A ‘confused’ Govt

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 5

A ‘confused’ Govt

PA Auckland Government policy on sports contacts with South Africa has been described as “ludicrous, and confused” by the chairman of the Halt All Racist Tours organisation (Mr Trevor Richards). Mr Richards said there were now three versions of the Government’s policy. “Perhaps if we could get Sir Keith Holyokae, Mr Talboys, and Mr Muldoon in the same room together for half an hour, we could find which is the correct version,’’ he said.

“If it is confusing for the people in New Zealand, it will be even more confusing for the people overseas,” he said. “The situation is ludicrous.” The president of the Citizen’s Association for Racial Equality (Mr T. O. Newnham) said there were contradictions between Sir Keith’s version of the policy and Mr Muldoon’s recent silence on the subject.

He said the policy suggested by Sir Keith was impractical. Sports bodies were taking no notice of requests to consult the Government.

The regional conference of H.A.R.T. in Auckland expressed doubts about any changes in South African sports policies. New Zealand Government statements were described as “ambiguous.”

The conference decided that the focus of H.A.R.T.

activities during the next six months would continue to be sports contacts with South Africa. More sports contacts were planned during the next six months than ever before, it was said, largely as a result of Government inaction. Mr Newnham said that an invitation to South Africa to attend the world O.K. dinghy championships at Takapuna next year, at the same time as the New Zealand Games, would lead to similar boycotts to those which disrupted the Olympic Games.

The Government had the power to do many things to dissuade sports bodies from making tours to South Africa, said the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon), in Auckland. However, he reiterated the point that the Government had no intention of taking away the travel rights of New Zealanders.

Instead, sports bodies in New Zealand would be made aware of United Nations resolutions calling on all countries to refrain from contacts with sports groups established on the basis of apartheid, or racially selected sports teams from South Africa. Mr Muldoon said that New Zealand was unquestionably in a better position after Sir Keith’s visit to the United Nations. “What he did, and what he set out to do, was to clarify the Government position on

South Africa, which has not changed in essence, but has been greatly distorted overseas,” Mr Muldoon said. He had not been aware of any adverse criticism of New Zealand for its stand on South Africa at the meeting of Commonwealth Finance Ministers in Hong Kong and the meeting of the World Bank in Manila earlier this month.

Told that Sir Keith Holyoake had agreed to a suggestion that his Government’s policy was now the same as the Labour Party’s Election policy in 1972 on sports contacts with South Africa, Mr Muldoon said that Labour had changed its attitude since then.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr Tizard) had made it clear, said Mr Muldoon, that Labour would have done as it had done before —“change policy after the Election and withhold passports” of people intending to go on a sports tour to South Africa.

Mr Tizard had promptly denied this later, but “most people would tend to believe a Minister’s spontaneous statement, rather than a political denial that followed,” Mr Muldoon said.

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