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Stop the Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB)

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 Submissions on the RSB are open until 1pm 23 June.  The Regulatory Standards Bill has to be rejected.  The RSB recommends that Parliament removes any requirement for  all future and existing laws (apart from Treaty settlement Bills) to comply with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Bill Of Rights Act. The Treaty Principles was about changing the principles of Te Tiriti, the Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) is about removing Te Tiriti.  The obligations listed in the RSB are nearly all related to private property rights: human rights and Te Tiriti obligations are not considered at all. And that is what this Bill is about - it is about the ACT party's endless focus on private property rights and the prioritisation of corporate profit. What is ironic is that if this had been law in the 1800s, the entire country would still be totally Māori as a clause in the Bill states: legislation should not take or  impair  property without the owner’s consent unless cer...
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Film Screening: BORN IN FLAMES (Lizzie Borden, 1983)

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 A community screening of anarcha-feminist filmmaker Lizzie Borden's dystopian masterpiece, which explores themes of race, queerness, intersectional feminism, police brutality and surveillance, and the role of independent radio in political revolution. Fierce, intelligent guerrilla filmmaking from the depths of the Reagan era, which invites conversations about radical change, and has relevance to tino rangatiratanga and decolinisation movements in our own hapori whānui. We would love to see you there! WHEN: 7pm Wednesday 28th May. WHERE: 13 Garrett Street, Te Aro, Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
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Happy 30th Birthday to The Freedom Shop!

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 On the 1st of May 2025, the Freedom Shop in Wellington turned 30! We began in upper Cuba Street in the NORML shop and since then have been in various places around the city: the Cake Shop, Oblong, sharing space at Rebel Press, and then for several years at the Opportunity for Animals - now we're in the front of Book Haven (next door to Opportunity for Animals). Come and check us out.   
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Lots of Books in the Shop

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There are a lot of new books in the shop at the moment, just arrived from PM Press and AK Press. There are old favourites including some Frantz Fanon, Silvia Federici along with ever popular The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, Pangayaw and Decolonising Resistance: Anarchism in the Philippines as well as Anarcha-Feminists in the Philippines, Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution and a couple of new books for us, Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual and Physical Resistance – a history of UK anti-fascist organising. There's also, as always, Tina Ngata's Kia Mau: Resisting Colonial Fictions on the shelf, plus Murdoch Stephens new book Visas Now! Aotearoa's Response to Global Refugee Emergencies. A lot of reading as we head into the colder weather.  
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Bigger than your lunch box

Like many, I get a daily chuckle out of the news story that keeps on giving – the school lunches disaster. This was supposed to be an easy win for the free-market coalition: an opportunity to showcase how much better National and Act are at financial management, how wasteful Labour was and generally how everyone wins when you let competition and the free market rule. Except they picked the wrong target group. School kids. Had this been about meals delivered to rest homes, we would have never heard about the problems. The residents would have complained to the staff, some staff may have complained to management and management may have written a strongly worded letter to the food company. But the rest of us would never know and the government could have claimed the money savings as a success. But kids are different, in particular teenagers, who are very good at two things: complaining about how tough they have it and posting things on social media, especially pictures of food. Amplified ...
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