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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 14, 5 July 1976.

Editorial — National's Attack on Students

page 4

Editorial

National's Attack on Students

Drawings of argricultural imagery

Students are deeply involved in the National Government's plans to tie up the union movement with a myriad of repressive industrial laws.

While the amendments to the Industrial Relations Act are aimed at the so-called "militants" in the trade unions, they set a precedent for any organisation that wishes to have a say in how the country is being run.

Mr Muldoon told a student caller to his talkback show in 1974 that Students' Associations were too involved in "politics", and he would support any moves that would limited them to those issues "to do with student welfare".

Unfortunately. Mr Muldoon doesn't see the connection between student welfare, and the decisions made by Government, which are commonly referred to as "politics".

Students, along with all other New Zealanders, want to be able to deckle whether they'll be breathing in carbon monoxide for the next ten years, whether they'll be living in a gutter or a house, or whether they'll be slogging through the rice paddies rifle in hand trying to keep Asia free from "Communism". To Mr Muldoon all these questions are "political" and have no place in a trade union or a Students' Association.

At the moment students are no threat to the Muldoon Government, so they can be left alone while the unions are being dealt with. But, if students threaten Mr Muldoon (as they seem to have done when they disrupted the Pacific Basin Economic Council Meeting in 1972) then the force of law may come crashing down on their collective head.

So, students must stand with organised labour in opposing any moves by the National Government to restrict the democratic rights exercised by individual workers in their unions. If we do not stand firm now then when we next march for the maintenance of our bursary levels, we may find blank stares greeting our cries for fraternal support.

John Ryall