RSA Should Defend Freedom

I hope the national Returned Servicemen's Association joins sports organisers, school trustees, employers and others burdened by the Government's nanny state risk aversion, ACT New Zealand Justice Spokesman Stephen Franks said today.

"The RSA should rise up in revolt at even being asked for a `professional traffic management plan' for an ANZAC Day parade," Mr Franks said.

"Labour's victim culture and bubble-wrap rules have crept in like a fog, and are stifling our `can do' spirit. Affected individuals and organisations are silenced by `safety first' slogans from Ministers, who take no account of the cultural cost of trying to eliminate risks from life.

"Education Minister Trevor Mallard slammed the Principals' Association for `over-reacting'. His sub message was `they don't care about kids'. But kids are probably at greater risk after a bubble-wrapped childhood than when they were led off the tarmac by well-meaning parents and other non-professionals.

"Who better than the RSA to crusade against the loss of the New Zealand culture their members were prepared to fight for?

"I know what my late father - an Alamein and Cassino veteran, and a former local councillor - would have thought of being asked for a professional traffic management plan for his ANZAC parade.

"The RSA doesn't even need to abandon its recent claims of being `non-political'. The last government was nearly as bad as the current one for putting red tape powers in the hands of lawyers, judges and bureaucrats who don't have to count the true costs of their rules," Mr Franks said.

© 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>>