Category: imported_guest
Every 20-30 years the unfashionable, with a few tweaks, becomes fashionable. Surprisingly, this 'fashion cycle' seems to apply equally public policy and even to politics – think NZ First. It all starts with an 'outsider' breaking the mold and if the movement has legs, it may reach a tipping point or 'precipice,' with other early adopters jumping in. If there's real momentum, a critical mass is reached turning what was once outlandish into 'mainstream.'
For the last couple of weeks we have been expecting the appearance of the government’s draft foreshore and seabed bill. Usually reliable rumours told us that it would be going to the Cabinet in the last week or two, and would then be introduced to the House. For some reason there has been a delay, and rumour has it that it may be another couple of weeks at least before it is introduced. I know not what the reason may be. It would be nice to think that the government is actually coming to its senses, that the Prime Minister and Attorney-General are actually beginning to realise what a monstrous crime they are proposing to commit, and what the public reaction will be to this theft of our common heritage and solemn recognition that New Zealand is henceforward and increasingly an apartheid state[1].
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition has asked the High Court to rule on the validity of NIWA's "Seven Station" New Zealand Temperature Record (NZTR) that features prominently on its website and is used in information it passes on to schools and is also used to support the emission trading scheme, resource consent applications for wind farms and many other key aspects of policies designed to “fight climate change”.
Earlier this year the National government appointed a working group to look at ways of reducing welfare dependence. The group has consulted widely, too widely in my opinion. But they wanted to be seen to be making a fair job of it. The conference they ran at Victoria University in June gave the first public indications that all would not be plain sailing, and it was naive to assume it could be. The traditional left/right divide became quickly apparent with many attendees characterising the initiative as ‘beneficiary bashing’. Prominent in the detraction were Sue Bradford, the Child Poverty Action Group, the ex Children’s Commissioner, and various church and community groups who have latterly joined forces to form an alternative welfare working group.
The Government’s RMA (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Act 2009 came into force on 1st October 2009.
The National-led government’s attempts to sanitize its controversial “remedy” to the Foreshore and Seabed Act (2004) grow ever more curious and contradictory by the day. It is quite clear that the government and Maori interests already do not see eye-to-eye over what the proposed replacement legislation will mean in practice, and that the government cannot hold a consistent line when explaining to the wider public what will happen when Maori tribes lay claims to title over the foreshore and seabed.
Any good economics student in year 11 will tell you that the cost of everything is what you give up to get it. By that logic the cost of a weekend's binge drinking can be 48 hours of life; drinking, recovering, drinking and recovering again with nothing but sclerotic memories and an empty bank account to show for it. That's without considering the risk of catastrophic costs, which should be widely understood after too many alcohol related tragedies.
The recent incident in Christchurch in which two police officers were shot and seriously wounded and a police dog killed once again highlighted the risks that frontline police officers face going about what most would consider routine tasks.
In a column in The Dominion Post in February 2008, I wrote that a law change requiring intellectually disabled workers to be paid the legal minimum wage was a triumph of human rights ideology over common sense. My column attracted a response from Ruth Dyson, then the Minister for Disability Issues, who told me in an email that in fact it was a triumph of fairness and common sense over ideology.
Just in case you hadn’t heard, it’s now official; under the coalition Government’s proposed Foreshore and Seabed Act Mark II, customary title is recognised as ownership. No longer is ‘nobody is to own’ the foreshore and seabed, the way it was sold in the consultation document. Instead, iwi and hapu will have the right to claim a new form of title , which will sit over and above the residual public domain ‘in much the same way that fee simple title sits over the Crown’s radical title to land’, in the words of the Attorney General. From the economic point of view, that amounts to ownership. I am sceptical that it can even be reconciled with the weaker notion of public domain, which is left as an undefined residual and as such, subject to constant encroachment from activities and exclusions possible under the new title. So much for the reassuring words about an undefined ‘public access’ right.
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