Blue liberals Newsletter: May 2008
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.
Quote:
"The worth of the State in the long run is the worth of the individuals comprising it."
John Stuart Mill
