Category: imported_weekly
State-owned energy company Meridian Energy is likely to list on the New Zealand stock exchange in October as the government takes the next step in the partial privatisation of state-owned assets. The company has now finalised a contract with the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter shareholders Rio Tinto and Sumitomo for lower priced power until January 2017 - the smelter uses 40 percent of the Meridian’s generating capacity.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister John Key announced a new tranche of reforms for the Resource Management Act: “New Zealand needs planning law that enables economic growth and jobs, as well as providing strong environmental outcomes. The changes we are introducing are about striking that balance between our environmental responsibilities and our economic opportunities.
The Government Communications Security Bureau legislation is now back in front of Parliament. Introduced by former Prime Minister Helen Clark under urgency in 2001, the original Bill was designed to establish a proper legislative framework for the GCSB, which had been operating since its creation in 1977 as a non-statutory organisation.
The welfare reforms that came into force this month have been described as the biggest changes to the benefit system since the original Social Security Act was passed into law in 1938. The underlying generosity of that scheme - which created a wide range of assistance measures including the Sickness, Invalids’, Unemployment, Emergency and Widows’ Benefits - is attributed as helping to keep Labour in power until 1949.
With just a week to go until the consultation phase of the government’s constitutional review comes to an end, if you haven’t already sent in a submission, you have until 5pm Wednesday July 31st to do so. The review has focussed public attention on the exercise of constitutional power in New Zealand. In doing so it has become clear that the Maori sovereignty movement has made significant progress towards their goal of the co-management of the country.
A campaign is presently underway to convince the public that racism in the government sector is responsible for the poor social outcomes of Maori. Predictably the solution offered is preferential treatment for Maori - by enshrining the ‘principles’ of the Treaty of Waitangi into law.
The political panic over falling rates of home ownership is based on figures that cannot be relied upon, with home ownership rates probably not in decline at all. The concerns over housing affordability are concentrated in just a few centres around the country, where population increases have outpaced the building of new houses.
The 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System, which recommended that MMP replace FPP as New Zealand’s voting system, also recommended the abolition of the Maori seats on the basis that MMP would adequately increase the Parliamentary representation of minority groups including Maori.
Launched with appropriate earth-ending prophecies last October, Russell Norman claimed that nothing short of quantitative easing would rescue New Zealand’s economy from cataclysmic consequences. The problem for the Greens was that their new policy was typically lacking in realism. Furthermore, their policy was not quantitative easing at all. Instead it was an inflationary plan to moneterise government debt.
Over the last two weeks our constitutional review public information campaign advertisement has been published in newspapers across the country. We used the ad’ to inform the public that a review of our constitutional arrangements was taking place - and to encourage them to get involved. After all, public awareness is a key pre-requisite for any constitutional change process, and a Research New Zealand survey published in April had indicated that only a third of New Zealanders had even heard of the government’s review.
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