Mr Watt still considering call to resign

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34072, 9 February 1976, Page 1

Mr Watt still considering call to resign

New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND. February 8.

The New Zealand High Commissioner in Britain, Mr Hugh Watt, was today still considering whether to heed an official Government reejuest for him to resign.

One of the tasks of the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Taiboys) on his present diplomatic mission to Europe was to ask Mr Watt, as a Labour

Government appointee, to step down from the London post.

The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) confirmed in Auckland this evening that Mr Taiboys had asked Mr Watt whether the “customary” resignation would be offered.

“To the best of my knowledge. Mr Watt is still considering the matter,” Mr Muldoon said. It was traditional that political appointees should offer their resignations on a change in Government. Two other New Zealand representatives overseas appointed bv the Labour Government, Mr E. Chapman (High Commissioner in Australia) and Mr P N. Holloway (Ambassador to Italy) had already done so. Mr Muldoon said. But should Mr Watt still be in London at the time of a trip Mr Muldoon proposes in April, it would not be embarrassing to be hosted by Mr Watt, Mr Muldoon said. “I see no reason at all why it should be embarrassing to me,” he said.

Mr Taiboys, meanw’hile, is reported by David Barber, an N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent in London, to have said that the Government may be prepared to let Mr Watt stay in his post until April, as long as he has tendered his resignation by then. Mr Taiboys agreed that “there could be embarrass-

■ ment” if Mr Watt were still in London to greet Mr Muldoon, but said: “There need not be embarrassment if the position is resolved.” Mr Taiboys said he would be “very sad” if Mr Watt refused to resign and forced the Government to pass legislation to dismiss him.

Mr Taiboys, says Barber, has given the details of the message he gave Mr Watt when he arrived in London. “I told him simply that he had been Deputy Prime Minister: that he had come to London as a Minister and High Commissioner; and that if the positions were reversed, he could not tolerate the situation.”

Mr Taiboys said: “Mr Watt has agreed with me that I would not be acceptable to him as a political representative if the positions were reversed.” But Mr Watt has so far stuck to his stand that he is no longer a politician but a I representative of the State. “I want to know what I have done wrong,” he told report-j ers. "Why should I be, stopped from doing the best. I can for New Zealand?”. ■ But Mr Taiboys has said: “He has not done anything wrong except fail to accept the normal conventions. Let us acknowledge the facts of political life — there are only two kinds of person that the Government can have in this

job: a neutral servant of the State, or somebody who is of the governing party.”

■ Until Mr Watt had re- | signed, Mr Muldoon indi [ cated this evening, there would be no consideration given to the choice of a successor for the London post. In the meantime, the treatment of the case in the British and New Zealand press was the cause of “great anxiety,” Mr Muldoon said. “I regard it as a black mark on the New Zealand press that it is interested in what is essentially a relatively minor matter, when Mr Taiboys is conducting some of the most important negotiations ever on New Zealand's future markets in the E.E.C.”