The rough times ahead for the Government

Press, 9 November 1988, Page 20

The rough times ahead for the Government

Oliver Riddell

reports from Wellington

A SORT of silence has descended over the Government. Is it the lull before the storm? Is it the quiet of total exhaustion? Is it merely a dramatic pause before the action resumes? Naval films of Second World War vintage all contain an obligatory dramatic moment. A submarine is lurking below and a depth-charge is chucked in. It disappers below the surface and everyone stands around waiting. There is a frightful explosion, expected but still unnerving. The water boils and as it subsides various bits and pieces bob around. Those waiting then try to decipher what has happened, if anything, from what they can see. And of coure there are always a few bodies as well. Mangled, not easily interpreted, but always a few and not all surfacing at the same time. That truly represents the position of those in Parliament watching the extraordinary events of recent days. Everyone has his or her own interpretation, and there are those with a vested interest in ensuring their interpretation is accepted by the others and becomes part of the record of events. The only body identified so far is that of Mr Richard Prebble, but there are bound to be others. It is just that they have not reached the surface yet. It is surprising that the first body should be Mr Prebble’s; he has been the most aggressive member of the 20-strong Cabinet. He was the most intrangient opponent of the Prime Minister’s determination to bring his Leftwing party and Right-wing Government closer together. Already there are those who are not satisfied with just Mr Prebble’s demotion from the Cabinet: they want him driven from Parliament and the Labour Party. There are also friends of Mr Prebble who want the Prime Minister punished for what he has done to their friend. The Prime Minister has to deal with both pressures, and the violent rejection of other points of view that both pressures represent. The Labour movement is just as deeply divided today as it was a week ago when Mr Prebble was still Minister for State-Owned Enterprises and fifth-ranked Cabinet Minister — only more publicly so. The pressures on the Prime Minister from the Right are the more apparent. A campaign of destabilisation against Mr Lange from within his own Cabinet and caucus has been gathering momentum all year. His sacking of Mr Prebble may have clipped his opponents’ wings for a while but it has also made them more determined. Mr Prebble himself signalled some of the elements of campaign when he made the intemperate remarks last Friday that led Mr Lange to sack him. There is the element of Mr Lange’s health. Having his an-

gioplasty for an angina condition in July lent credence to this. Mr Prebble was able to allege that Mr Lange was tired, overstressed, unable to sleep and behaving irrationally, and quoted Mr Lange as his source for this. Mr Lange has denied saying anything that Mr Prebble attributed to him, particularly that worry over selling State assets was “killing” him. Prime Ministers tend to be the subject of rumours about their personal lives. In New Zealand these rumours in recent decades have been more about the love life of Prime Ministers, but his heart surgery made Mr Lange vulnerable to rumours about his health too. Such rumours may be malicious or merely of the peeping Tom variety that follow film stars and all other public figures. They are nonetheless wounding and tending to destabilise. Then there is the element of “Government by-press-confer-ence” of which Mr Prebble spoke several times during the week-end and which is a recurring theme among those who belong to the same faction — including the Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas. Three recent instances of this are alleged: © The withdrawal of substantial elements of the ill-fated December 17 Economic Package at a Prime Ministerial press conference on January 29; @ The announcement of the blowout in the Budget deficit forecast at a press conference on June 29 before the Prime Minister entered hospital; and @ The announcement of new Cabinet guideliness on State asset sales at a press conference on October 30. It is being alleged that on each occasion Mr Lange broke Cabinet solidarity, that he acted unconstitutionally by replacing Cabinet government with Prime Ministerial rule, and that he acted in this way because he knew the Cabinet did not support him. Not surprisingly, Mr Lange .emphatically rejects the charges. But they are very destabilising for him, and thus for the Government. They made Mr Prebble very vulnerable to Prime Ministerial anger because he was associated with the group Mr Lange believed was floating the rumours. The dismantling of the December 17 Economic Package is seen as the break point in relations between Mr Lange on one side and Mr Douglas, and the group of supporters closest to Mr Douglas, on the other. The Douglas group’s analysis of that event was that they had

Cabinet agreement to a package which Mr Lange himself launched. But over the following weeks Mr Lange weakened in his resolve to back it, chivvied into that position by some of his staff who were opposed to Rogernomics and Government economic policy. Although Mr Douglas had been given reason to suspect the plug might be pulled on the package, they say, it still came as a bolt from the blue and was done behind Mr Douglas’s back while he was overseas. This group considers Mr Lane dicatorial and irrational, and not to be trusted again. Since then Mr Douglas has been collecting papers to use to protect himself against Mr Lange. They include Cabinet minutes and letters from Mr Lange, and a bundle of these was assembled during the week-end of Mr Prebble’s sacking and distributed to the Cabinet meeting on Monday by Mr Douglas. Not surprisingly, the version of events on the December 17 package by those close to Mr Lange is somewhat different. They say there were four elements of the package to which the Cabinet had not agreed at the time it was announced, but which had to be in it to make it fiscally workable. These included: no agreement to cut spending by $6OO million ($3OO million on housing and $3OO million on health); no agreement to the precise rate of the flat tax; no agreement to the rate of the proposed Guaranteed Minimum Family Income; and

no agreement to abolish the system of Family Support.

Indeed, less than a week after he had announced the December 17 package, Mr Lange was reminding his Cabinet colleagues that there were substantial elements of the package that still had to be worked through. He was saying that the package set out Government intentions without excluding the possibility that they would alter, which Mr Douglas understandably took as a signal that the plug might be pulled on the whole package. Whether Mr Lange’s public pulling of the plug on January 29 was “Government-by-press-con-ference” must, in the circumstances, be a matter of opinion. What it does reveal is the depth of antagonism that has grown between members of the Government. This is bad news for the country. But it also shows why Mr Lange is so keen to regain control of all his Government. His efforts mean that the unbridled freedom Mr Douglas had for three years in economic management is being restrained. Naturally Mr Douglas is resisting that. Mr Douglas is still there and his achievements are still intact. What is in doubt is his ability to influence Government decisions on social delivery —- which the Prime Minister has announced will be the big target for its 198790 term — and what impact that loss of influence will have on the wider economy. He is losing influence because

Mr Lange and others want to bring closer together the Rightwing policies of the Government and the Left-wing attitudes of the party that worked to put it there. Mr Lange is being hampered by another element of the destabilisation campaign — that he lacks support in the Cabinet for bringing both sides closer together. For example, after Mr Prebble had been sacked, journalists in Parliament were being told that Mr Lange would be made to pay for it at the Cabinet meeting on Monday. After the meeting, the word went around that life had been very difficult for him. Radio and some newspapers carried stories yesterday morning saying that Mr Lange had been given an ultimatum to behave himself, with some Cabinet Ministers threatening to resign if he did not. Mr Lange felt obliged to issue a statement on this, saying that “there was no ultimatum and there were no threats to resign.” What a state of affairs. What a Government. Who on the outside can tell what really happened, where the truth sits, and whether it all sits in the one place? Members of the Government might do well to recall the words of Benjamin Franklin to his fellow rebels during the American Revolution: “If we don’t hang together we’ll hang separately.” The present silence in the Government will be brief. It is merely a dramatic pause before the action resumes.