‘Sobering effect’ on House

Press, 19 April 1982, Page 2

‘Sobering effect’ on House

From

BRIAR WHITEHEAD

An evenly matched House will improve the accountability of the Government enormously, the Labour member of Parliament for Christchurch Central, Mr G. W. R. Palmer, told the House last week. Speaking in the Address-in-Reply debate, Mr Palmer said a close House would have a sobering'effect on the excesses of Government policy. Government ' Ministers would last only as long as

the House permitted them, and this would improve the accountability of the Cabinet hugely. “For the first time in a generation we will be able to call the executive to account and control it,” Mr Palmer said. “When legislation that has unfortunate provisions comes in. we will be able to vote it down.” This did not mean that the Government would be defeated or that it would be denied supply. However, members should reflect very serious about the unusual powers they now had tb influence the decision of the House simply by making up their minds on the merits of individual pieces of legislation. Mr Palmer said the Gover-nor-General (Sir David Beattie) had an onerous office in the present political climate. He might be called upon to exercise his reserved powers not to follow the advice of the Prime Minister on a dissolution of Parliament. The member for St Albans, Mr' D. F. Caygill, said the Australian pattern when a money supply bill had been presented, was to deny supply to the Government if its

behaviour had been sufficiently reprehensible. It was proper to test the Government’s right to supply. and on its performance in the last seven years, it should not be paid. * Although the Government had campaigned on growth,, since 1975 and until 1979, the economy had grown by only 0.6 per cent annually. Between 1980 and 1981, it declined. This compared with rates in Australia (gross) of 2.6 per cent since 1974, in America 3.3 per cent and in Japan 4.3 per cent. The only growth was in the Imprest Supply Bill, which asked for, $2OOO million more than last year, and the only justification for the increase was the possible switch of the Taupo seat to Labour. The Government -could continue until October .without calling a General Election. The Government had to acknowledge that blame for the size .of the deficit lay with the pre-election "economy stoke-up” to scrape home at the polls. Indirect taxation and prescription charges were unacceptable ways of closing the gap: The Government had

given no hint before the election that interest rates for an ordinary residential first mortgage would have reached 18 per cent in Christchurch after Christmas. Inflation was running at almost twice the level of New Zealand’s major trading partners, and the oil price could not be blamed. It was 16 per cent here, 9 per cent in Australia, and about the same in Britain and the United States. The member for Yaldhurst, Mr M. A. Connelly, said inflation had caused an alarming deterioration in value of the New Zealand dollar. Creeping .devaluation had reduced the value of the New Zealand dollar compared with the Australian dollar to 70c from a superior value. ■ ; , The balance-pf-payments deficit would probably be more than $lOOO million for the March year when the annual accounts were presented. Although export earnings had increased, inflation had reduced earnings in real terms to a loss. The cuts in Government expenditure would lead, as they had in 1975, to higher unemployment, more business collapse, and lower

Government revenues, until the Government again said it wanted to cut social benefits. Mr Connelly said that the closer economic relations agreement with Australia would remove, as quickly as practicable, import selection and tariffs on all goods. These were needed to protect and encourage growth in particularly the manufacturing sector, which would absorb most labour. The defence budget was suffering because it depended for financing on. a healthy economy. New Zealand was cutting its defence expenditure at a time when Britain and New Zealand’s treaty partners were reminding New Zealand of its defence obligations. The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) could say Labour was hob-nobbing with Communists, but the economic condition into which the country had deteriorated under a National Government made the Government more responsible for communism in. New Zealand than the Labour Party. “It has facilitated the election of Ken Douglas to the secretaryship of the F.0.L., and Bill Anderson to the executive,” he said.