Still questions about the Devoy appointment

Last week, when I was busy with other things, I finally received a (late) response to my Official Information Act request about Susan Devoy's appointment as Race Relations Commissioner. The Herald has already covered the main point - that Devoy was in fact the second choice of a second round of interviews, after Michael Jones - but assuming they got the same documents that I did they missed a few things.

Firstly, the process. The Ministry of Justice sent Judith Collins a standard briefing on the need to advertise the appointment in June 2012, and a briefing summarising the applications received in mid-July (not scanned, because its basically a duplicate of the October document below). But also in the paper trail is a rather interesting pair of undated files notes in which Collins basically sets out to undermine the process she has already set in train. The first - dated by the Minister in her response as "circa August 2012" - talks openly about the need for "broadening the pool" of applicants. Exactly who wanted this broader pool and why is sadly redacted as a "free and frank" expression of opinion; but given that it is the Minister who makes the decisions we must assume that it came from her. As for why, we already know that it was not an issue of candidate quality - high quality candidates were summarily ignored. So it must be for some other reason. The Minister needs to answer some questions about this.

(If it was Collins, then the decision to withhold this as "free and frank opinion" is dodgy. Ministers can and should be expected to be held accountable for their views)

In the second undated file note ("circa October 2012", according to the Minister), the Minister discusses contacting alternative candidates before a single interview has been conducted. Which raises serious doubts as to whether the subsequent interviews were carried out in good faith.

In October 2012 the Ministry sent Collins a second briefing, basically a hurry up, asking her to select a short-list for interview. Some people may find it odd for a Minister to be taking such a close interest in the process, rather than letting the Ministry make recommendations, but as a remarkably frank email released in response to a similar request about Jackie Blue's appointment noted, "[t]he Minister's preference is to perform that task herself". Because all the names and candidate details have been redacted, we do not know if Collins selected the strongest candidates or the weakest ones (but again note that some very strong candidates were not even interviewed). What we do know is that the interview panel found both of Collins' shortlisted candidates to be unsuitable. (Devoy was subsequently the second choice of a second-round of interviews; the report of her interview panel is here)

Secondly, Devoy claimed not to remember who had asked her to apply for the job. But as this email shows, it was a Ministry of Justice staffer acting on the orders of Secretary for Justice Andrew Bridgman. There is no paper trail on who asked Bridgman to contact her, but we can only assume that it was Collins.

Thirdly, there's the issue of the Paris Principles. This is a set of rules the UN uses to rate national human rights institutions like our Human Rights Commission, and one of the fundamentals is that those bodies must be independent of the government. The October briefing to the Minister sets out the fundamentals: a transparent appointments process, and representation from civil society on the interview panel. It is questionable whether a process in which candidates are shoulder-tapped qualifies as "transparent". As for the second criteria, it is highly questionable whether an SOE-chair counts as a "civil society" representative rather than a government appointee, and their independence is certainly questionable. Collins may have put the Human Rights Commission's A-status accreditation with the UN at risk with her actions. If it is downgraded, we will know exactly who to blame.

Britain collaborated in rendition

Who'd have thunk it? Britain collaborate din US rendition far more than they have admitted:

The UK's support for the CIA's global rendition programme after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US was far more substantial than has previously been recognised, according to a new research project that draws on a vast number of publicly available data and documentation.

Evidence gathered by The Rendition Project – an interactive website that maps thousands of rendition flights – highlight 1,622 flights in and out of the UK by aircraft now known to have been involved in the agency's secret kidnap and detention programme.

While many of those flights may not have been involved in rendition operations, the researchers behind the project have drawn on testimony from detainees, Red Cross reports, courtroom evidence, flight records and invoices to show that at least 144 were entering the UK while suspected of being engaged in rendition operations.

When the media first revealed that the US was using the UK as a stopover point for renditions, Home Secretary jack Straw called it a conspiracy theory:

Straw told the same MPs that media reports of UK involvement in the mistreatment of detainees were "in the realms of the fantastic". Documentation subsequently disclosed in the high court in London showed that Straw had consigned British citizens to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba after they were detained in Afghanistan in 2001.

So basically the UK government made a secret alliance with the US to facilitate kidnapping and torture. The politicians responsible need to be held accountable for it. And the best way of doing that is to put them on trial before an international court for all the world to see.

So much for "mum and dad investors"

When National first moved to privatise Mighty River Power, it promised that the shares would go to "mum and dad investors", ordinary kiwis. Naturally, they lied:

A small number of wealthy investors including businesses and trusts snapped up nearly half the Mighty River Power shares set aside for retail buyers, sparking accusations the Government's sales pitch about selling to "mum and dad investors" was a cynical ploy.

An analysis of the partial float reveals that 101,000 "mum and dad" shareholders were allocated just 13.4 per cent of the former state- owned enterprise. Roughly the same amount went to a much smaller group of wealthy investors, charities, businesses and superannuation funds.

The figures, confirmed by Treasury, show that of the 113,000 retail investors who paid $912 million for shares at $2.50 each, 12,844 buyers who represented the top 10.9 per cent bought roughly half the retail pool. They invested an average $34,618.

Of those, a select sub- group of 394 investors bought $90m worth of shares in parcels of more than 100,000 shares - an average investment of $228,865

This is who National considers to be "ordinary kiwi mums and dads": the top 10% of the 2%. Or as the rest of us should know them, the 0.2%. As for the rest of us, we don't even feature in their worldview except as a peasant to be abused. If you don't have $30,000 sitting in the bank to steal a portion of a state-owned asset, then you're nobody to them.

Far from being a way of spreading wealth to all, National's privatisation was just a way of rewarding their rich cronies. And we'll all be paying for it - not just through higher power prices, but through the harmful social effects of the higher inequality it has caused.

Still losing the war on P

The latest Indicators and Progress Report for the Government’s Tackling Methamphetamine Action Plan [PDF] is out, and naturally the government is trying to put a positive spin on things and claim that it is winning its war on P. But while there's some good news - overall usage has reduced as P has become unfashionable and people have realised that its no fun turning into a raving psychopath - the core indicators around price and availability have remained unchanged. Methamphetamine still costs around $100 a point or $700 a gram, with possible a slight reduction in the bulk price. The price of precursors for cooking has dropped by around 25%, from $12 - $16,000 to $8 - $12,000. Availability is pretty much static. If that's "victory", then its a "victory" which changes nothing.

Meanwhile, we're pissing tens of millions of dollars a year away on an approach which is manifestly not working. It is a futile waste of time, money, and people's lives. There has to be a better way than this.

Selling out the conservation estate

So, as expected Nick Smith has granted Bathurst Resources an access agreement to turn the Denniston Plateau into a giant open-cast coal mine. But don't worry! The government is getting paid for it!

“The loss of conservation values is compensated by a $22 million package by Bathurst Resources. This will fund pest and predator control over 25,000 hectares of the Heaphy River catchment in the Kahurangi National Park, 4,500 hectares on and around the Denniston Plateau, as well as for historic projects on the Plateau itself. This is the largest ever compensation package negotiated by DOC for a mine or other commercial venture.

In other words, Nick Smith has just agreed to effectively sell part of our conservation estate for thirty pieces of silver. Not that he actually sold it, of course, because that would require a much tougher assessment, so instead he's leasing it for the purpose of being destroyed.

It will be interesting to see what the official advice says about this. Access agreements to Crown land must have regard to "the objectives of any Act under which the land is administered" (in this case "to promote the conservation of New Zealand's natural and historic resources") and to the purpose for which the land is held. And the advice will emerge - either under the OIA or as part of discovery in the inevitable application for judicial review. If its not absolutely bulletproof, than it will be overturned. And on that front the mere timing of the decision - the day before greater consultation requirements were due to come into force - provides prima facie evidence of bad faith on the part of the Minister. The last thing he wanted was the public being given a chance to have our say on the issue.

Where the bloody hell are we?

Australia has joined the Open Government Partnership, an international body dedicated to greater government openness and transparency. Meanwhile, what do we have from New Zealand? Silence. We missed the initial launch because Murray McCully was "busy" (likely paying attention to rugby). Since then there's been an internal note from MFAT [PDF] talking about the need to consider the issue, but apparently no further progress. This despite an acknowledgement that "the goals and principles of OGP are in line with the commitment of the New Zealand Government to transparency and openness" and a warning that

There are risks that New Zealand's absence from OGP may become increasingly glaring as membership expands, especially given our existing reputation for transparency and openness.

I think we're well past that point. We're being left behind by the Australians on this. Given their record on government secrecy, we should be seriously embarrassed.

Fallow on privatisation

Writing in the Herald, Brian Fallow assesses the future of the government's privatisation plans. His conclusion? Not good. The Labour-Greens proposed monopsony combined with uncertainty over the future of Tiwai Point means that

In these circumstances for the Government to press ahead with the selldown of the SOEs turns a policy that was merely kind of pointless - a solution in search of a problem - to one that is either cynical or bloody-minded.

But what about their public justifications for selling? None of them stack up. With high unemployment and rock-bottom interest rates, reducing debt isn't the highest priority, and there's no evidence that SOE's are badly run (by contrast, the problems seem to occur when they are privatised, or in the case of Solid Energy, when they act as if they have been). Finally, there's a real risk that bringing new suckers into the sharemarket encouraging new first-time investors will backfire horribly and just be a (money-losing, for those first-time investors) way of hiding eventual foreign ownership.

But, as Fallow said, the policy is cynical and blood-minded. They're selling because they've said they'll sell - not because its actually in the best interests of New Zealand.

McDonald's: Wage-thieves

Wage-theft - workers not being paid what they are owed - is endemic in the US fast food industry, and is now the subject of a major criminal investigation in New York. Sadly, it turns out New Zealand fast food restraunts aren't immune, with McDonalds accused of stealing $2.5 million from its workers:

Unite are submitting an employment authority case against McDonald’s today for unpaid breaks that the union estimates has resulted in unpaid wages of $2.5 million.

"We have wage and time records from two stores (one a McCopco store and one a franchisee) for the last four months that confirm a consistent pattern of not paying for lost lunch breaks – as they are required to do under the collective agreement," said Unite National Director Mike Treen.

[...]

"We have done a calculation for the two stores and we estimate the unpaid breaks for all staff to be $2700 for each store for the four months. Multiply that by 6 to cover the two-year collective agreement, and again by 160 to cover every store in the country – and the total owed is $2.5 million.

That cheap burger you're eating? It's cheap because McDonald's steals from its workers. Throw it away and buy from somewhere that pays people properly instead.

Climate change: China agrees to a cap

Big news on the climate change front: China has agreed to cap its greenhouse gas emissions from 2016:

The battle against global warming has received a transformational boost after China, the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, proposed to set a cap on its greenhouse gas emissions for the first time.

Under the proposal China, which is responsible for a quarter of the world's carbon emissions, would put a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions from 2016, in a bid to curb what most scientists agree is the main cause of climate change.

It marks a dramatic change in China's approach to climate change that experts say will make countries around the world more likely to agree to stringent cuts to their carbon emissions in a co-ordinated effort to tackle global warming.

China has no cap up until now due to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities - that those historically responsible for the problem need to act first to clean it up. Despite agreeing to this principle in the UNFCCC, the US has used China's uncapped emissions to justify inaction and frustrate global climate change talks for a decade. Now the ball is firmly in their court. I wonder what excuse they'll use now?

(My guess: start whinging about India. Because the US's position was never about fairness and was always about undermining international agreements)

Unlawful, unjustified and unreasonable

On October 15 2007, the New Zealand Police conducted a series of "anti-terrorist raids" around the country. In the Bay of Plenty town of Ruatoki they terrorised the community, with armed police conducting searches and searching every vehicle going in and out. Effectively, they acted like an army of occupation invading a hostile area. Now, six years on, the Independent police Conduct Authority has found that their actions were "unlawful, unjustified and unreasonable":

Independent Police Conduct Authority Chair Judge Sir David Carruthers said today that the decision by the then Commissioner of Police to undertake the operation in Ruatoki Valley and elsewhere on 15 October 2007 was reasonable and justified.

“However, the road blocks established by Police at Ruatoki and Taneatua were unlawful, unjustified and unreasonable. While Police were warranted in taking steps to address possible risk to public safety there was no justification for believing there was a general threat to the people of Ruatoki.

“Police had no legal basis for stopping and searching vehicles or photographing drivers or passengers,” he said.

In addition police unlawfully detained and searched other residents at properties where they were executing search warrants.

All of this raises the question of whether police will personally apologise to and compensate those whose rights they systematically violated, and whether the officers responsible will be disciplined or sacked. Sadly, the police seem to be in their usual mode of denying they did anything wrong, so that seems unlikely. Their refusal to do so can only continue to undermine the reputation of the police as an institution, and the willingness of the public to cooperate with them - just as it continues to do so over Arthur Allen Thomas.

I'm also left with a question: the IPCA has found that police illegally photographed people at roadblocks (something the police are in denial over). Has that illegally gathered information been destroyed, or has it been databased somewhere, allowing the police to continue to benefit from the fruits of their crime?

(The full report is here [PDF])

Something to go to in Wellington

Want to know more about illegal GCSB spying and the new powers it is trying to grab? Journalist Nicky Hager, former MP Keith Locke and lawyer Michael Bott will be discussing these problems at a public meeting in Wellington next week:

When: 18:00, Monday 27 May
Where: Mezzanine Room, Wellington Central Library

A living wage for Hamilton

The Hamilton City Council has voted to adopt a living wage for all its staff:

Hamilton City Council has become the first in the country to vote in favour of paying its staff what campaigners have called the living wage.

Councillors on Tuesday voted eight to five in favour of paying $18.40 an hour to staff currently earning less.

As a result, 80 workers will get a pay rise in the next two years at an estimated eventual cost of $168,000 a year.

Good. Councils, like other employers, should pay their staff enough to live a dignified life. Unfortunately there's a big gap around contractors, who aren't employed by the council and so don't benefit from this - so the next step is to adopt that as a requirement for all contracted services. Which will incidentally remove the "race to the bottom", hire-the-same-staff-and-pay-them-less model which currently drives contracting out, so it will kill two birds with one stone.

Charter schools = quack schools

Who wants to run a charter school? Quacks and loons, according to the PPTA:

A list of organisations that have expressed interest in running charter schools has been outed, revealing a high proportion of religious groups, including a Manawatu church arguing it has the right to teach creationism using taxpayer money because state schools teach evolution.

The Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) has defended its decision to print the list in this month's edition of its members' magazine, which names 21 organisations that registered interest - almost half of them religious groups - with president Angela Roberts arguing that the process had been shrouded in secrecy.

Attempts to identify which organisations had registered interest were previously stonewalled.

The full list is here [PDF, p. 7]. In addition to the quacks and loons, there's also four Maori trusts and a cramming service (so we know how they'll get results). A handful of the applicants look credible, but then there's the obvious question of why they don't just set up a private school (or arrange with parents to lobby for a designated character school or Kura Kaupapa Maori instead).

As for the quacks and loons: it is absolutely inappropriate that taxpayers money is used to provide religious education. These groups are simply looking for a massive taxpayer subsidy for proselytising. And that's not something anyone should support.

Unsurprising

So, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has concluded that the GCSB did not actually break any laws. Colour me unsurprised. The Inspector-General is a total captive of the agencies he is supposed to be overseeing, reliant on them for support and information. Meanwhile, he's barred from inquiring into anything which is "operationally sensitive", which can be redefined by the agency at will to mushroom him. The net result: a paper "watchdog", who is no check and balance at all.

So its not really surprising that the Inspector-General echoes the GCSB's line that everything is fine and that the law is "unclear". "Nothing to see here, move along, and by the way we'll be having some extra spy powers thanks".

Meanwhile, we're expected to simultaneously believe that

all of the cases were based on serious issues including potential weapons of mass destruction development, people smuggling, foreign espionage in New Zealand and drug smuggling.

but also that

no arrest, prosecution or any other legal processes have occurred as a result of the information supplied to NZSIS by the GCSB.

Which if taken at face value means that someone is not doing their fucking job. Drug smuggling, people smuggling, WMD development and foreign espionage are all crimes punishable by severe penalties (basically 14 years to life imprisonment, unless the drugs smuggled are class C or lower). And they did all that spying and yet didn't manage to prosecute anyone? that suggests either incompetent prosecutors, or that the net is being cast too wide and that people's privacy is being invaded for no good reason. Either way, heads should roll.

Tax cheats don't like criticism

So, it turns out that the tax cheats don't like being called on their crimes:

The bosses of some of Britain's largest multinational corporations have urged David Cameron to stop moralising and rein in his rhetoric on tax avoidance ahead of a G8 summit next month.

Chief executives of companies such as Burberry, Tesco, Vodafone, BAE Systems, Prudential and GSK were keen to take a final opportunity to lobby the prime minister in advance of the meeting of political leaders in Northern Ireland.

Cameron has pledged to use Britain's G8 presidency to tackle aggressive tax avoidance by multinationals, but is also keen to heed the counsel of his business advisory group, which he met with on Monday.

Firstly, this shows that the strategy of naming and shaming tax cheats is working - it has made people aware of the problem, and it has encouraged them to do something about it. Just as no-one likes buying from a company which kills a thousand of its workers due to shoddy construction, no-one likes buying from a tax-cheat. Companies who trade on their reputation will need to be squeaky clean on the tax front, and make sure they are not using aggressive evasion tactics.

But secondly, it speaks volumes about the sociopathic character of major corporate executives that they think the response to this is to stop politicians talking about it rather than clean up their own act. These companies have no intention of paying their fair share of taxes - hell, in some cases their profitability depends on them not doing so. Which means we need government to force them. The question is whether government works for us, or the tax-cheats.

Not acceptable

It seems that while Tim Groser has been gallavanting around the world unsuccessfully campaigning to get himself a better job, he's been ignoring things at home - including such basics as answering OIA requests:

New Zealand First says Trade Minister Tim Groser’s refusal to acknowledge or answer Official Information Act (OIA) requests, brings the Minister’s performance of him and his office into question.

Associate spokesperson for Trade Andrew Williams says the Minister has so far failed to respond to five different OIA requests dating back to November 2012.

“While Mr Groser was off traveling the world at the tax-payer’s expense, trying to sure-up support for his failed WTO bid, his office has been failing to act on numerous OIA requests.

This is simply unacceptable. The OIA is not optional - it is the law. Ministers are legally required to respond to requests as soon as practicable, with 20 working days as the upper limit. And they should not be putting their personal career advancement before their legal obligations to the people of New Zealand.

Sadly, there's no penalty for breaking this law, and given the constant underfunding of the Ombudsman's office, complaining about late requests is pointless (for a start, it won't make them arrive on time). The only way this disease can be cured is by naming and shaming Ministers who ignore the law, so that voters can hold them accountable for their performance at the ballot box.

No asset sales in Christchurch

Some good news: Christchurch won't be selling its assets to fund the rebuild. They've looked at their finances, and drawn the sensible conclusion that its both unnecessary and stupid. They'd rather have the income to keep rates down long-term than a one-off cash infusion (and financial problems further down the track).

But they still have one problem: Gerry Brownlee:

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker says there's a $600 million gap between what his city is prepared to spend on new projects, such as a convention centre, and what the Government wants.

Speaking on Firstline this morning, Mr Parker said the council has asked the community what it wants and how much it's prepared to spend, but the Government is pushing for more.

"Over a year ago, council ran a budget through a consultation with its community, and it said – take for example, the convention centre – that we would rebuild the convention centre, make it a little bit bigger, and build it on the old site," says Mr Parker.

"The Government plan came through and said no, we want it to be 50 percent bigger than you're planning to do, and we want it to be on a central city site, a different place about 500m closer into the heart of the city.

What gets built in Christchurch should be up to the people of Christchurch, not dictated by a Minister in Wellington. Sadly National still doesn't seem to understand this fundamental concept of democracy. The question is whether they will invoke CERA powers to force Christchurch to sell its assets to pay for infrastructure they don't want.

New Fisk

Where else but Northern Ireland would a killer on a school board even be mooted as a possibility?

Worse than I thought

One of the more odious features of Fiji's military dictatorship is its use of "ouster clauses", purportedly denying the jurisdiction of the courts to review its illegal policies. Such clauses have a long and dubious history in military dictatorships. But now National is using them here. Their New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) - a discriminatory bill specifically intended to overturn the family carer's victory in Atkinson & Others v Ministry of Health, rammed through the House under all-stages urgency on Friday - includes an ouster clause purportedly denying the courts jurisdiction to review decisions made under it on human rights grounds:

On and after the commencement of this Part, no complaint based in whole or in part on a specified allegation [one that a decision under the Act discriminates on the grounds of marital status, disability, age or family status] may be made to the Human Rights Commission, and no proceedings based in whole or in part on a specified allegation may be commenced or continued in any court or tribunal.

As for cases that got in before then, apart from Atkinson, they are denied any effective remedy. The result is effectively to excise the Act from the jurisdiction of the courts, giving the government a free hand to discriminate on those grounds in its policies over home care, regardless of the Human Rights Act.

This is a direct attack on the rule of law, a direct attack on our constitution, and a direct attack on the rights of all of us. After all, if the government feels that it can excise family carers and the disabled from the Human Rights Act, what's to stop them from doing it to the rest of us? What's to stop them from excising our right to free speech, free assembly, or our right to vote? Nothing. The problem is what to do about it.

The immediate solution is to throw this government out on their arses at the next election. This is simply the latest in a long line of constitutional abuses, and they have clearly shown that they cannot be trusted with power. In the long term, we need to make sure that this can never happen again. And that means entrenching the Bill of Rights Act as supreme law and allowing laws which purport to contravene it to be overturned. Half-measures such as declarations of inconsistency and mandatory reporting will no longer cut it anymore. Parliament has shown that it will not act to guard our fundamental human rights. They have betrayed our trust. It is therefore time to take that role off them and give it to a body which can be trusted: the courts.

[Hat-tip: Andrew Geddis]

National's "innovation" agenda

The government has been trumpeting its support for science, claiming that it is investing $200 million of new funding over the next four years. Half of this is going on business R&D grants, but of the other half they're highlighting $73.5 million for their "National Science Challenges" and an extra $20 million for the Marsden Fund. But as usual for this government, its all spin and bullshit.

First, lets look at overall science funding, as laid out in the Estimate of Appropriations for Vote: Science and Innovation [PDF]. Core departmental funding? Cut from $33 to $29.6 million. Research funding (which includes both the Marsden Fund and various other specific categories of research, as well as core CRI funding)? Cut from $741.5 to $686.5 million. Overall they've sucked over $55 million out of science and innovation. They've introduced some new categories of funding - the "National Science Challenges" - and boosted the Marsden Fund. But those have come at the expense of much deeper cuts elsewhere.

And as for those "National Science Challenges": $73.5 million over 4 years equals $18.375 million a year. And there are ten of them, so each of these "priority areas" gets a mere $1.84 million in funding a year. That doesn't buy a hell of a lot of scientists, or a hell of a lot of science. But announcing it does buy headlines, which is all National is after.

This government is not supporting science - it is cutting it (oh, except for "energy and minerals research" - the miners and oil drillers keep their hidden subsidy). And in the process, they are cutting the future of this country. And you do not need to be a scientist to figure that out.