Legislating For Liberty.

Revolutionary Intentions: The Regulatory Standards Bill sounds like one of those pieces of legislation debated on a dreary Thursday afternoon in an almost empty House of Representatives - it is anything but.

FOR A BILL set to transform New Zealand into a libertarian nightmare, it has an extremely boring name. The Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) sounds like one of those pieces of legislation debated on a dreary Thursday afternoon in an almost empty House of Representatives. Not because anyone in particular wants it, but because those whose job it is to monitor the efficacy or otherwise of government regulations declares it to be necessary.

MPs protesting to their respective Party Whips that they know absolutely nothing about this sort of bill’s content, are told that participation in such debates is good for them. Speaking for ten minutes about something one knows absolutely nothing about is key political skill. Without it, no politician should expect to do more than shepherd boring bills through a nearly empty House for the rest of their (short) political career.

The RSB may sound like one of those bills, it is anything but. According to one critic, the Bill will “neuter the ability of lawmakers to consider anything outside of individual liberty and property rights”.

That this proposed piece of alleged legislative dynamite is the product of the Act Party is entirely unsurprising. David Seymour and his caucus are the most disciplined band of ideologically-driven politicians in our Parliament. Liberty and Property are their twin lodestars, and by them they navigate the choppy seas of New Zealand’s resolutely non-ideological politics.

Knowing exactly where they want to go has made it much easier for Act to determine, often with alarming and near-revolutionary clarity, what they ought to do. Boiled down to its essence, Act’s political mission is captured in the French expression laissez-faire – loosely translated as “let them do it”.

If the actions of individuals cause no harm to others – let them do it.

If those actions involve only their own property – let them do it.

Contrariwise, if some individuals seek to compel other individuals for any reason other than preventing them from causing harm to others, then don’t let them do it. And if that compulsion involves regulating the use of other individuals’ private property, then definitely don’t let them do it!

Understandably, socialists are not (and never have been) great fans of laissez-faire. The collective welfare is (or used to be) their lodestar. Individuals determined to put themselves, and their property, ahead of measures designed to serve the common good should not be allowed to do it.

Obviously, a great deal rests on how “harm” is defined.

If your dairy farm is polluting the streams and rivers that others are accustomed to fishing and swimming in, does that constitute harm? And, if it does, then, surely, the state is entitled to regulate your farming practices? That is to say, restrict the ways in which you can legally use your private property.

Alternatively, if a friend undertakes to sell you a few grams of cannabis, what business is it of the state’s? Why should smoking weed, which most medical scientists have determined to be essentially harmless, be punishable by law? Why shouldn’t individuals, if they’re old enough to assess and accept the consequences of using cannabis, and it causes others no harm, be allowed to do it?

If pressed, Act will always put the liberty of individual New Zealanders and the sanctity of their private property, well ahead of the nation’s collective welfare. With National and NZ First’s backing, Act’s leader hopes to enshrine his party’s guiding principles in the RSB.

If it becomes law, then all regulatory legislation will be weighed carefully by an appointed board against the claims of Liberty and Property. And, if Parliament, in its wisdom, elects to override the Board’s advice, then, as is already the case with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, it will be required to do so in the basilisk glare of public scrutiny.

Naturally, environmental groups, iwi, trade unionists and the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of NGO-land regard the RSB with horror and dismay. They no doubt believed that, having been soundly defeated several times already, such libertarian legislative forays were things of the past.

The Left, generally, is flabbergasted and outraged that the Coalition remains committed to the RSB’s passage. And, boy, are they making a fuss. To hear them talk, the Bill might have been co-sponsored by Sauron and Voldemort.

But, don’t be alarmed. One parliament cannot bind another. If the RSB looks like transforming Aotearoa-New Zealand into Mordor, then the next government can simply repeal it.

A version of this essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 6 June 2025.

In Praise Of Individualism.

Me, Myself, Eye: The great irony of individualism is that the nearer humanity comes to the point where every person can make their own life, the more doubtful many intellectuals become of its merit. But, before embracing the moral oblivion of collective identity; and the strictures of tribal tradition, they should ask themselves this question: How long could I be happy in a house without windows, doors … or mirrors?

SURELY, the greatest creation of human civilisation is the human individual. To own one’s own life, freed from the unyielding obligations of family, tribe and nation, is a relatively new human experience. For most of human history, human experience has been overwhelmingly collective. For millennia, tradition has dictated practically every aspect of our lives. Our ways were expected to be the ways of our ancestors – and, if they weren’t, then the people who mattered would want to know why.

The people who mattered: emperors, kings, warlords, popes; they were the only people who could aspire to the luxury of individualism. Their power and their wealth provided them with the mental and physical space to conceive of themselves as unique beings in time. Beings whose features, words and deeds could live on long after they were dead.

The words of the mythical Irish hero, Cuchulainn, sum up the proposition neatly: “I care not if I live but a night and a day, so long as my deeds live after me.”

What was it, then, that allowed ordinary people to find the space and time to conceive of themselves as something more than someone’s son or daughter, a member of a tribe, the subject of a king? The answer is, of course, the city. From the earliest times, cities have served as the crucibles of individualism. They are also the birthplaces of the essential quality that makes selfhood possible: liberty.

Not by accident did the Middle Ages produce the saying: “City air makes you free.” If a serf was able to evade his obligations to his feudal lord by living within the boundaries of a town or city for a year and a day, then he was declared a free man. That freedom to make of oneself what one pleases is crucial. It is difficult to be an individual in chains.

Cities are also – and not surprisingly – the birthplaces of democracy. The sheer diversity that existed within a city’s walls: the vast number of tradespeople and specialists who lived there; and the markets which these successful individuals created, regulated and supplied; all were allergic to tyranny. It is difficult to make money with someone looking over your shoulder.

Indeed, economic historian, Jeremy Black, pondering why it was Great Britain rather than the larger and more prosperous France that kicked off the Industrial Revolution, contrasts the less centralised and more liberal government of the British Isles with the highly centralised and bureaucratic regime of the absolute Bourbon monarchs. To get a good idea financed and a working prototype designed and built in Great Britain was a matter of months, in France it could take years.

Capitalism, itself, represents the apotheosis of individualism. One has only to contemplate the extraordinarily eloquent photograph of the Victorian engineer, entrepreneur, and all-round industrial titan, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to grasp the why and how of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerburg.

The individual as world-shaper: Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

But, the freedom to make a good idea pay must be buttressed by a great many other freedoms. The individual must be free to think, to speak, to write, and to publish her thoughts. She must be free to come together with like-minded individuals in pursuit of a common purpose. Most crucially, she must be free to participate in the making of the laws by which her life is both protected and constrained, and be confident that those laws will be applied, and enforced, without fear or favour – to everyone.

Cities, liberty, capitalism, liberal democracy, the Rule of Law: all of these have played a part in the emergence of the individual. Indeed, the history of the last three centuries has been the history of individualism’s relentless demographic expansion: from the rulers’ dreams of immortality; to the craftspeople and merchants who turned muck into brass; to the industrial workers who demanded, with unrelenting energy, a fair share of the wealth their own blood, toil, tears and sweat was creating.

The great irony of individualism is that the nearer humanity comes to the point where every person can make their own life, the more doubtful many intellectuals become of its merit. But, before embracing the moral oblivion of collective identity; and the strictures of tribal tradition, they should ask themselves this question:

How long could I be happy in a house without windows, doors … or mirrors?

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 6 January 2023.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Some Thoughts On The Political Trinity

And The Greatest Of These Is Liberty: As Eugene Delacroix (he's the one holding the musket) graphically illustrated in his famous 1830 painting Liberty Leading The People, the prime mover of all great revolutionary struggles is humanity's determination to be free.

IF IT HAS DONE NOTHING ELSE, the Charlie Hebdo tragedy has reacquainted us with the goals of the first great revolution of the modern era. Over the past painful fortnight the French people and their political representatives have repeatedly invoked the three founding principles of the French Republic: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. There is no disputing the revolutionary potential of these principles. Individually and collectively, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity define the modern democratic project. Since 1789, every major revolutionary episode has drawn inspiration from at least one of them.

 

It is no accident that the French revolutionary credo is presented as a trinity. Hostile though the French revolutionaries undoubtedly were to the claims of organised religion, they also understood that the French state occupied a special place in the heart of the Catholic Church. This was because the Catholic Church had for centuries occupied a special place in the hearts of the French people. If Church and State were to be separated, as the Enlightenment values of the revolutionaries dictated, then the sacred trio of Father, Son and Holy Spirit would have to be replaced with an equally compelling trinity.

 

The correspondences between the Christian and the revolutionary trinity are interesting.

 

If it is true that “in the beginning” was God the Father, “the maker of Heaven and Earth”, then it is also true that Liberty – Freedom – lies at the very heart, and is the prime mover, of all truly revolutionary movements. Without freedom, all the other revolutionary goals are soon compromised. Indeed, it is precisely the restriction of freedom that allows inequality to flourish and renders human solidarity impractical.

 

But, if Liberty is the first demand of the revolutionary, that is only because the injustices of inequality are so many and so urgent that they cry out for the freedom necessary to address them. Equality thus plays the role of Jesus in the Christian trinity. Theologically speaking, although God precedes Jesus, Jesus is also God – or at least that much of Him as can be rendered intelligible to human-beings. Philosophically speaking, Equality cannot exist without Liberty, and yet it is also the state-of-being for which Liberty is constantly sacrificing itself.

 

Hence the need for Fraternity – the revolutionaries’ answer to the Christians’ Holy Spirit. Without the solidarity and empathy so crucial to fraternity’s historical expression, Liberty and Equality can very easily become empty, potentially contradictory – even deadly – political objectives.

 

The French Revolution itself bears witness to the consequences of abandoning Liberty in the name of Equality. Robespierre’s “Reign of Terror” was intended to coerce the French people into virtue. A surfeit of Liberty, according to Robespierre, had placed the egalitarian fatherland in mortal danger. Accordingly, the newly ratified Rights of Man and of the Citizen were suspended, pending the final destruction of the ancien regime and its aristocratic supporters. Fraternity, not surprisingly, was the first to feel the embrace of Madame Guillotine.

 

The destruction of Fraternity is, therefore, incontrovertible evidence that the revolution is in the process of being, or already has been, betrayed. Just as the concept of Holy Spirit acts as a sort of miraculous glue – binding together God, Jesus and the faithful in an ineffably mysterious unity – so, too, does the principle of Fraternity serve to keep the people’s eyes on the revolutionary prize. One has only to be reminded of Stalin’s order to “eliminate the Kulaks as a class”, or recall Pol Pot’s genocidal determination to empty Cambodia of every human-being who was not a peasant or a party worker, to understand what happens when solidarity and basic human empathy are branded “counter-revolutionary” sentiments.

 

Madame Roland, the French revolutionary leader whose moderation earned her the enmity of Robespierre's Jacobins, and whose own faction, the Girondins, were duly purged as soon as the Jacobins gained political ascendancy, is best remembered for her words addressed to the statue of Liberty in the Place de la Revolution as she awaited execution: “Oh Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!”
 



Madame Roland: "Oh Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!"
 

But Madame Roland was wrong. It is not Liberty that inspires political extremism, but a perilous ambition to reduce all the dazzling diversity of the human family to a dull and ominously silent uniformity. As if Equality was a purely mathematical concept meaning sameness, instead of a political ideal describing the social condition of human-beings who are free to create rich and productive lives for themselves and their families while protected from chance and adversity by the collective love and support of their fellow citizens.

 

A Left that does not proclaim Liberty as its primary objective; a Socialism that is not of its essence emancipatory and libertarian; a Labour Party not proudly committed to helping their fellow citizens’ pursue happiness; none of these has a future – and, frankly, does not deserve one.

 

In a Christian’s life, St Paul told the Corinthians, only three things truly matter: Faith, Hope and Love – and the greatest of these is Love. When it comes to political salvation, however, the only three things that truly matter are Liberty, Equality and Fraternity – and the greatest of these is Liberty. We must never forget, however, that Liberty, like God, comes as part of a package deal.

 

Being free on your own is the best definition of Hell I can think of.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 19 January 2015.