Labour pledges social services for all

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 1

Labour pledges social services for all

By

PETER LUKE,

, political reporter

Labour’s election campaign was launched last evening with the promise that all New Zealanders would have the right to education and health care regardless of wealth.

The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, devoted much of his campaign opening speech to reasserting traditional Labour beliefs about the role of the State in health and education.

Concern over privatisation or user-pays in these two areas has worried many Labour supporters. Mr Lange defended the Government’s reviews of the social services, saying that they had grown “like topsy” with little over-all planning. Every dollar spent would be scrutinised, but there was a bottom line in social services. “The bottom line in health is that there will never be a Labour Government which has a system of health care which denies to any New Zealander the right of health care from the State of a

standard which is less than the best that money can buy.” Mr Lange pledged also increased spending in education. Education could not be separated

from economic growth, he said. "The simple fact is that there will be fewer and fewer jobs for people without skills. "We in the Labour Government are the inheritors of a party which is identified unashamedly as the education, party.” Mr Lange promised more freely available early childcare education, and said that the Government’s second term would achieve its 1984 pledge of one teacher for every 20 junior school pupils. Mr Lange promised also that

no child would leave school without knowing how to read, write, and count. Tertiary education must again be made the right of all. “It is the right of a daughter of a railway worker to sit in university with the son of a doctor,” he said. Those who worked had the .right to demand of the State the assurance of support and assistance in times of change. Mr Lange spent little time discussing economic issues last evening, and made few specific policy commitments. The changes of the last three years had been great, and amounted to a revolution, he said. This revolution, however, had not been without aim or purpose.

“We knew that New Zealanders did not want to be treated like idiots any longer.” Labour had put the “politics of easy promises” behind it.

Mr Lange emphasised also that the Government had implemented short and long-term policies to combat crime. Foreign policy was mentioned only once but Mr Lange’s reference to New Zealand as “proud, independent, and nuclear-free’’ drew loud applause. In one of his few clear references to the National rally on Sunday, Mr Lange copied Mr Bolger in referring to New Zealand’s week-end rugby success. “No-one packed it in at halftime. They came back in the second half,” he said.