ImperatorFish: Booze-busting Banks Divides ACT

Written By: - Date published: 2:42 pm, April 24th, 2012 - 3 comments
Categories: act, alcohol, john banks, Satire - Tags:

Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here.

A bitter fight has erupted within the ACT Party over the decision by leader John Banks to vote against keeping the alcohol purchasing age at 18.

The move by Banks to support measures to further control the supply of liquor has some party strategists worried. They are concerned that an increasingly sober populace in control of its senses and making sensible voting choices would be a disaster for the party.

The issue has led to divisions within the party, and questions being raised about whether John Banks is the right person to lead the ACT Party.

The party’s annual conference, which took place over the weekend in a bus shelter in Parnell, highlighted a number of differences of opinion between party members on the direction ACT should take.

A small but vocal faction appears determined to return ACT to its libertarian foundations, while another faction continues to push for more conservative policies.

A third faction failed to attend the party conference, because it was back at its house in front of its PC writing rambling and angry comments on Kiwiblog about the evils of socialism, and blaming everyone but itself for its fall into disgrace and ruination.

Of all the policies ACT has advocated, it is the alcohol age one that threatens to fatally divide the party.

“People need to be drinking more,” said the party’s president Chris Simmons. “If we can grow the level of intoxication throughout society, especially at election time, there’s a chance a few voters might stumble into polling booths drunk and accidentally vote for us.

“What we don’t need are wowsers like John Banks telling people they can’t drink and make disastrous voting decisions. ACT stands for freedom and liberty, and we strongly believe that everyone should be free to make terrible, terrible mistakes.”

Former MP John Boscawen admitted he had “some concerns” about the decision by John Banks to vote for the alcohol law change.

“Young people are particularly stupid when they come into contact with alcohol,” said Mr Boscawen, “and when they’re that tanked up anything can happen.

“Sure, some of these kids will drink so much that they end up falling into a gutter or getting into trouble with the police. But some of them will join ACT on Campus.”

3 comments on “ImperatorFish: Booze-busting Banks Divides ACT ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Rodel 1
    24 April 2012 at 9:07 pm

    John Banks is not ACT. He is National. And John Key is really ACT..But the dumbos in ACT don’t seem to have realized. Perhaps Rodney Hide senses that something isn’t what itseems.

  2. Jenny 2
    24 April 2012 at 10:14 pm

    It is easy to make light of this issue, but at the heart of it all is the real nature of this party. ACT is the well funded political expression of the exploiters and the rich. The party, that when push comes to shove balances personal liberty against making profit and making profit always comes out on top.

    ACT will never act against the booze barons who peddle alcopop to kids. Despite all their talk about freedom and personal liberty, exploitation is their raison d’etre.

    Therefore rather than restrict the power of the booze barons to make extraordinary profits out of social misery, ACT’s first instinct is to criminalise young people.

    ACT On Campus the young privileged yellow shirted thugs that accompanied Banks at all his public appearances during his election campaign in Epsom, look likely to be the first to jump ship.

  3. Jenny 3
    24 April 2012 at 10:40 pm

    Raising the drinking age threatens to criminalise a whole generation. And their can be very little doubt that most of the police attention will descend on Maori and Island youth.

    All studies have shown that one of the most effective ways of stopping youth problem drinking is to raise the price of liquor through tariffs.

    Special attention should be given to hard liquor coloured and flavoured and mixed to make it more attractive to young people.

    Advertising should be another target for legislation. Plain packaging as being considered for cigarettes would be a good start.

    The uncontrolled proliferation of bottle shops in poor areas outside of democratic community control should be another target.

    ACT is the party of the those at the top our society who live off everyone else. And so will go to any lengths to sustain the flow of profits from the bottom of society to the top. Sensible solutions to youth problem drinking are beyond them.

    As revealed by this controversy, ACT – Punitive and authoritarian, the antithesis of personal liberty and freedom.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.