The BFD | Letter to the Editor: ACT Party Constitution

Dear Editor

I am in full support of ACT’s opposition to the 3 waters theft, scaling back of the crippling red-tape on small business and supporting our Police but I want to see ACT live up to its Constitution.

Objects and Principles

7. The principal object of the Party is to promote an open and benevolent society in which individuals are free to achieve their full potential. To this end the Party upholds the following fundamental principles:

a) That it is inherent in the nature of human beings as individuals that they are the owners of their own lives and must be free to act according to their own judgments so long as they accept and respect the like freedom of others;

b) Freedom of thought, conscience, religion, belief, and expression including the right to adopt, hold opinions, and express those opinions, is essential to a free society and must be promoted, protected, and preserved; c) That the proper purpose of government is to enact and enforce laws, and to take such action as may be necessary to secure freedom of the individual from the actions of others, including those others who constitute the government, which could constrain 4 V.070521 individuals from exercising ownership of their own lives.

8. The Party subscribes to values and subsidiary principles following from and consistent with its principal object and the fundamental principles, including but not limited to:

a) No one is above the law; all are subject to the same law administered in the same way; b) Laws must be objectively justifiable and objective in their application, implementation and administration;

c) Regulations and other delegated legislation must be scrutinised and subjected to recall or cancellation if they are not able to be objectively justified;

d) Each person must be judged as an individual by reference to the person’s own personality, character and actions and not as a member of a group defined by race, gender, sexuality, religion, political belief or other group characteristic;

e) Disagreements must be resolved by dialogue and the application of reason, not by physical force or actions which although falling short of physical force aim to prevent a speaker from being heard;

f) Voluntary choice and agreement should be the way in which people deal with each other in everyday life and in the economic market place;

g) The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement which should be viewed as intended to set an honourable course for the future interaction of individual Maori with individual non Maori.