Hundreds seek court dismissal of New Zealand cannabis referendum results

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Hundreds seek court dismissal of New Zealand cannabis referendum results

Nadia Murray-Ragg | Victoria U. Wellington Faculty of Law, NZ

December 8, 2020 06:41:18 pm

A group of more than 350 electors filed suit against the Electoral Commission in the High Court of New Zealand Sunday seeking to have the results of the country’s recent cannabis referendum dismissed.

In October, 50.7 percent of New Zealand voters responded “No” to the cannabis referendum question “Do you support the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill?”—a margin of 2.3 percent on the “Yes” vote. According to a Checkpoint radio broadcast, the group has asked the High Court to void the “No” majority result. Specifically, it has challenged the cannabis referendum result under Subpart 4 of the Referendums Framework Act 2019 (the Act). Under the Act, groups of 200 or more electors who are “dissatisfied with the result of the referendum” are empowered to petition the High Court to inquire into the conduct of the referendum or those associated with it.

Blair Anderson, one of the petitioners who advocates drug reform, told Checkpoint that misinformation surrounding the cannabis referendum had not been corrected. Namely, the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill lacked provisions to correct misinformation in the mainstream media and the “expert committee … assembled … to correct any misinformation” failed to do so. Anderson pointed to the example that “we heard that the Medical Association didn’t approve of the bill, and then at the end of the period, just after the bulk of people had voted, had come out and said quite the converse.”

If the petitioners are successful in getting the High Court to declare the cannabis referendum as void, section 32 of the Act requires a new referendum on the issue to take place on a date appointed by the Governor-General within six months of the declaration.

“If the judge thinks this was inherently wrong and it influenced the outcome, he’s probably on a bound to say the referendum is null and void,” Anderson commented, emphasizing that “[i]t’s not the result of the referendum we’re disputing. We’re disputing the conduct of that referendum”.

Not all commentators are as optimistic. Professor Andrew Geddis of the University of Otago wrote in an article for The Spinoff that “this legal challenge to the referendum stands no chance of success in court” and highlighted vagueness in the petitioners’ allegations.

Anderson believes that making cannabis reform an issue for Members of Parliament to debate and hear evidence upon at a Select Committee is “the right thing to do” rather than having another referendum.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.