Helen Clark is now *against* corruption!

 

Helen Clark's eponymous foundation has come out against corruption in politics, which is a bit like coming out in favour of apple pie with cream.  

As I outline below, you'd think an organisation using Ms Clark's name might stay quiet on the subject of corruption. What her foundation's report calls corruption however included in one neat package deal the putrid practices of political lobbyists, and the act of people donating to their favourite political party.

These are two very different things.

One has the stench of cronyism. Of peddlers of political relationships forming a parasite class that Ayn Rand once called an "aristocracy of pull." The other is, well, for the most part it is just people donating to a political party because they like the party's policies and/or people.

Yes, cause and effect sometimes goes the other way. There are parties who do sell policies to donors. The ACT party's pathetic capitulations to Auckland council amalgamation and on abolishing the RMA has for years been predicated upon the many consultants who donate to and infest the party, and who never see a trough they don't like. The National Party's silence on China's many misdeeds may be connected to large donations from organisations like the Inner Mongolia Rider Horse group. The link between Winstons First's racing and fishing policies and his racing and fishing donors is oft ignored simply because major parties seek a sweetheart deal with him every three years,  but is tangible, not to mention the link between Labour's policies (education policies for example, favouring teachers unions) and trades union donations of time and money to Labour's campaign. And not to mention all the "green" projects subsidised with taxpayer money to help out the businesses and of Green donors.

But for the most part, donations are small beer. And are fairly transparent. It's the hole-and-corner parasites of political pull who are the biggest evil. And they're everywhere.

PJ O’Rourke used to delight in pointing out that this corruption, the buying and selling of political favour, is simply the price of Big Government — the sort of government that Clark herself has always favoured. Favours for cronies. Jobs for the boys (and girls). Big Government's power and money on sale to the highest bidders.

No one should be surprised. As O'Rourke used to remind us, when legislation proscribes what is bought and sold, the first things to be bought will be the legislators -- and the more legislation is written the higher the demand, and the higher the price.

The answer of course is a separation of state and economy, in the same way and for much the same reasons as the separation of church and state.

But that is not what Clark's foundation prescribes. 

It's not what Clark herself is after.

Helen Clark and her followers have long favoured direct payment of political parties by taxpayers. That's what this is about. Taxpayers forced to donate to parties whose views they may abhor. To political parties whose power would only become more entrenched by the regular involuntary AP from taxpayers' pockets. Clark favours this because her own Red Team suffers by comparison with donations to the Blue Team. (Not that money on its own can win elections, otherwise the ACT Party would have been in power for the last three decades.)

This was the impetus behind then-Prime Minister Clark's infamous user of illegal taxpayer money for her own election campaigns — "illegal" was the Auditor-General's word — passing retrospective legislation to legalise what commentator Chris Trotter called "acceptable corruption." ("Acceptable" because it was his own favoured political regime ransacking the public purse.) And for then-Prime Minister Clark's subsequent passing of the Electoral Finance Act to muzzle her opponents during election campaigns.

Corruption? If there's anyone in New Zealand politics who knows about corruption it's Helen Clark. When I read that Helen Clark's Foundation is "targeting corruption," I immediately searched here at NOT PC for "Helen Clark corruption." It's quite a trove. It runs for three pages. if you feel like diving in, start with the post near the top: ' Cancerous and corrosive and un-democratic and, and, and ...

Or of you want a fuller story, download this PDF copy of The Free Radical from 2006 explaining, as the cover story describes 'How Labour Stole the Election.'

Cancerous and corrosive and un-democratic and, and, and ...

Labour regards Dr Brash as a corrosive and cancerous person within the New Zealand political system. - Helen Clark, September 20, 2006.

Unbelievable! - Whale Oil, September 20, 2006

When Bernard Darnton first announced his case against Helen Clark and the Labour Party, he said that in knowingly stealing public money to fund their election campaign Labour broke the fundamental rules that separate liberal democracy from dictatorship. As week has followed week ever since, it's become more apparent how accurate that assessment is.

This Labour Government does not understand that there even is a difference betwen liberal democracy and dictatorship.

In fact, they are so convinced that it is only themselves that are the repository of liberal democratic values that as week has followed week since their corruption has been publicly raised, each attack against them has been greeted not with a a defence of their corrupt actions -- which were indefensible -- but to attack the accuser as an affront to democracy:

• How dare the Exclusive Brethren use their own money to attack the Labour Government.
• How dare the Electoral Commissioner tell Labour's election organisers that they couldn't spend taxpayers' money the way they did.
• How dare the Auditor-General point out that the rules on election spending were broken.
• How dare the Herald expose the Labour Party's spin as a venal attempt both to conceal the theft, and to buy support to retrospectively validate it.
  
• How dare the Libertarianz use their own money to take Helen Clark and 40 Labour MPs to court for violating the Bill of Rights and the Constitution Act.
• How dare 81% of the population demand in a poll that Helen and Labour pay it back.
• How dare businessmen, accountants and golfers (golofers!) criticise her Government.
• How dare Her Majesty's Opposition attract and spend voluntary, private donations to attack the Government!
  
• How dare the Leader of the Opposition accuse the ruling party of corruption. How dare they!
  

It seems clear that Helen Clark does not understand the NZ political system. All of these critics, every one, has been attacked for having the effrontery to attack the ruling party. People giving money to opponents of this Government have heard this Government assert they intend to do something about that. Yesterday Pete Hodgson declared that the Labour Party is threatening to bring legislation so people won't be able to criticise the ruling party during elections. Yesterday and this morning the Leader of the Opposition was attacked by Helen Clark and Pete Hodgson for being "corrupt and cancerous" and "divisive" -- it is intolerable they maintained that such a man could be in a position to become the leader of a western democracy -- and they demanded that he go ...

Is this not incredible? It couldn't be more apparent that about democracry and liberal democratic values this Labour Government could not be less representative.

Do they not understand that it is up to the voters , not her or Pete Hodgson, to decide who the leader of this western democracy is?

Do they not understand that people are entitled to spend their own money in pursuit of opposition to her Government and their policies?

Do they even understand the concept of "their own money"?

Do they not understand that as the right to free speech must of necessity include the right to offend, so too in a democracy must the right to freely criticise the Government be protected?

Do they not understand what corruption means according to the Electoral Act -- the Act they knowingly, flagrantly and with aforethought broke.

When accused of leaking last year this Prime Minister asserted, "By definition I cannot leak." Now it seems her attitude when attacked is to assert, "By definition, we are the repository of all democratic values. Anyone attacking us attacks democracy." But as Bernard Robertson points out in the latest Law Journal:

If a government can knowingly and deliberately break the law and then ram through retrospective validating legislation then it can do anything. We have a government composed of people who simply do not recognise the concept of government under law.

That is the issue that all the noisy outbursts are designed to conceal. What they cannot conceal is that if the Prime Minister and her advisors ever understood the line between liberal democracy and dictatorship, then seven years in power have destroyed it.

Pay it back Helen. And then resign. You've had your time.

LINKS: 1688? - Darnton Vs Clark
Talking of Corruption - Kiwiblog (David Farrar)
Labour calling people corrupt- Kiwiblog (David Farrar)
"Unbelievable" - Whale Oil Beef Hooked (You Tube video)

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour, D arnton V Clark

"...an atmosphere where criticising the government is becoming pretty hazardous."

The list of attacks on free speech by the Clark Government is a long one, and those listed here are just scratching the surface of incidents which, taken together, reveal their increasingly visceral hatred of the concept:

• for the first time in 103 years, a crown-owned company fined for "contempt of parliament";
• a Select Committee chairmen tearing up letters from Committee members who raise serious concerns;
• a conviction for sedition for protesting the passing of the Foreshore and Seabed Act;
• the 'crime' of "bringing Parliament into disrepute" still on the books;
  
• TVNZ’s Board being hauled before Parliament’s Privileges Committee during the Ian Fraser affair;
• Commerce Commission prosecution of Air New Zealand for highlighting the high cost of government levies to travellers in their ticket prices;
• Attacking those who criticise the Clark Government of corruption -- "Allegations of corruption are intolerable in a Western liberal democracy," declared a hyperbolic Helen Clark. And as one blogger reminded her, "No, Miss Clark. Corruption is intolerable. When allegations of corruption are intolerable, it's no longer a Western liberal democracy");
• an attack by Helen Clark on the Dominion Post and The Press for printing the Mohammed cartoons;
• a threat by Michael Cullen to land the Herald with "a very large tax bill" if criticism of the Clark Government didn't cease;
  
• an attack by Helen Clark on Fran O'Sullivan for her criticism of what Fran called "ramming through legislation under urgency to retrospectively legalise the unlawful raid on parliamentary funds";
• "Taking away the Exclusive Brethren's employment law loophole because they spent $1.2 million campaigning against the Greens and the Clark Government";
• praising loudly "the measures the British Labour Government has imposed to curb press freedoms";
• moving to "toughen up the Press Council" when it comes to dealing with a local media that is just doing its job;
• restrictions on liquor, pharmaceuticals, and fast food advertising;
• the Electricity Commissioner removed from office because, says the former Commissioner, “I stood up to the government as an independent regulator should”;
• bullying of the Auditor General over the last few months for criticising the Government;
• long and prolonged attacks on a religious sect for daring to criticise the Government;
• a "clamp down on the tax privileges of charitable trusts that cross an undeclared line into political advocacy";
• moving to prevent third-party criticism of Government during an election;
• moving to ban anonymous donations to political parties;
• moving to institute state-funding of political parties (these last three, taken together, being a form of speech-rationing).

As Bill English said on Morning Report today (yes, even Bill can get things right occasionally), this is "all an atmosphere where criticising the government is becoming pretty hazardous."

And it is in this highly-charged atmosphere -- one in which free speech is rapidly becoming a privilege instead of a right -- that the decision of Wellington Airport to refuse to display this billboard below has been taken [Hat tip Darnton V Clark]. "Too politically sensitive," the airport management apparently said when presented with the ad.

In the current "atmosphere where criticising the government is becoming pretty hazardous,"you really have to commend the bravery of the other two airports which have chosen to run with the billboard. Look out for attacks very soon on the management and running of Auckland and Christchurch airports.

UPDATE: Bernard Darnton's Section 14 blog has this to say:

The Dominion Post suggests that the reason for the refusal may be that the Airport is concerned about the Government’s pending decision on the Qantas/Air New Zealand codeshare agreement, which could cut flights to the capital and hence cut airport profits.

A chilling effect is the self-censorship that occurs when someone fears the actions of another. A newspaper declining to print a cartoon not because it isn’t news but because it fears reprisals from medieval thugs would be one example.

In this case the Government has the power to make decisions that could negatively affect the running of the Airport. The Clark Government has a history of being vindictive and so the Airport might rightly fear them and censor themselves in the hopes of getting the “right” decision from Pete Hodgson. An air of fear can sometimes be more effective than explicit censorship laws, and it’s certainly more stealthy.

Ain't that the truth. When the application of so many laws and regulations involves the exercising of "discretionary powers" by authorities, then appeasement of authority becomes a habit.

LINK: Political billboards - Morning Report, Radio NZ

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour, Free_Speech

"Acceptable corruption"

Helen Clark has conceded that the Labour Party won't be using a Pledge Card at the next election -- a concession not to the Auditor General, who found that the Pledge Card was an illegal use of taxpayer's money, but an acceptance that the Auditor General's report and Bernard Darnton's case against Clark for illegal use of public money have between them soiled the Card irreparably.

It's also an easy concession to make, given that Helen Clark (in her role as leader of the Clark Government) is organising the full weight of taxpaid resources and state power to be brought to bear to re-elect Helen Clark (in her role as leader of the Labour Party), and to silence her opponents.

Who needs pledge cards when you've issued a policy requiring departmental bureaucrats to issue advertising extolling your programmes?

Who needs pledge cards when you're enacting legislation under urgency to "throw open the gates" to unlimited parliamentary spending on your behalf so that the taxpayer pays for your campaign, you don't have to, and it doesn't count as election advertising?

Who needs pledge cards when you're enacting further legislation without proper consultation that effectively shuts down your opponents for the entire year of an election campaign? That will shut down political speech for one-third of our lives?

Who needs to worry about being called corrupt when you can just change the law to make your corruption legal?

Between them the Electoral Finance Bill the continuation of the so called Temporary Appropriation Bill deals the Clark Government all the cards in seeking re-election -- and just to make sure it ensures all the cards are marked.

No wonder "Miss Clark indicated yesterday that Labour was unlikely to fund the pledge card through the parliamentary leaders fund, if at all." Who needs it when you've got what Chris Trotter calls (approvingly) "acceptable corruption" on your side.

Where an honest or principled person might be appalled at contemplating, let alone carrying out or defending such corruption, Clark and Trotter have no problem. Both have been thoroughly immersed in post-modernist neo-Marxist structuralism, a mouthful of bullshit that stands for whole reams of freedom-threatening bollocks.

According to the pomo-wanking structuralist, we are all part of a subliminal power struggle of all against all, a struggle between collectives characterised by the battle to control the "inherent power structures" at work in society. As an example of the application of this view, according to the pomo-wanker, no matter how outrageous the behaviour it's not possible for a "minority" racist to be a racist, no matter how overt. In the words of the pomowankers who now write Herald editorials for example,

Nor may Maori activists or their supporters sensibly be called racists. Racism has nothing to do with skin colour, and everything to do with power. Anyone who argues that those arrested in Tuhoe and elsewhere last month are more powerful than the state authority unleashed on them is deluded. Or trying to win votes by any means necessary.

As an intelligent commenter says at Kiwiblog, this is not a redefinition of racism:

This has been the standard definition of racism in NZ universities since at least the early 1980’s. It has been hammered relentlessly into almost three decades-worth of students by lecturers and activitists in the humanities and social sciences divisions.

It’s no surprise at all to me to see it emerging in the editorial page of the Herald in 2007 by those former students. That was exactly the intention of those professors all those years ago.

The commenter, Tom Hunter, explains how this pomo-wank allows the left to countenance corruption without a qualm:

while the notion has been cleverly broadened far beyond racism the real impact has come from its being welded to the thinking of the modern political left. After all, they represent all the powerless and oppressed of this world do they not?

It enables any Left-wing movement to justify almost action to gain the power of the state and hold on to it, for even after holding such power for years or even decades they can still claim that they are powerless, at the mercy of mysterious, hidden forces in society that can be countered in no other way.

For all his harking back to a golden time of traditional working-class Labour action it was actually this post-modern notion of enternal powerlessness that lay at the heart of Chris Trotter’s observation that Labour’s 2005 victory represented “acceptable corruption”.

Hate is Love. War is Peace. Pah, crude! Power is Powerlessness is infinitely more subtle and brilliant.

Such is the power of poor philosophy to blind and corrupt. As long as you position yourself to "speak for the speechless," then anything at all goes including violence, naked corruption and an unconcealed grab at permanent political power. In other words, all the cards you can grab are yours for the taking.

Who the hell needs pledge cards when you've made sure that all the powers of the state are already at your disposal for your re-election campaign?

"Leadership, credibility and values" in New Zealand politics

"When I called the election," said Helen Clark in the election campaign we all paid for, "I said that it was going to be about leadership and credibility and values." As Bernard Darnton observed yesterday, "It's kind of turned out that way, hasn't it." Oh yes. "Leadership, credibility and values": that's exactly how to describe their just-announced descent into the gutter.

I barely need to write anything about this ongoing row ignited over the Government's misappropriation of taxpayers' money to steal the last election; I don't need to since there's good commentary everywhere. Let me start with David Farrar:

Well I doubt even the most rabid supporter will defend Labour on this one. Having failed to distract attention with dredging up the Brethren's campaign and anoymous donations (which Labour has specifically kept legal, and receive themselves), yesterday they said they would start revealing "secrets about the private lives of National MPs" unless they back off about Labour's illegal election over-spending. It seems there really is no gutter low enough. I think even McCarthy would be repulsed.

Quite possibly, although McCarthy certainly knew all about repulsive. Here's The Press:

Labour's cynical attacks on National over election spending smack of a desperate attempt at self-justification. But amid these claims and the mutual taunts of corruption being thrown across an increasingly chaotic House, the real issue is straightforward: whether Labour in last year's election broke the rules by spending parliamentary funding on soliciting votes. Given that it defies belief that the pledge card was not designed to gain votes, the conclusion has to be that Labour took a calculated gamble to bend the rules and has now been caught. Its allegations against National are designed to divert attention from this basic point and from the issue of what role over-spending played in Labour's return to power.

And Russell Brown:

Labour's return of fire on National - with the promise of, literally, a book of embarrassing emails to and from Don Brash in advance of last year's election - is, of course, spin: a classic effort to change the subject from something Labour doesn't want to talk about to something National doesn't want to talk about...

And Labour hack Jordan Carter? Well, he's giving the perfect display of what happens when you lift a rock and see all the insects scuttling for cover. Like his favourite Leaderene he's realised there's no longer any point in defending the indefensible when flinging mud might take attention from their own corruption, and so the craven cokroachdeclares he and his colleagues are:

Very pleased to see the government coming out and actually pointing out that National's holier-than-thou approach to politics these days is the political equivalent of a castle built on sand. Can't wait til the whole pile of emails comes out, as referred to in this morning's 'Herald.'

So much for Helen Clark's claim before the election she wanted to bring back "leadership, credibility and values" to New Zealand politics. Labour's corruption and this pre-announced descent into the gutter outdoes anything seen in recent politics for sheer, shivering disgust. Muldoon's attacks on Colin Moyle look positively honest and upstanding by comparison. "Leadership, credibility and values" my arse.

And Bernard Darnton, whose litigation against the Government on this issue hangs over them like a sword waiting to fall, has found good Herald commentary:

Anyone with half a brain must know by now that there is something rotten in the state of New Zealand politics and the odour of dishonesty emanating from Parliament must have citizens of the capital walking the streets with pegs on their noses.

On the news that all of Helengrad's dirt files are about to be emptied, Darnton concludes in a post called 'Stench of Dishonesty':

In other news, Trevor Mallard has promised to go nuclear and start spreading tabloid gossip on opposition MPs who insist on calling the government corrupt just because they stole public money to buy an election. Presumably National will follow suit and one can only dream that Mutually Assured Destruction ensues.

One can dream. Meanwhile, ''Whale Oil' has put together one of their better short videos: 'Labour's Corruption,' set to the music of Iggy Pop; and they also have a wee visual peek at the controls of the 'Clark & Cullen spin cycle.'

So with all that to read, you hardly need my own commentary on the mud slinging. Let me just remind Labour's mudslingers of the real meaning of the fallacy of ad hominem: that if you attack the man instead of the ball, the ball is still in play. Whatever 'scalps' they themselves might win by throwing around their buckets of filth, it doesn't alter for a minute that they did steal the election with misappropriated money, they did knowingly lie to the Electoral Commissioner, and that eighty-one percent of New Zealanders already know that to be true.

It's hard to forget what you already know to be true, particularly when the accused have stopped defending the charges aginst them. I look forward to seeing Helen Clark in the dock to actually answer the substantive charges in a forum in which facts rather than spin are still valued: Roll on Darnton V Clark.

LINKS: Too many links to name, and still many more good comments around the place to mention. The Clark Government is on the ropes, and they know it.

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour, Politics-National, Darnton V Clark

Clark: "Bucket's of cash ... "

"Buckets of cash" ... "covert donations" ... "cash for policy" ...

Those squalid accusations above were all thrown across The House by the PM yesterday in an effort to divert attention from their own misappropriation of public money. They are all complaints she says she has against National's own "corruption." Let's have a quick look at each of them shall we?:

• "Buckets of cash...": Yes, National did have buckets of cash, and all of it (bar $10,000 they've already paid back) was given voluntarily by donors. A concept Clark's Labour has trouble understanding, so I'll just repeat the word: Voluntarily. Labour too received some voluntary donations, mainly from unions, but the issue here is that $800,000 of involuntarily appropriated taxpayer money was misappropriated by Labour to steal the last election.
  
  Both parties had buckets of cash at the last electiion. National's buckets were filled with their own money. Labour's however were filled to the brim with yours, taken against your will, and used without legal authority.
  
  
• "Covert donations...": Asked to defend that charge this morning on TV's Breakfast News, Labour strategist Pete 'I Admit Nothing' Hodgson "had a letter" sent by the Exclusive Brethren to the Electoral Commission asking for guidance on how to spend $1.2 million so as not to cause any problem with National's spending cap. Quite what he hoped to show with this, apart from showing how an organisation should go about ensuring they don't break the law, it was hard to really know. It was certainly no evidence of "covert" anything, except Hodgson's "covert" use once again of the Brethren bogie, a 'strategy' you would think a decent strategist would already have realised hasn't worked.
  
  
• And what about the charge against National of "cash for policy"? Insurance companies donated to National because re-privatising the ACC was a chief National Party platform, just as it had been for years. Was there any evidence the policy changed because of the donations? No. Was it "covert"? No. So is there a problem? No.
  
  So as a charge against the National Party this one has no more resonance than the charge that Labour took money from the unions to scrap the Employment Contracts Act (although on reflection that charge might actually have more legs...)

Three charges out of three that are just plain bollocks.

I say all this not to defend the National Party -- for whom I hold no brief whatsoever, and very little love (as most of my posts on the Nats will show) -- but to point out the measure of desperation of this Labour Party. This is the best they can do to defend their blatant misappopriation of taxpayers' money to steal the last election. They've been caught with their hands in the till up to their elbows, and they hope that if they make up tales about their opponents it might all just go away. It won't. It's nothing more than misdirection, and that it is so poorly done and so shallow is an indication of how bereft they are of any defence against the charge of corruption.

Spin is in; lies are all; anything at all to divert attention from their own corrupt practices. Eighty-one percent of NZers know they're lying, know they're corrupt ... and to those charges Labour just has no substantive answer.

As litigant and Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton says on his blog, "When Helen Clark called the election she said that it was 'going to be about leadership and credibility and values.' And it’s definitely turned out turned out that way, hasn’t it?"

There is one further charge which Labour's Darnton Darnton V Clark needs to surmount -- the 'test case' being brought by Libertarianz leader Darnton Darnton to show that there are still constitutional limits on the Government -- and that is this: the claim that the money misappropriated for the Pledge Card was not "election spending" since the Pledge Card was not part of Labour's election campaign. Once again, what Labour are relying on here is a public too ignorant to follow what's being said.

Despite the best efforts of the state's miseducation system over the years, even this electorate is not that ignorant.

On that score and as I noted yesterday, G-Man has posted a snippet from a tape he has in which Helen Clark tells a Wellington audience that the Pledge Card is the "centre-piece" of their election campaign. And this morning the boys at new libertarian blog 'Pacific Empire' note that even Brian Edwards's hagiography of Queen Helen is happy to explain in plain English how crucial the Pledge Card is and has been in delivering Labour's "election promises." How successful? As Edwards explains, "Helen believes that the card was a considerable success." A "considerable success."

As Darnton said yesterday, "Thanks, Helen. If you could just explain all that to the judge we should be able to wrap this up pretty quickly."

*** Oh, and by the way, as Helen Clark thinks the phrase "Pay It Back" is just another bumper sticker slogan, a Darnton supporter has been good enough to turn it into one. (Well done, Duncan.) You can get yours at his online store. "The target market for this product," says Darnton, "is 81% of the voting population."

LINKS: A smoking gun - Darnton V Clark
Eh? - G-Man Inc.
Pledge card most important part of Labour's campaign: Brian Edwards - Pacific Empire
Bumper sticker - Cafe Press store

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour, Politics-National, Darnton V Clark

Helen Clark: UN must “get better” at the core job it’s never done

 

Helen Clark is still going for the top job at the only place in the world that could teach FIFA something about corruption (not being about merit, a job she’s unlikely to get), yet her speech in support of her goal yesterday tells you something about how it became that way.

“We have to get better at preventing conflict and resolving conflict,” she said in her opening address.

Just think about that for a moment: We, the United Nations Organisation, have to get better at preventing conflict and resolving conflict. Think about that for a moment while you take a small piece of paper on which you write down the very reason for which the UN was allegedly formed.

Now, hands up all of you who wrote down something like “preventing and resolving conflict.”  You know, peace? Do I have a clear majority here? It’s core job, at least what it said on the box it came in, was supposed to be preventing and resolving conflict. It was right there in all the well-wishing speeches that launched it. But that was before it began delivering helpless country after helpless country into the arms of those sitting on the UN’s board; sending Trojan horses into western democracies with names like Agenda 21, Earth Charter, Climate Change, sustainable development and declarations of indigneous psuedo-rights; sending blue-helmeted troops to the world’s most dangerous places to get shot at while unspeakable horrors happened around them; and setting up commissions on what they call “human rights” on which sit some of the biggest torturers on the planet …

You might call all of this “mission creep,” except what else could you expect of an organisation whose mission in its founders’ eyes was never perpetual peace and who had on its founding board, and regularly hosts on its podium, some of the biggest and most devious butchers on the planet. It hasn’t just lost its way. It never had any other.

To see just a small part of the problem, take that small piece of paper again and list on it all the conflicts, genocides or ethnic cleansings the UN has prevented or resolved. Still got plenty of space left? Of course you have. Its abject failure in preventing or resolving any conflict or ending any genocide must surely give pause to even the most ardent supporter of this bastion of bloated corruption. “Get better at preventing conflict?” It would have to begin doing that job at all!

“When an institution reaches the degree of corruption, brazen cynicism and dishonour demonstrated by the U.N. in its shameful history,” suggested Ayn Rand many years ago, “to discuss it at length is to imply that its members and supporters may possibly be making an innocent error about its nature—which is no longer possible.”

I wish Helen Clark well in her bid to cleanse these foul-smelling Augean stables.  It is possibly genuine. She is possibly innocent. Or, like Arthur Schlesinger, close adviser to and hagiographer of President Kennedy, maybe she too “cannot resist the feeling that the UN world is really an immense and picturesque form of make-believe” -- one in which she knows she performs well.

Why wouldn’t you want to make the most of your talents?

.

Darnton V Clark: Breaking the seal

When you're out on a beer-drinking session your first visit to the smallest room is sometimes called 'breaking the seal,' and for obvious reasons: once the 'seal' is broken the floodgates almost literally have been opened.

Audrey Young in the Herald has now 'broken the seal' on the Darnton V Clark case with her report today on the state of play regarding Labour's taxpayer-funded election spending. For the first time now in the MSM, Bernard Darnton's case is given serious treatment, and its place within the present furore laid out, including the disquieting news that "any retrospective legislation proposed by Dr Cullen is likely to cover any negative outcome from that case as well" -- a clear signal surely that what Labour did was illegal, and they know it.

[Darnton's] statement claims there was no statutory authority for the service to pay the $446,000 for the pledge card.

The appropriation to fund the card stated that party and member support was to be used to support the leader's office, research operations, whips' office and members' parliamentary operations. The card did not fit that definition, the claim argues.

Auckland lawyer Alan Dormer, acting for Mr Darnton, said that while the Solicitor-General's opinion was slightly different from his own case it was "very comforting" ...

Mr Dormer said it would be possible to draft legislation to deny his client his day in court.

"Have we really sunk so low that we are going to have political parties ripping off the system and then passing legislation about it just to stop the High Court looking at it."

National is the only party known to oppose the legislation at this stage. Leader Don Brash has been on the case all week but he stepped up his language yesterday.

"Labour has been pinged for something like half a million dollars and the bastards don't want to pay it back," Dr Brash said on Gore's Hokonui Gold radio station yesterday.

"Helen Clark says 'Oh, the rules weren't clear. Let's pass a law making what is illegal legal.' Robert Mugabe [Zimbabwe's president] would have been proud of her."

So the seal has been broken. And unlike the deathless Rodney Hide who insisted this morning that parliamentary parties should be able to campaign for office using taxpayers' money (as his party did in extremis last election), The Don is on the side of the angels with his recent comments.

UPDATE: Bernard Darnton comments on Cullen's intention to derail the court action against Helen Clark with retrospective, ie., backward-looking legislation:

That which we call a steaming pile of horseshit
By any other word would smell as foul...

Separation of powers is another constitutional nicety that Labour can do without. Don’t like a Court decision? A swift bit of legislation and it never happened. Can anyone say “Foreshore and Seabed”? Of course, separation of powers is designed to prevent corruption. Since Labour ministers can do no wrong it is clearly unnecessary.

LINKS: Labour shifts the goalposts - NZ Herald
Darnton V Clark website
What's in a name? - Darnton V Clark

RELATED: Darnton V Clark, Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour

Clean, green and increasingly corrupt

If I had a dollar for every time I've been told that New Zealand's clean, green reputation is too important to tinker with, I could fund Bernard Darnton's case against Helen Clark on my own.

Just as precious and undoubtedly more objective is the reputation New Zealand has as a corruption-free place to do business. Our reputation is so good that in the last survey performed by Transparency International, the globally recognised pre-eminent anti-corruption watchdog, NZ came out second only to Iceland (and equal with Finland) as a corruption-free place to do business.

That is a reputation worth protecting.

However, as Transparency International themselves point out, this reputation is under threat. Reports the Dominion:

Labour risks harming New Zealand’s reputation if it refuses to repay taxpayer funds unlawfully spent on campaigning and changes the law to make it legal, an anti-corruption watchdog has warned...
[Executive Officer] Mr Cave said Transparency International directors in this country – which include former ombudsman Mel Smith and former auditor-general David Macdonald – had grave concerns at Labour’s stance. “Any retrospective changing of the law to legitimise something that was previously illegal we would criticise in the strongest possible terms.”

This corrupt Government risks not only its own reputation here -- which is already lower than a snake's belly -- but that of New Zealand, and as we're all aware a repution once tainted is hard to regain. As an issue this goes well beyond party politics. However, as Bernard Darnton concludes:

To the list of people (too long to repeat here) who think that the Labour Party are a pack of dodgy buggers who need to be reigned in, you can add the world’s premier anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International. As Transparency International says, “Corruption ruins lives. Fight back.”

LINKS: Reputation at risk in funds row - Dominion Post
Transparency International warns Labour - Bernard Darnton, Darnton V Clark

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour, Darnton V Clark

Intolerable allegations

Steve at Vigesimal Pundit has it exactly right with this short post:

"Allegations of corruption are intolerable in a Western liberal democracy." - Helen Clark.

No, Miss Clark. Corruption is intolerable. When allegations of corruption are intolerable, it's no longer a Western liberal democracy.

Exactly right.

LINK: Grasping - Vigesimal Pundit (formerly Teenage Pundit until mathematical geekdom beckoned)

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour, Darnton V Clark

Darnton: We're screwed

The legislation introduced under urgency this afternoon to validate this Labour Government's theft of money by which they stole an election is to be rammed through without the bill being available to view even by those voting on it, without debate on the Auditor-General's report which was the proximate cause of, without the advice on which the bill has been drawn up being made available, without any substantive debate on the bill being allowed by the speaker, and without any formal commitment to pay back the money illegally used. [Hat tip DPF]

Not only that, the advice is that the legislation has the effect of knocking out Bernard Darnton's case against Helen Clark, the Labour Party and Parliamentary Services. Says Bernard Darnton:

Retrospective legislation introduced into Parliament today will probably spell the end of Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton's lawsuit against Helen Clark and other Labour members but Darnton is claiming a moral victory.

He says, “if Labour had thought they were in the right they would have seen us in court. In reality, they knew they were going to get a hiding and so they're changing the law before the case can be tried.

“This government has proven that they have no respect for the law. They've said they have legal opinions that differ to mine but they aren't prepared to see them fail in court. Right at the start of this case I said that this government thought they were above the law. They've proved me right in a very disturbing fashion.

“Changing the law to escape charges against them is something I'd expect from a third-world dictatorship. Sadly, New Zealand has no constitutional protections to prevent this type of abuse by a government that is, quite literally, out of control.”

Darnton is continuing to look at his legal options.

If the Foreshore and Seabed Act was introduced with the express aim of making it impossible to go to court to prove pre-existing property rights then this bill has the express aim of making it impossible to hold this Government to account, and the manner it is being introduced just shits all over any pretence at this country being a western liberal democracy in which the Government is subject to the rule of law.

We're fucked. Free speech is under attack. The rule of law is now a joke. And we have a Government that will do anything, including stealing an election, to stay in power.

This is not just a whiff of corruption: this is a whole toxic cloud of fetid power-lust that in a very short time has engulfed the political processes of this country.

UPDATE: Reaction everywhere. David Slack's is perhaps the most temperate, contrasting this to Fitzgerald v Muldoon and pointing out that the ruling then indicated that Parliament is supreme, something Muldoon at least was unwilling to use to his advantage -- a surprising scrupulousness this Government is unwilling to emulate.

LINKS: Moral victory for Bernard Darnton over pledge card - Bernard Darnton, Scoop
The Government is above the law - Darnton Vs. Clark
Fallout - David Slack

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Darnton V Clark, Free Speech, Constitution, Law, Politics-Labour

Pressure on for justice for the Berrymans

There is movement on the Berryman front. Thank God. Following Rob Moodie's release on the internet of the Butcher Report which the Army had tried to suppress, there has been a public stampede to download it, to find out the truth, and I trust to put pressure where it's needed to get justice for the Berrymans. And there has been a disgraceful move by the Manawatu Law Society to censure Rob Moodie for his spirited defence of his clients. (Feel free to write them to say what you think of that.)

Even the politicians are getting into the game - belatedly to be sure, but it is happening - putting pressure on for a public inquiry. While that would be something, it's not a public inquiry that Keith and Margaret Berryman need but compensation and their lives back. And soon. This injustice has already taken ten years of their life; any more delay would just be further injustice over something that should have been sorted years ago.

Five years ago Helen Clark stood on the Berryman's bridge with Mark Burton and Harry Duynhoven and promised "when I become Prime Minister, I will ensure the Government will settle the Berrymans for this outrage." Yeah, right Helen. If Helen thought she could simply bury this she is very much mistaken. As Adrian Chisholm said to me last night, "What she didn't count on was a Rob Moodie out there."

Rob Moodie has zero tolerance for corruption; I have zero tolerance for liars - so perhaps I could encourage you while you're writing the Law Society to fax Helen Clark's office and tell her exactly what you think of her forked tongue. Fax: (04) 473 3579, e-mail: pm@ministers.govt.nz

[UPDATE: If you really want to push the boat out with your correspondence you might like a link to an Excel spreadsheet of email addresses for 160 candidates in the coming election, which naturally includes many sitting MPs. Here 'tis.]

Ask not for whom the tipping point comes. It comes for Helen.

It's fairly widely agreed that Margaret Thatcher's eleven years in power were ended when she lost touch with the electorate and brought in the poll tax. (Having just landed in the UK with my girlfriend, I can tell you first-hand what a severe shock it was to be handed a NZ$4000 bill just to be able to rent a flat!)

For Thatcher the poll tax was the tipping point, the moment when even her supporters turned against her, and when all those critics who had been biding their time figured out it was then safe to attack. Once the floodgates were opened by the poll tax debacle, all it took was one mauling by a former ally (whose verbal thrusts had been likened to "being savaged by a dead sheep") to bring her down -- and with Thatcher it wasn't the electorate who sacked her, it was her own colleagues.

Once the tipping point comes, it only takes a 'small putsch' for the House of Cards to fall.

It seems that with the Auditor-General's revelations of Labour's electoral corruption now ringing out around the country, the tipping point has now come for Helen Clark and her Labour Party.

Recent articles and editorials have uncharacteristically savaged her for her "Government's absolute determination to cling to office at any cost," even as her deputy threatens the media with attack by the IRD. And now, as David Farrar observes, "today's Dominion Post editorial on the illegal pledge card spending makes the others (which were very stern also) look like wimps."

It starts by asking:
"What part of shameless and arrogant does Labour not understand?"

And it just gets more acerbic by the sentence.

What's noticeable with these recent richly-deserved MSM attacks is the point made by Insolent Prick in a comment to that post: "This is the same mainstream media that ate out of Auntie Helen's hand for the last ten years, and swallowed her spin hook, line and sinker. Shows you just how low Labour's got if even the editorials have turned on her."

Quite. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it would seem to be ringing for Helen. Roll on Darnton V Clark.

LINKS: 1990: Howe resigns over Europe policy - BBC: On This Day
Shameless and arrogant - Kiwiblog (David Farrar)
A blatant opportunist - Editorial, Dom Post

RELATED: Darnton V Clark, Politics-NZ, Politics-Labour, History-Modern

Property Rights of the Poor Need to be Recognised in Developing Countries

I was standing in line behind Helen Clark getting coffee just before Christmas.  To be fair I didn’t notice it was her until the starstruck barista delayed her fainting long enough to tell me who had caused her heart to flutter so. It was the head of the UN, she said.  (I felt it churlish to point out Miss Clark is actually head of the UN’s development programme and not yet the whole UN, and since I felt protective of my long black anyway I just smiled for her appreciation of how she had just been touched by greatness).

Strangely, Miss Clark didn’t turn to me to ask for advice in her present portfolio area, i..e, how to best help develop developing countries, but if she had I’d have pointed her to something like the works of Hernando de Soto, or this guest post by Peter F. Schaefer and Clayton Schaefer, advising things Miss Clark’s development agency has never (and would never) consider.

Property Rights of the Poor Need to be Recognised in Developing Countries

Who's next?

Scapegoat. n. One who is made to bear the blame of others. See goat, fall guy, whipping boy.

Helen Clark does scapegoats well, doesn't she. First she puts the boot into the Exclusive Brethren, who she would like us to believe were almost single-handledly responsible for contemporary corruption in politics (anything to divert us from the very real corruption of an election bought with our money); now Mercury Energy, whose "heartlessness" she says (rather than a family's own bad lifestyle choices) is responsible for a woman's death ... anything, any lies at all, to get people's minds off the clusterfuck that her Government has become. Anything to avoid blame being pointed at her.

Still eighteen months before an election. Who's next? Do we all need to keep our heads down? As a blues singer said once, "Every culture needs a scapegoat to clean the shithouse." There's still an awful lot of shit to clean up 'tween now and next November -- if this strategy can last that long.

A lesson from Budapest

"We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening," said Hungarian Socialist Leader Ferenc Gyurcsany of the method by which they won last year's Hungarian election, a comment which has ignited Hungarian anger and kicked off street rioting not seen since the fall of communism in Hungary sixteen years ago:

Hungary PM says "we lied" to win election - Reuters Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted to a Socialist Party meeting in May his government had lied about its record to win April's election and said it had done nothing in four years but hold on to power.
True lies: Hungarian leader blurts out the truth on the economy - Times Online The riots, the worst since the end of communism, were ostensibly sparked by the publication of a leaked tape on Sunday in which Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Prime Minister, was heard saying that he and his Socialist party had lied for four years about Hungary’s budget in order to win a general election in April.

There's a lesson here for politicians everywhere, and given the lying and corruption now apparent in our most recent election in New Zealand, a particularly relevant lesson for our own political leaders here.

It seems to me that NZ's ruling party would be fooligh to discount the anger that New Zealanders feel at our own stolen election, simply because New Zealanders express their outrage in a less demonstrative way than do Hungarians. To use Helen Clark's own term, outside the 'Beltway' anger is mounting. She ignores that anger at her peril.

UPDATE: The Times has extracts of the Hungarian PM's lying tape. You could all too easily confuse it with something produced rather closer to home. Samples:

"Obviously we lied throughout the past one and a half, two years. It was completely obvious that what we said was not true."

"Meanwhile, we have done nothing for four years. You cannot tell me of any significant government measure we could be proud of... If we need to give an account to the country what we have done for four years, what will we say?"

"I almost died of having to pretend for the past year that we were actually governing. Instead we lied day, night and evening."

RELATED: Politics-World, Darnton V Clark

Nats not oustanding over Field

NZ Herald: Call the police - National gets tough on Field
National is considering going to the police about the dealings of Labour MP Phillip Field...

Excuse me, but what the heck? When examples of real corruption over serious constitutional issues arise, the parliamentary opposition is silent. Minor scandals like this however, and they're all over them -- and regardless of your views of the propriety or otherwise of Field's helping would-be immigrants (and I do have mine), it is only a minor quibble. Minor things obsess Her Majesty's Opposition. Sign a painting you didn't do, throw a tennis ball, or have a nose to tail in a ministerial car, and this opposition are all over it like gonorrhea in an STD clinic.

However when serious constitutional issues arise such as taking Helen Clark to court over her misappropriation of public money in order to run for office, and the parliamentary opposition parties have this to say: "

. . . . . . . ." That's right. They're as quiet as a man who's just received a course of treatment at the STD clinic. It's somewhat enlightening about their priorities, wouldn't you say?

And what's this: The Nats don't just want to dob Field into the police for ... um ... well, they're not sure really, but on top of that they say they "might also alert other Government agencies ... to accusations that the MP used 'slave labour'."

Are they kidding? Have they looked at a dictionary? Let's check. Wikipedia defines "slave labour" as:

A condition of control over a person against their will, enforced by
violence or other forms of coercion. Slavery almost always occurs for the
purpose of securing the labor of the person concerned. A specific form, known as
chattel slavery, implies the legal ownership of a person or persons.

Did Field have any ownership at all over the Thai would-be immigrants? No. Did they paint and tile his house against their will? No. Did he coerce them? No -- and no one has adduced any evidence he did.

If there was any coercion of these would-be immigrants -- of the restless refuse of teeming Thai shores who were here and yearning to breathe free -- they found it in our absurdly restrictive immigration laws, which left their lives and families in limbo and gave anyone who chose to use it the whip hand over their lives. Instead of coercing them however, as immigration offficials eventually did, Field helped them. I for one have no problem with that. I do however have a problem with the immigration laws that made such help necessary, and that left them so desperate.

If there is one good thing that could come from all this, it is this: With our immigration laws on the table and presently under review, it might be time to realise that would-be immigrants are not cattle, they are human beings. Let peaceful people pass borders freely. With that policy in place, situations like those under discussion just wouldn't even occur.

LINKS: National gets tough on Field - NZ Herald
Darnton Vs Clark - trial website
Definitions for slave labour on the web - Wikipedia
Phillip Field - Not PC (Peter Cresswell)

TAGS: Immigration, Politics-NZ, Politics-National, Politics-ACT

Fifty-odd questions for National

By the time you read this post, I'll be holding up one end of the Libertarianz stand at Fieldays -- helping promoting reason, freedom and less government to an expected 150,000 punters strolling past our stand.

And since we'll be just three stands down the road from the National Party stand, we thought we should encourage passing punters to stop in and see them too, and ask any passing MPs some pointed questions.  In fact, for those so inclined, we'll be offering them some very pointed questions to ask.  Who better to ask them of, we thought?

And since we believe in fairness, we'll even give them advance notice of some of the very fair questions we've prepared for them ... 

Fifty-odd Fieldays questions for National

Q: RED TAPE: Which government departments will the National Party abolish to reduce government, in accordance with the stated aims of the National Party's constitution?
LIBERTARIANZ says: The Libertarianz unemployment policy is clear -- unemployment under Libertarianz would increase dramatically ... among bureaucrats, consultants and jobsworths. Start with the Ministries of Women's, Youth, Maori and Pacific Island Affairs, and NZ Rail and OSH, and then keep working on down ...

Q: SMACKING: At the anti-smacking rally outside parliament last year, National MPs stood up and said they were AGAINST the anti-smacking bill. One week later they all marched into parliament and voted FOR the Bill. Is there a word for that?
LIBERTARIANZ are opposed to the nationalisation of New Zealand children. Your children are YOUR children, not Sue Bradford’s – or John Key’s.

Q: RMA: You Introduced the Resource Management Act in 1991, and Simon Upton and Nick Smith oversaw it unchanged for eight years. Are you proud of that?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Private property rights provide the strongest possible protection for the environment and property owners. Libertarianz will repeal the fascistic Resource Management Act, and uncover the common law that decades of planning legislation have buried.

Q: COMPULSION: Is it true you are not a party of compulsion, as National's Kate Wilkinson said recently -- just before she was silenced for saying so?

Q: VOLUNTARISM: Do you support voluntary student union membership?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Supporting voluntarism on campus is a litmus test of freedom. If you don’t support students being allowed to choose with whom they associate, then what does that say about your support for freedom of choice.

Q: GLOBAL WARMING: You signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998. Are you still proud of that?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Emission reductions required under the Kyoto Protocol will throttle New Zealand industry and energy production. Libertarianz advocate immediate withdrawal from this anti-industrial handbrake on prosperity.

Q: LABOUR-LITE: Is there any law introduced by the Clark Government that you WOULD repeal? Anything at all to which you wouldn't say "Me too"?
LIBERTARIANZ says: ‘Me too’ government is rotten government. Policies should be based on principles, not platitudes.

Q: ELECTION BRIBES: National originally said it would oppose interest-free student loans "with every bone in its body." Now you SUPPORT them! Where are those bones now -- in particular the 33 vertebrae?
LIBERTARIANZ says stop taxing students, and they can pay their own way through their studies. And keep your promises.

Q: EDUCATION: Three years ago National said bulk funding was "the first step towards providing the flexible education system that parents wanted." You've now abandoned even this timid first step. Do you no longer believe in a flexible education system that serves parents and children better?
LIBERTARIANZ says the separation of school and state is urgently necessary to liberate youngsters from the factory schools that are failing in everything but politically correct indoctrination.

Q: FOREIGN OWNERSHIP: Why won't you immediately overturn the pathetic ban on foreign ownership of so called strategic assets that saw the sale of Auckland Airport shares to Canada Pensions made illegal by this Government?
LIBERTARIANZ says it's not the Government's job to intrude upon a willing seller and a willing buyer. A principled party would know this.

Q: WELFARE: Why won't you immediately overturn Labour's Welfare for Working Families programme that is turning so many of the country's middle class into welfare beneficiaries?
LIBERTARIANZ says the moral cannibalism of enforced welfare should be abolished immediately, and beneficiaries urgently reacquainted with the ethic of self-responsibility – as should the National Party.

Q: DEFENCE: Why has the National Party capitulated completely on defending New Zealand? Isn't it true that the National Party's defence policy is now best summarised by the title of our national anthem: 'God Defend New Zealand'?
LIBERTARIANZ says: A country worth defending must be able to defend itself. New Zealand's woeful defence capability must be urgently upgraded --meaning more frigates, more Orions, surveillance aircraft for border protection, and rebuilding the strike wing of the Air Force.

Q: MONEY: After eight years of Labour, we are paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world -- how EXACTLY will you change that?
LIBERTARIANZ says the idea that governments can print money to create false prosperity must always be paid for in the long run.

Q: WAGES: The gap between NZ wages and those in Australia and around the world is getting bigger and bigger -- how EXACTLY will you change that?
LIBERTARIANZ says getting the government off your back and out of your business will light the blue touch paper of prosperity!

Q: MONEY: Grocery and petrol prices are going through the roof -- how EXACTLY will you change that?
LIBERTARIANZ says abolishing GST and ending the theft of motorists through hefty petrol taxes (nearly a dollar of every litre) will begin to make life affordable again.

Q: HOUSING: Every city around the world that has made town planners into kings has made housing seriously unaffordable for hardworking kids, whereas un-zoned cities like Houston are the most affordable places in the world to buy a house. What will you do to reduce the power of town planners in New Zealand?
LIBERTARIANZ says the rule of the town planners will only end with a stake through the heart of the Resource Management Act.

Q: EDUCATION: Ten years after Lockwood Smith introduced the NCEA, 300,000 Kiwi kids are functionally illiterate. Are you proud of that? And why is he still on your front bench?
LIBERTARIANZ says the separation of school and state is urgently necessary to liberate youngsters from the factory schools that are failing in everything but politically correct indoctrination.

Q: ENVIRONMENT: Why is Nick Smith more concerned with cutting greenhouse gas emissions and protecting Maui dolphins than he is in protecting hardworking New Zealanders who are losing their livelihoods by the throttling of industry and the closing down of fisheries? Isn't he in the wrong party?
LIBERTARIANZ says the environment is best protected with strong private property rights, not their destruction.

Q: GLOBAL WARMING: Why has National climbed on board the anti-industry bandwagon in calling for "strong action on climate change" – which means government action to stop private action. We know that socialism doesn't work at fifteen degrees, so why do Nick Smith and National think it will work at seventeen?
LIBERTARIANZ says New Zealand should drop the Emissions Trading Scheme forthwith, withdraw from Kyoto, and leave folk free to make their own choices on global warming.

Q: HEALTH: Even with billions of extra dollars poured into it, the die-while-you-wait health system hasn't improved -- how EXACTLY will you change that?
LIBERTARIANZ will end socialised medicine, allowing providers of all forms of prevention, treatment and therapy to compete in an open market. Tax relief leaves money in your pocket to spend for your own family's health care as you see fit.

Q: TAXES: Cutting taxes without cutting spending makes economic sense? Do you think anyone believes you when you say serious tax cuts don't require serious spending cuts to match?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Your money should be left in your pocket. A Libertarianz government will abolish all duties, tariffs, taxes and levies - except income tax, which as a transitional measure will be set at 25%, with an income threshold before payment of $50,000. And unlike National, Libertarianz has spending cuts to match.

Q: CRIME: We know that violent crime against innocent New Zealanders is continuing to soar -- how EXACTLY will you change that? Why will you not recognise the right of New Zealanders to defend themselves and their families?
LIBERTARIANZ says real crimes with genuine victims like rape, robbery, murder and theft should be vigorously pursued and the rights of these victims enforced and upheld. The NZ Bill of Rights should be amended to uphold your right to self-defence and the right to possess the means thereof.

Q: WELFARE: We know that when nearly 300,000 New Zealanders are dependent on welfare that it's a lie to say unemployment is at "record low levels" -- how EXACTLY will you change the endemic welfare dependence that is the legacy of both National and Labour policies?
LIBERTARIANZ says the moral cannibalism of enforced welfare should be abolished immediately, and beneficiaries urgently reacquainted with the ethic of self-responsibility – as should the National Party.

Q; DPB: After watching case after case of unwanted children being murdered by their own whanau, when will you abolish the system whereby hard-working New Zealanders are taxed to pay for no-hopers to breed?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Recipients should be given three years notice that the failed DPB scheme will end, at which time it should be terminated forthwith.

Q: COMPLIANCE COSTS: Every government since Jenny Shipley's has promised to "reduce the burden of compliance and bureaucracy," but not one has yet managed it. How EXACTLY will you?
LIBERTARIANZ says there must be a separation of state and business. We must get the government's agents out of your business and out of your life, and slash the regulations that give them access.

Q: PRIVATISATION: Why will you not terminate wasteful dreck like NZ Rail and Maori TV, and sell off profitable enterprises like TVNZ? What happened to the National Party's principles of favouring smaller government?
LIBERTARIANZ says: State assets should be given back to those whose money paid for them - taxpayers - as shares to be sold or retained as you choose.

Q: NANNY STATE: Nanny State is going berserk. How exactly will you reverse the soft fascism of Nanny's onslaught?
LIBERTARIANZ says: The urgency of getting Nanny State out of our homes, out of our workplaces, out of your children's minds and out of our pockets should be understood now even by the National Party.

Q: EDUCATION: Why won't National allow tax credits for people paying for private education?
LIBERTARIANZ says if you withdraw your children from the state's factory schools, you deserve a refund.

Q: HEALTH: Why won't National allow tax credits for people paying for private health insurance?
LIBERTARIANZ says if you withdraw your custom from the state's die-while-you-wait health system, you deserve a refund.

Q: ELECTORAL CORRUPTION: Where was National when Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton was suing Helen Clark for stealing nearly a million dollars of taxpayers' money to buy the last election?
LIBERTARIANZ says using taxpayers’ money to buy elections is corrupt, whoever is doing it.

Q: ENERGY: Will you repeal Labour's ten-year moratorium on the construction of new thermal power stations? Or would Nick Smith rather go hug a tree?
LIBERTARIANZ says the abolition of the Resource Management Act and withdrawal from Kyoto are urgently necessary to allow the long overdue construction of new, clean power generation.

Q: TRANSPORT: Why will you not sell off Michael Cullen's new train set so we're not in the hole even further for all its ongoing costs?
LIBERTARIANZ says all the government's white elephants should be sold off.

Q: PRIVATISATION: Why have you ruled out selling TVNZ, the power generators, all the SOEs and al the government's shares in Air New Zealand?
LIBERTARIANZ says all the government's assets should be sold off, or given as shares to long-term taxpayers.

Q: BUREAUCRACY: What will National do to make public servants our servants again, and not our masters?
LIBERTARIANZ says show them our unemployment policy -- unemployment under Libertarianz would increase dramatically ... among bureaucrats, consultants and jobsworths. Start with the Ministries of Women's, Youth, Maori and Pacific Island Affairs, and the Resource Management Act and OSH and work on down ...

Q: ANIMAL WELFARE: Why will you not rein in the maltreatment of farmers by the SPCA?
LIBERTARIANZ says a farmer's animals are his property, not the SPCA’s.

Q: RACISM: Don Brash stated that National believed in One Law For All. Does John Key?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Government should be colour blind. Law should be colour blind. There should be no favours based on race, colour, or 'treaty status.'

Q: RACISM: Why won't you abolish the Maori seats immediately? If it's right to do it in three years, why not now?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Mean what you say and say what you mean. Racist parliamentary seats should go the way of slavery and apartheid.

Q: WAITANGI: When will you end the corrupt Treaty Gravy Train and take power away from the corrupt Brown Table who are making millions from it?
LIBERTARIANZ says the politics of race and the myth of ‘partnership’ should be expunged from our legal system. Like good politics, good law is colour blind.

Q: GLOBAL WARMING: Why are you going to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme of your own?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Throttling industry with feel-good law is wrong -- just flat out wrong.

Q: FISHING: Why won't National repeal Jim Anderton's draconian ban on set-net fishing. Do you care more about Maui dolphins than you do about the families and livelihoods of New Zealand's fishermen?
LIBERTARIANZ says: Human beings come before fish. (And if dolphins were so smart, they'd stay away from set nets.)

Q. LABOUR-LITE: What's the chief difference between your team and the Red Team? Better suits?
LIBERTARIANZ says if you want to vote Labour out, then voting to put Labour-Lite in is just a wasted vote.

Q. TRADE: How come the Labour party is better at getting free trade deals than National ever has?
LIBERTARIANZ foreign policy can be written in two words: free trade.

Q. TRADE: How come Phil Goff & Helen Clark are better at arguing the case for free trade than John Key & Bill English?
LIBERTARIANZ foreign policy can be written in two words: free trade.

Q. WINSTON PETERS: Will National once again offer Winston the baubles of office just so you can govern?
LIBERTARIANZ says Winston’s tantrums are too high a price to pay. In Parliament Libertarianz would firmly commit to supporting every law that both advances freedom and contains no new coercion. Which rules out supporting Winston.

Q. GLOBAL WARMING: Why did John Key change his view on Global Warming? Was there new evidence we didn't hear about?
LIBERTARIANZ says: The warmist charade is another scaremongering fiction, just like the Y2K, Asian Bird Flu and Ice Age scares of yore – another case of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Q. Does the National Party Caucus beat the snot out of Nick Smith during morning break? If not, why not?

Q. FARMING: How come farmers have been better off under Labour? Please explain.

Q. ELECTRICITY: If Nuclear power was the right thing for NZ would National support it? If not, why not?
LIBERTARIANZ says: The abolition of the Resource Management Act and withdrawal from Kyoto are urgently necessary to allow the long overdue construction of new, clean power generation.

Q: ELECTRICITY: Good on Gerry Brownlee for taking the Clark Government to task for New Zealand’s shambles of an electricity supply. But what will National actually do that will make any difference to our supply shortage? And is he aware that it was National who signed the Kyoto protocol that makes new thermal power stations immoral, and introduced the Resource Management Act that makes building new power stations of any kind all but illegal?
LIBERTARIANZ says abolishing the Resource Management Act and withdrawing from Kyoto are urgently necessary to allow the long overdue construction of new, clean and reliable power generation.

Q. ECONOMY: Why has Labour out-performed National in terms of NZ economic growth rates each time they get into power? It’s not just luck, is it.
LIBERTARIANZ says: Failed policies of subsidies, ‘picking winners’ and micro-managing economics makes an economy insufficiently able to adapt to changing economic conditions. The only ‘managing’ governments should do is managing to keep themselves out of the way.

Q: LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Council rates are going through the roof! Why will you not repeal Local Government Act that Sandra Lee introduced to allow councils to charge like a wounded bull?
LIBERTARIANZ says all laws that allow politicians to put their hand in your pocket without your permission should be repealed.

Q: SUSTAINABILITY: Will you ban the word ‘sustainable’ from the government’s vocabulary?
LIBERTARIANZ says sacrificing our own prosperity to ‘future generations’ in the name of ‘sustainability’ is a con – it can only end in the poverty of both. Our grandchildren will not thank us for not building the dams, abattoirs, power stations, roads and houses today that will need in the future.

I'll let you know if we get any decent responses.

And if you'd like to contribute to help pay for the Libertarianz' stand, then we'd love to see the colour of your money.  :-)