‘Ambush’ for Mr Muldoon

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 1

‘Ambush’ for Mr Muldoon

PA Wellington The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) walked into a rubber workers’ ambush at a public meeting in Wellington yesterday.

In his only outdoor meeting of the election campaign so far, Mr Muldoon got an unfriendly reception from a big crowd dominated by members of the rubber workers’ union worried about the ramifications of the Industries Development Commission report on the tyre industry. About 150 rubber workers, many of them waving placards and two holding severed pig's heads on poles, booed Mr Muldoon and jeered his explanation of the growth strategy. However, they stayed silent when he read the relevant section from the I.D.C. report saying that the industry justified development and assistance even though it contained excess production capacity.

The report was a lot less damaging than a lot of the workers had seemed to think, Mr Muldoon said.

Attacking the Upper Hutt Mayor, Mr Rex Kirton —

who was sitting with him on the platform — he said the mayor’s statements on the I.D.C. report had been “irresponsible.”

“I get a little bit angry when local body leaders get involved in my election, particularly when they say things that are not true,” Mr Muldoon said.

Referring to the Dunlop factory in Upper Hutt, he said: “I don’t think it is going to be closed, down and the Dunlop people don’t think it is going to be closed down, because they have said so.”

Criticising a man carrying a placard exor’ting against multi-national companies, Mr Muldoon pointed out that Dunlop was a multi-national.

It was not going to close down and leave the field to the two other multi-national tyre makers in New Zealand. Mr Muldoon’s promises on the growth strategy were greeted with jeers of “Rubbish,” arid “We don’t believe it.”