Graham Adams: The collapse of Maori nationalism

As with unionism, overreach will end iwi power push.

One of former Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s most singular achievements during her tenure as premier was to push a majority of voters to the point of revulsion regarding race-based policy. Now the coalition government is orchestrating a swift counter-revolution, with the support of the disaffected constituency Ardern helped create.

Chris Trotter: It Was Twenty Years Ago Today - More at Stake Than Sun and Sand.

“An unhappy summer” is the prediction of at least one of the Maori leaders laying claim to the foreshore and seabed in response to the Government’s declaration that New Zealand’s beaches and coastal waters lie in the “public domain” - i.e. belong to all of us.

Maori nationalists have raised the prospect of fencing off public beaches and requiring non-Maori to apply for “visas” before being granted access. Titewhai Harawira has gone even further, denouncing the Government’s proposals as another “confiscation” of Maori property rights, and threatening to organise a nationwide march on Parliament in protest.

Chris Trotter: If It Ain’t Broke, Why Fix It?

Deborah Hart is sceptical about democracy’s effectiveness. Or, at the very least, she believes it can be improved. “We should never take for granted that our electoral system, or indeed our democracy, will work effectively”, says the Chair of the Independent Electoral Review Panel.
It’s a rather curious comment for the person charged with giving our electoral system the once-over to toss – almost randomly – into the “conversation” about New Zealand’s democracy. After all, New Zealand boasts one of the oldest, continuously operating, democracies in the world. Countries much larger and more powerful than our own cannot point to an uninterrupted stretch of free and fair elections of nearly 130 years. Neither the French nor the Italians could make such a boast, and certainly not the Germans or the Russians.