Category: Constitutional Reform
The return of COVID-19 community transmission, with Auckland back in a level 3 lockdown and the rest of New Zealand at level 2, raises real questions about New Zealand’s upcoming general election.
While many of the adverse effects of cannabis use are well recognised, the adverse respiratory effects are not. Cannabis is much more damaging to the lungs than tobacco: one cannabis joint is equivalent to between 2.5 and 5 tobacco cigarettes for adverse effects on lung function and in terms of lung cancer risk, it is similar to 20 tobacco cigarettes.
Andrew Borrowdale, a former parliamentary draughtsman and author of respected law texts, alleges that the “special powers” delegated by section 70 of the Health Act 1956 cannot provide Parliamentary authority for the entire populace to be locked up at home.
What this highlight is that when a government acts outside of the law during the term of a Parliament only the courts can hold them to account. Only they are the custodians of the Rule of Law.
Instead of questioning the accuracy of the computer models, the Prime Minister appears to have been spooked into making another of her disastrous 'Captain’s Calls' - to lock down the country and ‘eliminate’ the virus.
Fear of widespread infection in the community of a virulent disease is now sufficient to lock people up in their homes and suspend Parliament. Really! This not the first such plague to affect New Zealand and it will not be the last. Yet this is the first time our civil liberties and our democracy have been suspended in order to minimise its effect on public health.
German immunologist and toxicologist Professor Stefan Hockertz says, “Covid-19 is no more dangerous than influenza, but is simply observed much more closely. More dangerous than the virus is the fear and panic created by the media and the ‘authoritarian reaction’ of many governments.”
Any restrictions anywhere in New Zealand on public movement under COVID-19 Level 4 national emergency criteria should apply equally everywhere and to everybody, regardless of race, and only be imposed and enforced by legitimate authorities of the state and not Maori amateurs.
Without a doubt Sian Elias’ Ngati Apa judgement was unprecedented judicial activism. And that’s the problem with judicial activism – the public are left to pick up the pieces. So here we are, almost 20 years later, facing multiple tribal claims for the country’s entire coastline. The first ones will be heard this year...
In Britain and much of the west, the risible pretence is maintained that the religion has nothing to do with Islamic extremism. From the moment this threat emerged in Britain more than three decades ago, the establishment has refused to acknowledge that what we are facing is Islamic holy war, rooted in religious doctrines which are as genuine as they are contestable.
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