Govt is ‘crackpot’ says Values leader

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34132, 20 April 1976, Page 18

Govt is ‘crackpot’ says Values leader

(NZ. Press Association} AUCKLAND, April 19. The Values Party would provide a strong voice in opposition to the present “crackpot” Government, the new leader of the Values Party (Mr Tony Kunowski) promised today. In his first important speech as party leader, Mr Kunowski said that every

thinking person in New Zealand must be deeply concerned about Mr Muldoon’s reactionary style of Government.

At his party’s annual conference at Blockhouse Bay yesterday, Mr Kunowski said that Mr Muldoon’s Government posed a threat to civil liberties, “especially the fundamental right to dissent, the very life-blood of our democratic process.”

“The Values Party must provide a strong voice and act as a focal point for concerted community action against this crackpot Government.

“We must point out that we do not need American nuclear arms to defend a shipload of meat carcases, and that a policy of nonalignment would do far more for a positive reduction in world tensions than the course we now have been forced to take. “We must point out that Mr Muldoon’s aim to rapidly transfer resources to the private sector will not provide either the short or the longterm stability that this country' so badly needs. "Above all, we must point out the appalling deficiencies in this triennial farce we call democracy, a system where a small percentage change in the votes cast for a major party can change more than half the seats in Parliament and lead to an oppressive minority Government.” Mr Kunowski said both Labour and National still saw economic growth as the answer to all the ills of the country when in so many instances it was actually causing them. Rising rates of crime and drug addiction were symptoms of the underlying des-

pair of people trapped in a competitive and acquisitive society. “And yet with each passing day, our politicians become more remote from the people they are meant to save.”

Mr Kunowski said it was ironical that the National Party, which had benignly drawn attention to “the dangers of Labour centralist policies,” had itself instituted the most authoritarian regime the country had seen for many years.