Category: imported_guest
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.
If the government wants to get New Zealand working it should get rid of the Resource Management Act. Even one of its architects, Geoffrey Palmer, has said the RMA is broken.
Fear of widespread infection in the community of a virulent disease is now sufficient to lock people up in their homes and suspend Parliament. Really! This not the first such plague to affect New Zealand and it will not be the last. Yet this is the first time our civil liberties and our democracy have been suspended in order to minimise its effect on public health.
The only strategy that makes sense is to screen massively, then confine the positive cases. Neither Hong Kong nor Taiwan nor Korea nor Singapore, territories with the lowest mortality rates for Covid-19, have imposed confinement on healthy people.
Any restrictions anywhere in New Zealand on public movement under COVID-19 Level 4 national emergency criteria should apply equally everywhere and to everybody, regardless of race, and only be imposed and enforced by legitimate authorities of the state and not Maori amateurs.