Gloomy picture of N.Z., Lange

Press, 10 February 1989, Page 4

Gloomy picture of N.Z., Lange

By

JULIE FITZGERALD

of NZPA in London

A once near-perfect country, New Zealand is now an unhappy land of instability and uncertainty, according to a British journalist who spent last week in New Zealand. In a feature article in yesterday's “Guardian” newspaper, the Pacific Affairs correspondent, Simon Winchester, paints a gloomy picture of New Zealand. > It ranges from the personal performance of the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, and that of his Government and its policies, to the rising crime rate, racial tensions and the “brain drain." He describes New Zealand’s “hitherto ebullient” Prime Minister as “now a ruined man.” Winchester uses the tale of the fire brigade having to break into Mr Lange’s Hill Street flat recently, only to find him asleep in bed and a can of baked beans burning on the stove, “to illustrate the reality of a figure who, two or more years ago, was generally regarded as one of the hemisphere’s — if not the world’s — more able and spectacular leaders.” “The wretched little saga did not, as Mr Lange might have preferred, add to his carefully nurtured Man of the People legend — the kind many say he had hoped to create by living in the flat in the first place. “Instead it cemented the notion in many New Zealanders’ minds that Lange had become overstretched and overtired, and was now lonely and

pathetic, no longer someone of whom the average New Zealander could be prdud.” Winchester says almost all social scientists in New Zealand believe there have been complex changes in a country that was once seen as a demiparadise, set down in the southern seas. “Paradise no longer, they say — but since David Lange came to power, purgatory.” He lays much of the blame at the door of Rogernomics — an economic philosophy which “appears not to have been a great success for a Government and a party that professes itself to be Socialist M He said New Zealand had “always been a stupefyingly dull country — but a fundamentally decent place too. But now all the goodness of the place seems to be eroding.” “The crime rate is going up hugely. People are less tolerant. Racial problems are growing, and the economy is in bad shape.” He says Auckland is a truly unpleasant place, which has a ruined look about it — “something visitors to next year’s Commonwealth Games will note to their dismay and surprise.” “This year all New Zealand seems cast down, collectively dejected and depressed at itself and the state that it has managed to get itself into during — though quite probably not just because of — the Government of David Russell Lange. “This once near-perfect country is, sad to say, an unhappy land, set down in the silver sea.”