THE MISPRESS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1986. P.M.’s choice of audiences

Press, 3 September 1986, Page 16

THE MISPRESS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1986. P.M.’s choice of audiences

The Whakatane Rotary Club, for the last three years host to the annual “state of the nation” address by the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, will hear no more from him. Nor indeed will any other Rotary club or “groups which discriminate against women.” Perhaps the hurly-burly of a pretty tough party conference, which had some harsh words for his Government, persuaded Mr Lange to adopt this course. He will now comply with a remit adopted by the Labour Party conference in one of its more cranky moments at the week-end.

Mr Lange, in fact, has gone further. The conference asked that his annual address be made to “a more representative audience.” Mr Lange has said he will not be speaking “to people who have discrimination” and disclosed that he has declined invitations recently to speak to organisations that are “uniformly homosexual.” Who he speaks to is Mr Lange’s business of course, just as it is the business of other people whether they listen. Even so, Mr Lange seems to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick and will disqualify himself from many speaking engagements if he is going to apply his new rule evenly.

Presumably, since he will no longer

speak to Rotary Club meetings, Mr Lange will also refuse to speak to meetings of the Inner Wheel, the associated organisation for women — a separate and autonomous body because the women want it that way. By the same token he will have to pass up opportunities to speak to the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers, the Federation of University Women, the Maori Women’s Welfare League, and even the League of Mothers. Certainly he could not address the Pulp and Paper Workers’ Federation, whose policy is to discriminate against women in jobs involving shift work.

The Rotary organisation meanwhile, is confident it can get other speakers who are just as good “and last longer than politicians.” Some people, indeed, might be gladdened by the thought that the trend should catch on and that they would have to listen less to what politicians are saying and read less about what politicians have said. For these hopefuls, Mr Lange’s aside that Whakatane is, in any event, “a rather difficult venue from the point of view of the media” suggests that he wants more coverage of his speeches, not less. Perhaps, after all, Mr Lange wants no more than to spend his summer holidays somewhere else this year.