The National Party organised an "open forum" in Wellington last December. Advertised topics included the News Media Ownership and Narcotics acts, and Rhodesia.

MPs Riddiford, Adams-Schneider, McCready, and a British Conservative MP, Dame Joan Vickers, made up the panel.

About 200 people were in the Savage Club hall for the forum, which began with a question read by the chairman. Mr. J. S. Meadowcroft (President of the National Party) on the Narcotics Act.

Issue dodged

According to reliable sources, this written question and the others which followed were "jacked up"—probably by the panel members who answered them.

While this practice is not too objectionable if the questions are realistic, the narcotics question missed the main point of concern to the public—the right to search without warrant, and the chairman quickly proceeded to the next topic after the "rigged" question had been dealt with.

Mr. McCready. Otaki MP, demonstrated ignorance when answering a question from a member of the audience about NZ White Paper figures on infiltration in Vietnam.

He said he was not concerned with what was in "black and white," as he had been there and had spoken with the then Prime Minister of South Vietnam. In effect Mr. McCready rejected his own government's "facts" on the Vietnam war.

Rhodesia

The chairman after dealing with all advertised topics except Rhodesia, expressed surprise that there had not been any questions on Rhodesia. (He shouldn't have been, because the forum had been dealing with fixed topics and Rhodesia was next.)

Following a brief eulogy of Dame Vickers, he indicated that, as there were no questions. Dame Vickers would read out a few questions she had prepared on the topic and answer them herself.

This the lady did for approximately 10 minutes. Carefully avoiding the more contentious points. Dame Vickers answered about a dozen of her own typed questions.

After this, the chairman stated that as he had promised at the start to close the forum at 10 o'clock he would call on Mr. Riddiford to say a few words.

He forgot!

The chairman did not state at the beginning that he wished to close at 10 o'clock. In his unseemly haste to do so he forgot about the period for questions from the floor on any topic.

No allowance was made for questions from the floor on Rhodesia despite the fact that many people wanted to question the British MP. Roger Clark, a VUW law lecturer was, however, permitted to squeeze in two questions.