Philosophy, economics, politics, law

Welcome to Thoughts from the North by me, Gary Judd KC: lawyer; company chairman; speaker and participant, — sometimes chairman or facilitator — at nearly 40 Asia-Pacific conferences, seminars and training sessions on financial, governance and allied matters; occasional writer on philosophy, politics, economics and law. I am a concerned observer of the present social and economic environment with foreboding for the future because of current attitudes of the young and not so young, of governments and institutions, and because of global geopolitics; The economic and social policies of governments and their agencies defy reason. The lessons of the past, including constitutional and legal history, are ignored. The causes of past crises are re-enacted.

I have written occasionally on such matters. I now have the time to do so in a more regular and systematic way, drawing on my background and experience.

I became interested and engaged in New Zealand politics more than 50 years ago, as a friend and sometime confidant of Labour Party politicians, but not a politician myself, nor any desire to be one. There is a statement often but probably wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill, “If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.” That aphorism fails to recognize that life experience may result in an understanding that there is a proper relationship between emotions and mind which requires feelings to be tested by and subordinated to reason, and that the dichotomy is not between socialism and conservatism, but between subjection to dictation and control on the one hand (the hallmark of socialism), and freedom and individuality on the other.

Socialism negates freedom and individuality. “To be a socialist,” Joseph Goebells said, is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole. Socialism is in its deepest sense service.”

Freedom and political equality go hand in hand. Political equality derives from the observable fact about human beings that, to use John Locke’s words in Treatise 2 of his Two Treatises of Government (published 1690),

[all men are naturally in] a state … of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection….

Or, as it was so beautifully put over 2000 years earlier in a papyrus fragment, On Truth, attributed to Antiphon (480-411 BCE), an Athenian orator and statesman who possibly also participated in legal affairs:

For by nature we all equally, both barbarians and Greeks, have an entirely similar origin: for it is fitting to fulfil the natural satisfactions which are necessary to all men: all have the ability to fulfil these in the same way, and in all this none of us is different either as barbarian or as Greek; for we all breathe into the air with mouth and nostrils…

This emphasizes the commonality and equality of all human beings regardless of their cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Using the scientific knowledge now available it can be put this way: nothing in human genes or the DNA contained within them confers dominion over others, nor subordinates one to another.

Freedom is not absolute for, as Locke pointed out, it is subject to "the bounds of the law of nature,”

… we must consider, what state men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man….

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

Laws made by men ought to be designed so that there is reconciliation between the state of perfect freedom and the law of nature’s demands, as there is a tension between the two principles.

A bit more then about the background I bring to the consideration of such matters.

I am a New Zealand King’s Counsel (within Great Britain and the British Commonwealth of Nations, a barrister – that is a lawyer, usually one who is an advocate in the courts – of the highest rank; Queen’s Counsel when the sovereign is a woman, King’s Counsel when the sovereign is a man). My area has been and to a more limited extent still is litigation, principally in civil and commercial law, administrative law, copyright and other intellectual property, and taxation. I have practised in the courts of New Zealand including about a dozen appearances before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London when it was New Zealand’s final appellate court.

I have been fortunate to be able to combine my legal professional career with other activities.

I was chairman of ASB Bank Limited, which became a subsidiary of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia during my tenure, from 1988 (when ASB was wholly owned by the ASB Bank Community Trust) until my retirement as a director of ASB companies in August 2011, During this period, ASB grew from a modest, regional savings bank with assets of less than NZ$2 billion to a nationally operating, full-service financial institution with assets of over NZ$60 billion. From 1998 until my retirement from ASB I also chaired associate company ASB Group (Life) Ltd owner of New Zealand's largest life insurance company (Sovereign). 

My ASB involvement led to a 2009 Prime Ministerial appointment for a three-year term as one of New Zealand’s three appointees to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) where I became a co-chair of the ABAC Advisory Group on APEC Financial System Capacity Building. APEC is the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation, comprising 21 countries of Asia and the Pacific Rim.

During this period, I represented ABAC on many occasions: as chair, speaker and participant at nearly 40 conferences, seminars and training sessions.

I was a member of the New Zealand International Business Forum for a few years until I ceased my ASB involvement.

I also chaired Ports of Auckland Ltd for three years, and was chairman of the Auckland Radio Trust, which rebroadcasts the BBC World Service in New Zealand on frequency 810 AM, until I moved out of the coverage area in February 2023 and retired as a trustee.

Today, I continue with my legal work at reduced intensity allowing time to start publishing more works which will I hope provoke attention to some of the pressing issues of our times.

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