Labour has big boost

Press, 25 November 1981, Page 1

Labour has big boost

PA Auckland The Auckland Town Hall overflowed last evening, giving the Labour leader (Mr Rowling) one of the biggest rallies of any leader in the 1981 election campaign. About 1900 people crowded into the hall. Another 400 watched a live telecast in the adjacent concert chamber. Several hundred more were prevented from entering the hall and some of them stayed to listen to the address via loudspeakers. A fanfare of trumpets and deluge of streamers poured over Mr Rowling as he entered. There were three standing ovations before he spoke.. As he left he was surrounded by well-wishers all the way to his car and people spilled over the street round the entourage. It was a “mighty meeting, symbolic of a historic and mighty campaign.” The people of Auckland had shown the response that would come at Saturday’s General Election.

Mr Rowling noted that the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) had drawn far fewer people when he spoke in the hall in the first week of the campaign. (Observers put that attendance at about 1309.) ■ -Mr Rowling suggested that Mr Muldoon could boost his , meeting attendances by perhaps having "one of those tickets with a secret number on it — and whoever gets the right number could have, perhaps, a marginal lands loan.” He said that Mr Muldoon had bumbled his way round the world like an “international clown ... buffoonery beyond all measure.” Mr Muldoon’s election charts were “absolutely unique,” because he was the only person in New Zealand who had inflation going down, while all the rest had it going the other way. Mr Muldoon had been reported as saying that the last five years of zero growth were in fact a matter of deliberate policy — “part of the National Party’s growth strategy.” “If he really said that he should be taken immediately to see a psychiatrist,” Mr Rbwling said.