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Otago Daily Times
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
The Regulatory Standards Bill is an attack on all of us
It is that time again. We have another big parliamentary Bill to submit on, the Regulatory Standards Bill. It is a complicated beast. I know this because I submitted on the discussion document back in December. I was one of the 20,108 not-bot submitters who argued against its complex and contradictory proposals. You might be one of the 76 people who supported the proposals. Good on you for having your say. You and I both get to do it again. I do not know anyone other than Act New Zealand who is providing advice if you are one of the 76 but there is a lot of support if you want to join the 20,000. A major concern is the explicit exclusion of Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the Bill's narrow law-making principles. The Bill excludes Māori perspectives in the law-making process, erodes Māori rights to self-determination and threatens te reo Māori. It perpetuates systemic racism and colonial structures of power. Lawyer Tania Waikato argues the Bill will lead to even greater legal confusion and uncertainty, and undoubtedly more litigation because it discards decades of law on the application of te Tiriti in New Zealand policy and legislation. Even the Ministry of Justice has said the Bill fails to reflect the constitutional importance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The government wants to use the Bill to help it avoid having te Tiriti conversations, but it will only encourage and amplify them. There are other reasons too. The Bill will constrain the regulation and law-making of future governments. All laws and regulations will have to meet a set of principles that idolise individual freedoms and private property rights over everything else. That means, for example, over public services like a good, fit-for-purpose, future-proofed hospital for the South. You do not have to be a hardcore socialist to think public hospitals are a good idea. Or that it is good for governments, even ones we did not vote for, to be able to legislate for the public good over private interests. Academic Jane Kelsey describes this as "metaregulation", where the Bill will regulate the way governments can regulate. Because of this, the Bill has the potential to constrain parliamentary sovereignty, in practice if not in law. What about our environment? The environment has taken some big hits under this government and the Bill will make more of them more likely. Greenpeace is saying it will be harder for the government to address climate change and biodiversity loss. The Bill might require the government to compensate corporations for the impact of protective laws that affect their property. You do not get compensated when the law impacts your property: why should corporations? The Bill encourages deregulation which will compromise the health of the environment. It will encourage exploitation of natural areas and accelerate the loss of endangered species. It is very contradictory. On one hand the government is encouraging more tourists into New Zealand and on the other promoting legislation that puts our most valuable tourism asset, our natural environment, at even greater risk. Some are also arguing the Bill will disproportionately benefit wealthy people, widening the gap between them and everybody else. The Bill will prioritise individual's property rights over workers' rights to secure and safe employment or the rights of vulnerable communities. These are collective services, like social services and infrastructure. Collective services help to keep us working, support the elderly through superannuation, and provide the social safety net. As eroded as these services might be right now, it can still get much worse, for everyone. The Bill proposes having an unelected regulatory standards board appointed by the minister to oversee the regime. This is not a body representing the public. This is an elite group hand-picked by the minister to help put pressure on the government to follow the Bill's prescription. The board will be unelected lobbyists for the Bill's ideology and will not be accountable to voters. The submissions on the Bill close on June 23, so you have 10 more days. There is a good portal on the parliamentary website to make your submission through, so it is easy to do. You do not have to say much and you do not have to know all about the Bill's trickier details. ODT columnist Chris Trotter is right that no Parliament can bind a future one. A future government could, of course, repeal the Bill if it becomes law — but that is not a reason not to fight it. Putting your faith in the good judgement of a future government is, well, not good judgement. We have to keep up our side of our democracy and have our say, even more so as democracy comes under intense attack. Because that is what this Bill represents. It is not just an attack on Māori and te Tiriti. Or just on conservationists. Or just on the social safety net. It is an attack on everyone. ■Metiria Stanton Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
Otago Daily Times
02-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Bus hub: Focus on central city safety
Preventing crime at Dunedin's bus hub could hinge on ensuring threats are responded to rapidly, deploying prominent patrols and adjusting the area's design, a report suggests. Stronger accountability and ensuring collaboration across agencies delivers results also shape as priorities for improving safety in the central city. A review of safety plans from cities in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom is set to be discussed by the Otago Regional Council on Thursday. Options were not presented, but the material "will be used to assist with actions going forward", a report said. The bus hub in Great King St was the scene of a fatal stabbing last year of 16-year-old Enere McLaren-Taana. A survey of 1300 Dunedin secondary school students subsequently found 45% did not feel safe in the inner city and harassment of girls was rife. A multi-agency advisory group was established after the stabbing and, this year, the regional council - a leading partner in the group - commissioned the safety review by Collective Strategy. "Its purpose is to identify effective strategies and practical insights that can be applied to enhance safety in Dunedin's central city, particularly around the Dunedin bus hub, a known hotspot for youth-related safety concerns," its executive summary said. Victimisation data from last year obtained from police showed the area around the bus hub and parts of the Octagon had a higher concentration of reported crime. The highest number of offences occurred early on Sunday mornings and after-school hours on weekdays. Creation of flexible, rapid response safety teams was explored in the review. "A co-ordinated and well-defined safety response process that is supported by a reliable and monitored CCTV network is required to ensure these services are well utilised and have the maximum positive impact on safety," the report said. In Dunedin, security services were employed around the bus hub and police had established a beat team to increase foot patrols in the city centre. The review noted a shift towards a culture of prevention was evident in many community safety plans. "Cultural inclusion, social connections, and increasing the prominence and visibility of safety measures are effective measures that cities are implementing to prevent and reduce crime and antisocial behaviour. "By understanding and applying the principles of te Tiriti and building greater awareness of mana whenua connections to the land, we can increase positive interactions in communities and promote shared values of inclusion and respect." Partnership models were discussed in the review. "Regular engagement and communication between a wide range of other agencies was seen as critical to every safety team interviewed. "Having a more focused short-term set of actions is effective when working with a partnership model, as partners have greater clarity about what's required and what they're working towards." Leadership and strong governance were considered vital. "Some teams found that without a senior leader owning the work, there wasn't the necessary authority to make decisions and escalate issues if enough progress wasn't made. "It was common for plans to linger in the realm of 'lots of talking and not much doing' if this leadership wasn't present." In Dunedin, the central city advisory group meets monthly.
Otago Daily Times
02-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Focus on central city safety: Bus hub crime review ready
Preventing crime at Dunedin's bus hub could hinge on ensuring threats are responded to rapidly, deploying prominent patrols and adjusting the area's design, a report suggests. Stronger accountability and ensuring collaboration across agencies delivers results also shape as priorities for improving safety in the central city. A review of safety plans from cities in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom is set to be discussed by the Otago Regional Council on Thursday. Options were not presented, but the material "will be used to assist with actions going forward", a report said. The bus hub in Great King St was the scene of a fatal stabbing last year of 16-year-old Enere McLaren-Taana. A survey of 1300 Dunedin secondary school students subsequently found 45% did not feel safe in the inner city and harassment of girls was rife. A multi-agency advisory group was established after the stabbing and, this year, the regional council — a leading partner in the group — commissioned the safety review by Collective Strategy. "Its purpose is to identify effective strategies and practical insights that can be applied to enhance safety in Dunedin's central city, particularly around the Dunedin bus hub, a known hotspot for youth-related safety concerns," its executive summary said. Victimisation data from last year obtained from police showed the area around the bus hub and parts of the Octagon had a higher concentration of reported crime. The highest number of offences occurred early on Sunday mornings and after-school hours on weekdays. Creation of flexible, rapid response safety teams was explored in the review. "A co-ordinated and well-defined safety response process that is supported by a reliable and monitored CCTV network is required to ensure these services are well utilised and have the maximum positive impact on safety," the report said. In Dunedin, security services were employed around the bus hub and police had established a beat team to increase foot patrols in the city centre. The review noted a shift towards a culture of prevention was evident in many community safety plans. "Cultural inclusion, social connections, and increasing the prominence and visibility of safety measures are effective measures that cities are implementing to prevent and reduce crime and antisocial behaviour. "By understanding and applying the principles of te Tiriti and building greater awareness of mana whenua connections to the land, we can increase positive interactions in communities and promote shared values of inclusion and respect." Partnership models were discussed in the review. "Regular engagement and communication between a wide range of other agencies was seen as critical to every safety team interviewed. "Having a more focused short-term set of actions is effective when working with a partnership model, as partners have greater clarity about what's required and what they're working towards." Leadership and strong governance were considered vital. "Some teams found that without a senior leader owning the work, there wasn't the necessary authority to make decisions and escalate issues if enough progress wasn't made. "It was common for plans to linger in the realm of 'lots of talking and not much doing' if this leadership wasn't present." In Dunedin, the central city advisory group meets monthly.
Otago Daily Times
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Penalty proof Maori MPs facing disproportionate scrutiny
When Judith Collins accused Te Pāti Māori MPs of a "lack of civility" for their haka in Parliament she drew 185 years of colonial racism down upon their heads. It was grotesque. And entirely expected. Collins, who chaired the privileges committee, argued that their decision to impose the harshest penalty in the Parliament's history against Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was based on "fairness". It was vengence, not fairness. Her public statements about Te Pāti Māori and the excessive sentence belong to a colonial bias that maliciously targets the Māori presence in the House. The government has well-signalled its intention to force a confrontation with Māori in the Parliament. At every opportunity, the government has chosen the worst behaviour and the most offensive route. When Maureen Pugh refused to allow a karakia from a rangatira after the passing of Whakatōhea Claims Settlement legislation, the Speaker was unapologetic and defensive, relying on their own rules to justify this insult to kaumatua. The Treaty Principles Bill was another way to do the same thing — threaten Māori people and their Māori MPs with a legal tool to eliminate te Tiriti rights, justified on the basis of "process". The Parliament, in the grip of the coalition government, has been anything but civil where Māori are concerned. It was right then for Te Pāti Māori to reject the privileges committee request to appear without collective representation or tikanga expertise. There was no civility to be found among the government members of that committee. The MPs would only have used the opportunity to harass and denigrate the MPs, their representatives, their communities and tikanga Māori. The problem that incites the government MPs to such tumult is that Te Pāti Māori are not sorry. They are not sorry for expressing tikanga in the Chamber. They are not sorry for being Māori. That act of defiance infuriates and embarrasses the government. The haka humiliated the coalition. It has now been watched over 700 million times across the globe. That single act of indigenous strength has led literally millions of people to support Māori cultural expression that challenges colonial violence. For government this is abhorrent. Māori must comply, must concede, must assimilate, and must make no fuss. If we are to perform our culture it can only be in accordance with the rules they set to tame and domesticate it. If we insist on being Māori, we are treated like criminals. The privileges committee has done exactly that in its ruling. It has declared that being and expressing Māori in the Parliament is a crime, weaponising the Parliament's rules against Māori MPs. Māori MPs now face disproportionate scrutiny and excessive punishment for an act of cultural resistance. The privileges committee does not operate in a vacuum. New Zealand's political landscape has seen a rise in anti-Māori rhetoric, particularly from right-wing factions. By leading the committee's biased enforcement of the privileges committee rules, the government drives a culture where Pākehā MPs are held to different, lower, standards and Māori MP's are disproportionately punished. What a familiar story. The lack of integrity in the committee's process means that Māori MPs are judged not the rules, but by a Pākehā-dominated interpretation that reinforces inequities. If Parliament refuses to address this, it further erodes respect for an institution already, and rightly, considered a relic of colonial power. Next week, when the House resumes, we will see whether the Parliament as a whole is prepared to pull back on its rules-based racism. That is one of the constitutional struggles here. The privileges committee's historical practice of reasonableness and collegiality was captured by the coalition government's political agenda, exposing a deeper hypocrisy in New Zealand's democracy. The committee became a tool for the government's political retribution. New Zealand's political institutions are rooted in colonialism. The privileges committee, in overseeing parliamentary conduct, still operates as if Māori should not exist. First the Parliament needs to reject the vicious recommendations of the privileges committee. The rules governing the privileges committee now also need an overhaul. The government should not be able to use it for vengeful purposes. A bare majority should never be enough for a censure recommendation. Tikanga Māori needs to be safeguarded against the racial bias we have witnessed. Without some change, the committee will continue as an arm of the state's assimilationist agenda, punishing those who dare to be Māori in that place. ■Metiria Stanton Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
The Spinoff
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
Review: NZSO's Echoes of Home uses the Christchurch Town Hall to its full potential
A review of the NZSO's latest concert series, performed in Wellington and Christchurch and featuring soloist Amalia Hall. Like many orchestras, the NZSO likes to pair big name composers, like Dvořák and Bartók, with shorter pieces. The concert began with New Zealand composer Douglas Lilburn's Aotearoa overture. The orchestra's new chief executive, Marc Feldman, who started a few weeks ago, introduced the performance – presumably so the many people who give money to keep the NZSO going will have a face to attach to the names in their emails. He said that he hadn't heard any pieces by Lilburn until the first performance of the concert in Wellington two days earlier. But the audience had – surely many of them, like me, had been assigned a Lilburn piece when learning music at some point in New Zealand – and it was lovely to start the concert from a point of familiarity. The overture is very midcentury magnificence (it was written for the centenary celebrations of the signing of te Tiriti), with the theme developing as it passes between the different sections, with some particularly lively cymbals. As the programme noted, Bartók's concerto was written in the 1930s, as Bartók considered rising Nazism in Europe, eventually leaving his homeland of Hungary and moving to the US. Perhaps that tension can be felt in the music: there's a tug between the strings and the brass instruments. The concerto as a whole made me think of the process of building a cathedral: the years it takes, the vision it requires, the role of each individual instrument as a solid foundation that allows the flourishes of the violin to spin so enthusiastically up and down. Amalia Hall is mainly known for her work with chamber music group NZ Trio. As a soloist with a full orchestra, she was dazzling; her hand dancing up and down the fingerboard. It was amazing how her single small violin could fill the space of the Christchurch Town Hall (I am in no way qualified to compare the acoustics of different venues but wow – the acoustics of the Town Hall are spectacular!). Even though the concerto is quite technical and serious, the kind of music making a capital-letters Statement, I felt like she embraced the music with a kind of warmth and playfulness too. This was especially obvious when she was playing very high and fast, yet maintaining a mellow tone, and in the slower sections of the concerto. For her encore, Hall played a short piece with the first desk of each of the other string instruments, which was even more twisting and playful, like jumping between river rocks. This nod to smaller ensemble playing was particularly fun, and showed the range she can play. I haven't listened to much Bartók before, and especially liked how much pizzicato the orchestra used. It's very fun to see double basses and cellos, with their longer and deeper strings, really going hard on the plucking. As well as the shifting tempo, the pizzicato gave the performance a layers of texture. After the interval, the orchestra played Dvořák's Symphony number 7. Although written about 50 years earlier than the Bartók, it also responds to European political unrest and the thrum of the Czech nationalist movement. While there were way more string players on the stage, the highlights really go to the wind and brass instruments: I liked the way the melody moved between the violas and the flutes. The trombones, despite having very little to do in one movement, joined the horns and trumpets for the grand final movement. The horn section was doing a lot, actually, with some very bouncy solos. The entire performance was held together by guest conductor Gábor Káli. A Hungarian who is an expert in Bartók, Káli wins lots of conducting points for being fun to watch. As someone who feels like I know very little about classical music, this was helpful – I could see from where he was pointing how the double basses or bassoons were responding to the music, which made it easier to understand. But it's also very enjoyable to see a conductor who should honestly have been logging the performance on Strava based on how much he was moving. Seeing a live orchestra with a conductor like Káli is a reminder that of course classical music isn't just the sort of sentimental string music that gets used in ads; it has something urgent to say, both when it was originally written and now. I'm not sure that the theme of 'echoes of home' really made sense to apply to the concert, even if one of the pieces was named after Aotearoa. Perhaps (definitely) I'm not that good at recognising Czech folk tunes being repurposed for classical music. But the challenge of music is that words don't always map neatly onto the ideas it holds. Instead, the orchestra is made up of moving parts, and not just the moving parts of a harp. In the big, complex sound of so many instruments working together, there's an invitation to be absorbed, and a ticket to look towards home, then go somewhere new.
