Author: Roger Partridge
OPINION: Roger Partridge. Critics of judicial overreach face an odd challenge. The most sophisticated response is not to defend the decisions – it is to deny that constitutional limits exist at all. If courts made the rules, the argument runs, courts can remake them. Last month’s column, An Inheritance Worth Defending, drew that response, among others. Four arguments recur. On the surface they are distinct – one concerns the foundations of parliamentary sovereignty, one the proper limits of common law development, one a comparison with Australian constitutional law, and one concerns the lessons to be drawn from two landmark cases…
OPINION: ROGER PARTRIDGE When a story recently emerged about the government getting advice on carless days under the Petroleum Demand Restraint Act, older New Zealanders will have felt a warm flush of nostalgia. The 1979 restrictions brought coloured windscreen stickers announcing the weekday car owners had promised not to drive. Thursday proved the most popular choice. A thriving black market followed. Forty-three percent of vehicles secured exemptions. The first person prosecuted under the original scheme was caught driving at 3.45 am –after falling asleep in his car following a party. His designated non-driving period had begun at 2 am. Petrol consumption fell by a paltry three per cent. The policy was abandoned. But the story got me thinking. Which of the 1970s’ other good ideas might…
The pre-Christmas stoush between Finance Minister Nicola Willis and her 1990s predecessor Ruth Richardson has faded. The planned debate was cancelled. But beneath the theatre lies a puzzle neither of them addressed. The Government has cut contractors, culled consultants, deferred capital projects. Yet one number – the one most directly within ministerial control – has barely shifted. In June 2017, four months before Labour took office, the core public service employed just over 47,000 full-time equivalent staff. Six years later, on the eve of the 2023 election, that number had swelled beyond 63,000. Then came something curious. In the months…