Auditor-General warned to ‘tread carefully’

Press, 15 July 1982, Page 3

Auditor-General warned to ‘tread carefully’

PA Auckland The Auditor-General, Mr A. C. Shailes. has been warned by the president of the Labour Party, Mr J. P. Anderton, to tread carefully on the Clyde high dam issue. He also warned yesterday that New Zealand was seeing the beginning of a coalition between two conservative parties which cared only for power. Mr Anderton said that he wondered how Mr Shailes, whose agreement was clearly crucial to the Prime Minister’s “manoeuvrings,” could give much credence to Mr Muldoon’s assurances that he bad the numbers to pass the required legislation. “After all, the two Social Credit members have shown

a remarkable tendency to change their minds in the past.” he-said; The Parliamentary debate on such legislation was some distance in the future, and the Government’s hold on the Treasury benches was as shaky as any in this country's history, Mr Anderton said.

“All these factors make it difficult to understand why any Auditor-General could have enough confidence to give his consent to the expenditure of huge sums of public money under such circumstances,” he said. Social Credit had shown itself to have the principles of an unscrupulous secondhand car salesman. Both it and National cared so much

about power that they would sell their grandmothers for five cents to achieve that end, he said. “The rule of law will now be an obscene joke in this country. Courts, tribunals, and commissions of inquiry — Erebus and the Marginal Lands Board inquiries come immediately to mind — will stand under the shadow of retrospective legislation from an unprincipled totalitarian coalition, which has made a farce of individual citizens' rights,” he said. It was all very.well for a Government to alter legislation after a court case to ensure that the situation was not repeated. But it was another thing altogether for that legislation to rescind the

decision of the court or tribunal as though it had never existed. “From now on, justice, particularly when sought against the' Government, cannot remotely be seen to be done because, even when individuals or community groups win their case, Social Credit and National have given notice that they will combine to make sure those groups lose.” “So much for the trumpeted cries of ‘freedom and citizens’ rights' that have emanated from both those parties in the past. Neither will be credible again." Mr Anderton said that Labour was now clearly the only principled political party.