Category: Guest Posts
The seven Maori seats in Parliament should be scrapped. The need for them has long passed. The seats have become redundant; other than a political crutch for Labour, they serve no purpose and rather than entrenching them, Parliament should be doing away with them.
Ever since Meremere power station was commissioned in the 1950s, New Zealand has relied on coal-fired power stations supplemented by gas and oil to provide the 10% of annual energy needed in a 1:20 dry year to replace the shortfall in hydropower generation. To make up for the shortfall we need to have an energy store that can be converted into electricity over a four month dry period.
Last week the Tax Working Group published its interim report on its recommended changes to the tax system. The 196 page report makes no firm recommendations but it discards a number of matters raised in the discussion paper and gives strong indications of what is likely to be included in the final report which is due in February.
Plainly Maori Language Week was a public opinion manipulation campaign orchestrated to elicit the kinds of submissions the government wants to receive. Its function is to entrench Maori institutional racism across New Zealand society, using the Trojan horse of Maori language as the means.
Housing and Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford has announced 14 reform proposals, but the two that will make properties unmanageable for some, and this includes Housing New Zealand, are the end of 90-day no-reason terminations and the requirement to allow dogs.
I am an ‘interested party’ in the Marine and Coastal Area Act 2011 and am opposed, mainly on the general principal of equality of rights – but also because I am a keen fishermen and don’t want to see any restrictions on my right to fish.
When the economic engine of a democracy fails, social and environmental imperatives become unaffordable. But rather than fix the economy, politicians have obfuscated and spent more of the nation’s precious capital on political band aids – reinforcing the downward spiral.
Several questions are raised by the development of a “charter” to set out the principles to guide “sound research” practice in New Zealand - including whether the Treaty of Waitangi should have a place in research, and why can’t research funders be relied on to set their own standards for the appropriate use of their money?
Months ago, when the Massey University Politics Society asked me to give a speech on the Manawatu campus about my time in politics, nobody could have guessed how events would unfold.
More than half of Winnipeg’s Indigenous homeless population are former State wards. Many were born with irreversible brain damage caused by alcohol in their mother’s womb at a crucial time, resulting in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Their irresponsible parents placed their own selfish drinking and drug taking ahead of their duties as parents.
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