Timaru would prosper if Soared wins—M.P.

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 8

Timaru would prosper if Soared wins—M.P.

Timaru hv alartinn

Timaru would prosper if Social Credit wins next month’s by-election, said the party’s deputy leader, Mr Garry Knapp, last evening. Addressing a small gathering at the opening of the party’s campaign, Mr Knapp said the region would benefit because the Government would spend a lot of money trying to win back the seat.

“This Government is a Government of con artists. They use clever, tricky words.”

In spite of all the waffle about free enterprise, the academic socialists in the Labour Party were quite happy to hook low-income New Zealanders on to the welfare system. Unemployment had dropped but emigration had risen. Many of New Zealand’s best workers were voting with their feet and leaving the country, he said.

Virtually every Govern-

ment charge had gone up by more than 20 per cent, and the goods and services tax would add another 15 per cent.

“All of the fancy talk before the election, the soothing promises, have been thrown out the window. The academics and their text-book theories have taken over,” said Mr Knapp.

The Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas, whom he described as a Tory in drag, had even conned his colleagues. “Instead of the ordinary people being better off and being given some sense and some hope, it is the finance companies, the leaders of the banking fraternity and the property speculators who heap praise on the Government/’

Floating the dollar had been “an utter fizzer.”

Mr Knapp said the Government had borrowed itself silly, and had “opened up the New Zealand market to any opportunist' or comelately to make a fast buck out of New Zealand’s resources.” The Government was borrowing the people’s money and charging them for the privilege. Loans raised to pay for the Marsden Point refinery, in overseas dollars, were now 25 per cent dearer to repay in New Zealand dollars.

“That is Labour’s fault. Though every Minister in the Labour Government would have you believe that the fault belongs with National, they knew what

would follow when they brought about the devaluation,” he said. Social Credit did not believe that a free market existed.

Mr Kanpp said the Reserve Bank credit resource should be used to build vital indigenous resources such as a deep-sea fishing fleet, to reticulate compressed national gas to the South Island, diversify farming, develop forestry and expand tourism.

He said the past Labour leaders, Michael Savage and Peter Fraser, had used the same method to build railways, .roads and houses. It could be done again.

Social Credit’s candidate for the by-election, Mrs Lynley Simmons, pledged to fight for Government financial backing for erosion control at Washdyke, a higher subsidy for Timaru’s sewerage scheme, better staffing levels for police and more support for tourism.