First week of term: House finds time hanging heavily

Press, 20 February 1988, Page 22

First week of term: House finds time hanging heavily

Peter Luke ,

of our political staff, considers

a week in which M.P.s had too little to do

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE and being able “to relate to each other” ■ are curiously 60s expressions for this fourth Labour Government. But these were the warm fuzzies used by the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, to explain his caucus’s Ashburton retreat last week. Journalists were not included within this benign aura. They were left gasping in Mr Lange’s exhaust fumes after his celebrated spin round the Hotel Ashburton.

To the north, the National caucus staged a . private retreat in New Plymouth. Thus the scene was set for a battle of minds in the House this week.

Revitalised, the two caucuses should have ripped in to their work, and each other, with the pent-up frustration that only overnight stays in Ashburton or New Plymouth can inspire. It was not to be.

Half-way through the third day’s sitting, the House became an unemployment statistic. And play was abandoned — not through bad light, but because the captains agreed there was not enough work to do. This was a merciful coup de grace for a week that had promised much, but delivered only question-marks. The Government’s performance could not have been helped by the 13,000 plus State workers who marched their abuse of the State Sector Bill to Parliament on Tuesday. Calling for those who work in Parliament was the first banner to arrive “Bellamy’s oppose the Bill.” It was learned only later that while the workers’ cafe was closed, the members’ diningroom remained open. Standing impassive was the former police Red Squad commander and now the National member for Hobson, Mr Ross Meurant. Earlier, this veteran had watched the marchers chant up the 1981 battleground in Molesworth Street, opposite Parliament.

The strong Opposition presence at the rally should not provoke the “strange bedfellows” cliche. State servants and the National Party are in different beds, even different motels, in their opposition to the bill. The Opposition has made its stand on the alleged politicisation of the State servants: the bill would effectively permit top State servants to be appointed by the Prime Minister. But Mr Bolger and his colleagues are

silent on the changes to working conditions that the unions fear will flow from the bill.

By contrast, neither the placards of the 13,000, nor the rally’s five speakers — who included a senior vice-president of the Labour Party — mentioned politicisation. Ironically, Mr Bolger strode down the steps of Parliament as the crowd was chanting “one, two, three four, bring us out the gang of four” (presumably Messrs Lange, Douglas, Prebble, and Rodger); and “We want Lange” (although it was not clear what they wanted to do with him).

Mr Bolger paused half-way down the steps. A few desultory boos rang out, then the chant of “we don’t want your grandstanding.”

Two initial heroes of the crowd — Ms Sonja Davies and Mr Graeme Kelly, both Labour backbenchers — received a cruel response to their speeches. Ms Davies was told she had “sold out” and Mr Kelly was booed

into silence at one point. Both members had told a crowd baying for blood that they would work within the parliamentary process to change the bill.

As Mr Kelly, the more savagely treated of the two, said: “I could go out and be a threeminute hero but that’s not going to change anything.” But whether anything can. be done to change the bill is unlikely. The Minister of State Services, Mr Rodger, seems singularly underwhelmed by the prospect of swapping his life membership of the Public Service Association for the State Sector Bill.

, Compared to the drama of this march of 13,000, the business of the House was a more mundane saga of opportunities lost. The clearest example of this was the early adjournment on Thursday. The Opposition later decried the waste of taxpayers’ money in having the House sit when there was not enough work for it. But this point could have

been made far more effectively through debating the adjournment.

Earlier, on Tuesday, the Opposition did win an adjournment, or snap, debate. But even this had its bizarre touches.

A two-hour snap debate is sought through a letter to the Speaker, outlining what new matter of public urgency requires such a debate.

The Speaker, Mr Burke, agreed that the February 10 tax package merited a snap debate. But Mr Burke said that Mr Bolger’s letter was so long that the time it took him to read it would be subtracted from the two hours.

The debate itself was predictable. The Opposition added little of significance to their past criticism of the package, concentrating on the alleged rift between Mr Lange and Mr Douglas. Government members returned the compliment, stressing the “incoherence” of the Opposition’s economic policy. It was in this context that Mr

Lange dropped what one newspaper referred to as a tax “stunner”: the introduction of a capital gains tax. Such a tax was predictable and inevitable and would close avoidance loopholes, said Mr Lange. Logically, as the Government has subsequently argued, there was no reason for Mr Douglas to have been “stunned.” Mr Lange said nothing to indicate such a tax was imminent, and it had been foreshadowed in Mr Douglas’s own December 17 economic statement. That it had also been foreshadowed in Treasury briefing papers and by Mr Simon Walker in his infamous pre-election tip sheet made it even more predictable.

Certainly Mr Douglas’s past reference to the tax was rather more cautious than the bold statement from Mr Lange. Whether that merely indicates that the Prime Minister is more flamboyant and dramatic than his Finance Minister, or that he has some deeper motive is one of this week’s question-marks.

And one of the week’s other question-marks concerned the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle. Instead of relating to caucus colleagues, Mr Moyle was relating to Iran. Mr Moyle first denied, then conceded that he had described the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeiny, as charismatic and influential.

Forced to defend Mr Moyle against reports that the Minister had also described Iran as democratic, Mr Lange distinguished between a democratic country and a democratic government, adding that neither applied to the New Zealand position on Iran.

And to the charge that his Minister had grovelled at the ayatollah’s feet, Mr Lange replied: “The Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, did not grovel at the feet, or indeed any part of the anatomy, of the ayatollah.” The first sitting week of the House could charitably be likened to the loosening first over of a fast bowler, with most of the action happening in the stand, not on the field.

The Opposition this coming week will have another prime chance to embarrass the Government, with the January unemployment statistics being released.

It is unlikely that National’s employment spokesman, Mr Win Peters, will let these figures become another lost opportunity.