Sunday Club to stand

Press, 16 December 1985, Page 1

Sunday Club to stand

The Sunday Club will field candidates in the 1987 General Election, its chairman, Mr Bert Walker, announced yesterday. Selected Parliamentary seats, both National and Labour, would be contested under the banner of “The National Conservative Group,” an independent group drawn from within the financial membership of the National Party, he said.

The group would “exercise its right to act independently when, in its view, the situation warrants it.”

Mr Walker would not .say which seats would be contested, or who would stand. Some names would be announced before Christmas. Mr Walker said that the reasons the Sunday Club had decided to contest seats were the “extreme economic conditions prevailing, the unnecessary hurt and concern of so many sections of the community, and an ineffective Parliamentary Opposition that appears unwilling or unable to decide what it was they were elected to Parliament for.”

The National Conservative Group would attract people who were “liberal in social and moral matters and on the extreme Right in monetary matters,” said Mr Walker.

The group did not disagree with any of the National Party’s stated principles or philosophies, but supported a return to traditionally recognised morality and laws. It believed in a free competitive market system, and in free enterprise, but not a “totally unfettered form of free enterprise.”

“New Zealand has been thrown in at the deep end by the theorists preaching an uncompromising, unrestrained monetary policy,” said Mr Walker.

A tighter, more controlled welfare system was needed. The group believed that a high standard of health and education should be available to all citizens. Peace studies should be removed from school curriculae, as they represented a grave danger of political indoctrination and weakening of New Zealand’s defence, he said. Legislation to ban nuclear ships from ports should be removed also, and alliances with countries of the “free world” should be encouraged for “collective security.”