Local Government Amalgamation

Sorry for being late to blog about this, but the Government has announcedthat it will hold a Royal Commission (the membership of, terms of reference of, and date to report back still to be decided) into the local governance of Auckland. Meanwhile, National list MP Mark Blumsky has introduced a Bill (the Auckland and Wellington Local Government Reform Bill) to establish task forces for both cities to look into local government for those cities, report back by 2010 and have referendums to see if those plans will be implemented. I welcome the Royal Commission of inquiry, and hope it produces good results. Same with Blumsky’s Bill, which deserves to go to select committee.

 On the issue of amalgamation and local government, it is an important issue, and a good argument can be made that we don’t need 7 councils just for Auckland, and 85 territorial authorities nationwide. Fewer councils will mean fewer staff and bureaucracy, ability to obtain economies of scale, and a greater ability to work together at the regional level. On the minus side is less local representation, the possibility of a ‘tyranny of the majority’ type problems in some cases. There is also no conclusive proof big is better. In fact Owen McShane, a resource management expert, has labbled the tiny Newmarket Borough Council (which existed before it was amalgamated into Auckland City in 1986) the best run council he has ever seen. For me the issue should be looked at experts in the area, and not from an ideological framework. The Royal Commission and Mark Blumsky’s Bill are both good steps in the right direction, although I would extend the royal commision or taskforces to look at the whole country, as there are a number of rural councils where amalgamtion could be useful (i.e. in kaikoura district there are only three thousand people, should it be merged with the Hurunui district (population 10 000) to form a ‘North Canterbury District’) and in terms of economies of scale possibly more gains from amalgamation than the already large Auckland councils.

Scream Murder, Murder, our democracy is being killed

The NZ Herald has described the Anti-free Speech Bill perfectly. In one of its more recent articles it says “While Key has been on the road the Prime Minister has cooked National’s election goose with a legislative gerrymander in a dirty deal cooked up between Labour and the minor parties. Clark had sworn to put an end to the anonymous trust funds and donors who funnelled cash to National at the last election (and Labour). The “Hollow Woman” has now decided its all right – long after brash’s ousting – for political parties to be funded by secret donations from wealthy donors. Particularly hers.”. The opinion piece goes on to rightly describe the Bill as “an extraordinarily draconian attack on New Zealander’s democratic rights”.

Almost as good is a Dominion Post editorial a number of days ago, with the best extracts reproduced here.. It labbels the $60 000 limit “preposterously small given the cost of newspaper of television advertising” as well as describing the limits on free speech as “draconian”. The editorial concludes “Labour’s agenda is clear. It is determined to do all it can legislatively to make it difficult for opponents to wage a political campaign in 2008 but, at the same time, will certainly add to the millons it is already spending on telling the community how to behave via a veritable wave of public information campaigns.

Both these pieces are excellent, and tell us quite clearly what the real purpose of the Anti-Free Speech Bill is, rewrite the election spending rules in Labour’s favour to help it steal win the 2008 election, in the biggest attack on free speech in the history of our country. Sadly our countries media offers too little of these excellent pieces.

Imagine what would happen if another country tried to rewrite rugby rules to benefit its team against the All Blacks in this years Rugby World Cup (suppose if this team was very good at drop goals but not too good at try scoring, making drop goals worth 5 points and tries worth 3). There would be a massive outrage from the public. It would be on the front pages of all our newspapers, and all over our TV sets. What Labour is doing in the Anti-Free Speech Bill is similar, trying to rewrite the elction laws to benefit themselves against National. The big difference is something far far more important than the Rugby World Cup is at stake here. Our democracy and the future of our country. Yet there is no big outrage against the new legislation. This is because, sadly most New Zealanders who don’t read blogs don’t know how far reeaching the attack on free speech is, largely because our media has done little to inform them. they should with their front pages and on TV scream Murder, Murder, our democracy is being killed.

Why Cannabis should stay illegal

Today’s Dominion Post health section has a good article by Chris Kalderimis entitled “Cannabis linked with psychosis and lung damage” (A9) about the health effects of cannabis. It may come as a big surprise to those libertarians and dope-smokers that the effects aren’t good. This is something that Metiria Turei (a Green MP) should look at carefully, as she has a Bill which has recently been pulled out of the ballot to legalise “medicinal cannabis“.

Lets take a look at the health effects of cannabis. First, according to a recent Lancent study, marijuana use can increase the risk of developing a psychotic illness by 40%, and the risk of developing schizophrenia by 100%. And for dope-smokers that’s the not so bad news, as Kalderimis points out that the risk of getting a psychotic illness or schizophrenia is only 1%, so cannabis increases the risk to 1.4% and 2% respectively. Here is the really bad news. According to a very recent medical Research Institute smoking one cannabis joint does the same amount of damage to your lungs as five tobacco cigarettes. To be fair to the dope-smokers one study isn’t definate proof, but it should be seriously looked at. From this one can conclude that a doctor would need to smoke a awfull lot of drugs before prescribing cannabis for his/her patients for health reasons.

Some advocates of legal  ’soft drugs’ (like party pills and cannabis) argue that banning them could cause people to switch to ‘hard drugs’ (like ‘P’), which do more harm. People who make this arguement should look at the article “When the party’s over” on page B6 in the Dominion Post on August 1 (reproduced here). It details research by Victoria University student kate Bryson into the effects of banning party pills, and found that three quarters of party pill users are already using illegal drugs (so much for the if party pills are banned people will switch to illegal drugs arguement) and that 86% said they would not try ‘P’ if party pills were banned (proving the banning party pills will make people switch to ‘P’ or other harder drugs arguement wrong). What is needed is not to legalise drugs, which would send the implicit message that it is OK to use them), but tell young people that drug use is wrong and will not be tolerated by society. And we need to put pressure on politicians to make sure it isn’t tolerated and the police better enforce the laws against cannabis.