Speaking to candidates

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33065, 4 November 1972, Page 19

Speaking to candidates

(Ken Coates)

RAKAIA

Mr C. C. A. McLachlan, National Party Member of Parliament for Ashburton, will contest the newly named Rakaia electorate. In the last election, he gained a majority of 2590. The Labour Party’s candidate is Mr H, A. Clark, a social worker. A Social Credit stalwart, Mr R. H. Hooper, of Kirwee, will be the league’s candidate, and the New Democrat candidate is Mr E. V. Wall, a retired man who says he is not interested in publicity and concedes that he will just be a name on a ballot paper. Mrs A. C. Begg, who was to stand as a Liberal Party candidate, has withdrawn.

Mr Richard Hooper, aged 58, employed as an engineer at Kirwee, is apparently a man who does not believe in wasted effort. He says bluntly: “don’t pretend that I will be knocking on doors and campaigning; it is a waste of effort, and anyway the electorate is too big to get around. “Campaigning is not necessary as people have already made up their minds. The message will be given through our leader.” Mr Hooper stood for Social Credit in the Ashburton electorate in 1957. With his son, he had his own engineering business at Kirwee for over 12 years but has relinquished this. Asked why he was standing, Mr Hooper said he came forward because the league had not had candidates who could measure up to the policy of monetary reform.. He says he is interested in the need for conservation of land and water resources and considers adequate measures should be brought down to safeguard these.

“Any perceptive social worker is bound to seek social or political action as a way of changing society’s attitudes.” This comment comes from a Labour candidate, Mr H. A. Clarke, supervising psychiatric social worker at Sunnyside Hospital, who is making his first venture into national politics. Married with four children of school age, he has taken six weeks unpaid leave and is living in the Ashburton area. He sees his family at week-ends. “I think the seat can be won, but I am a realist enough to know that a great deal of sophisticated organisation is necessary,” he says. Mr Clarke contends that different areas in his electorate have different needs —Lincoln’s may be different from Methven, and Methven’s may differ from Ashburton’s. “This is why my main interest may well be in the field of regional development which is the key to

the development of Canterbury,” he adds. “Irrigation may well be a need in some areas, but others may benefit from better dry land grass farming. “In the election a great deal depends on who has the best organisation, who understands the needs of the people best, and who communicates best.” He considers main issues this election will be things which affect people as individuals. “The voting population has never been better educated and is also younger than it has ever been,” he adds.

As Mr Clarke sees it, there is one quarter of the voting population in Ashburton town and another quarter in Lincoln, Leeston, Prebbleton, Rolleston, and Templeton. The populations of country townships are largely decreasing as people move to the North Island or to Christchurch, he says. Establishing big industries is a superficial view of regional development, in his view, and people need to be taught to use the natural assets of primary produce in new ways.

“As it is, schools seem intent on turning out bank clerks and other semi-pro-fessional people for whom there are no jobs in the area.”

Appropriately Mr Clarke was born in Ashburton. He has been Labour orientated since his family’s business failed in the depression. “People who don’t know me, know my father, or knew my grandfather,” he says. SOCIAL SERVICES In planning to meet as many people as possible and learn of area’s needs, he adds that he is aware that there is great resentment that the sitting member lives in Christchurch and does not service the electorate.

“My opposition will not be the sitting member but the established farmer with a large holding, although I believe Labour has something to offer him too — it is in his interests that we have a country we can be proud of, and that the village shop is a viable proposition.” Age'd 36, Mr Clarke left school at the age of 15. After being apprenticed to a horticulturalist he trained as a primary schoolteacher and after a period of teaching transferred to the child welfare service. He gained a diploma in social services from Victoria University. He says his work stems from a liking for working with people, and his present post at Sunnyside gives scope for a considerable degree of professional satisfaction.

Mr Clarke is strongly critical of New Zealand’s social services which, he says, have failed to develop to meet the needs of the people. Much work needs to be done with families in primary prevention, and to restoring relative value to benefits. Social services need to be reorganised, rather than concentrating on more and more police, and a decentralised system with regional autonomy would be best, he considers.

Nothing in life can be achieved without discipline, says Mr C. C. A. McLachlan who has strong views on law and order. The breakdown of discipline, he says, goes back to the days when Dr Beeby was education director and his “play-way system.” “Somewhere along the line discipline was lost in certain sections and some people are more or less spitting at the law,” he adds. “Even a Member of Parliament is not respected today as he was 30 years ago. “I’m told the story of Sir Heaton Rhodes who went to Tai Tapu; someone shouted at him and he told them: ‘I will not be back. I am the member of Parliament, and that man was rude to me.’ “Imagine a politician trying to say that today. I was scared of a policeman when I was young, they are not scared of him any more.” Mr McLachlan recalls that after the shooting of the Ashburton constable he felt the day might come when the police might have to be armed. But the police had advised him afterwards this would result in them having to shoot it out, and no-one would be much better off. “At a meeting at Tai Tapu which I attended with Mr Muldoon I saw the police getting pushed and

shoved around,” he says. “I said I would not stand for that and asked the police why they did not belt them?

“I was told that if in Court the following morning someone had a bruise the police would have to account for the fact they might have mishandled the person. If somebody does that sort of thing, the police have to be given more protection under the act.”

Asked to comment on the police assurances that the law contains adequate provision against violence, Mr McLachlan said much of the trouble lay in enforcement of penalties by Magistrates. Someone who deliberately offended against law and order, disrupted a political meeting and flicked off a policeman’s helmet should be sent to gaol for two months. That would make them think.

Warming to his subject, the M.P. for Ashburton criticises what he calls, “a world-wide festering sore against the Establishment. “I will say, and this might cost me some votes, that the churches have helped it. They want us to go to meetings during the election campaign and explain these things. “My father was an elder of the Presbyterian Church and we went to church on Sunday, but we did not get into politics.

“Now they are saying to a politician, ‘you account for what you have done,’ and they' bring young people along who say let’s put McLachlan and Muldoon up on the platform and give them hell and tell them what they’ve done. In my day this sort of thing didn't happen. “This is the ‘against the Establishment’ move and they don’t know they are destroying democracy.” LOCAL ISSUES It would be misleading to suggest Mr Colin McLachlan is preoccupied with law and order. Asked to review his last three years in Parliament he points to persuading the Government to build Ashburton College, getting rid of land tax and being associated with formulation of the Government’s policy on irrigation. “People don’t realise when you get into Parliament you can’t be a knowall on all things so you specialise,” he adds. “My committees have been finance, transport and I have spent much time on accident compensation. I have been chairman of that committee.”

Asked what concerned people in his electorate, Mr McLachlan said farmers had to get irrigation off the ground, “and we will do this.” It was probably slower than some people wanted, but would change the face of the whole Canterbury Plains. “I foresee, if we get jet freighters, that the Canterbury Plains will become the market garden of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. That is looking a fair way ahead, and we must have irrigation to do it.”

He says he has been investigating coastal barge transport because “the thing that is stifling us is the cost of transport between the two islands.” But between $l4 and $l7 million would not be forthcoming in capital investment before the Railways Department would agree not to undercut and the marine unions would play along with barging. Such a scheme would allow Canterbury farmers to export for example, barley and potatoes, at a reasonable cost. KEEPING IN TOUCH

Another matter bn which Mr McLachlan has emphatic views is the demands made on him as a local M.P. and a Parliamentarian busy with duties in Wellington. “I believe,” he says, “the people elected me to represent them in Wellington. I hope people can realise that although I make myself available always to someone who has a problem, there is so much pressure that I cannot go to every bunfight, sit there and just carry a flag as a member of Parliament.”

He is quick to point out that he does accept as many invitations in the large rural electorate as possible. “I have a map and I don’t mind whether its the football or tennis club so long as I keep appearing in a different place. It would be quite wrong to be appearing say three times in Methven and turning down three invitations at Leeston.”

In this way he tries to keep in touch with people, and as well, watches his mail.

“We are getting nearer and nearer the English system where the people don’t see the member and he has an agent,” contends Mr McLachlan. “If we are to do an adequate job here—and I believe the government must govern—and there is a demand that Parliament sits longer every year, there is no way out. I cannot be in two places at once.”