Green Party all over the show on Level 2 Pandemic Powers – how about trying this instead

The Greens are all over the show bro.

Their Youth Wing be scared for Māori…

Green Party’s youth wing anxious for Māori over police powers in COVID-19 law

The Young Greens are anxious for Māori over concerns about police having powers to enter private proprieties without a warrant in the Government’s new COVID-19 legislation. 

Kate Aschoff, a spokesperson for the Green Party’s youth wing, said the COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill – which sets out the legal framework for alert level 2 – gives “unjust powers” to police which could be “used disproportionately” against Māori.

“Police powers to enter homes and private dwellings without a warrant demonstrate an extension of power that is likely to be abused and create more damages between the Government, police and Māori.”

…while Marama doesn’t see how warrantless searches will make life much harder for minorities…

She said while minority groups had valid reasons to be concerned, the Bill couldn’t make existing inequalities any worse

…charming, and all the while no one seems to know what the bloody hell this new piece of legislation is even for.

I have blamed a lack of fresh eyes and an over worked burnt out staff and MPs for this entire fiasco.

It’s made worse because this was supposed to clear up the whole legality issue when the Government were forced to implement ill-fitting legislation into the real time momentum of a pandemic.

The Government felt that by singling out Marae as exempt from health enforcement officials they were adding protections, but the Māori electorate read that as a threat not a protection.

My guess is that the vast majority of people getting angry haven’t read the legislation and would not have seen there were Police and health enforcement officials who had access to places to enforce quarantine, the legislation was ensuring health enforcement officials couldn’t just barge into a Marae or private homes, and that clause has now been removed.

The real issue here is not protections to prevent health enforcement officials from entering Marae or homes, it’s the warrantless searches of homes and Marae by the Police that is the problem.

We just learned yesterday that the bloody police were using mass surveillance face recognition with zero permission!

As someone who has had my civil rights breached by the Police and had to fight them through Court, I know how weak the existing checks and balances to police power are.

Here’s what the Greens should be saying.

“We know we have to allow extraordinary powers to exist to fight this pandemic,but we must always be conscious of abuse of power by the state. The latest Covid19 legislation allows for Police to enter homes and Marae without a warrant to enforce quarantine and we will review that power every 3 months. We call on the NZ Police to use this new power legitimately and if anyone in NZ feels Police are abusing warrantless search powers by inventing a quarantine concern where there is none, I urge you to contact me, Marama Davidson personally on my cell phone ……… We will not accept Police abusing this power beyond protecting NZers from this pandemic.

The NZ Greens will work hard to save Kiwi lives, rebuild Kiwi green jobs and protect Kiwi rights.”

You know, cause there’s an election coming and the Party doesn’t seem to have any clear message on which to win votes in September and as someone who has voted Green all my life, it would be sad to see you disappear under 5%.

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