Category: Guest Posts

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A Violation of the Marine and Coastal Area Act

The Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of New Zealand (CORANZ) objected to the claim by Ngati Pahauwera, for a Customary Marine Title over the coast between the Waikare River mouth and the Waihua River mouth, in northern Hawke’s Bay.


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Plans for Benefit Changes Misguided

When a benefit-dependent sole parent refuses to name the father of her children a penalty is incurred. That’s because the state is then unable to recoup any of her benefit from the liable parent.


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It’s Climate Month - Again!

In November every year, most of our mainstream media subject us all to saturation coverage of the evils of “climate change” (by which they mean dangerous anthropogenic global warming). This is no coincidence. At this time of year, the UNFCCC holds its annual “Conference of the Parties”, which is attended by large delegations from every government in the world, along with tens of thousands of acolytes.


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Looking for a successful outward-oriented economic strategy 

The government says it want to increase the export orientation of the New Zealand economy. Early in their term of office, the previous government adopted an explicit numerical target for lifting exports (as a share of GDP). Unfortunately, no progress was made towards it.


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Devious, Manipulative and Deceitful

We learned a few days ago that on the day before the September 23 general election, Winston Peters kick-started legal action against National cabinet ministers - including then prime minister Bill English - party officials, a senior public servant and two journalists over the leaking of his superannuation overpayment. He took this action without disclosing it to either the National or Labour parties.


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New Government must review the foreshore and seabed shambles

It is now over six years since the racist Marine and Coastal Area Act came into force, under John Key’s National Government. The goal of the Act was give Maori tribal groups the right to claim control of New Zealand’s publicly owned foreshore and seabed.


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The Wonders of MMP

I spent 11 wonderful years living and working in New Zealand, from 1993 to 2004. During that whole time one of my pet peeves was the MMP voting system, one of the world’s most proportional systems and the one the Americans imposed on the Germans after World War II.


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Change Brings Uncertainty

So there we have it. MMP at work. A party that receives 7.2% of the vote gets to choose who runs the country. And they choose a party that received 36.9% of the vote, and that party enters into a coalition agreement with another party that received 6.3% of the vote.


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We Need Flatter Taxes, Cleaner Rules

The Trump administration released a thumbnail sketch last week of its much anticipated tax plan, which has generated opposition and support from all the usual suspects.


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Post-election hiatus illustrates the perversity of MMP

The only thing that can be said with any certainty about the next New Zealand government is that it will look very different from the last one. National party prime minister Bill English won an emphatic 13-seat majority over the opposition Labour party in an election result that defied the pattern of history.