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.