Incompatibility led to sacking—P.M.

Press, 4 April 1989, Page 2

Incompatibility led to sacking—P.M.

By

PATTRICK SMELLIE

in Wellington

Incompatibility with other board members led to a former Rural Bank director, Ms Jenny Morel, being sacked, the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, said yesterday. While paying tribute to her competence and integrity, Mr Lange said that sometimes boards of directors were incompatible, by no fault of anyone in particular. “Now that, it seems to me, is

what happened there,” he said in a radio interview. Mr Lange also confirmed yesterday that Ms Morel’s reappointment to the board of the Railway Corporation was considered by the Cabinet yesterday, and would be recommended to the caucus. Her Railways Corporation position formally expired on March 31. The Minister of State-Owned Enterprises, Mr Rodger, also confirmed that the Cabinet had

discussed Ms Morel’s leaving the Rural Bank board before an announcement he made last week saying that she had resigned. At the time, Ms Morel had not resigned, and did so only later that day. The Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, yesterday defended the Rural Bank from news media criticisms of its lending policies. “The Rural Bank is being blamed for some of the econo-

mic ills of farming, when in fact it has only been the instrument of Government policy,” he said. Subsidising land values, and encouraging development and farm settlement with taxpayers’ money had been the policies of the previous Government, not the bank itself. “The bank’s executives had no option, as public servants, but to implement them,” Mr Moyle said. Replacement, page 5.