Plea on communications

Press, 10 May 1982, Page 6

Plea on communications

PA Wellington The Labour leader (Mr Rowling) said yesterday that the party needed to improve communications with younger people. Addressing the Labour Youth Council meeting in Wellington. Mr Rowling said that communication with younger people was not nearly as good as it should be. The party had policies on issues of major concern to young voters, but it had not been successful in getting across its message, he said. Mr Rowling made a plea to delegates to try to devise ways of improving communication. Party officials could visit

young people at universities, teachers' colleges, and polytechnics, but it was harder to talk to others outside the sphere of such institutions. The party’s ■ president. Mr J. P. Anderton, spoke to delegates of unemployment facing young people. He was critical of social conventions which made it acceptable for farmers to accept handouts of supplementary minimum prices payments and companies to receive export incentives while the unemployed received the dole. How would the farmers and companies feel if their payments were called the dole? he asked. They would feel exactly as young p'eople did. degraded and with a

lack of self-worth. After six years of a National Government many people believed unemployment could not be avoided and the numbers of jobless would be substantial and increasing over the next few years. That was a negative and defeatist approach, he said. Drugs, broadcasting, and defence were among topics discussed by council delegates during the two-day conference. The council supported the establishment of a Royal Commission to consider the question of decriminalising marijuana, and said that its recommendations should be enacted by a Labour government.