Category: Guest Posts
Consenting processes are already slow enough and councils are hardly well positioned to assess the carbon effects of anything. Consultants providing climate impact assessments may do well, but it won’t help New Zealand’s net emissions where those emissions are already covered under the ETS.
Andrew Borrowdale, a former parliamentary draughtsman and author of respected law texts, alleges that the “special powers” delegated by section 70 of the Health Act 1956 cannot provide Parliamentary authority for the entire populace to be locked up at home.
The smear that the west is institutionally racist is designed to both facilitate and obscure the real agenda of overturning capitalist society because it is white and therefore deemed intrinsically evil – which of course is itself a racist agenda.
In terms of the recent past, the ineffectiveness of lockdowns implies that New Zealand suffered large output losses, of ten billion dollars or more, for no likely benefit in terms of lives saved as a result of the decision to move almost immediately from Level 2 to Level 4... Any claim that lockdown was necessary to save lives can be treated with strong scepticism.
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.
The only way for the community to generate greater income is through job creation and productivity growth. This has to come overwhelmingly from the private sector.
In the aftermath of the economic fall-out caused by the Covid-19 outbreak, the Labour Government must introduce the framework for policies which address the systemic weaknesses that have undermined our economy and society for so long, and which threaten our future.
The Covid-19 outbreak has not only precipitated a health emergency, but an economic crisis unparalleled in modern history. For New Zealand to emerge from that crisis in a healthy state, the Labour government will need to provide a clear framework for recovery.
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.