HART telex ‘could be defamatory’

Press, 9 March 1982, Page 1

HART telex ‘could be defamatory’

Parliamentary reporter The Government will have “a close look" at the telex message sent by HART to the meeting of the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa last week.’ The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) said yesterday that it was possible that some statements in the message “could be defamatory.” Anyone reading the message, which HART released at the week-end, would see that it was the reason for the resolution passed at the O.A.U. meeting, seeking exclusion of New Zealand from the Brisbane Commonwealth Games, he said.

“Again, anyone who reads this message will see that every possible part of the message is put in the worst possible light from the point of view of the New Zealand Government, and that means the New Zealand people,” he said.

"They have deliberately set out to slander their own country,” said Mr Muldoon. “Every incident has been magnified if it suited their case, or suppressed if it didn’t.” He was asked if the Government was considering some form of rebuttal of the HART telex in a message of its own to the Commonweath members of the O.A.U.

“There are various suggestions current at the moment,” Mr Muldoon said. “The Australians, of course, have taken the initiative, but there are various suggestions

which partly revolve around the New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games Association. “I think that the content of the message is quite unfair to that organisation and, doubtless, now that it has been released they will want to put the record straight.” When it was released by the chairman of HART, Mr John Minto, on Sunday, the telex was shown to say that it was not for the antiapartheid organisation to tell Commonwealth governments what they should or should not do in response to the Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand, the Press Association reported.

But "we would be less than candid if we did not state that any weakening of the international communities’ position vis-a-vis New Zealand would be a bitter blow to the New Zealand antiapartheid movement," the telex said.

However, HART said yesterday that Mr Muldoon made “nonsensical" claims while badly needing a scapegoat when he said New Zealand had been slandered in the telex.

'Mr Muldoon's “strong, aggressive reactions” to the telex were to try to convince people that the organisation had said “something dreadful.” The Government had been unable to find a single inaccuracy in the telex sent to the O.A.U.