SPEAKEASY

MY LETTER TO ORAUTA

by Julian Pistorius
Below is an email I sent to Ken Brown, chairman of the Orauta School board, and Keri Molloy, editor of The Bay Chronicle, the day after our first meeting:

Dear Ken,

It was wonderful meeting you, the parents, the teachers and the children yesterday. Thank you very much for honouring us with such a wonderful welcome.

I hope that now that you have met us, you trust us a little bit more. We are sincere in our support of you. We believe that you have done nothing wrong and are being persecuted wrongly by the government.

At this stage you are probably still suspicious that we want to use you and this case for our own political gain and grand-standing, or even to get some maori votes. I wouldn't blame you for thinking this, as we all know how slimy and fake politicians are and that they have done this many times before. It's all a big popularity contest for them - "How can I make more people vote for me, even if I have to say something I don't really believe, and say different things to different people."

All I offer you is my word on my honour. I would personally support you in this case, even if I was not involved in the party, because I believe that there are some basic, very important principles at stake here. Secondly, the Libertarianz is not your average political party. :) We do not want to get into parliament by vote-buying or popularity contest. We despise the game of politics just like most people I speak to.

We are not doing this for the votes. For one, we are not standing for the maori seats, and we never will, because we believe that it is wrong to separate the country by race. Secondly, most middle-class New Zealanders probably will not raise an eyebrow if the government succeeds in this action, because it is happening to a small group of people somewhere in the sticks, and they simply do not see how it applies to them. Be sure, we are not going to get votes out of middle-class New Zealanders for this, quite the contrary, in fact. So, why are we doing this, I am sure you are wondering?

Well, as we keep saying, we are the only party to fight consistently for the freedoms of individuals in New Zealand. There are many people in this country who are having their rights violated by government after government: Small communities like yourself, gun-owners, farmers, businessmen, people who want to use drugs, and many others. The problem is, they are all minorities. Even though everybody is part of some minority group, nobody cares that the rights of other minority groups are being violated, only about the rights of their own minority group. What we want to do is make people see the common theme - that the current system is allowing the violation of people's rights.

What we want to achieve here is to make people realise something important. We are all connected as a society. If the freedoms of one small part of our society is attacked, we all have to stand up for their rights, even if we don't necessarily agree with everything that they are doing. This is the way these governments operate: They attack small groups at a time, hoping that nobody outside the small community will care enough to make too much fuss. I want to make people realise that if the government takes away your freedom to run your own school without government interference, then we have all lost a bit of freedom.

So, though we don't believe in everything that you do and how you are going about it, we don't believe the government is right in what it is trying to do. We want to make people everywhere realise what is happening to you and make them realise how this affects all of us.

Now, my advice is the following: If you want true independence, you need to cut yourselves off from the state completely. He who holds the purse-strings holds the power; and if the state is strong enough to give you what you want, it is strong enough to take it away. You are, of course, free to follow it or not, however you wish; it is just my advice.

I want the state to leave you in peace and to give you the land and buildings, instead of persecuting innocent parents and trying to evict you. When you own the land, in the sense of a proper private property title, you would have other funding options open to you and would not need the state at all. Until then, we have to stop this persecution by the government.

I don't believe that some of your long-term plans are just, as you are probably aware by now. For that reason, we can not make this fight completely our own. So, it is your fight - we can only advise and support you where we can, on the points that we agree on. At the same time we will continue to make a lot of noise about this from a libertarian perspective and make as many people as possible aware of this terrible injustice against you.

To summarise, what is important to remember here is that we have to help your community fight to keep your school. I keep coming back to the picture of the caring parents I met yesterday. Your only crime is taking responsibility for your children's education. How twisted a society are we living in that people who take responsibility are punished? We would be shamed if we left this injustice go unchallenged.

So, now you know what our real motives are. Yes, they are selfish motives, because we believe that in fighting for your freedoms, we are fighting for our own freedom as well.

Regards
Julian Pistorius

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