Discussions underway:
- More: The Government in your fridge
- Freedom vs Security
- We must remember what they sacrificed for
- The government in your fridge
- What part of "Freedom of Speech" does Labour not understand?
- Labour Attacks Freedom of Speech
- Lessons from America
- Health Advocacy
- Labour as a Government
- The Importance Of Population Policy [APRIL 2007]
- The Surveillance Society [APRIL 2007]
The Government in our Fridge (even more on the way)
The Ministry of Health's pitch through the Public Health Bill for wide sweeping powers to deal with the causes of obesity and other non-communicable diseases has - rightly - come under fire. Is it just coincidence then that the Ministry's public health division should choose this time to take to the media to complain about the marketing of BlueBird chips and the adequacy of voluntary industry standards of advertising?
Probably not. The Ministry has long played politics on public health issues and has made free use of the health lobby groups that it supports to create an environment where it gets its own way. The present complaint looks suspiciously like it might fall into that category.
The Ministry's zeal for ding what's good for us is well-known. Generally, it is to be welcomed. But when it tries to address our 'bad' nutritional decisions by limiting our choice, we can and should be concerned.
The latest effort in this vein is a "supermarket strategy" that, we're told, is intended to reduce the sale of the 15% or so of processed foods on the shelves that the Ministry objects to in favour of what it regards as the more correct. Unable to make the sale of jelly beans illegal, it seeks - behind the scenes - to make their sale difficult.
What's most concerning in what the Ministry is doing is the absence of any recognition of the importance of personal responsibility. Instead of equipping people with the knowledge to make sensible choices, it wants to manage what we do by limiting our choice. Also it seems quite happy to demonise supermarkets and the food industry, which in the end are not responsible for being fat, people are.
The Ministry may mean well, but instead of empowering people it is working very actively to disempower them. We believe this deserves a very hard and critical look.
Freedom versus security
The Blue Liberals believe that one of government’s reasons for existence (going right back to the social contract of Rousseau and John Locke) is the maintenance of law and order. It is vital that the people of New Zealand are protected from criminal elements, gangs and drug dealers. Over the past six months John Key has laid out strong anti-gang and anti-drug policies.
However, as policies are developed to combat these anti-society criminals, we must make sure that no precedent is set for the unreasonable dilution of the rights of the majority of law abiding New Zealanders. One lesson we have learnt from history is that government can always find reasons to continue to expand their power at the expense of the liberties of the individual.
An overseas example has been the continued widening of the powers of the state in the United Kingdom to take and keep DNA records of citizens. Although (much like the New Zealand DNA database) the police initially only had the ability to take DNA from those arrested and awaiting trial, since then the powers of the police and state to take and hold DNA have drastically increased. From 2004, anyone arrested (but not charged) for any offence where imprisonment is a possible sentence (that is to say, almost any crime at all) has their DNA taken and stored in the DNA database for one hundred years, whether or not they are charged or convicted.
While, naturally, the government must have the power to enforce the laws to protect two of those most inalienable rights; the rights of life and the pursuit of happiness, we must be vigilant to prevent the creep of those government powers and the undercutting of our third basic right: The right liberty and privacy.
We must remember what they sacrificed for
Every year on ANZAC Day at thousands of services around New Zealand we are told what our forefathers died for on the shores of Gallipoli, the slopes of Monte Cassino, and rice paddies of Korea. We are told they died for freedom, the freedom to worship as we choose, to say what we like, and to have a government that responds to the will of the people, rather than a people that responds to the whim of the government.
ANZAC Day is a remembrance of more than the heroes who died for our freedom, it is a day for each of us to remember those freedoms. It is a day to make sure that our government is protecting those liberties. And on ANZAC Day 2008 we must seriously question that our current government is committed to protecting freedom and liberty for the people of New Zealand. We have an Electoral Finance Act that is stifling dissent in an election year (the very time one would imagine dissent was most important!). We have public servants who now think of themselves as the public masters, that they know best rather than the voters who elected them and the taxpayers who pay their salaries. We have government ministers content to remove troublesome reporters (such as pro-Tibetan reporters at Chinese Free Trade Agreement press conferences) rather than allow them to cause a nasty political scene.
On ANZAC Day 2008 we must remember again what those soldiers fought and died for thousands of kilometres from home.
The government in your fridge
Not content with moving into your living room, the government seems determined to get into your fridge too.
The Public Health Bill is currently grinding its way through the select committee process and in it are some sweeping powers for official to issues codes of practice to regulate the marketing and sale of those foods and beverages implicated in non-communicable diseases.
The non-communicable diseases refereed to of course are heart disease and type 2 diabetes and, of their common cause - obesity.
What's wrong with that? At one level not a lot. The fact that we have a growing epidemic of ill-health and our children's longevity is very likely to be less than our own should definitely make us think. The issue is not that there's a problem - there is. The issue is what we do about it.
Unfortunately, too many people seem to think that it not what 'we' should do about it, but what the government should do about it. Manifesting the learned helpless that has been fostered by decades of nanny state interventions, many of us are inclined to gloss over the question of personal responsibility to look for excuses and someone to blame.
It's that sentiment which is most strongly reflected in this, the government's latest health policy. The basic message is that it's not your fault that you're sick or soon going to be; rather it's the fault of the fast food chains and liquor companies.
None of this is to say that there should be a free-for-all of alcohol and fast food promotion. But it's also important that the government put a focus where it belongs - on the choices that we make as individuals. We shouldn't be encouraged to point the finger at someone else and blame them for our choices.
What part of "Freedom of Speech" does Labour not understand?
One thing is clear from even a causal read of Labour's proposed Electoral Finance Bill and that is that it is intended to constrain free speech.
In the face of concern by interest groups such as Forest & Bird, the Government has said that the Bill is intended only to deal with those people engaged in political activity on behalf of a political party.
That's what they say. But the terms of the Bill are broad and make it clear that anyone taking a position which can be seen as aligned to a party political position will be affected. Given that any matter of public concern is likely to be related to a stance taken by a politician or party in some fashion, it's difficult to see how any interest group will escape the reach of the Bill.
What this means is that anyone wanting to attract public sympathy at any time within nearly a year of a general election will be required to register with the Chief Electoral Officer They will also be subject to a spending limit of $60,000 and if they don't do what government tells them they will face prosecution and potentially a year in prison.
For all that the Labour Government tries to pretend otherwise, this Bill is targeted at anyone who disagrees with it. Those familiar with the 9th floor of the Beehive will know that one of the PM's more common mantras is "if you're not for us, you're agin; us". Put another way, if you disagree with government on anything, then you must agree with the other lot - in which case you're biased, exercising an "undue influence" and need to be pulled into line.
The net result is that free citizens not only have to effectively seek permission to have a public view on any particular point during an election year, but they must also be subject to spending limits that make it impossible for them to access the mass media to publish their points of view.
The Government, of course, is under no such constraint and the line between "explaining" policies such as working for families and crowing about party political achievements is a very fine one. It is one that the government has stepped over on many occasions.
That should come as no surprise and how far the Government is prepared to go in ignoring both the law and democratic principle can be seen by simple reference to the Bill of Rights Act.
Section 14 of that Act says very clearly that:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form".
That seems pretty clear. Yet in the face of this, the Government intends to place limits on the capacity of individuals to publish and receive information and opinions during an election year.
The Attorney General - a person who can at least make the excuse of not being a lawyer - has dismissed the suggestion that the Bill contravenes the Bill of Rights legislation. It's not an issue. A more lawyerly response might have been to say that the rights set out in the Bill of Rights legislation are subject to "reasonable limitation" and mount a defence there.
But the problem with that there is nothing about the Government's proposed Bill that could in any way be said to be a reasonable. They have talked about undue influence of well to do business and other interests but have failed to produce any proof of such campaigning having an impact on the people's voting decisions. Indeed, it could be argued that the one notorious instance of political campaigning by a third party actually adversely affected the very Party which was the intended, if unwitting, "beneficiary".
Behind all of this it may be that the Government has a genuine and benign concern. However, the fact that people who have raised concerns about the civil liberties issues associated with the Bill have been immediately and publicly accused of political bias by none other than the Prime Minister isn't reassuring.
In the face of justified public concern about its intentions the government has, very rightly, said that the Bill goes too far. It is, it says, intending to make extensive changes. However, because the Bill is before the Select Committee and cannot be withdrawn at this point, any amendments will either have to come about on the initiative of the Government members on the Select Committee, or through a supplementary order paper.
The problem with that is that neither of these vehicles will give the public the opportunity to scrutinise what Labour proposes to do. Intended or not, this reinforces the perception of a government determined to ignore public opinion in pursuit of its very undemocratic objectives.
The issues raised by the Electoral Finance Bill go well beyond party politics. The Government's actions quite clearly do violence to our freedoms of expression and should be opposed by all parties including Labour. It is legislation about which every citizen, blue red or green, should be concerned.
We urge all people concerned with democratic freedom to write to their local MP, as well as the responsible Minster, Mark Burton expressing their opposition to the Bill.
Labour Attacks Freedom of Speech
It was all down to 'big money' campaigning. Those Labour MPs stung by the reversal in their political fortunes at the last general election chose to bang on about it for weeks. It had nothing to do with them or their government. No, it was just "big money".
Labour's sense of grievance could be tasted. It was only given an edge by the ill-judged political machinations of the Brethren.
Who knows what promises Labour's front bench made to itself at the time, but dealing to hostile political voices in the community was, very clearly, high up on their agenda.
No surprise then that one of the express objectives of the recently tabled Electoral Finance Bill is to counter "the undue influence of wealth". Even less of a surprise is the fact that 'third party' campaigning is the area that they have decided to get stuck into most vigorously.
Some of the vaguer regulations dealing with party political spending - the thing the public was most concerned about after the government's $800,000 spending rort in 2005 - were unaddressed. Instead, government proposes to impose a $60,000 spending limit on third party political campaigning with a year of a general election.
Those organisations or lobby groups who might want to take a policy position in election year are effectively muzzled as a result. To be heard they must either rely on the strength of their advocacy in to the two years in the election cycle that free speech is allowed. Otherwise they will have to funnel money - with whatever strings they can be attached - to political parties and the doubtful regulatory regime that governs them.
There will be arguments about whether the government's intentions a malign or less so. Certainly, the argument could be made that the election advertising undertaken by the likes of the CTU and PPTA amounts to Labour party electioneering. The government may well feel entirely justified and perfectly benign in its approach.
However, whatever the motive, or the provocations, there can be no getting away from the fact that the Electoral Finance Bill seeks to place active constraints on any person or persons not working from within a political party.
The working assumption is that the political process is owned and mediated by political parties and no-one else. Under this formulation, lobby groups - industry, trade union, religious or otherwise - and individuals are all disempowered in favour whatever lowest common denominator position can be negotiated with those who control the development of policy within the established political structure.
The violence that this does to the Bill of Rights and freedom of expression is inescapable. It is not, as Crown Law Office advice to the Attorney-General suggests (www.justice.govt.nz/bill-of-rights/bill-list-2007/e-bill/electoral-finance-bill.html), a finely balanced issue at all and that perspective will doubtless receive prominence as the Bill makes its way through the House.
The Attorney-General - a non lawyer, for whom the subtleties of such arcane ideas as freedom of expression are apparently elusive - has chosen not to report to Parliament on the potential conflict with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is something he is obliged to do. The fact that he hasn't suggests that he doesn't see a problem. We do.
Lessons from America
The American mid-term elections delivered the Republicans not only a beating, but also an unequivocal message: the heartland had had enough. Not just enough of Bush’s uncompromising yet consistently unavailing foreign policy. Not just enough of the rigid moral conservatism of the religious right with whom the administration made its bed. But enough also of domestic policies that held uncritically to a belief in the market and self help, despite a failing health system and the 40 million US citizens trapped at subsistence level or below.
The Republicans were out of touch with the US electorate and in the mind of the electorate, they had to go.
The lesson is clear: There is no place for extremism. Doctrine must guide and inform but it must not ignore fact or reason. Morality can and should be upheld but not where it is morality bred of ignorance and bigotry.
Those that went, however, did not just come only from Republican’s right wing. Long-established moderates also said their goodbyes. They were the Yankee Republicans, the Party’s old school, noted for their social tolerance, their fiscal conservatism and their belief that government should keep its nose out of issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. They were also the collateral damage of a Republican Party that had moved too far to the right and it is no small irony that their absence will be felt in the unchallenged persistence of the Party’s moral and religious conservatism - a conservatism that will ensure the GOP’s isolation from public sentiment for several years to come.
The lesson is clear: There is no place for extremism. Doctrine must guide and inform but it must not ignore fact or reason. Morality can and should be upheld but not where it is morality bred of ignorance and bigotry. Recognising that is not an abandonment of our principles - for all that an embattled labour government might assert it. Rather, it is an affirmation of them. Tolerance, inclusion, the creation of opportunity and accountability in government are at our core and they should not be held hostage to fear, or bigotry, polemic or the desire to curry favour with those whose interests might not reflect the interests of our community as a whole.
Health advocacy:
Time to bring health advocates to heel
The Ministry of Health is notable for many things. Its zeal in pursuing what it regards as the common weal is among the more salient of them. Claiming the unassailable virtue of doing God's work, the Ministry has used tax-payers' money to fund health groups to lobby legislators on smoking, promoted increased regulation of drinking water standards - despite a doubtful problem definition or cost-benefit analysis - and has most recently entertained the nationalisation of the local tobacco industry and the banning 'unhealthy' food from work-place vending machines. In all cases, the Ministry justifies itself with the assertion that it's for our own good.
The identification and mitigation of avoidable public harm is of course a legitimate mandate for any health agency. It's also a reasonable enough basis for deciding when the coercive forces of the state should kick into gear. But, it's not the only consideration, particularly when it come to matters of personal choice.
It's the recognition of the personal right of election that is the most glaringly absent from the Ministry's thinking. In a free society the risk of public harm must always be balanced against the principle that citizens have the licence to exercise personal choices and accept personal responsibility for them. Put more familiarly, people are free to do whatever they choose, to the extent that what they do does not impinge on the rights and freedoms of others. Any other consequences are for the individual to bear.
The harm versus choice calculation is one that the Ministry ignores and is not hard to see, simmering beneath the surface of official reaction to the recent documentary on meningococcal vaccination, a frustrated desire to stifle yet another freedom, that of expression. But upholding the principles of a free society is not apparently the job of the Ministry of Health. Such things are for politicians and other agencies of state, placing them - with all their relative strengths and weaknesses - in the position of having to defend what should never have to be defended.
The fifth Labour government shows its true colours
Labour has asserted again and again that National doesn't care. Pretending a monopoly over concern for the poor and disenfranchised, Labour has accused National of representing only the narrowest and most selfish of interests.
But last week John Key threw a different light on exactly who it is that is concerned about delivering positive social outcomes for New Zealanders - and it is not the present government.
Underscoring the reality we all know, Key pointed to the growing underclass in New Zealand society where opportunity and ambition to do better have taken second place to institutionalised welfare and a lack of hope.
Labour's response to this was both clinical and chilling. Refusing to admit the fallibility of its insights, Labour turned to statistics and spin, pointing all the while to the quantum of government instead of than the quality of it.
In so doing Labour has underscored just how removed it, not National, is from New Zealanders and their interests. It also provided a timely reminder of how few members of Labour's ranks have experienced need or the stark realities of welfare, or of having their next pay check at risk. It now leaves in the minds of New Zealanders a real question - just who is it that really cares?
The Importance Of Population Policy
Whether you accept the science of global warming or not, there can be no doubt that we need to significantly lift our game when it comes to environmental preservation and rehabilitation.
Responsible management and a focus on renewable or sustainable resource can certainly militate the sometimes dramatic impacts human activity can have on the world, but these things only carry us so far. At some stage - ideally while we still have options - we need to confront the reality that continual growth cannot be sustained over the long or now even the short term.
Growth, of course, has been one of the tenets of our economy. As often as not economic prosperity and population growth have been treated as synonymous. Even today you will hear staunch advocacy of the need to raise New Zealand's population to 10 or 15 million on the assumption that this is a cure for all that ails us.
But is it? And how rational is it to suppose that the world as we know it today will be the world we will live in tomorrow. It was only a few years ago that one-time Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser advocated an increase in Australia's population to 50 million over 50 years. This year that Peter Costello breathed new life into that grand idea by putting in place incentives to for parents to deliver on that old fashion maxim of a kid for mum, a kid for dad and a kid for Australia.
The motivations for that were entirely economic. But as Australia looks at changes in its own climate (real no matter what the cause) things other than economic need to be taken into account. One of those things is whether it will be able to support a population much larger than the one it has now.
Of course Australia's problems are nothing to those felt elsewhere in the world where ecospheres are collapsing, supposedly infinite resources are proving very finite and the future is writ clear and large. With better organisation (and a lot more state control) it may be that we can feed the multitudes, but do we want the world to be one large farm, devoid of wilderness and absent of life expect that which is bent to our wants and needs?
Those may not be questions for us - yet. But there can be no doubt that if through design or neglect we doubled our population there would be a down-side as well as the 'up'. The question for us is whether that upside is worth it compared with what will be sacrificed?
This and all the related questions deserve to be considered and debated, and a population policy developed that has regard not just to narrow economic considerations, but also to wider and more difficult questions about the quality of life and the extent to which our interests as human beings are best met by addressing the interests of our environment.
The development of a population policy - one that takes into account more than just economic considerations - would be timely and is something that we intend to advocate for.
The Surveillance Society
It has been said, often contemptuously, that New Zealand lags 20 years behind Britain. If that's so, then Britain provides us with a window on our future that is as dark as it is revealing.
What it foreshadows for New Zealand is society that is over-regulated and one where the individual is fully under the watchful eye of the State. Camera surveillance, the finger-printing of children at school and, from 2009, identity cards for all persons over 16 years are the innovations there that all too soon we will find being advocated here.
The stated motivations are, of course, benign, inevitably touted as in the 'public interest'. Yet, under the guise of public safety, national security, or public health management, the British government is inexorably institutionalising the mechanisms of the Orwellian (or at least the Nanny) state.
Sadly, the best that Britain's Tories have been able to offer in response to this trend is the promise that children will only be finger-printed with the permission of their parents. This is a tepid response to what has been a concerted attack on the liberty of the subject and suggests that even Britain's right has fallen under the sway of those with a passion for state control.
This assertion will of course be angrily denounced as lunatic by Britain's social democrats at least. Ever well-intentioned and believing in the sanctity of the state as a medium for social justice, they reassure the public with earnest imprecations about terrorism and protecting us from others and ourselves. In so doing, they assert the wisdom of the state over the individual, at the same time rejecting calls for the greater accountability for themselves and their officials that their greater power should demand.
The reluctance to balance power with accountability is already a feature of our own experience and if that is an augury of what is to come, then we have cause to be concerned.
If you are interested in pursuing any of these discussions with us, please let us know: bluelibs@national.org.nz
