Category: Politics
In 2003, the late Dr Michael Crichton, a best-selling author with more than 200 million books in print including Jurassic Park and State of Fear, was asked what he thought was the most important challenge facing mankind. He explained: “The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age it takes on a special urgency and importance. We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems.”
Without a doubt, the welcome sound of the New Zealand National Anthem ringing out from the London Olympic Games rekindles that wonderful sense of pride in being a New Zealander. The Games serves to remind us of what a powerful motivating force competition is. It is the very thing that pushes the boundaries of human endurance and effort. How tragic that the guardians of our education system have progressively removed competition from our schools, when striving for success is such an important driver of achievement.
In spite of the dedication and hard work of tens of thousands of New Zealanders - and the support of hundreds of thousands - sadly, we have been unable to gather enough signatures to trigger a nation-wide referendum on restoring Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed.
Though our Citizens Initiated Referendum (CIR) has failed narrowly to get to its target, the Coastal Coalition will continue to campaign strongly against National’s Marine and Coastal Area Act (the 2011 Act). So I ask that all Coastal Coalition members stay in touch, and help us with this fight.
Next week the Waitangi Tribunal will be hearing the Maori Council’s claim for the ownership of New Zealand’s freshwater. To most people, water, like air, is part of a natural cycle and is regarded as a ‘common good’ –managed by the Crown on behalf of us all, through Regional Councils.
Race-based policy has been a feature of governance in New Zealand as long as the nation has had a government, and race-based affirmative action has been with us since the 1980s. Where is this heading and can anything be done to stop it? This column seeks to describe what the likely costs will be: when historical redress is agreed to and paid; when co-management agreements are set up with all tribal entities; and when all tribes have social service agencies operating, including Whanau Ora. I also suggest what could be done to reverse the process.
There is a strange irony about New Zealanders. While some are extremely vocal in opposing foreign ownership of land or assets, many turn a blind eye when a foreign group like the United Nations effectively takes over aspects of our governance and institutional arrangements.
The political nature of the Maori Party's constitutional review advisory panel is in sharp contract to the way in which a major constitutional review should normally have been implemented – through an independent Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by constitutional law experts. Instead we have ended up with a politically appointed panel, heavily weighted in favour of former politicians and Maori academics, but light on legal and constitutional expertise.
New Zealand’s ETS is the only country-wide trading scheme in the world outside of the European Union. The EU scheme is not an “all gasses, all sectors” scheme like New Zealand’s, but instead it targets just 43 percent of industrial emissions. It excludes the transport sector, households and small businesses, agriculture, and construction and waste. In addition, the EU scheme is based solely on carbon dioxide and excludes methane, which is such a major part of our emissions profile.
Deception has always been at the heart of the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation. When it was enacted in great haste by a Labour Government in 2008, the public were told it was intended to stave off global warming. In fact, its purpose was to settle a major law suit brought against the Government by the forestry industry.
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