Foundation
Meurant had led the New Zealand Police's high-profile "Red Squad" during the controversial 1981 Springbok Tour. he became a National Party MP in 1987 and won re-election as such in 1990 and in 1993. Meurant often clashed with the leadership of the National Party over Maori policy, and was regarded as one of the leading dissidents within the National caucus at the time. Eventually, in September 1994, Meurant decided to break away from National and to establish his own party, adopting the name "Right of Centre" (or "ROC"). The acronym represented Meurant's right-wing economic philosophy of privatisation of government assets.
The new party was originally conceived by former National MPs Rob Munro (formerly a lieutenant-colonel in the New Zealand Army), lawyer Graham Reeves, and Meurant. Munro and Reeves had lost their National seats in 1993. Meurant remained in Parliament but was an implacable critic of Prime Minister Jim Bolger. To some extent the new party represented an opportunity for the former MPs to re-enter parliament. However, as the 1996 general election loomed, Munro retreated to obscurity and Reeves returned to the National Party fold to contest the unwinnable Tukituki electorate seat for National.
Read more about this topic: New Zealand Conservative Party
Famous quotes containing the word foundation:
“Laws remain in credit not because they are just, but because they are laws. That is the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:M”I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true foundation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody’s wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)