Govt’s commitment to principle questioned

Press, 22 June 1981, Page 2

Govt’s commitment to principle questioned

What the M.P.s were saving

From BRIAR WHITEHEAD It was not possible to support the Gleneagles Agreement, and sports contacts with South Africa, the Labour member of Parliament for Christchurch Central (Mr G. W. R. Palmer) said in Parliament last week. Speaking in a snap debate on remarks made by the Minister of Maori Affairs and Police (Mr Couch) on apartheid. Mr Palmer said the sincerity of the Minister was not in question, but the Government's commitment to the principle of collective responsibility was. Collective responsibility meant a Cabinet Minister did not dissent in public from a Cabinet decision, or the method of its implementation. unless he first resigned, Mr Palmer said.

If Mr Couch supported the Gleneagles Agreement, which said that apartheid in sport was an abomination, he could not support sports contacts with South Africa in public statements.

“The Minister has breached this convention several times, and indeed, his main qualifications for holding his portfolios, in the eyes of the Prime Minister, appear to be that he does not really subscribe to the Government policy on the tour. “The Government is playing both sides off against the middle. It cannot have jt both ways. The attempt to do so has fractured the publicsolidarity that Cabinet must present to the country,” Mr Palmer said.

Prosecution favoured

The amended Juries Bill favoured the prosecution, said Mr Palmer. The police were able to interrogate the Wanganui Computer to vet the jury list by informing the Crown prosecutor of minimal convictions against eligible jurors. The defence did not have the same right, and this made police vetting more significant. Although .this should be

balanced, it perhaps compensated the defence that the Crown was unable to stand .aside jurors. Under the existing Juries Act the Crown prosecutor had the right to stand jurors aside. The new bill followed the .recommendation of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Thomas case that the police should not have access to jury lists earlier than the defence.

Although the Summary Offences Bill' decriminalised drunkenness, it still allowed them to be locked up wrongfully, said Mr Palmer.

People found intoxicated in a public place would be detained. “Force can be used on them. Against their will they can be taken away, and locked up. “What sort of protections will be available to these people if they feel that they have been wrongfully detained in the event that they are not brought before a court?”

Aluminium World growth in aluminium demand had been 8 per cent a year for the last 2() years, said the member fot ■ Waitaki. Mr J. H. Elworthy ■ If that demand halved in the’ next decade, international supply would still have to increase at the rate of three smelters the size of Ararrioana each year.

The South Island aluminium projects would not preclude other electricity-based industries in Otago, he said. The leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling) had said a Labour Government would develop the Lower Waitaki, but at the same time he opposed the development fo the second aluminium smelter, the justification for hy-dro-electric development on the lower Waitaki, said Mr Elworthy. North Otago was now grazing cowp on irrigated land to produce more butterfat per hectare than prime country in the Waikato. $l2O million would be invested in the electorate in a cement

factory by New Zealand Cement Holdings, a private firm. Scheme ‘passed by’ The Government had “passed by” expanded irrigation for the north central Canterbury plains, said the Labour member for Yaldhurst, Mr M. A. Connelly. The Labour party would proceed on that scheme, and would also immediately commission "multi-water use, engineering. and related feasibility studies" on the Lower Waiiaki. The Labour Government would lower the rates of return on investment from up to 15 per cent, to levels that would allow water and soil projects to have Government subsidy backing.

Catchment Boards would have reasonable access to funds, and the National Water and Soil Conservation Authority would be authorised to give direct financial assistance to private developers and local authorities.

In Christchurch a Labour Government would realign roads and replan services often affected by flooding. It would look at works on the vulnerable Kaikoura and Otira rail tracks. The National checklist of “growth development” plans had nothing for Christchurch and Canterbury, Mr Connelly said. Conservation era The "massive” burst of freezing works construction in the Marlborough electorate was using Christchurch skilled labour and ensuring Christchurch's future as one of the principal engineering centres in the South Island, said the member for Marlborough. Mr D. L. Kidd.

Mr Kidd said he believed the 1980 s would be the era of conservation, and that 1981 would bring protection of wild and ' scenic rivers, and protection of individual and environmental rights in mining legislation. “We must not only, de-

velop, but conserve, Mr Kidd said.

Unless New Zealand developed a phosphate-efficient white clover, it put at risk most of the thrust of its agricultural development of recent years, and its production.

"We must solve the problem of legumes — in particular. clovers — which cannot compete for phosphate as well as grasses. We need to apply nearly three times as much phosphate to clover as to grasses."

The D.S.I.R. was making "tremendous efforts” towards a phosphate-efficieht white clover, he said.

The cost of phosphate was increasing at twice the rate of other farm imputs. and all New Zealand agricultural expansion depended on it.