Socred ‘can pay for promise’

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 3

Socred ‘can pay for promise’

PA Whangarei Social Credit was the only party that could “pay for its promises,” its party leader, Mr Beetham, told a crowd of about 200 in Whangarei on Tuesday evening. In a speech centred on economic policies, Mr Beetham said Social Credit would halve interest rates across the board, stimulate credit, create more jobs, and encourage people to retire at 55.

The latter policy alone would create 45,000 new

full-time jobs and more than 22,000 part-time jobs, he said.

Mr Beetham said money was at the root of New Zealand’s problems.

The present system crippled job providers by offering money at “sky high” interest rates, forcing them to employ as few people as Sible and charge the est prices possible. Mr Beetham said that Labour’s economic document was “just a set of generalisations,” Mr Bob Jones’s New Zealand Party

economic policy was “open slather for the wealthy and the dole queue for the rest,” and both National and Labour were asking voters to give them a blank cheque. “They are so arrogant that they are not putting an election policy before you in this election,” Mr Beetham said.

“They have given no clear indication of the way in which they will govern the country, particularly in terms of economic management in the next three

years.” Mr Beetham said Social Credit had two members of Parliament and “15 on the brink” — it had to win out. The party would promote more policemen on the beat, less discretion for judges, higher penalties for offenders, more emphasis on restitution for the injured party, counter-trading, and “a final no” to New Zealand’s “perilous entanglement in nuclear confrontation ' between the big Powers.”