Mr Bolger, Sir Robert deal to oust Mr McLay?

Press, 3 December 1985, Page 1

Mr Bolger, Sir Robert deal to oust Mr McLay?

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington

An accommodation between the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, and Sir Robert Muldoon has put Mr McLay’s leadership of the National Party under immediate threat, according to caucus sources.

The question is not now if there will be a reshuffle but when and whether Mr McLay will survive as leader until Christmas, they say. The member of Parliament for Kaimai, Mr Bruce Townshend, and the member for New Plymouth, Mr Tony Friedlander, are being cited as Mr Bolger’s numbers men.

Mr Friedlander is a longtime Muldoon supporter and lobbied last December when Sir Robert was under challenge from Mr McLay to have the vote deferred to the New Year.

Mr Bolger is believed to have offered Sir Robert the foreign affairs spokesmanship and promotion to the front bench.

While this may win him the support of the Muldoon camp, it will antagonise those who regard Sir Robert more as a political liability than an asset but they would tend anyway to line up behind Mr McLay. The push to drop Mr McLay gained force after Friday’s Heylen-“Eye Witness” poll. This showed not only that Mr Bolger was 5 percentage points ahead of Mr McLay in the preferred leader stakes, but also that for the third successive month support for him had increased.

He was at 8.2 per cent from 5.7 per cent in October and 2.8 per cent in August. Compounding the speculation that a coup is imminent is an address Mr Bolger gave last evening at the official opening of a new party building in Mr Friedlander’s electorate.

The speech notes were circulated to the Parliamentary press gallery. They show Mr Bolger linking himself with a confident future and distancing himself from the uncertainties now besetting National. “This expression of confidence in New Plymouth is all the more welcome at a time when some would argue that the party has lost its way,” he says. “I suffer from no such indecision.”

They also show Mr Bolger arguing that the Opposition must get its act together and quickly.

“The time available may be very short because I believe that the Government may seek an election early next year on the issue of its nuclear-free legislation,” he says. While he does not present this as an argument for an early resolution of National’s leadership crisis, others are making the point for him. There are also indications in the speech of a rapprochement with Sir Robert based on a middle position between Sir Robert’s interventionist apEiach to the economy and McLay’s more market orthodoxy. While Mr Bolger “confronts head-on the myth that National favours unnecessary controls and regulations,” he does not repudiate interventionism per se.

Mr Bolger; page 8