While I'm riffing on opposition strategy...

"Regulatory Standards Bill 2021 ... outlines how all new legislation and regulation — and after 10 years all existing legislation (excluding Treaty settlements) — should adhere to a specific set of libertarian principles."

#MelanieNelson, 2024

e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-an…

Can we *please* stop buying into the hard right lie that their philosophy and policy is in any way "libertarian"? It isn't, in any historical or meaningful sense of the term.

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The ‘dangerous’ bill flying under the radar | E-Tangata

“Individually or together, these two bills would entrench libertarian preferences in New Zealand’s constitutional framework. They would also obstruct the consideration of Te Tiriti in future lawmaking.” — Melanie Nelson.

^{Melanie Nelson (E-Tangata)}

ACT are "libertarian" like the Bolsheviks under Stalin were "communist". They pay lip service to the ideas to recruit people who believe in them as Useful Idiots, while pushing exactly the opposite in their policy.

We don't have a (visible) left-libertarian tradition in Aotearoa. So every new generation of intuitive libertarians are at risk of becoming child soldiers for ACT. To mitigate this, Greens/ TPM need to lean into the principled libertarian aspects of their philosophies.

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I'm not talking about paying lip service either, like ACT do. In the past, NZ Greens have stood up for all the basic civil liberties enshrined in BORA. Freedoms of expression and assembly, of the press and the net, and freedom from mass surveillance.

They also campaign against monopoly power (unlike ACT who make excuses for it), like overextension of copyright and patent monopolies. And for fair shakes for sustainable, workers-respecting small businesses, farmers, and rural communities.

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Yes, the Greens drifted down a technocratic and somewhat authoritarian path over the last decade. James Shaw is less responsible for this than opportunist scapegoating has claimed, it's been a whole party problem;

strypey.dreamwidth.org/6069.ht…

But I've posted recently about how the Tana affair seems to have woken them up to the entryist tail wagging the dog. I'm encouraged by Davidson's Right to Repair bill, and new MPs like Kahurangi Taylor and Benjamin Doyle;

peertube.nz/w/fTGp8RJt7XTdRprH…

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ATMmachine

2024-11-21 06:31:57

Benjamin Doyle Maiden Statement

Aotearoa New Zealand Green Party List MP Benjamin Doyle's Maiden Statement delivered to parliament Thursday 21st of November 2024.

As for Te Pāti Māori, part of NatACT First's influence campaigns strategy has been to smear them as heavy-handed authoritarians. Which is about as honest as Stalin smearing real communists, including anarchists, as 'enemies of the revolution'.

What TPM in its current form really represent is one of the most radically democratic forces in NZ political history. Which is how they were able to almost sweep the board in the Māori seats, and almost double their best party vote result (2008).

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TPM policy is all about decentralisation and self-governance. For all the peoples of Aotearoa, as promised in the wording of Te Tiriti, not just those of Māori heritage (another ACT smear).

The same rules that enable kura kaupapa also enable special character schools based on Waldorf education philosophy, or Montessori, or discovery learning. Without the need for Charter School models that reduce schools to for-profit businesses, with elite privileges over for-purpose schools.

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That said, like the Greens, TPM are all about liberating community-based businesses. From captured regulation, like Charter Schools, slanting every playing field towards the largest corporate players. Which is exactly what the Regulatory Standards Bill seeks to entrench, at everyone else's expense.

ACT has never and will never exist primarily to protect the civil liberties of all. Even when principled activists have managed to make it vote for them. Those people need to look elsewhere.

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If Labour can shake off their Rogernomics rump (which may or not require shaking off Hipkins), the Greens can finish shake off the People's Front of Judea technocracy, and Te Pāti Māori can continue to build deep and wide flaxroots governance - of all ethnicities - there's no reason they can't defeat NatACT First in 2026, if not before.

As I mentioned a few days ago, this year's local body elections are a chance to send some shots across the bows of the government's ship. Let's use it.

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