Act aims to cut property red tape

Act leader Don Brash. Photo / Herald on Sunday

The Act Party wants property rights added to the Bill of Rights Act to allow owners of private property to do as they please with their land.

In the first of his party's campaign speeches, leader Don Brash again referred to government regulators as "little Hitlers" and championed as little government interference as possible.

He said New Zealand could be a country "where people are free to do as they please on their own property - provided it doesn't damage the property of others", or it could regress "down to a black hole where little Hitlers tell you what colour you may paint your house".

Mana Party leader Hone Harawira has compared Dr Brash to Hitler for his polarising views on Maori, which Dr Brash has rejected.

Dr Brash said the Act Party wanted to amend the Bill of Rights Act to include property rights.

"This is an old idea whose time has certainly come," he told the party's Upper South regional conference in Christchurch yesterday.

This could be reinforced by overhauling the Resource Management Act "so the current presumption that property owners must seek permission to do anything on their own land was reversed".

He repeated other party policies, including scrapping the Emissions Trading Scheme, bringing in a system of vouchers for parents to choose which school their children attend, abolishing Parliament's Maori seats and re-introducing youth pay rates.

"We'd make serious inroads into government spending, so that we don't have to keep borrowing $300 million a week, and can reduce and flatten personal and company taxes."

Dr Brash threw his weight behind freedom of speech and the right to offend people.

"That includes my right to say separatism is wrong, even if supporters of separatism are offended by my saying so.

"Let me say in passing I shall go right on saying it whether it causes offence or not. But I shall also defend to the death the right of separatists to disagree with me."

He defended former Employers and Manufacturers Association boss Alasdair Thompson's right to express an opinion, even if it was wrong.

Dr Brash said Government intervention was an impediment to freedom. "Free people are unstoppable. Together we can restore paradise."