Nanny's ever creeping hand.... while she allows scum to party at our expense

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The oppression of adult smokers continues with Julian Pistorius blogging about a proposal in New South Wales to ban smoking in cars!! Your own private property, your own space – well, given so many acquiesce to it being banned in businesses you own, its only natural that the anti-liberty brigade would choose cars next. Not exactly rocket science to figure out what is next. The idea, you see, is to protect children. Now this is easy to understand by motive – see I have asthma and both my parents smoked at home until my late teens – something they both regret now. It would be preferable if parents didn’t smoke around their children. It would be preferable if parents did lots of things and didn't do others - the things is there are laws to prohibit parents neglecting, physically and sexually abusing their children. They do little to stop it happening, but it does mean they are brought to account.

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Now you know my opinion on smoking, I hate it personally, but believe it is up to adults to decide what they put into their own bodies, and whether or not they allow smoking on their property. That was explained in my post on the forthcoming ban in England.

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This call for banning smoking in cars - to protect children - is far more insidious. The road to hell is paved with good intentions - and the means to this end are terrifying indeed. How is this going to be enforced? Are you going to be fined and stopped by cops for smoking in your own car? Remember the odds are that if your car is stolen it will get next to no police attention, but ohhhhh smoke in it - then you're in trouble, breaking Nanny State's Parenting Laws.

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This can't be the end though - you see, if parents are to be controlled according to what is harmful to their children, what next will it be? After all, the harm caused by exposure to tobacco smoke in cars would be minor. Banning smoking everywhere must be next. Then limits on alcohol storage and consumption by parents? Regulations on storing poisons and knives? Regulations to prohibit male parents being alone with their children (sex abuse). How about a daily diet ration for children so parents don’t feed them too little, too much or the wrong food? How about banning books that are suitable only for adults in parents' houses? After all - it is for children - what's more important than protecting children from negligent or harmful parents?
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Oh I forgot to say, the Bill to ban smoking in cars covers ALL cars, whether you're a parent or not - after all, can't be TOO careful when we are protecting people from themselves?

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So who wants to do this? Political correct socialists? No. The Reverend Fred Niles, well known NSW evangelist MP who leads the Christian Democrats and hates homosexuals and wants to ban Muslim clothing. Fred clearly thinks that the state should regulate parenting.

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Of course we know the Maori Party would condone this – being the fascist bullies who want to ban smoking. Lindsay Mitchell and ZealandWhinge both blogged on this. The Maori Party wants to "protect children" by taking away the rights of adults - seeing the state as parents of Maori who it does not think can make their own minds up themselves.

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So think, if you're a non-smoker - what does banning smoking in cars mean? What does it mean that there are people wanting to expand the justice system's role into prosecuting smokers - when at the same time, a woman can kill a baby girl and get four years of prison she describes as "It's not as hard as people make out". The Sunday Star Times reports how she enjoyed drugs, porn and partied in prison - if the Maori Party can't get viscerally outraged by the entity that killed Lillybing like it gets outraged by smoking, then it can't even pretend to have any interest in the issues that truly hurt Maori people.

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and you might think about where state priorities should be.... smoking, or child killers?