Though I agree with on privatisation as a principle, a whole series of alarm bells are ringing in my mind, concerning just why a longterm United Nations and NZ Labour Party aparatchik would be advocating such ideas.

Consider the sort of stuff that Ian Wishart has been reporting lately about the desire of the UN “One-world-socialist-government” advocates for the UN to have its own sources of global taxation, perhaps carbon taxes; AND its own standing armies to enforce its policy without recourse to units on loan from sovereign nations. Does this thought not send a chill up your spine?

You know this David Shearer guy: where does he stand on that?

I agree also with the “French Foreign Legion” concept; it makes sense for a power that has to police other parts of the world. But I am deeply uneasy about trusting the actual defence of a realm to paid mercenaries rather than patriotic citizens who have enlisted or even been conscripted in a time of crisis. Given the track record of the international Left on infiltrating and subverting institutions, I think that defence forces of paid mercenaries would be easier subverted than the other.

Do I have a point?

I have always thought the next best thing to our own strike wing, would be to pay the Aussies to base a squadron here – I trust them. Heck, I trust the Yanks, but sadly many NZ-ers do not.

I certainly do not trust the U.N.

And I am dubious about the trustworthiness of a mixed bunch of pilots from Russia, China, Pakistan, Egypt, Bolivia, Malaysia, Turkey, Germany, Sweden, wherever; when it comes to the defence of New Zealand, no matter how well they are paid. I am especially dubious about the trustworthiness of armed forces of this type all over the world in the event of a showdown between sovereign nations and the U.N. OneWorld socialist government.

A mercenary military might happily defend, say, Greece, against Turkish invasion; but I can just imagine mercenaries all over the world laying down their arms when it comes to fighting off the new, mercenary “U.N.” – in fact I can imagine clauses in their contracts about this.

I very much doubt that David Shearer’s ideas really are “to the right of P.J. O’Rourke” at all; I suspect that in their motive, they are about as far to the Left as they can be. I think P.J. O’Rourke’s instincts, to pick privatisation of everything BUT defence, are impeccable. This whole thing just reeks of socialist One world government power grabbing. Sorry.

And about as effective too.

The Left is rather ineffectual these days. Quite the humorous situation to watch..”

are you talking about america there..?..oecd..?

and the triumph of the rightwing over the forces of obama..?

(y’know..!..just as you predicted for so long..

..eh..?..)

and your reagan/thatcher rightwing revolution is in good health..?..you reckon..?

should we file that one with your obama-defeat predictions..?

phil(whoar.co.nz)

Finally a job for Fiji’s Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s and his military regime.
I here he wants to talk.

See:
http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/DNZB/alt_essayBody.asp?essayID=5G9

The 1969 legislation was probably in response to the 1965 incident which at the time increased public profle of the SIS and let to concerns about its control.

there was just an unlegislated security service in 1965. I thought the SIS wasn’t established until 1969 (the NZSIS Act)

If you are a public servant, one of the arts is to be able to research and report on a matter impartially even if you do not personally believe in the ‘best’ option. You would be useless as a policy adviser if you let your personal feelings get in the way. This is very important for an impartial public service – one that can serve governments of differing political viewpoints.

It is also why there are limitations on political studies students telling ‘outsiders’ the opinions of fellow students – there was a big row at Auckland University in 1965 when a SIS employee was ‘outed’ in a politics course.

David obviously chose a topic at the time (or may have been steered that way by an academic) which seemed a ‘good idea’, and researched and wrote it up quite impartially, unaware it was going to come back and bite him in the bum some years later. He got caught another way – normally such works would remain in relative obscurity and he would not need to worry too much about the future, but electronic databases and the internet has changed all this.

Whoo hoo to make an impact mickey. Savage not much. More like being savaged by Bambi.

Wayne Mapp is kindly stirring the pot to keep the opposition in disarray and keep Phil looking over his sholder for drawn daggers.

Hey Phil Gee, now there’s warm-hug photo op for ya!!

There are frequent occasions when I’d happily pay a few bucks not to smell the fragrance of blanket man’s urine.

I would say it goes something like this in terms of the majority in private hands
Housing -> Land -> Small businesses -> Retailing -> Manufacturing -> Financial Services -> Transport -> Utilities -> Social Services -> Public Convienences -> Military

If this guy is gonna be consistent, he should also be looking at privatising Health, Education and Welfare, although I draw the line at Public Toilets

But one of the papers was written while Shearer was an employee of the NZ Government, working in Phil Goff’s office. Did he write the paper in his own time or at the office? Did Goff and Shearer discuss the paper before it was published? Did he have Goff’s permission to publish it? Or was he freelancing? Are we supposed to believe that Goff had never heard of the paper? Or did he know, and hoped that his candidate’s secret privatisation agenda would stay secret, even after Labour made secret privatisation agendas an election issue last year?

Labour really needs to drop the inept “smear campaign” accusations, and front up and tell us what Goff knew about his favoured candidate and the policies that he thought were important enough to write about, in depth, on four occasions.