The 2023 General Election has a preliminary result. ¶ The preliminary result is mostly meaningless from a legal standpoint, but we don’t want to wait two weeks to hear some number, so we get a rough and ready count of the…
I have a basically finished 800-word article on the entrenchment issue that is now unneeded. Dean Knight’s tweets, my tweets, and the open letter of the group of legal academics published by the New Zealand Herald say almost all that…
I have prepared the following (draft) submission on the Electoral (Māori Electoral Option) Legislation Bill, which you all have until Saturday to submit on. Happy to consider comments, or to fix typos: have I used the word whakapapa incorrectly, etc?…
Tomorrow, I will be 60 years old. It’s the impossibly distant age at which people used to retire with a pension and a mortgage-free house. It's okay. I've been thinking of myself as basically there for a while now – and…
You might recall that on April 19 and 20 this year, RNZ published and broadcast a series of reports – beginning with this one – that claimed the government had not followed Ministry of Health advice to end the MIQ system in…
This Disability Pride Month I am reflecting on the complicated identity of disability for those of us with physical disabilities. ¶ I am often “reminded” by those inside and outside the disability community that having a disability is only made difficult…
There are four types of bills that Parliament considers: most bills are government bills, but there are also members bills, private bills and local bills. Members bills are relatively well know (some important ones have passed over the last few…
The New Zealand Drug Harm Index 2020 just made it into 2021: it was quietly posted on the Ministry of Health website before Christmas. And it contains some startling claims. Not the least of them, that cannabis is New Zealand's…
Just sent the following submission in on the law repealing the three strikes sentencing regime. ¶ You have until midnight tonight if you want your say. ¶ == ¶ The Justice Committee ¶ Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill ¶ Submission of Graeme Edgeler ¶ Introduction ¶ This…
The year we are about to depart has been a frustrating one for the New Zealand medicinal cannabis community. ¶ A cluster of companies established to produce and distrubute legal cannabis products ran up against a regulatory scheme that sometimes seemed…
The Public Address Word of the Year for 2021 is "Covidiot" – a word which seems to sum up a particular kind of frustration in 2021, but which, oddly enough, is a word coined in 2020 – as a Professor of Linguistics…
Welcome to to the voting stage of the Public Address Word of the Year 2021. Over the past week's korero phase, readers have been discussing and proposing words and phrases to sum up the year. I've made up a long…
It's that time again! Time to find the word or phrase that conjures, captures or sums up 2021. What'll it be? Last year's Public Address Word of the Year winner, "doomscrolling", made it all the way to The Guardian but…
I have made a submission on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). ¶ In preparing it, I looked at the Hansard for the first reading debate, and got name-dropped as someone likely to make a submission. So, of…
You may have read last week that two years after the publication of regulations for medicinal cannabis – and three years after the enabling legislation – two local products from a local manufacturer have finally met the minimum quality standards for prescription.…
On Tuesday 5 October the New Zealand Government announced that proof of COVID-19 vaccination would be a requirement to attend large events this summer. ¶ It took a few days for event owners to absorb the information and understand the implications.…
Late last week, the Government introduced two further bills around the COVID-19 response, one the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill has a very short select committee process, which has meant I haven't been able to consider it fully. There…
The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill was back from Select Committee last week, and got its second reading today. ¶ My submission on the original bill is here. As I often am, I was more reticitent in pushing back that other submitters, largely…
On 3 September, New Zealand Police shot and killed Ahamed Samsudeen, shortly after he commenced a knife attack in an Auckland supermarket. Considering him to be highly dangerous, he was under close surveillance. His death meant, that in the days…
As I've noted here before, for various reasons, the clinical evidence for cannabis as a teatment for pain and other conditions is not yet compelling. This doesn't mean it won't be, but as the International Association for the Study of…
In the decades leading up to the 18th Amendment, the case for the prohibition of alcohol was made repeatedly. The harms of alcohol were substantial, and the US experience was worse than most. The victims made the case, and campaigners…
I was alerted late last week to the fact that John Campbell had used one of my earlier pieces in questioning the Prime Minister about the Government’s hate speech proposals, in particular focussing the lack of clarity in the Government’s…
[This takes a while to get there, but I promise this is a part of my series on hate speech reform] ¶ In 2013, the National government introduced amendments to the Bail Act. These have been controversial over the last several…
I am generally sceptical of laws regulating speech, especially those that impose criminal penalties, the consequences can be perverse, and can sometimes even make things worse for those whom they seek to protect. But I try not to allow my…
In what will hopefully be the first of the number of posts on the government’s hate speech proposals, I have a look at what they actually cover. You may have guessed from the title of this piece that there is…