Mr Peters angry at rumours of bid for leadership

Press, 26 December 1987, Page 16

Mr Peters angry at rumours of bid for leadership

Oliver Riddell,

of our political staff, analyses a National Party wrangle

THERE IS an old saying noone in the National Party seems to have heard of. It is that those who do not learn the lessons of history are fated to repeat them. Between the 1984 and 1987 General Elections, National was in a state of constant turmoil. Leaders (three) fought out their disagreements on the public stage and succeeded each other. Bitter in-fighting distracted those who were supposed to be running the party organisation; bitter infighting distracted the members of Parliament from attacking the Government.

Those who were left fought hard in the General Election but saw National slip further behind Labour in seats in Parliament. That was an astonishing result in view of the wide swathes the Labour Government had cut. New Zealand’s main defence arrangement lapsed; there was a military coup just to the north; the export industries had their support and protection ripped away; unemployment rose dramatically; the rich got (much) richer and the poor got poorer; various Cabinet Ministers were shown as less than competent; half the Public Service was corporatised; regional economies were devastated.

Instead of cashing in on these dramatic political opportunities, National spent three years fighting itself. One president and two leaders were demoted after nasty wrangles in which party loyalty and self-discipline were discounted.

Yet, far from being chastened, National responded to its 19-seat defeat as if it had won a moral victory. There was none of the

gloom of defeat; there was the confidence of victory. Since polling day National has continued to fight an election campaign. It believes that Labour will bomb out, that the voters will come to their senses, and that New Zealand will cry for National again. That being so, logic dictates to National that the most important' thing is to get its own policies and attitudes right. Attacking Labour is secondary because Labour will self-destruct anyway. The primary concern is to win the policy and leadership battles in National to be ready to replace the discredited Labour Government.

This is fairyland stuff. But it is the driving impetus within National and the only logical explanation for the bizarre events of recent days. One political columnist last week set a scenario that Mr Winston Peters (Tauranga) was going to be National’s next leader. This was based on the assumptions that Miss Ruth Richardson (Selwyn) would launch a leadership charge against Mr Jim Bolger; that Mr Bolger would lack the support to win; and that Mr Peters would emerge as the choice of a majority in National who wanted to frustrate Miss Richardson. Into these muddied waters rushed the Minister for StateOwned Enterprises, Mr Prebble. If his Cabinet colleagues range from dislike to hatred towards the National Party, Mr Prebble loathes National with white-hot loathing. Mr Prebble put out an audit of National’s performance. Predictably, he found nothing good to

say. Mr Prebble believes that in politics to be objective is to be a coward, and he is no coward. He identified three cliques in National’s caucus — the biggest backed Miss Richardson, the next backed Mr Peters and included Sir Robert Muldoon, and a small rump still supported Mr Bolger. All this might have been passed off as a silly-season incident had Mr Peters not gone public in reaction to it. Mr Peters is a superb publicist. He has virtually single-handedly among his colleagues gone for Labour’s throat since it won office. In fact, he is National’s Mr Prebble.

Some of his campaigns have not gone well. He attacked the Government over whether an inter-Island ferry touched the bottom of Tory Channel or not; he attacked the Government over whether a Soviet submarine had been sighted in Cook Strait.

But it was he who came within an ace of forcing the resignation of Mr Wetere as Minister of Maori Affairs over the international loan; it is he who is knocking chunks off the credibility of the Mana Enterprise and Maori Access schemes. Mr Peters said the claim he would defeat Mr Bolger, or even stand against him, was nonsense. Virtually everyone in Parliament would privately agree with that. Not only has Mr Peters been consistently loyal to Mr Bolger, but he is implacably opposed to the policies and person of Miss Richardson. But he went further. He said he knew who among his colleagues was starting these rumours and that if they persisted

he would name them in public. Maybe National should remember Benjamin Franklin’s advice to his colleagues: “If we don’t hang together we’ll hang separately.” Mr Peters felt provoked into replying to his anonymous fermenters because he saw that they were serious in using him as a stalking horse •to topple Mr Bolger.

Yet all this occurred at the same time the Labour Government was announcing increased GST, a reduced flat income tax, a reduced company tax, ending tax deductions to charities and for private superannuation and life insurance, and a host of other important economic policies. ■

National’s response to this was

abysmally fragmented and lacklustre. For five days in succession “The Press” led its front page with reports on aspects of this package yet not once did any Opposition speaker challenge that with material of equal importance or relevance.

Instead National has channelled its energy into yet more in-fighting. Having not learned the lesson from what the infighting during 1984-87 did to its election chances, National seems determined to do ,the same again.

Such in-fighting has led to the open contempt Labour feels for National and the increasingly public arrogance it exercises as a Government with no Opposition outside the ranks of its own Leftwing.