North Shore, Helensville & Wairarapa

Eric Olthwaite summarises last night's election meeting in North Shore. Apparently Wayne Mapp and Phil Twyford said all the usual stuff, Dail Jones said the embarrassing stuff, John Boscawen did ... "not the best" ... and Libertarianz' Mike Murphy, says Eric, "was one of the night's stars."

     Mike spoke with a lot of confidence and, to paraphrase Helen Clarke, you won't die wondering what a libertarian thinks - a refreshing change from the others.
    For example, on the question of coalition partners, after the others had ummed and aaahed about who they might go with, Mike stood up and proclaimed "The Libertarianz will not go into coalition with anybody!" to raucous applause.
    Another of his finer moments was on Defence. After going through the Air Force and Navy the "time-up" bell sounded before he could get to the Army, not wanting to leave the audience hanging Michael just managed to call out "... and we'll arm the populace" before sitting down, again raucous applause.

Yes, Eric's biased -- "why vote for Libertarianz even if there is no realistic chance of them getting into parliament?" he's asked, to which he responds "It'll be even less realistic if I don't vote for them."

Words of truth. Whatever your political persuasion, vote for what you believe in and be proud for doing so.

A vote for what you believe in is never wasted.  A vote for what you don't believe in, always is.

And just to make sure you don't die wondering what a libertarian really thinks, here's what Mike might have said about coalitions and defence if he'd had time for a few more words:

• How would Libz handle coalition?
• Defence - A Libertarian View

UPDATE 1:  And here's a very brief report (thanks Paul) on a meeting at Whenuapai, in John Key's Helensville electorate -- although it looks like National's Paula Bennett is standing in for an absent (in all senses of the word) John Boy.  I'll skip the boring stuff and head straight to the report on Peter Osborne, Libertarianz candidate for Helensville:

    Peter Osborne was the fourth member to give his speech and without a doubt the meeting livened up a bit. After a few lacklustre applauses for NZ First, National and Family party Peter got a very long and loud applause bordering on cheering. Followed by the host of the night commenting "How can anyone disagree with that!"
    I think we at least made some people think and I saw many people walking out with
Libertarianz flyers. Of course we went around afterward to make sure
people took a flyer with them...
    There were quite a few defence people there and questions were asked about Whenuapai airbase. Peter got up and made a very passionate and clear statement. "If freedom is worth having it is worth defending. Not only will we keep Whenuapai open but we need to upgrade it as well." 10 votes right there! The others just weaseled around a bit
having no idea what should be done.

That could describe their approach to lots of things, couldn't it, including the economic crisis...

UPDATE 2: And from a Wairarapa meeting, where Libz deputy Dr Richard McGrath first took a pop at the Labour candidate

about the $194k of unpaid gift duty that Labour still owing to taxpayer (see Darnton vs Clark).

And then:

Later on our National MP said his party would scale back the worst excesses of the RMA. I spoke straight afterward and reminded him that this was entirely appropriate as National had passed that act in the first place. 

As I'm sure Dr McGrath told the audience at that point,  National is NOT the answer.