Posting to Auckland Wire of Scoop
Press Release: Libertarianz Party
Date: Monday, 12 July 1999
Time: 2:26 pm NZT

Council Smacks Apartment Owners

Libertarianz Housing Deregulation Spokesman Keith Patterson says
Auckland City Council's latest social engineering highlights
local governments' anti-freedom agenda, as displayed at the Local
Body Association's recent conference.

Apartment builders and families in Auckland City are to be smacked
by Council's proposed District Plan change that will allow only
one carpark per new apartment, coupled with numerous other restrictions
on carparks any new development can provide. "It seems pretty
obvious to point out that councils should not have this sort
of dictatorial power to control how people will build their homes
- the number of car parks you choose to provide is properly nobody's
business but your own, and the buyer of your apartment," says
an angry Patterson.

The avowed reason for the increased restriction is to improve
Auckland's traffic problems. "If petty little bureaucrats kept
their sticky fingers out of people1s lives, we could solve traffic
congestion problems ourselves. The normal forces of economics
will have people on public transport when they are fed up with
traffic hassles, and apartments in town will sell to people who
do not want to commute. In the meantime," says Patterson, "let
me offer a message to the social engineers of both central and
local government: Leave us alone!"

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>