Category: Maori Issues
People need to take action to defend a community’s democratic right to call a referendum if their local council decides to establish a Maori ward, since Local Government New Zealand is attempting to have this important public power abolished.
LGNZ is engaged in a power grab. It wants to ensure its members are not subject to public polls concerning Maori wards/constituencies. The reason for this is that LGNZ supports race-based Maori wards/constituencies and wants its members to be able to impose them unchecked
Last month Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull, the President of Local Government New Zealand wrote to the coalition Government calling for the removal of the petition rights that allow local residents and ratepayers to demand a poll if their Council unilaterally decides to establish Maori wards.
The Western Bay of Plenty District Council is divided into three wards for electoral purposes. However, in November 2017, Councillors voted - with nine votes in favour and three opposed - to establish additional race-based wards, which would guarantee seats for Maori.
Last week submissions opened on the Government’s tax review. In reality, it's a twelve month long $4 million political charade designed to deliver the capital gains tax policy that Labour botched during the election campaign.
The Marine and Coastal Area Act is flawed in many respects, but especially in its failure to define a critical legal test. As it stands, unless the law is amended, it will be Judges rather than Parliament that determines whether Maori interests will own some of the coastal marine area or most of it.
The Marine and Coastal Area Act should be closed down, but instead it remains a privatisation threat to our coast. My Association, the Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of New Zealand, has been concerned about attempts to privatise New Zealand’s foreshore and seabed since 2004.
Over the years Waitangi Day has changed from being a celebration of the birth of our nation, when two peoples were united as one, to becoming a grievance day for tribal activists pursuing their Maori sovereignty agenda.
Decades of pronouncements, proposals, plans, policies, and programmes aimed at reviving Te Reo Māori have acted like an accumulation of grime on the edifice of the language. These accretions need to be cleared away, to get a more detailed impression of the state of the language and its prospects for survival – if indeed there are any.
Earlier this month a public wharf on Matakana Island, off the Tauranga Coast, was blockaded with barbed wire and fence posts. A sign placed at the front of the Panepane wharf said, “Bugga Off.”
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