John McLean: Woe betide us when parliament's words no longer matter

As a child, I believed my grandmother simply started knitting, without an end in mind, and on each occasion an unforeseen woolen item would magically take shape.

I felt much the same when I began reading tracts of Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s screeds of words. He seemed to me to be aimlessly banging away at his keyboard, invested with nothing but inchoate hope for a useful result.

But what’s Sir Geoffrey really been up to?

NZCPR Newsletter: The Battle for Democracy

In November 2000, former Prime Minister David Lange stated: 

“Democratic government can accommodate Maori political aspiration in many ways… What it cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a separate sovereignty. As soon as it does that, it isn’t a democracy. We can have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can’t coexist and we can’t have them both.”

He specifically warned about the Treaty of Waitangi: 

“The treaty is a wonderful stick for activists to beat the rest of us with.” He described it as “a source of alternative authority - the basis of a self-perpetuating industry in academic and legal circles” and he made the point that “many on the left of politics who sympathise with Maori aspiration have identified with the cause of the treaty, either not knowing or not caring that its implications are profoundly undemocratic.”

Barry Brill: NZ Sovereignty - The Law is Settled

A recent Herald article by Jack Vowles, political science professor at Victoria University, asks why the term ‘sovereignty’ is so hard to define.

Professor Vowles notes that the late Hugh Kawharu’s authoritative translation of the key text of the Treaty of Waitangi says:

“The Chiefs …give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the complete governance over their land.”

Vowles concedes that any commonsense reader would see no difference between “complete governance for ever” and “sovereignty”.

Guy Steward: Parliamentary Sovereignty

Some politicians have been groomed to look, think, act, and talk like politicians, but their smiling public façade hides a tyrant in the making. If you scratch the surface enough the veneer drops and their true, despotic colours emerge. These are the unyielding, resolute autocrats, the dedicated globalists. Our system, unfortunately, suits them as much as a dictatorship would.

Then there are the politicians who are so because they carry the potential for statesmanship. These are a breed of patriots willing to put up with the crap and the flak because they are in it for the long haul, out of love for their country. Our system doesn’t particularly favour them.

Steve Baron: New Zealand - Parliamentary or People Sovereignty?

In 1840 the British government signed the Treaty of Waitangi with indigenous Maori tribes which gave Britain sovereignty over New Zealand. In 1852 the New Zealand Constitution Act was passed to implement the British Westminster style of government, which is based on the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty.

British constitutional theorist, Prof. Alfred Dicey said that Parliamentary Sovereignty was, “the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament”. Given that New Zealand does not have a codified (written) constitution, this gives the government of the day supreme power, making it unaccountable to voters apart from once every three years at an election.