The Herald reported:

Northland’s Ngāti Hine people are in mourning, following the death of well-known kaumātua, and Waitangi stalwart, Pita Paraone.
Paraone died at 2am this morning in Auckland Hospital.
A whānau member says the much-loved elder had heart surgery about three weeks ago, and failed to recover.

Paraone was known for his quiet but firm diplomacy and was for many years the programme organiser for Waitangi Day, and the chair of the Waitangi National Trust.
He was also a former NZ First MP.
His family are now preparing to bring him north for the tangihana at his home marae in Mōtatau in the Bay of Islands.
New Zealand First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said his party was deeply saddened to learn of Paraone’s death.
“On behalf of New Zealand First let me express our condolences to Pita’s wife, Elva, his three children and wider whānau,” said Peters.
“Northland and the people of New Zealand have lost a man who cared deeply for his people and country, and worked endlessly to make New Zealand a better country for us all,” Peters said.

A very nice man, who worked hard for New Zealand. Had no enemies in politics as far as I know, and respected by all sides.

National’s Economic Discussion Paper has scores of proposals in there, most of them good. Here’s the 10 I think are the best:

1. Index tax thresholds to inflation
2. No new taxes
3. Only tax real interest income, not nominal income
4. Raise the eligibility age for NZ Superannuation from 65 to 67
5. Abolish taxpayer funded bonus payments for being in a union
6. Reverse ban on offshore oil and gas exploration
7. Explore congestion charging
8. Require all government agencies to pay creditors on time
9. Bring back public sector targets in health, education etc
10. Will repeal two regulations for every new regulation

Eric Crampton writes:

Fans of the classic Australian political satire The Hollowmen will remember the standard trick for inflating a figure when doing political math: roll together several years’ expenditures to get a bigger number.
A smallish-sounding $10 million spending announcement, rolled up over 10 years, becomes $100 million. As an official on The Hollowmen warned, “Treasury hate it. Might get you some headlines, but who needs that?”
The past fortnight brought a lot of headline stories about the social cost of alcohol. Felix Desmarais’ article for the Dominion Post warned that alcohol costs $5 billion. The Herald‘s headline warned of a “$70b social cost”, citing Alcohol Action New Zealand’s rolling up 10 years’ worth of alleged costs.

Wow so the cost of alcohol is around a third of NZ’s GDP. My God, let’s ban it and we’ll be so much better off.

When considering health costs, BERL explicitly wiped out any conditions where alcohol reduces net health costs. They worked from the alcohol aetiological tables listing the proportions of every disorder that might be attributed to alcohol. For alcohol-related liver cirrhosis, the proportion is obviously 100 per cent. But for other disorders, like chronic heart disease, the proportion is negative because alcohol reduces heart disease.

For any disorder where alcohol provides those protective effects, BERL assumed away those benefits.

So this “cost” is ignoring all benefits. It is basically meaningless.

When BERL tried to estimate the costs of alcohol-related crime, they used a survey of prisoners who were asked to what extent alcohol had contributed to their offending. If the prisoner said at least “some”, the costs of that offending were entirely attributed to alcohol.

Nonsensical.

BERL’s estimates were also plagued by double-counting. If you follow standard guidelines, you cannot count both the intangible costs of premature mortality and the costs of lost productivity due to premature mortality. New Zealand’s standard measure of the cost of premature mortality already includes all associated costs, including lost productivity. BERL added up both.

It is almost like they were trying to get as big a number as possible.

Last year, BERL came back to argue that alcohol costs the nation $7.8b per year, or $1635 per capita. The number appeared to be an inflation adjustment to the old 2009 figure; but I thought it worth checking. BERL’s Ganesh Nana confirms that the figure is an update of the old $4.9b, inflated by GDP growth since then. Our best hope of reducing alcohol’s social cost, by that measure, is a very sharp recession.
The Hollowmen thought they were teaching us how to build a big number. They had nothing on BERL. We should all know better than to take their new number seriously.

So now you multiple the so called cost of alcohol by GDP growth. Really it is genius work they do.

The Herald reports:

A legal battle in Sydney, Australia is under way with a Māori group claiming valuable land was given to them by Aboriginal people 200 years ago.
The leader of Ngāti Rangihou Kanguru hapū maintains that in the early 1800s aboriginal leaders entrusted their Māori king to 112 acres in Parramatta, which is now Sydney’s biggest CBD, according to 9 News.

Excellent. Next will be a claim on Greenland!

“We are here to reclaim Rangihou land,” Rangihou leader Lady Crown told 9 News.
“We want acknowledgement and recognition. We want the history books corrected and compensation for damages of the land.
“We have the first laws in time, so our laws stand above any other law in the land.”

I suspect they will not do well in court.

In March, the Māori group attempted to forcibly seize Rangihou by changing the locks on the Waratah soccer club and charging for parking in their own setup.
However, the group was evicted four days later.

In NZ they would be there years later.

One News reports:

The Prime Minister has been labelled a hypocrite for continuing to enforce the former National’s Government’s drug sanctions on beneficiaries. 
It comes while the Social Development Minister ignores the Green Party’s pleas for a more compassionate approach to be taken.
1 NEWS revealed this week that of the nearly 40,000 beneficiaries referred for jobs that required a drug test this year, there were only 114 failed tests and on 72 occasions beneficiaries were punished with sanctions.
Under the sanctions, regime job seekers’ can have their benefit cut by 50 per cent for four weeks, then stopped altogether if there are further infringements.
Jacinda Ardern backed the drug sanction regime this week saying, “we need to make sure that if someone is not able to get into work because they’ve failed a drug test that we’re able to encourage them”.
“From a Labour perspective it’s all about making sure it’s appropriate use (of sanctions), there are mutual obligations in our system,” she said.   
In 2013, as Labour’s social development spokesperson, Ms Ardern criticised the drug sanctions telling NZ Herald that cutting support for drug users would reduce their chances of rehabilitation.
“All of the evidence suggests that responding in the way National has suggested doesn’t work,” she said.

So in 2013 Jacinda Ardern condemned what National did, but in 2019 she now defends them as mutual obligations.

The 2019 Ardern is correct of course.

The Government announced:

This Government is ensuring that excessive MPs’ pay increases are stopped and a fairer system is used in future, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says.

Actually they are doing the exact opposite. They are repealing a law that restricted MP pay increases to the change in the median wage.

“In 2015, MPs took control of the way that their pay increases were calculated by replacing the Remuneration Authority’s independence with their own preferred formula. The changes were a failure, with this formula generating higher pay increases than the system used prior to 2015.

“We will repeal this formula and restore the independence of the Remuneration Authority to calculate increases in a fair and transparent manner. This means MPs’ pay will be calculated using the same process for reviewing the remuneration of other key public office holders.”

This is wonderful double speak. It means that they may now get massive pay increases rather than ones restricted to the median wage movement.

Under the law passed by National MPs would get a mere 2.1% pay rise in 2019 – as that is how much the median public sector wage has gone up. Under Jacinda’s law, they could get a lot more.

The best predictor of the future is the present. How much did the PM’s salary increase when Labour was last in office?

It went from $222,400 to $393,000 – an increase of $170,600. That is a 76.7% increase over nine years.

The median public sector increase was 45.6%. So the increase would have been around $70,000 less over nine years.

So who knew when Jacinda called 2018 the year of delivery, she meant the year of delivering huge pay increases to herself and her colleagues.

Clare Curran announces:

Labour Dunedin South MP Clare Curran has announced she will not re-stand at the 2020 election, closing a twelve year career in Parliament. She will remain in the seat until the election.

I wish Clare well.

Obviously things did not go well for Clare as a Minister but I don’t think that should detract from the work she put in as Opposition Spokesperson for ICT and Communications. She worked very hard in the area of Internet and comms policy, and has been a good voice for Internet freedom.

I got to work with her a bit when she was in opposition, and always found her constructive despite our different political allegiances.

A guest post by Gavan O’Farrell:

“This is who I am”
 
I recently read an article about what it’s like being deaf in New Zealand.  One woman interviewed recalled a camp she attended when she was young.  The experience made a big impression on her, so much so that she came to realise that being deaf was “who I am”. 
 
This got me thinking about other times I’ve heard someone say that such-and-such is “who I am”.  One hears of people saying it about their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, or some other characteristic they consider to be vital to the point of being definitive.
 
I expect many who say this are very deeply affected by the significance of the characteristic they are describing and this is articulated, with some poetic licence, as “This is who I am”.  In some cases (perhaps many), this poetic licence may be energised by the fact that the person has been made to feel like a social outlier because of the characteristic.  In these cases, the “poetry” becomes quite poignant and very powerful.
 
However, some proclaim “who I am” with a polemical purpose which, if spelled out, goes something like this: “This characteristic is who I am.  For that reason, your disapproval of it, or disagreement with it, is a rejection of me as a person, a denial of my humanity”.  What seems to follow, in the mind of the speaker, is that the disapproval or disagreement must therefore not be permitted and may even be reasonably described as hate speech and condemned as such.  We see this happening all around us.
 
No matter how the declaration “This is who I am” is used, I suggest that it isn’t actually true.  I cannot interfere with a person’s view of themselves – I’m just an onlooker with no authority – but I can have an opinion about this kind of thought process.  When the woman declared that her deafness is “who I am”, it occurred to me to ask, “What about your ethnicity and gender, are they just peripheral?”
 
When a person identifies a characteristic and says, “This is who I am”, they are doing themselves a great injustice and selling themselves way short. 
 
Each person consists of an enormous number of characteristics, some innate and others formed by experience and context.  I’ll call each of these a “what” as distinct from the “who”.  There are all sorts of whats – sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender presentation, age, height,  body shape and weight, strength, IQ, EQ, disposition, beauty, physical prowess, physical health, mental health, attitude to heights, enclosed spaces and spiders, place on various spectrums (eg introvert/extrovert, optimist/pessimist, sweetness of tooth, sensitivity to heat and cold), opinions and world-view, life experience, experience of oppression (from one side or another), skills, self-esteem, memory, facility with languages ………..  I’m not sure the list has an end.
 
I suggest that “who” a person is must be, at the very least, the aggregate of the enormous number of whats that characterise the person.  To be honest, I would go further and suggest that this aggregate is simply “what” the person is, while the “who” of that person is something even more profound and utterly unique. 
 
Who we really are
 
Because I’m a Christian (just mainstream, nothing fancy), I believe each human being is made “in the image and likeness” of the creator God.  This is rather grand and gives each person fabulous significance and value, which is the other reason I find limited self-identification so irksome.
 
But even if the imago Dei is notionally set aside, it is apparent that an individual human being is an unfathomably deep and complex unit.  So, when a person focuses on a single characteristic and says “This is who I am”, they are saying something that is wildly inaccurate. 
 
It is good to be prepared to go to some trouble to understand why a person identifies themselves in this way, especially if there is real hurt underlying what they say.  However, it doesn’t follow that a poetic understatement, no matter how poignant or tragic, should be taken literally – because then it’s false.
 
Identity politics
 
I don’t intend this to be of merely passing interest:  it’s relevant to identity politics. 
 
I’m not quite sure just who is “in charge” of identity politics – I only know they’ve been operating behind the scenes and that no-one voted for them.  They seem to have decided that each person has only a handful of characteristics – or, at least, only a handful of characteristics that matter. 
 
I cannot interfere when a person entertains a false and limiting belief about themselves.  I must feel a little sad and leave them be.  However, I object to being told that I must treat their paltry self-identification as a fact.
 
It is even more objectionable when someone applies this shabby branding to someone else.
 
This happens, for example, when I am identified as “just” a pale, stale male or “just” a phobia-laden Christian bigot or “just” a beneficiary of racist colonialism etc.  Once one of these damning labels is attached to me, no interest is taken in my other characteristics, much less in my actual opinions, decisions and actions. 
 
It also happens when a person is encouraged to self-identify in this paltry manner – to see themselves as a person of very few parts.  The perverse thing is, this encouragement comes from people who claim to advocate for that person!
 
This has been going on for a while, but I continue to be astonished by the new elite (academics, media, educators, much of government) who arrogantly presume to define everyone, especially when that definition is insultingly incomplete.  This displays utter contempt for every member of the community – not only those the elite intends to punish for past sins but also those it claims to champion. 
 
Identity politics insults everyone by underestimating them.  That’s just the start, of course:  after rebranding us all and diving us into herds, the elite –
·         decides which herds are good and bad (regardless of what people actually say and do);
·         stage-manage a war between them (women against men, Pakehā against Māori, and so on).
 
The complexity and uniqueness of every human being is not the only vital truth ignored – also ignored is a person’s accountability for what they do, not for what they are – but that’s where it starts.

The Herald reports the following stats for the 2018/19 year:

• Suicides up 17 from 668 to 685
• Suicide rate up from 13.67 to 13.93 per 100,000
• Maori suicides up from 149 to 162
• Maori suicide rate up from 25.96 to 28.23
• Pacific suicides up from 23 to 34
• European suicides down from 462 to 446
• European suicide rate down from 13.94 to 13.46
• 15 – 19 year old suicides up from 53 to 73
• 15 – 19 year old suicide rate up from 16.88 to 23.14
• 20 – 24 year old suicides up from 76 to 91
• 20 – 24 year old suicide rate up from 21.21 to 26.87

That is a huge increase in the youth suicide rate and an 11 year high for the overall suicide rate.

Now I personally don’t think the suicide rate is something you “blame” the Government for. You can blame them for the waiting times for Emergency departments or the level of funding for drugs but the complexity of suicide is something where there is no magic wand you can wave to say this will reduce it.

Of course this didn’t stop Labour from blaming the suicide rate on National before the last election.

And I will make one political point:

She (Ardern) reiterated the Government’s position that there was not enough evidence to support setting a national suicide target.

“A target implies we have a tolerance for suicide, and we do not. The goal is for no one to be lost to suicide.”

That is just puerile crap to be honest.

We have a target to reduce the prison population. That doesn’t mean to say we have a tolerance for people going to prison.

We have a target to reduce workplace fatal accidents. That doesn’t mean we think workplace fatalities are acceptable.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand actor Ray Henwood has died.
Circa Theatre in Wellington confirmed on Monday that Henwood had died aged 82.
The actor spent a lifetime inhabiting the lives of others in a world of make believe. He had played Albert Einstein, Joseph Stalin, Dylan Thomas and Winston Churchill, to name but a few. …

Henwood was also a renowned theatre actor and was instrumental in establishing Circa Theatre, where he performed many of his most iconic roles, in 1976. 
He was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in 2006.
Henwood is survived by his wife, Carolyn, a retired district court judge and arts patron, son Dai, and his grandchildren.

There would be no Circa without the Henwoods. It is a wonderful legacy he laves behind.

Henwood was a magnificent actor. One of the last plays he did at Circa was King Lear with himself as King Lear. He was masterful, as I blogged in my review.

Wellington theatre won’t quite be the same without him.

HDPA writes:

And, since the PM told us we’re being fleeced, it’s added more tax with a 3.5 per cent increase in the petrol tax this year.
So, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it?
If we’re really being fleeced, then surely a government that really felt that would alleviate the pain and drop away some of that tax.
Now the government can go ahead and fight this battle if it wants, because you never know, it could maybe win and consumers could be grateful. But it’s a high risk one.
Because (a) this will take years – will this government be there to take the credit if petrol prices come down? And (b) it wouldn’t take much for argument to swing against the government.
It wouldn’t take lot of effort for the petrol companies or the opposition to turn that ‘fleecing’ narrative onto the government itself.
We saw that start today when Simon Bridges called the pm the fleecer in chief. Now, Bridges doesn’t get a lot of cut through so I wouldn’t’ be too worried about him, but if that takes a hold, and it can with this government, it’ll hurt.

People don’t realise what a massive proportion of the price of petrol, is Government charges. The current rates are:

• National Land Transport Fund 66.52c
• GST 32.61c (on a $2.50 retail price)
• Regional Fuel Tax (in Auckland) 10.0c
• ACC Levy 6.0c
• Local Authorities Fuel Tax 0.66c
• Engine Fuel Monitoring Levy 0.6c

That is a total of 116.4 cents on every litre (in Auckland) going to the Government in direct taxes.

Massey went out of its way to block Don Brash from speaking on campus with claims that allowing him to do so would make some staff or students feel unsafe (ie they don’t like what he says).

So surely Massey is ultra focused on safety for staff and students right?

Well Stuff reports:

A woman who says she was sexually assaulted by a university colleague has spent months trying to have her alleged attacker removed from her workplace.
Rape crisis services and student advocates are calling for Massey University to act after the woman, a graduate student at the university’s Palmerston North campus, was left bleeding and bruised following the alleged assault on March 10. …

Instead, five months later, the alleged perpetrator is still studying on campus and has been employed as a tutor working alongside young female students.

It sounds like they employed him as a tutor after being informed of the Police complaint of sexual assault.

On June 28, Marie laid an academic grievance complaint against the school’s head. She was referred to associate dean of research Professor Ian Fuller.
During a meeting with Fuller, Marie says he expressed sympathy but told her quitting her PhD might be the “best option”.

Surely that is not correct.

The Herald reports:

A Wellington property developer has pledged to ring-fence $10,000 for charity from the profit of every high end home he sells.
It means millions of dollars will be diverted from the wallet of The Wellington Company’s director Ian Cassels to those most in need.
Houses and apartments sold over $800,000 would generate the donation to Wellington City Mission.
The Mission’s association with the Stop Out Club for wayward youth founded in the early 20th century captured the attention of Cassels, who then learned more about the charity’s historical ties with the city.

Wellington City Mission does great work. Well done Ian Cassels for your generosity.

A guest post from Bryan Leland:

The excellent report of the Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) deserves careful study. It strongly recommends against any attempt to achieve 100% CO2 free electricity generation in a normal hydrological year. It concludes that it is effectively impossible to provide a reliable and economic supply under this scenario.
 
The key problem is dry hydrological years. About once every 20 years, low rainfall reduces hydropower generation by about 15% which amounts to 10% of annual energy. The ICCC report explains that in all years that might be drier than normal extra gas will need to be burned to minimise the risk of a shortage. In a severe dry year, extra gas generation of about 3000 GWh will be needed – about 8% of annual demand. The report does not say where the gas will come from or who will pay the annual cost of storing it. If gas is unavailable the only alternative is coal.
 
It concludes that maintaining supply in dry years is the major hurdle when contemplating CO2 free generation and points out that biomass, batteries, hydrogen and overbuilding of wind and solar power are excessively expensive for dry year reserve.
 
It concludes that it is better to electrify transport and accept 8% fossil fuel generation than it is to try to eliminate fossil fuel generation during a normal year. It does not mention the problem of CO2 emitted during battery manufacture or the cost to the economy and consumers of scrapping internal combustion cars before their life has ended, purchasing more expensive electric cars, supplying charging stations, reinforcing the distribution system and the like.
 
Meeting peak demand is also a major problem. An analysis of the report indicates that, under its electrification scenario, peak demand can only be met if the wind is blowing. Peak demands often occur when the wind is not blowing so it may be necessary to shed 1000 – 2000 MW of peak demand for several hours during calm days in the wintertime. This would damage the economy and put lives at risk.
 
The report points out that the cost of CO2 under the Emissions Trading Scheme will need to increase substantially to reduce fossil fuel generation. It would seem that the authors do not realise that an increase in the cost of CO2 will provide windfall profits to the hydro power generators because, the way our electricity market works, for every dollar of tax paid by fossil fuel generators, consumers are likely to pay $5 to $10 in extra electricity charges.
 
The report makes it clear that the Resource Management Act will make it extremely difficult to increase generation capacity to match the increased demand from electrification because consenting new generation is getting more and more difficult and time-consuming. It also points out that although many windfarm sites have RMA approvals the process may have to start all over again if the size or location of the turbines has changed.
 
The committee’s terms of reference specified “renewable energy” rather than “CO2 free energy” so it did not contemplate nuclear power even though it could substantially reduce emissions and provide a safe, cheaper and more reliable supply.
 
My own conclusion is that the best “bang for the buck” is achieved by replacing coal fired generation with gas and planning for nuclear power. I also conclude that a crash program to introduce electric cars would be very expensive because it would be necessary to subsidise the cars, the charging points and the upgrading of the distribution system. The cost of the subsidies will fall heaviest on the poor.
 
In summary, if the country really needs to provide a reliable and economic supply while minimising emissions of CO2, natural gas is essential, nuclear would be beneficial and the Resource Management Act must be overhauled. Even if all this happens, there is still a risk of high prices and shortages.

Chris Bishop released:

Phil Twyford is clearly more concerned about his public image than he is about improving the transport network given the number of NZTA spin doctors has almost doubled since he became its Minister, National’s Transport spokesperson Chris Bishop says.
Information released to National shows the number of fulltime equivalent employees (FTEs), working in media, communications, marketing, stakeholder engagement or public affairs at the New Zealand Transport Agency grew from 26.13 in July 2017 to 40.05 in July 2019.
In 2017, the agency employed 17.53 permanent and 8.60 fixed-term employees in those roles. By 2019, that had grown to 37.05 permanent and three fixed-term employees.
“It’s a slap in the face when the NZTA can find extra money to spend on spin doctors but it can’t find the cash for vital new infrastructure and safety upgrades,” Mr Bishop says.
“Instead of building the roads Kiwis are crying out for, Phil Twyford and his Associate Minister Julie Anne Genter appear more interested in finding new ways to spin their ineptitude in the media.

So they slash funding for roads but increase funding for people to explain why there won’t be more roads.

The SMH reports:

Labor lost the election because it was proposing higher taxes and not because the public rejected bold policy reform, former prime minister Paul Keating said.
Speaking on the ABC’s 7.30, Mr Keating said the lesson of Labor’s shock loss was not that oppositions could not be brave with their policy agendas, but that the public supported lower taxes.

A great Labor PM.

In stark contrast to failed leader Bill Shorten’s class-warfare strategy targeted at the “big end of town”, Mr Keating said the top marginal tax rate should be cut further, to no more than 39 per cent.
“I cut the top marginal rate from 60 per cent under John Howard, to 47 per cent. It is still at 45 per cent 35 years later, how pathetic is that? The top marginal rate in Australia shouldn’t be a jot over 39 per cent,” he said.

High top tax rates just lead to high levels of avoidance. When Cullen increased the top tax rate from 33c to 39c, the tax from the top income earners fell.

The Herald reports:

President Donald Trump demanded US companies stop doing business with China and questioned whether the Federal Reserve chairman was a bigger enemy of the US than Beijing’s leader Friday, capping one of the most extraordinary days in the long-running US-China trade war.

If any other President labeled the Federal Reserve Chair (whom they appointed) an enemy of the United States, they would be impeached. You’ve got a President labeling the guy who runs the central bank of the US as an enemy of the state.

“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA,” Trump tweeted.

I think he may have gone mad. He thinks he can order private companies about as if he was dictator.

Trump may single handedly cause a global recession. And he will try and blame everyone else for it.

Audrey Young writes:

From Simon Bridges’ perspective, he has had a splendid week.
In the general debate on Wednesday, Bridges was mentioned no fewer than 12 times by Transport Minister Phil Twyford and four times each by the other Labour speakers, except for Greg O’Connor.
He may have missed the briefing note from the research unit but he didn’t mention Bridges at all and only once referred to the “Leader of the Opposition.”
Considering how relatively unpopular Bridges is as leader, Labour appears quite worried about him.
There is a reason for that.
Few thought an unpopular National leader would have impact on a first-term Government with a highly popular leader in Jacinda Ardern and – even if the shine came off Ardern – that Bridges would be capable of capitalising on it.
But Bridges is not only getting cut-through, he seems to have a tailwind.
He is picking issues that resonate, and by having concise messages that are reinforced by social media, most of which are fair but some of which are not.
There was a particularly cruel but fair social media clip of Ardern’s somewhat waffly statements around Ihumātao.

Labour seem to be very worried at the moment.

An interesting story at the American Conservative from a Latino student:

Anyway, there were a few standard questions about what we do to take care of ourselves and I was feeling fine about everything. Then, on the fourth question, the moderator asked, “How do your intersecting identities affect your mental health?” A parade of rather predictable responses followed. “I’m black, so nobody expects me to succeed, which is why I fail so often.” “I’m a woman, so I often feel as if I am supposed to be in the kitchen instead of the study.” And so on. I was the last one.
I thought about it for a second and decided to take a stand (paraphrasing): “I don’t think about my intersecting identities. It simply isn’t useful. It’s more useful to think of myself as an individual and not subject myself to imaginary group pressures because that leads to pathology. I prefer to grant myself agency and allow that I have the power to determine my course regardless of these happenstance characteristics.”
The circle became visibly tense and the people next to me were physically repulsed. The moderator looked at me and sneered, “White male.” Seriously, she said that.
I was a bit taken aback. I smirked a bit (it is rather funny) and said something to the effect of, “There are words to describe people who make assumptions on the basis of skin color and gender, and they aren’t particularly nice. And I’m actually Mexican–” She interrupted me, saying, “Well, you have very light skin.” Can you imagine the nerve of this woman? Seriously, she said that.
Of course, I’m paraphrasing my own words here because I don’t remember exactly what I said. I responded, “That’s quite the observation. What you can’t tell by my skin color and gender [she assumed my gender! The nerve of some people] is that I am on the autism spectrum. What you can’t tell is that my parents divorced when I was very young, that my family lost everything in the Great Recession, that my grandparents grew up in boxcars, that my parents never finished college, that my parents were abused as children, that I have had many personal struggles. These aren’t the things you can get out of melanin and genitalia…” I went on for some time like that and we went back and forth a few more times, with other students jumping in to tell me how insensitive I was being.

How dare he assert individual circumstances over identity politics.

A guest post by Richard Prosser:

We are frequently told that having guns in New Zealand is a privilege. I contend that it is in fact a right. Let me tell you why I so contend.
It is a timeless universal human right to be able to possess the means of ensuring one’s survival, be that in terms of hunting food, or defending oneself, and one’s home and family, or protecting the society or nation of which one is a part.
Reference to the possession of arms being a privilege rather than a right is a common refrain in New Zealand, and in some other jurisdictions. It is a claim that is not often challenged publicly, and I believe this is because everyone knows that as soon as this issue is actually addressed head-on, a rather large can of worms will be opened, and nobody has much of an appetite for the discussion that will inevitably ensue.
Every living thing, from the tiniest bacteria to the mightiest apex predator, is possessed of an inherent right to act in self-preservation. At the risk of confounding the issue through choice of terminology, I will say that this is a truth I hold to be self-evident. (A partial quote from Thomas Jefferson, author of the US Declaration of Independence, reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”)
And the right to self-preservation does, and by definition must, include the right to the means of self-preservation, because the denial of the means is also, by unavoidable extension, the denial of the right.
The English Bill of Rights 1688 is enshrined in New Zealand Statute Law. It is current. It is valid. It may be found here:
http://legislation.govt.nz/act/imperial/1688/0002/latest/whole.html#DLM10993
The seventh tenet of the English Bill of Rights 1688 states:
Subjects’ arms
That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law:
 
The reference to Protestants is not intended to deny Catholics or anyone else their rights, but rather because Church and State are officially linked in Britain, and at the time of writing, the BOR was an affirmation of the Rights of Englishmen, that being anyone under the rule of the English Monarch, and was not intended to affirm the rights of anyone else. Since the Church of England had been created by Henry VIII’s unilateral rejection of the Papal authority of Rome, all his (and those of subsequent Monarchs) subjects were automatically Protestant. The practice of other religions may have been tolerated, but that did not mean that their adherents were any less subject to the rule of the King and his Church, nor were they denied the rights or privileges, or exempted from the duties, of other subjects.
I will touch on the US 2^nd Amendment later. It is more of a distraction than a help here, given that this is about guns, and many people have a propensity for lumping anyone who advocates on behalf of law-abiding New Zealand firearms owners, in with the Americans.
Neither the English Bill of Rights nor the US Constitution make reference to the right to have arms for the purpose of granting that right; the right exists, as do all elements of the Common Law, and it does not need to be granted, nor may it be denied, other than by the unlawful usurpation of the Common Law. Rather, it is referenced in order to recognise and acknowledge that right, and to assert and affirm it so that it may not be forgotten or denied by those who make the rules and those who live under them, now and in the future.
The wording of the English Bill of Rights makes it in some ways a more elegant instrument than the US Constitution, because it states that the arms the citizens may have, may be “suitable to their conditions”, acknowledging that those conditions may change with time and circumstance. By definition, arms necessary for one’s defence must be capable of countering actual threats to one’s safety, and as the means of threat evolve, so must the arms available to the citizens be able to evolve.
In the day of its writing, the Bill would have contemplated swords, pikes, muskets, and similar arms. Today it encompasses modern firearms. In the future it will encompass such technology as man is able to develop as time goes on. The conditions may change but the right does not.
The BOR also states that the having of arms shall be “as allowed by law”. The law referenced here is the Common Law, and the specific affirmation is to ensure that Statute law shall also allow it (as it lawfully must, being that the right of self-preservation and by extension to the means thereof is a Common Law right), but also that within the Statute law there may be provisions to prevent breaches of the Statute law, providing the Statute law with the ability to deny the having of arms to those who threaten either form of the law, so long as that law is lawful.
That may sound convoluted, but it means that the likes of criminals and the mentally unsound may be denied the having of arms, but also that no statute law that unlawfully denies rights under the Common Law, is a lawful law.
This latter consideration is precisely how the granting of firearms licences operates in New Zealand today – a person demonstrating that they have the ability to safely have arms, SHALL be issued with a licence (and yes, that is the wording in the Arms Act), unless there is some lawful reason why they should not.
This is the only matter in which the concept of ‘privilege’ applies, with regards to the having of arms in New Zealand.
Section 24 of the Arms Act 1983 detailing the issuing of firearms licences may be found here: http://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1983/0044/latest/DLM72923.html
24 Issue of firearms licence
(1)
Subject to subsection (2), a firearms licence shall be issued if the member of the Police to whom the application is made is satisfied that the applicant—
(a)
is of or over the age of 16 years; and
(b)
is a fit and proper person to be in possession of a firearm or airgun.
 
Fit and proper means you’re not a criminal or a nutbar.
No sane person wants criminals or nutbars running around with guns. But at the same time, there is no lawful mechanism by which people who are not criminals or nutbars may be denied the right to own firearms, and to own them for the purposes of self-defence.
‘Fit and proper’ also allows for the objective assessment of people who have criminal convictions. A person may, for example, be a convicted fraudster. Legally that person is a criminal, but that might not necessarily make them a person who should be considered a risk as far as the ownership of firearms is concerned.
Now please note – this doesn’t mean that if you have a gun, you necessarily have the legal right to use it in self defence as a first choice option. We are reasonable people in New Zealand. We believe in the principle of reasonable force, and indeed the self-defence provisions of the Crimes Act 1961 section 48 http://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/whole.html#DLM328268 do explicitly state this. You can’t just go shooting people first and asking questions second because you happen to have a licence and a gun and you think you might have a claim that they were threatening you, if on examination, any reasonable person would say that you were in fact going miles over the top.
48 Self-defence and defence of another
Every one is justified in using, in the defence of himself or herself or another, such force as, in the circumstances as he or she believes them to be, it is reasonable to use.
 
In reality these circumstances very seldom come about. Given the very high rate of firearms ownership in New Zealand, and the also very high rate of person-on-person violence, the number of occasions when someone has to employ lethal force involving a firearm, in their own defence, is statistically almost nil. And in almost every case where this does happen, the Courts eventually acquit the person who has acted in self-defence. They are usually left with an eye-wateringly massive legal bill for their trouble, but that is a separate matter. The point here is that in New Zealand, the judicial outcome falls, as a general rule, on the side of reasonableness.
Three times I have been interviewed by Police in the re-issuing of my Firearms Licence, and three times I have been asked “would you use a firearm in self-defence?” and three times I have answered, honestly, “Yes, but only as a last resort”, because that is the truth; and three times I have subsequently been issued with my renewed licence.
And yes I have had threats; having spent six years as a not-always-completely-uncontroversial MP, I guess that comes with the territory. But I have never ever had cause to even consider unlocking the gun cabinet because of any of them, let alone kill anybody.
So yes; in fact, and indeed in law in New Zealand, both in current Statute and in the ancient affirmation of Rights, it is a Right to possess firearms for self-defence. That this Right has not been publicly debated let alone declared, and that in fact is it more often repudiated than not, does not alter that reality. Rather it reflects a near-universal reluctance on both sides of the current discussion to confront the issue. Everyone knows that doing so will lead to lots of unpleasantness.
The first and sadly predictable response by Government would be to remove the BOR from the New Zealand Statutes. But here’s the thing – a Right disclaimed by Statute doesn’t just go away. It is intrinsic. It may be denied but it is not invalidated. Rights are like the Sun, the Moon, and the stars; like the tides and the seasons. They exist and are above and beyond the reach of the laws of man. The Common Law is not law made by Man. It is Law that exists.
Common Law is perhaps the most crucially important element in the foundation of the Constitutional arrangements of those jurisdictions that recognise and embrace it. Common Law is not created by authorities; it is accepted that it exists. Rather, appropriately skilled and learned Judges are tasked with discovering it. Precedent is one tool used by Judges to refine our better understanding of it.
Our own New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990  http://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/whole.html#DLM224792 confirms this;
2 Rights affirmed
The rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights are affirmed.
 
Rights are affirmed rather than granted, and the existence of Rights not specified is acknowledged.
28 Other rights and freedoms not affected
An existing right or freedom shall not be held to be abrogated or restricted by reason only that the right or freedom is not included in this Bill of Rights or is included only in part.
 
Responsibility for the protection of Rights may be delegated by let, but the act of doing so does not extinguish ownership of the Right. It is by this process that we allow the Police to enforce laws – however, the exercise of this let by the Police occurs in parallel with our ownership of our Rights. It is not possible for Rights to be signed away.
For clarity, a lawful law is one crafted within the constraints of the rights of the People. Parliament is of course Sovereign, and can create whatever laws it chooses – but it must be remembered, within that, that the powers of the Sovereign are not unlimited. Sovereign Power is no longer the divine right of Kings to rule alone under God, but rather is contained within, and constrained by, such recognised principles of the Common Law as are described within the terms of the Magna Carta.
So a law passed by a Sovereign Parliament, in any of the Queen’s Realms, which breaches the terms of the Magna Carta, is not a lawful law. Law abiding people are not bound by such a law, and indeed it is their duty as citizens to oppose it.
Likewise, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States exists, in the arrangements of their jurisdiction, for the sole and express purpose of enabling the citizens of the US to do precisely that, should circumstances ever require it. Americans are not subjects of the Queen, as we know, but their Constitution is founded on exactly the same principles as those that shaped the Magna Carta.
Good Governance and good policing are always undertaken by way of let, rather than by way of imposition. When governance or policing is made by way of enforcement against the intrinsic rights or expressed wishes of the People, it is bad governance or bad policing.
This is where we come to a point of potential conflict. When Governments seek to impose on The People, laws which are not lawful under the Common Law, and further, attempt to enforce said laws through the use of force, history provides us with plenty of examples in which The People respond with force in kind.
This is where uniforms meet pitchforks.
Such confrontations generally end badly for the uniforms.
This happened in England in 1642 and ran until 1651. It happened in America in 1765 and ran until 1783. It happened in France in 1789 and again in 1848, the latter event being accompanied by similar uprisings in Denmark, Austria, Hungary, and several States in Italy and Germany, and to a lesser extent in Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Belgium, Ireland, and Spain.
It has happened with increasing frequency the world over through all of the 20^th century. It is happening again in France as we speak.
Uprisings, revolutions, wars for independence; such struggles are almost the natural state of being for human societies. Wikipedia has a quite a soberingly long list of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions
The common theme, in every last one of them, is the attempted subjection of Peoples, to laws that are unreasonable, by Authorities who do so, purely and simply because they want to and because they can. Eventually, a point almost always arrives when such unreasonableness is met, and countered, by even greater unreasonableness.
New Zealand is not different in this regard. Just because we haven’t had a revolution in our history does not mean that as a society we are immune to the forces and actions that cause them to come about – all it means is that we haven’t reached that point yet. But we are a young country, meaning that time is against us, and today, unreasonableness on the part of Government is beginning to become more and more apparent.
Let me paint a hypothetical scenario. A New Zealand firearms licence holder is visited by Police in his or her home. Firearms are confiscated without adequate compensation being paid. The firearms licence holder resists, and is arrested and locked in the Police station cells.
Shortly thereafter, a large group of the firearms licence holder’s friends and supporters, outraged by his or her treatment, arrive at the Police station in question. They physically confront the officers there, force their way into the building, break open the cell, and let the firearms licence holder out.
At what point in this hypothetical scenario is the law first broken?
I’ll tell you. The law is first broken when Parliament passes an Act allowing for the confiscation of private property without adequate compensation. That is where the unreasonableness begins, and where the inalienable rights of the private property owner are breached by an Authority acting in an unlawful manner – that is, in a manner that contravenes the Common Law.
It is the act of the Government doing something that is unreasonable and unlawful, that leads to the confrontation between the uniforms and the pitchforks. This scenario could have been avoided altogether if Government had not chosen, freely and deliberately, to be unreasonable, and to deny the rights of the private property owner here, because they wanted to, and because they could.
It is tragically sad that it takes pitchforks to make some people see reason, and to behave reasonably rather than unreasonably. But history tells us that all too often, this is the way that things happen.
Why do some people in positions of public authority choose to behave in this manner? Personally I believe it comes down to power, and to the ability to impose one’s will on others.
Most people do not have power, have no interest in having power, and find it hard to understand why others would want to have it.
But too many of the few who do have power are addicted to it, and want more of it, and almost inevitably come to behave irrationally in their pursuit of it. They would rather face the pitchforks than give it up. In my view, such attitudes are simply not sane.
Thomas Jefferson again: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
It will be a very wonderful thing if New Zealand can be the first place and the first time where it doesn’t have to be this way.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Will we repeat them?