"Why is Alliance List MP Liz Gordon calling for an increase in benefits, but an end to foodbanks?" asks Libertarianz spokesman Lindsay Mitchell. "Why doesn't this woman - whose salary we are forced to pay - do her homework?"

"Ms Gordon should acquaint herself with American experience showing that when benefits are increased there is actually an increase in uptake numbers and in the time spent on the benefit - that is, more poverty. Her aim doesn't stack up."

"She talks about beneficiaries constantly looking for the source of their next meal, yet we know that obesity - particularly amongst children from low income families - is a growing health problem in NZ. Her claim doesn't add up."

"She wants to see an end to foodbanks in NZ. Why Ms Gordon? What is wrong with voluntary aid to the needy? I would have expected theAlliance to be championing help for the poor. Perhaps Ms Gordon is worried about what might happen to her job if the role of Government was supplanted by that of private welfare providers. Feathering one's own nest isn't unknown amongst Alliances MPs," notes Mitchell.

Libertarianz believe that all welfare provision should be via private, charitable agencies.

"New Zealanders are generous people but it should be their right to choose whom they wish to support," says Mitchell. "It is immoral that I am forced to support habitual layabouts - addicted to hand-outs, when there are others far more deserving whom I am made financially unable to help."

ENDS

For further information please contact: Lindsay Mitchell Liberatarianz Assoc. Spokesman to Deregulate Welfare (04) 562 7944, Dandl.Mitchell@clear.net.nz

* LIBERTARIANZ * More Freedom * Less Government *

www.libertarianz.org.nz www.freeradical.co.nz

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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>>