Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library
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Existential Risks: New Zealand needs a method to agree on a value framework and how to quantify future lives at risk
Get PDFHuman civilisation faces a range of existential risks, including nuclear war, runaway climate change and superintelligent artificial intelligence run amok. As we show here with calculations for the New Zealand setting, large numbers of currently living and, especially, future people are potentially threatened by existential risks. A just process for resource allocation demands that we consider future generations but also account for solidarity with the present. Here we consider the various ethical and policy issues involved and make a case for further engagement with the New Zealand public to determine societal values towards future lives and their protection
Presenting It, Proclaiming It: Using Art to Present Place-based Climate Knowledge
Get PDFAn exploration of how art and design can aid in the communication of the complex problem of climate change.
 
Communicating for Systemic Change: Perspectives from the New Zealand Climate Movement
Get PDFThe climate crisis significantly magnifies the urgency of implementing systemic change. Globally, we have little time remaining in which to bring about the social, political, and economic transformation needed to avoid triggering amplifying feedbacks and runaway climate chaos. In this context, a core challenge is how to mobilise people and inspire widespread action to create this transformation. Understanding current approaches to climate communication is crucial for ensuring that our communication practices play the vital role they will need to in the coming decades. In this article, I do not aim to provide a comprehensive set of guidelines that define effective climate communication. My primary aim is to understand current communication practices. To achieve this, I take a movement-centred activist-scholarship approach to research on climate communication decision-making via in-depth semi-structured interviews with 14 members of the New Zealand climate movement. My intent is to synthesise the perspectives and experiences of New Zealand climate movement participants. Through this, I hope to offer a useful analysis of significant dynamics in climate communication and shed light on dynamics in systemic change communication more broadly.
 
A New Perspective on the Public–Private Divide? Justiciability of Government Contracting Decisions Following Ririnui and Problem Gambling
Get PDFBehind every theory of administrative law lies a theory of the state. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the application of judicial review to government contracting decisions. New Zealand courts have long struggled to adopt a consistent and coherent approach in this area, and two recent decisions of relevance do very little to improve the situation. This article argues that a decision of the Supreme Court in Ririnui significantly broadens the scope of justiciability of government contracting decisions by providing an exception to Mercury Energy. The Court of Appeal's approach in Problem Gambling is more cautious but has nevertheless resulted in a broadening of the range of circumstances where government contracting decisions will be subject to judicial review. Beyond these limited findings the law both in New Zealand and overseas continues to lack consistency and coherence. This article suggests that while this state of affairs is undoubtedly the result of the application of a public law cause of action to a context which sits on the public law–private law divide, the courts should stop relying on an inconsistent doctrine and recognise that cases are being decided on the basis of normative conceptions of the proper role of judicial review in this context
Impressions of Life and Law on the High Court Bench
Get PDFThe following is a public lecture given at Victoria University of Wellington on 27 March 2018, organised by the New Zealand Centre for Public Law. In it Justice Matthew Palmer compares his impressions of life and law on the High Court Bench with that in practice and in academia
Rethinking Parliamentary Status: Are Parliamentarians Bound by the Protected Disclosures Act 2000? A Comparison Between South Africa and New Zealand
Get PDFThis article compares the Protected Disclosures Act 2000 (PDA) in South Africa and New Zealand. The comparison is framed by the question whether the PDA binds members of Parliament (MPs) or not. Regarding South Africa, the article analyses the provisions of the PDA and its curial interpretation in the Charlton litigation. Technically, MPs are bound by the PDA. This article nonetheless defends the Labour Appeal Court's merits judgment, which held that MPs are not bound. Regarding New Zealand, the article analyses the provisions of the PDA and suggests the probable outcome in court if similar litigation were ever to occur in New Zealand. 
Foreword: The Dynamic Evolution of International Law – Rise or Decline?
Get PDFThis is the foreword to the special issue of the Victoria University of Wellington Law Review presenting an edited collection of articles from leading voices in the field of public international law – scholars, judges and practitioners – that reflect on the different dimensions of the problem of change in international law. 
The Dynamic Evolution of International Environmental Law
Get PDFThis article will explore selected innovations within multilateral environmental agreements that have contributed to the dynamic evolution of international environmental law within the context of the traditional rules relating to treaties, international institutions and state responsibility. It will argue that whilst these innovations undoubtedly push and develop the boundaries of these areas of law, they do not represent a significant departure from the traditional principle of consent that underpins international law more generally. But should they? The period of modern international environmental law (from 1972 to date), which from a lawyer's perspective might be described as dynamic and innovative, has simultaneously witnessed significant and persistent environmental change and degradation across the biosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. The question for 21st century environmental lawyers is whether international environmental law is fit for the Anthropocene and whether there is sufficient scope for future dynamic evolution within the constraints and structures of the existing international legal system
Science and evidence informing policymaking in New Zealand: The meth contamination story
Get PDFThe following is based on a presentation given at the NZAS 2018 Annual Conference New Zealand Perspectives at the Interface of Science and Policy, and provides a brief overview of the complex story that led to the most dramatically impactful report produced during Sir Peter Gluckman’s tenure as the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor – ‘Methamphetamine contamination in residential properties: Exposures, risk levels, and interpretation of standards’ (Gluckman et al. 2018). Release of the report rapidly shifted policies across a number of government agencies and abruptly curtailed the predatory practices of an industry which had flourished because of a particular failure in the science-to-policy exchange: no one had asked the right questio
Ontological Syncretistic Noneism
Get PDFIn this paper I want to claim, first, that despite close similarities, noneism (as developed in both Routley 1980 and Priest 20162) and Crane’s (2013) psychological reductionism are different ontological doctrines. For unlike the latter, the former is ontologically committed to objects that are nonentities. Once one splits ontological from existential commitment, this claim, I guess, is rather uncontroversial. Second, however, I want to claim something more controversial; namely, that this ontological interpretation of noneism naturally makes noneism be nonstandardly read as a form of allism, to be however appropriately distinguished from Quinean allism in terms of the different scope of the overall ontological domain on which the only particular/existential quantifier that there is ranges. This may orient a noneist towards a syncretistic view of existence, according to which, appearances notwithstanding, existence as a whole is captured both by means of second-order and by means of first-order related notions
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