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Latest Column
While the inefficiencies and cost blowouts of local government are a major concern for the Coalition – and rightly so given the huge impact it has on our economy and our lives – they must not lose sight of the fact that many parts of the country local government is now effectively being run by iwi for their own benefit.
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Local government in New Zealand is facing significant challenges. After many years of entrenched policy positions councils now need to rapidly adapt and realign to the significant re-sets emanating from central government. All local councils are creatures of statutes and like it or not, central government and local councils must be inextricably intertwined.
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This Month On NZCPR
Since one Parliament cannot bind another, National no longer needs to prop up a dangerous and highly destabilising law promoted by a Party that is now openly advancing anarchy. The fatally flawed Marine and Coastal Area Act should be repealed and the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act restored to provide certainty, security and to protect the public good...
This new law will be the most indescribable gift to Maori of an enormous part of the remaining public property and public wealth of this country. It will deprive the rest of us of any possibility of enjoying the immense economic opportunities which the foreshore and seabed affords and which, heaven knows, we so desperately need…
Looking at the wider picture, all over the world, liberal democracies are being threatened by authoritarian forces. We experienced it ourselves just five years ago, when almost every single one of our democratic rights and freedoms were stripped away without warning. It was into the democratic vacuum Jacinda Ardern created, that tribal rule was ushered in.
National wants economic growth. Opening up the agricultural sector to less regulated gene editing and the more wholesale use of GMO’s could be a quick way to get quantum leaps in production. But there are no guarantees and the evidence for increased production from gene manipulation is scant. Yet the changes are being hustled through.
If a line-by-line review had been carried out, Coalition Ministers would have been shocked to discover Labour’s toxic He Puapua programmes are still operating. De-funding those including “Rautaki Maori” policies to deliver preferential hiring practices for Maori. would not only have helped the Coalition to deliver on their election pledge to “Stop He Puapua”, but it would also have saved millions of dollars to reduce spending and pay down debt.
Nicola Willis described Budget 2025 as a “No BS” Budget. That’s true, to the extent that it lacked the stratospheric BS that characterised the political spin of the Ardern/Robertson budgets. That was the good news. The not-so-good news is that the budget lacked substance and was devoid of the economic reform that this country needs to reverse its long-term economic decline. It tinkered with the problem.
Quality reform is now called for. But where is the party with the courage to set New Zealand on the path to a better future – one where the good of New Zealanders is put first, and where there’s no kowtowing to vested interest groups demanding special privileges.
The current welfare system has over the years piled mountains of debt onto the shoulders of today’s children and young people, who as a result, should be marching in the streets in protest. The crisis of New Zealand’s unfunded obligations is about to hit us hard. .
