Candidate predicts bitter campaign

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33063, 2 November 1972, Page 16

Candidate predicts bitter campaign

It was going to be a very bitter General Election campaign, “because the Labour Party must make it this time,” the National Party candidate for Lyttelton, Mr J. Blumsky, told a crowd of about 50 at a street-comer meeting last evening.

"Beware of the Labour Party’s honeyed phrases,” he said. The promises the La-

bour Party made were going to cost money, “and the only place that comes from is out of your pocket.” The “cloth-cap socialism” of 1932 belonged in that time, and not in 1972, he said. A Government must not create class warfare, and it could not represent just “the worker” — it must represent everyone. He had entered politics because he firmly felt that men such as the Prime Minister (Mr Marshall), the Minister of Finance (Mr Muldoon) and the Minister of the Environment (Mr Maclntyre) must be in power in 1972. Mr Blumsky said. There could be an attitude that the National Party had been in power too long: “Let’s try the other mob.” But the Government did not have to offer bribes, or “blow up balloons that are going to float away,” its platform for the election had already been proved,” Mr Blumsky said. He, too, was not going to make a lot of promises, he said. “One thing that I will retain by November 26 will be my dignity.” “If I try to make you change the political views you hold, I am doing it honestly and with sincerity.” Speaking of the Chatham Islands, Mr Blumsky said they were not in desperate straits, and they did not need politicians who were going to “turn them into a prayerboard for beating the rest of the country over the head.” But, if elected, he would work for greater equality of fuel costs between tne islands and New Zealand, as fuel was so vital to the islanders.

The next three years were going to be difficult and dangerous for New Zealand, with Britain entering the E.E.C., and it would be a time when the National Party should be in power, he said.