Category: Democracy
While Stuff may think it’s acceptable for their journalists to harass and bully members of the public, it certainly is not acceptable behaviour in the UK, where newspaper editors are expected to adhere to an ‘Editor’s Code of Practice’, which protects the public against aggressive and intimidating journalists.
The most depressing feature of Fire and Fury was that amongst its repeated warnings about threats to democracy it never once mentioned the elephant in the room — namely Ardern’s government steadily undermining democracy by threading a radical view of the Treaty as a 50:50 partnership with iwi throughout legislation with absolutely no mandate
The pressure on new councils, as Labour seeks to undermine their autonomy and transform the sector into a government lapdog, will be intense. For voters that surely means ensuring the candidates that they support will not be cowed by Labour’s demands - but will stand firm in their commitment to local democracy and remain strong as the voice of their local community.
More likely, is that LGNZ has become an integral part of the government’s strategy to promote the implementation of He Pua Pua and the so called “partnership” principles of the Treaty of Waitangi - notwithstanding that they are a factual and jurisprudential nonsense. If this so, then LGNZ should stop its media spin and make a clean breast of it to its members and the public.
The dictatorial way Jacinda Ardern has governed our nation, destroying lives and livelihoods, undermining our democracy and crushing those who stand in her way, is testimony to a ruthlessness that her “be kind” mantra attempts to disguise.
What emerges over the next few days promises to be a master-class in the art of dismissing, diminishing and disparaging an individual who has had the temerity to breach the iron law of omerta which governs the practice of party politics.
But there’s a much deeper reason for National’s decline in the polls. The honeymoon of hope and expectation around the new leader has subsided. Some will be disappointed with Christopher Luxon’s impassive stance on a number of issues - but particularly Labour’s attack on democracy through co-governance.
Regrettably, in today’s New Zealand there are people who, putting racism under new management and rejecting equality before the law, advance race-based co-governance as a serious proposition for New Zealand’s future. Now, public health, drinking water, sewage, storm water, local body governance, aspects of resource management and so on. Tomorrow, who knows?
Fortunately, people like Richard Prebble, Jason Smith, Graham Adams, and Elizabeth Rata are calling out the transformational change Jacinda Ardern promised for what it is – a coup against democracy.
Tribalism and democracy are incompatible. We can’t have both. If we wish to keep New Zealand as a liberal democratic nation then, as we derive our citizen rights from the nation-state, so we have a duty to ensure that the nation-state which awards those rights, remains democratic and able to do so.
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