07 May 2009

ACT's first serious (partial) let down?

A law on what people wear in public in one district.

After all, couldn't pubs, clubs and restaurants just enforce private property rights and set their own rules?

Good on Heather Roy and Sir Roger Douglas for being principled opponents, shame on Rodney, David Garrett and John Boscawen. You cannot pretend to be for less government or the liberal party by supporting the criminalisation of what people wear in public in one district.

It is not just authoritarian, but ludicrous that there is now a separate criminal law (not bylaw) for a distinct local authority district.

It is one thing for ACT's policy to disappoint me as a libertarian, but to actively machinate to support a new - victimless - criminal law, is appalling. The issue of course is that it isn't party policy, but for individual MPs - of whom only Rodney Hide is directly voted (and without whom none of the others would be there).

So I'll leave it to Bernard Darnton, Lindsay Mitchell and Blair Mulholland to conclude. Garrett and Boscawen appear to believe it, but Rodney Hide? He always talked differently - now with this, and the mega city, he looks like the others, it's a pity. I always hoped I would be wrong about ACT in government. This appears to be its first active support for MORE government not less. Shame.

2 comments:

Ruffle said...

"It is not just authoritarian, but ludicrous that there is now a separate criminal law (not bylaw) for a distinct local authority district."

Actually you are quite wrong. This is not a criminal law - it is a Local Bill to allow Wanganui to pass a bylaw. The Bill in itself only allows for a bylaw to be passed.

Mr Dennis said...

It is utterly disgraceful, not only because it goes against ACT's principles but because it is completely nonsensical and if anything will make it harder to catch criminals (it forces the gangs to wear civilian clothes rather than easily-identifiable uniforms).

Good on the Maori party opposing it, remember we could just as easily have had ACT opposing it but the Maori party persuaded to support it.