This week: ACT’s last hope for survival
- DOMPOST: “Brash Still Certain He Can Beat Hide” – ACT’s president backs Rodney Hide, but two MPs—including party co-founder Roger Douglas—prefer Don Brash as party leader…
THE DOCTOR SAYS: No two ways about it, Rodney Hide must go as ACT leader if the party wants to avoid obliteration in the coming election.
And the longer Mr Super-Shitty fights the inevitable the more obvious it is that he has no-one’s interests at heart but his own.
As leader of the Libertarianz Party, I have offered Don Brash our support, as per the press release below.
But that support has a proviso. It would be a mistake for Brash to promote the bigoted John Banks as a candidate in the Epsom seat. This crusty conservative, this failed mayor, this economic ignoramus—responsible for leaving Auckland ratepayers nearly one billion dollars in debt when he left mayoral office—has as much to do with the ACT Party’s founding principles as a dancing chimpanzee.
Or as Rodney Hide.
See y’all next week!
Doc McGrath
Bring Back Brash, Says Libz
Libertarianz leader Richard McGrath offered his enthusiastic support to Don Brash
in his bid to oust Rodney Hide as ACT leader.
"I welcome Dr Brash, a man of principle and courage, back into politics and wish
him well in his efforts to revitalise the ACT Party," he said.
"Rodney Hide has single-handedly destroyed in a few short years a political party
that promised much in its early days but has steadily lost traction because it compromised
its core values and alienated its supporters."
"Unless ACT replaces its leader, it will be toast at the next election," McGrath added.
"Don Brash offers ACT a slim chance of salvation in November, otherwise the party
will probably fold."
"The ACT Party should consider it an honour to have Dr Brash courting them, and
should immediately join him up prior to a showdown with Mr Hide."
Dr McGrath said Don Brash shares many of the values espoused by the Libertarianz
Party, namely a reduction in the size and scope of government, increasing privatisation of
education and welfare, and one law for all. Values that the ACT and National Parties were
once said to espouse as well.
14 comments:
It does rather pose the obvious question however of why anyone would WISH for the survival of the ACT Party.
Its has abandoned virtually every principle it was once said to hold,
and those it hasn't abandoned it has pissed on.
For my part, I wouldn't want to be part of any party that had either John Banks or Rodney Hide as a member.
The former has all the appeal of an undertaker--with even less financial rectitude. And the latter is still convinced the taxpayer should be paying for his midlife crisis.
Any party with those two in its ranks could never have my support--and should never be contemplated by Dr Brash. Nor one that continued to support the continuing iniquity of the Resource Management Act--still, by many a mile, the single most facist legislation since the war, and one for which this embarrassment of a party has been chief cheerleader from day one of its foundation.
Time to stick a fork in its arse and turn it over. It's done.
Parties should be allowed the opportunity to reboot, as it were.
'Time to stick a fork in its arse and turn it over. It's done.'
This coming from a card carrying member of the 'libz'. Oh the irony!
Rather than survival of the ACT Party per se, I would like to see some integrity from its leadership, which Brash can provide.
Rodney "But I was entitled!" Hide has lost all vestige of integrity, turning from perk-buster to perk-luster in his first term as a minister.
The RMA has been a millstone around ACT's neck for years. The Libz Party has taken every opportunity to remind ACT just how much of a departure from core values the RMA represents.
Incidentally, the ACT website (unlike that of the National Socialists) does not cite any core values or principles, just twenty policies that hang floating without any uniting theme.
I would like to see Heather Roy re-emerge from exile as I feel she has a contribution to make. She would be a good 2IC for Brash if he rolls Hide.
Boscowan is a hollow man. Anyone who attended his Climate Change presentations last year will have seen what a disappointment he is as an MP.
ACT still has some good people but as a political force it is moribund. I wonder whether Brash has timed this to continue the resurrection theme promulgated by the Christian Easter festival.
I have e-mailed Don Brash suggesting he avoid any association with John Banks. The last thing ACT needs is a bigoted conservative fundamentalist. People like Banks need to be purged from the party as a matter of urgency once Brash assumes the leadership.
Libz will continue to pressure ACT to disavow its previous support for the RMA. Brash is more likely to distance himself from legislation of which Mussolini would have been proud.
The following statement in your post sums it up nicely really:
"Rodney Hide has single-handedly destroyed in a few short years a political party that promised much in its early days but has steadily lost traction because it compromised its core values"
I was pretty sure that Act didn't support the RMA, as they have campaigned vigorously against it in past. Apart from the confidence and supply agreement, what makes you think they do?
ACT's "policy" is to tinker with it.
That "policy" hasn't changed since 2005, when I wrote this--as various people have confirmed to me following their own questioning of that buffoon by the name of Rodney Hide.
My own position is that the basic "no-bullshit" parts of present district plan rules (height-to-boundary; density etc.) should be written on property titles as voluntary covenants in favour of immediate neighbours, then the "planners" should be fired, the RMA should be abolished and replaced with a codification of basic common law principles like "coming to the nuisance; like rights to light, air and support and so on; and like the ability to acquire rights by long and unchallenged use.
Alternatively, set up Small Consents Tribunals, and abolish it from the bottom up.
But the RMA must go.
So much for the virtue of selfishness. If Rodney could control himself this mess would have been avoided.
@Aaron
Rodney's actions were hardly selfish - he didn't act rationally in his own interest. The result is that he's now toast.
@Cheesefunnel:
Think outside the square. Who actually wants to be an MP, when there are other better paid and more satisfying jobs to be had elsewhere?
The fact that Libertarianz Party candidates stand for election gets libertarian ideas into the consciousness of the public and more importantly, are noticed by the MPs. Some of our ideas are debated and some are taken aboard by other parties (e.g. the first $50k of income being tax free. Both ACT and the Maori Party want the same thing albeit at differing thresholds).
So there is a quantum of success we can look back on with some degree of pride. But we are up against a public that has been educated by state-worshipping card-carrying members of teachers unions, and these teachers are hardly going to be exposing their young charges to the classical liberal ideas, are they?
On a hiding to nothing.
Link below is to Rodney Hides statement to ACT members
Truly disgusting. Shows he recognizes the plot but lies about ACT being the only party that does. Then he proceeds to loose the plot expressing his admiration for the National led big authoritarian government.
The question is will The Don be any better. Not a good sign that he has invited John Banks to the party.
http://act.org.nz/news/statement-from-hon-rodney-hide
Watching the Herald video of the press conference, I couldn't help but feel that Hide was relieved, and that he was sincere in his support for The Don. Don Brash will be positive for ACT's electorial chances, but ultimately
1. Don is still a "Central Banker" both by profession and philosophy; so tinkering of the leaver pulling will be all we ever get on the number one economic issue that needs real change.
2. Following on from what PC has said about ACT/RMA, there won't be any change there at all of any sustance.
3. Even if Don managed to get the NATS to sell off all that needs to be (which he won't) It will be so unpalatable to the average punter in a by-then even worse economy, they & the Nats will be thrown out on their arse in 2014 and replaced by a newly rampant Labour left.
So, while on the face of it it all looks exciting for us of the libertarian persuation, the reality is that an uncompromising Libertarianz party and ancillary philosophic movement must kept going and grown if we are to ever see any real change in our life time.
Of course, I am probably completely wrong and all will work out swimmingly.
@Richard McGrath
Rodney made what he believed at the time to be a rational, selfish decision. The fact that it turned out to be a bad decision months later is irrelevant.
Hindsight is always 20/20
Richard: The Act on Campus website's "about" section on the homepage does have some vaguely principle-ish stuff on it.
Also, I believe Labour and the Greens also promote the "tax-free threshold" idea.
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