A great day for local democracy and equal rights
Decisions over the structure of local democracy will once again rest with the people who pay the rates, not the handful of councillors who spend it.
Whenever given the chance to vote in a referendum, local voters have rejected being divided by race. Labour didn’t like that, so they scrapped the referendums. ACT believes in local democracy, so we campaigned to restore the referendums, got it into our coalition agreement, and today, we made it happen.
The passage of the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill means councils that have established Māori wards can disestablish them. If they don’t do this, citizens will be able to vote on them next year in the local body elections.
But the fight is far from over.
Until we define in law that all citizens have the same rights, the erosion of our democracy will continue.
Thank you for everything you do.
 |  David Seymour ACT Leader |
Just for Mr. Seymour’s and ACT’s information, the plural of refenduM is referendA not referendumS. Maybe they should consider getting a proof reader, ideally someone with a classical education aor, at least, someone with a basic knowledge of Latin!!!!
According to Cambridge University Press: “Scholars often use referenda as the plural for referendum. This choice is a hypercorrection—it may sound like proper Latin, but it is not. Referendums is always the correct choice.” However, our view is that both are correct and it’s a case of take your pick.
I completely agree. When you borrow a term from another language you commit to keep it in the original form, in perpetuity. I have been campaigning for years for people to say Paris with a silent s, Roma, Athina etc. And when I am travelling abroad, I tick off Greeks, Turks, Italians for saying Londino, Londra whatever. And I have tried to convince the people of Mousehole, Cornwall, to say it properly, instead of Mouzzle.