Student unions are an arm of government?

Yes that's the argument made by Tony Milne at Just Left criticising David Farrar:

"Instead he advocates for student associations to become voluntary. The equivalent of course is the public refusing to pay their taxes when the Government does something they don't like."

My response to that is fairly clear:

Tony that is absolute bollocks, student unions are not like some arm of government, they are associations no different from a political party, industry association, trade union, environmental group, sports club or the like. This same old tired argument gets trotted out time and time again.

Governments have a monopoly of the use of legalised force against citizens. This is typically used to protect citizens from each other and from invasion. Local government has specified devolved statutory responsibilities regarding the enforcement and operation of certain laws (e.g. RMA, dog laws, food premises).

Student unions do not by any stretch of the imagination carry out any statutorily defined functions or have a legal right to use force in any way - except to force students to belong.

I don't "belong" to the New Zealand Government, nor Wellington City Council or Wellington Regional Council. All those entities have legally defined powers related to my behaviour in public places and the use of my property, student unions have none of the sort (all the powers they have are private property rights).

There is a fundamental human right of freedom of association. That means if I don't want to belong an association because I do not want it to represent me (which is the core function of student unions), then I shouldn't be forced to. Whatever other services student union's provide can largely be rationed by showing a membership card, or other techniques that, remarkably, virtually all other voluntary associations manage. For example, associate membership just to use certain facilities and not cross subsidise the political activity.

I know the left pined for compulsory trade union membership after the Nats abolished it in 1983 and again in 1991, but it is no different.

Yes members can vote, but why should one vote in an organisation that you don't believe in, that you don't want representing you, and which doesn't deliver what you want.

The truth is that student associations oppose voluntary membership because they are scared shitless that most students would rather keep the money than support a student association if they use few to none of the facilities, and don't agree with the fringe Marxists who run the show.

Of course Marxists have never been known for their belief in individual rights.

This follows up the appaling case of some turd at Salient spamming Big News, and then when Dave at Big News outed it, Salient threatened a defamation law suit, until it was outed that Dave was right. Salient thinks an apology makes up for someone being threatened with a lawsuit. Like kids left with the liquor cabinet open, they behave as if they are responsible to no one, because they aren't.

It also follows up the ANZAC Day celebrates war, so we wont celebrate ANZAC Day view of the communists running the VUWSA. In the past a couple of VUWSA Presidents have had the audacity of laying communist wreaths, happy to insult veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as if it would have been better had Kim Il Sung made all of Korea a totalitarian hellhole instead of half.

Most students don't vote at student union elections for some obvious reasons, many go to university to go to lectures and tutorials, not to spend time figuring out how to vote. Most students get little chance to really understand the candidates (it's a bit different from a general election!), and so many candidates are mediocrities that nobody can be bothered voting for.

Most students will see their vote not counting at all, because student unions are almost always run by leftwing activist types, so the student union is not seen as relevant to them.

David Farrar is dead right, Anne Tolley should be putting voluntary student union membership on the agenda (although she's never struck me as a supporter of individual freedom in the past). The primary opponents will be Labour and the Greens, both of whom treat student unions as training boot camps for future candidates, but it is ACT policy, and National might get some kudos from students by making student associations truly accountable.

It is about freedom, fundamentally.

Everyone is equal but?

Idiot Savant has said that it is a "fundamental principle that everyone is born equal and should be treated as such" in damning Kevin Rudd's opposition to gay marriage or civil unions.

I agree, the state should treat everyone equally, the state should be blind to race, sex and (NIOF*) sexual orientation.

However, he doesn't carry that view consistently.

He has called abolition of the Maori seats (without the "consent of Maori") racism, although Maori seats do not treat everyone equally by definition.

He supports government policies requiring the state and private sector to give preferential treatment to women in employment;

He supports government policies to spend more on Maori health proportionately than other citizens, because Maori do not “choose” unhealthy lifestyles

He damned Don Brash for promoting equality before the law saying “Brash is just the latest in a long tradition of beneficiaries of unequal status quos using egalitarian arguments to defend their advantages. But the sort of formal, legal equality that they espouse is about as useful as the formal, legal guarantees of human rights in the old Soviet constitution.”

So formal, legal equality is useless then. The state should treat individuals differently on the basis of race and sex. If you're born Maori, you have guaranteed political representation, but not if you're born gay, or become a Muslim, or are a libertarian. If you're born Maori, the state should spend more money on your healthcare, not because YOU'RE unhealthy, but because on average others like you are.

Are redheads more likely to suffer mental illness? Blondes more likely to catch STDs? Brunettes more likely to be hired to managerial positions? Maybe someone should investigate and get the state to interfere to "fix" this.

So treating everyone equally isn't much of a "fundamental principle" then is it?

* Non Initiation of Force. Rapists of adults and children are not entitled to equal treatment on the grounds of sexual orientation.

What's wrong with David Shearer?

I have read his article on "Outsourcing security" (thanks DPF) where he makes a strong case for allowing mercenaries to be contracted to protect civilians in the midst of a civil war, or governments seeking to terrorise a local population. He also wrote "outsourcing war" which continues on a similar vein

Imagine, for example, if such a group were placed to protect Tamils in Sri Lanka, or the people of Darfur? Indeed, what good they could do in protecting ships from Somali pirates!

The man seems to have character, indeed far more than any other Labour candidate, and dare I say most National candidates. John Key's cheap shot that "he wants to privatise the army" is nonsense, and unfair. He no more wants to privatise the army than National wants to privatise ACC.

David Farrar appears to be supporting the guy, quite right too, although is also publicising his pro-mercenary views more to "foment happy mischief" I suspect.

Of course Labour passed legislation banning New Zealand mercenaries, led by Phil Goff himself. The Greens, supported it (why let civilians defend themselves? war is bad no matter what).

National opposed the Bill, so I would have thought the right thing for National to do is support his candidacy, on one level anyway.

However, his views on many other topics are unknown, and so he can't be judged, good or bad, without knowing those. Being a member of the Labour Party of course, instantly raises some obvious suspicions, but I haven't heard any substantive reason to be against him yet.

If National opposes him, because he has a policy National implicitly supported in the past, then you have to wonder whether National regards politics to be just a game of point scoring, or is about principles? (Then again, isn't that question just tautological?)

The beginning of the end of the Progressives

With the announcement that the Progressives (which have long just been the Jim Anderton fan club for Labour supporters) are not standing in Mt Albert, how long before Jim Anderton retires, along with his party?

Clark gone.
Cullen gone.

Surely the man who was Deputy PM from 1999 to 2002, who brought Kiwibank, converted the Ministry of Commerce into the Ministry of handing out subsidies Economic Development, has nothing more to add?

What Dr Cullen's valedictory ignored

Dr Cullen’s valedictory speech is the cause of much fawning from the Labour side. The best that can be said for Dr Cullen is twofold:
- He is witty and entertaining (which of course would be fine if he hadn’t had his hands on your wallet);
- He kept his less intelligent colleagues away from totally destroying the national finances. In short, despite the mistakes he did make, he said “no” a lot.

“He cited tax reform, the creation of the Cullen Fund, and Working for Families as among Labour's major achievements.” On tax reform presumably he means GST. Labour certainly simplified and broadened the tax base, but it did mean people paid more tax.

However, the Cullen Fund is a very mixed achievement indeed. Yes it shows the government is better off investing taxpayers money rather than running a PAYGO pension, but it doesn’t address the fundamental unfairness of national superannuation. Everyone pays, to different degrees, but not everyone receives what they paid in, and more importantly some receive nothing because they died before they were eligible.

Working for Families extended welfare to the middle class. Instead of granting tax cuts, it targets credits and payments to people regardless of whether they earned the money in the first place. It expands the state’s role in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, who now must be grateful that the benevolent state is helping them gain a living – it would have been cheaper, simpler and fairer to grant tax cuts.

He responded to calls about NZ being a Nanny State saying “"New Zealand is, in fact, far less of a nanny state than it was in 1981 in terms of both social and economic freedoms.”

Well hold on Michael, was that you who did that? No it was mostly the previous Labour government and National government that followed it. It was Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson on economic freedoms, and personal freedoms? Well that depends on what you are talking about. Alcohol? Yes Smoking and drugs? No Homosexuality? Yes Censorship? No. The record is mixed, and the last Labour government did precious little to enhance freedom and a fair bit to erode it. Helen "the state is sovereign" Clark was no fan of individualism.

In the transport sector few know that Cullen essentially ran the show on the railways, and pushed for spending more on roads, largely because, with the exception of Pete Hodgson, the transport ministers were all fairly lowly ranked (Gosche was largely sidelined for example). Policy on Air NZ, railways, Auckland transport and highways funding was driven substantially by Dr Cullen. Having the purse strings means you can do that. Which of course brings me to his low points:

1. Refusing to allow Singapore Airlines to bail out Air New Zealand (by owning 49% of it), preferring to listen to Qantas which had a vested interest in kneecapping Air NZ as a competitor, and having the whole South Pacific aviation market to itself. Then “having to bail out Air NZ” when he need not have. His interference in what was then a privately owned company was palpably incompetent.

2. The ongoing fiasco over rail. Buying the Auckland rail network at 4 times its market value. Buying the national rail network for $1 and then not enforcing track access charges against the company granted monopoly access rights. Then paying 50% over the market price for “Kiwirail” when it knowingly would almost never make a return on capital. It has destroyed over $200 million of taxpayers' wealth, and counting. His own justifications, were a joke.

3. The waste of money in health. How there was next to no increase in productivity for an over 50% increase in health spending in real terms. Money down a black hole (which even he would privately admit).

4. The unnecessary “sin tax” of 39%, cutting in at the ridiculously low $60,000 which sent a signal that under Labour, successful people were to be penalised.

5. Letting the state sector grow, with little to see for it beyond more bureaucrats and policy wonks, and little improvement in advice. It soaked up hoards of mediocre university graduates in Wellington, bright eyed, bushy tailed and keen to do what they were told, without questioning the fundamental wisdom of any of it.

6. "We won you lost eat that" attitude shortly after the 1999 election when dealing with the business sector. Imagine the Nats doing that to the union movement.

So while most will miss the wit and humour of Cullen, I wont miss the fact he was Helen Clark's right hand man in taking from everyone, and being the great renationaliser when he need not have been. He expanded the welfare state, the commercial role of the state and frightened off a major foreign investor (Singapore Airlines) because of his own pig-headedness and attitude to some foreign investment. If the best that can be said is it could have been worse, it is a low threshold to cross for success.

Clark needed Cullen, he was the only person in the Labour caucus that business started to trust, and who was seen as a fairly safe pair of hands to deal with the economy (she certainly wasn't seen that way). Sadly, he squandered so much of the proceeds of surplus for more welfare, a bigger state sector and more spending on health and education, with very mixed results, that now in recession the country faces a huge deficit.

Bill English is stuck with having to the dirty work of cutting this bloated state sector down to size to deal to the deficit - that is Dr Cullen's true political legacy - growing the state so much in nine years that the Nats have to have courage to reverse his work - and you all know what Labour's reaction to that will be.