Report inaccurate—Mr Goff

Press, 19 September 1986, Page 4

Report inaccurate —Mr Goff

Wellington reporter Mr Philip Burdon (Nat., Fendalton) came under attack from the Government in Parliament yesterday and was greeted with chants of “shame, shame” when he rose to reply.

The attack resulted from an article in a weekly newspaper about a Christchurch woman who was alleged to have taken Housing Corporation loan advice and been left “homeless and heartbroken.” .

The article then said that Mr Burdon was “bat-

tling” the Minister or Housing, Mr Goff, on her behalf. This led to a question in Parliament to Mr Goff by Mr Jim Sutton (Lab., Waitaki) asking if the Minister could confirm any of the statements in the article. Mr Goff said that a number of statements in the article that were advanced as factual were grossly inaccurate and misleading. He quoted the statement that Mr Burdon had been battling him on the woman’s behalf. In fact, Mr Burdon had never ap-

proached either the Minister of Housing or the Housing Corporation on her behalf. "That is a peculiarly inactive style of battling,” Mr Goff said. The only approach he had received on the woman’s behalf had been from Mr Caygill (Lab., St Albans), the Minister of Trade and Industry. Further, the woman had not been paying $163 a week in mortgage repayments to the Housing Corporation, as alleged, but $B7 a week. Contrary to assertions in tjhe article, Mr Goff

said, the sale of her home by the corporation had not rendered her homeless. She had bought a new home that was mort-gage-free. Mr Burdon rose to challenge the Minister to table the correspondence on the issue, but was drowned out by cries of “shame” from the Government. Ten minutes later Mr Burdon was again in hot water. He asked the Minister of Education, Mr Marshall, if he had authorised the organisation, Teachers for Peace, to use the Correspondence

.School as its mailing address and contact point in advertisements. Mr Marshall waved a copy of an advertisement dated July, 1984, and suggested Mr Burdon ask his colleague, the former Minister of Education, Mr Merv Wellington.

When Mr Burdon said the advertisement had been repeated since then, Mr Marshall said his only involvement had been to issue an instruction that the Correspondence School was not to be cited as the mailing address in future.