The Freedom Shop Aotearoa

 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...

Get your submissions against David Seymour's darned Treaty Principles Bill in! The deadline is 7 Jan 11:59pm - that's this coming Tuesday! Post your submissions here . For reference, below is the Freedom Shop's own submission: THE Freedom Shop Collective is a small, Poneke-based collective, now approaching its 30th year of existence, so has outlived seven New Zealand governments. Our primary project has been the successful operation of a non-profit political bookshop which encourages the disestablishment of capitalism and the state. Often dubbed ‘OG activists’ by youngsters, the collective is well-known and respected amongst Poneke’s alternative political and countercultural milieus. We oppose the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, considering the introduction of this bill to be solely based on the need of the author to fulfil an adolescent ideological obsession, and recommend the entire thing be dumped ASAP While we see this bill as dead in the water, it has the un...

If one wanted to see the perfect illustration of racism in action, this week’s news coverage provided it. Two maritime disasters happened this week. On Sunday, a submersible boat with 5 people on board lost contact with its mother ship in the Atlantic. A search is under way. Then on Wednesday, a boat with 59 people sank in the same ocean. 35 people drowned.