Your lawyer mates are probably telling you not to be daft.

But here is the bottom line:

As someone present New Zealand, you are a subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.  She empowered Parliament to make laws, and to provide appropriate sanctions to those who break them.

That is the authority over you. 

So your statement that all men are made equal under God's law is obviously broken; as someone far more famous than I noted, some animals are more equal than others.  So you may be my equal, but you are not an equal of Her Maj.

(And you'll never be faced by a "fine" under the Infringing File Sharing legislation; you may be required to pay an "award".  The difference is a fine is a sum of money ordered to be paid by a criminal court as a punishment, and that money that ends up in the government's coffers.  An award is a civil remedy where one party is instructed to hand over money to another party to right a wrong)

It's hereditory, based on some ancient rellies of hers who beat up other people to be declared guvnor of all England.  All happening hundreds and in some cases thousands of years ago, back when they played tick with hatchets and went jousting and generally killing one another in the name of honour.  When it all quietened down a bit and the petty squables ended by about the 1600s people just accepted the monarch, as by then there were the sembleces of a parliamentary democracy, and the monarch was effectively a figurehead, as Her Maj QE II is to this day.

However, for New Zealand, when Her Maj goes, I think it is time we became an independent republic.

This wont be simple, as there is a lot of hat-tipping to the Treaty of Waitangi, and of course, that binds the Crown, and if we become a reublic, thats the end of the Treaty.  So before we become a republic we have to get to the point where everyone can agree that the Treaty has served its purpose, and we can go forward as one New Zealand.  That wont be without its challenges.

free_az said:

So ultimately what you've outlined in your post is that Her Maj QE II derives her authority from the use of force.

Ultimately, and historically, yes, her mob "won".  New Zealand is quite unusual in that we didn't get "colonised" (ie taken by force) like many places the English went many years ago, we got treatied, so the folks who were here at the the time (Maori) actually got a choice of what to do, and made a deal with Her Maj's predecessors.

These are more peaceful times, surely she can't go to war with everyone who refuses to recognise her authority?

She doesn't have to: she has people, "The State"

Don't get me wrong, I think the police are a fantastic for the most part, I like to sleep at night knowing my kids are safe. However in these modern times the Police have two very different jobs. One is protecting the public from harmful intruders of our most basic of rights. But their other job is to enforce statutory regulations upon the public, no matter how ridiculous or totalitarian they may be.

I share some of your concerns.  A number of police forces around the world have a tagline something like "to protect and serve", which I think is absolutely appropriate. NZ Police Association President Greg O'Connor describes the NZ Police Service as "The coercive arm of the state", which although it is undoubtedly true, that role should be secondary to the "protect and serve" role.  O'Connor has further remarked (in the context of more guns in the hands of the Police) that we should just get used to more people getting shot.

If I had enough capital I could employ legislators and others to be my 'police force' and write something called 'criminal law' and then assume it applies to everyone in a defined area, lets say my neighbourhood.

No.  A bunch of people are trying this right now in Syria, and it isn't very pretty.  The established forces are numerically strong and well resourced, and will use whatever force is necessary to prevent you from doing this.

If you don't like being under the thumb of a government, there is another option one can consider, and that is to go to a country that doesn't have a government, or at least not one that is effective.  Somalia is an example.

Yahel116 said:

"It applies to you because its the law"….. We all know this is an incorrect statement because that's the same thing as saying "the bible is factual because its the bible". That's not evidence that it is anything at all.

Well,… if you go back a bit in history both statements were true for exactly the same reason.

Time was, if you had questioned the bible then well meaning religious types would simply have killed you.  As Wikipedia notes, in Britain, the then 20-year-old Thomas Aikenhead was executed in 1697 for the crime of denying the veracity of the Old Testament and the legitimacy of Christ's miracles.

The law applies to you not because you accept that it does, but because there are people who will apply the law to you, irrespective of your views on the matter.  They out-power and outnumber you.  There isn't even going to be a discussion along the lines of "first I would like to see evidence that the law applies to me".

Seriously – if "the law doesn't apply to me" was a usable defence, don't you think that would be defense strategy number one for every accused?  Every defendent would say "nope, not my law, I don't agree, doesn't apply to me, let me go".  Every trial would then end as the accused walks out the door smiling.