Not theirs to sell

Labour's Phil Twyford has launched a new campaign in support of his Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill: Not Yours To Sell. From the campaign's opening blog:

No one trusts Rodney Hide and his cronies to keep Auckland community assets in public hands so my member’s bill will put any decision to sell community assets firmly into the hands of Aucklanders. The bill requires the sale or privatisation of any assets to be first put to a public referendum.

[...]

I think one of the big anxieties underlying the super city debate is the fear that the super city is just the prelude to corporatisation of local government, and privatisation of our assets: the ports, the water, and our transport infrastructure, not to mention libraries, parks, halls and other assets. These fears have been fueled by Local Government Minister Rodney Hide’s proposed reforms of the Local Government Act which seek to reduce council activities to core services. And by ACT’s stated policy to force Councils to sell off their commercial enterprises. Bear in mind also that it is only a decade or so since the right wing were trying to hock off the ports.

Given the ideological agenda of the right and their past behaviour when in power, those fears are fully justified. Twyford's bill would put them to bed, by requiring that any significant asset sale be approved by the relevant local authority. And that's a principle which shouldn't just apply in Auckland - but across the whole country.

If you'd like to support the campaign, sign up and take action.

Washington DC recognises same-sex marriages

Washington DC has recognised same-sex marriages performed in other states. It's not much, but its a definite move in the right direction. With more and more states and countries legalising same-sex marriage, and the US's high level of interstate mobility, there are more and more couples who are legally married but whose marriages are not recognised by their local jurisdiction. This in turn creates an unrelenting pressure, if not for performing same-sex marriages, then at least recognising those conducted legally elsewhere. And that pressure has just gone federal, with Massachusetts filing a federal court case challenging the US Defence of Marriage Act (which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages) in order to defend the rights of its citizens to receive federal assistance. This one will go all the way to the Supreme Court, and if it succeeds, then at the minimum the US government will no longer be able to treat married gays as unpeople.

Which raises the question: why haven't we done the same? While the Civil Union Act allowed foreign civil unions to be recognised by regulation, there is no provision for recognition of foreign same-sex marriages, as the government refuses to recognise them purely as a matter of public policy. That position is morally unsustainable, and given its discriminatory nature, may be legally unsustainable. More importantly for this discussion, it is practically unsustainable. With more countries allowing same-sex marriage, it is only a matter of time before a Canadian, Dutch or South African same-sex couple moves here and then needs to get divorced, or one party dies causing legal hassles over succession, which means the courts will have to make a decision - and given the requirement to interpret through the lens of the BORA, the expansiveness of New Zealand family law and the precedents in this area (see the discussion here [PDF]), that is likely to be for some form of recognition simply to avoid the practical problems. The government's refusal to recognise is thus simply putting off the problem, while unfairly dumping the costs on the parties in the eventual test case.

Of course, the easiest way to recognise foreign same-sex marriages under New Zealand law is simply to legalise them here. But I think that's still a few years off. And until it happens, we are going to face a legal problem, unless the government legislates to fill the gap.

Ireland goes medieval

Last year, the UK abolished the archaic offence of blasphemous libel, and New Zealand will almost certainly follow suit if anybody has the courage to actually bring a bill on it. Meanwhile, Ireland is moving in the opposite direction, with the Dail passing a new defamation bill which included the following:

36. Publication or utterance of blasphemous matter.

(1) A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000. [This has now been amended to €25,000 - I/S]

(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if (a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and (b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.

(3) It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates

So, in Ireland, the easily outraged religious now get a veto on free speech. Say that "god doesn't exist", make a great TV comedy mocking the Catholic church, tell those people worshipping the latest slightly Virgin Mary-shaped object that they're credulous fools, and get a whopping fine. Because their right not to be offended apparently outweighs your right to express the blatantly obvious.

This is a medieval law. And by passing it, the Dail have marked Ireland as a medieval country, on a par with Afghanistan, Iran and similar backwards places.

Climate change: a clear message

SignOn reports from last night's climate change target consultation in Dunedin:

The mood in the meeting was electric. 200 people packed into the Dunedin Centre and with only 100 seats, people were jammed in and pouring out the doorways. Once again, the audience was invited to stand if they supported 40% and all bar six stood up and waved the ‘40% by 2020’ signs that Sign On community organisers were handing out outside the meeting. Local sustainability educator Maureen Howard called for a motion to be passed for this meeting to adopt 40% by 2020 to loud cheers and claps and when she asked “…are there any objections?…” you could have heard a pin drop.

350 Aotearoa reports that that motion had near-unanimous support. They also highlight that much of the audience were young - people whose future is on the line, and who can expect to be living with the consequences of the government's policy for a long time to come. Unlike Nick Smith or the dinosaurs running the National Party.

Tonight its Queenstown. So if you're there and you care, turn up. Otherwise your voice will be taken by a farmer.

It's not murder if they're gay

In 2007, two men were drinking together. One allegedly made an unwanted sexual advance. The other beat him to death with a banjo and rammed the stump down his throat, killing him. Today, the second man was convicted - but of manslaughter, not murder. The message is clear: it's not murder if the victim is gay.

This is another victory for the provocation defence - and another reason why it must be repealed. The law as it stands gives cover to those committing anti-gay hate-crimes, allowing them to minimise their offending. It allows them to use the sexuality of their victim as a defence. "He came on to me" is apparently a justification for murder. If that standard - or its misogynistic equivalent, "the bitch tried to leave me" - applied to straight men, there'd be a lot less of them about.

This law rewards violent, brutal people who refuse to exercise self-control. It encourages lawyers to pander to the bigotry and misogyny of juries to essentially blame victims for their own deaths. It is, in short, a murderer's charter. And its long past time we got rid of it. It is time to ecrasez l'infame and repeal provocation.

Another reason to vote "yes"

Man beat daughter over church refusal, court told:

A 55-year-old man who beat his daughter over the head with a lump of concrete when she refused to go to his Mormon church "does not understand what all the fuss is about", Hastings District Court has heard.

Uluia Muliipu appeared in court after pleading guilty to one count of assault with intent to injure.

Judge Geoff Rea said on February 22 this year Muliipu had become involved in an argument with his daughter who refused to attend church.

He chased her down the street and back into the house picking up a lump of concrete along the way.

He then whacked her over the head in a bedroom with the concrete causing skin on her head to split and start bleeding.

They were both "covered in blood" and he kicked her in the face causing bruising.

"When police arrived you told them your daughter was lucky you did not kill her," Judge Rea said.

This is what the opponents of the child disciple law are implicitly defending - and it is what we are voting against next month. Two years ago, this unrepentant sadist would have been able to claim a defence of "reasonable force" for his brutality. As a result, the case might never have gone to court. Now he can't do that. And I am very glad of it.

Reminder: Drinking Liberally in Wellington tonight

Drinking Liberally is on again in Wellington tonight, with guest speaker Mark Eden, from the Wellington Animal Rights Network, on sow crates and battery hens.

When: 17:30, Thursday, 9 July
Where: Southern Cross Bar, Abel Smtih St, Wellington

[Hat-tip: The Standard]

Climate change: consulting in Christchurch

SignOn reports on last night's climate change target consultation meeting in Christchurch:

Christchurch had its consultation this evening and nearly 200 Cantabrians came out to have their say to Climate Change Minister Nick Smith and NZ Climate Ambassador Adrian Macey. There were 40 by 2020 stickers and signs galore and nearly every comment made from the floor was supporting a 40% target and from very interesting angles too. A Neptune Power rep talked about the lack of support for ocean based energy so far and the need to invest in this area; Gareth Renowden, of Hot Topic fame discussed the need for an updating of the 450 ppm two/degrees target and suggested at least 80 per cent by 2050; and Don Murray, from a group I haven’t heard of before, Grandparents for Action on Greenhouse Gases, suggested NZ should adopt a unilateral 20 per cent target, and a 40 per cent target if developing nations come on board in someway.

(I'm sure Hot Topic will have their own report up soon)

So, the turnouts are still high and there is still overwhelming support for action. But after doing Dunedin tonight, the meetings go off into the sticks - Queenstown on Friday, Hamilton on Monday, then New Plymouth, Napier, and Nelson. So, if you live in any of those places - and especially the last one - it is important to go along and show your support for a strong 2020 target. Otherwise, the final media on the consultation will be dominated by the views of polluting farmers - which is exactly what National is hoping for.

"Boy racers": "severe punishment"

Yesterday the Herald reported on the Transport and Industrial Relations committee's hearings into the government's "boy racer" laws, and specifically on the Motor Trade Association pointing out that crushing cars rather than selling them is mindlessly vindictive and makes no financial sense. It also reported the Police Minister's response:

But Police Minister Judith Collins says this is unlikely and public support for severe punishments for the worst offenders is overwhelming.

I'll leave aside Collins' characterisation of people who drive round and round in circles as "the worst offenders" for the moment, because I have a bigger target. Crown Law's advice that the bills complied with the Bill of Rights Act relied very heavily on the view that confiscation and crushing was not in any way a punishment for offending, or that if it was, it was "of a limited character". Here we have the Minister admitting not just that its a punishment, but a "severe" one. Which rather blows Crown Law's arguments (and the BORA-consistency of the bills) out of the water, neh?

Collins can't have it both ways. If confiscation and seizure are punishments, then the bills are inconsistent with the BORA, as those punishments are disproportionate and intended to be inflicted without trial. But if they're not, she doesn't get to grandstand. I wonder which one she'll choose?

Write your own referendum question

I know, it's the same as The Standard's. But it really gets to the heart of what this referendum is about: whether parents should be allowed to punch their children in the face, or shove them to the ground repeatedly, or beat them with soup ladles, or string them up as part of some twisted and sadistic ideal of "good parenting"?

The child-beaters say "yes". I say "no". If it would be criminal to do it to an adult, it can be no less criminal to do it to a child. If the law fails to protect the most vulnerable among us, and specifically allows them to be victimised and abused by sadists, then it is worthless.

(Oh, and you can write your own question here)

Victory for disability support workers

Disability support workers have won a historic victory, with a ruling from the Employment Court that they are in fact working when doing "sleepover" shifts, and should thus be paid at least the minimum wage for the full duration:

The case involved disability support worker Phil Dickson. He works at an IHC community house that is home to five service users with intellectual disabilities.

As part of his job Mr Dickson does ‘sleepover’ shifts from 10pm to 7am for which he’s paid $34. This amounts to $3.77 an hour, less than a third of the minimum adult wage of $12.50 an hour.

Mr Dickson is allowed to sleep during the shift but is frequently disturbed and often has to get up to provide support for the service users living in the community house. The court described the responsibilities he has during sleepovers as ‘weighty’ and ‘critical to the business of the employer.’ The IHC argued that doing a ‘sleepover’ shift is not work and so Phil does not have to be paid the adult minimum wage while doing the shift.

“The Employment Court did not accept the IHC argument,” says SFWU national secretary John Ryall. “The court has ruled that doing a ‘sleepover’ shift is working and Mr Dickson should be paid the minimum adult wage for a ‘sleepover’ shift.”

“This is a significant and historic decision because there are thousands of workers being paid less than the minimum wage for ‘sleepover shifts,” says John Ryall.

The ruling will mean that these workers will be about $80 a shift better off - a pretty significant difference.

Climate change: people want action

Greenpeace's SignOn blog reports on last night's 2020 target consultation meeting in Auckland:

The Auckland target consultation meeting last night was full to the brim. By my rough calculations, about 450 people attended, including media, politicians, greenies and business people. Latecomers were forced sit on the floor or stand around the back of the auditorium. By another rough calculation, about 80 per cent of attendees supported the 40 per cent by 2020 target. We know this because those who did were asked to stand. It was a beautiful moment and I actually saw a nervous blush creep up Climate Change Minister Nick Smith’s neck. Many people waved banners promoting the target.

People clearly want real action on climate change. Unfortunately, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith is just spouting the same old excuses and peddling the same old policy of delay. But if the other meetings produce this sort of turnout and this sort of response, then he will have been given a very clear message: either he takes real action, or we do - by de-electing him and his government.

BTW, if there's anybody reading this in Nelson who wants to do something useful, I'd suggest going to 350 Aotearoa and signing up to organise a protest right outside Smith's electorate office on October 24. If we want them to listen, we need to make them afraid, and that means making a clear electoral threat right there in their electorates.

In the ballot XXVI: Outlawing aggression

In his opening speech, Green MP Kennedy Graham proposed a truly ambitious plan for New Zealand: outlawing the international crime of aggression:

It is time to ensure that we live up to our binding international obligations. It is time that the state responsibility New Zealand has assumed not to commit aggression is implemented in domestic legislation. Over the years we have translated international obligations into our own legislation – in 1946 to abide by economic sanctions of the Security Council, in 1987 to forswear nuclear weapons. In 2002, we made it a criminal offence for any New Zealander to commit genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity.

Now is the time to take the next step – to make it a crime in domestic law for any New Zealander, including its leaders, to commit aggression, as defined by the UN General Assembly in 1974. This requires simply the adoption, by this House, of legislation to that effect.

Graham's bill for this - the International Non-Aggression and Lawful Use of Force Bill - appeared in the ballot last week. He officially released it yesterday, and it does exactly what it says on the label, defining aggression and making it a criminal offence punishable by ten years' imprisonment for any New Zealand leader to

plan, prepare, initiate or execute an act of aggression which by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.

It contains a specific exemption for force exercised in individual or collective self-defence or authorised by the UN Security Council, and creates a special prosecutor for aggression as an independent agent who can bring charges. The latter is likely to be the biggest problem with the bill, as I don't think anyone would ever really expect it to be used, making such a position unjustifiable. OTOH, in the event we did have to use it, the government cannot be left to prosecute itself.

Oh, and as a bonus, the bill requires the Attorney-General to provide a written legal opinion to both the government and the House before any decision to commit the NZDF to any action involving the use of force. That would be worth a bill on its own.

This is a solid and worthy bill, and one I hope is drawn and passed. At Nuremberg, the US prosecutor, Robert Jackson, said that aggression was "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". It is outlawed by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but its parties have not yet agreed on a definition to bring the clause into effect. But our acceptance of the ICC does not stop us outlawing it in domestic law as well - and given our support of international law and our love of peace, it is one we should take as soon as possible.

An end to male infertility?

UK scientists have successfully differentiated human sperm from stem cells in a petri-dish. The article itself talks worriedly about "the end of men", but its not about that. Instead, it means an end to male infertility - either directly, because infertile men will just be able to submit some skin cells and have sperm for IVF grown to order, or indirectly, due to the massive research avenues it opens up. As the article points out,

"Sperm production takes 15 years in a human and there are thousands of factors that could affect it," said Professor Nayernia. "We can investigate these factors in the laboratory in a matter of months with this technique."

Unfortunately, they didn't have success in producing sperm from female stem-cells (allowing women to be fathers in a genetic sense), and they think that this is impossible - but its still a stunning breakthrough and thrilling stuff.

More on UK torture

The Guardian has a long piece on the evolution of the UK's policy of torture. It sounds like a lot of people in the UK's security apparatus should be going to jail - and, because of their stupid and criminal actions, a lot of terrorists will ultimately have their convictions overturned on appeal. But this being the UK, the establishment will protect its own, they'll cover it up and bribe a couple of people with knighthoods, and the scum responsible will escape justice to plan torture another day.

Conspiracy to torture

A year ago, we learned that the UK had actively colluded in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, forwarding questions to the Pakistani, Moroccan and American interrogators who systematically and repeatedly tortured him, while turning a blind eye to the abuse. Since then, others have alleged similar treatment. But the exact details of the UK's guilt have remained hidden behind court suppression. But not any more. last night, Conservative MP David Davis - who resigned and fought a by-election over the issue of 42 days detention without trial - used Parliamentary privilege to reveal the depths of British collusion in detail. And they're not pretty:

Davis told MPs that although sufficient evidence had been gathered to ensure [Rangzieb] Ahmed could be prosecuted for serious terrorism offences, he was permitted to fly from Manchester to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, in 2006 while under surveillance. He then detailed the way in which the British authorities:

• Tipped off the ISI that Ahmed was on his way.
• Told the ISI he was a terrorist and suggested that he should be detained.
• Were aware of the methods used by the ISI while questioning terrorism suspects.
• Drew up a list of questions for the ISI to put to Ahmed.
• Questioned him themselves after he had been in ISI custody for around 13 days.

The officers from MI5 and MI6 who interrogated Ahmed should have known his detention was unlawful because he had not been brought before a court. Ahmed says he told these officers he was being tortured and that signs of his mistreatment would have been evident.

He says he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep and sexually humiliated. At one point three fingernails were ripped out of his left hand. He says this was done slowly, over a period of days, while he was being asked questions which he believes were handed to the ISI by British and US authorities.

Oh - and then when he went public, they tried to pervert the course of justice by buying his silence. Another example of how torture rots the system.

The UK has spun allegations of collusion by suggesting it was opportunistic and the fault of the people on the ground - another country fortunately arrested someone the UK was interested in, so they questioned them; the torture was incidental. But from the above, it seems that it was planned at a senior level, and torture was the intended outcome of the whole exercise. This isn't "collusion" - it's conspiracy. And the people involved should be prosecuted and jailed for it.

Massacre and mass arrests in Urumqi

Over the weekend, the Chinese government brutally suppressed a peaceful protest by Uighirs in Urumqi, Xinjiang, sparking off riots that killed at least 156 people and left at least 800 injured. Since then they have followed up the only way they know how: with repression and mass arrests. Almost 1,500 people have been rounded up by police, sparking further protests from their families. As in Tibet last year, the root of the problem is the colonisation of the region and cultural genocide of its inhabitants by China; Xinjiang's Uighurs face systematic discrimination in their own country, are denied the freedom to practice their religion, and are gradually being displaced and reduced to an underclass by Han immigrants from the rest of China. The old capital, Kashgar, is being "remodelled" in an effort to destroy Uighur culture - just like Lhasa. But unlike Tibet, there has so far been no international condemnation. The Chinese government is murdering its own citizens and engaging in widespread repression - and the world does nothing.

The trouser problem again

What is it with monarchs and trousers? First there was the Queen, now we have the King of Tonga objecting to the presence of women wearing trousers. And then just to rub it in,

The Tongan King's pet dogs were given free rein though, leaping around the Prime Minister and the King for their photo shoot, before one of the King's favourite mutts - Estelle - made a break for it and headed out onto the road.

So, the King of Tonga thinks dogs are higher in the pecking order than women. Classy.

It would be nice if he dragged himself into the twentieth century to recognise that what you wear is your own choice, and not something which should be dictated to you - either by goverments or monarchs.

Climate change: choosing the target

This week the government is consulting on its 2020 emissions target, essentially its negotiating position at Copenhagen, with a series of public meetings around the country (though surprisingly not in Palmerston North - too many climate scientists here, I guess). Greenpeace and other environmental NGOs are pushing for it to adopt an ambitious target of 40% by 2020, the polluters are already issuing dire warnings of the cost of doing anything, and the deniers are sticking their fingers in their ears and going "La la la I can't hear you!" So what should the target be? As you might expect, I favour a high target, in the range of 30% - 40%. Here's why.

• Firstly, the problem is urgent. The science is telling us that the situation is increasingly dire. Thanks to past pollution and a decade of inaction, we are now basically committed to the critical level of 2 degrees of warming. If we want to stop it getting any worse, emissions need to peak and decline in the next six years. If we write off the Greenland ice sheet and decide to gamble with the future of the Amazon rain forest, then we can stretch that out to 2020. Thats how urgent this problem is. If we want to turn this around, we need to start making real cuts now.
• Secondly, the risks are not symmetric. Because of the lag in the system, action now is better than action later. If we make deep cuts now, and later find out that the situation is not as serious as it looks, then we can always slacken off (and in the process we will have greened our economy). But if we leave action till the last minute, then find out its worse, we're fucked. This again points to acting sooner rather than later.
• Thirdly, we don't know how bad it will get. The IPCC's projections are extremely conservative, and don't account for positive feedback in the climate system. Since the publication of their latest assessment report, the risk of those has grown. We're already seeing methane bubbling up out of the ground in Siberia, and we may have hit the tipping point for Arctic methane clathrates. If we want to avoid those risks, then we need to make deep cuts sooner rather than later.
• Fourthly, we need to show the world we're serious. New Zealand is a small country, and by themselves our emissions make little difference; solving this problem requires action from the US, EU, China and India on board. And we can't expect them to do that if we won't. For the more mercenary, then the question is purely one of financial force: the US and EU are getting very keen on border taxes. A high target will mean not being squicked by them.

The countries which are "serious" about climate change - Germany, the EU, the UK - are all committing to targets in the 30% to 40% range (Scotland is committing to 42%). We need to be up there with them, not back with the US and Japan.

Are deep cuts achievable domestically? Certainly not if the government maintains its traditional "policy" of doing little or nothing. But in some ways that's irrelevant. Kyoto-2 will continue to include international carbon trading, and so if the government fails to enact sufficiently strong domestic policy, it will have to buy credits o the international market from those who do (or back green development projects in the developing world, hopefully under much stricter conditions than at present). In other words, in the worst case, the target is simply setting how much we will pay. The question then is how much are we willing to pay to get others to act? Or, to put it back into its proper moral context, how much are we willing to pay to stop the Pacific from drowning? How much are we willing to pay to avoid global drought? How much are we willing to pay to avoid 184 million deaths? Because those are the consequences of a weak target, and they will be on our consciences if we choose not to act.

More casual lies

It turns out that John Key isn't the only one casually lying to Parliament at Question Time. Now we can add Nick Smith to the list:

Papers released under the Official Information Act indicate that ACC Minister Nick Smith has mislead Parliament, and tried to unfairly blame his department for his pre-emptive announcement of redundancies in late May, Grant Robertson, Labour State Services Spokesperson says.

“Nick Smith told Parliament in June that he had only learned ‘subsequently’ that he had announced redundancies at ACC before staff were to be told,” Grant Robertson said.

“However papers from the ACC show that he was briefed twice, once in writing, and once orally that staff were to be told about the redundancies the day after he made his statement.

Lying to Parliament is a serious offence, and one Ministers in particular should be held accountable for. But as I noted before, its what happens when you have government-by-spin: casual lies to avoid a temporary bad headline.

Unfortunately Smith will almost certainly escape accountability. Standing Orders require that Privilege complaints be laid at the earliest opportunity, which usually means that sitting day. Which means that if you have to wait for the evidence to emerge through the OIA process, the Minister can lie with impunity.

Doing the right thing

The government is set to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Good. As a country which thinks of itself as having got its relationship with Māori right (or rather, a lot less wrong than anywhere else), we should have been supporting it all along. Instead, we clubbed together with Australia, the US and Canada - countries whose treatment of their indigenous peoples is charitably described as "racist", and more accurately as "genocidal" - to oppose it.

The declaration affirms human rights recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international law, and highlights the right against discrimination. It affirms collective and community rights against genocide, dispossession, assimilation, integration and relocation - all wrongs which have been inflicted on indigenous peoples in the past. It includes rights to maintain their own language and culture and traditional ways, to education in their own language, and to protection of their traditional medicinal plants. None of this is controversial, and these are already well-respected in New Zealand.

What is controversial are the provisions in two areas: land and self-determination. On the former, the declaration affirms the right of indigenous peoples to maintain their lands, and to receive restitution and just compensation where they have been forcibly dispossessed of them. That's what our Treaty process is about (though the compensation is hardly just), but you can see why countries such as Australia (where the process is less advanced) and the US (which is still in deep denial about their genocide of native Americans) have a problem with it. On the latter, the declaration affirms that indigenous peoples,

as a specific form of exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, including culture, religion, education, information, media, health, housing, employment, social welfare, economic activities, land and resources management, environment and entry by non-members, as well as ways and means for financing these autonomous functions.

We've come a long way in our recognition of iwi self-government. But we haven't quite gone this far yet. But it is already there in the Treaty's guarantee of rangitiratanga. The complicating factor is that unlike many countries where indigenous peoples live exclusively on their lands, past dispossessions and internal migration mean that Māori and Pakeha are well mixed. So we are not going to be able to use the same sorts of solutions as Brazil, for example. Instead, our solution is likely to involve more devolution of educational, health and social services to iwi - something we are already doing simply out of pragmatism. Some iwi, such as Tūhoe, which have maintained a distinct and largely exclusive territory, may be able to take this further into a more territorial-based autonomy - but very few others will.

Climate change: bad faith from ACT

During the last election, ACT campaigned on scrapping the ETS. As a result, they got a full select committee review of the legislation. Having achieved this, you'd expect them to participate, right? Wrong! According to an article in The Press last Wednesday (offline), they've missed half the meetings:

ACT has provoked outrage by demanding the emissions trading scheme (ETS) be reviewed and then failing to attend almost half of the public hearings.

Emissions Trading Scheme review committee minutes show ACT MPs Rodney Hide and John Boscawen turned up to five of nine meetings between February and May to hear public submissions.

[...]

Select committee chairman and United Future leader peter Dunne said Boscawen, who replaced Hide, had been ill. "Notwithstanding this, they have not attended as much as I would have expected," he said.

It's so typically ACT. A few years ago they weren't even bothering to turn up to vote, while collecting their full parliamentary salaries for not doing so. Looks like nothing has changed there, then.

Still, there is a positive side: without ACT there to act as a spoiler, the committee might actually be able to reach a sensible agreement. And OTOH, ACT knows it can just veto that outside the committee room, so its no real wonder they're no longer bothering with the charade.

Answers on LAVs

Last month, we saw unprecedented scenes in Napier, as NZDF LAVs were deployed to assist police in dealing with an armed gunman. I was curious about this, and so used the OIA to ask some questions. It seems I wasn't the only one, and the NZDF has gone for a public response. The bits of interest to me:

During the armed siege NZDF Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) were used to provide armoured protection to help recover the body of the Police Officer tragically killed earlier in the armed stand-off. NZDF has also confirmed that all Defence Force personnel were unarmed throughout the siege and the LAVs carried no ammunition.

[...]

“The decision to use the LAVs was made by the Chief of Defence Force in consultation with the Minister of Defence under section 9(1) (b) of the Defence Act 1990 following a request from the Police” says Cdr Fogarty.

[Link added]

I'd asked for a little bit more than this, but not a lot, and the answers are generally satisfactory (though I'm now wondering whether to go after all correspondence between the Minister, NZDF and the police on the issue to see how insane the Minister and the police are). But this sort of public release is usually used to screw up requestors. And in this case, its pretty obvious who: the person who'd asked whether Jan Molenaar had bought some of his guns from the army.

Against Demeny voting

Over on Red Alert, Phil Twyford considers the problem of intergeneration equity raised by National's suspension of contributions to the Cullen fund, and floats a solution: Demeny voting - that is, giving parents the right to vote on behalf of their children.

Cue predictable outrage, including some from DPF which confirms his retreat into a parody of thrusting Thatcherism.

But this idea is actually consistent with the moral basis of democracy in the moral equality of all people. Those children have interests, which are no less important than anybody else's. Those interests should therefore be counted. In practice, this principle runs up against practicality: children are usually unable to express their interests clearly, though this could (and arguably should) also be seen as a failure of adults to listen to children when they say what their interests are (I'm not interested in the argument that children lack information to judge their own interests because a) its solvable by education; and b) we would never accept that as a reason for denying the franchise to an adult).

Demeny's solution is to let parents exercise their children's vote, on the basis that they are the best judges of their interests. But the danger here is that it would simply see the interests of children conflated with and supplanted by the interests of their parents, and those policies which see parents getting tax cuts while their children are burdened with debt giving a false cloak of consent. This is exactly why liberals cling so tightly to the principle that people are the best judges of their own interests, and reject second-guessing and appeals to "false consciousness". In such circumstances it seems better to have no-one pretend to speak for you than to have them speak falsely "on your behalf" and imply your consent.

But the most telling rebuttal comes from Graeme Edgeler:

Would Kate Sheppard had accepted that an interim solution to women being denied the vote would have been to accept that men with wives would get a second vote?

The answer, of course, is a resounding "no", for exactly the reasons I express above.

So what should we do? As I've said before, I think the answer is to lower the voting age. Not everyone will count, but more will. And its a better solution than having people falsely pretending to speak for others.

Mission creep

When the police were trialling tasers, their opponents (including myself) warned that their introduction would inevitably result in "mission creep", from being used as a "less than lethal" option in dealing with violent suspects to being used casually to induce compliance for the police's convenience. It gives me no pleasure to be able to say I told you so:

The man at the centre of a stand-off with police in Hamilton this morning has given himself up after police pointed tasers at him.

[...]

The bare-chested man kept police at bay for close to three hours as he waved sticks in the air.

He occasionally used the sticks to beat on the ground and slash at surrounding bush.

Think about that for a moment: faced with a violent, but contained and not immediately threatening suspect, police threatened him with electrical torture purely for their own convenience. They couldn't be bothered waiting around for a few more hours while they talked the suspect down, so out with the tasers.

This is not how we were told tasers would be used. When they forced them on our society, the police said they would only be used to deal with violent offenders in immediately threatening conditions, and that they would be subject to the same restrictions as firearms. They would not have dreamed of threatening this man with a gun. Therefore they shouldn't have threatened him with a taser. It is that simple.

The taser experiment has failed. It is producing a shift from "policing by consent" to US-style "compliance policing", where the police routinely threaten force against the population in order to ensure their obedience. And that is not the sort of police force or the sort of society that New Zealander's want.

The police need to have their electric torture toys taken off them. And the officers who threatened to use them today in circumstances where they clearly amounted to unreasonable force should be prosecuted for assault.

Revoking their delegation

The hot topic of the day seems to be Phil Twyford's member's bill [not online yet] to protect Auckland community assets from privatisation. DPF naturally hates it, calling it "scaremongering", Brian Rudman thinks it is addressing a non-existent problem, and Russell Brown is a bit dubious about increased use of referenda, though thinks its a great way of hoisting Rodney Hide by his own TABOR petard. So, what do I think? I don't think it goes far enough.

Having lived through the 90's, when central and local government sold our assets in corrupt sales to their criminal mates, this is not an issue I trust any politician on. And judging by the unpopularity of asset sales in general, neither do most New Zealanders. The solution then is to revoke politicians' delegation on the issue, and require them to go to the people for any significant non-business-as-usual asset sale, dilution or privatisation.

In other words, we don't just need Twyford's bill for Auckland - we need one covering local body assets across the whole country. And we don't just need a bill for local body assets - we need one for SOE's and Crown-Owned Companies (such as TVNZ, Radio NZ, and the majority-owned Air New Zealand) as well.

While the tide has clearly turned on this issue and the message is finally sinking in - witness National's wariness on asset sales and its fear of the "p"-word - that is no reason not to have safeguards. These are our assets, and so we should have the final say on what happens to them - not politicians.

New Fisk

Tanks roll and guns fall silent, but the clichés go on for ever

Democracy wins in Samoa

Last month, I blogged about some troubling news from Samoa. The Speaker of the Samoan Fono evicted the opposition from the House, disqualifying nine MPs from their seats for the "crime" of establishing a new political party. It was a classic example of how Samoa's Human Rights Protection Party has retained its twenty-year grip on power. But fortunately, it has been defeated. The Samoan Supreme Court has overturned the Speaker's ruling and cancelled the by-elections as the decision did not comply with the Electoral Act, and the MPs will resume their seats when Parliament reconvenes in August. They are now considering whether to sue the Speaker for damages. Meanwhile, the government is considering further amendments to the Electoral Act to prevent new parties from rising. Because obviously that's the last thing anyone would want in a democracy.

Carnival of the Liberals

The 94th Carnival of the Liberals is now up at Submitted to a Candid World.

Brownlee bullshits on bank insulation loans

Last month, the government unveiled the second half of its home-insulation policy: getting banks to waive extra fees on loans for insulation. Unlike me, the government believes this will be effective in getting people to install insulation, and the Minister of Energy Gerry Brownlee stood up in the House and declared

We welcome the support of the banking industry in delivering this important initiative. It will create warmer, drier, and healthier homes for many thousands of New Zealanders.

and

tens of thousands of households will pick up on the scheme and will be delighted that the bank will allow them that extra lending at no additional fee

What basis did he have for making these claims? According to EECA, none at all:

Thank you for your email of 19 June 2009 in which you request, under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act), information regarding the effectiveness of the Bank Loan Scheme which is part of the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme.

Under section 18(e) of the Act, EECA is declining your request because the information you have requested does not exist.

The utilization of the banks was explored because of the opportunity for existing bank mortgage customers to extend their mortgage to cover the costs of their participation in the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme. EECA will monitor the uptake and effectiveness of the scheme during the first year of the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme.

(Link added)

Its understandable that EECA didn't assess the effectiveness of the scheme - it costs the government nothing, and while it might not help much, it certainly isn't going to do any harm, so there's little point wasting time on it. But it does mean the Minister was simply bullshitting. Which unfortunately seems to be a habit of this government.

(With thanks to EECA,who processed my request in just 10 working days)

"Boy racers": Submission II

Below is the draft of my submission on the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill, which I'll be emailing away before Friday. It has been informed by posts here and here.

• I oppose the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill and ask that it not be passed.
• The chief purpose of the bill is to allow the confiscation and destruction of vehicles as punishment for illegal street racing offences. According to the government’s own advice, there is no evidence that this measure will work, and no empirical case has been made for it. According to Treasury comment on the Cabinet paper approving the proposal, there was “no analysis, evident in the paper, that any of the measures proposed are likely to be effective in influencing behaviour and achieving the stated objectives”.
• Policy should be evidence-based. This is not. It seems to be aimed primarily at securing “tough on crime” headlines for the Minister. That is not a proper goal for public policy.
• Recommendation: the entire confiscation and destruction regime should be removed from the bill.
• As part of this goal, the bill allows the confiscation and destruction of vehicles from third parties as “punishment” for the crimes of others. It uses the Orwellian phrase “substitute for the offender” to refer to these third parties. A better term would be “scapegoat”.
• Such collective punishment is as absurd as it is immoral. It violates fundamental standards of justice and ignores completely the link between behaviour and punishment. If it was performed in time of war, it would be considered a war crime. This bill would impose it in time of peace.
• In addition to being collective punishment, this confiscation of third-party vehicles also constitutes punishment without trial. Under the bill, person A is tried, and as a consequence person B’s vehicle may be confiscated and destroyed. Person B has not been charged with any offence, let alone been tried, and has had no chance to defend themselves. While they have access to an appeals process, this is with a reverse onus of proof which stacks the legal deck against them. This would not be an appropriate process for a speeding ticket, let alone the confiscation of a vehicle potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars.
• Crown Law has argued that as this confiscation “[does] not involve any penalty other than the loss of the vehicle”, it is not a punishment, and as there is no trial, it does not constitute punishment without trial. I hope that the committee can see the absurdity of such arguments. As with impoundment under the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill, it is performed by agents of the state, using the coercive power of the state, and inflicted explicitly for violation of the law (albeit by another). It is explicitly intended as a deterrent. These are all the hallmarks of a punishment, and it will be understood as such by those it is inflicted upon.
• Recommendation: if the confiscation regime is preserved, those sections allowing confiscation and destruction of vehicles owned by a “substitute for the offender” should be removed.
• I do not wish to make an oral submission to the Select Committee.

New kiwi blog

Open New Zealand - "News and links on Open Government in New Zealand".

People might also want to check out the NZ Open Government Online Groups.

In the ballot XXV

Another batch of Member's Bills currently in the ballot. Previous batches are indexed here:

Crimes (Reasonable Parental Control and Correction) Amendment Bill (John Boscawen): John Boscawen's section 59 revanchist bill. This would replace the existing section 59 with a version modelled heavily on Chester Borrows' (later Rodney Hide's) committee stage SOP [PDF], explicitly allowing force for the purposes of correction provided it causes no more than "transitory and trifling" harm, does not use a weapon or implement, and is not inflicted in a cruel or degrading manner. In short, the rule of thumb for child-beaters. That version was defeated overwhelmingly during the committee stage of the original bill, and I doubt it has any more support now. But the purpose of the bill isn't really to pass - its to get National to vote against it, thus allowing ACT to claim that it is the champion of child-beaters.

Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Change of Date for Full Funding) Amendment Bill (David Parker): This would amend the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2001 to extend the date for full funding of ACC claims from 2014 to 2019. The government has manufactured a "crisis" in ACC by scaremongering over the short-term (and self-correcting) effects of the economic crisis. It has used this as an excuse to increase levies, in the hope of increasing dissatisfaction with ACC as a prelude to privatisation. Parker's bill would solve the problem in a flash, by pushing the date for full-funding out to 2019, allowing ACC to look past the effects of the crisis and reducing the need for a levy increase.

As a side-note, this was recommended by ACC in its Briefing to the Incoming Minister, and really the government should be doing this itself. But if they're not going to govern responsibly, the opposition will just have to do it for them.

Smart Meters (Consumer Choice) Bill (Jeanette Fitzsimons): This bill amends the Electricity Act 1992 to give effect to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's recommendations on smart meters [PDF]. Smart meters would be required to have automatic load control and the ability to talk to smart appliances, while power companies installing them would be required to offer customers an in-home display and (if they are a retailer) a choice of pricing schemes including a flat-rate (so no mandatory TOU metering, and no exposure to the spot market). The overall thrust is to make the technology work for consumers, not greedy power companies - and that's something we should all support.

As usual, I'll have more bills as I acquire them.

In appreciation of Red Alert

Over at the Standard, Marty G posts in praise of Red Alert (the Labour caucus blog). And I have to agree. It's a fantastic tool for connecting MPs with the online and getting them to front up and explain themselves. It's also great for showing us parts of Parliamentary business - such as select committee hearings, written questions and overseas trips - that we don't normally see. And they clearly listen to the feedback - there have been Parliamentary questions asked based on material in the comments. Though sadly, this isn't true in every case.

The Greens have been doing this for ages at Frogblog, and an increasing number of their MPs are posting to it, but its still a party blog rather than the individual voices of their MPs, and it has a different focus - more on the issues, less on the day to day work. And there seems to be less direct feedback between the MPs and the readers (though given the colonisation of Frogblog's comments by hecklers from the sewer, that's hardly surprising).

It's a fantastic experiment in direct communication between a caucus and its political activists, and IMHO a massive success. Every party should have one.

How to vote in the referendum

Courtesy of Scoop's Lyndon Hood:

Unfortunately, it did miss a perfectly good opportunity to ask whether the present King of France is bald. OTOH, the answer to that should probably be which bloody one?

Politics, not justice

So, it seems that former National MP and cabinet minister Richard Worth will escape prosecution. The police have concluded that there isn't enough evidence to bring a prosecution, and as a result the victim has dropped her complaint. The former sadly isn't that surprising - sex cases are notoriously hard to prosecute, as by their nature there tend to be no other witnesses, so it comes down to a credibility contest between the victim and alleged offender in which the latter has the advantage of being able to put the former on trial. Mucking about with offence and conviction statistics, it seems that only half of sexual assault cases are "resolved" (meaning an alleged offender is identified - this roughly translates into the number of prosecutions), and only a third of those brought to trial result in conviction (the average for murder is over half, and manslaughter around two thirds). And that's without even getting into what proportion of such crimes are ever reported. Basically, if Worth did do anything, the odds were in favour of him getting away with it.

But while he may have escaped legal sanction, the behaviour alleged is sufficiently dubious that no-one in their right mind would want that smell around their cabinet table - or in their party (political or otherwise). That is apparently some consolation to the victim, but its politics, not justice.

Climate change: inappropriate technology

The Listener this week has an article highlighting a recent paper which argues that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is an inappropriate technology for New Zealand. Unfortunately, the Listener doesn't make its content available online - but the paper it is talking about is here [PDF]. The short version is that even if we are the fastest follower on the block, CCS is unlikely to be available before 2030, making it useless in meeting an interim 2020 emissions reduction target. In the longer term, CCS could be fitted to Huntly - or rather, its successor - which would make a substantial dent in our annual emissions. But there would be a substantial energy penalty (~5% - 20% assuming a modern plant) in doing so - and that's only considering the capture and compression, without transport and storage (which is site specific). This won't outweigh the benefits, but it will mean having to mine a lot more coal for the same net amount of electricity. Given this, the authors question whether money spent on CCS research is a good use of resources, given that it can't possibly help us until it is too late.

So far, so good. But then they suggest an alternative that that research money should be spent on: woody biomass. As in burning trees for electricity. The technology is mature - they do it in Scandinavia apparently - and wood gasification is pretty efficient. They go on:

A recent study has indicated that realistic areas of 2.5-2.7 million ha are available for planting without competing with food crops (Hall and Gifford, 2007). We estimate that a plantation of about 434,000 hectares (using marginal farmland) could produce the same amount of electrical output as the Huntly power plant in 2006, at arguably less risk (financially and environmentally) and with a greater chance of public acceptance.

To put that number in context, we currently have about 1.8 million hectares of production forest, so we're looking at a roughly 25% increase. 434,000 hectares is 4,340 square kilometres - or about 1.6% of the total landmass of New Zealand. It's about two and a half times the area of Stuart Island. For one power plant.

Or, we could build a couple of windfarms...