Mrs Wood can’t be beaten: Sir George

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 15

Mrs Wood can’t be beaten: Sir George

PA Wellington The president of .the National Party, Mrs Sue Wood, would be unbeatable at the moment, a former holder of the position, Sir George Chapman, has said. Mrs Wood is being challenged for the presidency by a former National Government Minister, Dr lan Shearer. . Sir George told Radio New Zealand’s “Morning Report” that Dr Shearer would struggle to get there because Mrs Wood had strong support among party activists. "Dr Shearer has two hurdles to overcome... the first is that he has to obtain a nomination from the Auckland division,” Sir George said. “If he does succeed in obtaining a nomination then he will still have a considerable hurdle at the conference and the odds are very much against him being successful,” he said. Sir George said it was always a big task to take on the sitting president, as he had found out in 1971 when he lost his first attempt at leadership of the party. He said he did not think the challenge would affect National’s chances at the Timaru by-election. Dr Shearer replied that he believed it was necessary to challenge the president, “under the circumstances.” “There is considerable concern within the party and I believe that she should not go through all of

the five divisions unchallenged,” he said.

Asked about the effect his challenge would have on the by-election, Dr Shearer said if the organisation was going to be affected then, clearly, there was a need to do more work. He said he was confident of support. “Within the last 48 hours I’ve gone from four to seven and I haven’t canvassed yet. These are just people that have phoned in and said: ‘You’ve got virtually total support from our electorate.’

“Bearing in mind the number of delegates from each of those, that’s a considerable number starting to add up,” Dr Shearer said. The support had come from the Auckland division, he said. Dr Shearer said he did

not believe the fact that Mrs Wood came from Auckland would make his task more difficult.

“I believe this is really an issue whether the president and the general director have done their job, and it doesn’t relate to regional boundaries. Clearly there’s some dissatisfaction with their performances in the Canterbury-Westland area,” he said. Dr Shearer said if he won there would be a reorganisation of the party’s headquarters which had to be done before the next General Election. “If I lose we’ll reconsider next year. But next year is another matter because it’s much closer to a General Election and quite clearly that is not a good time to consider changing the presidency,” Dr Shearer said.