Activism Plan
by Duncan Bayne
My plan is to maximise the payback from my efforts, in terms of effect on Government and Opposition policy, and public opinion and awareness.
To achieve this, I'll be:
- Writing submissions on Bills before Parliamentary Select Committees [1], and publicising those submissions; anyone interested in a particular Bill will be able to find my submission, read it, and see what's wrong or right with the Bill from a Libertarian perspective.
- Writing a serious, in-depth analysis of one political topic or event every week - either for my homepage, SOLO, or the Free Radical ... with my goal being a regular column for a mainstream publication.
- Donating a small proportion of whatever income I get from sales of software I'm now writing to the Libertarianz.
- Continuing to update the Free Radical website as new issues come out, while unashamedly letting Julian Pistorius handle the harder, more time consuming administration issues.
- Helping to protect what liberties we have in New Zealand by joining the Territorial Army.
Now, that last item probably needs a few disclaimers.
Firstly, it assumes that my current employer won't object to the possibility of me vanishing for extended periods of time. Although NZ law forbids employers to prevent their employees from Territorial service, there's no way I'm using that legislation as a weapon against my employer. I haven't got in writing, but an initial discussion with my manager suggests all will be well in this respect.
Secondly, it assumes that they'd want me. Again, initial enquiries with a recruiter have been positive; I've been training to ace the fitness requirements, but my eyesight might yet let me down.
Finally, there's no way I'll join up if doing so reduces my annual income to the point where I risk losing my house, as my wife is foremost in my plans for life (explicitly; check my wedding vows). I'll be discussing this in earnest with an Army recruiter within the next couple of weeks.
In summary, I aim to be spending around five hours a week on the above activism areas, on those weeks where I'm not training with the Territorials (or being posted somewhere unpleasant in support of U.N. 'peacekeeping' operations ...)
It's going to be an interesting year :-)
[1] Non-Kiwi SOLOists can read Making a Submission to a Parliamentary Select Committee to get an idea of the process; I'm guessing it's substantially similar to other countries
Discuss this Article (6 messages)
|
