Bank post causes row in House

Press, 11 July 1986, Page 1

Bank post causes row in House

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The pending appointment of one of New Zealand’s leading • Communists, the secretary of the Federation of Labour, Mr Ken Douglas, to the board of the Reserve Bank led to four senior members of the National Party being told to leave Parliament yesterday. A well authenticated rumour of Mr Douglas’s appointment reached Parliament yesterday morning. Mr Douglas himself was unavailable for comment but checks within the Beehive showed that his appointment is expected to be announced within the next two days. Word of this reached the National Party at its weekly caucus meeting and when Parliament assembled at 2 p.m. the Opposition began taunting the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, across the House. Mr Lange provoked his opponents by continuing to work at his desk with his head down, and this led to louder and louder taunts.

The first to be ordered from the Chamber was the former Minister of Energy and present Opposition leader in the House, Mr Bill Birch. The Speaker, Dr Wall, ordered Mr Birch out for continuing to call In a loud voice while the Speaker was on his feet trying to address members. He was followed in quick succession by three of his colleagues who, even though Dr Wall remained on his feet, continued to call out and taunt Mr Lange. The three, in order, were the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger; the former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon; and the former Minister of

Social Welfare, Mr Venn Young. All left relatively good-humouredly, although Sir Robert called back to the Speaker as he left: "Labour Party dictatorship.” The next hour in Parliament, question time, was extremely unruly. The barred members returned after 15 minutes and it was more back-benchers on both sides of the House who followed their example. There was such a babble of noise that it was very hard for members themselves and the Speaker to hear what questions were being asked and what the replies of Cabinet Ministers were.

Dr Wall himself compounded the growing irritation of National Party back-benchers by viewing Democratic Party members of Parliament as "Opposition members.” The effect of this was that sometimes National Party members were not given time to ask a question after a Democrat had asked one.

Mr Douglas, whose appointment got the afternoon in Parliament off to such a bad start, is a long? time member of the Mos-cow-orientated Socialist Unity Party. He is a believer in classic Marxist theory about nationalising the means of production, distribution and exchange, and about the class struggle.