Labour plans to tell of other loans

Press, 18 February 1983, Page 3

Labour plans to tell of other loans

Parliamentary reporter The Labour Party .plans more disclosures of Rural Bank loans to “mates of the National Party," according to the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Lange, yesterday.

The Labour caucus discussed the Government's use of the Rural bank at its first meeting yesterday. Mr Lange said that the special report on bank loans to the Auckland businessman, Mr John Spencer, by the Ombudsman would not get to the heart of the matter. It would probably show that the Rural Bank faithfully discharged the Government s policy in granting loans to wealthy farmers. The Government could “front up,” and admit that there was no check on ownership of the companies that.“kept on dipping into the public’s coffer,” Mr Lange said. But it was keeping quiet. The loans were being used to prop up hobby farmers Or remote farmers, so that they could buy more and more land, he said. At the same time the Government was saying Rural Bank loans were going to farmers under hardship. The philosophy was completely -at odd’s with the Government’s line that New Zealand was in recession. Mr Lange said that “names, places, and amounts” would be released by the Labour Party in due course, to force the Government to account for “advances to people who did not need them.” Asked to comment on reports that the widow of the recently deceased general manager of the Rural Bank, Mr H. J. King, was saying that the Labour Party campaign against the bank’s . lending policies contributed to his death, Mr Lange said that the Government, not the bank, was at fault.