P.M. ‘shattered’ to see words in print

Press, 14 October 1985, Page 13

P.M. ‘shattered’ to see words in print

By

NZPA chief

political reporter Tim Donoghue Wellington

The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, said he was “shattered” when he saw in print his “geriatric generals” description of the former military chiefs who spoke out against the Government’s anti-nuclear policies. He had not intended his remarks to be published. Mr Lange said on a Radio New Zealand talkback show on Friday. When asked by the show’s host, Paul Holmes, if he regretted the remark, Mr Lange replied, “Oh, I do regret it very much, because it was never intended to be published.” “I just saw a chap as I was walking down a corridor and I said no, dismissed him. and when I saw it the next morning, I tell you

what I was much more shattered than the generals because it was exactly the wrong way to engage in a considered debate.

“I have spent a lot of time since actually engaging in an analysis of the issue rather than the personalities who were involved,” Mr Lange said.

As the reporter involved, I approached Mr Lange in a Beehive corridor on Tuesday evening and asked him for comment on the former defence chiefs’ report which had been embargoed for publication the next morning.

The interview with Mr Lange, recorded on a taperecorder, lasted one minute 25 seconds. Asked for his comment on the report, Mr Lange told me he did not intend to embark on a slanging match with former generals, and

going public would not enhance their cause, “either on their proposition or on their interesting excursion into disclosing things about the world of Intelligence which is also unprecedented.” He said he had sent a letter to “the chief letter writer” (Lieutenant-General Sir Leonard Thornton) on Monday. “His haste to go public on the matter will not enhance his cause at all,” Mr Lange said. He said he had told Sir Leonard what the Government intended to do in its Defence Review. Mr Lange said a further announcement on the Defence Review would be made by the Minister of Defence, Mr O’Flynn, during the debate on Defence estimates in Parliament that evening. “I did not see that state-

ment (of the defence chiefs) which was tendered extensively to the news media until tonight,” Mr Lange said. “I have had a letter from one of their number who was a signatory to this which was so hair-raising and so dotty that it rather tends to lend incredibility to the general position,” Mr Lange said.

Asked who had written the letter he was referring to, Mr Lange named one of the signatories.

The interview concluded when a group of serving defence chiefs passed us in the Beehive corridor on their way to the debating chamber for the Defence estimates.

Mr Lange said within earshot of the defence chiefs: “It’s incredible really. These geriatric generals can carry on like this for as long as they like.”