Category: Guest Posts
We write this open letter to you to express our dismay at recent remarks by Sir Tipene O’Regan, the co-chair of your government’s Constitutional Advisory Panel, as reported in the Otago Daily Times, and to ask what your attitude can be to an official panel which displays the predetermination and partiality which a good number of panel members clearly hold.
The Constitutional cake is finite. To increase the power of one group will diminish the rights of all other groups. The creation of one privileged minority group with either powers of veto, or to extract rent from necessary economic developments will damage New Zealand international competitiveness, suppress wealth creation, and give rise to widespread social resentment.
In May this year, the Retirement Policy and Research Centre (RPPC) published a PensionBriefing: Census 2013 - shortcomings in questions about housing. It suggests that trends in home-ownership rates are less clear than many claim and may even have been relatively unchanged in the 30 years 1976-2006.
On March 5, New Zealand held its census. And for four months starting next Monday, 25 March voting-age New Zealanders of Māori descent will have the option of switching between the Māori and general electoral rolls. The results of the census, and the Māori Option will be used to draw electorate boundaries for the next two general elections.
In 1968 the prevailing mental landscape of the western world changed politically and socially. In particular concern for nature led to the growth of self serving taxpayer funded tithe gathering environmental organizations promoting by modern propaganda methods a green religion with its central doctrine a self loathing of humanity. This fed upon itself and led to the mindset - an age of impending catastrophes.
The deadline for feedback on the draft Auckland Unitary Plan closed on Friday, 31 May. Assuming Aucklanders can navigate their way around the council’s Unitary Plan website and delve into its labyrinthine text and maps successfully, they will discover many hidden marvels such as the raft of policies that racially privilege Maori over all other Auckland residents.
What do a world-famous historian, a British author and a New Zealand cartoonist have in common? On the face of it, not much – except that all three have been embroiled recently in controversies that show how fragile the right of free speech has become in supposedly liberal democracies.
A conspicuous absence in the Constitutional Advisory Panel’s “conversation” is debate about the role of the Waitangi Tribunal, a body that exerts disproportionate influence over public life. The Waitangi Tribunal is the “elephant in the room”.
The New Zealand Labour Party has embraced the politics of diversity wholeheartly and with little self-criticism since the 1970s. This presentation explains the ‘cultural turn of the Left’ and its unintended and damaging consequences.
They say some politicians are just plain lucky. They seem to do the same things as other politicians who are perceived as failing, yet they somehow manage to charm voters or the media, or circumstances conspire to assist rather than defeat them. For four years Mr English must have wondered if he is one of the unlucky ones.
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