Tuesday 2 August 2005

Memo to Muriel:

ACT's Muriel Newman declared yesterday that "ACT’s once radical policies are now determining the future of New Zealand." You heard it there first, in Muriel's Weekly commentary. It must be true, because Muriel said so.

What I read there is a little, um, imaginative. Have a look yourself. Let's look at just one of her claims: "We were the first party to call for the scrapping of the Resource Management Act, which allows private property to be confiscated without compensation."

Word to Muriel: Not only has the ACT Party never had scrapping of the Resource Management Act as party policy -- more's the pity -- but there is only one party that has a policy to scrap the RMA, the Libertarianz, and -- as I know you know Muriel -- that has been Libz policy ever since the party's formation in 1996. (Here for example is Libz submission to Upton's RMA Inquiry back in 1999 . The ACT Party's submission then called for tinkering. Today they call for "gutting" but without any detail.)

Furthermore, even after Kelo, Muriel still thinks that confiscating private property with compensation is okay. Oh dear. It clearly takes her a while to learn her lessons.

File Muriel's column in the Fiction section of your archives.

No comments: