Businessmen to attack, says Mr Lange

Press, 19 August 1983, Page 4

Businessmen to attack, says Mr Lange

PA Wellington The Labour leader, Mr Lange, expects a meeting of business leaders in Wellington next week to attack the Government’s economic management. Mr Lange said at a press conference yesterday that he had been in touch with leaders of various sector groups, and was confident that statements would be made that atoned for the Srevious timidity of usinessmen. They would cause a complete change in the attitude of people in commerce to what had previously been held as the Government’s economic competence. About 150 business leaders will attend the three-day conference. Mr Lange Said there would be such a range of views and Criticism that the Prime Minister “would be painting himself as a tyrant of vengeance to be able to get his own back on that wide-ranging spread of opinion.” “We will simply stop hearing two wellpropagated myths about the Prime Minister That he tells things as they are and that he’s a good guy at managing the economy.

Both those myths are now to be exploded,” said Mr Lange. There was another myth that there was some degree of control of the economy being exercised, he said. “Having seen a fall in the inflation rate in other countries, the Prime Minister simply outlawed it. That is something akin to the tribe in Africa who used to think that the sun would come out of eclipse if they beat the drum.

“The Prime Minister has managed to persuade people that his management has produced the lower inflation rate. He then declares that he will have a crack at interest rates when interest rates must inevitably follow a genuine fall in inflation — they must come down.. “But there have been no threats or inducements to do anything about unemployment and that’s because he doesn’t have control of the economy,” he said. Mr Lange said that the Prime Minister continued to say that business people endorsed his policies and economic programme. But the people of New Zealand might see business people “holding their noses and saying no.”