Campaign on issues

Press, 17 April 1978, Page 6

Campaign on issues

The Values Party will conduct an issues-oriented campaign in the run-up to the General Election this year, says the party’s leader (Mr A. H. Kunowski).

“I think it reflects the party’s rapidly growing maturity that we have put aside our 1972 and 1975 campaign style,” he cold the party’s candidate and cam-paign-training conference in Christchurch on Saturday.

“We have realised that presenting people with a master plan, a blueprint for a new society, is not the way to persuade people of, the fundamental changes we need,” he said.

By taking an issueoriented approach the party could start to bring about a coalition between people and different interest groups “which will necessarily form the basis of a mass and united movement for radical change. “It is our task to make them aware that their seemingly diverse aspirations can and will be realised under

the Values umbrella,” said Mr Kunowski. Two such issues were the right to work, and the right of a woman to exercise her own conscience in the matter of abortion. The reasons New Zealand had zero growth and consequently high unemployment were twofold, he said. “First, much of our past growth has been unplanned and unco-ordinated and has taken us up a blind alley. “We have committed vast amounts of our resources to industries which simply cannot be sustained at anything like their present levels in the long term. Transport and our energy-intensive farming methods are just two examples. “The second reason for our high unemployment lies in the nature of the ownership and control of business in a capitalist system, where capital employs people and produces primarily for profit and growth . . . When either oth the twin objectives of profitability or growth cannot be attained.

people lose their means of livelihood.” The Values alternative was a co-operative economy, “where peoples’ needs are the basis for production; people, not profits, take precedence,” Mr Kunowski said. Ob abortion, Mr Kunowski said that allowing members of Parliament to exercise their freedom of conscience on a vote was “a very elitist policy.” “What it is in fact saying is that 87 people are given the right to exercise their conscience on a mtter which will never directly affect 83 of them, and yet this very right to exercise one’s own conscience is to be denied the women of New Zealand.” The abortion decision should be a matter of individual conscience for the women concerned, he said. “She should get full counselling services if she requests them, and firstclass medical treatment if she decides she wants an abortion,” said Mr Kunowski.