Miss Waring fears U.N. repercussions over tour

Press, 30 May 1981, Page 7

Miss Waring fears U.N. repercussions over tour

NZPA Washington New Zealand faces severe political and diplomatic repercussions in the United Nations, and the Commonwealth if the Springbok rugby tour went ahead, according to the Member of Parliament for Waipa, Miss Marilyn Waring. In a telephone interview with NZPA, she said, “There will be developments in the politics of both the United Nations and the Commonwealth organisation in the next two or three years that will have consequences for New Zealand if the tour is held.” She declined to elaborate on her remarks, but said, “I think most members of Parliament will understand what this means.”

Miss Waring was talking after meetings with top members of the United Nations Committee against Apartheid in New York and a visit to Jamaica where she had talks with Government Ministers and officials.

She said she planned to tell the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Mr Taiboys) about her talks with Mr Akporode Clark, of Nigeria, chairman of the United Nations Committee against Apartheid, and Mr Victor Gbeho, of Ghana, one of the committee’s most active members.

She summed up their views of the New Zealand Government’s attitude to the

tour by saying: “The spending of several million dollars in police money’ for protection and security alone will be seen as a Government endorsement of the tour.”

Railways Road Services bus drivers in Otago have voted unanimously to transport the touring Springbok team when it is in Dunedin.

The National Union of Railwaymen’s delegate at the Road Services depot in Dunedin, Mr P. R. McLellan, said the branch had petitioned all drivers in Otago, excluding North Otago, on their views.

“They were 100 per cent unanimous they would carry the Springboks.” he said. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr Lange) wants

to know whether the Government or the Rugby Union is governing the country. He was critical of the Government’s handling of a letter received from the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa.

He said that for Mr Talboys io say he could no more or no less than ask the Rugby Union to weigh the council’s appeal for the Springbok tour to be called off with “great care and deliberation’’ was merely protestation by paralysis. The president of the Auckland Trades Council, Mr G. H. Andersen, has told the Government to get its priorities straight. He said that the cost of policing the Springbok tour would be roughly $2 million, with an estimated 51.5 million worth of support from the Armed Forces. “This shows the total stupidity of New Zealand’s present situation,” he said, in a statement endorsed by the Trades Council.

According to a banned South African editor. Mr Donald Woods, a referendum on the Springbok tour could get the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) “off the hook.”

Mr Woods, a former editor of the “Daily Dispatch” in South Africa, was banned by the South African Government four years ago after leading a public outcry after the death of the black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko, in police custody.

Mr Woods said from his London home that he believed Mr Muldoon had a problem in that he had given an election undertaking not to interfere with the decisions of sports bodies. “I wondered if a referendum might get him off the hook. With the good name of New Zealand involved, a referendum might be a low price to pay,” he said.

The Government was labelled “irresponsible” in Parliament for “thrusting” the decision to stop the Springbok tour on to the RugbyUnion.

In a notice of motion. Mr R. K. Maxwell (Lab., Waitakere) said the decision was unavoidably one for the Government. He called on the House to endorse the action of Mr Taiboys in releasing recent correspondence between the Government, the Rugby Union, and the Supreme ’Council for Sport in Africa. A Christchurch pro-Spring-bok tour group has sent telegrams to all members of Parliament urging them to “stand firm against all pressure to withdraw the invitation to the Springbok team.” Support All Inter-National Tours said in the. telegram that the tour should proceed for the sake of all sportsminded persons who resented sport being used as a political weapon.