Free Press

ACT’s regular bulletin

Intergenerational Fairness
The Retirement Commissioner has said what ACT’s been saying for a long time, Super at 65 is not sustainable as the number of working aged taxpayers per retiree goes from 4.4 to 2.4 over the next 20 years. Last time the age was adjusted the average life expectancy was 76, now it is 81. Amazingly, ACT is the only party that agrees with the Commissioner while every other party runs for the hills. David Seymour’s latest SundayStar-Times column on the topic is here.

Contempt
Putting numbers aside, the other political parties are basically saying to young New Zealanders: “You know and we know there will be an adjustment, we’re just going to deny you any kind of certainty by refusing to talk about it for the next decade.” Next year ACT will be the only party saying to young New Zealanders that we need to confront this long term issue with honesty and certainty.

Airbnb Values Statement
The self-appointed gatekeepers of righteousness in the media had conniptions when ACT suggested immigrants and refugees sign a Values Statement, committing them to tolerance, freedom of speech, religious freedom, and equality before the law regardless of ethnicity, sexuality, or gender, among other things. Now an interesting development from Airbnb, the Community Commitment: “You commit to treat everyone—regardless of race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age—with respect, and without judgment or bias.”

And if You Don’t
The peer-to-peer accommodation site pulls no punches: “If you decline the commitment, you won’t be able to host or book using Airbnb, and you have the option to cancel your account.” Free Press works on the basis that governments will always be a few years (decades?) behind Silicon Valley. The New Zealand Government will eventually require people coming here to sign up to our liberal values of freedom, tolerance, and equality before the law.

Un-Kiwi Values from the Police
What in the hell were the police thinking when they set up a breath-testing checkpoint, allowed under the Land Transport Safety Act for countering drink driving, to find the identities of people who attended an Exit International meeting? Free Press does not condone illegal euthanasia—ACT wants to make it legal so that assisted dying occurs with appropriate safeguards under the rule of law—but there is now a much bigger issue at stake: freedom of assembly and proper process from the police.

Radio Silence from Assisted Dying Opponents
The usually outspoken opponents of assisted dying have been deafeningly silent since the checkpoint story broke. Do they quietly condone the police’s actions, or have they realised that much of the case for legalised assisted dying rests on the fact that the awful position faced by some people at the end of their lives gives them what the Supreme Court of Canada called the ‘cruel choice’ between ‘violent amateur suicide’ on the one hand and intolerable suffering on the other?

A New Housing Fix
Leonie Freeman has been a General Manager of Housing New Zealand and is a Director of Goodman Property Trust, one of the Country’s largest property investors with a market cap of $1.7b. She has taken the initiative to seed a peak body that would act as a clearing house for all the problems besetting New Zealand’s property market. Her website www.thehomepage.nz is worth a look. If you like her ideas, Freeman will be speaking at ACT’s election year conference on February 25th next year, registration opening this coming month.

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