Dear Editor
Blink and you’d miss it … Richard Prebble is still confined to the ‘Naughty Room’ at the NZ Herald.
They can’t let the ‘sponsor’ (your Marxist Government) of the ‘Fifty-five Million Club’ be offended by the Herald giving one of its best columnists (with a topic that needs revealing to the public) a deserving position in the newspaper.
So Prebs is placed at the bottom of Page A20 in today’s (October 13) Business section – and given a small heading size. Very strange …
That’s despite his topic, “Why a four-year parliamentary term might turn out to be a bad idea”, being worthy of a much better placement.
Prebble writes:
While we were focused on Covid, Labour announced an electoral review. One proposal is extending the parliamentary term to four years. It is a bad idea. […]
There is no constitution or second chamber to check the abuse of power.[…]
Today in Parliament there is the Covid-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2), that requires any laboratory to “deliver Covid-19 testing consumables that the Minister considers necessary”.
Rako Science has the rights to a rapid reliable Covid saliva test. For a year the Government has ignored expert advice to use rapid testing. The bill enables the Government to override Rako’s contracts and seize the company’s testing kits. There is no compensation for this de facto nationalisation. Any payment for “testing consumables” will be what the Government decides is “the market rate”.
Only the knowledge that MPs must stand for re-election prevents more abuses of power.
The New Zealand Parliament can even vote to delay an election. Labour has just given itself the power to delay the next local body election even though it is postal.
Voter anger over the Three Waters, the great big robbery of ratepayer assets, might be the real reason for any delay. This electoral review was not in Labour’s manifesto. The party’s ability to make any electoral change has proved too tempting. ….’
nzherald.co.nz
A good editor instinctively realises that a good columnist or a controversial topic means ‘bums on seats’ (reading the paper) or more subscribers.
But apparently not at the NZ Herald.
Cultural Norm
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