A ‘superficial morality’

Press, 8 December 1976, Page 7

A ‘superficial morality’

P A Nelson Socially New Zealand seems on the surface to be a highly moral community, but appearances belie the reality, says a former British member of Parliament, Miss Joan Hall. “The country has a very high rate of illegitimacy and venereal disease, compared with many other Western nations,” she says. “The place of the family in your society is a big problem. This is a question New Zealanders will have to work out for themselves — whether they believe in the legal family or not.” Miss Hall was Conservative M.P. for the marginal seat of Keighley, West Yorkshire, from 1970 to 1974. She won the seat by 616 votes, and lost it in the first Election in 1974 by 868 votes. Keighley is based on wool textile manufacturing, so Miss Hall has made her particular interests trade and industry, allied to foreign affairs and defence. She had a considerable background knowledge about Africa and Asia, but felt she knew too little about Britain's traditional friends, Australia and New Zealand. Because she was out of Parliament she de-

cided to take the opportunity to study both countries in depth, and has spent five months in each. In New Zealand she has been attached for four months to the Prime Minister’s Office, as a press officer. She began her career as a journalist for a Yorkshire weekly paper, the “Barnsley Chronicle.” She says that Mr Muldoon has a “great and valuable capacity” for thinking well ahead of what he is saying. “Woe betide anyone who interviews him without having his facts right.” Of New Zealanders she says: I don’t see you as a passionless people, you have space and time to enjoy your life, one of the few countries that still has these attributes. “But as a result, your life tends to be soporific, and I must confess that I have been engulfed by it too. It’s a very pleasant existence, but the people are like the landscape — a bit barren on your mountain tops, but with a wealth of lush growth underneath in the valleys.”

Miss Hall says she doubts wl ether many New Zealanders have yet grasped the significance of the Taranaki gas fields as a future power source for industrial development.

“And if you strike oil down south, it will completely revolutionise your country.”