Its about to propel ACT into the heights of popularity with Mr and Mrs NZ…..

Watch the crim lovers on the left howl like bitches over this.

As an unelected list MP she represents the negative side of MMP. She would never have been admitted to Parliament under FPP.

The point however, is that for whatever reason, the plan is to remove resource-rights from our trading partners and gift them to approved certification bodies. And the Delahunty plan is to do so in a way that flies in the face of most of the recent international environmental treaties we’ve signed up to.

I haven’t read the Bill myself, but I suspect Delahunty would say ‘it denies that sovereign states (generally) have the *inclination* to determine if their exports are ‘legal’ and ’sustainable’.

This would also be a unilateral action that could be subject to WTO sanction (we are after all, going to say to other sovereign states that they are too feckin’ stupid to be trusted with their own resources, so it’s up to the newest colonial power in the globe to take charge- the Green movement- to do that for them).

Note that we have agreed to a number of international environmental treaties (like the CBD) promising that we would only undertake multilateral action for environmental approval. Likewise we are eschewing other international multilateral approaches like CITES. Of course, CITES only requires a non-detriment standard rather than positive proof of sustainability, hence is less onerous to developing countries. The cost for sustainable forestry enterprises in developing countries to demonstrate that they are in fact, sustainable, can be a major financial and expertise hurdle. By analogy, the ongoing efforts to show that the CAMPFIRE programme was sustainable in Zimbabwe, went a long way to killing off the success of these initiatives.

Would an unsustainable biofuel be made from Kakapo, Chatham Island robin, Loch Ness Monsters?

And Delahunty’s bill demanding that imported timber products be produced from sustainable logging….does that mean a piece of furniture made from the last tree in the world would be banned from New Zealand?

That’s because there hasn’t been a ballot in 18 months.

Even if they are not passed it helps add to the legislative debate on the topic and the construction of future legislation regarding the topic.

I would personally like to see the Sustainable Biofuels Bill passed, as it holds principles similar to the amendment to the Biofuel Act (since repealed) put forward last year. Effectively asking the question – Why bother making Biofuels if they are not sustainable?

Yes, that would appear to be revealing. Sure they’re busy, but surely they’d prefer to spend time debating their own Bills rather than someone else’s..

Bradford’s proposed bill has no effect on the outcome of this current referendum.

Can you please qualify what ’stopping democracy’ entails?

I read the bill Toad linked to, and I think it seemed pretty sensible – a simple improvement to ensure clarification of questions submitted to the clerk of the house. I actually see there to be a lot of benefit in this. It means we can start debating the real issues in a referendum, and not their semantics.

You may not agree with Bradfords politics (I don’t) or her motives behind this bill (which are clear), but calling it an attempt to stop democracy sounds just plain hysterical.