Mrs Tizard went ‘into shock’

Press, 10 December 1984, Page 1

Mrs Tizard went ‘into shock’

PA Auckland The Mayor of Auckland, Mrs Cath Tizard, said yesterday that she had gone “into shock” during Friday evening’s violence in the city. Mrs Tizard had gone into the midst of the riots in Aotea Square and Queen Street and appealed to young people to move away from the conflict. She said that at one point she had tapped the shoulder of a man who was smashing windows and told him to stop. “I must have been completely out of my head,” she said. At an emergency meeting of the Auckland City Council yesterday, Mrs Tizard told of an “absolute hailstorm” of bottles and cans in scenes which resembled Belfast. When the rock concert was stopped and the storm

of missiles began, Mrs Tizard left the civic administration building and went into Aotea Square. “In the time it took me to go down in the lift, out the door and across the square, the Visitors and Information Centre had been demolished.

“I stood behind a man wielding a drum and others with heavy weapons smashing the last bit of glass in the information bureau.

“It was full of people gleefully dancing round like dervishes in an inferno, and smashing everything in sight.

“Make no mistake, this was a very representative group of young Auckland,” she said.

At that stage, said Mrs Tizard, she thought she went into shock, because she went into Queen Street and tried to appeal to young people to “move off.”

“There was no point in trying to make contact with people who were behaving in a mad, violent way, but what I was trying to persuade the spectators to do was to get out of it, to go.”

Young people caught up in the melee had been terri-

fied, she said. Many had come up to her to say what was happening was awful, and the concert had been lovely up to that point. “This positive side of what happened . was reflected later, with young people coming up saying ‘Give me a shovel, give me a broom, let me help’,” said Mrs Tizard.

She had spoken later to the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, at the Auckland Central Police Station, and on Saturday had long, intensive discussions with the Minister of Police, Mrs Hercus.

After yesterday’s council meeting, Mrs Tizard said alcohol and drugs had been the evident reasons for the violence.

“What causes young people to respond in the way that they did,” she said, “is a deeper problem that we are all part of.”