Unionist critical of Ministers’ market comment

Press, 12 September 1984, Page 26

Unionist critical of Ministers’ market comment

PA Wellington A leading trade unionist has publicly criticised comments made by some Government members of Parliament on the economy. A Federation of Labour executive member, Mr Rob Campbell, newly elected to the Labour Party’s governing council, said some statements made by leading members of the Government caucus and the Cabinet had filled him with horror. “We need to set in train now a controlled reflation of the economy which specifically seeks to deny the workings of the market,” he said. A controlled economic programme was fundamentally important to the success of accords being worked out.

Mr Campbell told NZPA later that he believed some of the statements made by the Ministers responsible for economic management on trade protection, wage levels, and monetary controls suggested that the

Treasury line of thinking was having an influence on them. He believed those Ministers had been put under an enormous amount of pressure, particularly since they came into power, by big business organisations, Public Service advisers, and the Treasury and the Reserve Bank to adopt a more market, less protectionist, attitude towards economic management than the previous Government. Labour and union policy always had favoured a controlled economy with an emphasis on stabilisation and a traditional emphasis on protection of domestic industry. Mr Campbell told delegates that to reject intervention was economic tenancy. “In a small, trade-depend-ent economy it makes sense to stabilise and control what we have. It makes no sense to carry out free-market experiments with an already sick economy and some already devastated members of the working class,” he said.