Category: Guest Posts
The movement for lower taxes is not an ideological exercise, or a way for the rich to make more money. It is a key tool in sparking the economy and helping us compete on the world stage.
Central to the issue of policy making is the fact that we do not influence the present, but we may influence the future. When determining policy objectives it is important, therefore, to consider not so much what is wrong now, but what may be unsatisfactory in the future. A focus on present circumstances may result in poor decisions.
It was Samuel Johnson who said; "poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult." Johnson, as he frequently does, gets to the heart of the matter. Virtue and freedom are necessary partners; one cannot exist without the other.
The article (Herald, Saturday September 2nd 2006) in which Detective Inspector Malcolm Johnston of Christchurch police advises that citizens who think they can take on a burglar should “have a go” is hopefully the first sign of a return to common sense by a police force increasingly struggling to contain serious crime. Recent claims from South Auckland community groups that police have lost the fight against crime in that part of our city gives this whole topic a degree of urgency.
I first met the Director of the Office of Proceedings for the Human Rights' Review Tribunal a year ago. Perhaps I should have realised from his title that his organisation would be highly bureaucratic and probably a vast waste of space, time, energy and tax-payers' dollars. The Human Rights' Commission offices on Queen Street in Auckland, where we met, were huge with panoramic views, but there was little, if anything, going on there. I had been advised to take my case on the basis of human rights, rather than employment, given that it involved sexism.
I’ve yet to hear one person suggest compulsory parenting courses at high school. I’ve yet to hear suggestions of imposing consequences on bad parents. The law of consequence – in other words, taking responsibility for our own actions – has left the lexicon. Well, where Maori are concerned it has. There’s always some professional excuse-monger who leaps up and blames “the system” or “government” or “Child, Youth Family” or “Western culture” on our every failing.
I never imagined how a country, socialist-orientated in so many ways, could administer quality education. Fortunately, when I got the chance to spend my final year of high school in Sweden , I was pleasantly surprised.
It is prudent to recognize the limitations of our knowledge and abilities. Such limitations, if accepted, should lead us to be cautious about significant intervention in people’s lives. Otherwise we run the danger of large, unforeseen and possibly very costly consequences. Moreover, we should not assess the influence of the Family Court by looking at individual cases alone
Governments over the past 15 – 20 years have predicated their drug policy on the one single approach of Harm Minimisation. What the community should ask is, if Harm Minimisation is working so well - why are we one of the highest drug-using nations in the world?
Economic theory does not necessarily tell us the proper size of government. Instead, economic theory tells us to examine costs and benefits in order to determine whether resources are allocated in a manner that increases or decreases economic growth.
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