Colin James's column for the Otago Daily Times for 3 February 2009
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Tuesday, 10 February 2009
'Considering' the constitution with the Maori party
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2 comments:
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.
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.
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