| | The rumours are false.
The person in question, Jim Peron, is being refused re-entry to New Zealand from Germany, where he's been organising the latest international anarcho-Saddamite conference, because the Immigration Service deem him to be of "unfit character." They have made that ruling because the Chief Censor—a gay, liberal man—declared a publication by Free Forum Books, when the latter was owned by Peron, "objectionable," meaning that possession of it is now a criminal offence in New Zealand. The Chief Censor examined the paedophile publication, Unbound, after it was tabled in Parliament by New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters. Peters has waged a long campaign against New Zealand's Immigration Service, saying it has allowed all manner of unsavoury characters to slip through the net & settle in New Zealand with evil agendas. He cites Peron as an example.
Unbound was unearthed by Madeleine Flannagan of the Locke Foundation. She & her husband Matt are Christian libertarians who say they were motivated to dig into Peron's background because Peron hounded & abused them for their religious beliefs whilst they were members of a student libertarian network he had set up.
But the Flannagans were not the original source of Peters' information. Neither they nor I know who was.
Because of a prior history of very bad blood between Peron & me, Peron has claimed all along that it was I who drew him to Winston Peters' attention. The claim has a certain plausibility on its face, given Peron's & my mutual detestation (I regard him as the most odious individual it has ever been my misfortune to encounter), but it's just not true. Late last year, Peters' office raised the matter of Peron with me, not the other way round, at the Press Gallery Christmas party. They already had a huge file on him & were about to raise questions in Parliament. I had the briefest of conversations with Frank Perry, Peters' press secretary at the time, which would have added nothing to their knowledge but a little to mine—& that was the extent of it till Winston Peters actually did raise the Peron issue in Parliament in March of this year.
Peters first made his allegations under "parliamentary privilege"—that is, inside the debating chamber, meaning he couldn't be sued for them. He subsequently repeated them outside Parliament, challenging Peron to sue him &/or appear with him on television. Peron has not picked up the challenge, but has instead chosen to make various allegations about me & the Flannagans under various pseudonymous guises on various blogs.
Not long after the matter blew up in Parliament, photographs & drawings of naked pubescent boys were discovered in Peron's Auckland bookshop. These, & a complete summation of the Locke Foundation's case against Peron, can be found at http://www.lockefoundation.org.nz/research_articles.htm
At the end of the day, the matter of who dobbed Peron in is not the issue. Peron is the issue, & focussing on the dobber is Peron's way of deflecting attention from that. But, since the matter has been raised here, I am taking this opportunity to set the record straight: I was not the dobber. This has already been stated by Frank Perry on the Scoop website. (Frank has not disclosed the identity of the dobber, either publicly or to me privately.)
For the record also, let me reiterate what I have said in the latest edition of The Free Radical. I do not buy into the current fashionable hysteria about paedophilia. I was one of the first people to sign a petition of public figures seeking an inquiry into the Peter Ellis case (Ellis was convicted of paedophiliac abuse on the basis of uncorroborated evidence elicted from suggestible toddlers by deranged feminazis). Nor am I in any sense an advocate of sexual prudery, conservatism or Christian repression ... between consenting adults, anything should be legally permissible, whatever moral judgments one may reach about it; it's quite simply no one else's business, least of all that of the Censor or the Immigration Service. But libertarianism—& much more, Objectivism—is not a license for sex with kids or the promotion thereof, & must not be seen to be. In that respect, leaving aside all rights & wrongs of immigration rules, censorship, etc., I welcome the end of the danger posed to the reason/freedom movement in New Zealand by Jim Peron. In other words, if I were the dobber, I would not be ashamed of the fact. It just so happens that I wasn't.
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