Freeze an act of ‘courage’

Press, 29 June 1982, Page 6

Freeze an act of ‘courage’

The wage and price freeze announced by the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) last, week was an act of "enormous political courage" and his future would depend on his ability to make it work, said the member of Parliament for Fendalton, Mr P. R. Burdon last evening. Speaking to an electorate meeting attended by about 80 people, Mr Burdon said that if Mr Muldoon did not achieve a real and long term reduction in inflation, he would'-be seen as having failed. This would have implications for the National Party's future and its chances of success in the 1984 General Election.. Interest groups such as unions and employers had come to expect double digit inflation. The wage price freeze would break this expectation. he said. Mr Burdon said the wageprice freeze was the last

event in what had been an “astonishing" two weeks for the National Party nationally and in the Canterbury-Wesl-land division. Everyone had been stunned by the sacking ot the former Cabinet Minister. Mr Derek Quigley. There was a place both for Mr Quigley and Mr Muldoon within the party. Mr Quigley would play an increasingly important'role in the party and in the Government in the future, he said. On the Clyde dam. Mr Burdon said that the debate about special legislation concerned the difference between legal purity and practical reality. ; He criticised the members of Parliament for Selwyn (Miss Ruth Richardson) and for Waikato (Mr S. D. Upton) for holding a press conference to announce their support for the Clyde dam legislation. Such “spectacles" sug- . gested disunity within the party, he said.