Entirely appropriate

ACT are kicking and screaming about the case of the businessman jailed for clearing native bush, but I think its entirely appropriate. This wasn't just senseless environmental vandalism in violation of the local district plan, but also a willful violation of a previously imposed court order from the Environment Court.

ACT claims that he was simply exercising the "rights of ownership". Unfortunately, clearcutting native bush is not among those rights. Contrary to ACT's delusions, this is not (and never has been) a country where property ownership is absolute. Central and local government rightly have the power to limit actions with social and environmental impacts that extend beyond the boundries of a single property. Sadly, some rural neanderthals don't seem to understand this - but I would hope that at least one of them has got the message.

(Meanwhile, KiwiPete's reaction is that "someone should have strangled Simon Upton at birth!" Don't you just love the Right? Crims are bad, Saddam is evil, but people who disagree with you deserve to be murdered...)