"When a government becomes powerful, it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurper which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance for votes with which to perpetuate itself." - Cicero
"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force." - George Washington
"In all that people can do for themselves, the government ought not to interfere." - Abraham Lincoln
"The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power." - John Stuart Mill
"The government's role is whatever the government defines it to be." - Helen Clark

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Don't criticise until it's too late

Now Cullen is telling us we shouldn't criticise his bill suppressing political speech until we see the version reported back from the select committee.

By then it will be too late. Labour is determined to rush this through before Christmas so that opponents can't effectively attack their record during the election campaign. There is a convention that such legislation should not be enacted in an election year.

Incidentally, this highlights the error of the parties who supported the first reading of the bill 'so they could improve it'. We all got to analyse and submit on a bill that is quite different from the one that will be put before Parliament. The bill that becomes law will be one that the public has effectively never had an opportunity to submit on. If the minor parties had been united against the original bill it would have failed at the first reading, forcing a rewrite prior to the select committee stage, not after. That would have been a much better process.