Our constitutional arrangements work on an implicit bargain - the principle of comity - that the Courts and Parliament don't mess with each other's turf. I think that bargain just got broken.
I really don't want to be "that guy" who leaps up at monotonously regular intervals to proclaim that a latest constitutional outrage marks some sort of nadir in governmental practice.
The National Government isn't going to bother even thinking about the Electoral Commission's recommendations to reform MMP. I wish that they'd told us this was the plan before we spent our time and effort engaging with the issue.
So it looks like the Electoral Commission's review of MMP, complete with recommended changes to fix those parts that haven't been working that well,
Now that we're in the business of guaranteeing winners by making public policy in their favour, the sky is the limit.
The Labour-Green Government today announced it had reached agreement with five "green-tech" start-up companies to create a "New Futures" industrial hub in Wellington. Under the terms of this agreement, the companies have committed to build plant, conduct R&D activities and produce goods for the next 35 years.
The Crown won't be able to change Sky City's gambling concessions without paying for it. But it isn't the Crown that would do so.
I have but three words to say to those who think that the announced agreement between Sky City Casino and the National Government, complete with regulatory concessions that will permit the casino to make a lot more money from punters over the next 35 years, really is "legally binding" on the Crown.
In the different stories being told about the sell-off of Mighty River Power, not even numerals mean the same thing to everyone.
If you were to go searching for a place where absolute, unarguable truth could be found, you might think you would find it in the realm of mathematical certainty. After all, we like to say that numbers - unlike certain lowly ranked National Party MPs - never lie.
Just because Aaron Gilmore said things happened in a particular way doesn't mean we shouldn't believe him when he now says those things happened in a different way. Right?
While Aaron Gilmore's actions at a Hanmer Springs hotel and the resultant fallout are, at best, mildly diverting, it is worth noting for posterity that he appears to have a somewhat shifting recollection of the events in question.
This is what he is quoted by the NZ Herald as saying about the relevant evening at his "tearful" apology press conference this morning:
Is Aaron Gilmore the Reese Witherspoon of New Zealand's Parliament?
Let's get the obvious out of the way. Alcohol makes people do dumb things. Even the most sane and sensible of us have been known to, under its influence, don a parrot puppet and flail around the dance floor at the front of an Abel [embarrassed edit: Able] Tasman's gig.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
The Dalai Lama is coming to Dunedin. In an ideal world, I'd be happy to spend a couple of hours going to hear what he has to say ... although I'm not (or, rather, no longer) religiously inclined, I think he's a guy who has "walked his talk" for long enough to deserve that. Plus by all accounts he's a pretty good and engaging speaker, so I don't think it'd be a total waste of time.
They that live by the law, die by the internet
Just a quick note, because it's late and I've just written an 1100 words post on electoral reform.
Last year, over 6000 of us took the time and effort to engage in debating the future of our MMP system. Would it be too much trouble for the Government to let us know whether there was any point to us doing so?
Following the majority decision to keep MMP at the 2011 referendum, the Electoral Commission last year reviewed the MMP voting system in a process that involved a couple of rounds of public consultation.
