From the Archives: Libertarian youth leader from New Zealand discusses his party’s politics

Libertarian youth leader from New Zealand discusses his party’s politics
May 22, 2012 12:25 PM MST

Libertarians are not active in politics solely in the United States. There are libertarian movements and political parties scattered through the Western democracies.

In New Zealand, for instance, there is the ACT Party. That name may seem funny, at first, until one understands that it began as an acronym.

Peter McCaffrey was a parliamentary candidate for the ACT Party in 2008 and 2011, when he was just 21 and 24 years old, respectively. He recently sat down for an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during a Republican Liberty Caucus social event.

At the time, McCaffrey was traveling through the United States on his way to take a job with a free-market think-tank in Regina, Saskatchewan.

About that acronym

The letters A-C-T, he explained, “used to stand for the ‘Association of Consumers and Taxpayers.’ That was when ACT was set up as a think-tank” almost 20 years ago.

“New Zealand adopted the mixed-member proportional electoral system” in 1994, he continued, with plans to hold the first election under that system in 1996. At that time, “the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers decided that with the implementation of a proportional electoral system, actually it would be better to be set up as a party rather than a think tank and so it became the ACT Party.”

The initials do not “stand for anything now but that’s the origin of the name,” McCaffrey said.

‘Classical liberal’

He describes the party as “a classical liberal party but there’s a bit of a fusion there.”

Older members, he explained, tend to be “more conservative-leaning” or split among liberals and conservatives, while “the younger membership tends to be much more liberal, even leaning towards libertarian.”

During the most recent parliamentary elections in November 2011, McCaffrey explained, the party’s “main focus was on the economy, getting tax rates down, [and] cutting regulation,” as well as advocating for school choice.

“We’ve been doing a big push for charter schools,” he said.

“In New Zealand, we have some private schools that are generally privately funded and we have state schools that are state-funded and state-run but there’s not a lot of choice in between those, so we ran a big push for more choice in education,” he said.

During the election campaign, he noted, the ACT Party made a coalition agreement with the National Party, a conservative party in New Zealand, and the two partners “pushed for an implementation of some trials of charter schools in New Zealand.” As a result, he said, “we’ll be setting up a couple of charter schools, one in South Auckland and one in Christ Church and hopefully more over the next three years as part of that deal.”

Under the new charter school law, he explained, the schools may “be run by any number of different non-profit organizations. Whether that’s Iwi, which are local Maori groups (Maori are the indigenous people in New Zealand) or charities, church groups, anything like that will be able to set up a school and run it.”

The new rules allow “more flexibility in the arrangements of the school so that there’s more choice for people in which schools they send their children to,” he said.

Liberalized drug laws

Generally, McCaffrey said, the ACT Party does not “get too involved in social issues. We try to focus on economics but that doesn’t always happen. Our leader last year” -- Donald Brash, a former New Zealand reserve bank governor – “surprised a lot of the journalists when he came out in support of liberalization of marijuana laws,” including decriminalization or legalization. That position came after heavy lobbying on the part of “some of the younger members of the party.”

That position, he pointed out, “startled a lot of people and maybe scared off some of our older members and supporters but it really got the media talking about the issue. It surprised a lot of people who saw us as sort of an old white conservative party, which, I think, was good for the image of the party long run.”

McCaffrey’s own involvement in ACT is relatively recent but it has spanned his whole adult life, so far.

Learning in high school

“I turned 18 in 2005,” he said, which is the voting age in New Zealand, as it is in the United States.

While he was still in high school, he said, “I just read the web sites of all the main parties that were in the parliament and had a bit of a think. ACT seemed to make the most sense, and so I voted for ACT in 2005,” the first year he was eligible to cast a ballot.

Then, he said, “having voted for ACT, when I got to university, there was a table at the orientation week for ACT on Campus, which is the youth wing of the ACT Party. I signed up to ACT on Campus and then over the next couple of years I got more and more involved in the ACT on Campus group and also in the party itself.”

McCaffrey explained that the “party is very open to young people, volunteers coming in, even coming into the parliamentary offices, helping out, volunteering, doing research -- all that sort of stuff -- so just sort of slowly I got more and more involved.”

Eventually, he “ended up being the ACT on Campus president, leading the youth wing of the party” and later he was selected to serve on “the board for the Wellington region” (equivalent to the unit committee of an American political party) “and stood as a candidate for the party for parliament in 2008 and 2011 in my local district,” Otaki.

He was not elected, however, noting modestly that “to be honest, my district isn’t a very good area for ACT, so I was kind of the only one who was willing to do it in my area.”

That turn of events, of course, is what brought McCaffrey to North America, where he continues to work on the sorts of issues that brought him into politics in his native New Zealand.


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on May 22, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

LPVA Candidate Cliff Hyra Denounces Negative Campaigning

At a press conference on the state capitol grounds in Richmond on Thursday, November 2, Libertarian nominee for Governor of Virginia Cliff Hyra strongly criticized his opponents -- Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam -- for misleading and negative campaigning, designed more to frighten voters than to persuade them.

Here is a video recording of the complete news conference:

And here, courtesy of the Hyra campaign, is a transcript of his prepared remarks. (It does not include his answers to questions posed by members of the news media.)

"Thank you all for coming. When I first decided to run for Governor of Virginia, I chose to make respect a central tenet of my campaign. All Virginians deserve respect, regardless of their backgrounds or beliefs- and regardless of their political opinions. I feel strongly that it is a mistake to demonize those who disagree with you. Our political opponents are not demons- they are our brothers and our sisters, and they bleed like we bleed, and they want, at a high level, most of the same things that we want.

"I wish that the other candidates felt the same way. I have watched with growing dismay over the last weeks as initial civility has given way to wild-eyed accusations and divisive rhetoric.

"What is politics coming to, what is our society coming to, when two candidates for state-wide office spend millions of dollars on ads accusing their opponent of sympathizing with violent street gangs, pedophiles, white nationalists and neo-Nazis, and of harboring supporters who want to run over our children with trucks. I cannot begin to describe my disappointment. I fear for the future of our Commonwealth and of our nation, when even the most staid candidates feel they have to descend to this level of discourse to win an election, and are willing to do so.

"My family was talking in general terms about the rhetoric we had been hearing, when my seven-year-old daughter asked me “Do grown-ups really fight like that?” and I said “Well, these two do” and she said “They’re acting like children!” and I said “You’re right.” It’s unbelievable to me that I have to be the grown-up in the room, because these 60-year old men, these establishment politicians, a sitting lieutenant governor and former chairman of the RNC, apparently think that the best strategy for getting elected to the highest office in the state is name-calling. I feel like telling them 'Don’t make me turn this car around!'

"Virginia’s voters want to make their decisions based on the issues. When I talk to Virginians all over the state, they are disgusted by the ads they see. What is important to them is the economy, education, healthcare, criminal justice. Not monuments. Not Enron.

"So with five days to go until election day, I ask all candidates to STOP the attack ads. From now until election day, please join me in refocusing the election on meaningful issues that have a real impact on the material well-being of Virginians. Let’s make sure voters have the information they need to make a reasoned decision. To that end, I have completed a series of seven issue papers, elaborating on my positions on seven of the most important issues to Virginians: jobs and growth, healthcare, business regulations, criminal justice reform, education, pipelines and environmental regulations, and taxation. I will be releasing these over the next few days, and hope that we can shift the debate back to critical topics such as these.

"And I ask the people of Virginia to look past the mud-slinging, compare the positions of all three candidates,and learn about my positive proposals to improve the lives of all Virginians. I am the only candidate who will fix our broken income tax code by exempting the first $60k of household income from the state income tax, the only candidate who will end the drug war and legalize marijuana so that we can give people struggling with substance abuse the help they need and redirect resources to other critical areas, the only candidate opposing the abuse of eminent domain, the only candidate not proposing billions of dollars in new government spending, the only candidate who would scrap SOL testing and replace it with something better, and the only candidate who emphasizes improving our tax and regulatory environment to support our small businesses and local entrepreneurs, instead of giving away millions of taxpayer dollars trying to lure in big corporations from out of state.

"I want all Virginians to know that there will be a third candidate on your ballot on November 7, a candidate with a positive vision for the future of Virginia who understands how important it is that Virginia be both innovative and inclusive, and who truly respects all Virginians. If all the negative ads have turned you off the election and you are thinking of staying at home on election day, please come out and vote NO to the negativity, and YES to civility and respect. Thank you."

Hyra's remarks have been reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch ("Calling himself the 'grown-up in the room,' Libertarian Cliff Hyra bashes Gillespie and Northam over harsh attack ads," by Graham Moomaw), Radio IQ/WVTF ("Libertarian to Other Candidates for Governor: Grow Up," by Mallory Noe-Payne), Augusta Free Press, The Washington Post ("Libertarian for Va. governor calls on rivals to drop the ‘wild-eyed accusations’," by Laura Vozzella), WVEC-TV in Norfolk ("Polling at distant third, Libertarian Cliff Hyra leans on independents in governor's race," by Janet Roach), RVA Mag ("Libertarian Candidate Cliff Hyra Holds Press Conference, Calls for Civility in Election," by Caitlin Barbieri), Community Idea Stations ("Libertarian Gubernatorial Candidate Calls For An End To Attack Ads," by Saraya Wintersmith), Bacon's Rebellion ("Take Back the Discourse — Fight for Civility!," by James Bacon), the Free Lance-Star, the Daily Progress, and the Roanoke Times.

Updated: Gary Johnson and Cliff Hyra React to #Charlottesville

Gary Johnson

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who was the Libertarian Party's nominee for President in 2012 and 2016, issued a statement on the afternoon of August 14 in reaction to the events this past weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Johnson posted his remarks on Facebook:

Racism killed people in Charlottesville this weekend. That is as un-American as it gets.

In the nation our Founders created, even a tiny minority of vile and repugnant 'demonstrators' enjoys the right to express racist white-supremacist evil.

BUT, the rest of us -- the overwhelming majority -- have the right, and I believe, the obligation, to condemn racism of every form. And when racist hate becomes violence and murder, we must respond with nothing less than the full force of the law.

Late Saturday night, Cliff Hyra, the Libertarian Party's 2017 nominee for Governor of Virginia, issued a similar statement, also on Facebook, reacting with shock and disbelief to the carnage precipitated by the presence of neo-Nazis, unabashed racists, and Confederate sympathizers in Charlottesville:

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Cliff Hyra

Horrific and tragic events in Charlottesville today. White nationalists and neo-Nazis threaten the liberty of us all, and as Virginians we must stand united against them. My heart goes out to the victims of the brutal terrorist attack and their families. I wish a swift and full recovery to those hospitalized, and offer my deepest condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives.

It is shocking and unbelievable to me that a political disagreement over statues could serve as an excuse for violent combat and heinous murder. I am heartbroken today, and also fearful for the future of our country and our commonwealth. We must act now to root out and extirpate all support for political violence. Peaceful discussion and political action are the only way forward.

Update, August 15: Gary Johnson expanded on his thoughts about last weekend's events and their aftermath in an article for The Jack News headlined "In the Wake of Charlottesville, Let’s Look for Solutions and Not Blame."

Gary Johnson on Donald Trump's contempt for democratic transitions: 'Unbelievable'

Last night, in the third and final Democratic-Republican presidential debate, GOP candidate Donald J. Trump suggested that he may not accept the results of the election on November 8, continuing his theme of asserting that massive electoral fraud will take place and that is the only reason he will lose to Hillary Clinton.

Today, Trump doubled down on his refusal to accept the central tenet of American democracy, that when a person or party loses an election, they become the loyal opposition and wait for another opportunity to win public office.

According to the Associated Press:

Trump kicked off a rally Thursday in Delaware, Ohio, by saying that he "would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supports and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election."

But he added: "If I win."

In response to Trump's bizarre break with tradition, the Libertarian Party's nominee for President, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, issued this statement:

Gary Johnson

“As a former Governor, who was elected and served as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, I have to say that Donald Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the outcome of an election is just one more straw too many. It’s offensive to the thousands of election officials across the nation, and it’s offensive to a nation for which the integrity of elections is what sets us apart from much of the world.

“Peaceful transition of power, which depends entirely upon honoring the results of elections, is as fundamental to our greatness and Constitution as anything else we do in America, and Donald Trump can’t even accept that fundamental without hedging.

“Unbelievable.”

Johnson and his running mate, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, have achieved ballot access in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia -- the first third-party presidential ticket to do so since Libertarian Harry Browne and his running mate, Jo Jorgensen, did it in 1996.

Guest Post: Vote Against Both Evils, by Will Hammer

This November 8th, if you decide to vote, you have a huge choice to make. You can either vote for a corrupt crony politician, or you can vote for a vulgar corrupt crony reality TV star. Because of the media, the partisan Commission on Presidential Debates, and the two major parties who have a vested interest in only having two parties, you would think those are your only choices.

Will Hammer, left, with Robert Sarvis in Buena Vista, Virginia

Well, you actually do have a choice at the ballot box this November. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, is on the ballot in all 50 states and D.C. He is an honest and a great man, not your typical crony politician or a bigoted, morally corrupt, gaudy salesman. Do I agree with Johnson on everything? No, but he is leaps and bounds better than Clinton or Trump and represents real change from the business as usual in Washington that has gotten us here. Is Gary Johnson perfect? No, but he actually admits that and it’s refreshing when a politician admits their humanity. Will you agree with him on everything? Probably not, but at least you know he does not have an agenda and he’s not speaking out of both sides of his mouth, or other orifice.

The biggest smear the media can come up with for Johnson is his ‘Aleppo moment’, in which he didn’t know what Aleppo was when randomly asked during a live interview. Should he have been able to answer that question? Of course, he’s running for President, but it’s definitely not a disqualifier. I’d rather have someone whose foreign policy won’t cause Syrian and other middle eastern strife, than someone who would know, but only because she was part of the administration that caused the major humanitarian crisis. He had another moment where he couldn’t name a foreign leader he respected. A week later, he still can’t. The media would have you believe that he couldn’t name ANY foreign leader, but that’s untrue. He cannot name a current foreign leader he admires and he explained that he doesn’t want to defend them against things that he’s not even aware of. Again, this was an unscripted, live question. The other candidates NEVER have unscripted questions. They are screened, planted, and given well beforehand to prepare.

So those are Gary Johnson’s big ‘scandals.’ Now, let’s compare those to Trump and Clinton. If I were to include all of them, this article would take up the whole newspaper, not 1600 words. Trump and Clinton are different sides of the same corrupt, crony coin. One sells her political power and influence and the other buys it. Trump is definitely no outsider, and Clinton is no progressive politician putting people before profits.

Trump has a horrible temperament and would be a disaster diplomatically, saying whatever came to his head on a whim in public, completely alienating us and quite frankly being a national embarrassment. He has spoken about media organizations such as the Washington Post having issues if he becomes President because of stories they have written about him. He has spoken about companies such as Amazon (both owned by Jeff Bezos) getting taxed essentially out of business. His careless speech may even incite violence, with him making suggestions about gun owners taking care of Clinton and many other situations. Trump has exploited horrible eminent domain laws to obtain private land to build his developments. He scammed people with Trump University, used bankruptcy to screw people and contractors over while walking away with millions, and the list goes on. He’s a bigot, demonizing Mexicans and others. And he’s a misogynist, saying crude and horrible things to and about various women. That’s bad enough, but we have just found out that he sexually assaults women and brags about it in private. This latest revelation was caught via a hot mic. Some are defending him, saying that it’s ‘locker room’ talk. Of course men do that, just as women do the same. But, there is a HUGE difference between what Trump said and ‘locker room’ talk. Trump actually talked about how being famous and a star allows him to sexually assault women and get away with it. I could care less about the “lewd language”, I care about the actions he described and he gets away with. This is DISGUSTING. This is it, this is your moment of truth. Are you going to defend and vote for this loathsome egomaniac?

Gary Johnson and William Weld at Libertarian Party Convention, May 2016

Clinton is definitely no saint either. Clinton is about as hawkish as they come. She voted for the Iraq War, costing thousands of US lives, an estimated 250-500k Iraqi lives, instability, and nearly $2 TRILLION. She was Secretary of State while the Obama administration bombed at least 8 countries, thousands upon thousands of innocent lives. She was part of regime change that created more and more instability, which led to the rise of ISIS. Simply put, she is one of the biggest advocates for and participants in our horrible foreign policy that has cost us US lives, innocent foreign lives, trillions of dollars, created more terrorists and allowed for ISIS to fill the void, and so on. War is a racket and Clinton is no peace candidate. The Clinton Foundation and pay to play with foreign governments/leaders. Recently she has also had some scandals involving emails. A leak revealed the DNC conspired to make sure Bernie Sanders did not receive nomination and that Clinton would. As a Ron Paul supporter in 2007 and 2012, I feel your pain and disgust Sander supporters.There is also the private email server that was in a bathroom that Clinton used instead of secure servers provided by the government for classified and official business while Secretary of the State. The FBI decided not to pursue charges against Clinton, but made it clear that she was extremely careless and frankly inept at handling classified information. But, why the double standard? Others have been charged with mishandling classified information, not intentionally. 30,000 emails deleted with BleachBit, 30 new emails recovered by FBI recently related to Benghazi, Clinton IT specialist asking Reddit how to alter ‘very VIP’ emails, and the list goes on. And now, the same day that Trump’s sexual groping audio comes to light, Wikileaks has released emails from Clinton’s campaign manager, revealing excerpts from Clinton’s Goldman Sach and other speeches, where she has earned more than $22 million, such as “If everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”

I recommend voting against both evils and voting for Gary Johnson. He is a two term Republican governor from a heavily Democratic state, as is his running mate Bill Weld. They will bring sanity and non-partisanship to the office, reaching across the aisle and working with coalitions of all parties. They are fiscally responsible and socially accepting, like the majority of Americans. They do not want to continue our failed foreign policy of drone strikes, invasions, backing various rebel groups, and overthrowing governments. They want to balance our budget and stop the growing $20 trillion deficit, which has doubled under Bush and then again under Obama. Reject both of the two major party Presidential candidates, the most hated in US history. The Democrats and Republicans believe they own your vote. They do not, you own your own vote. A vote for anyone is not a vote for someone else, like the narrative they are trying to play right now. Gary Johnson is polling roughly 10% nationally. But these are polls that do not include people under 40 (which actually favor Johnson) and/or have only Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on the top line, head to head. In reality, they are not going head to head. This is at least a 3 way race in all 50 states, and a 4 way race in most states with Jill Stein. Johnson is polling over 19% in five states, over 15% in 15 states, and over 10% in 42 states. He currently is actually polling within margin or error to Trump in New Mexico. If Gary Johnson does get 10% in Virginia, then the Libertarian Party would get major party status and be able to run candidates within obtaining the ridiculous amount of signatures required currently. There are many other states where Johnson’s success would create more choice on the ballot as well. If he was allowed on the debate stage, run by the Commission on Presidential Debates which was founded by former Democrat and Republican national chairs, then I have no doubt that he would be even higher, and possibly overtake both candidates. But thanks to Ross Perot’s success, who was polling lower than Johnson and was allowed to debate, the CPD raised the arbitrary percentage to be in the debates. It’s a scam and even the League of Women Voters, who used to run the Presidential debates, dropped their sponsorship because they did not want to help “perpetuate a fraud on the American people.” Even dozens of major newspapers and publications are calling for Gary Johnson’s inclusion into the debate, with over 60% of polled Americans wishing for Johnson to be included. Gary Johnson has even received six major newspaper endorsements, to Trump’s zero.

Will Hammer is a Libertarian who ran in 2014 for U.S. Congress and 2015 for Virginia House of Delegates. Hammer was the sole recipient of the Libertarian Party’s Patrick Henry award in 2016, which recognizes a very effective campaign for public office at the state or federal level, while communicating Libertarian ideas, principles, and values.

From the Archives: Former NM Governor Gary Johnson talks about shutdown, surveillance, and Sarvis

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on October 25, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Former NM Governor Gary Johnson talks about shutdown, surveillance, and Sarvis

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson will be one of the primary speakers on Saturday, October 26, at a rally at the foot of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to protest the expanding surveillance state.

Known as “Stop Watching Us,” the rally at the Capitol Reflecting Pool will also feature such speakers as Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, gay-rights advocate Dan Choi, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, national security analyst and author Bruce Schneier, and social critic Naomi Wolf. A video in support of the rally features celebrities John Cusack, Phil Donahue, Daniel Ellsberg, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Oliver Stone, and Wil Wheaton.

Protesters are gathering from around the country, with buses carrying them from far-flung places like New York City, Philadelphia, and Charlottesville, Virginia.

'Outrageous'

Two nights before the rally, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner spoke to Gary Johnson (who was also the 2012 Libertarian nominee for U.S. President) at a fundraising event for his non-profit organization, Our America Initiative.

In the course of the interview, Johnson expressed his outrage at the growth of government surveillance of American citizens and violations of privacy and constitutional protections.

“It's outrageous,” Johnson said, “that 125 billion cell phone conversations have been recorded or are authorized” to be archived for future probes.

“When you find out that a federal judge has said that it's OK for the [National Security Agency] to gather information from 113 million Verizon users,” he complained, “to me that is not the Fourth Amendment, to me that is not due process.”

Instead, it is “some sort of blanket 'government-knows-best'” policy that leads to the government “search[ing] your personal archives” and doing whatever they like with it, without constraints.

“This has got to stop,” Johnson said. “This really has to stop.”

'Chill out'
On another topic of recent concern, the temporary shutdown of the federal government that may recur in the near future, the 2012 presidential candidate explained what he would have said to the nation under those circumstances, if he were president.

“Here is what would have been coming out of my mouth,” Johnson said:

“'Chill out, citizens of the United States. I'm the executive. We're going to pay the bills. There's revenue coming in. We're going to pay the interest on our debt. Social Security checks are going to go out. I'm going to prioritize what's important in government and get it the funding and we'll manage our way through this.'”

Johnson said that his personal philosophy – not being a social conservative while also being “arguably the most fiscally conservative governor” in U.S. history – helped him reach across the aisle and work with a Democratic legislature as a Republican governor.

“I'm going to argue that” a libertarian philosophy like that “is reflective of most Americans and in a state that's two to one Democrat, [like] New Mexico, that resonates” with voters, he said.

Advice to Robert Sarvis
He offered his own experience as advice to Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian candidate for governor of Virginia this year.

If Sarvis is elected governor, Johnson said, he “can succeed on looking at issues first and politics last.”

That was “my promise running for governor of New Mexico, and I think I've fulfilled it,” Johnson said, emphasizing the slogan, “Politics last, issues first.”

In addition to speaking at Saturday afternoon's “Stop Watching Us” rally in Washington, Johnson and Sarvis will make a joint appearance that evening at the IOTA Club, 2832 Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m.

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