Busy blackbird

Daughter J joined us mid-afternoon to sort out our submissions to Parliament on the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. Submissions have to be in by midnight on 07 January. We sent them away with two days to spare.

This is a Bill which would (in its creator's mind) give a Governing Party power over Parliament, the Courts, the Waitangi Tribunal and every Government Department that is adopting a bicultural approach. I am staggered by the audacity of this little man whose party (ACT) got only 8% of the vote in the 2023 election. He keeps claiming that he has a mandate, because this Bill was something he campaigned on. Honesty (of him, the Prime Minister and the news media) should demand that he is made to acknowledge that if he wants to claim Party voting as being mandatory or not, he (and they) point out that 92% did not vote for ACT.

The Treaty of Waitangi is regarded by many (probably most of us) as our 'Founding Document'. That has become increasingly so, as it becomes clear that successive Governments and parliaments have at the least ignored the rights of Maori under the Treaty. The ACT party appears determined to cancel all rights that acknowledge the obligations that the British Crown accepted on behalf of colonists over 180 years ago. 

What many of us fear is that the drive for this appears to be to disempower Maori and other citizens from preventing the wholesale sale of rights to international corporates who wish to strip Aotearoa/New Zealand of its natural resources without any care of the environment which in many ways is unique. 

The Prime Minister (Christopher Luxon) claims to oppose the Bill, yet has allowed Seymour to persist in this. He is more concerned about travelling internationally than being in Parliament. The government he leads has changed many laws using the mechanism of 'Urgency' to severely limit the ability of the three opposition parties to argue against those changes. 
One of the worst things they have done is to re-introduce 'Boot Camps' for young persons who have offended. These were tried fifteen years ago, when they were shown to be ineffective. The Government also approved the use of force against this young men.

it is not possible to not be concerned at the move towards Fascism by this country . It appears to be happening in many Western democracies.