Even Conservatively Speaking, Colin Craig is a Disappointment.

I think Craig is a moral conservative only, not remotely an economic or political conservative, and a vote for the Conservative Party will be a vote for even more authoritarian statism than under National. And that’s a disaster for those of us who believe in the small state, laissez faire, and are moral liberals, some of whom will be tempted to vote tactically for the Conservative Party. Plus it’s a devil’s choice for National as a coalition partner.

On last week’s NBR Ask Colin Craig (Conservative Party) Anything, I asked how his promise to forcibly purchase land from developers he deemed weren’t building fast enough reconciled with those two basic tenets of conservatism: sacrosanct property rights, and the small state. This was his reply:

Other reforms such as land zoning (free up existing land use restrictions) and RMA (exempt residential housing and improvements) need to happen first. Also Govt needs to lead by example and better utilise it's large land holdings.

If the above fails then writing to a few land bankers (not developers with relatively small holdings) is a valid step toward solving the housing crisis. Interesting to see the UK Conservatives have had to do similar.

I don't see this as a breach of Conservative principles, legislation does empower government intervention, I consider it a last resort but better to use it than have a dysfunctional market like we have now.

No. His conservatism, proper, ended at ‘If the above fails …’ I wrote the below retort, but sent it over the weekend, and with NBR’s nanny moderation policy, with no one working on Saturday, it either was lost in their barb wired, or … whatever:

Colin, you can scope legislation to have the Fortress of Legislation intervene and interfere  in any areas of our lives politicians want it to: doesn't make it right; worse, that is the problem with the Big State you should be standing against as an upholder of small state conservative principles. Further, markets become dysfunctional precisely when the government intervenes.

Untrammeled property rights should have been your line in the sand, but you're not even bringing it to the negotiating table.

Disappointed. You never had my vote because of your moral, illiberal conservationism, and the liberal in classical liberal is important to me,  though I realise you have made a statement that you were never trying to get the Libertarianz vote: it’s just that I don't see how you can get even the true conservative vote with this answer, other than those, of course, voting tactically.

I should have added to the above that land-banking is only made profitable by state regulation that limits the supply of land. The fact that Colin understands this in his answer, yet still threatens to impugn property rights, regardless, shows him as, already, another populist prepared to lose what should be the abiding principles of a conservative movement, for a vote. Although I've never understood the contradiction of a conservative movement that believes in the small state, yet will use that state to check an individual's rights on grounds of - bigoted - moral conservatism.

Worse have been Craig's successive appearances:

In a further NBR piece he excuses state ownership and thus sees a place for it.

On The Nation last weekend he reminded me he is an economic xenophobe, wanting regulation around foreign ownership (which means limiting foreign investment).

Then last night on Campbell Live the unforgivable that lost him the vote of Mrs H he almost certainly had: he wants to double alcohol excise tax. At the time we looked at each other over our wine bottle – the couple who drinks together, sits (within arms length of the bottle) together – and were in unison: ‘He’s a bloody prohibitionist.’

So yet another wowser, state bully enters the pantheon of New Zealand Big State politics. No party that believes in the small state believes it can tell me what to do with my body. Craig has shown he will not hesitate to have the state bully on property and civil rights from a developer’s land ownership, to my martini intake. Get between the Hubbards’ and a martini, you’re yesterday’s story, Colin.

Add his already infamous quotes against the gay community and equal marriage, I can guess where he stands on legalisation of cannabis (NO), legalise euthanasia (NO), freedom of the individual to do as they like so long as they harm no one (NO).

The fact that Craig came into politics on the back of the leaky buildings issue, probably tells free, voluntary society voters everything they needed to know about him: for Craig, the state is the answer, not the problem. And that’s the problem with every party likely to make it back into the Fortress of Legislation 2014.

I think Craig is a moral conservative only, not remotely an economic or political conservative, and a vote for the Conservative Party will be a vote for even more authoritarian statism than under National. And that’s a disaster for those of us who believe in the small state, laissez faire, and are moral liberals, some of whom will be tempted to vote tactically for the Conservative Party. Plus it’s a devil’s choice for National as a coalition partner.

I continue giving my vote to Libertarianz, the only political party in New Zealand that will deliver unfettered, un-muddied property rights, and that will not compromise its principles for the evil that is pragmatism. I realise that society it traveling the opposite direction to the voluntary society, although perhaps from Liam Dann’s final tweet below, there is just this tiny squidgeon of hope:

Seems to highlight the difference and general confusion between fiscal/economic conservative and cultural conservative.
— Liam Dann (@liamdann) November 15, 2013

@liamdann There is only Conservatism. Not two kinds. One cannot be Conservative and believe in Progressive cultural issues.
— Redbaiter NZ (@Redbaiternz) November 15, 2013

@Redbaiternz who says. I can have a different position on every different issue if i want. And I can change it with my mood.
— Liam Dann (@liamdann) November 15, 2013

@liamdann Hence my point earlier @Redbaiternz I want property rights, small state, laissez faire, but don't want conservative illiberalism.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 15, 2013

@MarkHubbard33 @Redbaiternz I think plenty of people agree and are poorly represented by NZ politics right now.
— Liam Dann (@liamdann) November 15, 2013

Centre Politics: The Economics of Destruction. (Conservative Party V. Libertarianz)

Actually, over time it's always the economics of slavery, but if I use that word in the title, centre voters turn off, thinking me a writer of extremes which don’t concern their lives. Warning, there are extremes in this post, but they don’t come from me: they come from the debt figures produced by centre left and centre right governments, which hold complete power in New Zealand. The numbers are in my below comment to a thread on Whaleoil: my comment first, with context to follow:

I suspect some few of the Whale Army vote National. When National came in 2008 government debt was $10,258 billion. As of September just gone, that debt stands at $60,015 billion.

With the Christchurch earthquake costed in this government continues to borrow $27 million per day. That's per day; to fund government operations that make up over 44% of the entire economic activity in the country. And National is the party of small government ... yeah right.

Look at this fact from a different perspective. The government is borrowing $27 million a day for a country with only just over 4 million population, which we have to repay, with interest ... how's that going to work out?

Worse, a good fact from @RedBaiternz on Twitter, we have only just over 2 million taxpayers having to fund future annual budgets of $70 billion ... how's that going to work out?

Let's burrow - not borrow - down deeper. We know that the top 12% of taxpayers fund over 75% of the net tax take. Ignoring for now company, trustee income tax and indirect taxation that means about 250,000 people only are having to fund into the future some large part of $70 billion annual budgets, including debt servicing, so far, on $60 billion and growing.

Whale would call reasoned classical liberals such as Libertarianz the 'extreme fringe': no, the extremities are in the above numbers. The only way you fund that debt long term is increasing taxation -  I suggest markedly - and forcibly enforcing the continuing destruction of property rights, and personal civil rights, given the first thing the tax surveillance state must do to ensure the tax-take, is take away your privacy, while granting itself access to your property, starting with your income.

In fact, the only sane option 2014 is a vote for Libertarianz. Ironic most of the Whale army will be voting for the bigger and bigger nanny state, which is quickly become mathematically impossible, as the US and many countries in Europe are finding.

The context of this thread is interesting. It was Whale’s analysis of Rodney Hide’s NBR piece about how Colin Craig, leader of New Zealand’s fledgling Conservative Party, in an interview given some weeks before where he had stated his party would forcibly purchase (take) developers’ land from them if they didn’t build on it within a short time-frame suiting the politicians, thus destroyed the central premise of Conservatism, namely, sacrosanct property rights.

One of the first comments to that thread reasonably asked:

Wow i missed him saying that. So there is still no party in New Zealand that believes in Private Property Rights.

I replied that Libertarianz Party was founded wholly and unalterably on property rights. Of course Whale responded with his predictable scorn of the pragmatist, the type of pragmatist voting that has produced the figures in my final comment above:

Yeah, the libertarians...too pure to achieve anything, the happy hand clappers of nz politics

My reply to that stands on its own:

That's a meaningless response, Whale. Libertarianz are the only party left representing Western classical liberal values: the free society. If we changed any of the tenets of belief, as you suggest, then we become just another party representing nothing.

If people want to vote for a party that wholly respects property rights, there is only the one. I was simply answering a question.

In next year’s election, that truly is the voter choice: if you believe in property rights, then Libertarianz is your only option, if not, then vote for any other party, and help grow, at varying speeds, the mathematical impossibility of centre opportunistic fiat moneyed politics - read future tax indentured slavery of your children and grandchildren. And there’s a logical reason for how such politick destroys us; my most oft used quotation from Daniel Horowitz:

“We must understand that there is an imbalance of power in the political system of any democracy in that the forces of statism have an innate advantage over the defenders of freedom. It takes but one legislative or administrative victory for statism to succeed in guiding society on an indelible path towards dependency. We cannot perpetuate the free-market, but we can perpetuate statism by creating inveterate dependency constituencies. Statism enjoys the inherent advantage of self-perpetuation through its own pernicious activities that engender a continued need for the government programs.”