The place where our law is conceived is overseen by possibly the most biased speaker we can remember, making me wonder: Is anything immune from this government’s failings?
“Question Time is an important opportunity for the Opposition to criticise the Government and there is pressure on the Speaker to be seen as being fair on them. “That is where Mr Mallard is failing,” wrote Dunne.
“Time and time again, he seems too quick to intervene to cut the Opposition short, to the benefit and delight of the Government. That is not as it should be.”
Dunne called on Mallard to repair damage he has created so far to remove the view “he is probably Parliament’s most biased Speaker in the last thirty years”.
“If he carries on this way, he will achieve the dubious honour of being remembered as the Speaker who brought Parliament into disrepute.”
Newshub
Audrey Young agrees, saying “Trevor Mallard, has an inbuilt bias against National Party leader Simon Bridges and a soft spot for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.”
JC, writing for The BFD describes the government as “only saved from the equivalent of daily roadkill by the blatant bias displayed by Speaker Mallard. His knavery in continually wading in to their defence is nothing short of a disgrace.”
Obviously, Ardern is pleased Mallard has her back in the house, but Andrew Little wants to take their success in shutting down speech inside the house, to the outside where you and I live.
“Massey University’s vice-chancellor, Jan Thomas, prevented Don Brash from speaking on campus allegedly because she had security concerns. It transpired that the real reason was she held a distaste for his views and effectively acted as a censor.
Likewise, Auckland Mayor Phil Goff publicly disparaged two Canadian speakers and prevented them from using a council venue.”
“[…]we already have laws to protect against what we call ‘hate speech”’, but it is implicit in his comments that he envisages an expansion of this. What the Justice Minister doesn’t mention are the controversial hate speech laws that exist in Europe and the UK, which are extremely broad and have had the effect of silencing legitimate speech.
Individuals making relatively benign remarks have been prosecuted under this legislation. A situation surely we would not want to see in New Zealand. Mr Little talks of “a robust public discussion from all quarters” on these issues.
However, the real danger to meddling in our sound and proven speech laws is that institutions, agencies and interest groups with their own social and political agendas will likely have a disproportionate influence that is not in the national interest. There will be some whose sole intent is to undermine the free speech we already enjoy.”
Otago Daily Times
Attacks on free speech come under the guise of “protecting us from hate (offensive) speech,” as they use offensive speech as a scapegoat for terror attacks. Wipe out offensive speech and you remove terror attacks – for simple minds, it really is that easy
Just in case anyone should want to examine the insane mind of the Christchurch mosque murderer, Ardern made a “captain’s call” by declaring the possession of his manifesto illegal, making it easy to shoehorn him, erroneously, as a “far right terrorist.” Never fear, overseas observers have examined Brenton Tarrant’s motives for us.
“Do the people of New Zealand know that they’re playing into the hands of a murderous, racist thug? Are they aware that that they’re explicitly fulfilling the desires of a self-described “fascist” who admires the government of the People’s Republic of China, and wants to “incite violence, retaliation” with the partial goal of “destabilizing and polarizing Western society?”
[…] In the wake of that crime, the country’s government has succumbed to blind reaction by restricting speech, depriving innocent people of arms, and heightening domestic surveillance—intrusions into individual rights that are inherent whether or not governments and majorities formally respect them.
[…] as demagogues go, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern looks less like a Mussolini-type leading a mob and more like a participant in the panic trotting just a bit faster than the others and eager to mouth as many “easy answers” as it takes to avoid getting trampled by the rest.”
Reason.com
Yes, this really is the direction we are going in. We take guns away from the law-abiding just in case they wake up one morning and decide to commit mass murder. I’m pretty sure people don’t buy guns for that reason. And, if you don’t give up your guns voluntarily, they will be confiscated without recompense and you could go to jail. Another freedom gone. But the gangs are very happy because they’ve scored quite a few guns from the slippery hands of the keystone cops.
Jacinda Ardern is chipping away at our property rights by ploughing into the Ihamatao internal Iwi dispute over land privately owned by Fletchers and intended for housing development with benefits for Iwi.
“Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who is also Minister of Culture and Heritage, yesterday demonstrated a willingness to purchase private land on behalf of the nation.”
A Newspaper
What was Ardern thinking? The Iwi has already received a treaty settlement and the land was legally purchased by Fletchers but the PTPM is contemplating seizing the land, with restitution? The precedent set by this foray into legal ownership doesn’t bear thinking about!