Govt loss of seats predicted

Press, 15 April 1986, Page 20

Govt loss of seats predicted

PA Hamilton The Government would be lucky to hold one provincial seat after the next election, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, told a Hamilton East electorate dinner. The Government had failed to realise that the inevitable result of its “vicious attack” on the farming sector would be a downturn in provincial centres that serviced those areas.

The predicted 25 per cent drop in dairy farmers’ incomes would have a big impact on Hamilton, Mr Bolger said.

The city would fall to National at the next election.

For the people in the high rises of Auckland and Wellington the recession had yet to start, Mr Bolger said. It was mainly being felt by the "little people — the families trying to pay Off a mortgage while keeping the kids in shoes.” Even Labour members of Parliament were losing faith in the Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas.

“You can see them counting up the bankruptcies in their electorates, the number of

farmers who have been tossed off their land, the number of home owners who have been to see them in the past week to ask for help because they have got to sell up,” Mr Bolger said. The National Party had solutions that would correct the “lemming-like path of the economy under Labour,” Mr Bolger said.

“We recognise that the market and market forces will always be Important in determining economic policies,” he said.

Market economics was also about people. The

National Party wanted to create an economy where people could be secure in ■ the knowledge that the rules were not going to be changed half way through," Mr Bolger said. ~