Category: Democracy
New Zealand has avoided many irreconcilable political fights over competing values. Now an ignorant generation are looking for ways to anger their opponents by deliberately kicking sleeping dogs - focusing on differences instead of shared values.
The leadership of a nation operates on many levels. While the PM has been focussed on the suffering of the victims, in her desire to reassure New Zealanders that they are safe - and to look strong and decisive on the world stage - she has unleashed measures that have the capacity to turn our wonderful country into a totalitarian state.
I find people like Ghahraman and Davidson almost as frightening as terrorists. They don’t kill anyone, but their power to change society is greater. They use the institutions of a liberal democracy to whittle away at the open society. They are, in their way, as totalitarian and intolerant of difference as any gun-toting fascist or jihadist.
What is disturbing, however, is how the matter is now being politicised. The emotions of those in shock and grieving are being exploited by political opportunists and radicals. Through State censorship and hasty law changes, Jacinda Ardern’s Government is trying to disempower New Zealanders and keep us in the dark.
It’s a narrative of self-loathing that wants us to think the worst of ourselves, that shamelessly seeks to politicise the killings and create a moral panic in the hope not only that we’ll tighten the gun ownership laws but far more ominously, that we might be persuaded to discard such democratic niceties as freedom of speech.
We have all been sickened by the attacks that claimed the lives of 50 innocent men, women and children. We condemn violence and extremism in all of its forms and as a country we stand with the bereaved during this incredibly difficult time
The whole spectrum of special Maori rights - including co-governance rights - is a massive deception built on the false premise of ‘partnership’ touted as law. It is constitutionally impossible for a 'partnership' to exist between the sovereign and the governed.
Clearly this vital and intelligent young woman, our Prime Minister, has simply never read let alone made any attempt to understand the Treaty of Waitangi. It must follow that she is unaware of any of the jurisprudence surrounding it’s the lawful interpretation.
Right now the Government will be assessing the damage caused by the Tax Working Group’s proposed capital gains tax. By all accounts, the Prime Minister has been well and truly spooked by the vehemence of the public outcry against the proposal.
Jacinda Ardern’s Tax Working Group released its final report last week. It recommends a highly punitive capital gains tax, which it claims would make New Zealand’s tax system ‘fairer’ by forcing the ‘rich’ to pay more tax.
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