Professor Elizabeth Rata: Submission to the Select Committee on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) 2025

Submission to the Select Committee on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) 2025

LEGISLATION AND HONOURING THE TREATY OF WAITANGI

Introduction

John McDonald: Six Major Reasons to Oppose Road Pricing

The authorities are planning to take you on “a journey” into a society with more surveillance and more taxes.

2025 will be a critical year as moves to legalise road pricing schemes are currently underway in Parliament. The congestion charging schemes will involve additional surveillance technology being used to monitor vehicle movements and a billing system which effectively turns existing public roads into toll roads. A combination of charges, fees, permits, and fines are used in the schemes to collect revenue and penalise private motor vehicle travel.

Geoff Neal: Of ‘The Facts’ Obliterates Biased Racist Mainstream Media

Geoff’s factual reporting of important issues effecting all New Zealanders, not only offers the best statistical evidence available in the country, his data leaves the corrupt, racist, bribed and biased mainstream media for dead.

Fiona Mackenzie: Submission on the Department of Conservation’s Discussion Document

17th January 2025

By email to landlegislation@doc.govt.nz

Feedback on the Department of Conservation’s Discussion Document:
Modernising Conservation Land Management Nov 2024
(for a planned Conservation Amendment Bill to be passed by 2026)

https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/have-your-say/all-consultations/2024-consultations/proposals-to-modernise-the-conservation-system/

Dr Don Brash: Time to submit on the Treaty Principles Bill fast running out

This Parliament is being asked to pass a significant number of important Bills during the course of its three-year life – Bills related to resource management planning, to infrastructure, to education and to health. But few Bills are of greater significance than the Treaty Principles Bill which David Seymour has sponsored.

Why? Because it goes to the very heart of our constitution. And there are only days left in which to express your opinion: submissions on the Bill close at 11.59 p.m. next Tuesday, 7 January.

Dr Peter Winsley: Submission on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill

I support the Bill, despite its weaknesses.

For expositional clarity, in my submission I use the term “te Tiriti” rather than “the Treaty.” This acknowledges that about 540 rangatira signed te Tiriti versus about 39 who signed the English language document.

Context is important.

Penn Raine: Goodbye Prof Blakely

You can’t really accuse the Coalition MPs of bad manners, especially in the case of the dismissal of Tony Blakely as the chair of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid 19 – Lessons Learned. He has been, to use The Herald’s  words ‘eased out’, rather than ‘sacked’ as some might have thought appropriate.

That Blakely was an Ardern appointment was problematic enough in terms of how bright a light would be shone on edicts surrounding Covid but that he was a friend of Bloomfields and a Government advisor on those same contentious edicts, suggested to most of us that he would experience difficulty in steering the inquiry to any conclusion other than NZs performance had been exemplary.

Danny Simms: Submission to the Inquiry into the Covid Response

There was a fundamental error from the very beginning. The Oxford modelling that New Zealand’s response was based on was found to be seriously flawed within weeks of our Prime Minister frantically declaring that if we didn’t lock down tens of thousands would die. The models were shown to wildly exaggerate the risks, but our government pressed on.

Thus began one of the worst aspects of our response. The deliberate sowing of fear, bordering on panic by the daily breathless reports delivered by the Prime Minister and the Director General of Health.

Graeme Edgeler: The Periodic Review of the Intelligence and Security Act 2017

When the Intelligence and Security Act was passed in 2017, it required that every five to seven years, that the Intelligence Agencies and the Act itself be reviewed. Following from the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Christchurch masjidain, the review was moved up.

The Royal Commission made a number of recommendations, including proposing the creation of a third intelligence and security agency to work alongside the NZSIS and GSCB, with overall responsibility for strategic intelligence and security issues and with responsibility for counterterrorism.

LAST CHANCE: THREE STEPS TO SAY NO TO THREE WATERS

Submissions on the Three Waters Bill to confiscate local council water assets without fair compensation close Today - Friday 22 July. 

If you haven’t already sent in your submission, please join Kiwis up and down the country who are uniting to say “NO to Three Waters” by following these three simple steps:

1. Copy the following text as the basis of your submission:

I oppose the Water Services Entities Bill and ask the Select Committee to recommend that it be withdrawn on the basis that it is contrary to the public interest and harmful to democracy.

My concerns include:

- Communities have not been properly consulted over the proposals
- The modelling and assumptions cannot be relied on
- The estimates of costs to water users cannot be trusted
- The growing debt will create a huge burden for future generations
- The co-governance arrangements are discriminatory and anti-democratic.

The Bill should not proceed.

2. Now visit the Bill’s submission portal HERE 
3. Follow the prompts then paste* in your submission when asked to do so – and please feel free to modify it to reflect your own views.

That’s all there is to it. Please encourage as many people as you can to send in submissions. More information can be found our campaign page here: www.nzcpr.com/3waters 

*Please note: keyboard shortcuts may help with copying and pasting - highlight the text then press CONTROL C to copy and CTRL V to paste.

Barry Brill: The Five Ws of Climate Policy

Despite its glossy 188 pages, the Climate Commission’s 2021 Draft Advice For Consultation provides precious few answers to the vexed questions that have bedevilled climate change policymakers, both here and around the world, for the last three decades.

The ancient Greeks held that a report can only be considered complete if it answers five questions (5W) – what, why, who, where and when?. Nowadays, we add H2 – how and how much?

Climate policy gives rise to endless sub-questions under most of these headings and I touch upon just a smattering of the questions that should be raised during the ‘consultation’ period which expires on 14 March 2021: