By: Larry Williams | Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Maori claim to the water is just absurd.

They don't own the water. Nobody owns the water. The Maori Council is just trying it on. Again.

Their ignorance is incredible. They sit there at the Waitangi Tribunal, some of them with their dark sunnies on, and actually believe in the tripe they are trotting out. It’s ridiculous.

Maori might have some water rights but they don't own the water and they don't own the snow either.

What we are witnessing here is a straight out money grab. They smell the moollah.

This spiritual thing about the water is just a con too, its just bunkum.

REAL ESTATE

Real estate national median house price rose $3000 or 3.3% in the year to June.

Auckland and Christchurch are quite hot right now.

If you take inflation into account then house prices appear to be about where they were back in 2007.

The numbers don't mean a return to the boom times and that is a good thing.

A boom bust cycle is the last thing this country needs.

ECONOMY

The NZIER report that business confidence is at rock bottom.

General confidence plunged in the last 3 months from a net 24% confident in March, to a net 1% pessimistic in the latest survey.

It’s a lacklustre recovery and the fact is it is a volatile market particularly with the on-going issues in Europe and an increased risk to corporate earnings elsewhere.

There is no magic bullet despite what opposition political parties claim.

FORESHORE AND SEABED REFERENDUM

Efforts to secure a referendum on foreshore and seabed laws look to have failed.

Opponents of the Government's Marine and Coastal Area Act had been trying to collect enough signatures to force a citizens initiated referendum for Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed to be restored.

To be successful, they needed to gather over three hundred thousand signatures; however organisers say they are over 50 thousand short of the target.

The petition closes in four days time and its unlikely enough signatures will be collected in time.

Clearly the change to the law has been under the radar but its about to come back onto the radar with this case that Maori think they own the water.

One of the reasons the CIR failed was because they are pretty much pointless.

They are not binding and history tells us that Governments ignore them. The anti-smacking referendum is a case in point. It was ignored.

It’s ironic then that the Greens and Labour, who pushed the anti smacking legislation where a CIR was overwhelmingly against the law, are now pushing the same mechanism to stop the SOE partial sales.

As I said - they're a waste of time and the SOE referendum will prove it yet again.

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