cause them, but might well make them of briefer duration and far less expensive in human lives,” said Mr Guthrey. A former officer in the Twentieth Battalion, and holder of a Military Cross, Mr Guthrey spoke of the “spirit of Anzac,” the Commonwealth Games, and the importance of tradition, loyalty and respect for authority. Even the New Zealander who won the Victoria Cross

and Bar, Mr C. H. Upham, was a rebel, said Mr Guthrey, but one with a difference. “Today, he would have been a protester, but in the final analysis he had respect for authority and he knew the value of discipline.” STANDING OVATION Mr Guthrey began his address by thanking the Tin Hat Club for inviting him to address the club on the “spirit of Anzac.” “It’s nice to be wanted again,” he said. Mr Guthrey was given a standing oVation—-the second given to a visiting speaker in the club's 27-year history. The first was to the Duke of Edinburgh. Moving a vote of thanks to the speaker, the president of the Christchurch Returned Services Association (Mr J. Green) thanked Mr Guthrey for the support he gave the R.S.A. when he was in office as mayor. “You did not go wrong in your actions and you had every former serviceman behind you,” said Mr Green, in an obvious reference to a previous Anzac Day observance and the laying of an unauthorised wreath.