Party showing 'signs of disintergration’

Press, 7 March 1984, Page 21

Party showing 'signs of disintergration’

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, this week dismissed the New Zealand Party as showing “early signs of disintergration.” Sir Robert is now in San Francisco, where he will addresss a conference at the Berkeley campus of the University of California which will discuss his ideas on reform of the world trade and payments system, and where participants — drawn from government and business as well as the academic world — are likely to demand specific answers to probing questions.

Commenting on the conference of the New Zealand Party, which put off the election of a deputy leader until later in the year, Sir Robert said that it was

obvious the party was uneasy about the former broadcaster, Mr Gordon Dryden, as a potential deputy leader to the millionaire, Mr Bob Jones, because Mr Dryden was “a political chameleon who’s changed his colours too many times.” Mr Jones, Sir Robert said, had apparently discovered that it was impossible for one man to put a political party together, make all the policy and bring the organisation together — "he’s realised that and it’s just a matter of time before the public realises it.” ,

The Prime Minister said the press in New Zealand had refused to ask Mr Jones why he was his strongest supporter, “not only up until the ’Bl election, but up until September, 1982. “All the things that he’s saying about me today

could equally have been said in ’Bl and ’B2, when he was spending a tremendous amount of time going round the country raising funds for the National Party with (members of Parliament) Norman Jones and - Dail Jones,” he said.

“All of the arguments that he’s putting forward at the moment about Muldoon were equally true — if they were true at all — up until September 'B2, when he asked me, and I accepted, to open his hotel, the Southern Cross, in Dunedin.”

Sir Robert was asked if he felt betrayed by him.

“No, I don’t. I know that the price freeze, and the tax legislation, hit him in the pocket, and, being the man he is, he responded extravagently and formed a political party. It’s as simple as that.”