N.Z. author Harry Morton tells about his concerns

Press, 8 July 1986, Page 22

N.Z. author Harry Morton tells about his concerns

Nelson reporter

Politics, pressure groups, freedoms, family life erosion, and the alienation of "old friends” are some of the things that concern a New Zealand author, Harry Morton.

“The country is getting into a mess very largely of its own making,” he said, during an address to the Nelson City Luncheon Club.

Mr Morton, whose father and grandfather were in politics, admitted an interest in politics too.

“But my grandfather and father worked in the earlier days when politics meant to provide economically and democratically the best services and protection for the citizens. “It did not mean telling citizens how they should be living or thinking, nor massive social changes,” he said.

“The old, decent days of Nash and Nordmeyer, of Holyoake and Marshall, of Taiboys and Norman Kirk, whatever we thought of each of them then, by hqaven they look good now,” he said.

Mr Morton said he did not belong to any political party. His own political view was like that of McPhail and Gadsby: “I think Muldoon and Lange deserve each other.” On his travels he said, he could feel an unease, growing steadily, throughout New Zealand.

“People are genuinely worried and all of us want to do something about it, if only we knew why. I don't know why,” he said. Chatting with friends, he had found that they were not very concerned about what the "trendies” in the Treasury or women’s affairs or the universities thought “for all of them are absolutely secure with constantly rising salaries. In many

cases they just don’t know how the rest of the world lives,” he said. Mr Morton said he was particularly worried about pressure groups and whether freedoms were really being maintained. “How are we going to continue to pay for the good life of New Zealand without the fullest use of New Zealand’s chief asset, our agricultural skills and development? No farmer, for the next generation, is going to stick his neck out so far again*" he said.

New Zealanders should be asking questions about the activities of pressure groups.

“They seem to have no sense about the freedom of their critics to oppose opinions and their actions,” he said. There had always been pressure groups, going back through the centuries, “but they always tried to work by education and persuasion, and talked and acted with reason and moderation.”

This was not the case today.

"I have no time for fanatics. They seem to think their feelings are so unique that they justify threats, violent trampling on the rights of others,

and genuine danger to others,” said Mr Morton. “Demonstration is one thing; destruction, obstruction and disloyalty are another. The S.P.QA., the anti-racist groups — causes which definitely deserve sympathy — have nonetheless run mad in this country, apparently caring only about their own point of view,’’ he said. *

Mr Morton suggested it was time to check to see if freedoms were as secure as they were said to be. He cited the new Bill of Rights as an example. “ft will be little help in this because it specifically protects the right of the Government to favour some people against others in the, name of group rights,” he said. However, experience had shown that Bills of Rights had to be a protection against the Government and for Individual rights, and not rights for groups. If groups’ rights were protected, that protection took away the rights of individuals of any other group, he said. Mr Morton expressed concern about New Zealand’s falling reputation in the world with the people

who had always been New Zealand’s friends, and the arguments used to justify new friends. “I am quite sure in the field of defence that Mr Lange absolutely means it when he says there is no threat to New Zealand. He must, for why else would he have appointed the present Minister?” Mr Morton also questioned “the approach to modern life which downgrades the family.” All the ggreat civilisations were built solidly on family life, he said.