The Week in the House

Press, 5 September 1983, Page 2

The Week in the House

Parliamentary reporter

The Minister of Finance might be right in saying there was no problem about financing the $3OOO million deficit and keeping interest rates down, said Mr D. F. Caygill (Lab., St Albans). The Government could ensure that private savings were financed and channelled through into Government stock, he said. It could do this, for example, by telling the banks that a quarter of every dollar they own, a quarter of their deposits, had to be invested in Government stock.

Mr Caygill said if finance companies had to invest a fifth of everything they had into Government stock, and if at the same time the definition of finance comSanies was extended so that lose such as people selling computers were caught and declared to be finance companies, then the deficit could be made up.

‘Not representative’

People like the Labour challenger for Avon were

not wanted in Parliament, but the Member for Avon was as she was one of only eight women there, said Miss Ruth Richardson (Nat., Selwyn).

to the extent that the other seven women had university degrees, they were hot representative of most New Zealand women, and the member for Avon rescued the group from being regarded as elitist. But the Member for Avon was being subjected to a cheap and indecent burial, Miss Richardson said. Sounds rates The Marlborough County Council Empowering Amendment Bill was introduced into Parliament by Mr D. L. Kidd (Nat., Marlborough). This amendment ensured .that the rate struck would be 10 per cent of the composite total in the roaded areas of the Marlborough Sounds, he said. The charge would be fixed from and including 1984-85 on the basis of an increase over the $25 of not

more than 15 per cent in any one year, or the percentage increase in the preceding year of the total rates of the other Sound’s divisions, whichever was the lesser.

No answers The Budget provided no answers about the sort of society New Zealand had become, said Mr G. W. R. Palmer (Lab., Christchurch Central).

There were no measures for social justice in the Budget. The Government offered no signposts and no hope. It was a Budget of misery and despair that was bankrupt of ideas, he said. A good Budget for the times would have pointed a way

out of the morass in which New Zealand found itself.

Lobbyists

The Government should introduce legislation to define and register political lobbyists in New Zealand, said Mr M. K. Moore (Lab., Papanui). He had raised the matter earlier with the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, who had said there was no intention to introduce such legislation as there was no need for it.

It was needed because over the last five or six years there had developed a new kind of political animal who haunted the corridors of power wining and dining senior Cabinet Ministers, and who bad links with foreign governments.