VIOLENCE IN NEW ZEALAND

Mr. Eric Butler reports from New Zealand, where police protection has been necessary at many meetings to enable the speaker to address audiences:
As a veteran of the lecture platform, I have addressed many meetings through a barrage of interjections, insults, and, on occasions, missiles, but my meeting at Palmerston North was a new and depressing experience. Prominent amongst the demonstrators were teenage girls who poured out a stream of filth, which would have made a hardened Sergeant Major blush. These were University students, products of the new education." Some, presumably, will be the mothers of tomorrow's children. But to me they are harsh evidence that our Christian Civilisation is in its death throes. This is the post Christian era and the important question is how to foster re-generation.

The role of the media in aiding revolution was demonstrated in Wellington where "The Evening Post" carried a report that the League of Rights was to hold a "secret" Anti-Subversion School, and that anti-League demonstrators were planning to disrupt the function if they could discover where it was to be held. The report said that I had written a book, which I have never heard about. There was in fact no "secret" meeting, but a public meeting in a well-known hall in Lower Hutt. Protesting to the editor, I told him the report was an example of inciting revolutionaries to attempt to break up my meeting. A pattern of highly organised violence had emerged at most of my public meetings.

When the editor said that his paper was only reporting on a document being circulated, and that a reporter would be at the meeting, I knew what was coming. Within a few minutes of the start of the meeting it was clear that the highly organised disruptionists had two standards concerning "rights". They were the same people who staged violent protests against the South African football tour last year, allegedly to get "rights" for the Africans, but at the same time denying spectators the right to watch a game. They were not concerned about the rights of those people who had come to hear what I had to say.
There was no alternative but to ask the police to clear the hall and then to attempt to screen those who wanted to come back. The majority of disruptors then resorted to a demonstration outside, stones on the roof and attempts to break down doors. Some managed to get back to the hall and had to be removed one by one as they tried to disrupt. Every time the police moved a disruptor the revolutionaries' photographer rushed forward to photograph from the best possible angle to convey the impression of "police brutality."

I have been most impressed with the manner in which the New Zealand police are handling my meetings and to date have only seen one case - at the Masterton meeting - where the police had to use any force at all. Only several arrests have been made, but I understand that no charges have been laid.
I had the opportunity after the Masterton meeting to congratulate Mr. Ben Couch, the Minister for Police, on the standard of the New Zealand police. Mr. Couch's arrival halfway through my Masterton meeting produced an outburst of ironic applause from those demonstrators still present. In his generous vote of thanks, the Minister managed to deliver a few telling thrusts against some of the "old friends" from last year's Springbok tour. Mr. Couch came under heavy attack last year when in essence he suggested that South Africa's racial policies had some merit. Mr. Couch is part Maori and a Christian.
In discussing the demonstrators' interjections about several South African political prisoners being found dead in their cells, Mr. Couch told me that there were cases of New Zealand prisoners committing suicide in their cells, but there was little publicity about this.

Youth violence is growing in New Zealand now, as in every Western country. A front page headline reads, "Volatile Youth Feared", with a call from the police for a boost in their numbers. In a recent gang attack upon the police in Tauranga, Molotov cocktails were used to destroy police vehicles. A police spokesman draws attention to the fact that "unemployment and the questioning of authority highlighted by the Springbok tour had created volatile disaffected youth." The police stress that it is no solution for the police to try to bash the bashers. District court judges are calling for wider powers to deal with the growing disruption of court proceedings.

In his maiden speech in the New Zealand Parliament, the youngest Member, Nationalist Mr. Simon Upton, said that large numbers of his generation regarded Parliament and parliamentarians with a skeptical eye. Mr. Upton might have said that it is not surprising that youth is reacting, as it is when it observes the hypocrisy and double standards of their politicians.
Compounding the problems of a New Zealand society in which young people see little worthwhile future, are those resulting from a large influx of Pacific Islanders whose values and life styles are vastly different from those of the Europeans. Growing race friction is a reality, with the professionals in the "race relations" business trying to exploit it to the maximum.

New Zealand Police Association Secretary, Dr. Moodie, warns that Brixton type riots could occur in New Zealand unless the Government moved to help youth. I have experienced enough disruption at my New Zealand meetings to endorse that warning. But to do something constructive requires a basic change in financial policies. And there is unfortunately, no evidence that the Muldoon government intends to make that change. Like other countries, New Zealand is preparing to learn the hard way about what is essential for a stable society.

JEREMY LEE REPORTS FROM CANADA

This will be the last report from Jeremy Lee, from Canada, as he had now returned to Australia. He could well be contributing further assessments of the Canadian scene, in the near future, from his home base:
"Although it takes the English speaking peoples a remarkably long time to react to face slapping, Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, is now successful in inducing an angry flush to the national face right across the nation. He seems to go out of his way to ensure that his utterances are taken for what they are - calculated contempt.

"He has bluntly stated that co-operative federalism is over. He can afford to speak that way, since official opposition to his constitutional designs has crumpled. Her Majesty the Queen is to be asked to return Canada's Constitution, which has just passed both Houses in Britain, in person. "Last May, Trudeau brought in an Emergency Planning Act, making provisions for civil internment camps for political dissidents, centrally directed censorship of all media by the Prime Minister himself, and Government direction of labour, which Australians will recall as a favourite recommendation of Dr. Evatt in the post war period.

"Frightening as it may seem, there was no opposition to this legislation in Ottawa until almost a year after the Act went through. Opposition parties were apparently too tired, or too pre-occupied with head counting to notice the explosive material in the pipeline. No definition of what constituted an 'emergency' was contained in the bill the sole arbiter, apparently, being the Prime Minister himself.
"Without such bodies as the Canadian League of Rights, the public might never have known what lay in store.
Belatedly and probably due to the fright received by Opposition parties when a recent Albertan by-election was won by a new group, the Western Canadian Concept: the Conservatives in Ottowa have finally taken up the issue.

"Canada's budget plans for a further increase in taxes of 11.7%. Ottawa also now takes $3,000 for every living Canadian in taxes - over $12,000 for an average family of four. With Provincial taxes and municipal property taxes added on to the final figures, there must be somewhere between four and five thousand dollars per head of population. "One quarter of federal revenue alone goes in interest repayments on the national debt - a higher percentage than any other Western economy, except Northern Ireland, where one third of the Budget goes to the bankers in interest.
Canada is paying approximately $17,000 million (17 Billion) interest on a national debt of $130 Billion - bigger than the external debt of the whole Communist bloc.

"Last time I was here, Government took 42% of Canada's G.N.P. (Gross National Product) in taxes. That percentage has been upped to 45% in the latest Budget. So industry is taking a caning. The lumber industry in Alberta and British Columbia is being put in mothballs despite continuing demand for houses. Farm bankruptcies are running at 1930 levels and February's national bankruptcy figures were the highest in Canada's history.

"Part of Canada's huge debt has been incurred in funding the National Energy Programme (N.E.P.), allegedly to recapture Canadian ownership. The result, predictably, is that small Canadian oil industries across the prairies are folding up, while the 'Big Boys' unconcernedly concentrate on refining and distribution. Canada now spends $8 million a day subsidising the importation of oil!

So far, Prime Minister Trudeau has failed to explain how Canadian ownership can be retrieved by foreign borrowing from banks whose directors are in many cases also directors from international oil companies. "The result of all this is that there is a last minute awakening in Canada. The meetings I have addressed have been big. One expects this in British Columbia and Alberta. But even in Saskatchewan and Manitoba I have been startled at the size and intensity of the meetings - one hundred attending in Virden and the new centre of Forrest, which has never had a League meeting before.

"The first meeting in Ontario was in Toronto, with massive literature sales and donations. It augers well for the rest of the tour. Something new is happening in Canada, the greatest feature being the large percentage of young people turning out in all centres."