Party studies reforms

Press, 29 August 1984, Page 26

Party studies reforms

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Th first stirrings for reform of the National Party are now being felt within the party organisation. A nine-member committee has been set up by the party’s Wellington Division with three terms of reference: • To investigate and report on the structure the party organisation needs to win in 1987. • To investigate and report on how channels of communication between the party grassroots and its Parliamentary representatives can be improved; and • To investigate and report on the party so it can communicate better internally and with the public. Similar committees are being considered by the Canterbury-Westland and Auckland divisions. The Wellington committee has not been set up by the party’s national headquarters — based in Wellington — and will not report to headquarters. But its report will have a profound effect in headquarters, particularly if similar reports surface in Christchurch andAuckland. The committee was set

up because of the concern of the division over the loss of the General Election, the failure of the Government caucus to initiate reforms, and the failure of the annual conference two weeks after the General Election to initiate reforms.

There was a strong feeling at the annual conference that both the National leader, Sir Robert Muldoon, and the Party’s genera! director, Mr Barrie Leay, should go. Precipitate action on either was avoided.

The Wellington committee has not been set up to find one, two, or more, scapegoats. It has been set up to seek a path forward for the National Party, not in terms of party philosophy, but in terms of organisation and the hardware to back it — including money, personnel, and computers. It wants a suitable organisational structure, suitable structures for the flow of information within and to the outside, and suitable

personnel to fill the places in the structure. National is now conceding six weeks after the General Election what it would not concede two weeks after at its annual conference; it was out-organised by Labour. This committee, and probably others like it, has taken a few key personnel to work through the process of collecting opinions and making recommendations so that National will not have a similar experience in 1987.