Posts Tagged ‘legislation’

The case for mandatory legislative review

Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, February 24th, 2021 - 15 comments

You can’t read legislation for very long without finding instances of weird edge cases. But is also why we have kids trying to walk or bike on gravel roads with no sidewalks to get to school. When modern cars travel these narrow lanes at up to 100km/hour. Parliament has no systematic way to review obsolete legislation.

Freedom of speech – the knife-edge.

Written By: - Date published: 4:43 pm, January 17th, 2021 - 18 comments

I have a problem with dimwits waving around a slogan of “free speech” without understanding it. Ignorant fools more interested in screaming slogans than understanding the constraints of their ‘right’. The events of the last 4 years in the USA have made that very clear. So I thought I’d point out a few facts of life about constraints on freedom of speech – with a sidetrack through Trumps’ incitements to riot.

Viruses love liberty – they can breed more.

Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, May 14th, 2020 - 25 comments

Viruses and other diseases simply don’t care about abstractions like ‘human rights’. They just want to breed. We need a better legislative toolkit to deal with epidemics. There is only so long that a draconian state of emergency should be maintained. Like 1918 we need to start thinking about the future Health Act with reserve powers like level 2 and 1. In the meantime, we’ll deal with the virus with this imperfect act as a tool.

The NZ Government passes Health Homes Guarantee Act

Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, December 1st, 2017 - 119 comments

“Every New Zealander deserves a warm, healthy home to live in, and the Health Homes Guarantee Act will help ensure that”

Light-fingered regulation

Written By: - Date published: 3:23 pm, July 10th, 2012 - 16 comments

New Zealand-registered shell companies are being used for big-numbers money laundering. The government has repeatedly said it will tighten company registration to prevent this, but the bill languishes down the order list. National’s big on regulating the behaviour of beneficiaries, but slack when it comes to money-launderers.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.