Mike Moore: Even enemies have rights

This is a difficult column to write. I feel like those in the American Council for Civil Liberties who, for years, fought on behalf of African-Americans and their rights, but were obliged to defend the rights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Prime Minister Helen Clark, dismissed as "paranoid" by some in the media, was vindicated in her claims about the elusive, Exclusive Brethren. She's right, they have some appalling views.

They won't vote but want to tell you who to vote for; won't fight, being conscientious objectors to military service, but fund politicians if they promise to increase military expenditure.

Their views on the role of women and God in society are medieval, and like fundamentalists in all religions and societies, are reactionary and cruel.

Paying private detectives to find dirt on political opponents takes politics to a new low. The ends justifying the means has been the view of fanatics like al Qaeda, Stalin, and Hitler throughout the ages.

Having said that, they have a right to spend their money as they see fit, within the law. They have the right to sit in the Parliamentary Gallery to pray and pressure those who sit in Parliament.

The issue here is spending within the law, not just the legal law, but what is regarded as our moral law, our time-tested conventions. But it's their money, their time.

The answer to all this is transparency, putting their name to the publicity, letting the people judge - it's called democracy. What is deafening is the silence of those who campaign for civil liberties, correctly speaking up for those who have no voice.

Why the silence? Because, from a liberal perspective, it's hard to defend people who oppose everything you stand for. All the more reason to stand up for your opponents' rights. That's what makes us better than them.

The danger always is that in attacking these extremists, we adopt their tactics. Then they win. That's why it's unsettling to see the Government use the resources and levers of the state to defend themselves.

The threat to change labour law because the Brethren are "enemies of the state", as Stalin once described opponents, is dangerous. Why the Brethren got dispensation from New Zealand labour law is something I was not aware of and think wrong anyway. So should people in business who have to compete in the marketplace against what is probably unfair competition. But that's not the point.

If you oppose the Government, will the next step be to investigate their tax status? Have they a tax privilege and preference as a church? But then what?

These are political responses to a political threat, a slippery slide to the kind of Peronist politics we witnessed during the worst excesses of the Muldoon National Government, when police reports on MPs, and Security Intelligence Service reports, were made public by the Prime Minister. During the 1951 waterfront lock-out, the Government passed legislation to make it an offence to assist trade unionists, and muzzled the media - not that you have to muzzle sheep.

Communists and their foul practices did exist in New Zealand. They did their best to destroy us social democrats. However, it was wrong to destroy their civil liberties in the name of wider freedom in New Zealand.

The National Party and Don Brash have, until recently, handled the Brethren issue badly. At best, clumsy; at worse, deceitful. Conservative parties around the world have long distanced themselves from these extremists.

What took Don Brash so long? Our once secular media are now always scathing of anything to do with the Christian faith.

Earlier Labour leaders, Savage, Fraser, Nordmeyer, Nash, Kirk and Lange were muscular Christians. The Labour Party enjoyed the support of many churches because of our commitment to battle poverty; they led the peace movement.

We also enjoyed members of Parliament like Martyn Findlay and Bill Jefferies who fearlessly championed civil liberties. These brave streams of labour thought seem to have evaporated during the heat of this controversy.

Now that the conservative churches have become politicised, some challenge the rights of fundamentalists to have any political opinion. The Brethren are being demonised, as were the communists in the old days.

Politicians need someone to blame, preferably those who are outside the mainstream and don't vote, as enemies that they can save us from. This motivates their base, provides a welcome distraction and justifies the use of the state's resources to protect the "nation", meaning themselves.

Even these enemies of reason have rights, however despicable their tactics and motivations are.

* Mike Moore is a former Prime Minister of New Zealand and director-general of the World Trade Organisation.