Posts by Eddie Clark
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Danyl - I take your point about the New Left as well. In its Blairite and 3rd term NZ Labour incarnations, it is mostly about empty symbolism and pandering, papering over a rather nasty authoritarian impulse.
I also understand that constant bleating about rights and discrimination and lesbian maori whales is about as electorally popular with centrist voters as smallpox. I'm not saying that a retreat to populism doesn't make electoral sense, just that its a) unprincipled, and b) one that would certainly not bring me back to Labour. Its easier to play electoral games with rights when they're not ones that protect you personally.
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It would seem to me that one of the big "pointy-headed urban liberalism" policies of the last labour government was the Civil Union Act. I rather like the fact that the state will recognise my relationship. Is this genuinely the sort of stuff we want to criticise because the mushy socially conservative, economically populist middle don't like it?
Danyl, and I think the relevant Standardistas pushing this line, are straight white males. Its easier to dismiss things as 'social engineering', 'nanny state' and (to quote Danyl) "the tendency of many on the left to reduce almost every debate to a grievance issue that puts them offside with 99% of the population," when you're not a member of the small minority with a genuine grievance.
Dismiss that as electorally stupid if you want, but a lot of the unpopular social engineering was the right thing to do.
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Russell, I think the scary junk shop to which you are referring is more formally known as The David White Gallery which, given the hilariously awful pictures therein, is somehwat funny in and of itself. In the shop's back room, which consists of bad art and scary piles of books, I once found a stack of four copies of Even More: Joy of Sex, apparently the 3rd volume of the series. I didn't know that it was a trilogy...
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Why stop at Belize? Why not found a Randian utopia in the mid-atlantic and register your company there? Then no lefties or poor people could question you again. Nothing could go wrong with that.
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"human rights implement"
instrument, even. instrument. I can haz edit function?
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If, as you say, the current Bill of Rights makes it unlawful for a university to require its members to join a student union, why has there been no challenge in the courts?
In brief, because section 4 of the Bill of Rights states that the rights enumerated in the Act do not trump other legislation. In other words, we don't have a supreme Bill of Rights. And compulsory student association membership is set out in the Education Act. Thus, the Bill of Rights doesn't help you. That doesn't mean there isn't a breach of the right, it just means that in 1990 Geoff Palmer couldn't get enough support to pass a proper human rights implement.
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"Terming something a "right" is simply to say that it is something we think should strongly be protected. Rights are not trumps."
I actually agree with that statement, but its very much a minority view. The most prominent rights theorists - Dworkin, Rawls etc absolutely see rights as trumps.
I do, however, disagree with your "legitimacy through rights protection" suggestion for why membership of a students association invokes a conflict of rights. I don't think there is any conflict here, in a legal sense. Now, there is a whole nother kettle of fish that we could go on about here about which rights are offered legal protection and which are not (civil and political rights generally are, particularly in an NZ context, and social & economic rights, which might be protected by a students association, are not). But the question it seems to me that Graeme is asking is "Does CSM raise a prima facie issue of a breach of legal rights in New Zealand," and the answer to that question must be "yes."
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In every university except for Auckland and Otago, they chose to go compulsory. If they want VSM they can vote for it. It's in their hands. This is about taking that choice out of the hands of students.
How, George? As Graeme said, the rights guaranteed under the NZBORA are individual rights. Putting those rights to a vote in the case of freedom of association is just as inappropriate as putting the right, say, to freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex, disability, sexual orientation, race etc, to a vote. The point of guaranteed rights is to protect the (often unpopular) minority against the majority who finds it convenient to trample on their rights.
As I said, I think there is a good case to make that CSM is a justified limitation on the right to freedom of association, but that calculation is completely independent of the fact that students voted on it. Making rights dependant upon the will of the majority is completely repugnant.
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Graeme, snap.
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Gah. Stephen. A few points:
1) There's this thing called principle. It means that you don't change your general position on something just because its inconvenient at the time. If freedom of association is good for members or religious groups, protest groups, unions, etc, its also good for annoying pubescent right wingers who don't want to be part of students associations.
2) The European Court of Human Rights is probably the most respected human rights body in the world. It doesn't help your credibility to just dismiss it out of hand.
3) The point at which coherent debate can happen is whether or not CSM is a justified limitation on the right to freedom of association. It is legally untenable to argue that it doesn't involve a breach of the right at all.