Lange petty to resign—Nancy Prebble

Press, 16 August 1989, Page 8

Lange petty to resign—Nancy Prebble

PA Wellington The former Prime Minister, Mr David Lange, was petty to resign, says Mrs Nancy Prebble, the wife of the sacked Cabinet Minister, Mr Richard Prebble.

“If he was a big man he would have wanted the best team to carry us through to the election,” Mrs Prebble said yesterday. She said Mr Lange should have declared, on the return of the ousted Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas, to Cabinet, “All is forgiven. Let’s get back together. We don’t have to love one another but we can work together.” That way he would have been able to watch them, but instead he forgot he was chairman of a team. “He believed he owned it.”

Mr Douglas and her husband Richard had stuck with the crowd who supported them but Mr Lange had got the jitters and switched under pressure from various lobby groups. “He forgot the ones he hates most now were the ones that promoted him. He

talked about loyalty but he wasn’t loyal to them.

“He wasn’t loyal to (former Labour leader) Bill Rowling. That’s politics, but to turn round and abuse others, it’s a bit off’

She was too long in the tooth to believe the resignation announced last Monday had not been well planned in advance.

“I got the feeling there had been meetings beforehand. It was too quick and too smooth. It was only silly *** like Richard and Roger who went around like chooks without their heads.”

Asked what she thought of the new Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, Mrs Prebble said he was a different sort of politician whom she did not know well. Labour was, however, now dominated by “university politics” and there was too much back-scratching. “I wouldn’t have half of them in a job in my bloody place.” Her husband had wanted Mr Douglas for leader but would give Mr Palmer

time to knit a team together, she said. She had no time for the Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Helen Clark, however, and believed Mr Douglas would have been better in the job because he appealed to those who were not Centre-Left.

She described Ms Clark as a manipulator who cashed in on being a woman. “It’s like me cashing in on being brown. It’s not on. We want quality in Parliament, not quantity.” She did not know what portfolio Mr Prebble had wanted but said what he had been offered were “crumbs” and an “insult.”

As for her husband’s new job as head of the caucus committee on gangs, she said the family had received several favourable calls on his appointment and one from a woman threatening “he was going to get a bullet.”

He should give up the chairmanship and concentrate on winning his Auckland Central seat at the next election, she said.