What do we do with a lawless Speaker?

Yesterday, Speaker Gerry Brownlee purported to eject Chloe Swarbrick from the House for the rest of the week after she implicitly called regime MPs "spineless". The decision did not comply with parliament's standing orders, so Swarbrick turned up today to litigate that and give Brownlee a chance to admit he made a mistake and move on. Instead, he doubled down on his wrongness, named her, and had her suspended for 24 hours on a partisan vote. But in his incoherent rage he fucked that up too, so he had to do it a second time.

We were then treated to 20 minutes of litigation over the decision, its (lack of) past precedent, and whether Brownlee was simply making it up as he went along (he is) - during which Winston Peters, who had just voted to suspend Swarbrick, disagreed with Brownlee's decision and his own vote (which is another data point on his senility, I guess). Brownlee cycled through justifications, which ultimately came down to him - a purportedly "neutral" chair - being personally offended by Swarbrick's call for government MPs with a spine. Which apparently justifies a week's suspension, because an old white man's widdle feelings were hurt.

The decision was arbitrary and capricious. It ignored the rules parliament is supposed to operate by. In a normal government institution, there are remedies to prevent such lawlessness: the Ombudsman and (ultimately) the courts. They exist to prevent such abuses of power, and force government agencies to follow their own rules. But thanks to Parliamentary Privilege, such remedies are unavailable. Which invites the question: what do you do with a lawless Speaker? What do you do when a significant constitutional figure behaves like an arbitrary tyrant? What is the check and the balance here?

Meanwhile, like the (far more serious) lynching of Te Pāti Māori, this shows that Parliamentary "order" is just a tool for the partisan oppression of the opposition by the regime. And everyone can see it. It's another nail in the coffin of the idea of a neutral Speaker, and another shovel of earth on the grave of Parliament's legitimacy and social licence.

If you don't like this, the Standing Orders Committee is currently calling for submissions on parliament's rules for next term. So you can submit, point out the problems with arbitrary decisions and parliament's procedures for maintaining "order", and ask them to fix it it. If you care enough, you can even suggest solutions. Though honestly, that's really a "them" problem; its fine to say "this is a problem, and you parliamentary big brains who know and care about standing orders need to find a way to stop it". And if they refuse, then they can face the consequences for parliament's reputation.

Principles versus parliament

Yesterday the regime announced that it wouldn't consider recognising Palestine as a state until next month - so basically, waiting until Israel has murdered or deported every last Palestinian and stolen all their land. Parliament had an urgent debate on this today, with a banger of a speech by Chloe Swarbrick:

At the end of it, she challenged government MPs to support the Greens' Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill, saying that "[i]f we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history".

The Speaker threw her out.

I guess he didn't want a politician with actual principles making the rest of the cowards look bad.

Meanwhile, there's an obvious comparison here with John Key's famous "get some guts" over backing America's re-invasion of Iraq. On any normal analysis, its a similar allegation of cowardice. So why was it OK, when Swarbrick gets ejected?

I think the answer is obvious: It's OK When You're A Man.

"Our" Parliament is an archaic, deeply racist, deeply misogynist institution, whose "rules" are applied arbitrarily and nakedly for the political advantage of the regime and to lynch its opponents. Its no wonder MPs don't respect it. And its no wonder the people don't either. If it wants to retain its social licence to legislate, to rule by anything other than naked force, it needs to be better, to reflect modern Aotearoa, to drag itself into the present, to not do shit like this.

But good luck getting the fossils in there to understand that.

Gagging the medical professions

Aotearoa has had a public health system since the First Labour Government in the 1930s. And for as long as it has existed, medical professionals have been speaking out about its failures, criticising cuts, and generally acting as a watchdog on government policy. This has been inconvenient to those governments, but the professional role of medical staff has always been respected, because it is recognised that - like academics - they have a duty to their patients and to the public.

...until now. Faced with a public health system collapsing due to systematic underfunding, National wants to silence medical professionals. Its Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill (which is primarily about imposing white supremacy) includes a clause classifying Health NZ staff as public servants, and requiring them to uphold the principle of political neutrality.

This is a complete novelty in Aotearoa. As noted above, medical staff in the public health system have never been classified this way. And this isn't about a change in status - DHBs have been legally "crown agents" since the 2004 reorganisation and reclassification of the wider public sector with the Crown Entities act 2004, and were effectively in that position since their foundation in 2000 (as were their Area Health Board, Regional Health Authority, Crown Health Enterprise, and Hospital and Health Service predecessors). Instead, the motive is obviously to gag critics of the regime.

You might think that this would engage the right to freedom of expression affirmed by the BORA - and you'd be right. But weirdly, the Ministry of Justice, who did the BORA vet on the bill, didn't think so - they don't mention it, even to say it is a justified limitation. Though possibly this is because, as usual, they "ha[d] not yet received a final version of the Bill" (which should raise questions about the quality of the Ministry's BORA vetting process, and the quality of the advice on this core constitutional responsibility...)

What might a BORA vet have looked like? In the case of ordinary public servants, we accept that political neutrality and consequent restrictions on publicly criticising the government of the day are a justified limitation, because a neutral public service is an important public purpose, and the restrictions are proportionate. But ordinary public servants don't have a professional obligation to protect the public of medical staff, or a decades-long tradition of doing so. And the latter is relevant - as the Attorney-General noted in her section 7 report on the voter suppression provisions of the regime's Electoral Amendment Bill:

Expectations based on longstanding legislative settings are salient to judging potential prejudice and proportionality.

We have an expectation based on long-standing legislative settings that medical staff are free to act as critics of the public health system. They have been part of the wider state sector for nearly a century, and have always been free to speak. Restricting that right, when nothing meaningful has changed in terms of their status, therefore seems disproportionate.

The regime could have made a case that this change complies witht he BORA. The fact that they haven't even bothered speaks volumes. It must be rejected. If you'd like to speak up on it (or the other, racist changes in the bill), you can do so here.

Wag or be wagged

The Greens held their AGM over the weekend, and in her speech, co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick claimed to be leading the opposition. Which seems to be obviously correct, in that the Greens are setting the direction for the entire opposition bloc, by virtue of being the ones providing the ideas. And this isn't just a question of Labour's current policy-silence, but of their long-term ideological emptiness and their focus on being managers of the status quo (and getting the prestige and salaries) rather than leading the changes we need to make.

The only policy area Labour has any real interest and skill in is workers rights (and even then: income insurance? Really?) In other key areas - income inequality, tax policy, climate change, industrial policy - they just follow the Greens. Green policy one election tends to become Labour policy at the next one (and, if the public is won over, National policy after that - see home insulation schemes, or the bright-line test). And partly this is a victory by default: Labour's perpetual cowardice and fear of criticism means they're too chickenshit to put their own ideas out there, so the Green ones become the de facto left solution because Labour isn't offering any alternative.

Which makes the stuff about the Greens wagging the Labour dog amusing. They're already wagging that dog - just very slowly.

Obviously, as a Green voter, I would welcome speeding up that process. The more MPs the Greens and Te Pāti Māori bring to a left coalition, the louder their voices will be, and the more Labour will have to give them. But also, I want them to play hardball on this. Which will admittedly be easier if Labour doesn't have any agenda of its own.

As for Labour concern that the prospect of Green-led policy could drive voters to National, that sounds like a "you" problem. It also sounds untrue, given public attitudes towards wealth taxes and higher public spending. In fact, in light of those polls, one might also call it an elite lie to deter change to the status quo. But either way, Labour's solution is obvious: if it doesn't want people to think it will adopt Green policy by default, get some of your own, and stop whining that people expect you to actually stand for something.

Dancing on Kapuni's grave

Ballance Agri-Nutrients' Kapuni Urea plant is shutting down for four months due to a shortage of natural gas. Good. Its one of Aotearoa's biggest polluters, and the fertiliser it produces poisons our water and our people. And from an emissions point of view, we're better off without it.

According to Ballance's FY24 Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, Kapuni produced 166,605 tons of CO2 in 2023-2024. In calendar year 2023 the government gave them 333,084 tons of carbon credits as a pollution subsidy - over twice their actual emissions. In its 2024 annual report, Ballance valued its FY2024 pollution subsidy at $18.8 million - more than its pre-tax profit, and three times more than the amount of tax it paid. And its been over-subsidised so much that it is sitting on nearly a million tons of surplus units, enough to cover its emissions for six years (see p43 of their annual report).

We should not be subsidising companies to destroy our environment and poison our people. It is that simple. Like Methanex, any shutdown in production reduces emissions and subsidies, so that's a Good Thing. And if it becomes permanent, and we don't have to subsidise this evil any more, that seems like a Very Good Thing Indeed.

But what about the jobs? Kapuni employs 120 people. So we're subsidising those jobs to the tune of $156,000 a year (on Ballance's valuation). Which makes them very expensive jobs. The government could just pay them $100,000 a year each to not destroy the environment, and we'd still be better off.

Of course, if the actually cared about jobs, they could clean the place up, and move to lower emissions production. The previous government might even have helped, through the GIDI program. And Ballance was looking at that, through a thing called the Te Ata project, which promised to reduce the plant's emissions by 90%. But they discontinued it in May 2024. And as a result, they're now left in a situation where they have no way forward, no future but a knife-fight for ever-decreasing amounts of gas. I guess we can call that the consequences of their own shortsightedness...

RUCs vs excise taxes

The government has problem: it gets people to pay for the roads in part through petrol excise tax. But cars are becoming more efficient, and people are switching to EVs and not using petrol at all, so in the long-term it is going to have to find some other way to pay for it. So yesterday it announced its solution: force everyone to pay road user charges (RUCs) instead. Of course, being National, they're doing it in a way which penalises drivers of clean, fuel-efficient vehicles, while subsidising dirty, inefficient hoons; and of course, being National, they've added in private gouging middlemen and extra surveillance to enable future road privatisation (because of course they have). And their vision of how it should eventually work is

"Eventually, paying for RUC should be like paying a power bill online, or a Netflix subscription. Simple and easy," he said.

Or as someone on Kikorangi put it, the government is going to send you another bill.

And that's what it is going to feel like. Because around 80% of us still drive petrol vehicles, and so we just don't have to think about "paying for the roads" at all. Its invisible to us, because its built into the petrol price. So requiring us to monitor usage and buy the appropriate amount of RUCs like the truckies and Rurals do is going to be pretty alien - and alienating. And it raises the obvious question of whether there aren't better alternatives.

There are a bunch of competing values underlying our existing "pay for the roads" policy. There's a strong one of "user pays", and its converse, "non users don't pay": the roads should be paid for by people who use them, and our means of doing so should generally avoid impacting people who don't (which is why we have RUCs at all, rather than a fuel tax on diesel: because it used too often for non-road uses, so that would be unfair). On top of that, we've got simplicity, efficiency, equity, and ease of enforcement. Petrol excise tax ranks highly on all of these: non-road uses are insignificant, so its user-pays by proxy; its simple, easy to administer, invisible to the end user, and very easy to enforce (it is basically unavoidable, unless you have your own secret oil well and refinery setup). RUCs, OTOH, score poorly: while they charge directly for distance travelled (rather than using a litre of petrol as an increasingly rough proxy), they are administratively complex, and require actual enforcement: someone needs to check that you've paid, and force you to pay if you haven't. They're also "lumpy" - you need to buy them in large blocks with a fixed transaction cost - which means you get sticker shocks and resulting enforcement problems. What they have going for them is that they're fuel-neutral (because they charge directly on distance travelled), and its an existing system which can in theory be expanded. Though whether it can be expanded 500% without horrific teething problems at a time when the government is slashing public service capacity remains to be seen...

(I would also add in "privacy" and "difficult to privatise" as values here, but the governments mileage clearly varies on that one...)

Looking at those policy values, it seems that there are other ways to pay for the roads which would meet those values better than RUCs. And one obvious solution which immediately stands out is some equivalent of petrol excise tax for EVs, charged through (for example) public and private fast-chargers and collected by power / charging companies as part of your regular bill. There are a number of questions that would need to be answered: what proportion of EV charging is done by fast-charger (rather than normal household plugs); how many fast-chargers have separate meters and can power companies bill separately for them; what the cost of installing new meters at existing setups would be; how to deal with things like solar panels and vehicle to grid (because we expect both these things to increase, so the policy should deal with them upfront); How much there might be in residual costs and whether they are best dealt with by over-charging on fast-chargers, through a far lower levy on all residential electricity, or an annual fee somewhere. But the government knows how much it needs for the roads, it knows what proportion of that it wants EVs to pay, it can know or reliably guess how much energy they use, so in theory it can just work out a simple cents / kWh price, just like petrol excise: efficient, invisible, difficult for normal people to avoid, and so not requiring huge effort to enforce.

Such a system would obviously take time to develop. But there doesn't seem to be a huge need for urgency here - this is a policy we need in 2030, not tomorrow. We could take the time to do it properly and avoid lumping ourselves with a complex, difficult to enforce, intrusive and surveillance-and-privatisation-ready system. And it would be nice if opposition parties committed to doing so.

Secrecy to protect criminals

Fishing is a criminal industry, with fishers routinely violating quotas, under-reporting bycatch, and engaging in fraud to profit from pillaging the ocean. To stop this criminality, the government has finally been dragged into putting cameras on fishing boats, so they can monitor what is caught and ensure fishers obey the law. But fisheries minister Shame Jones is a bought-and-paid-for tool of the fishing industry, so he's decided that the resulting footage will be exempted from the Official Information Act:

An overhaul of fisheries rules will allow greater catch limits when fish are abundant and stop on-board camera footage being made public.

[...]

The move to exclude footage from the OIA was supported by Seafood New Zealand.

Chief executive Lisa Futschek said while it supported cameras on fishing vessels, they were a tool for "verification, not vilification".

"We accept that the regulator should have access to footage to ensure that we are doing what we say we do, but to enable members of the general public to see this footage is unfair," she said.

Which is exactly what burglars would say about security cameras, or police child-pornographers would say about their computer-use being audited. As for "vilification", if the fishing industry doesn't want to be vilified, they should not behave like villains. Simple.

As for the policy, there's a strong legal argument against it - OIA exemptions violate the BORA-affirmed right to freedom of expression, so must be demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society. But "protecting fishers poor little fee-fees" isn't an "important public purpose", and that's before we even get to questions of proportionality. But beyond that, the reason we have cameras is because MPI (and its predecessor Fisheries NZ) were completely captured by the industry they were supposed to be regulating, and was ignoring its serious crimes, until their enforcement reports were leaked and OIA'd, creating public pressure for them to do their job properly. The lesson here is that transparency is vital to keep the regulator honest and prevent capture. All secrecy does is protect criminals. But then, that's precisely why the fishing industry and their $10,000 mouthpiece Jones support it.

36,000 unemployed under National

The June labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen to 5.2%. There are now 158,000 unemployed - 36,000 more than when National took office.

This is the highest level since Covid - and it will get worse, with ANZ suggesting it could rise by another 0.5% (another 15,000 people) as companies get the message that there is no economic recovery from this government. So much for "better economic managers"...

"An illegitimate exercise of kāwanatanga"

That was the Waitangi Tribunal's assessment of the National regime's plans to gut the Marine and Coastal Area Act and steal the foreshore and seabed for its greedy fishing-industry donors. It found that the regime had violated te Tiriti of Waitangi by failing to consult iwi and hapu, and failed to identify any actual policy problem requiring the changes, and warned that continuing would "significantly endanger the Māori–Crown relationship".

So of course racist National are doing it anyway:

The government is forging ahead with plans to change the law governing New Zealand's foreshore and seabed, despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that appeared to undercut the rationale for the change.

The proposed legislation stems from a clause in National's coalition deal with NZ First, which promised to revisit the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act.

That commitment was driven by fears that a 2023 Court of Appeal decision could have made it significantly easier for Māori groups to win recognition of customary rights over parts of the coastline.

[...]

On Tuesday, Goldsmith confirmed to RNZ that Cabinet had agreed to press ahead with the law change regardless and to pass it before October.

Let's be clear: the underlying motive here is racism, pure and simple. Māori were having their rights over the foreshore upheld by the courts, and the white supremacist government did not like that. Neither did their donors and cronies in the aquaculture and commercial fishing industries, who did not want to pay iwi and hapu rent for the coastal space they want to use, or face an iwi veto over that use (because apparently property owners shouldn't get to decide what happens on their property if they're brown). So, they're overturning the law, and forcing the courts to revisit and overturn their decisions (rather than letting settled decisions stand as usual).

I do not expect Māori to take this lying down. We've already seen one hikoi which outnumbered the entire NZ police force five to one; I expect there'll be another. And it won't just be Māori. Modern Aotearoa recognises that Te Tiriti is the foundation of our constitution. It gives the government its right to exist. If the regime wants to rip that up, they will effectively be ripping up their own legitimacy and undermining their own foundations. And that seems like a very stupid and dangerous thing to do.

One thing is clear: if we are allowed to have a free and fair election next year - something the regime has also put in doubt - then this government must go. Whatever it does must be reversed by the next, with the courts required to revisit (again) any decisions they have been forced to revisit in the meantime. Racism and corruption cannot be permitted to stand.

"Longstanding expectations"

In her section 7 report declaring the government's voter suppression bill to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, Attorney-General Judith Collins noted that New Zealanders have had an expectation, since 1993, that electors can register to vote either on the day before polling day, or on polling day". Furthermore,

Expectations based on longstanding legislative settings are salient to judging potential prejudice and proportionality.

The TL;DR is that the prejudice from such a significant change from those longstanding expectations was more than enough to outweigh the uncertain benefits of the change on the vote-count.

That was for an expectation dating from 1993. But our expectation of being able to enrol at least the day before the election actually goes back much further than that. The relevant law is section 60 of the Electoral Act 1993. Section 60(g) is a recent (2020) addition, and allows same-day voter registration. Section 60(b) is part of the original Act, and allows registration up to the day before the poll. And as the law notes (in the handy little "compare" note at the bottom), it has a history. The current form, allowing voting by anyone who enrols before polling day - dates to 1990 (see s49). But we've allowed late enrolment well before that. The Electoral Act 1956 (s99(b)) allowed newly-qualified voters to register up until polling day, and that provision seems to go back to 1948 (s10). So our expectation that people who have moved or just turned 18 should be able to register right up to the election, and to vote as a result, goes back over three-quarters of a century, and no-one under the age of one hundred has voted under rules as restrictive as those National is proposing.

If a mere 32 year policy setting was a sufficiently longstanding expectation to make change a restriction of the right to vote, what does 77 years of stability - and fewer than 500 people who remember any different - mean?

National's policy is bullshit. It goes against the entire history of our democracy. It cannot be allowed to stand. And nor can they. Throw the tyrants out!

"A review"

When the government passes legislation trampling on civil liberties it loves to insert - and crow about - "safeguards" which will supposedly prevent abuse. For example, when it passed the Gangs Act 2024, which enables the government to designate a group as a "gang", banning its insignia and enabling all sorts of additional search and harassment powers and other fuckery - the select committee responded to concerns that protest groups would be designated by inserting a clause stating that civil disobedience for the purpose of political activism did not qualify. They also responded to concerns that groups would be designated forever by inserting a clause requiring the list to be regularly reviewed:

To ensure that the list is regularly reviewed, we also recommend inserting clause 30(3A) and (3B). These would require the Minister to review the Schedule before making a recommendation to amend it, and every 5 years if no amendments were made.

The government accepted these changes, with Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith saying in the bill's second reading debate:

To ensure that the list remains up to date, the police will review the entire list each time an addition or removal is considered, and every five years if no changes are made.

The clauses were discussed in the bill's committee stage, where it was taken to mean that the minister must check that every gang on the list still meets the criteria, and remove any that do not.

So how much of a safeguard is this really? Earlier this year police minister Mark Mitchell designated two additional gangs. I was curious to see whether he had complied with his legal obligation to review the entire schedule, so I asked for the review. His response:

There is no standalone document specifically titled or formatted as my review of Schedule 2. The review was undertaken as part of the broader policy development process that informed the introduction of the Gangs Act 2024 and the subsequent Gangs (Identified Gangs) Order 2024. As such, there is no discrete document in scope of your request.

So, he didn't need to do a review because he'd passed the law (including a list of gangs, 11 of which were outdated and removed by the select committee) just a few months earlier (unfortunately, that's not what the law actually says). Instead, the Minister pointed me at the police's advice and the relevant cabinet papers on the matter - which are interesting reading. The police's advice makes no mention of the need to review the schedule, and does not consider any gang other than those targeted for designation. As for the cabinet paper, it includes this:

I have reviewed the list of identified gangs in Schedule 2 as required under section 32(5) of the Act before making a recommendation to update the list.

Given the (lack of) documentary record, I leave it for readers to judge whether Mitchell was being honest with his cabinet colleagues, or fulfilled his legal obligations under the Act.

Meanwhile, this shows the contempt the government - and the public servants who support them - have for safeguards for our civil liberties. And it shows why it is a fool's bargain to trust them.

Voter suppression is election rigging

What do you call an election where the regime stops up to half a million people from voting, because they're more likely on historical trends to vote for the opposition? Rigged. And Labour's Willie Jackson isn't afraid to say it:

Labour MP Willie Jackson has accused the government of trying to rig next year's election through its move to block people from being able to enrol for 12 days before voting day.

[...]

In a fiery speech on Wednesday, Jackson poured contempt on the "disgraceful, rotten, useless government", accusing it of actively suppressing the vote and "vandalising democratic participation".

He pointed to official advice which noted that young people, Māori, Pasifika and Asian communities would be disproportionately affected by the changes.

"It's racist disenfranchisement," Jackson said. "It's a breach of democracy... this government risks being accused of rigging the next election."

"Risks"? I'd say they are. Its well-known that the special votes tend left, and last election they cost National two seats and an easy coalition with ACT, forcing it into the arms of NZ First. Recent polling shows a tight election, with just a seat or two between the left and the right. National's voter suppression is easily enough to do that, and ensure they are returned to power.

This change is contrary to the recommendations of the Ministry of Justice. It violates the right to vote. It is discriminatory. It is being done for partisan advantage, under the guise of "efficiency". Any election conducted under it will not be free or fair, and a government "elected" under it will not be legitimate.

Public faith in free and fair elections is absolutely foundational to democracy, and to the legitimacy of the state. National's voter suppression moves put that at risk. It cannot be allowed to stand.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day. First up is the third reading of the Auckland Harbour Board and Takapuna Borough Council Empowering Act Amendment Bill, a local bill dealing with archaic private law. Next is the first reading of Ingrid Leary's Property Law (Sunset Clauses) Amendment Bill. After that its the committee stages of Tracey McLellan's Evidence (Giving Evidence of Family Violence) Amendment Bill and Camilla Belich's Employment Relations (Employee Remuneration Disclosure) Amendment Bill. If the House moves quickly it might make a start on Cameron Brewer's Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill, in which case there will be a ballot for one bill tomorrow.

"Laser-focused"

Another week, and so another day of weather warnings, power cuts, slips, and likely flooding. Meanwhile, the government is steadfastly refusing to do anything about climate change, which is driving all this. Instead, they seem to be doing everything they possibly can to make things worse.

These weekly "1 in 100 year" weather events are costing us a fortune. But the government is still resisting making the polluters pay. Instead, they're "laser-focused on the cost-of-living" - of large, polluting industries who donate to them. As for the rest of us, if your house gets flooded, you're on your own. And if you have to move as a result, the government will stop you from voting.

Contra their propaganda, this is not "a government that focuses on what matters to [New Zealanders]". Instead they're just looting the country, while everything goes to hell in a handbasket. The quicker we kick them out of office, the better.

Feathering their cronies' nests

The central refrain of this regime has been "we can't afford it". They're constantly pleading poverty over public services, and using "tight" finances as an excuse to drive down public service wages. Meanwhile, they're nearly doubling the pay of their cronies who serve on government boards:

A Cabinet document, quietly uploaded online on Monday, shows ministers agreed to lift the maximum annual fee for chairs of governance boards from $90,000 to about $162,000.

The "Cabinet Fees Framework" is not binding but provides guidance to ministers when deciding compensation for those on a range of bodies, such as royal commissions and ministerial inquiries.

Speaking on Tuesday, Luxon said public sector fees had become completely "out of whack" with private sector rates and needed a reset.

So, just to get this clear: workers are paid too much and need a pay cut, but managers and board directors are paid too little, and need a whopping increase (probably so they can afford butter). As usual, austerity applies only to normal people, not the rich. Alternatively, the regime is just looting the public purse and engaging in upwards redistribution - as usual.

And next, of course, those higher pay rates for government boards will be used to "justify" higher pay for Ministers. Just wait...

More misogyny from National

How misogynistic is this dogshit regime? Since 2020 the Public Service Act has included explicit legal commitments to pay equity and diversity in the public service workforce.

This government is repealing them. Today they introduced a new Public Service Amendment Bill, which (among other things) repeals pay equity and freedom from bias from the "good employer" principles, and removes the promotion of diversity and inclusion as a duty of chief executives.

Reading the bill's Regulatory Impact Statement, there's a lot of mealy-mouthed bullshit about how these are things better addressed through the public sector workforce policy statement, and how "different governments take different stances on these matters". Clearly. This government, for example, does not believe in pay equity. It wants to pay women less. It also does not believe the public service should look like Aotearoa, preferring instead one which looks like local councils (where for a while there were more bald old white men called "John" than women as councillors). That position is simply not shared by the people of Aotearoa. And if we're allowed free and fair elections next year - currently in doubt due to regime plans for voter suppression - we should throw this misogynistic pack of wankers out on their arses.

Climate Change: The inevitable consequences

When National came to power in 2023, one of its first acts was to repeal all useful climate change policy. And now this is having its inevitable consequences, with he Pou a Rangi reporting that we are at significant risk of missing our 2026-35 budgets, and the 2050 target:

New Zealand is at significant risk of missing its 2050 climate target, and the government's actions have increased the risk, according to independent monitoring.

The Climate Change Commission's 2025 emissions reduction monitoring report said New Zealand had made steady progress on reducing its climate pollution, but urgent action was needed to get on track for future goals.

The report had shown the country was likely to meet the government's first emissions budget, which runs from 2022 to 2025, in part due to accounting changes in the way emissions were measured.

However, the risks of missing targets from 2026 onwards had risen in the past year, and the government's plans were insufficient to put the country on track long-term.

That's the polite way of putting it. The blunt way is that the margin on EB2 is very tight and might not happen, while there are insufficient reductions to meet EB3, and two thirds of those are marked as "significant risk of delivery" - pure hot air. So the government needs to do more. He Pou a Rangi has a bunch of suggestions - cutting pollution subsidies, pushing the shift to EVs and industrial electrification, decarbonising farming - but it seems unlikely that a government ideologically hostile to climate action will take them. Instead they're more likely to end He Pou a Rangi's statutory monitoring role, to ensure nothing undermines their real policy of doing nothing.

The good news is that this report is strong evidence for the Environmental Law Initiative's judicial review of the next emissions reduction plan, increasing the chances it will be found to be inadequate and forced to be revised. But if that happens, I guess we'll see the regime attack fundamental judicial review rights as well.

And whichever way that goes, it is crystal clear that the next government will need to take immediate action to restore and strengthen climate policy, and make up for National's three wasted years. This will mean much harder emissions cuts than we would have had to make if National had simply continued previous policy. But that's what happens when you kick the can down the road: eventually, the future arrives, and you need to actually deal with the problems you've been denying.

The full report is here.

Climate Change: the ICJ ruling

Last night the International Court of Justice provided its advisory opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change. Its very long, but the TL;DR is that states have real obligations under climate change treaties and other international law, including an obligation to limit fossil fuels, and that failing to uphold them may result in legal liability to pay compensation to injured parties. Importantly, these obligations are not just restricted to climate change treaties like the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, but stem from all sorts of other treaties and agreements, including Montreal Protocol, Biodiversity Convention, Convention on the Law of the Sea, international human rights law, and ultimately, customary international law. So merely sticking your fingers in your ears and withdrawing from climate change treaties - fuck you, America - may change some specific obligations, but ultimately does not remove them or prevent liability.

Internationally, the door is now open for countries suffering climate damage to start suing laggards and deniers and start demanding reparations, with the backing of the international legal system. But the real difference will be its effects on how laws are interpreted within states, and on climate change litigation across the world. Because most legal systems recognise or refer to the relevant international law, and most courts pay attention to the ICJ's definitive interpretation of what that means. So if countries are not meeting the obligations the ICJ says they have, their own courts may be able to say so and force them to do so.

What does it mean for Aotearoa? To give one example, back in January the National-led regime issued a new Paris NDC of a 51-55% cut in emissions by 2035 (from a 50% cut by 2030). This was... unambitious, especially in light of advice from He Pou a Rangi that we could do 55-60% by domestic action alone, and that a fair target would be in the real of 70-75%. That unambitious NDC is clearly illegal in international law, as it clearly does not reflect our "highest possible ambition", and may not be consistent with the (now legally binding) 1.5 degree target. Another country - the Cook Islands, say - could sue us to force us to raise it. The next government has a cast-iron case for doing so. And all future advice on such targets will reflect the ICJ's ruling (at least if it is competent).

Another example: states have concrete obligations to limit fossil fuels, and granting new permits was marked as an action inconsistent with that. So the legal ground under the regime's plans to restart offshore drilling and subsidise the gas industry just shifted. The climate change clauses in our free trade agreements will be interpreted accordingly, so if it wasn't already illegal and in breach of those FTAs, it definitely is now. And MFAT should be screaming at the regime about that.

Most importantly: our climate change legislation refers explicitly to our international obligations in various places - target reviews, the setting of emissions budgets and emissions reduction plans, and ETS volume limits and unit price settings. The relevant legal instruments are incorporated directly into the law of Aotearoa in the schedules to the Climate Change Response Act. In interpreting them and deciding on those obligations, New Zealand courts are likely to find the ICJ ruling persuasive. While international obligations are explicitly one of only a number of factors for consideration, there's an assumption that the government will behave legally and consistently with its obligations, so in practice they're a limit. Which means that targets, budgets, and plans which are inconsistent with the legally binding 1.5 degree temperature threshold, or with the requirement to exercise due diligence in reducing emissions - might be ruled to be unlawful and forced to be reconsidered. Judicial review just got easier, and the Environmental Law Institute's case challenging the ERP may benefit significantly.

Its less clear what it will mean for cases like Smith v Fonterra, but I guess we'll find out.

Ideally, we shouldn't have to sue our own governments to get them to stop grovelling to the fossil fuel industry and adhere to their clear international obligations. But the ICJ has just given us a weapon to do so, and the people of the world should use it.

An attack on free and fair elections

That's the only way to describe the regime's new Electoral Amendment Bill. The big change is ending same-day enrolment, which enabled over a hundred thousand people to vote last election. National wants to disenfranchise those people. Their excuse? Administrative convenience - because they refuse to properly resource the Electoral Commission to handle the load. But it is simply a cynical attempt to strap the electoral chicken, and prevent those people - primarily young people and those who have moved shortly before the election - from voting.

But that's not the only change. They're re-instating the prisoner voting ban, which explicitly violates the Bill of Rights Act, in the process giving the finger to the carefully negotiated settlement between courts and Parliament over their responsibilities under our constitution. its pure performative punching down, while also helping to gerrymander electorates with prisons in them.

There are other unpleasant changes too:

• increasing the declaration threshold for donations from $5000 to $6000, reducing transaprency over who is bribing our politicians;
• restricting public access to donation records to the last six years, limiting our ability to see who has been buying our politicians, and making bribes paid in opposition effectively invisible;
• extending the prohibition on registering new political parties, from writ day to the entire regulated period, in an effort to stifle political competition;
• expanding the Electoral Commission from 3 to 7 members, enabling them to pack it with cronies, US-style.

So, reducing voting rights, transparency, and competition, while creating a one-off opportunity to put their thumb on the electoral scale for the next election. All of this runs completely counter to our democratic norms, and to public demand, which overwhelmingly favours more transparency. Combined with the regime's attacks on protest rights, it paints an increasingly dark picture of the character of this regime - and makes it clear that we need to oust it at the first opportunity.

Willis says "let them eat butter"

Butter has become a flashpoint in the cost-of-living crisis, with the price of the baking staple doubling in the last 14 months, and people queuing for cheap blocks. Its got so bad that National - the party of rich farmers - has had to pretend to care, with Nicola Willis having a meeting with Fonterra's CEO in an effort to talk down the price. The result? everything is fine, apparently:

The Finance Minister does not believe New Zealanders are getting a "raw deal" on butter, but has accepted there is no getting away from how expensive it is right now.

We’re not getting a raw deal? Bullshit. We can see it every time we go to the supermarket. But Willis is paid $304,300 a year plus slush, so she can buy all the butter she wants. Which makes the above sound a lot like "let them eat butter".

So who’s to blame? Willis is desperate to deflect attention from Fonterra, so blames the supermarkets:

The meeting had reinforced Willis' interest in increasing supermarket competition to put downward pressure on the price of butter.

"All roads lead back to supermarket competition. I continue to believe that is the most powerful lever that the government has on this issue. We will never be able to control global dairy prices. What we can influence is the amount of competition in New Zealand's grocery sector and we have a lot of work underway to address that."

While the supermarket cartel is absolutely part of the problem, National's "work programme" is basically "hope a third party joins the oligopoly and gets in on the gouging". So they have no real solutions there. And they're certainly not going to do what is necessary: legislate to forcibly break up the cartel and forbid mergers in the sector or its underlying logistics to prevent such accumulation of market power.

And none of this should be letting Fonterra off the hook. Because while there's a global price, there's no reason we, the people who bear the environmental costs of the dairy industry's profiteering and who subsidise them billions of dollars a year in water and carbon, should pay it. And we have tools we can use to ensure we get some benefit from hosting this parasitic, polluting industry. For example, we could ban or restrict dairy exports to ensure they served the domestic market first. Or just directly regulate to require them to sell domestically at a low price. Because seeing butter exported overseas while it becomes unaffordable to kiwis is simply unacceptable.

Obviously, regulating Fonterra would be bad for farmers. But it would be far better for the rest of us. And why shouldn’t those subsidised rural parasites give something back to the community they leech off for once?