‘Budget’ will not prompt caucus reply

Press, 22 July 1989, Page 2

‘Budget’ will not prompt caucus reply

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington If events of the last 18 months are any pointer, the extraordinary alternative Budget from Mr Douglas will not create a ripple in the Government caucus.

That is why the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, is not responding to it. He knows that many of his Parliamentary colleagues want to stop Mr Douglas’s campaign against him, which has been naked and unashamed since Mr Douglas’s departure as Minister of Finance last December. He knows also that their preferred way of ending the campaign is for Mr Lange to kiss and make up with Mr Douglas, welcome him back into the Cabinet, and offer him a leading role in the Government. No matter what Mr Douglas says about Mr Lange and no matter how his actions undermine Mr Lange and leave Government unity in tatters, many caucus members do not want Mr Lange to react against him. Mr Lange is accordingly not dealing with Mr Douglas as he would like to. When he reacted to Mr Douglas’s campaign against him in a speech to Labour’s Wellington regional conference in May, Mr lange found himself under trenchant (and in one case tearful) attack at

his next caucus meeting.

The Minister of Finance, Mr Caygill, endorsed the Douglas alternative this week rather than being affronted by its pre-emption of his own July 27 Budget. Mr Lange is able to savage Mr Douglas, only when the Backbone Club oversteps the generous limits the caucus has set for its campaign. , Otherwise he must wait for Mr Douglas to grow tired of the campaign, which he shows no sign of doing, or for the strain to get him down. What Mr Lange can do, and is doing is press ahead with the business of Government and hope that Mr Douglas and his campaign become seen as irrelevant by those members of the Government who refuse to see it as damaging. A few new Cabinet Ministers in August and the promise of more later may begin to focus the attention of caucus members on the future rather than on recapturing the past collaboration of Mr Lange and Mr Douglas. Whether Mr Douglas is chosen by caucus for one of these Cabinet positions, whether Mr Lange will accept him, what post he gets offered and whether he will accept it, will all have a bearing on whether the Douglas versus Lange drama starts fading from the political scene.