‘Our people cannot relax’

Press, 22 June 1984, Page 3

‘Our people cannot relax’

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington

Labour’s election candidates were warned by their leader, Mr Lange, yesterday against letting the party’s lead in the latest Heylen opinion poll lull then into a false complacency. In a stirring pre-cam-paign address to the candidates in Parliament Buildings, Mr Lange said, “Our people cannot relax and bask in being 7 per cent up four weeks before the real ballot takes place.” The poll showed only that on June 16 when it was taken, New Zealanders had felt “a real euphoria about the prospect of a change of government” but it was not until July 14 that they would vote, he said. Labour would have to

work harder now that the results had been released. “That is the message that will have to sustain you because it is perfectly possible to set out from a position of light-hearted assurance to actually take yourselves out of a victory,” Mr Lange said. He was greeted by a standing ovation when he entered the room with his wife, Naomi, and by another when he left, and although his speech was heavily laced with cautions it was delivered in a spirit of lowkey optimism. He urged the candidates to base their campaigns round the decline in living standards which the Government’s “economic mismanagement” had produced.

This was why the snap election had been called, not because of Marilyn Waring, New Zealand’s defence, Marsden Point, or National’s failure to hold on to a majority in the House, he said. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, had had “1795 good reasons last Thursday night for handing in his jersey.” That was the number of notifications of price increases since the freeze was lifted at the end of February. It was, Mr Lange said, “an incredibly high figure,” especially as one of the applications had contained 1000 individual rises. He said that that was why Sir Robert had gone to the polls early. “He kept the whole show

just together but he knew he had not a dog’s chance of keeping it on the road to November. You simply cannot treat a country as he has for nine years and get away with it. New Zealand deserves something better,” Mr Lange said. The people had borne the wage freeze and their reward for that sacrifice had been a $4 a week pay increase after tax. That morning he had seen a kilogram of mince selling for $3.99. Families had been “crunched” and they were feeling the despair of it, he said.

“We don’t have to wait for the consumers price index. Our people are telling us the story now. They are the ones that go to the check-out counter. They don’t read the C.P.I. and right across this country you have to get across that identification of us with their concern,” he told the candidates.

Food prices had risen more than 3 per cent in three months and those were the increases that people saw every day. They were “the people’s rate of inflation,” Mr Lange said. The freeze had been for most “a wasted sacrifice” because the Government had had no policies to put in place when it was lifted, Mr Lange said.