New Zealand Government Uses Earthquake to Enact Sweeping New Powers

New Zealand’s parliament voted unanimously last month to pass the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act (CERRA), which gives government ministers the power to override almost any law in the country’s statute books. The conservative National Party government pushed through the legislation in a single evening, with the full support of the Maori Party, the opposition Labour Party and the Green Party.

Both the government and opposition asserted that the sweeping powers were needed to provide assistance to the city of Christchurch and the surrounding Canterbury region, which was hit by a destructive 7.1 magnitude earthquake on September 4. But the Act does not provide any additional funding or assistance for the disaster victims, many of whom are living in badly damaged houses and have received little or no government assistance.

Rather, this anti-democratic legislation concentrates wide powers in the hands of ministers and their unelected advisers. It sidelines parliament and effectively rules out public debate on measures that potentially have far reaching consequences. The provisions of the CERRA will remain in place until April 2012. For the next 18 months, as one columnist for the National Business Review put it, “a few ministers, so long as they can link it to the Canterbury earthquake, can make laws about almost everything by signing a bit of paper”.'

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