New Zealand was once a liberal democracy

Today it is neither and marching towards authoritarian socialism

New Zealand has made it clear it will be illegal for its citizens to purchase cigarettes after a transition period, so that people under the age of fifteen years will never be able to buy cigarettes in the country. This article will unpack the shifting tides of New Zealand politics. It is not a pretty picture.

To set the stage, in 2017 New Zealand was ranked the country with the most freedom in the world¹. Canada ranked fourth and the United States (“Home of the Free”?) didn’t make the top 10. Our views of liberal democracy and freedom need some updating since our childhood beliefs have faded into history and the trend is troubling.

Over time, left wing governments in New Zealand, the United States and Canada (to name three) have become enamored with the concept that the state knows what is best for its citizens and the citizenry needs to be ordered to line up with the state’s concept. Typically, the state’s view is the mandated behaviours are needed to “save lives”.

It is more than a bit silly, since other than taxes death is the only certainty we face as human beings. In our lives, the question of how much happiness to sacrified for safety is a personal choice in truly free societies, and the state’s intervention only called for when our happiness comes at the expense of others safety. There are good reasons for laws against drunk driving, for example. The case for an outright ban on smoking is not that strong. Sure, there are arguments that “second hand smoke” can cause health issues for third parties, but so can driving cars. It is specious to argue that second hand tobacco smoke is more dangerous to others than the carbon monoxide emitted from car exhausts. The question is how harmful, and smoking is simply a lot less harmless to those who don’t smoke than vehicles are to those who live in cities. The world health organization (WHO) sets 9 ppm of carbon monoxide as the maximum safe level and car exhaust frequently (during rush hour) raises the ambient level of carbon monoxide in cities to over 30 ppm, but for short period. Rush hour lasts a lot longer than a cigarette.

The lifetime ban on cigarettes for people now under fifteen is imposed on them before they can even vote. Arden’s edicts aren’t limited to tobacco. She now wants to suppress free speech. There are no good reasons to suppress free speech or open and frank debate, which have been cornerstones of liberal democracy for centuries.

Since Arden was elected and became Prime Minister, things have turned sinister. Arden says Government is “your single source of the truth”. Writing as George Orwell in 1949 in his famous book “1984”, Eric Arthur Blair saw this coming and now it is here in New Zealand.

For many people, particularly our parents generation, a smoke was a welcome escape from the pressures of two world wars, a depression, a Cold War, and widespread economic disparity with many citizens of Western democracies living in poverty and struggling to pay their bills. That is getting worse today with left wing governments “climate change” policies and edicts causing a global energy shortage that has driven prices for home heating fuel, electricity, gasoline and everything derived from fossil fuels (which is almost everything manufactured one way or another) through the roof and inflation now approaching double digits.

But Arden’s left wing government prefers to pretend carbon dioxide causes global warming (an absurd theory, easily shown false) and attack smokers.

In our short lives on Earth (mine is approaching its end) we men find pleasure in, among many other things, the company of women and for some a fine cigar now and then. As Rudyard Kipling famously said: “A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”.²

Arden’s declaration of a “climate emergency” in a country producing on 0.17% of global emissions is a harbinger of more edicts to come, promoting electric vehicles, wind and solar energy, and attacking agriculture which is New Zealand’s largest source of its miniscule carbon dioxide emissions but essential to its food security. Like Justin Trudeau, Arden is using the global warming alarm for political gain oblivious to its nonsensical foundation, at the expense of New Zealand’s citizens who will suffer higher inflation, more restrictions and plenty of mandates to come. Total elimination of all carbon dioxide emissions in either or both of Canada and New Zealand would be irrelevant to climate on anyone’s theory of climate change.

New Zealand is already falling in the global “Freedom Index” (from first to second just last year) and will keep falling as long as Arden or her ilk enjoy power. It is a sad picture of a beautiful country that led the world in personal freedom on a few years ago. I fear Canada is heading the same way.

A famous judge named Learned Hand reportedly quipped: “the spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." Apparently Arden and Trudeau missed that in their history or politcal science classes, if they ever studied either.

1. Source: The Fraser Institute

2. In “The Betrothed” - Rudyard Kipling’s Verse,1885