Category: Guest Posts
In simple language, the terms of reference require the panel to reform local government in a way that is consistent with the wishes of central government. Reforming local government in the way recommended in the Future for Local Government report would be a giant leap forward for the government in achieving its He Puapua strategy.
A virus has been allowed to infect the common law and it has unknowable and unpredictable consequences. We can no longer refer to the common law because it no longer is common to all New Zealanders. Unless the courts and the law command widespread community acceptance by its impartiality and universal application the door is open to anarchy.
By the Government’s own modelling its scheme will send 20% of beef and sheep farmers and 5% of dairy farmers out of existence. Out of existence will also go their share of the $30b export earnings the sectors earn each year.
Nanaia Mahuta has achieved exactly what she set out to achieve, and that is a much stronger presence of Maori around the local council decision making table. It’s a giant leap forward towards co-governance at a local level.
Prior to this compulsory cultural renaissance people managed their own conflicts. Tension would have existed always but so did the freedom to choose. What kind of society wants to remove that freedom? One in which the collective trumps the individual.
Once we get a written constitution, a higher law which binds parliament itself, there will be no stopping judges as they interpret it as they please. The entire argument for a written constitution is an attempt to remove matters from parliament’s’ authority and hand them over to judges.
How long will New Zealand voters tolerate under-investment in all other public services to accommodate massive over-investments in the ambition of some politicians to ‘lead the world’ in Climate Policy?
The last eight months have seen 3,000 more deaths than expected – an unfolding disaster. Over 1,000 are unrelated to COVID-19. Health authorities and politicians should face more scrutiny over the causes of these unexplained excess deaths - especially as they are concentrated in age groups eligible for boosters.
The most depressing feature of Fire and Fury was that amongst its repeated warnings about threats to democracy it never once mentioned the elephant in the room — namely Ardern’s government steadily undermining democracy by threading a radical view of the Treaty as a 50:50 partnership with iwi throughout legislation with absolutely no mandate
More likely, is that LGNZ has become an integral part of the government’s strategy to promote the implementation of He Pua Pua and the so called “partnership” principles of the Treaty of Waitangi - notwithstanding that they are a factual and jurisprudential nonsense. If this so, then LGNZ should stop its media spin and make a clean breast of it to its members and the public.
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