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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 21. September 10, 1968
National Party Attacked
National Party Attacked
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Caroline McGrath, the Students' Association's Education Officer, and next year' Women's VicePresident, shows around a group of the Queen Scouts who visited the University on Friday.
"The National Party had failed to recognise the three principal movements in twentieth century New Zealand history," Dr Michael Basset said recently.
He was addressing a meeting of the Auckland University National Club on the subject of "What I Think is wrong with the National Party".
Dr Basset is the Labour candidate for Waitemata in the 1969 General Election.
Dr Basset said that these three movements were: the drift to urban living from the rural areas, with its consequent effects on employment patterns; the development of welfare statism; and, in the international sphere, the rise of independence movements throughout the world.
"The National Party has maintained a defiant stand toward these developments," Dr Basset said.
National did not have the sense to realise that this move favoured their supporters more than it did Labour's, he said.
National had done much to undermine what Labour had begun and had tried to destroy the welfare state, Dr Basset said.
He said that under a National administration it could be expected that Social Security would remain at a static level.
He said that New Zealand, once a leader in welfare statism, had now fallen far behind many other countries.
"It was obvious that the National Party had never appreciated the arguments beind the Welfare State in the first place.
"The National Party has never been politically strong enough to attack the Welfare State, but has never managed to improve it either," he said.
Dr Basset said he believed it was possible to make an equally strong condemnation of National in the in the international sphere.
He said that no movements of nationalism and the breakdown of empire had bypassed the understanding of the National Party, and this explained their lack of foreign policy.
He said that such attitudes lead to inflexibility in foreign policy, an inflexibility bred out of ignorance.
Coupled with all too little learning, such policies had placed New Zealand in a dangerous and invidious position in South-East Asia, he said.