Category: imported_guest
The Waitangi Tribunal claims just announced by the New Zealand Maori Council are unapologetically an attempt at legal mugging. Though purportedly based on the deep wounds Maoridom will feel if SOE shares are sold before the ownership of water is settled, the NZMC has made it plain that they will go away if they get some soothing free shares. The claims have little apparent legal merit. But on form to date I predict a reasonable chance they will succeed in levering shares out of an easy-touch government.
A settlement of the Ninety Mile Beach tribe’s complaints plus Maori politicians posturing over proposed asset sales have awakened interest in the on-going saga of quasi legal claims by a handful of high profile individuals and compensation payments by the government. Although details of Treaty of Waitangi settlements are publicly available, information is more accessible in our Treaty Transparency Research Report here on a spreadsheet or in a document format - as a list of settlements to date with links to summaries and deeds on the Office of Treaty Settlements website.
Nobody really seems to know just what will come of the proposed changes to New Zealand’s food safety regime. Minister for Food Safety Kate Wilkinson assures us that the regime simply modernizes New Zealand legislation and, if anything, reduces the regulatory burden facing food producers. Where current legislation does little to distinguish large from small processers, the revised legislation provides a graduated scale ranging from government provision of safety information to very small informal producers of low-risk products to full-scale safety regulation for larger concerns. Despite those assurances, many small producers fear the new system will impose costs that they cannot bear. 3 News reports on a small organic food exchange whose founder says they’ll more likely close than bear the up-front costs of developing compliant food safety plans; the founder of Lisa’s Hummus says she could not have started had she been subject to the new rules. Without a legal background, it’s pretty difficult to tell just what the effects will be.
Economists often talk about shocks, and in the next breath about impulse response functions, which is basically how an initial shock follows through over time to the rest of the economy. So this week’s article will describe how the Eurozone shock might be expected to flow through to the rest of the world and thence trickle down to us. I’ll conclude with a few general lessons for us, hopefully not too unctuous.
Economic life these days seems to shudder from one crisis to another. The US finally looks like clawing its way back from its own version of a financial nightmare, the subprime crisis. But Europe is another story. Amid the welter of media commentary, it’s harder than it should be to find a clear diagnosis and prognosis of the Eurozone convulsions.
Why did the losers lose in last week’s general election? Labour leader-in-departure Phil Goff says it was not their time, and Shane Jones wants to know why three out of every four voters thought Team Goff was unfit to govern. Nearly 300,000 voters deserted Labour between 2005 and 2011 (1) voting with their feet against the Clark-Cullen leadership and Team Goff, plus the policies that went with them.
Let’s get the congratulations out of the way first. National’s election triumph was as emphatic as they get, at least under MMP. Admittedly, it’s rare for a government to be tossed out of office after only one term: it last happened in 1975, and the circumstances then were unusual. Norman Kirk had died in office and the Labour Party leadership had been assumed by the mild-mannered Bill Rowling, who was ill-prepared to deal with the aggression and firepower of a political streetfighter named Muldoon.
The votes are in. The winners are grinners, and the losers are out or about to be ousted. While politicians spin the results, the numbers tell the story. So who won? Who lost? And why?
Which New Zealand political party poses the greatest threat to harmonious race relations? The parties that assert one law for all, or those demanding entrenched Maori seats, automatic enrolment of Maori on the Maori electoral roll, have Maori language compulsorily available in schools, or an independent Treaty of Waitangi Commission elected solely by Maori voters?
They straggled past down Cuba Street, an odd collection of gaunt activists, earnest ladies and scruffy alternative lifestylers, waving handwritten signs ‘WE ARE THE OTHER 99%’, and handing out cyclostyled bits of paper on the scourges of capitalism. It seemed hard to take them as any kind of threat to the social order. But what started out as the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest movement shows every sign of becoming an international movement, with much larger marches in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, at times violent. Are these just the same old woolly minded agit prop socialists, or do they have a point? And if so, what if anything, should the policy makers do about it?
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