Category: Crime & Justice
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is now looking foolish after thousands of people took to the streets in protest on Monday, thumbing their nose at her lockdown rules, while the Police watched on doing nothing.
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.
Maori tribal rahui roadblocks instigated across New Zealand under COVID-19 Alert Level 4 lockdown and continued under Level 3 and even Level 2 are illegal. Independent investigations of what happened over the roadblocks have become imperative.
Public anxiety at the way these blockades are operating – and not just in the Far North, but on the East Coast and reportedly in the central North Island as well – has reached such a level that National MPs can’t ignore it.
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.”
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...
2019 was to be the year of delivery for Labour. We were told this new government would be transformational, and their policies would have a wellbeing focus. Reality has not lived up to the expectations.
One of the “key outcomes” of the new prison strategy was to humanise and heal inmates, the Minister of Corrections Kelvin Davis said. “An important part of that involves staff treating people with respect and dignity to uphold their mana.”
A question that is increasingly being asked these days is whether we are now heading into another ‘Dark Age’, where common sense and rational thinking are again being replaced by fanaticism and superstition. In addition, the State is becoming more pervasive and people are feeling increasingly powerless to change or improve their lives.
The way that Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-Green-New Zealand First Coalition Government is dealing with the quarter of a million law-abiding New Zealanders who make up this country’s firearms community is a disgrace. Given the trust that had existed, the Prime Minister’s crackdown was unexpected. Their democratic rights were trashed by wide-ranging and punitive restrictions that destroyed an important part of the Kiwi way of life.