Sir Robert admits party has hit difficult time

Press, 12 October 1985, Page 2

Sir Robert admits party has hit difficult time

By OLIVER RIDDELL in Wellington The fact that the National Party is "going through a difficult time” has been acknowledged by the party’s former leader, Sir Robert Muldoon. In an address at a National Party function in Invercargill, he said National had to ask Itself why it was not taking better advantage of the mess the Labour Government was getting into. “We have a Government which, through its handling of the economy, should be 10 points behind in the polls yet is 10 points ahead. Sir Robert said.

He said the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, was riding a wave of self-esteem which enabled him to say the most outrageous things, believe them himself, and convince a good slice of the public it should believe him as well. National had to ask itself why all this was happening because, if it could not answer that question, its hope of making this another one-term Labour Government was slim indeed.

“Why then is the National Party still behind in the polls?” Sir Robert said. “I am not going to talk about personalities on our side of the House; you can all make up your own minds on that.” But National had allowed itself to be diverted from the reality that earned the country’s “bread and butter” to issues which, although important in themselves, haa been used deliberately by the Labour Party to divert attention from the fact that an economic policy was bringing the country face to face with a recession.

The depth and time span of this recession could not be calculated, Sir Robert said. There was no solution short of a change of Government because whatever changes the Labour Government made would be halfhearted.

“I have.never apologised for the economic policies of my Government and I am not about to start,” Sir Robert said. Monetarist theories as the basis for economic policies created more problems than they solved and a middle-of-the-road economic policy — using all the weapons available, but each to the least possible extent — provided the best answer in New Zealand.

"Some of my colleagues in the National party caucus have not yet absorbed that lesson, and some of them will have to eat their words to do so,” he said.

Unless they did so there was no way National would be seen as much different from the present Government and by 1987 that would not be an attractive picture for the voter. Sir Robert said there was a chance Labour would go to the country at the end of 1986, before the impact of the goods and services tax was fully apparent and immediately after some quite substantial personal income tax relief was given.

There was even a chance Labour would call an election this year, so that it could jump over the worst of the economic disaster before it had to face the voters again, but time was running out for that He predicted that for the 1986 calendar year New Zealand’s rate of inflation would be about 20 per cent, and worse still by March, 1987. After that, the rate would start to move down.

That was not a good situation for a Government facing an election, particularly as interest rates would certeinly not be lower than now. “By then, National will have to have its act together,” Sir Robert said. “It will have to decide whether it is a party of the mainstream of New Zealand thought, or whether it has been subverted by the socalled urban liberals, and it will have to be performing rather better in the House than it has in recent times,” he said.

The Leader of the Oppostion, Mr McLay, declined to be drawn on Sir Robert’s comments about the National Party. However, Mr McLay plans to address a National Party meeting in Auckland tomorrow and if he finds Sir Robert’s comments have received a lot of prominence during the week-end he is expected to reply then.