Friday 19 April 2013

New Zealand shows Wales the sort of Parliament we should have.

Thanks to Rusell Elliot for pointing me towards the news that New Zealand becomes the first country in the Asia Pacific to legalise same sex marriage. The public gallery in parliament breaks into song following the vote, singing the traditional Maori love song Pokarekare Ana. New Zealand is now the 13th country to legalise gay marriage, after Uruguay passed its law earlier in 








There was also a hilarious speech from MP Maurice Willamson






Even for someone  who is not Gay  finds this incredibly moving and I suddenly realised that what I was watching was the equivalent in many ways of the end of segregation in the USA and Apartheid in South Africa,

It also made me wonder why Wales doesn't have a parliament of its own like New Zealand  instead of a toothlless Assembly.

Its not only the New Zealand All Blacks Wales should seek to emulate but its politicians

1 comment:

maen_tramgwydd said...

Whilst I fully agree that Wales should be an independent state with its own fully functioning legislature, NZ might not be the best example to emulate.

If I'm not mistaken NZ's parliament, like that at Westminster, is sovereign, and is practically unlimited constitutionally. That sovereignty is derived from the UK parliament.

I would prefer to see a legislature subject to a written constitution which vests sovereignty in the people of Wales, limiting the powers of the legislature in specific ways.

The UK's unwritten constitution and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament has, in my opinion, been responsible for the political and economic mess in which the country finds itself in 2013. There is no way to overturn it as the politicians in Westminster hold the key to reform. They are turkeys who will never for Christmas, the end of their permanent right to power and endless privileges.

Fortunately Scotland and Wales do have an escape tunnel, unlike England, whose citizens will be landed with it for eternity. However, our escape tunnel is guarded by a vicious UK state which controls the media, as the Yes campaign is finding to its frustration during the referendum campaign. The UK will use every dirty trick in the book to hold on to its corrupt power base.