Free enterprise fading—'Times’

Press, 4 June 1984, Page 6

Free enterprise fading—'Times’

NZPA staff correspondent London Financial curbs imposed by the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, have given the National Party’s free enterprise banner a tattered look, a report in “The Times” says. “Unmoved by the ferment his unorthodoxies cause within the ruling National Party, Sir Robert ... continues to have the Government play an interventionist role in the economy,” it said. The report, by the newspaper’s Wellington correspondent, W. P. Reeves, said Sir Robert had announced sweeping regulations to control bank and finance company lending rates within days of his return from visits to London, Paris, and Washington.

None of his manipulation which started with a prices and wages freeze imposed two years ago and partially lifted in February fitted National Party philosophy, Mr Reeves said. “The Prime Minister’s detractors love to quote back at him his own fulminations against controls a few years ago when as Finance Minister he gave warning of their ineffectiveness unless backed by powers intolerable except in times of emergency.” The ambitions of the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr McLay, required him to tread a cautious line between the loyalty he owed Sir Robert and the support of the private marketeers in the caucus who helped elect him to the deputy leadership, the report said.