Nats bound for dead end—Sunday Club

Press, 30 January 1986, Page 7

Nats bound for dead end—Sunday Club

By OLIVER RIDDELL in Wellington The National Party was being led to annihilation said the Sunday Club chairman, Mr Bert Walker.

This ginger group within the National Party seeks more traditional policies and has criticised the leadership, both within the party and within Parliament, for National’s poor performance and low poll rating.

Mr Walker has written to senior National Party executives explaining why National did so badly in 1985, and what remedies were needed this year.

“You are almost 18 months away from an election campaign,” he told them. "Unless the (National Party) Dominion Executive takes a more realistic view of what the voting public is saying, then National is heading for complete annihilation.

“As much as the Sunday Club appreciates Jim McLay the man and the politician, no party in touch with the voting public would retain as Parliamentary Leader someone who could attract only a 3 per cent popularity vote, and still hope to win an election campaign. “People are beginning to panic,” Mr Walker said.

He put several questions to them:

• Why had the National Party membership fallen from 200,000 to less than 100,000 in only a few years?

• Why were so many branches going into recess?

• Why did the National Party turn its back on the public and become so divorced from the people? • Why is National in such financial difficulties?

• Why was the New Zealand Party formed; how many National financial members had defected to it; and why was

no one trying to regain them? ,

• Why were party members not advised of the pending sale of the headquarters building in Wellington or the reasons for it, when they had helped raise the money for it?

Mr Walker supported Dr lan Shearer’s efforts to seek public answers to the financial matters. The health of the National Party made any possible embarrassments immaterial.

He said the handling of Dr Shearer and Mrs Margaret Quin was “a fiasco” that had left everyone thinking the lawyers on the Dominion executive did not understand the common law—hardly the way to win confidence and public support.

He described the repeated remarks of National’s president, Mrs Sue Wood, on television—“l’m gagged and can’t say anything”—as throwing much doubt on who was running the National Party. The Sunday Club was now numerically and financially very strong. Politically, its aim had always been to do its best to salvage the National Party organisation, and then defeat the Labour Government Mr Walker told “The Press” it was pleased Mr McLay had said he would do his best to improve his leadership this year, and took credit for that The recent Agricultural Position Paper from National also agreed with Sunday Club policies, though should have been more explicit

The Sunday Club had been refining its longterm policy proposals for National.