News

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The Supreme Court declined the appeal of water bottler Cloud Ocean Water against the decision of the Court of Appeal in Aotearoa Water Action Inc v Canterbury Regional Council. The Court found that the Canterbury Regional Council was not able to split a “take and use” resource consent, and combine a new “use-only” consent with the “take” portion of the old consent.

The Supreme Court granted Make It 16’s appeal for a declaration that the minimum voting age was inconsistent with the right to freedom from discrimination under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (“NZBORA”).

Here are Franks Ogilvie’s top eight tips for starting a new society

It is common in New Zealand’s MMP system for a multiple political parties to need to enter into an arrangement to secure government. In order to form government, a political party must be able to demonstrate to the Governor-General that they have the confidence of House. Therefore, a party must be able to show they can get a majority of votes in a confidence motion, and to get a budget through parliament. To do this, the secure governing agreements with minor parties. These are often referred to as ‘coalition agreements’, but not all agreements between parties are actually coalition agreements.

A political party sought an order requiring the Electoral Commission to accept candidate nominations after the statutory deadline had expired.

Franks Ogilvie provided legal support to the Voluntary Heritage Group to assist in their opposition to Lower Hutt City Council proposals to bring in new and expanded heritage restrictions.

The plaintiffs are a group of minor political parties - NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party, Vision NZ, Freedoms New Zealand and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party. They unsuccessfully challenged the Electoral Commission’s decision to allocate broadcasting time, which they believed was unfairly distributed between the larger and smaller parties.

Movement unsuccessfully sought judicial review of Waka Kotahi’s decision to adopt the National Land Transport Programme 2021 (“NLTP 2021”). The basis of Movement’s challenge was that land transport investments set out in the plan did not sufficiently contribute to a transition to a zero carbon land transport system.