Lange style made to catch mood of attentive audience

Press, 13 July 1984, Page 15

Lange style made to catch mood of attentive audience

By

MICHAEL HANNAH

Fighting a campaign on little more than mood, the leader of the Labour party, Mr Lange, has hung his chances of victory on style. He has promised audiences in packed town halls, provincial opera houses, and school halls a change of style in Government In the process, he has changed his own style to try to achieve that goal.

Audiences have loved it. Voters have crammed into halls too small to hold them to cheer Mr Lange and give him a welcome, which has clearly buoyed his hopes of winning tomorrow.

But hall audiences can be fickle. From the emotional response of the Rotorua crowd, to the more dour and relative silence of a Tau-' marunui audience, supporters have been consistent in applauding what they came to hear.

The use of power by the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, has drawn most crowd reaction, but issues such as nuclear power, housing, and education have also been well received.

Clever phrases, ironic punch-lines, such as the well-worn story of New Zealand’s finally being beaten on economic performance by Turkey, and familiar slogans, such as "Of course you can do it,” have triggered applause. But set speeches on party objectives - tourism, overseas trade and even the “think big” projects in Taranaki — have attracted little reaction.

Reactions have changed as Mr Lange’s own style has developed during the campaign. From fighting purely on mood, rather than policy differences and issues, Mr Lange has responded more and more to Sir Robert’s statements as the campaign has worn on.

At the same time, the distinct change in Mr Lange’s appearance on television, which involved schooling his face to a sombre, humourless expression whenever the cameras rolled, has given way gradually to a suppressed confidence and the occasional outburst of a grin.

Audience reactions have changed as his speaking delivery has changed to suit different media. For the hall audience, there are the snappy, slogan-like phrases. For the reporters in the hall, looking desperately for issues to cover, there was the set speech, which differed so much from his normal delivery that it was immediately apparent he was reading. Only by the last week had

Mr Lange relaxed enough to improvise on the set speeches, gaining more audience reaction particularly from his Napier meeting last Tuesday. Many of the audience, though, could safely be described as party faithful, even though in places such as Rotorua, New Plymouth, and Napier they outstripped attendance records for recent Labour meetings. They also represent a small proportion of voters in any single electorate. So the meeting Mr Lange had in a Taumarunui pub with local civic leaders was perhaps a more significant reflection of the feeling he has tapped particularly in provincial New Zealand.

There, he was confronted with an unlikely delegation of local body councils, hospital and school boards, unions, Federated Farmers, and retailers, all pleading a case against a Ministry of Works and Development decision to transfer 35 Ministry families to Turangi. They argued that the loss of the families would reduce vital services and facilities in Taumarunui. What they got from Mr Lange was a refusal to commit a Labour Government to revoking the transfer order, but a Solomon’s judgment pledging that the issue would be kept open for debate for all interested parties, including the unrepresented Turangi residents, who stood to gain from the transfer, before a decision was made.

The Taumarunui delegation went away pleased with their reception. Mr Lange, removed from audiences he had to cajole and exhort, assumed a business-like pose, absorbing the details of the delegation’s submissions quickly and drawing further details from individual members. His lawyer’s training of mastering a brief as quickly as possible was to the fore.

Pressed later, he told “The Press” he was not getting any feedback at all that people expected any more from Labour than the chance to have their voice heard, and to have “integrity” in government.

Consultation has been a major plank in his election platform. Consequently, there have been few firm policy pledges, and, until the last week, little sparring

with National over diiterences. The paramount issue, and the one which has gained most electoral reaction, has been the Prime Minister’s style of government Mr Lange has even been at pains to tell his audiences

not to expect too many changes before Christmas, but to brace themselves for a long, hard haul to get the country’s economy into shape. ' The preacher’s style, which he has found almost impossible to translate into something that can be reported or televised, has extended even to advising his audience not to gloat over National and Social Credit voters who may be defeated on polling day.

Hie same style, exhorting supporters to work together with their political rivals under a new Government, was labelled “condescending and arrogant” by Sir Robert when he was on the receiving end of it in a televised debate last Sunday evening.

Mr Lange later told “The Press” he did not expect the message to appeal to everyone. He believed “quite big chunks” of society probably would not care to put divisions behind them and work together.

But he maintained there was a resurgent, international mood that “people who care and think” wanted to work, but were put off any initiative of their own by “sectoral politics of blindness and hate.”

“That is no more evident than in the provincial areas,” he said. “They don’t want to see Wellington ruling their lives.” Mr Lange has offered voters a team of Labour Ministers, winning applause on the mention of names of his deputy leader, Mr Geoffrey Palmer, and two other Christchurch members, Mr Mike Moore and Mrs Ann Hercus. But audiences were noticeably cool on the mention of the party’s finance spokesman, Mr Rodger Douglas, though they later warmed to Mr Lange’s insistence that Mr Douglas had paid for his mistake in releasing a discussion paper favouring devaluation, and particularly when, this was linked with a claim that the country had paid for the “mistakes” of Sir Robert Muldoon.

In asking voters to trust his “team,” Mr Lange told “The Press” he was not asking them to “buy into 20 individuals.” He believed a leader still had to “carry the can” and be ultimately responsible for his Government.

“But his strengths are to

commit people and delegate responsibility, and ensure that they deliver. That quality should be respected by the electorate,” he said. “Pressing the flesh’’ is an inevitable part of election campaigns, and Mr Lange has mingled enthusiastically with crowds after his meetings, or with workers as he has toured factories in provincial electorates.

He has displayed a seemingly limitless store of anecdotes, for the occasion, and an easy banter with total strangers who have come up to shake his hand. Tiredness has been evident, though. His speech in New Plymouth barely fired as he slurred his words and spoke slowly and flatly. The meeting came a day after he had participated in a radio debate with the leaders of the other three main parties, which the compere, Ms Sharon Crosbie, later likened to being “in charge of a playpen of over-tired toddlers.”

Mr Lange says the hardest thing about the camK, his first as leader of abour Party, was “living for weeks and weeks, knowing if you make a slip you're turkey.” “Fortunately,” he said, that had not happened. Perhaps as an insurance policy, though, he has been shadowed during the whole campaign by Mr Joe Walding, a former Labour Minister of Overseas Trade, offering more moral support than advice but also allowing Mr Lange to consult and relax with an experienced campaigner. A touch of self-depreca-tory humour slipped into his speeches, particularly about his size and more polished appearance. To jibes about his new glasses and suit, he told audiences these were not the real issues of the election campaign, and at least his suit had given three months work to a team of tailors, or “tentmakers” as he called them later in the campaign.

Asked in the last week what he had planned in case Labour lost the election, he told “The Press,” “If we lose, we start to put it together again. But I don’t concede that we will.” He has exhorted Labour supporters to ignore political polls, and the party has organised hundreds of volunteers in key electorates to call on voters on polling day, persuading the extra voters who enrolled late to exercise their vote. But Mr Lange’s and his party’s fate may be more in the hands of those who did not attend his meetings, and who by the end of the week had still not made up their minds.