Thursday 5 January 2012

The Editor
Hokitika Guardian
　
Dear Editor

So Green Party Primary Production Spokesman Steffan Browning thinks the government’s controversial Food Bill, “should regulate bartering” (Hokitika Guardian 4 January). What absolute nonsense.

If bartering means anything it means simple, informal i.e. non-bureaucratised, exchanges. "Regulating" this will benefit only those seeking positions in the BBB (Blooming Bartering Bureaucracy) - and political parties such as the Greens whose original motivations for seeking political office have become submerged by the parliamentary desire to wave the big political stick at the public.

When I belonged to the N.Z. Green Party (we all make mistakes - but some of us learn from them) the party would have laughed at the notion of “regulating” something like bartering. Clearly, they have been too long in Parliament - and have been captured by that institution’s love of needlessly interfering in people’s lives. It reminds me of a definition of government I heard many years ago in England i.e. government is the process of finding out what people are doing - and stopping them doing it.

All the “assurances“ in the world about the Food Bill from politicians of whichever group seeking to grab a little power by clinging to National‘s coat-tails are meaningless. If the various fish-hooks in the Bill which are coming to light are not intended to be put into effect, why were they included in the first place? There may be some justification for a Food Bill but as usual those who manipulate these matters are obsessed with tying the public up in complex and freedom-restricting nonsense.

David Tranter
DSC Health Spokesman

Published: 05 January 2012