Category: imported_weekly
This year’s budget is to be released on Thursday. It will be delivered against a backdrop of increasing global economic uncertainty, particularly in the Eurozone. Greece is unable to form a government and a withdrawal from the Euro is looking increasingly likely - maybe even from the European Union itself. Youth unemployment has hit 50 percent in both Greece and Spain, while the number of people out of work in the Eurozone as a whole is at a 15-year high of over 17 million. There are concerns over Spain’s banking system, Portugal is sinking deeper into recession, Italy is still not out of the woods, and France has just elected a socialist President who believes that he can spend his way out of his country’s economic woes.
Poverty advocates are crying foul over the fact that the government is even raising the idea of linking the immunisation of children to benefit receipt, even though it is an established practice that works well in many other countries. This is a discussion that is taking place in the wider context of the government’s initiative to better protect vulnerable children. Requiring beneficiaries to immunise their children – unless they are opposed for conscience reasons - is surely part of their obligation as parents. Those who fail to do so are putting their children at risk.
The political nature of the Maori Party's constitutional review advisory panel is in sharp contract to the way in which a major constitutional review should normally have been implemented – through an independent Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by constitutional law experts. Instead we have ended up with a politically appointed panel, heavily weighted in favour of former politicians and Maori academics, but light on legal and constitutional expertise.
Saturday was Tax Freedom Day. As far as the central government tax burden is concerned, Saturday was the notional day of the year when the average New Zealander stopped working for the government and started working for themselves.
The reality is that the world is a far better place today than it was 50 years ago or even a few years ago - and it will be better still in the years to come. The technological and internet innovations that we are currently experiencing are only the starting point of a revolution that is now underway and is transforming our lives on a daily basis.
New Zealand’s ETS is the only country-wide trading scheme in the world outside of the European Union. The EU scheme is not an “all gasses, all sectors” scheme like New Zealand’s, but instead it targets just 43 percent of industrial emissions. It excludes the transport sector, households and small businesses, agriculture, and construction and waste. In addition, the EU scheme is based solely on carbon dioxide and excludes methane, which is such a major part of our emissions profile.
A decision on the future ownership of the Crafar Farms, a large North Island farming operation that went into receivership in October 2009 owing $194 million, is imminent.
There is a growing consensus amongst western leaders that policies and practices that divide citizens along ethnic and cultural lines are immensely damaging to societies and nations. British Prime Minister David Cameron, along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and former Prime Ministers - John Howard of Australia, Jose Aznar of Spain, and Yves Leterme of Belgium - have all condemned multiculturalism as a failed policy that undermines national identity, promoting separatism and extremism
One of the key concerns about MMP is the existence of the race-based Maori seats. Introduced in 1867 as a temporary measure for a five year period, they are an anachronism from the past.
A half page advertisement promoting our Citizens Initiated Referendum (CIR) to restore Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed will appear in community newspapers throughout the country this week. The ad asks those people who believe that our coastline out to the 22km edge of the Territorial Sea belongs to all New Zealanders equally regardless of race, to sign our petition for a nation-wide referendum. If we can gather the support of 320,000 registered voters by the end of June, this will become only the fifth CIR petition to ever succeed in triggering a citizens’ referendum.
Loading ...
