Thursday 25 August 2011

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR'S: Sack the buggers

_richardmcgrathYour weekly prescription of good hard sense from Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath.

At the 2011 Libertarianz Party conference, Wellington Central candidate-to-be Regan Cutting made a brief speech in which he highlighted this pie chart of government spending.

Budget2011

If you look past the three usual suspects, note if you will which branch of government presently has the fourth-highest budget…

As Regan pointed out, more than Police, Justice and Corrections combined - yes, it's the Department of Legalised Theft, the department with the power to go through your bank account, empty your pockets, and to bankrupt more New Zealanders every year than start new businesses.

It is this department of bloodsuckers that accounts for nearly 8% of government spending. Even if you add spending on the NZ Defence Force and Ministry of Defence to that for Police, Justice and Corrections (which collectively comprise almost all the legitimate functions of government) their total still only comes to 8.01% of spending.

Meaning, of course, that virtually all the other 92% should be returned to those from whom it was stolen.
Now, none of this namby-pamby “110 positions based in the capital are to be axed” after-one-Ministry-is-“folded-back” into-the-other nonsense. Libertarianz says any responsible government would immediately get to work on reducing the government's runaway spending by trimming all  the easy stuff, getting rid of all the non-essential departments, starting with a month-long wind down of the following useless state entities:

Department                                               Current Percentage of Govt Spending
Statistics NZ                                                                     0.17
Land Information                                                          0.20
Te Puni Kokiri                                                                  0.26
Ministry for Culture & Heritage                                0.45
Ministry for Science & Innovation                          0.94
Dept of Building & Housing                                         1.22
Ministry for the Environment                                   1.33
Dept of Labour                                                                 1.75
Ministry of Economic Development                      1.94
Total                                                                                    8.09

There you go, 8% of spending - $6.6 billion - gone in the space of one month. Easy. (And to stop the buggers therein whimpering, give them a year-long holiday if you have to; no-one will mourn their absence, and it will still save us money even in the short run with all of them out of our hair.)

And parenthetically, this is what responsible governments do in a recession—and did do, successfully, in every recession until Mr Keynes came along.

And those other government departments listed in the pie chart above? Well, they could literally abolished overnight—gone by lunchtime. Or if any were doing anything at all commercial (fat chance) privatised within four weeks.

This would, of course just be the start of massive tax cuts, a freeing up of the economy and an end to the rampant and out-of-control spending made fashionable most recently by those partners in fiscal recklessness Bill English and Michael Cullen.

We haven't even started on the Ministries/Departments/Offices of 'Yoof' Development,  Ethnic Affairs, Archives, National Library, Tourism, Pacific Island Affairs, Women's Affairs, Consumer Affairs,etc. I'm guessing these could be wound down or denationalised over 3 months, to give them some time to sort out their own affairs.

The Result? Billions of dollars back in taxpayers' pockets, thousands back in your own pocket—and businesses free to run their own affairs without a bullying paper-shuffler hanging around their neck.

Because your “refund” actually belongs to you anyway, and you should have a choice about the destination of your dollars. Politicians shouldn't be able to bully you and tell you where it must be spent. You have the right to make that choice, because it's your goddamn money, right?

Only one political party respects that right, and Regan Cutting will be representing it in the coming election, in the Wellington Central electorate. Good on you, Regan.

And, on an unrelated topic, a salute to my elder son Andrew 'Bloodbath' McGrath (as he was promoted on the event programme) who retained his undefeated status over five rounds of full-rules kickboxing at the Lower Hutt Town Hall last Saturday night. Way to go, Andrew!

See you next week!
Doc McGrath

7 comments:

Mark Hubbard said...

Hey, that’s my department Richard :) Good post.

I’m posting anonymously from behind the Iron Drape now , my posts deal with just how hard it is to comply with the laws this department enforces, some of the legislation is so complex, the taxpayer is given no guidance, and complying with it all is a nightmare given the consequences for getting it wrong. And of course the bureaucracy of it all. Plus the real problem, the IR’s are where the rubber meets the road to our Big Brother social(alist) democracies.

Why are we letting men like this run our lives?

Richard McGrath said...

Just spotted a typo: the paragraph that started "As Ronald Reagan pointed out..." should read "As Regan pointed out..."

Sorry for the error.

Dolf said...

Doc,

Will libz be represented in Rodney?

Richard McGrath said...

@Dolf:

Not as yet. We didn't stand candidates in 2008 or 2005 there either, though I suspect we would do relatively well in that electorate.

Richard McGrath said...

@Tribeless:

Glad to see you're still beating the bastards back on your excellent blog. Keep it up!

Anonymous said...

Who gives a shit about ministries spending 6.6 billion.

Your stupid prescription cuts off the little toe while the rest of the body dies in cancer.

The very first acts of any reasonably centre-right government would be:
* immediately arm police, and pass laws giving them the power to use firearms whenever possible
* immediately terminate all benefits / welfare spending , including National Super & Govt. Superannuation Funds.
* immediately terminate all health spending
* immediately terminate all education spending.

Now you see why arming the cops needs to be #1 - there will be litererally 100,000s of bludgers who need to be dealt to!

And now you've cut about 60% of spending in the first week, you can start worrying about the very very small bits: the boutique ministries and offices you're so proud to list up the top.

Anonymous said...

Doc,I saw this post the other day and knew it wasn't right.
IRDs "vote" can be found here. http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/2011/estimates/est11reven.pdf

pg 6 is where the real detail is. The cost is all in WfFTCs and associated social policy guff. Very little by comparison is actually on the dept doing core tax collection.