‘Open season’ declared on Minister

Press, 20 February 1987, Page 3

‘Open season’ declared on Minister

The Opposition has declared an “open season” on the Minister of Employment and Regional Development, Mr Burke. National’s spokesman on employment, Mr Bill Birch (Franklin), asked if there was nothing disastrous that Mr Burke could not do? Mr Burke had failed totally and the only reason he did not proffer his resignation to the Cabinet was that unlike the Minister of Finance and. Minister of Maori Affairs, who had, Mr Burkes resignation would be accepted. Mr Birch said Mr Burke had a portfolio of failure — outlawing job-creation schemes, taking unemployment to record levels, opening New Zealand to unskilled Pacific island migrants and then closing the gate once a flood had come through, and being wrong in his labour pro-i

jections four times in a row. Mr Burke described Mr Birch as the man who had promised New Zealand 410,000 new jobs from the “think big” projects that were now a financial embarrassment. Registered unemployment plus those on special work schemes had risen to more than 130,000 under National and New Zealand was still facing the consequences of that, Mr Burke said. He asserted that National’s graph on unemployment, printed in the Sunday newspaper, was defective in three respects: • It began with a June figure and ended with a December figure, so creating a false impression of comparing like with like. ? • Its base line was not

zero so that the movements it purported < to show were not in scale. • It began just after the period when National had presided over the worst level of unemployment in New Zealand’s history, so preventing those comparing National’s record with Labour’s from making a

valid comparison. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, said provincial New Zealand was in an alarming state and Mr Burke had to recognise the failure of his Government’s policies to produce the jobs he had promised. Appalling unemployment was recorded in Northland, where 15 per cent were registered as unemployed, and the figures in Tauranga, Hamilton, New Plymouth, and Hastings were very bad also.

“New Zealand now knows that one of the big failures of this Labour Government is its record on employment, having been elected on a platform of full employment — and the voters will not forget that later in the year,” Mr Bolger said.