Category: Constitutional Reform
Since writing the article on the Rule of law and Maori privilege a number of people have asked what is this Rule of law and why does it have any significance in the modern New Zealand world. It is a good question...
The main political news over the last week was the formal announcement of the marriage of convenience between Hone Harawira’s Mana Party and Kim Dotcom’s Internet Party. The merger of a party based on a reserved Maori seat, that claims to represent disadvantaged Maori, with a party founded by a foreign multi-millionaire fraudster, reeks of hypocrisy.
Thanks to Denis McCarthy of the NZCPR Working Group Project, a summary of the 5,259 submissions to the Constitutional Advisory Panel on New Zealand's constitutional arrangements is provided in this report.
All around the country corporate iwi are moving in on local government to protect their assets and progress their power sharing 50:50 co-governance goal. Last month it was New Plymouth, where a plan to appoint six iwi representatives with full voting rights was defeated by a council vote. This month, it is Rotorua, where the Mayor has been planning to establish a new iwi board with voting rights - without the knowledge of the community.
Maoridom’s elite have persuaded politicians that their genetic inheritance guarantees them superior status to all other citizens. Dressed up as bogus claims of Treaty partnership and sovereignty rights, successive governments have knowingly compromised the rule of law by granting special privileges based on superior race demands.
The Rule of Law embodies the notion that freedoms are protected not by the dicktat of any person or collection of people, but by the Law to which all, high or low born, are subject. This notion is so central to the way we order our society that it is now little discussed, and one suspects no longer widely understood. It is a safeguard of great antiquity.
A country’s constitution belongs to the people. It’s the charter that sets out the basic rules by which a nation is governed: the rights and safeguards of citizens; how state power is exercised; the type of voting system; the number of Members of Parliament; whether representatives are elected freely or through some form of quota system.
An analysis of submissions to the Constitutional Advisory Panel obtained under the Official Information Act reveal a deep opposition to treaty politics that was obscured in the panel’s report to government in December.
This book contains a dozen essays on aspects of Treaty of Waitangi settlements. The fourteen contributors are all, in one sense anyway, eminently qualified to write on the subject. This book is a political tract masquerading as an academic treatise.
It can be argued that it is the detractors of citizens’ democracy, like Sir Geoffrey, that are out of step with society, and that more direct participation is needed, not less. Especially at a time when nations around the world are struggling to find better ways to connect with voters and keep them engaged in the democratic process.
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