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New Zealand Herald
September 25, 2003
Deliver us from those who know what's best for us
by Garth George
It's been going on for years, and it's still going on. The political powers
that be - and a handful of others - are determined to reduce us all to the
lowest common denominator.
And with that comes repression. It's the sort of repression that is ever so
subtle, because it is always done on the specious grounds that it is for the
good of society.
And the single-minded obsessives who would have it so never sleep. No sooner
are they knocked back once - or twice, or as many times as you like - they go
to ground. Yet the moment something happens to give them an excuse to remount
their hobby horses, off they go again.
This insistence on reducing us all to the lowest common denominator, and insidiously
repressing us along the way, was all over Tuesday's paper.
Leading the way were those blind fools who associate the tragic death of
little Coral Burrows with parents' right to smack their children.
I am amazed that Helen Clark has bought into this argument, because it is the
sort of thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction for which she is not generally known.
How any sane person can associate the killing of a child with the smacking
issue is beyond me - as it is beyond Youth Affairs Minister John Tamihere and
some writers of letters to the editor, whose words are so far the only
sensible ones seen or heard.
Hear Mr Tamihere: "I find it offensive that people used emotion-charged
events surrounding the Coral case to relitigate the repeal of Section 59 of the
Crimes Act. Why does that come out of the blue as a panacea that would have
stopped what happened to her or to [murdered baby] Lillybing? It would not
have." He is absolutely right.
Then we have chemists urging health officials to ban some cold and flu pills,
or to make them prescription-only, to stop them being used to make illegal
drugs.
Why should I, like tens of thousands of others a sufferer from chronic sinus
problems, be deprived of medication I regularly buy from the chemist because
a small group of nasties use them to make dangerous illegal drugs?
Or why should I be made to pay a GP $52 to prescribe for me a medication I
can buy from the chemist for about half that price?
Next we are confronted (again) with the shortage of men in primary school
teaching resulting from what has become known as the "Peter Ellis
Syndrome" - the one that tells the paranoid that if a male teacher as
much as pats a child on the head he is likely to be a child molester.
I don't blame men in the least for not taking up primary school teaching in
the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that has been fostered around child
abuse by fearful parents, aided and abetted by psychologists and
"counsellors" who make lots of dollars out of it.
And finally (at least for that issue of the Herald) there's the bloke who
would ban importing second-hand Japanese cars because they clog up our
motorways.
Thus would he deprive probably tens of thousands of Kiwis of the chance to
own a reasonably decent motor car and condemn us once again to be at the
mercy of franchised car dealers, from whom we joyfully escaped when Japanese
imports began.
In the past 20-odd years I have owned two Japanese imports, both Nissans. The
Skyline, which had everything that opens and shuts, I turned over after
160,000km of trouble-free motoring (and it is still going strong); the
Cefiro, with even more things that open and shut, I still have after
136,000km.
In all these things we see the urge to deprive the vast majority in the
apparent interests of a tiny minority.
If something goes amiss, there are always some - and more than usual these
days, particularly in Parliament - who jump at the chance to pass another law
which they think will deal with it.
We've seen it lately with dog control (because one or two children were badly
mauled), with boy racers (because a few people are inconvenienced by the
noise and smell), with tougher smoking laws (because "an estimated"
350 people allegedly die of second-hand smoke each year).
We see it in the increasing reverse discrimination in favour of Maori, in
speed cameras, booze roadblocks and surveillance cameras in the streets, in
the banning of alcohol in downtown areas and at beach resorts and in
time-consuming and largely unnecessary security checks at airports.
It is repression - of a population which is predominantly law-abiding and
which does not deserve to have to suffer the restrictions sadly misguided
people wish to place upon them because of the actions of a few, who should be
dealt with by law-enforcement agencies. Fat chance.
I call it screwing down the lid. And we know what happens when pressure
builds up under a screwed-down lid. Be ready to duck.
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