New Zealand Party closing 1984 (0.00-7.15). Bob Jones: “Good evening. Providence has deemed I should speak first, for of all the leaders over the last four weeks I’m the only one with anything worthwhile to say. Now I don’t want to waste time talking about the failures of the Muldoon government. For despite frequent claims the New Zealand Party grew from a hatred of the Prime Minister, I want to place on record, now that Sir Robert is about to depart our political scene, that I consider him to be one of the great figures of our country’s history. So regardless of what he says about me, I’m proud to have known him. But the old lions must give way to the young, and the outmoded to the new, and it is that I really want to talk about, because there is no point dwelling on the past. We must now look only to the future. Certainly that is the underlying genesis of the New Zealand Party. This party is made up of provenly successful people, men and women who are individually outstanding success stories. Who are not interested in that middle ground of mediocrity, who discard the politics of compromise of which Labour and National boast. And never before has such a line-up of proven competence been placed before the nation. Our aim in all things is excellence. We seek only the best. And all my life people have said to me you can’t do that. And all of my life I have proven them wrong. After all, remember a mere 12 months ago the Prime Minister assuring the nation talk of a new political party was a hoax. Tonight, on the eve of an election, the Prime Minister, no less, waits in the wings for me to complete my address. So, I say again to you, anything is possible if you strive hard enough. Aim for the heights, you’ll reach the stars. So, when Mr Lange says there are no quick solutions to this nation’s problems I could weep in frustration. That is the message of failure we’ve all been listening to all of our lives. And this party and its personnel have consistently proven wrong, so long as one has the courage to ignore it. For too long this country has been like a flower bud waiting to bloom through a seemingly eternal winter. The National government will be decimated tomorrow, and everybody knows that, a vote for National, therefore, is an exercise in futility, it is an endorsement of failure. But a Labour government, in my honest opinion, represents no change whatsoever, other than, of course, in personnel. You see what a Labour government means is not a step forward, it means a giant leap backwards. It will epitomise a return to the grey gloom of a Depression mentality cloth-cap uninspired boredom. And I believe that is what is precisely what this nation so desperately needs to shed, the things such as the big government, corresponding small people mentality. A Labour government means three more years of incompetence and bungling and of stifling that flowering potential this country really has, of bowing before the demands of every rag tag pressure group, of total incomprehension of financial and economic matters. All in all that is a pretty gloomy scenario. But look, there is a better way. And I want to put to you a simple proposition. Consider the times in your lives you’ve made major decisions; marriage, new house, purchase of a small business or whatever. And ask yourself, despite all the bad moments, the worries about what you were doing, did not taking that step inevitably result in a happy outcome. If the answer is yes, then I invite you to take another such decision tomorrow with your vote. Why not bring some light into your life? Look, there is no point voting National, because they don’t deserve it anyway, but clearly they’re going to lose. So search your soul and ask yourself, what will it be like three years later after a Labour government. Nothing is more certain than they will be a miserable failure. The New Zealand Party is a challenge to you to really change things in this nation, once and for all. What have you got to lose by putting that invitation to a three-year test? I know I can end unemployment, not in eight years as Mr Lange says, but inside a year. It is really quite easy. You simply expand the economy, immediately you’ve got a shortage of labour. How do you expand the economy? Can’t be done for five years says Mr Lange. Dear me, the politics of failure again. It is really rather easy. We simply remove the impediments frustrating that expansion, particularly the punitive tax system which we have, something all the experts have been saying for years. So how do we pay for the state? No problem there either. The expanded economy will produce, not withstanding the lower tax scales, a great deal more revenue. You’ll pay less taxes as a percentage of your earnings, but my word you’ll earn a great deal more. And so it goes. All the things other successful countries are proving to be true. All of my life I’ve found so called difficulties easily overcome by simply working out the quick solutions, and for Mr Lange’s benefit again, I emphasise quick. I recall when I was a skinny kid I found myself in the NZU boxing final. Everyone told me the guy I was up against would take my head off, and he did. Shortly after it started, there I was two broken ribs, broken nose, bloody face, sitting on the deck being counted out. Well I thought about it quickly, what to do. I thought about it, got up, took his head off instead, and I repeat there are always quick answers, no matter how awesome the problems. When I decided to write books the literary set scoffed. I wrote them, became this country’s best selling author. Couple of years ago I decided to float the second biggest new public company in this country’s history. And this time it was the share market fraternity scoffing. Can’t be done they said. We did it, we’re oversubscribed in fact, tripled our shareholders money in a year, turned that original 10 million capital into a $40 million asset situation inside two years. So they laughed a year ago when I talked about forming a new political party. They are not laughing any longer. Think about that tomorrow. For in deservedly, and justifiably sinking the National Party, you are doing yourself no favours substituting a Labour government. Do you really believe that Labour can resolve the massive debt problems this country has? Are you happy trusting them with our $14 billion annual budget? Do you really believe they’ve got people competent to make this country boom, as we in the New Zealand Party can do, and have done with our own lives? Think about that before you give Labour the Treasury benches. Certainly, we must remove the government. The National Party has sold out on everything it once represented; it is a party of socialism, a party of big government, a party of small people, most of all it is a party of economic mismanagement. But why not vote for competence? Why not take a chance and try a real change tomorrow? We will make this nation wealthy, quickly. But we won’t stop there. We will make it fun, because with my leadership there will be a little bit of style, some panache, and some excitement, and Mr Lange is not going to give you that. And finally, a special message to the people of Ohariu. We need a strong, competent MP. The future of this party and therefore, I believe, of this nation rests very much with you. So I now suggest you turn your television sets off for the next half hour, and in line with our education policies, read a book. Thank you all for listening to me. Social Credit closing statement 1984 (7.25-17.32). Bruce Beetham. M.P for Rangitikei. Social Credit Party Leader: “Social Credit welcomes the Prime Minister’s decision to call this election because it gives Social Credit the opportunity to be the means of removing the Muldoon administration from the power it has exercised for far too long. I say that because it is Social Credit, not Labour, which is in a position, in National held seats, to topple a significant number of Muldoon candidates. I’m referring to those National held seats, 15 in all, in which Social Credit is the clear and immediate opposition to the Muldoon candidate, and in which Labour is trailing a distant third. That is why Social Credit is very confident, not only that it will retain its existing seats of Rangitikei and East Coast Bays, but obtain several additional seats in National held electorates in which it is now just a few hundred votes away from winning. The coming election is a crucial one for New Zealand. It represents what could be the last real chance for New Zealanders to turn their country in a new direction, to break away from the tyranny of what has become close to a dictatorship and move towards an approach to government which is based on cooperation and consensus. Getting Parliament dissolved on the pretext of not having a working majority exposes the very worst feature of the Muldoon style of government: its arrogance. Divide and rule has been the essence of the Muldoon style and this snap election is a classic example of his tactic of trying to stay in power by dividing the country and pitching people against each other in mindless conflict. No longer can we afford as a nation to continue on this path of such division and confrontation. What we must have in its place is cooperation, consensus and as much unity as possible. This will allow us to solve problems in a satisfactory way and move forward together. Social Credit stands for needed change. This country can’t afford to continue going down the road of economic stagnation, chronic unemployment, crippling debt, and the further souring of industrial relations. We must arrest the economic and social breakdown which is causing an increase in violent crime, and threatening law and order and internal stability in our society. When on July the 14th Social Credit obtains the seats that will, for the first time effectively give it sufficient strength to really influence the decision making process in the next Parliament, we will use that crucial position to help forge a stable well-led and consensus seeking government. A government which can bring the people of this country together on a course which will be acceptable to a large number of New Zealanders. We will then, play our part in bringing to an end a Muldoon-led administration which no longer has the confidence of a great majority of New Zealanders. We will also help to establish a government that will set this country on the road to economic recovery and the introduction of long over-due reform in its financial, industrial and political structure. Social Credit and Social Credit alone has the ability, in this election, as I said at the outset, to be the means of changing for the better the standard and quality of life of all New Zealanders through what we offer, both by way of our political position, and our policies, you and your children can have a future with Social Credit. Beetham to hall: You know, in a country with a small population of just over three million, with abundant natural resources, the existence of unemployment is unnecessary, immoral and intolerable. What is physically possible, and socially and environmentally desirable, can always be made economically feasible. If the resources are there and the manpower is there, there is absolutely no reason why the money can’t be there as well. Clapping. Turns off television at home while wearing jersey: “Let me repeat that. Unemployment is unnecessary, immoral and intolerable. You know, if the resources and the manpower are there, there is absolutely no reason why the money shouldn’t be also. Our economic system is collapsing. Its made thousands of us poor in the midst of plenty. Crammed our children into classrooms where one teacher tries to teach 40 children. It has given our health services chronic anaemia. It has kept would be farmers off the land. Put the necessities of life beyond the reach of families with only one income. And worst of all, it is destroying our young people with the fear of unemployment. Now we hear that word so often. Let’s remember what it really means. It means you are useless, no-one wants you, you aren’t entitled to a job or a wage packet, you have no future, no future to plan for, no choices to make, no right to marry. All you are good for is a pointless boring existence on the dole. And we are surprised when some of them take to crime. Under the present system, our industries, farms, and small businesses, which together are New Zealand’s biggest producers and provide most jobs, are crippled and half paralysed because they can’t borrow money except at still sky-high interest rates. Of course, this process promotes inflation. And to jump ahead of it the money lender puts an even higher interest on his next loan. The conventional answer to this problem is that the workers should demand less. The Social Credit answer is that the money lenders should get less. Now Social Credit would supply low cost working capital to the small business and to the farmer from New Zealand’s own money source, the Reserve Bank, and distribute it through the trading banks. And for people whose savings are invested in high interest loans, to them we’d say your present need for high interest is fueling inflation, and that harms you as well. What we offer you are your savings inflation proofed, in the trustee savings banks and the post office and this will protect your income. And we’ll also provide incentives for New Zealanders to invest their savings in New Zealand’s productive businesses. This, in essence, is what Social Credit means by money for people. Money directed where it will let people work, earn and create more and cheaper goods and services for everyone. The profits should go to the people who do the work, and share the risks of enterprise. Not to the manipulators of money, not to the speculators, the foreign bankers, the quick and the cunning who neither toil nor spin. Our policies include the halving of interest rates (% symbol), to stimulate business (Halving of interest rates) and create jobs, the choice of retirement from 55 (Choice of retirement from 55) on full super to create jobs right down the line, first home mortgages at (5% first mortgage. 7% second mortgage) at 5% and second mortgages at 7%, to provide building jobs as well as houses, a taxation package that helps the worst off (Taxation package to help the family and encourage investment in production) and also encourages the better off to save and invest in productive, job creating industry. Safer streets and (More bobbies on the beat) and less crime. More bobbies on the beat. Tougher penalties for violent crime (Tougher penalties for violent crime) and restitution for the victims (Restitution for the victim). In the export market, counter-trading agreements (Counter-trading outside the hard currency network) outside of the ruinous hard-currency network in which New Zealand suffers a desperate disadvantage. And above all, an absolute and final no to our perilous entanglement in the nuclear confrontation between the superpowers. No visits of nuclear ships from any country, all our efforts behind a nuclear-free Pacific, and that also means (Nuclear-free Pacific) no nuclear power plants and no dumping of nuclear waste. We can protect this country against conventional threats, just as Switzerland and Sweden did successfully through two world wars. And we can do it by creating an effective resistance association. You’ll be told, of course, it is cheaper to rely on the nuclear umbrella. It is, cheap and deadly. Time is running out. New Zealand simply can’t stand another three years of the Muldoon government. In Whangarei, Kaipara, Rodney, the Bay of Islands, Glenfield, Pakuranga, Hauraki, Tongariro, Waipa, Tauranga, Waitotara, Wanganui, Otago and other seats, Social Credit is running close to the sitting member. Social Credit. Whangarei, Kaipara, Rodney, Bay of Islands, Glenfield, Pakuranga, Hauraki, Tongariro, Waipa, Tauranga, Waitotara, Wanganui, Otago. In these electorates, only a Social Credit vote is a vote for change. Use if for change. Get the Social Credit candidate in. Then we’ll have some more democratic three-party debate in Parliament, and about time too. Social Credit. Picture of 13 candidates who are all male. Labour closing address 1984 (NZ Party file, 17.46-27.40) David Lange: “This is the last chance I’ll have to speak to you before you vote in tomorrow’s general election. After a month of electioneering, you’ve probably had just enough from all the candidates. So, for the next few minutes, I’d like to put all of that all aside. I’d like to talk to you quite simply about the sort of country, the sort of New Zealand, I want my children and their children to grow up in. First, I want my children to have the best education possible. Second best won’t do. It isn’t a question of doing brilliantly in exams or getting better marks than anyone else, or going to university. It is a question of being allowed the opportunity to meet your individual potential. I see that as their right, as it is the right of every New Zealand child. Not something to be bought, only if you can afford it. I want my children to be able to go as far as they can, and at their own best speed. Our own experience and international research tells us this is most likely to happen with class sizes of around 20. It can’t happen where a teacher is trying to divide his or her attention between 30 or even 40 children. There the struggling child is left behind. The gifted child’s potential is unfulfilled. That is a waste of our most precious human resource: our children. Next, I want them to leave school knowing that they are going to be able to find a job. Not just any old job, but a job that matches their skills and qualifications. A job where, again, they can meet their individual potential. I see that as their right too, as it is the right of every school leaver, every graduate from training college, technical institute, or university. You know the problem with quoting unemployment statistics is that they depersonalise the issue. When we are told unemployment is up we feel bad. When we are told unemployment is down we feel good. Well, unemployment is down at the moment to about 100,000. Not one of those people feels good. What I am saying is you can’t deal with unemployment figures, relatively. Each one of those 100,000 statistics represents a personal tragedy to the person concerned and to his or her family. Unemployment, like inadequate education, is a tragic waste of human resources. All the more tragic because it is unnecessary. The Labour Party has always pursued a policy of full employment. I’m for that. I want my children to leave school knowing that they have a job to go to. And, that so has everyone else. Next, I want my children to grow up in an affluent society. Somebody once said to me, you know, the trouble with you Labour people is you want to make everybody equally poor. What nonsense. What we want to do is make it possible for people to enjoy their lives, to live them to the fullest extent, and you can’t do that if you don’t know where the next dollar is coming from. I want my children to be comfortable, not to live with anxiety about money, not to have to struggle to make ends meet. Not to be shacked throughout their lives by mortgages and hire purchase agreements that they can only just afford, or can’t afford at all. I want my children to have more than just enough. I want them to enjoy all the good things that an affluent society has to offer, rather than just get by. That is their right too. Just as it ought to be the right of every New Zealander prepared to work and strive for something better. Our goal is not to make everyone the same, our goal is to set minimum standards of affluence for all our people. I don’t object to wealth, but I do object to privilege. What else? I want my children to be able to afford the home they need. I want them to have access throughout their lives to adequate healthcare. I want them to have the security of knowing that if things do go wrong they can rely on the support of a society in which anger has given way to compassion, resentment to concern. Again, that means an affluent society, for only in an affluent society can these things be made available to all. Finally, I want my children to grow up in a society that is at peace with itself. We no longer live in a society like that. We are at odds with one another, bosses with workers, town with country, north with south, haves with have nots. The price we have paid for those divisions is both social and economic. In social terms we have quite simply lost our sense of nationhood, of a common purpose. We no longer identify ourselves as New Zealanders, but as members of warring factions within New Zealand. Our lot and their lot. In economic terms division has inevitable lead to decline for the two go hand in hand. Our appalling growth rate, massive indebtedness to overseas money lenders, and falling living standards are all a direct result of our failure to pull together in a time of crisis. Common sense tells you that there can be no profit in confrontation, but that there is profit in working together. If you doubt it, look overseas. The economies which have leapt ahead are the economies of countries whose governments have practiced consensus and cooperation. In New Zealand, during the eight and a half years the present government has been in office, more than three million work days have been lost through strikes and industrial unrest; that is twice the number of workdays lost by the first, second and third Labour governments combined in their twenty years of office. Throw in the 12 years of consensus style government practiced by Keith Holyoake for good measure, and you are still nowhere near the three million figure. Cooperation works, confrontation doesn’t. Cooperation leads to growth, confrontation to stagnation. I want my children to grow up in a society where people cooperate. That is our policy, that is our intention, that is our starting point. The National Party offers you more of the same. Its starting point, its intention is therefore more confrontation, more division, more tearing at the fabric of New Zealand society. No good can come of it. In difficult times in our history, in war and in depression, New Zealanders have won through. We have shown others how. We are now faced with another kind of crisis. We have to ensure, as a people, that our resourcefulness, our common sense, and above all our sense of tolerance and fairness, are applied collectively to the challenges ahead. Tomorrow’s election is no more than the beginning of that effort. Of the drive to heal the wounds and end the divisions. That is what we mean by bringing New Zealand together. What you are voting for tomorrow is the sort of society you and your children will live in for at least the next three years. Your choice is between what has been, and what could be. It is not a choice between experience and inexperience. It is a choice between the old ways, which have not worked, and the new way, which must be given the chance to work if New Zealand is to heal and prosper. Your vote tomorrow can give us all that chance. We need your vote to bring about that change. Labour. Bringing New Zealand together. National closing 1984 (after NZ Party at 27.50-38.05) Sir Robert Muldoon: “Good evening. I want to sum up for you the campaigns of the two major parties. First, the Labour Party. The Labour Party is trying to sell Mr Lange as a man of consensus, who’ll bring the country together. He said he had a deal with the Federation of Labour on wages, and that the employers agreed with his policy. The employers rejected that claim and said that while they agreed with some of his statements, his version of their attitude went much too far. This week, however, Jim Knox the President of the Federation of Labour destroyed the whole carefully constructed Labour campaign when he said, in a most aggressive manner, that there was no deal with the Labour Party, and no deal that there’d be any restraint on the part of the Federation of Labour. He went a step further, with a naked threat of industrial chaos if the National government remains in office. The Labour Party campaign has been short on specifics. Their economic policy simply does not exist. And it is no answer to say they will not have a policy until they’ve opened the books. If it was short-term policy, something for the next week or next month it is reasonable enough to say they want to see up to the minute figures. But if it is medium or long-term policy, any political party should be able to devise and announce such a policy from the statistics that are freely available, and night after night I’ve shown my audiences the monthly Reserve Bank bulletin, which updates every month all the vital economic statistics. This, added to the releases of the Government Statistician, should be enough for any competent party to base a medium to long-term economic strategy on. The other major feature of the Labour campaign is that every time a spokesman makes a statement which seems to be politically damaging, Mr Lange promptly contradicts him and says it is not so. Mr Douglas and Mr Moyle on devaluation, Mr O’Flynn on trade with South Africa and ANZUS, Mr Prebble on accelerated immigration of unskilled Pacific Islanders, Mrs Hercus on the clawing back of the superannuation of anyone who has an additional income, and on the tax deductibility of medical insurance payments, Mr Douglas on an annual assets tax. Every one of these was promptly denied, but the clear impression remains that these senior members of the Parliamentary Labour Party would in fact move to implement these proposals were a Labour government to be re-elected. And that the combined weight of the left-wing of the party caucus and the Federation of Labour, through the joint council of Labour, would ensure that these policies were put in place. At the point where his campaign started to fall apart, Mr Lange suddenly announced that if he became Prime Minister he’d learn Maori and make Maori an official language. It would be of more value to him if he took a stage one course in economics. The whole consensus campaign of the Labour Party has collapsed. They cannot even get consensus inside their own group of senior spokesmen, let alone with the Federation of Labour and the Socialist Unity Party executives with whom they are clearly entangled. It is not reds under the bed, it is reds in the bed and dictating what happens. As far as the National Party is concerned, I’ve been illustrating in my meetings what the medium and long-term future is for New Zealand under a National Government. We’ve come through ten years of recession with our living standards intact, certainly higher unemployment, but unemployment at a level lower than that in any other country of the OECD apart from Japan. And about half the level of Bob Hawke’s Australia. We now have in place the industries, that over the next few years, will develop, provide jobs and turn our external accounts from a deficit to a surplus. Out of that surplus, we’ll do two things. We’ll create more growth and jobs and we’ll pay off our debt. The decision as to the proportion of each of these activities are decisions to be made in the future. What is important is we now have the industries there, and we can see they are going to be winners. In 1981 I was telling you want we would do, and today we are doing it. The industries are being built, and in many cases are already operating. The expansion of horticultural exports is a major success story. We will have planted, in the time of my government, 375,000 hectares of new trees for forestry, with a value at stump, on maturity, of 7.5 billion dollars. About half of our total overseas debt, without even the added value of processing, whether pulping, paper making or whatever may be the final result. The International Monetary Fund has been thrown into the argument at a late stage. Their remedy is a rapid turnaround, accompanied by massive unemployment, business failures, and in many cases, social chaos and political destabilisation, leading, indeed, as you have seen around the world to strategic destabilisation. My campaign in world forums, which started as long ago as 1976, has been to get the IMF to recognise these results of its hard-line attitude. And during the last year it has started to pay off. The Commonwealth Finance Ministers committee, which I chair, has the support of almost every nation in the world, with the exception of one or two more affluent nations, such as Germany and the United States. And during this year, I have gradually got the Reagan administration to agree that this is the road we have to travel. The IMF solution of making the rich richer and the poor poorer is not an answer for New Zealand. And it is not an answer for the world, regardless of what the Jones party might think. The issue then is simple. Are you going to take a chance on a Labour Party that is hopelessly divided and led by a man with no experience whatsoever in government, and, by his own admission, no knowledge of or understanding of economic affairs? Or are you going to stick with me and my party. We’ve got a good team backing me up, including some top-class backbenchers who’ll come into the cabinet in the next week. This is a time for New Zealanders to be hard headed and clear thinking and for them to vote in their own best interest. I am the most experienced Finance Minister in the Commonwealth, and probably in the world. Do you want to swop me for a man who can’t find his seat at a football match? Text: New Zealand you’re winning. Pictures of sports people and industrial projects. Announcer and text: “To vote for any party other than National on Saturday is to risk again Labour’s economic debacle of 1972/75. New Zealand you are winning.” Announcer: “Don’t throw it all away.” Text: “Vote National July 14.”