Below is the Libertarianz party list for their third election since registration in 1996 - as delivered this morning to the Chief Electoral Office in Wellington.

Party leader Russell Watkins says of the list "it is still the best-looking party list on offer, though perhaps a little more 'follicly-challenged' than it has been in the past. As always, the list is packed with talented people; as always the list is packed with reluctant politicians - and as always, each reluctant candidate is aware that the only way we are going to get politicians out of our pockets, out of our lives, and off our backs is to stand against them."

"At this election, and every election, you only have two clear choices," affirms Watkins. "You have the choice of Nanny State in a dozen different guises, or you have the Libertarianz - the only party standing for the freedom of the individual."

The list reads (with bios of the top ten below):

1 WATKINS Russell

2 McGRATH Richard

3 HUGHES Helen

4 WIKIRIWHI Tim

5 WEBBER Mike

6 CROSS Colin

7 WHITE Tina

8 CRESSWELL Peter

9 O'BRIEN Sally

10 LINTON Peter

11 BATES Andrew

12 RIDDLE Ken

13 GORDGE Mike

14 PATTERSON Keith

15 WOOD Haden

16 STURM Timothy

17 MALONE Warrick

18 COUPER Andrew

19 OSBORNE Peter

20 DARNTON Bernard

21 CHARLTON Daniel

22 COLE Barry

23 HADEN Nik

24 VERHOEVEN Willem

25 TIMBERLAKE Larry

26 MURPHY Michael

27 FRASER Nanette

28 FRASER Alan

29 WINEFIELD Robert

30 HURLEY Hank

31 KIMPTON Sean

32 RIDDLE Shirley

33 GERVAI Linda

Top-Ten Candidate Bios:

1. Russell Watkins, Tauranga businessman and party leader, is standing against Winston Peters in Tauranga - a challenge he says that his time with the Royal New Zealand Artillery will help him with. "It taught me all I need to know about blowing away the big guns," he says with a smile.

2. Dr Richard McGrath (party deputy) is a Masterton general practitioner, police medical officer and team doctor for the Wairarapa-Bush NPC rugby team. McGrath is a long-standing opponent of what he calls the state's "die-while-you-wait" health system.

3. Helen Hughes is a silver-voiced Whangarei medical-marijuana campaigner. 'Hooch' Helen, as she is known, is the party's Whangarei candidate, and like all libertarians a reluctant politician: "I dislike politics and have nothing but contempt for politicians," she says, "but how do we get them out of our lives unless we are prepared to oppose them?"

4. Tim Wikiriwhi is a Hamilton fitter and turner, the party's Hamilton West candidate, and their spokesman to deregulate Maori Affairs. "As a libertarian," Wikiriwhi says, "I stand for equality before the law, and condemn any and all ideologies which grant privilege on the basis of race." He is utterly opposed to what he calls "the rampant state-sponsored apartheid" of Treaty laws and race-based legislation.

5. Mike Webber, a New Plymouth helicopter pilot, is also the party's New Plymouth candidate. Mike is an enthusiastic hunter and a keen advocate of the rights of gun owners. Another reluctant politician, he says it is time New Zealanders open their eyes and take action: "Tell the corrupt and power-hungry politicians that they have had their grubby snouts in the trough of public money for too long and that the thieving must end. We must take up the fight for our freedom now," he says. "If not us, who? If not now, when?"

6. Colin Cross, Wellington businessman and former teacher, is the party's Wellington Central candidate and an advocate of individualism. "Libertarianz is the only party that recognises an individual's right to own and manage his own life," he says. "This fundamental right, so seemingly obvious, is so easily destroyed by state intervention under the guise of well-meant support. The net effect of state aid is to destroy people's sense of self, to encourage guilt and self-loathing, and ultimately create dependency on further aid, similar to a drug addiction."

7. Tina White is the party's dynamic President, a charity fund-raiser, and a New Zealand champion line-dancer. She is still mourning Italy's departure from the World Cup.

8. Peter Cresswell is an Auckland architect, would-be classic car collector and the party's spokesman to deregulate the environment. He says that "New Zealand has had nearly a decade under the RMA, under planning legislation that abolishes property rights and provides no environmental protection. In doing so we have ignored eight centuries of common law that protects both. It is time to acknowledge the failure," he says, "and time to resurrect common law from where it has been buried."

9. Sally O'Brien, an Auckland bookshop owner, is the party's spokesman to deregulate welfare. "Humanity has rightly rejected cannibalism as inhuman," she says. "It is time that state welfare be recognised as moral cannibalism, and reviled as such."

10. Peter Linton is a plastics engineer and a keen hunter & shooter. Peter has served ten years on the executive of the Sporting Shooters Association of NZ, with four of them as National Secretary. He endorses the right to bear arms in self-defence, "which should be included in this country's Bill of Rights. After all," he says. "if we have no right to defend ourselves we have no rights at all!"

It's enough to make you vote Libertarianz !

ENDS

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