Labour 1984 TV broadcast from the Christchurch Town Hall Geoffrey Palmer: “Ladies and gentlemen, the next Prime Minister of New Zealand: David Lange.” David Lange: “On July 14th, New Zealanders will decide more than who wins an election. There is a much greater task at hand: the future direction of our country. New Zealand needs a new start. It needs new opportunities, new direction, and new vigour. It needs to put behind it the stagnation of the past, the lack of effort and the failure, and together we must set New Zealand on the path of recovery and unity. This won’t be easy. This won’t be easy. Problems will not be solved overnight. Tonight, I offer no miracle cures. No pockets full of dollar to be emptied the day after the election. New Zealanders ought to have had enough of election promises designed to be broken. But our opponents do not learn. In the past week more than seven hundred million dollars of expenditure committed, promise after promise. The old cry of ‘where is the money coming from’ ought to be turned against them. They used to be the masters of that cry. New Zealanders see through that. The clear truth is that recovery will not and cannot be won while New Zealanders are at odds with each other. The Muldoon government has had eight and a half years to make its policies work and it has failed. We cannot afford more of the same. If that is the experience being offered, it is an experience we don’t want to repeat. Our country, our country is in deep recession, more and more New Zealanders are concerned about the security of their jobs, their homes, and their way of life. It is harder for them to make ends meet. Our children’s future is uncertain. Today, division and confrontation is the name of the game. New Zealander has deliberately been set against New Zealander, young against old, rich against poor, unions against employers, race against race, town against country, region against region; confrontation has debased our national life. And New Zealanders are tired of bickering. They are tired of provocation from the top as a substitute from leadership. Tonight, and during this campaign, Labour will present a positive programme, a programme that will bring growth and a planned expansion of our economy. We will bring fairness back to government and to taxation. We will cut through the red tape that is holding New Zealand back. But the over-riding need is unity and commitment on the part of all of us to the task of recovery. Let us reflect for a moment on what has gone wrong these last eight and half years. It is not merely that we are worse off economically, though we are; that thousands of New Zealanders are denied the right to work, though they are; it is not merely that our social services are in decline, our health and education systems under threat, although they certainly are. For eight and a half years, we’ve had a government that has blamed others for its problems. For eight and a half years we’ve witnessed a national witch hunt: the unions, the employers, the dole bludgers, the doctors, the church leaders, the finance houses, the public servants, the economists, the media, and now even members of the National Party. The list goes on and on. If you can’t inspire anyone crack them. No-one has been immune. And now we are into the basest of the most negative aspects of a political campaign. The campaign of smear in my office today plagued by telephone calls. Concerned New Zealanders, worried because our opponents had terrified the, ringing to seek assurance that the National superannuation scheme will continue, as of course it will. That insurance tax deduction will continue as of course they are. All false, but when you see you cannot come out with a policy, positive programme for New Zealand, when you are so bankrupt of policy that you can’t advance one of them during a campaign opening, you use the politics of confrontation, of negation and division, and that is what this campaign is against. For eight and a half years, this country has simply stood back while it has been torn apart, and I say it has got to stop; enough is quite enough. If New Zealand, if New Zealand is to prosper as it must we must turn our back on the politics of confrontation; if it is to go forward we need new leadership and a style of government that brings people together. Make no mistake, we are not talking about fine sounding romantic ideals. We are talking hard when we are talking about leadership by cooperation. There is an economic reality in that programme. There is no profit in confrontation, whether in the home or the workplace or the nation. There is profit in working together. If you doubt it look overseas. The economies which have leapt ahead are invariably the economies whose governments have practiced consensus and cooperation. Not merely in industry, but in all areas of social and political life. Germany, Sweden, Austria, Japan, Finland, and the Hawke Labor government in Australia. Those are success stories. But where have the politics of confrontation brought New Zealand. We are a country rich in natural resources, rich in talent. We are a country that should have left the rest of the world behind. Instead, we have been dragged steadily to the bottom of the economic heap. You know last year, we used to talk about how in eight and a half years, this government had dragged New Zealand from sixth to twenty-third in the OECD economic growth stakes. And then we used to say with some derision, only Turkey is doing worse. June ’84, Turkey is doing better. What, you might well say what has that got to do with you, and I say to you everything. Everything! The richer the country is the richer you are. The poorer the country the poorer we all are. But the statistics themselves shield a tragedy. While our growth rate under National has averaged less than one half percent, the number of people seeking jobs each year has grown by two percent. And there is the dilemma. The equation doesn’t work anymore and neither do more than one hundred thousand New Zealanders. The issue in this election isn’t Lange, or Muldoon; we have had quite enough of personality politics. The issue, the issue, the issue is New Zealand. But that is not the reason why the National Party called the election. It is not why they forced New Zealand to the polls in July instead of November. National knew their time was running out. They couldn’t paper over the cracks any longer. They had a pent-up dam of price rises looming above them. They heard that dam creaking and they ran for the high ground. Not for them to be around when the burst came over the people of New Zealand, but you can see it. They won’t even show us their budget. The fact is we are in debt right up to our eyebrows. And you don’t have to be an economic genius, or a self-confessed economic wizard, to understand the issues at stake. We all, we all borrow, we borrow to buy the things we can’t afford quite at the time, but that we can pay for later. We borrow to put a roof over our heads, and we borrow to get ourselves started in business. There is nothing wrong with that. That borrowing is productive, manageable. You are in trouble when you start to borrow more than you can afford to repay, and you are in real trouble when you can’t even afford to pay the interest on what you have borrowed, and that is the chilling prospect facing our country. The day the Muldoon government was elected New Zealand’s overseas debt stood at 2,000 million dollars. Today, eight and a half years later, the National debt abroad, public and private, stands not at two, but at 17 thousand million dollars. Again, that affects you. It means that you, and every single New Zealander, are in hock to international financiers, for more than five thousand dollars. It means that every man, woman and child in this country is paying ten dollars per week in interest to service that debt. Not to repay it, but to pay the interest. Fifty dollars a week for a family of five. Can you afford that? No wonder New Zealand’s overseas creditors are worried, but even more, no wonder you are worried when you go to pay the grocer. Under National, staggering levels of overseas borrowing have gone hand in hand with huge budget deficits. That is easily said, but what has it got to do with you? Everything. In 1976, twelve cents of every income tax dollar, that is your money, went to pay interest on the public debt. In 1984, that figure has risen to almost thirty cents in every tax dollar. That is the reason why class sizes remain too high. That is the reason why many people don’t have an adequate access to basic health services. But the massive internal and external deficits remain. Quite simply, we are living horribly beyond our means. National tells us inflation is under control. Check your latest grocery bill and tell me whether inflation is under control. The fact is, since the end of the freeze prices have been rising fast. The infamous eight dollars a week, before tax, has already been swallowed up. What we have very simply is a formula for social and industrial unrest, a breeding ground for anger and division. And we should be angry, we should be angry about unemployment, and falling living standards. We should be angry about our unfair taxation system, and a wages policy that hits the poor. We should be angry about falling standards in housing, education and health. However, we in the Labour movement and New Zealand, must channel that anger productively, we must not be diverted from the task at hand. Our most pressing concern is unemployment. There are 100,000 New Zealanders without work. That is one hundred thousand New Zealanders denied a right we of the Labour Party regard as fundamental to any civilized society. One hundred thousand unproductive New Zealanders, one hundred thousand individual and family tragedies. Unemployment is inherently and morally wrong. It is a waste of human resources and a threat to your children’s prospects in future. Why should you care? What has it got to do with you? It is quite simple, you are either already in the dole queue or you are paying taxes to support the people who are. Or one or more of your children are about to join them. The best reason for wanting to get rid of unemployment is that it is inherently wrong. The second-best reason is that it hits you in the pocket, whether you’ve got a job or not. In education, a quarter of a million children are crammed into classrooms, overcrowded, sometimes with more than 40 in them. That is a quarter of a million children who aren’t getting the individual attention they deserve. Many of those children will be no better off when they leave school. One in five will be unemployed. Rubbing shoulders in the dole queue with trained teachers not allowed to work. That’s government 84 National style, wasting resources, frittering futures, ignoring potential, wasting people. Teachers without jobs, pupils without teachers, it doesn’t make sense. Labour believes that an education is investment in our future. Our children need realistic, our children need realistic, relevant schooling to give them skills for jobs. In difficult times education is even more vital. Our schools must prepare children for work and for the future. It is time for New Zealand to face the facts on housing. Labour believes that home ownership is central to our New Zealand way of life, but increasingly home ownership is coming under real threat. How many people do you know who have managed to raise a first mortgage at eleven percent? How many of your friends have refinanced a second mortgage at fourteen percent? Those wanting to buy their first home face a real struggle. It is becoming harder to bridge that deposit gap. Labour will introduce an updated mortgage assistance scheme. We will tackle that deposit gap problem for first home buyers, and we will consult with home lending agencies to improve the availability of mortgage finance. Our commitment to housing makes economic sense. We will not only provide more homes, but provide stability and confidence for our building industry. That means growth. That means growth and permanent jobs. And what about renting? Things can’t be too bad there you might say, after all, didn’t they have, for two years, a rent freeze. Well the rent freeze ended on April Fool’s Day. And under those new rent limitation regulations landlords, pretty well all of them, were entitled to put their rents up by at least three percent, but many were able to legally increase their rents by more than a quarter. What that meant was that thousands of New Zealanders, particularly young people, had to hand over what was left of their eight dollars a week after tax, before they even got it. They handed it over to their landlords. What has that got to do with you? Very little if you have got an established house, if you’ve been in your own home for years. Very little if you’ve got a roof over your head and if you are not trying to bring up a young family. Very little if you’ve got a hundred thousand dollars tucked away in a term deposit somewhere. Very little, in other words, if you belong to that tiny minority of New Zealanders for whom things have got better under the National government. But for most people things have got worse, much worse. And New Zealanders know it isn’t right, it isn’t just, and it is becoming increasingly obvious that it isn’t moral and New Zealanders have a real sense of the rightness of things. They don’t demand a great deal from their government. But they do demand that the government shows, in all its dealings with them, stability, justice, a sense of evenhandedness, and a commitment to see that all have an equality of opportunity. Not that all, not that all become grey and wooden and individually equal. But that some have the chance to excel. Some have the chance to forge ahead by their effort. But so that none is locked out by government policy. And that is the difference. We’ve got to come to the end in New Zealand of a government selecting, in human terms, the winners and losers. We’ve got to stop the government deciding to target off particular sector groups. Because in the end the losers all get hurt. It is an interesting game, political cock fighting, if you hope to get capital out of it. But if you decide to declare social war on employers, manufacturers, farmers, small business people, workers, doctors, teachers, and even members of the National Party, New Zealand is the loser. New Zealand deserves better than that. New Zealanders, you see, in my view, thrive on work. They have a faith in social justice. They don’t keep demanding things of a government, they want a chance to make their lives secure. They want to work for themselves and not for the tax man. We don’t have a lot of economic missionaries in New Zealand, and if they work harder they want to get the reward for working harder. We are going to have a fairer tax system, where hard work is rewarded not penalized. We are going to have fair rules for wages and prices. Our policies will bring genuine equality of opportunity for women. Women, have for too long, been New Zealand’s neglected resource. And we will ensure that all women are given the chance to fulfill their individual potential. In social security we are going to get away from the obsession with numbers and codes and computers and systems and counters and forms and come right back to a concern with the individual New Zealander on a social welfare basis. Our health care system, once the best in the world, will no longer be threatened, as it has been under this administration. Retired New Zealanders will be given a special priority. More and more New Zealanders are over sixty. Many are finding it hard to make ends meet. Our senior citizens are not a burden, their contribution to our country must be recognized. The Labour Party in government has been at the forefront of recognizing their contribution; always did, always will, never been bettered at it. And I tell you if they talk about changing the national super, I say we are fully committed to that scheme and it must not be weakened in any way, and further that the only party that has changed it, and done it seven times, is the National Party. And if you hear them say we are going to change it, you ignore them. I come back to you and say what this country needs more than anything else is two things: internal peace and a sense of resolution to tackle New Zealand’s problems. And we must stop blaming one another for what has gone on, and we must place the blame where it properly belongs: on successive and failing National governments. You are not responsible for the appalling lack of growth in the New Zealand economy; they are. You are not responsible for the internal deficit; they are. You are not responsible for unemployment, for crime in the streets; good heavens the National Party keep on talking about punishing the criminals more. I don’t even want to place the emphasis on catching them. I want to stop it before it starts. I want to see young people, young people, not written off, not thrown out of value by our society, but honoured for their achievements. Not written off to a generation of provocative or sometimes violent behaviour; but harnessed for good social purposes in New Zealand. You are not responsible for that; they wrote that generation off. They had the pen, they could have writ the words which would have stopped the decline in living standards, in the standard of education, in healthcare and social welfare. They’re responsible, don’t you start feeling the guilt that they try to trundle out to you; don’t you start blaming the families for failure; when they failed to put the support to them. It is easy for them to target your hatred against those people who were never given any form of crutch to be helped, never given the assistance they needed, never propped when the time came to buy those schoolbooks and clothes. Never given more than those eight dollars, less taxes, to cope with the rising prices. And you New Zealanders have to start saying now, in a country as rich in resources as New Zealand, it is time that we all took it on the chin and pulled together to pull ourselves out of this trough. You didn’t create the inequitable tax system. You didn’t create their wage policies, you didn’t divide the society into the haves and the haves-not; they did. And you didn’t turn half New Zealand against the other; they did. And now it is up to you, because we need your help to clean up this mess. We are going to inherit it on July 14th. We are going to inherit it, we are going to inherit that mess on July 14th and I’ll plot with you the way through. First, we are going to assess the damage. The state of the public finances are bound to be worse than anything the National Party has disclosed. Our Balance of Payments, overseas reserves and budget deficit are likely to be far more serious than we have been told. We know what we want to do, but we can’t bring about recovery until we and you know the facts. The books, like the budget, might well have been cooked or locked away. That’s right. Earlier today, earlier today we announced Labour’s economic policy, and we will set in train an economic programme based on consistency and a heavy emphasis on the medium term. We are going to put behind us for ever the irrational, incompetent, ad-hoc, short-term, lurching interventionism that has made the New Zealand economy the laughing-stock of international financiers and governments. Your new Labour government will co-ordinate the country’s monetary, prices and incomes, taxation and expenditures policies. We are going to tie them in with sensible trade and investment policies. We are going to work directly with the private sector to take the lead, to unlock investment funds and create new jobs. Labour will make sure that rural bank and finance corporation loans go to the people who need them, the young farmers and the businesspeople who have the training and the commitment to contribute to this country’s growth. We are going to harness the energies, the practical experience, the skills and the enterprise of those in the farming and manufacturing industries to create greater productivity to create more jobs. We are going to be building up our service industries. New Zealand’s tourist potential has been barely touched. Here is an industry capable not merely of earning millions of overseas dollars, but of creating thousands of extra jobs at home. In the building industry, in transport, in the retail trade as well as in hotels and motels. We’ll give priority and incentive to small business, the forgotten sector of our economy in the last eight and a half years. We are going to get behind the development of those new high technology industries, industries with a real future. Instead of red tape we are going to make government a one-stop shop for future growth. We are going to seek a partnership of public and private enterprise. We are going to revitalize our stagnant farming industry. We can do it because the Labour Party has no vested interest in seeing the meat worker and the farmer at each other’s throat. We don’t gain whenever the boss and the worker is in conflict. In every way we’ll work to foster growth in the New Zealand economy by creating wealth, we’ll generate thousands of extra new jobs. That is going to be my government’s highest priority. It can be done, and I ask you look across the Tasman. The Prime Minister doesn’t like it, but I invite you to look across the Tasman and examine the extraordinary success of the Australian Labor Government. In just over a year they have achieved a growth rate of ten percent, the highest in the OECD. Not like New Zealand the lowest. Inflation has been cut to just under six percent without a two-year freeze. Most importantly, 240,000 new jobs have been created in that short time. And things are getting better. How do they do it in that short time? In the same way we will. By bringing people together. Compare what has been done there with National’s promise of 410,000 jobs. You remember those advertisements last election? 410,000 jobs for you, and for your children, and your children’s children. Remember that, and the sheep run up the valley, and the plane soared down the mountain side, and the old ewes ran into the freezers and got made into meat meal. And where did the jobs go, the 410,000 jobs? I tell you the National Party ended up with 5,000 fewer full-time jobs now than when they promised you 410,000. Look, we need a new way. Just after this election I as Prime Minister will convene a New Zealand economic conference. We are going to discuss and reach consensus on the future economic direction of New Zealand. That conference will be fully representative of New Zealand business small and large, the New Zealand workforce; the boss, the manager, the financier, the worker, local government, educators, leaders of all sections of our community. We are going to harness their expertise and experience. We are going to devise a broad New Zealand accord and I will ask delegates to that historical meeting. To set aside their historical sectional and parochial interests. To put aside their immediate selfish concerns in the interest of New Zealand. I want to make it quite clear that conference, as I stated in our economic policy release, will not be a substitute for our positive and responsible programme of renewal. The purpose of that conference will be to assist the government to determine priorities, to open the books, to be honest, to have no reserve, to get every delegate, every group represented, all the relevant facts and forecasts, to set out the problems and the policy options. We’ll generate there a climate of common concern. We’ll understand the scale, the scope of the current crisis in New Zealand. And every section of our community: business, unions will clearly understand the role they must play. And that approach is what we have been doing all along. We have released our industrial relations policy which had the understanding and the endorsement of the Employers Federation and of the Federation of Labour. No sectional group dictates the policy of the Labour Party. No sectional group dictates that. The Labour Party forms its policy, the Labour Party formed its policy after dealing with manufacturers, and farmers and exporters, with workers with business groups. I have sat in board tables and bankers’ rooms, and I have sat in the Federation of Labour. But no-one has got a mortgage on me or the Labour Party. And our policy is Labour policy. We are offering a programme of moderation and realism. We know New Zealand can’t spend itself out of this crisis. But there is a clear need for new policies, new attitudes, and a planned programme of recovery. The reward: economic growth, jobs, improved social services. But perhaps most important of all will be the restoration of what we have lost in our sense of dignity, purpose and self-respect. Our New Zealand pride will only thrive when our people move forward together. Where hope, not fear, lead to a restoration of confidence. I tonight, want to pledge to you, a team, a vastly different team from that which was offered you very, very recently. I want to offer you my deputy Geoff Palmer, a person, able, a person, able, talented and outstanding. I give you Roger Douglas my financial spokesperson; successful in business; basic to our policy; enterprising for New Zealand. I give you Mike Moore, who has brought trade, overseas marketing and tourism to the forefront. I want you to look at the others: Ann Hercus from your city; David Caygill; Russell Marshall; Richard Prebble, bright, hard, realistic, striving, young; compare them with anyone who is offering. And then I challenge you to look at your country. I challenge you to come right back and stop saying why don’t you let him stay there and have to live with it. I want you as a country to start to work out what our basic assets are. I give you the starting point: something the National Party can never realise. That we have a people rich in diversity, we have a people who really are quite extraordinarily rich, they come from all around the world. There are some who have been here long before the Treaty of Waitangi, and there are some who have come in more recent times. But this is a country which has a population mix geared to take this world. Right through, marketing, thrusting, speaking peace, talking, because we are so varied. We ought to make a strength of that diversity, not probe the nasty weaknesses that could come up. Draw us together, not exploit the difference. We are a country rich in resources. There is no country on this earth that has the capacity to work through this problem as well as New Zealand. It is a sin that given that wealth base, and the strength of our people, that we have been so mismanaged, that we have so focused on what divides us, that we have not as a country taken stock of what unites us and what we can exploit responsibly. I give you a people innovative, they had to be, they are isolated, they’ve lived apart from those huge centres of population, and we have very particular skills. No country in the world beats us for horticultural, agricultural expertise. We are world leaders and we can now turn our hands to the plough and do it. I give you a country that can still seize that New Zealand tradition of tolerance. A country where the richness of religious diversity need never be a wedge. No Northern Ireland New Zealand. A country where we can cope with each other, relish the differences, enjoy our individuality, still have strength to show compassion, and in the end to commit ourselves to working not just for selfish interests, but so that we can in ten years’ time look at the school leaver without flinching away from embarrassment. Because unless this election you turn this country around, you aren’t going to be able to face school leavers in ten years’ time. That is what the challenge of this election is about. I give you an absolute commitment from the members of my parliamentary team and the candidates who are now standing, that we will use all our strength, we will turn every effort we can, into changing the mood of pessimism and failure in this country around. New Zealanders have always responded in times of crisis. They have shown in war and peace that this country in the end transcends their concern for party or region or status. And that is the mandate for you for the next 18 days up to this election. We have to come through this election, not just winning it, but winning it in a way that is even then starting to heal the country. So that right after election night we can’t savior the victory, but we can immediately assume the responsibility. The responsibility to have a country not just as good as we found it, but far, far better. That is the challenge to you tonight. That is the challenge I leave you. And on July the 14th, and on July the 14th let’s bring New Zealand together. It is our time for a change, and we are going to make it. Thank you. Clapping and music. Man: “The current style of government tears people apart and it is time we got them together again.” Man: “I think the economy has totally lost its sense of direction.” Man: “I’m worried about the huge overseas debt.” Woman: “It is just too high, too much.” Woman: “How are we going to pay it back. I can’t imagine where the money will come from to pay back the debts we have incurred.” Woman: “There is no incentive to keep on working, the tax rate is so high.” Man: “I don’t think it is good government.” Lange: “The people who hold the purse strings have made a mess of things. Don’t they know it. And it is hard working New Zealanders like you who are having to pay for their mistakes. We are all in the same boat. Let’s look at the facts. For the past nine years there has been virtually no growth in the New Zealand economy. The last Labour government managed four times as much growth as National. Now New Zealanders owe more overseas than every before, five thousand dollars for every man, woman and child. Thirty cents in every dollar of your tax bill goes to pay off the interest, and only the interest on National’s borrowing. As a result, less and less is being spent on health, on housing, on education. On the things that we as New Zealanders have the right to expect. Since 1976 New Zealand has had the fastest rise in unemployment in the western world. Remember last election. National promised to create 410,000 jobs. So far, they’ve actually managed to lose some. There are 5,000 fewer jobs now that there were in 1981. So, what will we, the new Labour government, do about it? We’ll get growth back into the economy, we’ll get men and women back into jobs, and we’ll put money where the jobs are. We’ll have a tax system that rewards you for working harder, rather than penalizes you for extra effort. Text: Labour: Bringing New Zealand together. Announcer: “The new Labour government: Bringing New Zealand together.”