Moral coalition ‘anti-Labour’

Press, 14 January 1987, Page 6

Moral coalition ‘anti-Labour’

PETER LUKE

The Coalition of Concerned Citizens is clearly anti-Labour, but it will probably not influence this year’s General Election, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Palmer. He said that the coalition was a self-appointed group which purported to be Christian in outlook, "but appears to lack one of the basic Christian virtues — tolerance.” "They bear a close resemblance to the Moral Majority movement in the United States, of whom it has been said they are neither moral nor a majority. "These people are entitled to their point of view. But no-one be under any misappren-

sion. They are furthering a political aim by trying to say they are the only real Christians. “I doubt that the group will have any influence on the election.” Mr Palmer also said that the coalition had no monopoly on moral questions. The Labour Party itself stood for the high moral principles of compassion, help for the weak, and tolerance. Coalition claims to be apolitical were rejected by Mr Palmer, who said that “the aims of the group are clearly antiLabour.” The coalition stood for quite extreme Right-wing values, but extreme groups were never suck cessful in New Zealand politics, he said.

A threat by the National Party to expel supporters of the coalition has drawn an angry response. The coalition’s national spokesman, Mr Barry Reed, warned that National would lose the election if it carried out its threat National was talking of expelling “a group of people who can get up a petition with more than three-quarters of a million signatures,” he said, referring to the petition against homosexual law reform. National officials issued their threat when the coalition said it would run an alternative candidate to National’s deputy leader, Mr George Gair, who Supported homosexual * law reform last

One man who has studied the coalition, Mr Craig Young, agrees with Mr Palmer that the. coalition has overstated its political importance. Mr Young has spent most of the last year studying the group for a master of arts thesis at the University of Canterbury. The coalition appeared to be concentrating on the issue of homosexuality by targeting members of Parliament who supported last year’s reform bill. Yet this brand of singleissue populism could be counter-productive by leading to a backlash against the coalition. By identifying itself with the National Party, thewcoalition could also give the

Labour Party an obvious campaign target, Mr Young said.

The coalition had several weaknesses including “an endemic anti-intellec-tualism” and an ideology and strategy derived from the United States’ moral majority. Mr Young said that the New Zealand moral majority had lost every political battle it had fought since 1983, and he dismissed coalition claims that it would rally the 835,000 people who signed h petition against the Homosexual Law Reform Bin. No-one really knew how many people of voting age had signed that petition, or how strongly those people felt about the issue now, he said.