Socred call to dump P.M.

Press, 20 January 1982, Page 2

Socred call to dump P.M.

PA Wellington Social Credit has called on the National Party to dump Mr Muldoon as Prime Minister or at leastreplace him as Minister of Finance. A statement from the league’s leader, Mr B. C. Beetham, said yesterday that “the country needs, dynamic leadership from someone.in tune with the needs of the nation.” ... • . , National had been returned to office only “by the skin of its teeth” and should do New Zealand the initial favour of removing Mr Muldoon from the leadership.

Mr Beetham, who is in the Antarctic with Mr Muldoon, asserted, without giving details, that “certain members, even of the Cabinet, appear to be making at least tenta-

live moves along these lines.”

Attacking Mr Muldoon's record in controlling inflation, Mr Beetham said that the key finance portfolio should go to someone “at least prepared to address himself to what (under Mr Muldoon’s management) has become an incurable sore eating at the heart of the New Zealand economy.”

The statement was the Social Credit leader’s contribution to New Year “state of the nation” messages follow : ing the economic review released by Labour’s leader, Mr Rowling, and Mr Muldoon’s speech to the Orewa Rotary Club. Mr Beetham said that Mr Muldoon could no longer try to justify New Zealand's in-

flation by comparing it with similar countries, or blaming it on imported inflation. Most “comparable nations” had reduced their inflation and the imported content of inflation was now only 25 per cent.

“It is time the Government was prepared to face the fact that inflation is basically a financial problem that can be solved only bysound monetary policy,” he said. “Making working and investment capital more and more expensive is not the way to reduce inflation.”

Anyone familiar with the realities of the commercial world knew that this was simply a formula for increasing costs, he said. "A new approach is

needed, one based on ensuring that the financial system is kept in tune with the needs of production, that people’s savings are made available to productive enterprise, and that it is clearly recognised that interest rates as a cost to industry must be kept to a minimum,” said Mr Beetham.

“Only then will the expanded production — the ‘growth’ the Prime Minister keeps going on about — needed to create job opportunities and solve unemployment, take place.”

“The National Government has simply lost its way. Mouthing empty slogans like ‘Think Big’ and ‘National for Growth’ fool only National’s most unquestioning sup-

porters. This is evidenced by the fact that the party’s level of support at the election was the lowest percentage of the total vote. it has ever received in its history,” Mr Beetham said.

“It is only by accident of our electoral system, and the political and tactical impotence of the official Opposition, that it remains in office.” The Prime Minister was “over the hill, a has-been in terms of the goal he set, himself and his party six years ago of ‘restoring our shattered economy’.” Instead, he had “simply sunk the economy even further in the guagmire of chaos left by the Labour Government.”