N.Z. Party delegates duped — Mr Beetham

Press, 23 April 1984, Page 11

N.Z. Party delegates duped — Mr Beetham

PA Masterton Most of the delegates at the inaugural New Zealand Party conference had been duped and would be among the first to have their financial throats slit by a Jones Government, said the Social Credit leader, Mr Beetham. Mr Beetham told a pubic meeting in Masterton that becaus the news media had failed to examine the “phenomenon” surrounding Mr Bob Jones, the New Zealand Party’s leader, he would be happy to oblige. “Most of the people toying with supporting the party are like turkeys voting for an early Christmas,” he said.

Mr Beetham said that a Jones Government would mean government of, by, and for the greedy. It would mean a return to the “dog eat dog” unbridled capitalism of the early nineteenth century.

There would be a return to high inflation as a matter of deliberate policy. A Jones-managed economy

would be for the exclusive benefit of those who already owned the wealth and they would be able to exploit high inflation to their own advantage, he said. “A return to hyper-infla-tion would mean the final curtain call for the New Zealand economy,” Mr Beetham said.

High inflation would assist investment in existing assets and property but mean there would be virtually no investment in production.

Mr Beetham said that Social Credit shared the New Zealand Party’s concern about erosion of personal freedom and increase in coercive Government interference in the economy. But people should be wary of the illusion of freedom offered by the Jones party because that was all it was, he said. “Genuine, free, and individual enterprise would be first smothered and then buried under a system which was designed for the

benefit of property speculators and monopolists." The New Zealand Party’s slogan, "Freedom and prosperity,” was only intended to apply to a small group of people, Mr Beetham said. He said Social Credit wanted to see businessmen in Parliament who had been successful in creating more employment and production, not those who had manipulated existing assets for personal gain. Over a period of years, Social Credit had "officiated at the burial” of several other parties including the Values Party, the Liberal Reform Party, and the New Democrats, “and we shall repeat the process with the Jones party,” Mr Beetham said.

The previous evening Mr Jones packed the Mahurangi College Hall in Warkworth, north of Auckland, with a meeting which drew more than 500 people. Less than a week earlier, Mr Beetham had attracted fewer than 100 people to the same hall.