Sir Robert predicts failure

Press, 14 February 1986, Page 3

Sir Robert predicts failure

OLIVER RIDDELL

By

in Wellington

The appointment of “more-market monetarists” to New Zealand’s front bench in Parliament is only a temporary aberration, believes National’s former leader and Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon. He said National would move away from such policies as 1986 progressed as it saw the disastrous failure of the same policies being implemented by the Labour Government. People within the caucus and party organisation would become less and less receptive to such theories when they realised how little support there was for them among the public. Farmers paying 28 per cent for seasonal finance did not want a National Party that was opposed to controls on interest rates, Sir Robert said. Pure theory was of no interest to practical people like farmers. Furthermore, some of the chief advocates of the new theories on National’s front bench were not getting it right, and a lot of it was hopelessly impractical. "The National Party has to ask itself if it can win an election with such policies, and the answer has to be, no,” he said. The elevation of a number of people with such impractical ideas would be bound to irritate the more able people in the National caucus who had

been passed over because they did not espouse those ideas as enthusiastically. All members of Parliament were, by nature, ambitious, Sir Robert said. They were prepared to accept lower ranking in a pecking order if they could still see progress being made. However, as long as National continued to languish so far behind Labour in the polls, and as long as Mr McLay continued to poll so badly, the people who had been passed over would question the performance of those placed ahead of them.

Sir Robert predicted that the new “more-mar-ket” front bench would not attract public support and that both the party and Mr McLay would continue to do badly in the polls. He predicted that the party grassroots and uncommitted members of the caucus would force a change. Already, in only two days after its elevation, the new leadership had lost the debate in caucus on economic policy. Monetarism was discredited all over the world and even Professor Friedman would admit now that parts of it were wrong. The appointment of the new front-bench purists had set a scenario in 1986 for more of the wrangling that had characterised 1985, Sir Robert said. Dissatisfaction was likely to boil over again within two months.