LABOUR’S FIVE YEAR TIME WARP

12 October 1994:

Peter Dunne resigns from the Labour Party, citing as the main reasons its plans to repeal the Employment Contracts Act and put taxes up for those earning over $60,000. He says Labour has become more interested in appeasing the Alliance, than meeting the needs of people in electorates like his.

12 October 1999:
Labour’s bottom-line commitments for the coming election, which it says it will not deviate from, are still to put taxes up for those earning over $60,000, and repeal the Employment Contracts Act.

“Labour is trapped in a time-warp and fixated by icon politics.”

“It is as facile today as it was in 1994 for Labour to seriously suggest that all New Zealand’s ills can be resolved by putting up taxes and repealing the Employment Contracts Act, yet that is the only mantra Labour seems capable of clinging to,” Mr Dunne says.

Mr Dunne says that, according to the latest polls, Labour may well need United’s support to form the next Government.

“While Labour remains trapped in its self-imposed time warp of high taxes and union-dominated industrial relations, there is absolutely no prospect of United supporting a Labour-led Government.”

“I simply have no desire to re-enter the time warp I so gladly left in 1994,” he says.

ENDS
New Zealand’s Liberal Party

MEDIA STATEMENT
HON PETER DUNNE, MP
LEADER UNITED NEW ZEALAND
Parliament Buildings, Wellington 1.
e-mail: peter.dunne@parliament.govt.nz. Internet Address: http://www.united.org.nz

New Zealand’s Liberal Party