'RECORD PRICE RISES’

Press, 24 March 1977, Page 2

'RECORD PRICE RISES’

PA Wellington The increase in the consumers’ price index for the first quarter of this year would be a record, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling) said yesterday. He declined to nominate a figure but said there “wouldn’t be much out of 5 per cent”. The highest quarterly figure is 4.5 per cent for the June quarter last year. “This quarter in 19/7 will be the worst since we have been measuring with the C.P.1.,” Mr Rowling said. He said that the Government was essentially government by inertia. All the problems facing the country today were worse than they had been in 1975. The Government had done nothing of any significance to curb imports, industrial relations were worse than any year since 1951 and, in spite of claims that it stood for the rights of the individual, it had done nothing but knock individuals. Mr Rowling said it seemed lately that Ministers could not make decisions with the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) out of the country. “Whenever Ministers have been asked for a decision in the last few days, then they have to say they have to wait for the Prime Minister to return,” he said. “The Prime Minister is holding things up because he’s absent and mucking things up overseas because he’s there.”