Marc My Words. 27 April 2007

Political comment By Marc Alexander

A penny for your Anzac thoughts

Anzac day has come and gone. We've had our yearly dose of solemnity honoring those that fought for our freedoms. But I wonder.what would they think of what we've done with it?

With rising numbers attending the dawn services, it is tempting to conclude that we are more grateful to acknowledge their enormous sacrifice than ever before. But I'm not so sure. Quite apart from the disrespectful yobs who smashed down crosses arranged around South Taranaki's cenotaph and those demonstrators in Wellington who took the opportunity to burn the New Zealand flag during the service, I wonder if its not more a case of a nostalgia for a time when people seemed to have a greater sense of what it means to be a citizen of New Zealand.

Those wretched flag-burners called themselves anti-war protestors. I suppose they didn't see irony in that fact that the only reason they had the freedom to burn the flag was precisely because of the sacrifice of those they now protest against. But while its easy to admonish them for their childish and indulgent effrontery, it begs the larger question which is this: given what has happened since the Anzacs, would those who fought think again about whether it was worth it?

Their hard won gift to us was the opportunity and promise of a future free of tyranny, yet I see the precise opposite of that liberty increasingly gaining ground. The government doesn't seem to be the servant of the people but rather its master. Its purpose seems progressively inclined towards feeding its own needs rather than as an agency of collective interest. With Labour at the helm, its inexorable determination to overturn the dictates of democracy appears without restraint. The thin veneer of public support provided by elections is getting downright anorexic. We know the story: Helen Clark et al purposefully abused taxpayer funds to help win the last election. Labour then tried to justify such shameful theft, didn't want to pay it back, then, by dint of public condemnation (and poll implications), backed down and decided to skin the cat another way. The idea of state funding was born.

Here was a way in which Labour could leverage off all the special interest groups they redistributed wealth for, in return for easy access for resources to fund their re-election campaign. Accompanying other propaganda opportunities under the banner of policy education, such the $26 million spent celebrating Labour's 'Working for Families' initiative, it provided enormous capacity to disseminate the party line. That only their erstwhile socialist colleagues, the Greens, would back the policy means, for now at least, the strategy has been conveniently parked until greater parliamentary support may be had. And it may not take long. Labour's support partners are spiraling into oblivion and need all the help they can get. Never one to let principle get in the way of accepting financial assistance, these minnow parties will attempt to extract as much as they can for their thirty pieces of silver. Unfortunately it will be the public that will be hung out to dry.

This pocket book approach to shore up votes isn't confined to state funding of political parties. Labour has successfully, if disastrously, employed longstanding tactics such as increasing the depth of welfare dependency, state regulation, and interventions that strike at the heart of alternative (and in their mind competing) centers of authority such as families. The plethora of social engineering legislation over the last eight years of Helen Clark's reign has tested the usual public apathy in ways not seen in a very long time. Who would have imagined a few short years ago that pimps out on the street selling women like a piece of timeshare would now be a legally defensible business activity? Or that while parents may soon join the criminal fraternity for disciplining their children, murderers are let off their sentences to go out and kill again?

The Labour government has broken its moral compass so that good has become indistinguishable from bad, and evil has become a taxpayer funded treatment necessity. Quite simply we no longer reward lawfulness and good citizenry but burden it with ever higher costs to pay for social experiments in behavior modification theories.

And now, when it seemed such abuse of power could not be eclipsed, here's another little gem from the pages of their corruption handbook: tax subsidies for unions. Hard to imagine a more blatant attempt to shore up, and reward support, than the $650 bonus Public Service Association CYFS employees received. This is yet another example of where taxpayers of all political persuasions are forced to pay economic heed to Labour government ideology.

So what would those Anzacs have made of all of this? I don't presume to speak for them but I imagine they would be sorely disappointed to see a government turn on its people. They would see a nation which has increased its wealth many times over yet seemingly incapable of addressing the important issues such as public safety, accessibility of decent education and health outcomes. They would, I think, be horrified that while crime rates soared (42% in violent crimes since Labour came to office), criminals were receiving compensation payouts while sitting in prison facilities with $11million dollar landscapes.

They would wonder why since the removal of physical discipline in schools, truancy rates had shot up; youth crime increased; and educational attainments stall. They would undoubtedly question why young students no longer respect their elders and refuse to give up their seats for their elders. They would be surprised at the lack of manners and general civility and perhaps query whether or not the dropping standards in public broadcasting, the venal nature of some computer games might not have been an influence.

But most of all I suspect, they would take a long hard look at the government and ask its proponents why they have undermined the resilience and strength of families by supplanting its traditional self-reliance with disempowering dependence on the state? Why, they might ask, would the government assume the right to expand its corrosive influence within society in such a way as to usurp all the traditional civil relationships that have served countless previous generations so well? In short, why has government become society's biggest problem?

Anzac day is special not only because it reminds us of the sacrifice of our forefathers, but because it offers an opportunity for a sober reflection of what we have done with the opportunities they fought for. Sadly I believe we have let them down.

ENDS

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