Mr Exel talks to students

Press, 14 August 1976, Page 4

Mr Exel talks to students

Mr David Exel, the organiser of the Citizens for Rowling Campaign, has been communications director of the Labour Party for two months. Yesterday, he told a large audience of University of Canterbury students that the National Government was a Right-wing repressive party that could become the worst New Zealand had had. The solution, he said, lay in producing social change by getting behind the Labour movement — the trade unionists, the Opposition M.P.s, the racial pressure groups like Nga Tamatoa, “and the ‘Harps and Carps’ that our Prime Minister likes to pretend he laughs at.” It was no use trying to change the system from outside one of the two main parties, and no use pretending it could be done by theorising. It was no use pretending it could be done from outside the Labour movement, either, said Mr Exel. A former organiser of the TV2 programme, "Friday

Conference,” he resigned in May, without any pressure from TV2. he said. He had worked with the Labour Party for many years, had been appointed to its policy committee in May, and was now communications director. He was invited to speak to the students by the university’s Labour club. The National Party was Right-wing and repressive because it did not like solo mothers, or long-haired, "trendy-lefty university creeps,” or trade unions. It put up with them, but made life as difficult for them as it could. It repressed social reform of any sort and drove deeper the great divide between the rich and the poor, said Mr Exel. The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) made him angry, because Mr Muldoon was intelligent enough to know the outcome of every action he took — something beyond the capabilities of some members of his Cabinet, who were about as “thick as two short planks.”

Mr Exel alleged that Mr Muldoon knew how to play on the prejudices of New Zealanders to regain power. Every “panic button” that could be pressed to get a prejudiced and dangerous response from New Zealanders had been pressed. The outcome of the General Election was a tragedy that could prove to be a disaster for New Zealand. A climate of fear, unmatched for many years, was being engendered. Suddenly Russian missiles were “vaguely pointing in our direction,” an "incredibly dangerous” Russian fishing port was to be built in Tonga, and all this was purported to be allied very closely with Mr Bill Anderson’s Drivers’ Union and probably with Sir Thomas Skinner, the president of the Federation of Labour, as well. The National Party leadership had decided that it was again time to scoop the top off the movement for social reform. This was why the Prime Minister had brand-

ished the Public Safety Conservation Act before the public as a weapon to deal with large-scale dissent. The act was used in dealing with striking watersiders in 1951, Mr Exel said. A student asked if Mr Exel’s brand of social reform was just a nice way of saying socialism. “Yes, if you’re being sensible in your definition of socialism and not seeing little red men everywhere, it is,” Mr Exel said. Democratic socialism recognised that the national cake had stopped getting bigger for all. It now had to be shared. One of the ways to share it was to break some of the cycles: poor parent, poor child; socially-deprived parent, socially-deprived child. Democratic socialism would not seek nationalisation of monopoly enterprises, but it would seek legislation to make monopoly business responsive to the needs of society, not to the demands of capital. Mr Exel said.