Labour could sell some State ventures

Press, 3 May 1984, Page 3

Labour could sell some State ventures

PA Auckland A Labour government could sell some State enterprises to finance new ventures, suggested the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Lange, yesterday. Replying to a question after addressing an Auckland Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Mr Lange said he had no doctrinaire answer to Labour policy on buying back or selling State enterprises. He said that the party would come into office inheriting a huge deficit and there would be no policy of buying back enterprises, using taxpayers’ money, solely that the government might own them. “If this Government has knocked off some of Air New Zealand and it is flying, no government of mine will use taxpayers’ money to buy it back for the pleasure of holding its scrip,” he . said. Asked if his government would sell the rest, Mr Lange said, “If we got a good enough price and if it fitted in with our economic strategy.” He said a feature of New Zealand’s development had been that governments had been a catalyst and funder of some big developments.

“That will persist,” he said. “I take no joy at all in having quite useless capital tied up in something which can run by itself and we would reserve the right to move that capital into some venture, Some risk areas so that we might get more employment.” Mr Lange also told the Chamber of Commerce that New Zealand should have a prices and incomes policy endorsed by employers and unionists. A “clear voice for business” was needed, he said. Mr Lange said that the present Government was ’‘incapable of achieving an agreed prices and incomes policy.” “However, I believe my party is capable of such accord,” he said. Differences in economic policy existed in the Labour Party but the opponents of protectionism were winning the debate, Mr Lange said. He said that the differences arose from a simple debate with those who thought New Zealand could put up a wall and insulate itself from the world. They believed New Zealand should perservere with completely inefficient industries because of the social worth of doing so. “There are others in the party who say that we are

not that vulnerable that we are not that weak and that we do not have to shelter behind those artificial things,” he said, adding that they were winning. Mr Lange spoke against import licensing as a development strategy. "Import substitution through import licensing has not increased New Zealand’s control over our destiny,” he said. The Labour Party president, Mr J. P. Anderton, said yesterday that he was not personally in favour of a total phase-out of import licensing. “That is my personal viewpoint,” he said. “That is not a party policy necessarily. What I am proposing is one option of looking at import substitution.”