Utopia, you are standing in it!

This opinion piece appeared in the 2019 Spring issue of Te Awa (the NZ Green Party’s newsletter) at this link. Marama Davidson, a Green Party Co-Leader and Member of Parliament, has since said this article “puts trans rights to exist up for debate” and it’s been removed.

Solutions that are Fair to Everyone

I am writing a personal response to Jan Logie’s words in the last Te Awa, where she says: “We continue to push for progress on LGBTQI+ freedoms, and resist the backlash that’s trying to undermine our trans and gender diverse whanau and roll back their hard-won rights”.

Who is the “we” in this statement? Is it the Rainbow Greens? I am a lesbian, supposedly under their umbrella, but I am part of the backlash. Is it the whole Green Party? I am a long-time Greens member, but I am part of the backlash. If…

While the prorogation of Parliament has generated political controversy, constitutional lawyers are asking whether the government acted legally in advising the Monarch. The legal challenges to the prorogation will face a number of hurdles. Even if the prerogative power is justiciable, there are difficult questions in identifying the specific legal issue. When writing about a potential challenge in June, Lord Pannick stated that one legal objection is that ‘the prime minister would be seeking to prorogue parliament for the purpose of avoiding parliamentary sovereignty on an issue of significant constitutional importance’. This post will explore a related line of argument, which focuses on proroguing Parliament as a means to avoid political accountability (so the argument does not rely on the language of sovereignty). The starting point in the line of argument is that the prorogation will to some degree hinder Parliament in whatever it wants to do in the period…

It may be that there is no such thing as a date of 31 October 2019 for a no-deal UK withdrawal from the EU.  On 9 April 2019, according to Le Monde, Michel Barnier, chief negotiator for the European Council in the withdrawal negotiations with the UK, said: ‘The EU will never take a decision on a ‘no deal’. That will be a choice for the British.’

On 10 April, the European Council adopted a very obscure decision.  ‘In response [to a British request], the European Council agrees to an extension to allow for the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement.  Such an extension should last only as long as necessary to allow for the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement and, in any event, no longer than 31 October 2019.  If the Withdrawal Agreement is ratified by both parties before this date, the withdrawal will take place on the first…

Heather Roy

28 July 2019

Registers and health screening programmes have two things in common.  First, they both cost a lot to establish and administer.  Second, they are both effective only when compliance is at or very close to 100 percent. It follows then that excellent compliance should be assured before a gun register is put in place. Are the gangs really going to register their weapons, having already refused to surrender those that have been banned? Of course not. And having aggravated the rural community and law abiding gun owners the government should expect civil disobedience from many. An effective, well-functioning register needs buy-in. The $42 -$52 million cost of a gun register quoted by Police Minister Stuart Nash is taxpayer money down the gurgler.

Monday’s announcement by the Prime Minister about changes to gun licencing (gun owners will likely pay 2-3 times more for half the preseent licence…

It is eighty years today since New Zealand declared war on Germany, joining the United Kingdom in responding to the unprovoked aggression of the German invasion of Poland.  Until just now, glancing at one of the government historical websites, this statistic hadn’t occurred to me

New Zealand was involved for all but three of the 2179 days of the war — a commitment on a par only with Britain and Australia.

It is estimated that 11928 New Zealanders died in the course of that conflict, a death rate (per million population) higher than in any other Commonwealth country.  Dreadful as the war was, it still strikes me as something closer to a just war (for our side) than most other conflicts in modern history –  although, of course, the counterfactual is unknowable.

Back in the very early days of this blog, I wrote a short post on some aspects…