National not keen on win by default—Bolger

Press, 29 April 1989, Page 2

National not keen on win by default—Bolger

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The National Party is not interested in winning the next election by default, according to the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger.

He told a meeting of businessman in Mount Maunganui yesterday that New Zealand was going to have to wait another 18 months before National could start to put its ideas into practice. What concerned him most was that many New Zealanders were just going to sit it out for the next 18 months.

National was being advised to do the same thing, to say as little as possible, and so win anyway,

but Mr Bolger said he was not .interested in victory by default. That would not give the country good Government and the people needed better than that. “Get the Government off your back, give people something to hope for and nothing will stop us,” he said. The Government had become

too dominant a force in people’s lives. Individual enterprise was stifled when taxes gathered some

40 per cent of the wealth the country generated each year. The Government had become too divisive a force in people’s lives, Mr Bolger said. Too much attention was being paid to the issues that divided people and not enough to the things that united them.

While it might be appealing to talk about pay equity, the focus should be on employment for the

thousands of women who wanted a job.

He said too much time was being spent talking about institutional racism when what was needed were programmes to overcome disadvantages. too much time was being spent squabbling over abstract economic philosophy instead of attacking the task of achieving real economic growth.