JOHN McLEAN: Parliament passing legislation is ... undemocratic!?

Whacky reactions to proposed legislation extinguishing crazy climate Court cases

On Tuesday 12 May, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced a legislative reform to stop New Zealand Courts forcing “greenhouse gas”-producing businesses to compensate New Zealanders for damage from bad weather. The yet-to-be-drafted legislation will amend New Zealand’s Climate Change Response Act 2002.

The legislation will have the particular effect of extinguishing current Court action by a race hustler with a boring name. I’ve covered Mike Smith’s judicial machinations in a previous Substack.

Reactions to Goldsmith’s announcement have been bizarre and either misguided or disingenuous.

Smith himself has claimed, “It’s an affront to democracy”. Acknowledging that Mike doesn’t know much about much, his claim (assuming its sincere) evidences that he qualifies as a moron under the good old-fashioned definition (IQ 51-70). Because Parliament passing laws IS democracy.

Greenpeace’s Russel Norman labelled the change a “shocking abuse of power” and an “outrageous overreach”…as if democratically elected members of Parliament passing laws is a constitutional outrage. Nice one Norman.

One of Smith’s co-claimants in the litigation is Lawyers for Climate Action NZ Inc. LCA president, King’s Counsel Jenny Cooper, claimed that snuffing out Smith’s try-on will have a terrible effect. Super Dooper Cooper’s deep desire is for Citizen Smith to activate suggestible, activist Courts to concoct climate change “common law” and force law abiding businesses to pay for weather damage. Recognising that Goldsmith’s legislative intervention will crush her desire, Cooper KC pontificated:

“It’s really hard to understand why we would want to legislate now to say we could never bring claims against emitters for the harms and losses we’ve suffered.

“If they are not responsible for paying then who does? Well, everybody, basically.”

Mad-eyed Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has frothed that the current Government is using its “dying breaths” to remove New Zealanders’ “right” to squeeze money out of New Zealand businesses for the effects of bad weather.

But with John Minto setting up his antisemitic Palestine Free from the River to the Sea Party and Qiulae Wong’s Opportunity Party taking support from both Labour and the Greens, it could be Chlöe’s no-longer-environmental Green Party that’s drawing its dying breaths.

Another of Smith’s co-claimants is the Environmental Law Initiative. ELI senior legal adviser Eliza Prestidge-Oldfield has screeched, “It’s a bit rich for the government to say climate is best dealt with as a national policy issue when they’re busy scrapping climate action.” In September 2025, Prestidge-Oldfield joined the exodus of prestigious Green Party staffers in order to join ELI, citing a desire to focus on her “health, wellbeing and whānau”. And fair enough. Languishing in the Greens’ Madhouse can’t be any fun at all.

Victoria University law “academics” Graeme Austin and Bjorn-Oliver Magsig have claimed that Goldsmith’s mooted legislation will be undesirably “retrospective”. Which is bollocks. The legislation will expunge Smith’s current legal shenanigans in real time, when it comes into force. There’s no need for or hint of retrospectivity.

One Leftie who’d typically be expected to pipe up in opposition to Goldsmith’s announcement is ex-Labour Party Prime Minister Helen Clark. Aunty Helen is typically a go-to for legacy media’s concerted opposition to the current Government. But she’s been curiously silent on this one. And for very good reason. Helen has form when it comes to passing legislation to snuff out litigation.

In 2003, the Court of Appeal decided that Māori customary property rights to the foreshore and seabed are preserved unless clearly extinguished by Parliament, and therefore still exist. Helen Clark didn’t muck around. In 2004 Helen Clark arranged the passing of legislation vesting foreshore and seabed ownership in the Government “for all New Zealanders” and preventing individuals with Māori ancestry from obtaining customary title through the Courts.

Good precedent therefore exists for Parliament preventing activist individuals commandeering the Court system to further their own sectarian interests, be they annexing the foreshore and seabed or suing businesses for bad weather. Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act was met with “hīkoi” marches and protests of the sort that will following the abolition of the Māori seats in Parliament.

Helen Clark’s decisive action, her finest work, was reversed by Shonky John Key’s National Government in 2011. In the 2008 general election, the National Government had committed to reviewing Clark’s patriotic legislation. After that election, Key needlessly entered into a coalition arrangement with the Māori Party. And the rest is history.

Quisling Chris Finlayson drove legislation through Parliament that restored rights for Māori to claim coastline (plus seabed up to 12 miles out). Despite the current Government enacting legislation intended to narrow such claims in 2025, most of New Zealand’s coastline is still currently being claimed, by at least 600 mainly State-funded claimant groups, and with New Zealand’s activist Courts poised and eager to grant customary titles.

New Attorney-General Christopher Bishop has outwardly reasserted the supremacy of Parliament, stating publicly on 13 May:

“My view is that Parliament has not often been clear enough about what we’re trying to do, and intending to do, through legislation and we’ve let the courts fill in the gaps, with sometimes unpredictable consequences.

This government, in particular, is trying to be more specific and descriptive around what exactly we are trying to do, what Parliament is trying to do.”

My Marvellous Enactment

Here’s my suggestion, Bish, for a powerful assertion of Parliamentary supremacy.

In My World According to McLean, Parliament will pass legislation specifically defining and limiting the application of international treaties, declarations, conventions and the like (“internationalism”) in New Zealand. The legislation will expressly provide that internationalism can only have legal effect in New Zealand to the extent that Parliament has expressly, through specific legislation, incorporated or reflected particular globalist guff in New Zealand law.

My mind’s eye legislation would particularly provide that Courts, tribunals (including the Waitangi Tribunal) and Government agencies (including the Human Rights Commission) cannot embrace internationalism except to the extent Parliament has specifically adopted it in New Zealand legislation. No more common law adoption of foreign fantasies. The Courts would be confined to interpreting the black letters of legislation, according to the words’ literal meanings.

The legislation I imagine would nullify such undemocratic diversions as the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a declaration that New Zealand voted against when the UN General Assembly adopted UNDRIP in 2007 - and before ShonKey’s Sly Nats endorsed UNDRIP for the unsuspecting New Zealand populace in 2010.

“My” panacea legislation would also have the automatic effect of extinguishing such judicial abuses as Mike Smith’s common law claim for climactic corporate coin. Mendacious Mike’s only role in Court should be as defendant, for such things as his chain saw vandalism of One Tree Hill’s iconic pine.

John McLean is a senior lawyer who writes at John's Substack