Caution over offer to help

Press, 23 April 1987, Page 1

Caution over offer to help

By BRENDON BUtINS in A National Party assurance to welcome policy input from the Provincial Support Group Is criticised by some caucus sources who see its being interpreted as a return to economic intervention. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, met the group’s chairman, Mr . Collis Blake, at Parliament on Tuesday evening. Mr Blake, who has stopped several mortgagee sales of farms, proposed earlier this year forming a rural political party. He has now abandoned this and the group will work to provide an input into National’s. agricultural policy. Mr Bolger said this would be welcomed., But CaUCUS sources expressed concern about this offer, saying it could be taken as appearing to foreshadow a move back to interest rate controls and management of the New Zealand dollar. That was the interpretation put on it by the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, who said it marked a significant first step towards a return to interventionist policies for farming. Mr Bolger said last evening it meant no such thing. He said Provincial Support Group members were able to become members of the National Party and provide an input into policies. This would be helpful and welcome. ' •?’

What would be offered was sound economic management to the problems of high interest rates and an over-valued New Zealand dollar.’

This did not mean a return to controls and in-tervention-;-he said. — ~ “It symbolises a commitment to sensible economic management which does not strangle provincial New Zealand and our major export industries.”

Any member of Parliament who saw the Provincial Support Group’s input as meaning intervention was misguided, Mr Bolger said.