Boscawen's Lamington

For the life of me I'm no ACT supporter, but most ACT members are still head and shoulders above other parliamentarians, one such example being John Boscawen, who led the anti EFA marches last year (which, thankfully, is history).

So, it really annoyed me when a rival candidate at the Mt Albert by-election from the "People Before Profit" Party (whatever in hell that means) went up to him and put a lamington on his head. Fortunately, some others threw food at the perpetrator.

Perhaps he should be lucky I wasn't there -I'm not sure I could resist spitting at him, or something to that degree.

Te Aro Meeting

The Te Aro Valley Meeting is usually one of the most entertaining political meetings in New Zealand, with good justification. Luckily, I was there on Tuesday to support Bernard Darnton, the Libz candidate running in Wellington Central, and there was a good Libertarianz turn out to the meeting.

The Highlights:

1) Michael Appleby, the candidate for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannibis Party -he was really funny, and said afterwards that he's "a libertarian at heart".

2) The Worker's Party candidate looked like he'd walked straight out of the 1930s.

3) Meeting up with the other Libz (normally, Tuesday's our meeting night, and we did pop around to a local bar for a few minutes) and seeing Peter McCaffrey from ACT on Campus again -he's a great guy.

4) Bernard's answer to the question about which party he'd vote for, if not his own. His answer: Labour -for comedic value! (and to show the NZ public the evils of big government)

Lowlights:

1) Sue Kedgley -there aren't strong enough words that I could use to desribe her! She was (/is) very maternalistic in her demeanor and politics, and someone who wouldn't think twice about controlling every aspect of your life.

2) The United Future Candidate -he was younger than all the other candidates and obviously had no idea about what he was promoting, and performed a highly irritationg song/rap at the end of the meeting.

3) All the other leftist candidates proposing the same "all things to all men" policy.

All in all, it was a much more interesting political meeting than the last one I attended (in middle-class Eastbourne)!

ACT: The Party of Unionists?

The top 10 on the ACT Party List for the 2008 election goes as follows:

1) Rodney Hide
2) Heather Roy
3) Roger Douglas
4) John Boscawen
5) Undecided
6) Hilary Calvert
7) Peter Tashcoff
8) John Ormond
9) Colin du Plessis
10) Shawn Tan

Recognize #10? Probably not. (In fact, you should be congratulated if you recognize anyone from the entire second half of that list.) However, if you're in the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union, you'll definitely know him: he's Shawn Tan, and he's made big news in the Union recently.

As well as working for, as the ACT website says, three different Unions, he's also been involved in organizations such as the "Students for Justice in Palestine", a group that is, officially, "organized on democratic principles to promote justice, human rights, liberation and self-determination for the Palestinian people, with goals that include "the full decolonisation of all illegally held Palestinian lands, the end of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; the implementation of the right of return and repatriation of all Palestinian refugees to their original homes and properties, as well as an end to the apartheid system of discrimination against the Palestinian population". In other words, another anti-Israel group that is, because of its support of Israel, anti-United States.

Don't forget that he's also just come over from the Green Party.
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So, what about the other candidates on that list? Obviously, Rodney Hide and Heather Roy are at the top. Then, there's Roger Douglas and John Boscawen -not bad choices. As for numbers 6-9: well, there's a guy who's written a Maori novel. Another candidate's biggest political challenge is opposing the Trans-Tasman Therapeutics Bill. There isn't a lot to say about the others.

Also, consider who you don't see on the list. The people you see above you have replaced outstanding candidates such as Lindsay Mitchell, who is one of New Zealand's leading crusaders against Nanny State. Which is a damn shame -if ACT does get into Parliament, it would be nice to see her there.
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Some debate has also been occuring over the EPMU's course of action regarding it's new ACT Candidate; Whaleoil calls it "disgusting". However, I beg to differ; the Union, as a private entity, has the right to hire and fire whoever it wants -which is part of Libertarianism. However, it is very hypocritical that a Union should be doing so -considering that Unions originally pushed for the banning of such practices.

First Casualties of the EFB/A

The Electoral Finance Bill/Act came into effect two days ago, meaning that any voices who oppose the government can effectively be silenced by the power of the gun, the government deciding who's fit to receive money to campaign and who isn't, and who is allowed to donate money and who isn't (all the while supporting the ideas of those who they don't support with their own tax money).

The first casualty on this war on free speech, ironically, is Helen Clark. At the start of the new year, a group called "People Power" threw a rock through the window of her electoral office in Mount Albert, to protest the act. It wouldn't be the first time someone has vandalized Helen Clark's electoral office; the first time, however, the offender was charged with sedition (!).

Tim Shadbolt, the usually Labour-leaning and provocative mayor of New Zealand's southernmost city Invercargill is now touting the opposition to the Act, telling his citizens and those of the entire country to not vote Labour.

To protest this act further, Cameron Slater of Whale Oil and Andy Moore of The Section 59 Blog have started up www.dontvotelabour.org.nz, and they could be the first people brought to court under the new law.

...but where's their $1200 that supports claim that the Act will stop? Maybe they should realize that the $1200 cap on personal anonymous donations is truly pitiful compared to the $4.8 million of public money Labour spent on election campaigning in 2005. But which party received the most anonynous funding last year? ACT!

Or perhaps you'd like to do a Chris Trotter, getting quickly off the actual issues to do a bit of scaremongering non-existent concepts in his twisted, Marxist view of reality.

I Won Prebble's Book

For entering the ACT on Campus essay competition, I won a rather simple book by Richard Prebble (former leader of ACT, and, to the best of my knowledge, the softener of many of ACT's policies). According to Leighton Smith:

"It destroys Socialist theories forever".

Please show me how.