Recession ‘manufactured by National’

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34151, 12 May 1976, Page 2

Recession ‘manufactured by National’

(From our Parliamentary reporter} WELLINGTON, May 11. A theory that the present economic recession has been manufactured by the National Government appears to be gaining strength at the sixtieth Labour Party conference.

Delegates questioned today on the validity of this thesis, which was put forward late last night by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr Tizard), all maintained that had the country continued with Labour policies it would now be emerging from recession, rather than plunging into one.

Mr Tizard said in his speech that the National Government was forced to manufacture a crisis, and that it now had to maintain belief in it as a prime reason for the party’s existence. “If belief in the crisis cannot be sustained, the Government will have nothing to appeal to,” Mr Tizard said. Mr Tizard, Minister of Finance in Mr Rowling’s Cabinet, maintained that the Labour policy of overseas borrowing and deficit financing was an essential basis for the social policies followed in Labour’s last year in office. “Our real problem vzas not

that we borrowed too much, but that we did not realise the negative way in which it would be used against us.” Mr Tizard said. "We managed the economy better than the leaders of any other Western-style democracy. It is true that the recession lasted longer than the experts had advised.” In a speech almost as pugnacious as that of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling), Mr Tizard said that the Labour Party was on its way back. There would be another Labour government in 1978 —‘‘or sooner if the opportunity offers.”