Nats would intervene says Bolger

Press, 16 October 1989, Page 6

Nats would intervene says Bolger

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The next National Government will resume the practice of intervening in industrial disputes where the interests of the country require it, says the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger.

In a speech in Rotorua yesterday, Mr Bolger, who was a Minister of Labour in the former National Government from 1978 to 1984, referred to the recent spate of industrial stoppages. He said the country was in a dangerous state of drift under a Labour Government that could not address the central issues. The Minister of Labour would not say anything about the situation at the ports. The country was in a bind because the Labour Party would not confront its mate in the trade union movement. “No-one wants her to jump .into the middle of every industrial dispute and try to sort things out,” Mr Bolger said, “but she could make sure that the parties are talking to each other. “She could break her vow of silence and urge the parties to get together in the interests of the community as a whole — but she says nothing.” Even when a State-owned corporation and a union connived to flout the orders of the Labour Court, the Minister said nothing, he said. That was what had happened in the inter-island ferry dispute, when the Seamen’s Union twice defied the orders of the Labour Court. “The Railways Corporation

brought the issue to the court and then backed down in the most craven way I have ever seen — and as a former Minister of Labour, I’ve seen a few,” Mr Bolger said. “Yet in this low-cost victory for the union and high-cost loss of credibility for the Labour Court, the Minister still said nothing. “It’s wrong and a S.O.E. should not be allowed to go scot-free when it connives with a union to undermine the legal process.” A National Government would not put up with that and would“put a stop to that kind of nonsense,” he said. “New Zealand can’t afford to have a Prime Minister, a Labour Minister and a Justice Minister who behave like those three little monkeys who see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing.” For weeks the major ports had been idle because the Government had bungled its port reform legislation, he said. It was a shambles because Labour could not confront the basic job that needed to be done to make the country’s industrial relations rational. New Zealand could not afford work at the pace and pleasure of the waterside unions and neither, for that matter, could the watersiders.