Lange faces Cabinet ire over Anzac speech

Press, 1 May 1989, Page 3

Lange faces Cabinet ire over Anzac speech

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

At no time in the six years he has been leader of the Labour Party or the five years he has been Prime Minister has Mr Lange’s hold on both jobs been as shaky as during the last week.

He still commands the loyalty of his Parliamentary caucus and he is still the overwhelming choice of what remains of the Labour Party to be its leader. But unless he also retains the confidence of his Cabinet, he cannot stay on as Prime Minister or party leader. Just how much the confidence of his Cabinet colleagues has been shaken might be measured at today’s Cabinet meeting.

It is clear that his "dead letter” comments in his Yale speech last Anzac day went beyond policy that his Cabinet colleagues had agreed on.

There were also glitches in the system he used for advising them what was in the speech. It seems

that the Beehive computer system (carrying drafts of his speech) was out the previous week-end and that on Monday, when the final speech was circulated, it arrived late, with some offices closed for the day.

But it is not the mechanics of it that have got Mr Lange into trouble with his Cabinet colleagues. Nor do they seem very perturbed about the “dead letter” remarks themselves. That is broadly acceptable within the Cabinet and certainly widely acceptable in the party. But his Cabinet colleagues do object to his making policy “on the hoof,” as it were. What a Prime Minister says overseas tends to be taken universally to be Government policy. Yet if this was Government policy, it came as news to his Cabinet colleagues. Mr Lange can hardly be surprised if his opponents inside Labour and out consider his “dead letter” remarks to be opportunist — motivated by the strong suggestions

of some of his advisers that he needed to do something to prevent the flow of Left-wing party mem-

bers to Mr Jim Anderton. If it was opportunism, and a case can be made out that it was, then the decision to act must have been made without first asking two questions — why were people leaving Labour, and would a stronger antinuclear position bring them back? The answer to these questions would have focused Mr Lange’s attention on who is leaving Labour. It is not the trade union industrial Left wing — their support has been constant and public, if also conditional on not having Messrs Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble back in the Cabinet.

Those who are leaving are the academic Left wing, motivated to do so by their outrage at what the Government is planning to do to tertiary education, via the Hawke report.

While these supporters of Mr Anderton might welcome a stronger non-nuclear stance by the Government, and may welcome seeing Mr Lange overseas telling the United

States Government where to get oft, they are not going to be lured back by that. So, by saying what was politically acceptable, but by seeming to say it in circumstances of lack of consultation, Mr Lange has fallen on stony ground.

He has offended his Cabinet friends and given comfort to his Cabinet opponents, who lie in wait even more eagerly than the National Party to pounce on him any time he stumbles. The Douglas-Prebble supporters in the Cabinet may require Mr Lange to reinstate Messrs Douglas and Prebble. He will resign rather than do that, because he could not work with them in harness again, as the events of all last year showed. Mr Lange defends himself on the ground that Cabinet consultation had occurred, and he briefed his caucus foreign affairs and defence committee on his thoughts on February 22. But agrees that the system of getting his speech into other

Cabinet hands left a lot to be desired.

He will be lucky if only a review of procedures is required of him. There is also the strongly held belief among Cabinet Ministers that the ways in which Mr Lange is advised, the channels of opinion and the problems in getting advice heeded, all need to be attended to.

That will put the spotlight on Mr Lange’s advisory unit, and particularly on Dr John Henderson as its director.

Dr Henderson’s role in advising Mr Lange to make the “dead letter” speech and how competently he advised Canberra and Washington before Mr Lange made the speech, were the subject of much criticism in the Beehive last week.

If the Cabinet is still angry enough today, then Dr Henderson’s position may not be safe. If some are still as angry as they were for most of last week, Mr Lange’s position is not safe either.