Tariana Turia's Legacy

Smoke Free New Zealand by 2025

We have written numerous times about the idiocy of the NZ government declaring that New Zealand will be ciggie free by 2025.  The mechanism to bring this about is steep increases in the price of the deadly evil every year until they will become more expensive than a pot of gold. 

The Force behind this utopian dream was the Maori Party, and in particular its uber-mothering leader, Tariana Turia.  Columnist Barry Soper writes:

The Māori Party will have done a lot of reflection as to why it's no longer in politics. The answer's pretty obvious, they didn't represent the wishes of their people even though they felt they had their best interests at heart.

Their former co leader Tariana Turia, a fierce advocate for all things Maori, wanted better health for her people and one of the best ways to do that she believed was to stop them from smoking, setting silly target of a smoke free New Zealand by 2025.  As the target became more elusive, Turia wanted to ban tobacco products, to make them illegal. When that failed they began pricing them off the market.

Nanny Bloomberg Unmasked

The Witch Who Eats Children

Nanny Bloomberg, when he was mayor of  New York, was always hectoring folk to make them healthy, wealthy and wise.  Nanny passed lots of laws banning things like sugar--all in the effort to prevent people from living in ways that Nanny did not approve.  "It was for their own good," he said, as he departed for fresh pastures and campaigns.

Most New Yorkers, who love the Nanny State, thought that Bloomie was an all-round good guy.  He cared, that's why he passed all these laws telling us when to eat and drink and what profile our noses should assume as we breath the no-longer-free air.  He loves us. 

Except that now Nanny Bloomberg's mask has been stripped off.  He is exposed as an evil witch who kills and eats children.  Eric Garner was choked to death by the New York police whilst being arrested.  For what was he arrested, you ask?  For breaking one of Nanny Bloomberg's laws.  He was selling cigarettes on the street, free of Bloomberg's onerous, prohibitive taxes.  He was a criminal, said the police.  He had a record.  He had been arrested previously 31 times.  For what?  Murder?  Rape? Theft?  No.  He had been arrested 31 times for selling "illegal" cigarettes.  For that he deserved to die. 

you will never see fascism like a liberal trying to collect taxes.

May we suggest that instead of a criminal, Mr Garner was--in some senses--a patriot.  Here is Douglas Wilson's take on the matter:

Public Spirit Levels

A Good Start

There is a certain cast of person who believes he or she are called to hector everyone else about what is good for them.  They are lifelong professional nannies.  A previous generation would have called them "busybodies".  They operate within the realms of certitude so infallible they do not hesitate to advocate what is good for everyone else.  They harangue legislators, bureaucrats, regulators, the media--anyone that will listen.  Their dedication and passion are compelling.

Some examples spring to mind--drawn from just today's newspapers.  First up is the anti-tobacco crusaders.  Now the "big thing" that would deter everyone from smoking tobacco and which would make New Zealand smoke free by 2025 or whenever was plain packaging of tobacco.  No brand recognition.  No advertising allowed.  Except it appears to makes little impact on actual smoking rates.  And, in any event, smokers--as a class are not that bad.  They actually benefit the public purse.  They are more likely to die from various diseases at earlier ages, thereby reducing their fiscal drain upon government health and welfare spending. So the fiscal gnomes in Treasury are reportedly, oh-so-quietly, advocating increasing smoking rates as a way to reduce government spending increases over the next fifty years. 

So, say the professional nannies, we need to do more to stub our smoking.  What now?  How about a legally enforced change in the colour of ciggies.  Well knock me over with a puff of smoke.  Why didn't we think of that earlier?  If plain packaging won't work, coloured smokes will.  Why?  Well, they can be coloured in unattractive hues.  This, from the NZ Herald:

Foolish Politicians, Nannies and Wowsers

Prohibition Redux

The old adage from George Santayana runs, those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  A corollary is the proverb, a hundred blows on the back of a fool make no impression (Proverbs 17:10), but a word to the wise is sufficient. 

History has illustrated and taught repeatedly that when the state overreaches to ban or criminalise something as contraband (all for our own good, of course), criminals get richer and stronger.  It happens every time.  When governments overreach to ban tobacco and cigarettes, or tax them out of existence, it becomes, in the words of Yogi Berra, deja vu all over again. 

This, from Breitbart London:

Going Viral

Response That Tells a Story

We posted a piece recently about the perverse effects of protecting children from being children.  It specifically focused upon what has happened in a school where "health and safety" rules were abolished in the playground.  The effects have been salutary and very positive.  The post was entitled Unintended Perverse Effects.

Once the story became public, the school principal has been inundated with requests for information and general interest.  This, as reported in Stuff:

An Auckland principal who bravely ditched the playground rulebook has been overwhelmed by the positive international response to his story.  The phone has been buzzing with calls and interview requests from around the world for Swanson Primary School principal Bruce McLachlan.  "It's been a busy week, I didn't expect it. It's the reaction against the cotton-woolling of kids, helicopter parenting and nanny states."

It's gone viral--showing that there is unease at the grassroots over the state's nannying propensities in the vain attempt to protect people from themselves and to make the world one without risk, threat, or injury.

Unintended, Perverse Effects

 The Paradox of Cotton Wool

The pejorative term "nannying" has achieved widespread usage in the last twenty-five years.  Surprisingly, it just happens to co-incide with the rise of the ubiquitous state and its endless "health and safety" rules.  The more the state has sought to micro-legislate and regulate our lives, the more cynical and bitter its ungrateful subjects have become.

Probably in New Zealand the nadir was reached when the infamously nannying government led by "Auntie Helen" was proposing to regulate the length of showers in the nation.  Why?  To combat the terrible, dreadful, looming threat of global warming, you plebian numbskulls.  Don't you know what's good for you. Fortunately, the people achieved a moment of rare sanity and unceremoniously voted Auntie Helen out.

There are many drivers of this malignant nannying disease in the body politic.

Letter From America (About Ignorant, Desperate Politicians)

Spare Us

Forbidding cell phones and other electronic devices on aircraft has been a major irritant to air travellers.  Now commercial aviation is on the cusp of removing those restrictions.  Ah.  Not so fast.  Some overreaching, nannying ignorant politicians in the United States are opposing the nullification of the no-cell phone regulations, originally put in place for reasons of safety. 

Since technology has now moved on to where cell phone use does not pose any risk to commercial aircraft, on what grounds might the cancellation of such regulations be opposed?  We are glad you asked.  Something momentous to be sure.  This from The Hill:

Letter From NZ (About Addicts and Coroners)

Taking Responsibility

Several weeks ago, around Christmas we chastised Sir Bob Jones, a columnist in the NZ Herald for his less-than-salutary take upon compensation for David Bain.. Yesterday, however, Sir Bob redeemed himself with a stirling piece on molly-coddling, nannying, addictions, and coroners.

Here to Help

Jabba the Hut Gives us Nightmares

Ronald Reagan famously quipped that the most dangerous sentence in the English language was, "We're from the government and we're here to help."  Authoritarian rulers who believe they know what is in your best interests (better than you do) and who have pompously convinced themselves that they are kindly, considerate, and thoughtful--that is, they have noble motives--are the most dangerous of all.  After all Judas believed he was doing his people a great service, having their best interests at heart, when he betrayed our Lord for thirty pieces of silver.  In reality, he had fallen under the control of the Devil (Luke 22:3). 

Consequently, since the price of liberty is perpetual vigilance, we have to scrutinise very closely "well-meaning" governments.  The more well-meaning they are, the more dangerous they become.  At the very least it evidences a mode of thinking which considers citizens to be infantile children.  Such arrogance is both demeaning and minatory.

New Zealand's privacy laws are an example.  Conceived by civil righters and faceless bureaucrats and NGO-bureaucrats, privacy has become a classic example of the genre of authorities knowing what is best for you even if you don't.

Long Live the Nanny

 Breast Feeding Pharisaism

When people deny the righteousness of God they don't necessarily descend into rampant licentiousness.  What they more often do is substitute their own rules and regulations and claim divine prerogatives for them.  They want their rules to be elevated to the state of infallibility and inerrancy.  A new Pharisaism emerges.  Welcome to the wonderful world of the nanny state.  

Here is an example of the type.  Breast feeding is morally pure.  Bottle feeding is evil.  According to Stuff one mother, Jess Schulz who had trouble breast feeding and whose baby was losing weight eventually went to bottle feeding. 

While family supported her decision to bottle-feed, some strangers were not so accepting. One woman told her “if you can't feed your child you shouldn't breed”, while another called formula "evil".

Right.  So let's just let this baby starve while we have a tubal ligation to prevent any further moral monstrosities, shall we?

About Right . . .

Disclosure Better Than Nannying Protections Every Time

New Zealanders are a nation of gullible suckers. When it comes to matters of commerce they are far too trusting. We believe the most influential cause of this malaise is our ever-growing reliance upon government. Successive governments, at the insistence of the populace, have established codes, rules, regulation, protections ad nauseam for almost all commercial exchanges and contracts. We love our government to nanny us and cocoon us. In New Zealand, government is our idol god.

An unfortunate upshot is that we become far too trusting because we believe in the power and efficacy of government as our protector and provider. The casual "she'll be right" attitude betrays a carelessness burgeoned by a totally misplaced faith in the government's ability and power to take care of us. Most have never heard of the adage caveat emptor; those who have do not know what it means or regard it as obsolete or redundant.

Nine times out of ten the government's nannying intrusions perversely increase the risks. Take the matter of leaky homes--a financial disaster for thousands of New Zealanders. During the nineties and noughties, New Zealanders insouciantly bought leaky homes with reckless abandon. Basically they trusted the builders, and the certifying local councils, and the Building Code. The latter two were institutions of government nannying.

The government had allowed changes to the Building Code for a variety of reasons. Some of them arose from Greenist pressure groups who pushed successfully for the elimination of arsenic treated framing timber. A "green" alternative was mandated--which unfortunately rotted. Other changes were the result of building pressure groups pushing for more trendy fashions in housing, allowing rain to be driven up under eaves and gutters into walls. The great problem with governments is that nannying is shaped by vested interests pressuring politicians who, in turn, always have an eye upon electoral popularity.

Then there were the local body building inspections which allowed corners to be cut. More residential development means more taxation income to fund the ceaseless voracity of local body spending commitments and lusts.

The punters bought shonky houses without for a moment doubting the weather-tightness of their new houses. After all, they were the proud possessors of a local body certificate of fitness.

When it all turned to custard the officials and government agencies all denied any wrongdoing or responsibility. The builders had long gone, or were quickly going to escape liability. Because the calamity was dispersed throughout the country, rather than a focused location of destruction, government was not moved to do much about it.Yet the costs are estimated to be far greater than restoring quake smitten Christchurch. 

But the faith of our countrymen in the omni-competence of the state and its nannying is not easily shaken. As a result of the leaky homes disaster, a new layer of government protections, provisions, rules, and controls were promulgated.

Does the government have a role in such matters? Of course. But only as it touches the interests of justice. Breach of contract is a form of theft. The government has a duty to require that commercial obligations and responsibilities are met. But the obligations and responsibilities are those mutually agreed between the contracting parties, not those imposed by state nannying.

Were the government to restrict its policing and adjudication to contract enforcement one immediate outcome would be that New Zealanders would become a whole lot less gullible very quickly. Buyers would be far more prone to asking much harder questions and would get more substantial answers.

In recent days we may have seen a small step in a better direction--although you would not think so, given the media's squawking headlines. Under the heading "Home-owners protection plan axed", the NZ Herald documented an apparent decision (later denied) by the government to drop a compulsory builder's guarantee on homes.

Plans for a compulsory builders' guarantee for quality of work have been ditched from legislation drawn up after the multi-billion dollar leaky building scandal. The warranty was among new consumer support measures proposed in a review of the Building Act last year and expected to be considered by Parliament this year.

But there is no sign of it in the Building Amendment No 3 Bill, which is now before a parliamentary select committee.

The Master Builder's Federation has it right, we believe:

But the Registered Master Builders Federation is pushing an alternative to a mandatory guarantee. Federation chief executive Warwick Quinn said insurance companies in a compulsory scheme in New South Wales collapsed, resulting in the state government being forced to manage and underwrite it.

The federation said that instead of being forced to offer a guarantee, a builder should be required to disclose whether he had the financial backing to offer a guarantee, and on what terms and conditions. "This lets the consumer choose whether to take up a home warranty or not.

"Many home owners do not want a warranty because it is not a high-risk project and they are not interested in paying for it."

Mandatory disclosure is in principle a much better regime than mandated nannying protections. It is consistent with the buyer having a duty and responsibility to do his homework, and respects his rights to be a risk-taker.

The most unregulated market in New Zealand is the on-line TradeMe auction house. Yet quickly it has developed its own conventions for protecting the interests of both buyers and sellers. It illustrates how, when left to their own devices and resources, people quickly become savvy grown-ups. But when the state becomes nanny at our behest, we quickly revert to being children.