Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Doggy freedom

Speeches by politicians are best avoided in my experience. Full of banal, platitudinous, dreary waffle.

But I rather liked this one from Rodney Hide, quoting John Stuart Mill in an effort to get his audience, the NZ Companion Animal Conference, thinking about some basic principles.

I stand for freedom. I take the view, and apply it as Minister, that less government is good government. I think government should leave people as free as possible.

I believe hand-in-hand with individual freedom comes personal responsibility.

Too many people want to be free to do as they please but then aren’t prepared to accept the consequences of their own decisions and actions. They prefer to offload the consequences to others.

The fact is we can’t enjoy individual freedom unless we also accept personal responsibility.

This belief is probably more popular in the abstract than in everyday life.

Faced with any problem, an awful lot of people immediately think that ‘there should be a law against it’. And an awful lot of legislators, listening to the people as they should, agree, and pass a law against it. Sometimes, this law works, and things get better. But mostly it doesn’t.

I think the lowering of road deaths is an example of stronger laws and heavier enforcement producing a good result. Sure we have had to accept random breath tests, but our roads are undoubtedly safer as a result. That’s a small price to pay for reducing the carnage on our roads.

My belief in the need for individual freedom and personal responsibility impacts directly on my job as Minister of Local Government, which includes consideration of the country’s dog laws.

I want to announce today that I have asked officials to begin thinking about a first-principles review of the dog laws.

I have not asked that this be a priority, because I think the government has more important things to do. But I expect that sometime in 2011, you may be asked for your views.

In the meantime, the present laws will apply, although I hope that local authorities will work hard to ensure the emphasis is on freedom, rather than restriction.

I do not know what will emerge from such a first-principles review. In the lead-up to it, we can all do some thinking. Here’s mine: John Stuart Mill, the great 19th-century advocate of freedom, was responsible for what we know as the ‘harm principle’. It says 'the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection'.


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3 comments:

gravedodger said...

Where can I sign up. That I am restricted to the extent I am with my dogs is total discrimination. As a responsible (officially, cert to prove it), dog owner I am constantly barred from so many of OUR public areas while my more fortunate child minder fellow citizens can take their destructive little buggers to those places and leave a trail of litter and damage with impunity. Beaches, D O C reserves parks, I can go on. While reading a restriction sign concerning my little friend Zinny, since deceased,one day, a yob was having a slash on a shrub within clear view. On more than one occasion when depositing my doggy doos in a rubbish tin at a layby I have to do the tiptoe shuffle to avoid what I assume is human excrement, I say assumed because of the accompanying soiled paper.
Thankyou Rodney also you Lindsay for the heads up

Anonymous said...

As far as I'm concerned - dog ownership like any other kind of ownership is a privilege, not a right.

I've been bitten by nice middle-class-mom's dogs, after of course being assured that little Rover would
"never bite anyone". As far as I'm concerned any dog who bites anyone - and any dogs their owners own - should immediately be shot, and the owner sentenced for assault. No defence possible.

Frankly, it appals me that Roger a) has time to care about this at all, and b) is just doing an official review rather than just repealing all dog laws if he really believes in "freedom"


But if he really believes in freedom, there are far far more important things he could have done.

NOT VOTING FOR TAX RISES WOULD BE A START

Manolo said...

The words from Hide are fine and dandy, but it would be good to see some facts and actions backing them up.

So far, ACT influence is hardly noticeable in this quasi-socialist National & Maori Party coalition government.

Voting against the proposed ETS would be a good start.