Warning on unemployment

Press, 3 May 1984, Page 30

Warning on unemployment

PA Dunedin If the Labour leader, David Lange, is to make the reduction of unemployment a priority, he will have to replace Labour’s financial spokesman, Roger Douglas, the Social Credit leader, Bruce Beetham, has said. “The financial and economic policy of the Labour Party is being dictated by Mr Douglas, along conservatist, monetarist, retrenchment and free market lines, similar to those advocated by Mr Quigley on the rightwing of the National Party,” he said. Mr Beetham said that if Labour were to win the next election, this approach would automatically result in even higher unemployment than “the worst experienced under the Muldoon Administration.”

“This result has been perceived by the party’s president, Mr Anderton, and explains his attack on the free marketeers within the Labour Party at its weekend regional conference in Auckland,” Mr Beetham told the meeting. He said Labour was approaching the coming election with a contradictory approach to economic management “On the one hand, the Parliamentary party is dominated by the Rightwing thinking of Mr Douglas and Mr Lange, while the party at large still thinks traditionally, along Mr Anderton’s lines,” he said. “The result will be that the public will finish up having no clear idea of what the Labour Party stands for.”