Time runs short for Labour-Mr McLay

Press, 14 March 1985, Page 1

Time runs short for LabourMr McLay

PA Wellington Time was running out for Labour and all the good will of last year was expended, said the Leader of the Opposition, Mr McLay, yesterday.

He had given notice during a debate on private members’ notices of motion that he would move that the Government had lost the confidence of the House and the country. He cited rising food prices, high interest rates, industrial relations, and the A.N.Z.U.S. dispute. An Associate Minister of Finance, Mr Prebble, dismissed Mr McLay’s motion as a “pompous, arrogant, and prissy put-down.” Mr Mclay said New Zealanders were angry that the Lange Government had been responsible for high rates of inflation, and had showed a total unwillingness to deal with strikes. “We are sick and tired of a Prime Minister who at the moment is spending more time out of the country than in it — a man possessed of his own self-importance,” he said. Mr McLay said Labour had broken its promise to control prices. Food prices had risen 3.7 per cent in the last two months, he said. Interest rates had reached the highest level in the nation’s history. The Government was borrowing money at more than 18 per cent a year. Rates for overnight money had reached 1000 per

cent and had now slipped back to 750 per cent. Borrowing interest rates for houses were reaching 38 per cent per annum, he said. Overdraft rates were quoted at 30 per cent. “Banana republic figures — that is what this Government has done to this country in a short period of time,” said Mr McLay. “The people who voted for a Labour Government in July of last year did not vote for interest rates whether they be 18 per cent, 38 per cent, 55, 100, 500 or 1000 per cent. Interest rates at that level are nothing short of criminal.”

sure the security, the freedom, and defence of New Zealand. Whatever mandate the Labour Government might claim for its ban on nuclear ships, it had no mandate to curtail the A.N.Z.U.S. treaty or to render it inoperative, he said. Mr Prebble said the Government’s policies were succeeding. “We have taken over the worst economic crisis in this country’s history,” he said. The total debt of $14,000 million had been passed on to a Labour Government. The nation was no longer on its “borrow, borrow, borrow” track the previous Gover.iment had been on, he said.

Mr McLay said the Government had utterly and completely failed in its fundamental obligations to en-

Mr Prebble said a recent poll had shown that Labour was still the most preferred Government and the former National Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, was still the preferred party leader.

He described Mr McLay’s motion as puerile and said his speech had been a “pompous, arrogant, and prissy put-down.” It was not even close to what the average New Zealander wanted, he said.

He said Mr McLay was obsessed by the A.N.Z.U.S. issue and would be using his taxpayers’ paid trip to go overseas to denounce New Zealand.

The Opposition spokesman on finance, Mr Bill Birch, said Mr Prebble and the rest of the Cabinet “couldn’t run a fish and chip shop.” Mr Prebble had not answered one of the charges the Opposition had made. Before the last General

Election, building societies had been lending at 10 to 11 per cent on first mortgages — today that rate was more than 20 per cent, Mr Birch said.

Small-business people who needed to finance to expand were paying 8 per cent more than previously. “The Reserve Bank had realised the high rates were permanently damaging New Zealanders who wanted to borrow. The bank had to put back into the money market almost as much as it had taken out in the last four months to bring down interest rates — so much for their monetary policy,” said Mr Birch. The Senior Government Whip, Dr Cullen, said the noconfidence motion was “brittle, hysterical, and melodramatic” and had been put forward by a “brittle, hysterical, and melodramatic” Leader of the Opposition.

He said the National Party and “a few tame Tory stooges” were the only people trying to talk New Zealand's ’ trade relation-

ships with the United States into trouble.

Mr McLay had also said New Zealand was now defenceless.

“Has anyone noticed a large increase in the number of Slavic-looking gentlemen in ill-fitting suits wandering round this country measuring up the bridges and tunnels and various other targets?” Dr Cullen said.

“The country has carried on. There is no threat. Little old Tory ladies still go to bed and are surprised now to wake up and find they have not been ravaged by the hordes of Muscovy overnight,” he said. The National Party was faced with rebellion in its own ranks but it dared to talk about no confidence motions, Dr Cullen said.

He said that when the Opposition members were asked if they would reverse Government policies on interest rate and price controls, subsidies, and the surcharge on national superannuation,’ they could not give an answer.