New Zealand Conservative

If you can Vote When You're Senile ... That was the title of a recent Green Blog post about the need to grant the vote to 16 year olds. I have explored the general arguments made about  lowering the vote in a previous post - " Emancipating Youth ". As I said then, this can be seen as a push by parties of the left to perform gerrymandering by demographics rather than geography.  I also said this issue would continue to be pushed by the left every few years until it finally takes hold.  Thus, time to fisk this recent Green Vote post to say much the same things in a different way. If I wanted to suggest that maybe a lack of maturity was one of the reasons for denying the vote to 16 year olds, then I'd have to look no further than the title of the post: "If you can vote when you're senile...". It also gives me permission to be equally as flippant in my response post. Yes, totally uncalled for, but it is meant in the spirit of "talking at the ...

Men and women are different. There, I've said it. It's been mentioned a couple of times in other posts on this blog as well. But different doesn't mean 'not equal in value'. Men and women are complementary; each has talents or skills (or a lack of them) that are complemented by those of their partner. I also find it interesting that males are often referred to as 'chauvinist' or 'misogynist' but there doesn't seem to be a male version of the word "feminist" - a word describing male rights or a similar movement. Perhaps there hasn't needed to be one in the past; I do agree that women haven't always had the same legal rights as men, and that needed to be addressed and I think largely has been (apart from pay equity, which I'm not really sure about). In some respects, it isn't that men feel they are better than women - we don't think about it at all actually - it's that feminists seem to have an inferiority compl...

A Maori leader caught poaching trout from Lake Taupo says local iwi should be given customary rights to take fish. This has to be my favourite story of the week. Aside from the fact that he was using a net (bad form) to take an excessive amount of trout during spawning season and therefore threatening the restocking process necessary to stop trout going the way of the Moa last time Maori exercised their customary rights, the court of appeal has rightfully pointed out that it can hardly be considered a customary right given the trout was introduced by the British and European settlers. The broader issue here is of course that some Maori want to have a separate system and separate "rights" to the rest of New Zealanders. It's divisive and ultimately, unsustainable. If they get their way, then in 100 years our Pakeha ancestors will have legitimate grievances requiring the gifting of land and the allocation of our own "customary rights" that we were denied. O...

Is this really about the youth vote, or about the left’s power base? I'm vaguely aware some Labour Party "thinker" recently suggesting children get the vote, exercised via their parents. Ripples across the blogosphere - I haven't seen the source. [ Found it - Labour MP Phil Twyford] This idea could merely be a springboard for the frequently raised idea in lefty circles of lowering the voting age to say, 16. Start off with a suggestion that will not fly in order to finally compromise on the desired result. The left would do quite well out of this change. It's gerrymandering using demographics rather than geography. This is not isolated to New Zealand – lowering the voting age is has long been an idea pushed by the left worldwide, and has met with some success in a few countries. Then those countries are used as a justification for us to follow suit. No need to think, just follow. We’ve been there before It's a repeat of the 1970's and eno...

In a stunning blow for human rights, a gay man has been forced to become straight. "This is an abuse of my human rights" said Nigel Ipswitch as the court ordered he engage in marital sex with the women he was forced to marry, Susan Gladbottom. It all started when Susan met Nigel at a party, and a strong friendship developed. "We had so many shared interests, and Nigel was very attentive to my thoughts and feelings. One thing led to another, and love developed. I asked him if feelings were shared, and he said yes, absolutely. He then explained that we could never be anything more than friends, because he was gay." "Well, I wasn't prepared to take no for an answer, so I checked gay lobby groups and asked if people were allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex, and they said absolutely not. It was clear that the ONLY reason Nigel could come up with for not marrying me was that I wasn't male." "They built an entire legal case around disc...

If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear. If you have your DNA taken and stored by the Police, it's only so they can rule you out as a suspect on future issues. If you spend a few days in jail, it's for your safety and the safety of the public. So what's the problem? Maybe nothing. Or maybe Nanny has a Big Brother. On one hand, the Police have to check out suspicious acts, and we never hear exactly why Clarke became a person of interest. Surely though, grabbing him and checking his phone for photos would have been enough? At least they didn't just shoot him like the last terror suspect. Small mercies and all that. The police hypersensitivity is debatable, but Stephen Clarke raises a fair point. Not charged, so they should drop his DNA record. I see the idea of managing everyone's DNA in New Zealand pop up fairly often, around the time Dr Kiro, nearly ex-Children's Commissioner, bangs on about getting a national database tracking every child. Dre...

Yes, it seems there have been enough signatures collected to force a referendum on the smacking law. This is a good thing and yet I'm not completely happy. In the first place, it seems they're not going to hold the referendum in tandem with this year's General Election and instead hold a postal ballot next year; the reason? That recommendation [by Justice Minister Annette King] refers to the experience of 1999, when two referendums were held with the general election, causing long delays in vote-counting, confusion among voters, and congestion at polling booths. Ms King last night dismissed calls to hold the referendum earlier. I voted in 1999 and answered the referendum questions and I can't remember any confusion or backlog of people. This is simply another two-pronged tactic by the Government to delay or water down the referendum. One: they don't want the question put to voters this year as it will lose Labour votes - a good 70% of the country di...

Australia could have its first Anglican woman bishop as early as next year following a decision by the Anglican church's highest court. So it looks like a recent Equal Rights Amendment may give Eve another bite at the apple. "It means women are at last recognised as fully human, fully equal in the constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia," Dr Muriel Porter said. But even as Dr Porter defines fully human as allowed to be a Priest, it can't be too long before a Priest will be jailed for denying an Orangutan the right to be an altar boy . Related Link: Anglican church decides Priesthood is a womens job