Category: Politics
The cause of rising house prices is basic economics – demand exceeds supply. In the short run, excess demand bids up prices. In the longer run, high prices lead to an increase in supply, particularly in new construction. But we are not yet in a balanced demand-supply situation.
Without a doubt Sian Elias’ Ngati Apa judgement was unprecedented judicial activism. And that’s the problem with judicial activism – the public are left to pick up the pieces. So here we are, almost 20 years later, facing multiple tribal claims for the country’s entire coastline. The first ones will be heard this year...
In Britain and much of the west, the risible pretence is maintained that the religion has nothing to do with Islamic extremism. From the moment this threat emerged in Britain more than three decades ago, the establishment has refused to acknowledge that what we are facing is Islamic holy war, rooted in religious doctrines which are as genuine as they are contestable.
That’s the tragedy of tribalism - vulnerable Maori families have become pawns in a complex revenue stream that relies on the number of people experiencing disadvantage increasing. Now the former Maori Party co-leader Dame Tariana Turia appears intent on using them to help her resurrect the fortunes of the party she founded.
In that spirit of unity Prime Minister Norman Kirk insisted that the day of celebration should be called New Zealand Day – a day for all New Zealanders to observe our different identities and the sense of nationhood that brought us together. He wanted to ensure the day was owned by everyone, irrespective of race or heritage.
"Colonisation by a nation of shopkeepers". So said Napoleon Bonaparte of the English, and as with many things he was close to the truth. He meant it as an insult of course but found to his dismay as did the Kaiser and Hitler that when poked with a big enough stick the shop keepers had a nasty bite.
The Prime Minister and the government coalition partners have opened the classroom door to vested interest groups to spread their propaganda. One of those groups is the Maori sovereignty movement. Another is the Greens.
The entire document is couched in the language of climate campaigners rather than that of scientists. It is a trashy and hopelessly unbalanced catechism of all the fashionable pseudoscience. It is pure propaganda, in the very best Goebbels tradition.
A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today’s disadvantaged to become tomorrow’s privileged and, in the process, enables everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life.
The current welfare system has failed the people of New Zealand and led to too much inequality. We need to move away from the current welfare system of tax and spend via government-owned institutions to a system based on individual choice, competition, and personal savings...
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