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...

  Terrific tangle of 'Toitū Te Tiriti'  shi rts and totes at the shop, along with stickers and badges.

So you’ve done your submission on the Treaty Principles Bill (TPB) and you’re feeling a little bit proud because you’ve done your bit? Sorry, but there’s bad news. It turns out the Treaty Principles Bill was just a bone that the government threw at us to keep us busy. The bill is probably never going to become law anyway. The bill that will become law (because all coalition parties support it) is the Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) – and it is probably even more fundamental than the Treaty Principles one. While the TPB attempts to redefine what the Te Tiriti means, the RSB essentially says that Te Tiriti doesn’t matter anyway. The RSB is not at the committee stage (like the TPB), it is in the consultation phase, which means there is no actual wording of it yet. But there is a draft paper, and feedback on that paper closes on 13 January. After it is drafted it will then go through the Select Committee process (unless it is passed under urgency, which this government has done over 100 t...

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...

  The Freedom Shop will be closed on 19 November- we’ll be joining the Hīkoi - 9am at Waitangi Park. #Hikoi In the shop we have Toitū Te Tiriti tote bags, plus loads of Toitū Te Tiriti badges still in stock, along with ‘Māori Never Ceded Sovereignty’ badges - badges made in August after Luxton showed how little he knew of the story of this land #toitūtetiriti #MāoriNeverCededSovereignty