The media is reporting again on the Labour government's inability to implement a mining ban promised in 2017. The ban would infringe on the property rights of Ngāi Tahu, which was awarded ownership of all pounamu (greenstone) in its 1997 Treaty settlement.
Of course, the government of "kindness" has shown it has no qualms trampling on people's rights - by my count at least fifteen of the twenty rights provided for in our 1990 Bill of Rights Act, indicating the Bill of Rights is about as effective at protecting us from Government abuses as a face mask worn under the chin is at preventing the spread of a virus.
This particular situation is only different because it would trigger a new Treaty claim, which highlights the fact that we don't need to accept government wielding absolute power. Other nations have constitutions and laws which constrain the power of their governments. New Zealand has no constitution, and our government is only really constrained to a limited extent by the Treaty. The current government has repeatedly shown it is willing to break its own laws, and hurriedly change them when it is found out.
It doesn't have to be this way - we can entrench the Bill of Rights to prevent government from overriding it willy-nilly. This was even part of Geoffrey Palmer's original proposal for the Bill of Rights - but the politicians of the time rejected it.
Our political elite is out-of-control on every front and it is time to reign them in by providing New Zealanders the protections we expect in a first world nation. New Conservative co-leader Ted Johnston has a petition to force a referendum on making the Bill of Rights supreme law, but unfortunately even if the petition and the subsequent referendum are successful, Parliament is likely to simply ignore the results, as it has done with every past citizen's initiated referendum. If we want change, the only way we can get it is to vote in a new party which is willing to make it.