My speech for Forde's Frontbench candidate's meeting

Good evening ladies & gentlemen. I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.

Believe that, and you probably still believe in Santa Claus. Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem. More government; less freedom. More government; more problems. You’d think that lesson would by now have been well and truly learned.

No, I’m not from the government, I’m Peter Cresswell from the Libertarianz Party, and before I start properly I’d like you all to throw up your wallets please. I want your money because you can’t be trusted with it. Well, what do you know? Nobody seems to want to hand over their money! But you give your wallet to these people every day! They keep telling you that you can’t be trusted with it; they keep demanding more and more out of it, they keep getting fat off your efforts… and you keep voting for more of the same.

Who’s the idiot?

It’s not their money. You earned it. And you’re entitled to keep every darn cent. Isn’t it strange how we’re taught as kids, that it’s wrong to take what doesn’t belong to us … and yet as adults, you let these people here do just that! You don’t just let them. You beg for them to do it.

Isn’t that disgraceful?! They keep offering you more theft, and they keep offering to fix things they shouldn’t even be involved in, and they keep taking your money and bossing you around with it… and then you keep voting for more of the same.

Who’s the stupid one?

Tell me, who do you think runs the country? That’s right, you do. Helen doesn’t. Winston doesn’t. Pansy, Judith and Don don’t. You run the country, each of you every day by planning, producing and taking those moral actions you need to so that you and your family can stay live and keep flourishing. You run your life, and your business, so what do you need these people to boss you around for? And why do you keep bending over and taking the bossiness from them like you’re taking medicine from Nanny? It’s got me beat.

“It’s for your own good!” says Nanny as she stuffs her medicine down your throat. And what grim medicine.

Nanny says, “You must surrender half your earnings to her, and she’ll decide what to do with them.”

She says you must pay no-hopers to breed.

She says you may not cut trees down on your own property.

She says you may not end your own life when you want to.

“You may not smoke in bars,” she says. “Not even in a cigar bar. It’s for your own good…But you can still smoke in jail.”

She says you may not smoke marijuana anywhere, and has police out on the beat wasting their time making sure you don’t, doing you over when they should be protecting you.

She says you must surrender your children to her indoctrination centres, or be arrested if you don’t.

She says you must keep surrendering your money to pay for her die-while-you-wait health service, even if you have made alternative arrangements to make sure you don’t have to.

She says you may not fire staff, whatever their employment contract says.

Nanny says you may not open your business on days Nanny specifies.

She says you may not advertise for young female employees… so I’m not sure how Hooters are going to manage in opening a bar here full of young, attractive women. They might have to have a quota of ugly women just to keep Nanny happy.

Now this is just wrong, isn’t it? This is ugly, isn’t it. If someone offered you such a deal… if someone offering you such a deal showed up on your door step and offered you such a deal you’d tell them to bugger off, wouldn’t you? It wouldn’t matter how nice the seller was, because you’d know that deal they were offering was poison. Half your earnings in return for taking control over your life, your children, your property, your business and your happiness: and you don’t tell them to bugger off, do you? You keep voting for more of the same!

You don’t need Nanny holding your hand telling you what you can and can’t do. So why do you keep voting for exactly that?

These people up here today are all nice, all nice--apart of course from Judith--but the deal they’re offering you is poison. Don‘t keep buying it. I urge you not to keep buying it. They’re not Santa Claus—although some of them think they are, don’t they Judith—they’re not Santa Claus, they’re the living embodiment of Nanny. And it’s time you told them to bugger off.

Now I’m not here representing Nanny. I’m from the Libertarianz Party, and we think Nanny stinks. We’ve been around for ten years now, and we think politicians should be out of your pockets, out of your face, and out of your life. Gone by lunchtime. Gone for good.

There are 20 parties this election. 19 of them think it’s OK to help themselves to your money and boss you around with it. We don’t. We say that’s wrong.

We say that at this election there are twenty parties but only two choices: Nanny State in nineteen different guises, or Freedom, and Libertarianz.

Our philosophy is very simple: we stand for more freedom and less govt. In other words: you mind your business and I’ll mind mine.

In a truly free society the only laws are those that rightly prohibit the use of force and fraud and respect contracts that have been made voluntarily. You may not act forcefully or fraudulently toward others. That requirement should include the state and its agents.

To that end we recognise that tax is theft. Because that money, YOUR money, is then used to blatantly vote-buy. An election is an advance auction of stolen goods. Your goods. It’s time you asked for them back. It’s high time you stopped allowing yourself to be bribed with your own damn money.

It doesn’t matter which of this lot is in power, it’s used to buy votes. It’s a wonder Michael Cullen hasn’t buggered his wrist lately, he’s been writing so many cheques. And finding more money behind the cushions as he writes them. And John Key just wants to buy your vote with borrowed money. Unlike sensiblke peoplewho understand that to cut taxes you must also cut spending, he doesn’t want to cut government spending, he wants to increase it. Which you will have to pay for later. Enter Muldoon, Version 2.0.

These bloody socialists, both the Labour Socialists and the National Socialists, will tell you that they need to steal from you so that they can provide you with certain services, which is their sole justification for stealing all that money in the first place. Bollocks! What do they provide?

• Die-while-you-wait hospitals.
• Dumbed-down schools. Precisely the kind of dumbing down guaranteed to churn out hordes of brainless, gum-chewing, hip-hop loving Labour voters indefinitely. That produces kids who can’t read, write or add… but who do know all the latest, state-mandated nonsense about the Treaty of Waitangi; who do know all about cultural relativism.
• Compulsory charity, so that 300,000 New Zealanders are now beneficiaries of your charity.

Judith and Stuart (Labour Party hacks, ed.) will boast that New Zealand has only 4% unemployment. Easy, when you’re throwing benefits at 300,000 people. Some of those people are in this room. Do you know the highest paid beneficiary here today? Judith, who just left after throwing a hissy fit at your disrespect.

Truth is, you don’t need these people and their theft any more than you need a Ministry for Education or a Ministry for Health… or a Ministry for Shoes or a Ministry of Women’s or Maori Affairs. Leave them be and let them organise their own bloody affairs.

In fact, leave all of us be. You don’t need the government organising your life. All you need it for is to protect me from you and you from me, and outside that just to leave us all the hell alone.

Just let people make up their own minds, and leave them free to run their own lives, and make their own mistakes, and let them learn from them. Give them all their money back, so they can spend it where they deem best, with people who do know how to run things! Not central or local planners who patently don’t.

I know what’s best for me. The state doesn’t. The Libertarianz understand the balance between freedom and responsibility – because the two go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. To paraphrase PJ O’Rourke: there is only one basic human right and that’s the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the one basic duty: to accept full responsibility for your actions!

So why am I here tonight doing this when I so clearly detest politics and politicians, as I do?

Because I own my life. As an adult, I don’t need the state to interfere in my workplace, my home, my bedroom, my body (in terms of what I choose to do with it), my business, my property, my family or my wallet. Conversely, these buggers all want to interfere in some way, shape or form. I’ve got news for them: people were not born to be bossed around by bureaucrats or by politicians! To paraphrase Voltaire, the world will be a better place when the last politician is strangled with the guts of the last bureaucrat. It is the job of we libertarians to bring that happy day about.

I repeat: It’s a simple philosophy ladies & gentlemen: you mind your business, and I’ll mind mine. I don’t want your money and I don’t want to run your life.

But there are 19 other parties full of politicians who do. What’s the best thing you can say about politicians? Let me tell you a brief story to close.

Five surgeons are discussing who makes the best patient to operate on. The first surgeon says: I like accountants because when I open them up, everything is numbered, and I never lose track of where I am. [laughter] The second one says: I like electricians a lot better because when I open them up, everything is color-coded, and that makes it really simple. The third one says: I prefer a librarian, because everything is alphabetical. I don’t have any trouble with that at all. The fourth one says: I would pick construction workers; construction workers are really good. If there are a few parts left over and it took a lot longer than you thought, they don’t care, they understand that. [laughter] And the last one says: you guys aren’t even close. I like politicians. They have no guts, no heart, no spine, and the head and the butt are interchangeable!

At this election, I urge you to free yourself from the politicians. Cast a vote for your life, and for your liberty. Cast it for Libertarianz. We may not be in parliament this election, but you can be damn sure our ideas will be. Your vote will help that happen. Any other vote is just a vote for more of the same.

Thank you.