Better Democracy NZ is a non-partisan, non-profit organisation.

Our mission is to foster the improvement of New Zealand's democratic system and encourage the use of direct democracy through the

Veto, Citizens' Initiated and Recall referendum.

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Tuesday, 10 February 2009

'Considering' the constitution with the Maori party


Colin James's column for the Otago Daily Times for 3 February 2009

Click title for full story.

2 comments:

Dominic Baron said...

Colin James hits the "constitutional" nail on the head when he observes:

"Entrenching a provision of the Electoral Act is by a simple parliamentary majority. Another simple parliamentary majority can remove the entrenchment."

Precisely. And why is that? Because we do *not* have a constitution. When we finally get round to granting ourselves our first real, democratic constitution, one of its most basic provisions will be that *no* assembly of whatever kind will *ever* be able to overturn it or any of its clauses without formal permission from the people in binding referendums.

Steve Baron said...

Dominic makes a very important and valid point here. We think we live in a democracy but we are far from it. Heaven forbid the day we elect a party with a leader that turns out to be demented. It will be too late then. The time to get our cupboard in order is yesterday.