Worzel's World - A state of injustice

 

In countries like ours, who have a heritage of English Common Law, it all began in 1215 at the signing of the Magna Carta. This change was effected through the threat of violence by barons, peasants and serfs who stood, armed and battle ready, against the corrupt King John. Under the threat of armed conflict John signed the Magna Carta and a fairer, more just society was the result. This first law was a check on power, not an extension of it.

This is often what is required to convince those in authority that those without it should be treated fairly and have recourse to an objective idea of justice. The basis and quality of justice that has evolved since has not been perfect but for over 800 years has stumbled along adequately enough. It became known as the rule of law and people believed in it. 

Now, like King John of old, all too often those who make the law not only make inadequate, poorly drafted and frequently undemocratic law, but they also exempt themselves from obeying it. As in the evil King John's time, later-day peasants and serfs are forced to take authority for law rather than the law for authority.

It is a long-standing democratic principle that all are equal before the law. No politician or member of our supposed ‘free and independent judiciary’ will tell you that it is otherwise.

Yet this is demonstrably untrue.

Modern day New Zealand politicians have confused legislating for governing. Our freedom is gradually undermined by more law, regulation, red tape, mandatory compliance and intrusive state control of our lives. Yet less and less is an often-oppressive state bureaucracy held to account to the New Zealanders who pay their salaries. As the quantity of law and legislation has increased so has inequality, crime, our prison population and overall state dependency.

In a country where we are all deemed ‘equal before the law’, it appears that like Orwell's Animal Farm, some are more equal than others. The standard and formularised penalties for minor traffic infringements can mean little to corporate managers, company directors and others of the well-heeled salaried oligarchy. They can however cause genuine privation amongst the wage earning 'working poor’.

When the Kaipara District Council acted illegally to the great detriment of ratepayers, central government exonerated them by passing undemocratic, hypocritical, retrospective legislation, defrauding the public to enrich global banking interests. The majority of public submissions were opposed to the legislation. The people had 'had their say'. Sadly though the political agenda precluded those involved from objectively considering what was said. 

Multinational film producers Warner Brothers bluffed the Key government into altering tax law in their favour. Would they do that for me – a citizen? Various other legislation has been passed at the behest of global financial interests and foreign governments yet I am a seven-plus generation New Zealander and I cannot think of a single law passed in my time that has done me a scrap of good.

Many are, at last, realising that continuing to consent to this legislative hypocrisy actually endangers the wellbeing of everyone. Politicians and police preach ‘zero tolerance’ and magistrates send ‘strong messages’ to the populace. The main message though reads: ‘We are hypocrites and liars, you must do as we say not as we do. If you are strong we will leave you alone, if you are weak we will crush you’. 

They are telling us they are unworthy of our respect. They are also unworthy of our cooperation.

When law is drafted not in the interests of the governed but rather in the interests of the governing, there can be no rule of law. When the rules are an exercise in hypocrisy, then those rules no longer apply.

Under various pretexts government and her agencies have assumed the right to arrest and prosecute us. By the stealth of legislative creep much of our God-given liberty has been removed. The state violates us and causes harm on the basis of arbitrary law often arbitrarily applied. What are actually threats are called laws and what is actually practical extortion is labelled taxes, fines, levies, tariffs, licences and registrations.

However there are fundamental laws that are not the domain of authority and government. Here are some: Hungry people, like hungry pigs or dogs, turn mean; There is nothing so dangerous and potentially destructive as a man with nothing to lose; There is strength in numbers. 

All that is required to end oppression of the many by the few is that the people wake up to the progressive engineering of their own enslavement and – like the barons, peasants and serfs in 1215 – the many stand together and say enough is enough. 

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When law is drafted not in the interests of the governed but rather in the interests of the governing, there can be no rule of law.