Labour to form ‘unholy’ alliance

Press, 17 May 1984, Page 3

Labour to form ‘unholy’ alliance

PA Wellington An “unholy” alliance of the Labour movement would control New Zealand if the Labour Party came to power, said the Minister of Energy, Mr Birch, yesterday. The Labour Party was “falling over themselves to form an unholy alliance with Jim Knox (F.O.L. president) and his bunch of bruisers, which include committed Communists like the secretary, Ken Douglas, and Northern Drivers’ Union secretary, Bill Andersen,” said Mr Birch. He said in an address to the Gisborne Chamber of Commerce that this would have its price if Labour ever came to power. “The country controlled by the Labour movement; the Joint Council of Labour comprising, say, Knox, Douglas, Andersen, Lange and Palmer.”

Worse still, there was Mr (Jim) Anderton (the Labour Party’s president) breathing down the neck of Mr Lange, and espousing his doctrinal socialist economic philosophy of robbing Peter to pay Paul, he said.

He also attacked the last Labour Government’s economic record, saying the expansion in Government spending while they were in office was the most rapid in the last 20 years.

When Labour was “tossed out of office unceremoniously in 1975” they left the largest foreign exchange deficit in modern history, representing 52 per cent of export earnings, over four times what it was today.