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!"

ENDS

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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>>