Category: Democracy
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.
The issue of Maori seats around Council tables has certainly come to the fore in recent years, largely as a result of the fact that with Treaty settlements coming to an end, Iwi are casting their eyes around for what other resources or political power they can now accumulate. This is in fact the case with Te Arawa right now, under the guise of improving relationships with the Rotorua District Council.
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.
Equality, more than anything else, has always been our country’s ruling principle. But there was no more to the Treaty than that. No equality of Maori and the Crown in governing our country was envisaged. Partnership is an obvious absurdity. The Queen’s subjects cannot be her partners.
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.
Sir Geoffrey Palmer dismisses Citizens Initiated Referenda - an important element of our democratic process - stating that we (the people) are deluded (!) if we think that referenda will improve the quality of New Zealand’s democracy.
The admission that the Dunedin City Council is facing significant and long-term cost blow-outs over their new $230 million covered stadium should serve as a stark reminder that in local government bigger is not always better.
Loading ...
