Loonacy and the law student.
The Regulatory Standards Bill gives rise to some pretty loose and loony speculation.
The subject which I’m about to offer commentary on is an example of what may be the scarily low quality of thinking in some of our law students in NZ. Besides the particular brand of ridiculousness I address here, this is also the type of law student whom I’d bet my Maserati on believes that men who say they’re women are really women, and puberty blockers save children’s lives. We can only hope that if their piece of writing - which you can subject yourself to at the end, if you so desire - is the same as the quality of their argument in a court of law, they’ll get laughed out of it. However, these days, I wouldn’t be confident about betting my Maserati on that.
The law student who propelled me to pen this blogpiece is Helen Gilby. By her own admission, she’s a “wildly inconsistent law student”. She only came to my attention because she was a – paid! - guest writer on a Substack called ‘Emily Writes’, which The Substack Post picked up and featured in one of their weekly roundups, and delivered to my inbox. Before that, I had no knowledge of Gilby, so I blame them for exposing me to her 😊 According to her bio, she also writes for The Spinoff, a news platform which leans towards the loony Left. If the little I’ve seen of her writing is any indication, that’s no recommendation for either of them.
Emily Writes is as woke AF, and subscribers, presumably of the same woke-indoctrinated demographic as herself, flock to her - hence Helen Gilby’s presence there. Of course, I didn’t have to read Gilby’s garbage on Emily Writes, but I did. Poor decisions can be made by best of us. Tbh, I thought Emily was one of those who’d blocked me, but I may have mistaken her for someone else.
Featuring periodically in Emily’s blogpieces is ACT Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister, David Seymour, although I get the feeling it’s not with much love attached. However, I have only actually read the latest piece spotted in The Substack Post’s roundup. In that one, Helen Gilby runs amok about his ‘Regulatory Standards Bill’, which in its introductory statement says the aim is “to reduce the amount of unnecessary and poor-quality regulation”.
In line with being a wildly inconsistent law student, Gilby appears to be wildly speculative, too. In her piece¹, she claims that the bill will lead to unreasonable control and/or privatisation of the ports, the highways, transport hubs, food, processing plants, supply chains, telecommunications, energy, infrastructure, water, and rivers, all by unnamed forces. It’s “a legal shift designed to erode protections, override Te Tiriti [the Treaty of Waitangi], and open the door to privatising public goods. It strips power from Māori and frames resistance as obstruction”.
How she arrived at all that is quite the masterpiece of convoluted thinking! None of which is backed up by actual references to any clauses in the bill. My initial impression after reading her piece was that she’s wasting her time as a law student, and that a career in writing fantasy may be more lucrative for her.
Framing Māori as victims is pretty much a standard go-to argument, and currently off limits to question if one doesn’t want to be called a racist, or the ‘wrong’ sort of Māori for doing so. The reality is that iwi (Māori tribe/s) already have commercial interests in many, if not all, all the things Gilby names as being vulnerable to the Regulatory Standards Bill. I simply don’t see them rolling over and letting them be privatised/controlled by other commercial interests, even with greater scrutiny of proposed future legislation.
As far as control and/or privatisation of water goes, the biggest iwi in the South Island, Ngai Tahu, have been in a legal tussle with the Crown to ‘co-manage’ the fresh water in its extensive tribal lands, which cover a large portion of the South Island. The outcome isn’t decided yet, but I wonder if Gilby would be as afraid of the possibility of that water eventually getting controlled/privatised by Ngai Tahu, as she is of her vague unnamed forces controlling it? After all, there’s a greater chance of it happening subsequent to this legal battle, than from the Regulatory Standards Bill.
In order to be sure I wasn’t wrong in my assessment of Gilby’s – paid! – piece being fruitcake, I asked a legal acquaintance’s opinion. No, I wasn’t wrong. Although they consider that the bill needs some refining, as far as Gilby’s piece went the word “petulant” was present in their appraisal. I can only hope that most law students aren’t of Gilby’s ilk, but I fear wokeism may be too rampant at universities to feel very certain about that. I would be more than happy to be wrong, though.
There’s much ado over the Regulatory Standards Bill. I’m no expert, but a lot of it seems to be of little more substance than because it’s David Seymour’s bill. Or, maybe there’s a worry it will cause some proposed regulations to be scrutinised too closely? For those interested, here is a FAQ sheet below which may explain the main points more succinctly than wading through the proposed bill itself. Helen Gilby’s piece on Emily Writes’ Substack is underneath that. You might need a stiff drink afterwards. Whether you agree with the bill, or not, in the words of David Seymour, RSDS - Regulatory Standards Derangement Syndrome - is on full display there, by a future lawyer!
¹Emily Writes blogpiece -
LoL 'when Maori say 'no' it's a threat to profit'. Some iwi have MILLIONs salted away while their people continue to languish in the crime stats, homelessness, baby-killing, so much winning!
If only the 'elite' scummy brownclowns would say 'NO' to killing babies, 'NO' to gang membership, 'NO' to malfeasance and grift with public money.
Really the longer all this crap goes on for, the more age sensitive I get, as in "are you old enough to have been trained in facts or in fantastic visions of a new world order that will be created through destroying the world as it is now?".
I do not want to be treated by any doctor who prioritises gender identity over sex or one who doesn't even believe in sex as a factor that impacts on health and disease. I am not interested in paying big money to a lawyer who prides herself on being "inconsistent", unless perhaps she is also happy with being paid inconsistently.
I also don't believe that everything is a zero-sum game, that's it's every man for himself (or every woman for herself; there is no such thing as a nonbinary mammal), or any of the other mantras so beloved by the current crop of SJW.