Category: imported_weekly
According to Saturday’s Herald, the co-leader of the Maori Party, Pita Sharples, is trying to save a Black Power gang house from being demolished by the city council because it caters for the spiritual and cultural needs of Maori. He claimed that the Mt Wellington property - which had been the Black Power headquarters and hub of a $1.5 million cannabis ring before being seized and sold under the Proceeds of Crime Act – was sometimes used as a marae.[1]
For generations of Kiwi families, once the children arrived, so too did the dreams of a house and a bit of land in the country. Five or ten acre lots were ideal – they provided tons of space for the kids, room for a pony, a few steers, some sheep, chooks and a pig, as well as a big veggie garden and an orchard. In addition, of course, the house would have a garage, maybe even a sleep-out, and with luck, one or more sheds for dad.
Almost without a ripple, John Key’s administration is about to table a bill in Parliament that will have far reaching consequences that few can imagine. I am of course referring to the Government’s proposed changes to the foreshore and seabed.
What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?
Last Tuesday a routine Police call-out left two Police officers with gunshot wounds and a Police dog dead. In the drug-related fracas, one officer had his jaw shattered by a bullet, while the other officer took a bullet in his thigh - just missing his femoral artery. Gage, a six year old German Shepherd, was shot and killed trying to protect the officers.
In politics, ideology can be very dangerous if imposed without proper constraint. Nine years of rampant socialism saw New Zealand’s public policy framework inundated with ideological dogma. From the dumbing down of the education system, to the massive expansion of the welfare state, to the undermining of the family, to the erosion of private property rights, to the imposition of extreme environmentalism, to the relentless expansion of the state sector at the expense of the country’s wealth creators – the list goes on and on.
Over the last few years the information revolution has transformed the way we communicate and access knowledge. The New Zealand Centre for Political Research is a product of this. Every week New Zealand’s largest weekly electronic newsletter – the NZCPR Weekly - is delivered directly into your home and office. If you like what you read, you can forward it on to people around the country and the world. Our website, enables you to share your opinion, read our commentaries, use our research, or, through our new petition facility, add your voice to thousands of others who are demanding change.
A study released last year by the OECD on child wellbeing painted a grim picture of the status of children in New Zealand. It found that New Zealand children lived in poor conditions – average family incomes in New Zealand were low by OECD standards and child poverty rates high. In terms of the “health and safety” of children we ranked next to bottom – 29th out of 30, with by far the highest rate of youth suicide and an above average rate of child mortality.[1]
It has now been confirmed that under the new constitutional arrangements National and the Maori Party are planning to push through before Christmas, Maori will become the legal owners of large tracts of New Zealand’s foreshore and seabed.
The madness of the Government’s new carbon tax is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain. A further concern is its impact on inflation, interest rates and the exchange rate. It will add to the costs of fuel and power and these flow right through the economy to basics like food. This puts pressure on inflation, which in turn drives up interest rates and the kiwi dollar. The Government’s carbon tax is a classic example of the way the Government is making things tougher for the productive exporting sector. The worst aspect of the carbon tax is that it will not make one iota of difference to New Zealand’s emissions. Nick Smith 2005
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