A landmark day for New Zealand

The Supreme Court opens today, marking our full judicial independence from Britain. The first case to be heard is over whether ineffective assistance of counsel constitutes a miscarriage of justice, which seems to fit the bill for a substantial constitutional significance; details of other cases under consideration can be found here.

There's also a lovely piece of understatement relating to the failure of the opposition's attempts to gain a referendum on the matter:

Today's ceremony will also mark the failure of a citizens initiated referendum launched last year by National, New Zealand First and Act to gather enough signatures for a referendum on the court.

To succeed, it needed about 310,000 signatures by tomorrow; it appears to have fallen short by about 300,000

Or, to put it in English: despite National, ACT and NZFirst's best efforts to raise a stink about "fundamental constitutional change without a mandate", nobody else cared.