All posts by Richard
Insha’Allah
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. (NIV)
Poi E
Sick of race-based politics in New Zealand? Me too.
Let’s celebrate New Zealand’s Maori culture instead, with this timeless gem from the Patea Maori Club.
ASS says ‘Gay’ Jesus billboard not offensive
St. Matthew-in-the-City has been up to its usual tricks. The billboard pictured above appeared a week before Christmas last year and, as anticipated, a complaint was laid with the Advertising Standards Authority Society. But ASS deemed the billboard not offensive, said TVNZ today.
The complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority said the representation of Jesus was “akin to hate speech”.
However, a decision released yesterday found the billboard’s speculation about Jesus’ sexual orientation did not breach advertising codes.
It was “prepared by a Christian church to promote debate within the Christian faith, as opposed to a deliberately offensive advertisement by an outside party for commercial gain, had been prepared with a due sense of social responsibility”, the decision reads.
Is it within ASS’s remit to deem the billboad in exceptionally poor taste? Because it is. That sort of thing should be reserved for this blog!
Here’s an idea for St. Matthew-in-the-City’s upcoming Easter billboard.
That’ll promote debate within the Christian faith, for sure.
Please sign the Declaration of Equality
Mine was signature number 39,708. The target is 50,000. Please sign the Declaration of Equality.
On the Independent Constitutional Review team
Here are the good folk on the Independent Constitutional Review team. They’re not in on the con
The Independent Constitutional Review has been established by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research in response to the Maori Party’s plan to replace our constitution with one based on the Treaty of Waitangi to give the tribal elite supreme power in New Zealand.
but they’re on to it! Please sign the Declaration of Equality.
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David Round Independent Constitutional Review Panel Chairman Law Lecturer, Canterbury University; NZCPR Associate David Round teaches constitutional law at the University of Canterbury and is author of "Truth or Treaty? Commonsense Questions about the Treaty of Waitangi". |
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Associate Professor Elizabeth Rata Deputy Head of School of Critical Studies in Education, Auckland University. Dr Rata is a sociologist of education specialising in the relationship between education and society. She is Editor of Pacific-Asian Education, Leader of the Knowledge and Education Research Group, a member of a European Union International Research Staff Exchange Scheme, and a former Fulbright Senior Scholar to Georgetown University, Washington D.C. She is the author of numerous books. |
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Professor Martin Devlin (ONZM) Professor Emeritus, Massey University Professor Devlin has a distinguished career in the fields of education – in business, management, entrepreneurship, and corporate governance – in the private business sector, and in the NZ Army. He was appointed an Officer in the NZ Order of Merit, ONZM, in the Queens Birthday honours in 2011 for services to education. He is a fifth generation New Zealander. |
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Professor James Allan Garrick Professor of Law, University of Queensland The Garrick Professor of Law at the University of Queensland, Professor Allan is a member of the Mont Perelin Society, an author and commentator. Canadian born, he practised law in Canada and at the Bar in London before teaching law in Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia. He has worked at the Cornell Law School in the US and at the Dalhousie Law School in Canada where he was the 2004 Bertha Wilson Visiting Professor in Human Rights |
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Mike Butler NZCPR Associate Mike Butler is a property investor and manager. He is author of "The First Colonist — The life and times of Samuel Deighton 1821-1900", a former contract writer for the New World Encyclopedia, and he was the chief sub-editor of the Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune between 1986 and 1999. |
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Dr Muriel Newman Convenor of the Independent Constitutional Review NZCPR Founder and Director Muriel Newman established the public policy think tank, the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament. Her background is in business and education. She currently serves as a director of a childrens’ trust. |
In on the Con(stitutional Advisory Panel)
There’s another Treaty Debate on tonight at Te Papa.
Treaty Debate Series 2013 – My Voice Counts
This year, we focus on the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements. Participants include two prominent lawyers and a panel of young people.
Kim Hill, 2012 International Radio Personality of the Year, chairs the second Treaty Debate of 2013. This year, we invite a panel of young people to discuss the Constitutional Review, which wraps up in late 2013. They answer the question: What are the issues you care about?
The event is introduced by Claudia Orange, Te Papa’s Treaty of Waitangi scholar, and Carwyn Jones, from the New Zealand Centre for Public Law.
The Treaty Debates are organised by Te Papa in partnership with the New Zealand Centre for Public Law at Victoria University of Wellington
I plan to go along to give John Ansell some moral support, perhaps I’ll assist by holding one end of his protest banner, which reads, “Enough Treaty Treachery – Treatygate – The Conning of a Country”.
Ansell is right. The country is being conned.
There are no Treaty principles. There is no Treaty partnership. At least, not in the original Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi).
The third article of the Treaty guaranteed to all Māori the same rights as all other British subjects. This meant one law for all.
But there is at least one member of the Constitutional Advisory Panel who (last time I checked) doesn’t understand what “one law for all” means. She says
One-law-for-all is emotive nonsense. We have all sorts of varied laws for different categories of the population, age being the best example. Will Act, under Brash, get rid of the legal age for drinking, voting and obtaining a driver’s licence?
A libertarian friend tries to correct her woolly thinking. He says
You’re not comparing like with like. The drinking age is not a violation of one law for all. It applies equally to everyone. If there were an exemption for Maori, that would violate one law for all.
and goes on to ask
Is your article intended as an apologia for preferential treatment for Maori?
Perhaps it was intended as a job application?
A few brief words on why ageism is acceptable (in the cases to which Deborah Coddington refers) and racism is not. Law is all about discrimination. Morality is all about discrimination. We treat a man who has been found guilty of murder differently from a man who has been charged with murder and acquitted. We discriminate between the two cases. As we should. Legally (and morally), the difference between a Guilty verdict and a Not Guilty verdict is relevant to how people should be treated. In the case of age vs. race, a person’s age is morally relevant (they are deemed to be too young to give informed consent) to how they should be treated. A person’s skin colour is not.
It beggars belief that Coddington was once the Deputy Leader of the Libertarianz Party.
[Cross-posted to SOLO.]
Blessed are the sick
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
[Hat tip: No Minister]
Eternal Vigilance is #1 for eternal vigilance!
Shearer off to a ‘good start’
Yesterday, Shearer promises clear policy initiatives.
Today, Shearer defends policy-free speech.
Chris Trotter says Shearer is off to a ‘good start’. Why? Because
He was on just a few minutes ago and once again, he didn’t stumble, he didn’t stutter – this is a good start to the year.
He had a terrible first year, and he really needs to get this year rolling with an image that most people can at least not recoil from in horror and disbelief, so that’s a good start.
I don’t always follow the MSM, but when I do, I recoil in horror and disbelief.
At least one Labour MP is making the right noises about drug law reform. For that reason alone, I’d like to see a Labour-led government replace our National-led government in 2014. But I can’t see Shearer’s “good start” ending well. His flagship policy*—that of spending $30 billion of your money to build other people’s houses—was never a starter, let alone a good one. It’s in tatters.
I believe that we should be building houses – that’s not the Government building houses, it’s the private sector – obviously builders build houses. But what the Government can do is to make that happen. We can stand back and we can twiddle with the RMA, or blame councils as this government is doing, but it won’t get young Kiwis into their own home.
We have to step in and actually do something.
The government should do something. Yeah right. It’s all too awful to contemplate.
(* Labour’s KiwiBuild plan is to build 100,000 extra new houses over the next 10 years, for around $300,000 each. This, Mr Shearer says, will help young families buy their first home.)