Third party tipped after resignation
By
PETER LUKE,
BRENDON BURNS and PA
A third political party may emerge in the wake of yesterday’s resignation by Mr Jim Anderton from the Government caucus and Labour Party.
While the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, welcomed the announcement and derided the prospects for a new party, the Labour Party president, Ms Ruth Dyson, said a new party would attract disaffected Labour voters. In a television interview last evening, Mr Anderton confirmed that talks about a third party had been held. It had been put to him when he had held meetings in a number of centres in the last 10 days.
He said he would be involved if enough people expressed an interest.
Any new party would represent what the Labour Party had offered before the Government moved to the Right of the political spectrum. This included the right to work and a fair share for all in the nation’s resources. Mr Anderton said he would not stand in Sydenham in the next election as an Independent if the third party did not get off the ground. Independents did not achieve much for constituents, he said. Ms Dyson told NZPA that Mr Anderton would form a new party, taking disaffected Labour voters with him.
Labour’s challenge would be to explain to members why to stay with a Government with which they were disillusioned. This was not an easy task, said Ms Dyson.
Before the last election, Ms Dyson confessed to also having considered quitting the Labour
Party. But the only way to influence change was within the two main parties. "There’s only one choice, Labour or National.”
Ms Dyson said there would be no other member of the Labour caucus who would leave to join Mr Anderton in any new party. This view was shared by Mr Lange. He said Mr Anderton had alienated himself from any support in caucus.
“They’re not lemmings.” Mr Lange was pleased Mr Anderton had resigned. This allowed the Government to get on with its job. He suggested the M.P. tried to form a third party before quitting but had failed to get support from trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party.
At 3 p.m. yesterday Mr Anderton made his shock announcement that he was quitting both the Labour caucus and the Labour Party, to sit as an Independent until next year’s election.
In a four-page statement he said he could no longer work within a political institution that had “corrupted its own ideals, policies and constitution.”
"I have therefore no other honourable course to follow than to resign.”
Mr Anderton said that his previous rifts with the Government had received electorate support, and that this support would continue over his resignation.
“I would like to think I am reflecting the mainstream view of Labour people in my electorate in Sydenham and that that is in a sense the home of a CentreLeft liberal view in New Zealand politics and economics.” He praised the Government’s anti-nuclear policy and its housing and pay equity moves. “However, these more positive features have been overwhelmed by the tragedy of a parliamentary Labour caucus which has betrayed its own philosophic traditions and policy commitments.
“It has resulted in much of the heart and soul of New Zealand being massively damaged.”
Mr Anderton cited intolerable levels of unemployment, the increasing cost of gaining access to essential services, and a widening economic gap.
No particular issue' had prompted his resignation, but Mr Anderton also alluded to the Anzac frigate project and the ownership of natural resources being passed to foreign hands. “Finally, it is clear that the majority of the parliamentary Labour Party has only contempt for the constitutional principles of its own party.” Mr Anderton told reporters that he did not intend to put his electorate through a by-election, although support would be tested at a public meeting on Friday, April 28. Backgrounder, page 8 Anderton’s speech, page 20
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Press, 19 April 1989, Page 1
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655Third party tipped after resignation Press, 19 April 1989, Page 1
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