P.M. has failed working families, says Labour

Press, 25 November 1981, Page 6

P.M. has failed working families, says Labour

PA Auckland “The era of Muldoon is finished. He is wound up. They have given him six years and he has failed this country in every conceivable way.” With four days to go to the 1981 General Election, that was the message that the Labour leader (Mr Rowling) gave to an Auckland Waterside Workers’ Union meeting yesterday. Mr Rowling said that the Prime Minister had failed the working families of New Zealand. The feeling in the electorate was like that of 1972, when the third Labour government swept into power. “Muldooon is out, the fourth Labour government is in,” Mr Rowling said. Mr Rowling said that the National Party’s “Think Big”

policy was a confidence trick. “What the Prime Minister is telling the people of New Zealand is forget about now — the unemployment and inflation in 1981, the fact that we cannot build the houses, and half our children are in Australia — and hang about for another 10 years and we might produce something out of the hat.” He said that Labour would ensure that proposals to amend Accident Compensation law would not be introduced. However, the law needed some tidying up, he said. He defended his party’s election advertising after a watersider told him that it was embarrassing and an “insult to our intelligence.” “Sometimes with advertising you have got to jolt

people into paying attention? Mr Rowling said. “They won’t always like what they see but at least they, wake up.” ■ ' Mr Rowling said that the South African Consulate was probably a “damaging and divisive influence” in New Zealand, and a Labour government would get rid of it. “It is not, in fact, involving itself in what we suppose a consulate ought to be involving itself in, that is, trade promotion and the like. “It has become very clearly a propaganda source and does not seem to know any particular bounds with regard to the propaganda it uses. “We don’t need the show here, it is no use to New Zealand. In fact, in many ways it is probably a damaging and divisive influence.”