26 years ago the Parliament in New Zealand enacted the grand sounding "New Zealand Bill Of Rights Act".
The new law contained all manner of wonderful provisions -
the right to life, not to be subjected to torture, no medical experimentation, freedom to vote, freedom of thought and opinion, religion, peaceful assembly, movement, discrimination, unreasonable search and seizure, right to liberty, natural justice, double jeopardy.
All good stuff and many of us, in our naivety, were under the impression this would guarantee various rights and protections to the people of New Zealand - (yes, yes I know ...) - and quickly found it was the usual con trick.
What the politicians had done was to slip in Section 4 which reads:
No court shall, in relation to any enactment (whether passed or made before or after the commencement of this Bill of Rights),—
(a) hold any provision of the enactment to be impliedly repealed or revoked, or to be in any way invalid or ineffective; or
(b) decline to apply any provision of the enactment—
by reason only that the provision is inconsistent with any provision of this Bill of Rights.
In other words - the rights don't actually exist, but are arbitrarily dished out on a case by case basis depending upon who you are and how much you are disliked by cops, or left wing activists, or whomever.
For instance, if the fellow who hated you the most at High school joined the Police he could arrest you (for jaywalking), stick you in a cell, torture you, and not only could nobody stop him - but it would be up to you to prove to a Court you had a right not to be so treated. Chilling isn't it?
I had long argued in the Libertarianz that 80% of our work would be done if Section 4 was repealed; a simple matter which would take all of about 5 minutes of Parliament's time.
Along comes 2014 and the dissolving of the Libz, lots of people - who should have known better - rushed off to support the ACT party: the Association of Compulsion Touters.
There may have been some merit in doing so except for two tiny weeny, itsy bitsy things.....
1. The Association of Compulsion Touters has a policy of specifically banning personal liberties.
2. The ex-Libz were too lazy to bother reading it to notice (see what I mean when I keep harping on about 'unthinking' people?)
The ACT website specifically singles out the Bill of Rights (curiously, the only political party which took the trouble to do so in 2014), and specifically says the following -
"ACT does not support making the current New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA) supreme law..." - (ie: repealing section 4 would have that effect)
Not only are they the only political party in history who want to ban freedom if given the opportunity, but have managed a con artist trick of Petricevich or Madoff proportions to convince everybody they are libertarians - (like some stupid bloody Yank buying London Bridge! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!)
DUH!