Libertarianz Environment Deregulation Spokesman Peter Cresswell says he is unsurprised at Simon Upton's limp-wristed RMA amendments. "Property rights are still to be ignored," he says. "The only significant change is that private consultants are to be given increased power to become independently wealthy on the backs of New Zealand property owners."

"New Zealand property owners will still have to ask permission before they cut their own trees down; farmers will still be fined for turning a bog into a duck pond; property that the Resource Management Act has nationalised will still be nationalised. Only a confirmed advocate for state nationalisation of land could see the proposed amendments for anything other than the limp-wristed tinkering they are."

Even Act's Ken Shirley - one of the original architects of the RMA - has belatedly come round to this viewpoint, judging by his recent press release. "What Mr Shirley fails to recognise," says Cresswell, "is that the tinkering he now condemns began with the limp wristed report of former Act Spokesman Owen McShane."

"Failing to drive a stake through the vicious concepts at the heart of this act - sustainability, kaitiakitanga, intrinsic values - was the reason I previously condemned McShane's report for its tinkering.

"Nothing will now be changed to roll back the state's bureaucrats - following these gutless amendments, New Zealanders will still not be free on their own land."

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>