"Innocent until proven guilty" - even for terrorists

While the American people have voted for torture and madness, their courts at least seem to have retained some regard for American values. A federal court has halted the military commission "trial" of a suspected terrorist at Guantanamo until the accused has had a chance to have his status determined by an independent and impartial tribunal; it seems that trying someone before a kangaroo court without having actually proved that they are an "enemy combatant" (rather than a prisoner of war or ordinary criminal) violates the presumption of innocence. Who'd have thunk it?

Needless to say, the Department of Justice is appealing. I guess "innocent until proven guilty" is something else Americans voted against last week.

Don't make it easy for them

Greyshade, commenting on the US election, points out that

The reelection of George Bush is a salutary reminder for liberals (in any sense of the word) that democracy includes "rule by people who are wrong" no less than freedom of thought includes "freedom for the thought we loathe". We must reflect that the religious right, neoconservatives, bigots and the simply stupid have the same right to determine the direction of a country as any of us.

Absolutely. There is no question that rednecks get to vote, and there is no question that they get to run the country when they are in the majority. Bush won the election fair and square, and so he will generally get to do what he likes for the next four years, within the limits proscribed by the constitution. However, that does not mean that anyone should make it easy for him. Internationally, the world should let Americans know that if their pet monkey wants to play at hegemon, he will be doing it alone. Domestically, the Democrats have means of exercising power even when in the minority, and they should use them to the full. This does not mean filibustering everything, but it does mean impeding any attempt to alter the constitutional structure (including altering the balance of power on the Supreme Court), vigorously opposing Bush's domestic policy positions, and making sure that he is held fully responsible for them. One of the reasons the Democrats lost is that they weren't willing enough to strongly advocate for their positions and stand up for what they believed in. Hopefully being backed into an electoral corner will encourage them to do just that.

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Constar

US electoral reform

In the wake of the US election, thoughts are naturally turning to electoral reform. Kevin Drum considers the fact that less than twenty of the 435 congressional seats are competitive, and urges an end to gerrymandering (essentialy, gaming electoral boundaries to magnify the effects of a small preference into a huge one, by "packing, stacking, and cracking"). But that seems to be only part of the problem.

Consider the oft-raised Republican canard of "voter fraud". I know of no other western democracy where it is an issue - not because we tolerate it, but because we have strong and robust processes for detecting and prosecuting it, coupled with a political culture that it is simply unacceptable to win by cheating. Which part of this is the US missing?

Likewise, I know of no other western democracy where voters have to queue for nine hours in order to vote.

Many of these problems seem to stem from fragmentation of electoral law and processes. There will be a certain amount of that in any federal system, but when things like ballot design or the voting process vary from county to county within a state, then something is seriously wrong.

Given the diversity of the United States, these problems will not exist everywhere, but the point is that they should not exist anywhere. And fixing them is relatively trivial: requiring that each state, within its borders, uses one process and one ballot format for all federal elections (meaning that the presidential ballot papers look identical whereever you live within a state, while the congressional ones vary by district; if the state or county want to run other elections at the same time, they can do them on a different ballot paper), has a unified electoral roll, and properly resources their election authorities. How hard can it be?

As for gerrymandering, again serious democracies have their electoral boundaries set by independent commissions according to defined rules (to do with electoral size and not needlessly separating "communities of interest"). This does not mean an end to safe seats - some will exist by geography alone - but it does mean an end to their political creation. Of course, the real solution is to adandon single-member districts for multi-member STV (which ensures minority representation), but I can't imagine people who think that FPP was given to them by God going for that. Unfortunately, while the federal government has the power to set regulations here (and even to change the electoral system used), there's a strong presumption that it should be left to the states (that "government of states, not of people" problem again). Which means any move for change really has to come at that level, not at the federal level.

Abandoning NATO

Jonathan Steele argues in the Guardian that with the US taking an increasingly unilateral path, it is time to terminate NATO. The alliance was useful during the Cold War when Europe was threatened with Soviet invasion, but it is now past its use-by date; all it does now is provide a lever by which the US can bully Europe into backing its imperial ambitions. Add to the fact that NATO is now a signficant barrier to Europe standing on its own feet militarily (or at least making its own decisions), and the case is compelling.

But what about the historic good ties with the US? Freedland notes that

Ending Nato would not mean that Europe rejects good relations with the US. Nor does it rule out police and intelligence collaboration on issues of concern, such as the way to protect our countries against terrorism. Europe could still join the US in war, if there was an international consensus and the electorates of individual countries supported it.

But Europeans must reach their decisions from a position of genuine independence. The US has always based its approach to Europe on a calculation of interest rather than from sentimental motives. Europe should do no less. We can and, for the most part, should be America's friends. Allies, no longer.

Britain will never go for it, of course - but they're ambivalent about Europe anyway. The core European countries, OTOH - France, Germany, and the Benelux, who have seen all efforts to establish a European military screwed up by the US insisting on its dominance - probably feel very differently about the matter.

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New Zealand Political Comments

Grassroots

Further to the Alliance's demise, the Herald quotes from a letter sent to Alliance members by the outgoing leadership:

"We give notice that after the conference we will set up a new broad left activist organisation that will not run in the next election under its own banner, but will organise support for the Maori Party and Green Party and other progressive groups or individuals contesting electorate constituencies as appropriate."

I've argued for a while that the left needs its own think tank to provide intellectual ammunition to oppose the BRT, but I think that it also needs something like this: a grassroots organisation to encourage left-wing parties to stay left and maximise the chances of a left (rather than centrist) coalition government. It's good work, and I'm glad that the former Alliance leadership wants to do it. However, I also hope they'll avoid the usual left-wing problem of holding a grudge, and support any credible candidates the Alliance chooses to run.

Thoughts on the Alliance

There's been much coverage over the weekend of the "disintegration" of the Alliance, following the decision of its former leaders not to stand for office. But having read Span's take on the matter, I'm not sure that it's a disintegration so much as an opportunity for rebirth. The outgoing leadership had essentially lost interest in the party, seeing the Maori Party and the Greens as more credible left-wing vehicles. Under these circumstances, it's appropriate that they move on and allow others with greater commitment to take their place.

Unfortunately, commitment does not equal success, and the odds are against the Alliance making a comeback. MMP is effectively stacked to prevent new parties from gaining a foothold; the 5% threshhold is a signficant barrier, and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy - people won't vote for small parties because they have no chance of getting in (which is why we should ditch it). Which means that the Alliance contesting the list raises the prospect of a potentially vital 2 - 3% of the left vote disappearing into oblivion, or even of them taking the Greens with them. And as a left-wing voter, that's the last thing I want. Fortunately, the Alliance seems to realise that, and hopefully will be willing to endorse another left-wing party if they don't think they're going to make it.

Which really means that the Alliance's hopes lie in mounting a credible campaign for an electorate. They've done it before - Laila Harre made a good run in Waitakere in 1999, and Sandra Lee won a seat under FPP - but its still a big ask. And I can't imagine Labour stepping aside to let them in. Still, with the right candidate, in the right electorate, they might be able to make it...

The real problem, however, is pointed out by Just Left: the lack of a niche. When the Alliance was founded, Labour had clearly abandoned its left-wing principles, allowing a large amount of room for parties to the left of them. Now that Labour seems to have rediscovered its roots somewhat, there is less space to occupy. It's difficult even to come up with a killer issue on which to campaign - employment law has been fixed, the government is rebuilding state services, and has ended privatisations. A party to the left of Labour now simply represents "more" rather than a genuinely different approach. And I'm simply not sure that that's enough to get a party without much of a public profile back into Parliament...

Constitutional inquiries

The government finally seems to be getting its act together on constitutional review, with a proposal for a broad select committee style inquiry set to go before Cabinet. While it's dissappointing for those who wanted a full Royal Commission, I don't think it really deserves DPF's scorn as a Clayton's review. Yes, it will take time - but it needs it. The issues under consideration require a broad consensus if there is to be change, and if Don Brash was really interested in a debate on our constitutional structure (rather than simply trying to stoke tension to get votes), he'd support it. As for DPF's sneering at the idea of a "conversation witht he people", it depends on how it is done. If it is truly an attempt to promote grassroots discussion (as suggested by the Greens), then it should be supported. It's our constitution, after all; shouldn't we be involved in the process?

I think it's interesting that the government is also trying to focus squarely on the Treaty and put republicanism and a written constitution to one side for the moment. As I've argued here, the Treaty really is the prior issue, in that our answers on the other questions are going to depend significantly on how we approach the Treaty. Entrenching it as supreme law (as suggested by the Royal Commission on the Electoral System and pushed by Geoffrey Palmer) will drive us towards a more formal written constitution, for example, while the question of permanant Maori representation (or even, as ocassionally suggested, an upper house) will depend on what principles are extracted from it. Which means that this inquiry really is going to have to be followed by another one to deal with those other issues...

Can we fire them?

The chief executives of Auckland's local bodies unanimously agreed a "code of silence" on the issue of contaminated former agricultural land. I'm horrifed - firstly, that any local body would make such a decision (what happened to openness? What happened to informing people about dangers to their health?), but secondly, that it was made by the chief executives, who are unelected and now seemingly unaccountable to anyone.

Can they fire the fuckers?

Fighting the wrong war

A couple of months ago, US forces stormed Samarra in an effort to drive out the Iraqi resistance. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have worked. The resistance, it seems, have read their Mao:

When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws.

The same thing is going to happen in Fallujah. The US will take the city at the cost of several hundred civilian lives, but the resistance will simply go to ground. Then, when the US forces relax or turn their attention elsewhere, they will pop back up again to cause more trouble.

The US military have read their Mao too, and have been on the receiving end of these tactics in Vietnam. But despite this, they have failed to learn the lesson. The only way to defeat this sort of guerilla movement without committing widespread atrocities (which would be ironic given their claimed status as "liberators" of Iraq) is to win the battle for hearts and minds. Unfortunately, the US seems to be ignoring that battle (or else doing everything in their power to lose it). They are fighting the wrong war - is it any wonder that they seem to be losing?

Submissions and democracy

Big News asks (or rather, asked) "what is the point of opposing government bills when you are ignored?". The immediate cause of his complaint is the supposed lack of attention paid to submissions on recent legislation. While I can't comment on the committee process for the Care of Children Bill, having read the report on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill, I think it is wrong to conclude that the committee process has been a waste of time. While the committee failed to reach a verdict, the bill was still discussed, and amendments proposed and considered. The "failure" (if it can be called that) was political, in that no solid agreement could be reached on which amendments would be pursued. But reading past the rhetoric, there's very definitely a broad agreement between all participants but National and ACT on the general direction, and its just a matter of hammering out the details. I have no doubt that a compromise will be reached; what's unusual is that it wasn't reached in advance. And that's why I don't really consider it a "failure" - if a deal had been cut in advance, the public would have had far less input, and this way there is still a lot of scope for those with opinions on the bill to lobby parties as to which sorts of amendments they should support.

Likewise, I think it is simply false to claim that the submissions were wasted or have been ignored. Those with a memory longer than a goldfish may recall that when the bill went to select committee, the government's solution was all about crown ownership and management. Now they're essentially talking trusteeship and co-management through the vehicle of Maori Reservations. This change didn't come from thin air - it came from the submissions.

This is not to say that the government has paid equal attention or given equal weight to every submission, and nor should it. As I've said before, any solution to the foreshore and seabed needs the overwhelming support of Maori if it is to stick; it therefore makes sense to pay more attention to Maori concerns, and to move further towards their desired solution than that of those who oppose the bill on redneck grounds. Those who simply thought that the government should legislate to crush Maori claims were never going to get what they wanted - both because of Labour's political bent, and because it is not a lasting solution - but their submissions did still fill a purpose, in letting Labour know how far they might be able to move.

Big News also complains that

Come the final readings of these bills, the Government flip-flops. First its off to United Future for the Families Commission, will go to NZ First to pass the Foreshore and Seabed Legislation, and to the Greens to pass the Care of Children Bill.

That's not how voters wanted MMP to pan out.

Firstly, this isn't "flip-flopping" - the government isn't changing its beliefs or goals in any way. What it is doing is shopping around for a party which shares those beliefs or goals on any particular issue. What's inconsistent about that?

Secondly, it's exactly how I wanted MMP to pan out. In a democracy, the majority should shift; a permanant coalition creates a situation where one faction wins all the time, and another loses all the time, which simply isn't healthy. It's also important to note that the government's support is far broader than Big News suggests - 80% of all bills gain broad support, and even National and ACT have backed some legislation. And if nobody backs their legislation, then it simply doesn't happen.

But underneath these two complaints about the democratic process is the real issue, which is that Big News is upset that Parliament is passing legislation he doesn't like (and I say "Parliament" because he seems to be mostly complaining about conscience votes rather than party ones). But he's just going to have to grow up and learn to live with this. Contrary to his seeming belief, "democracy" does not mean "always getting your own way, regardless of how little support you have"...

Update: Fixed link. Big News renamed his post, and in the process removed the question I was quoting him as asking.

Roundup Ready Coca

Wired has a story about the emergance of a Roundup-Ready Coca strain in Colombia. The US government has been paying the Colombians to conduct a massive aerial spraying campaign in an effort to eliminate the Coca plant and thereby reduce cocaine production. Unfortunately, the plants just aren't dying anymore. There's a lot of speculation that the drug-lords simply bought themselves a few genetic engineers and used published techniques to implant Monsanto's (patented) Roundup-Ready gene, but it seems instead that the resistance is natural and propagated by farmers distributing cuttings to one another (which Wired naturally compares to file sharing). The US government of course is officially in denial, refusing to believe that simple-minded South American peasants could vanquish the American chemical industry with ten thousand year-old techniques, while making plans to escalate from herbicide to biological warfare agents. I guess they don't care about the prospect of a crop-eating fungus destroying people's crops and causing a famine if it's Colombians who will starve...

The economic backlash begins?

Economists have been warning for a while that Bush's economic policies of tax cuts for the rich coupled with increased spending would have consequences, and it looks like the backlash is already beginning. Despite positive news on unemployment and oil prices, and a stock market going wild at the thought of a return to gilded-age kleptocracy, the US dollar has fallen to a record low against the Euro. Why? Because people are selling out:

"It seems now that the longer-term investors like pension funds and perhaps monetary authorities are either hedging their dollar risk or moving assets out of the United States.

"It looks like the dollar has further to fall," Mr McMahon said.

While this may simply be a blip, if people are seriously divesting from the US because they don't want to be exposed to Bush and his trillion dollar deficits, it spells big trouble. The US runs an enormous trade deficit as well as a fiscal (government) one; it is therefore dependent on large influxes of foreign capital every day to keep the money-go-round spinning. If that capital dries up, or if foreign investors decide they want to get off, then you get Argentina. And a falling dollar, which erodes the value of US-dollar denominated assets, will simply encourage more people to get off...

Ratified

Russia has finally ratified the Kyoto Protocol. It's been approved by the upper house and signed by Putin, which means it will come into effect in 90 days.

I think this shows the way forward now that we are facing four more years of Bush. Under the Bush presidency, the US has not engaged constructively with the world, and it seems even less likely to in the future. And so, we are simply going to have to work around them...

Votes

The Hansard Reporting Service has been kind enough to provide me with the details of last night's voting on amendments to the Care of Children Bill. They note that they have not been proofread, and that there may be errors in the number counts or even the voting records themselves. Still, this is the best I can get until the Hansard Advance comes out next week.

There were three votes of interest. The first was on Supplementary Order Paper 294, from United Future's Murray Smith, proposing that no teenager be permitted to have an abortion without written notification of parental consent.

Ayes (26): Adams, Awatere Huata, Baldock, Brown, Carter J, Catchpole, Collins, Connell, Copeland, Duynhoven, English, Field, Gudgeon, Heatley, Jones, Mark, McNair, Ogilvy, Paraone, Perry, Peters J, Peters W, Smith M, Smith N, Turia, Turner.

Noes (94): Alexander, Anderton, Ardern, Barker, Barnett, Benson-Pope, Beyer, Bradford, Brash, Brownlee, Burton, Carter C, Carter D, Chadwick, Choudhary, Clark, Cosgrove, Coddington, Cullen, Cunliffe, Dalziel, Donald, Donnelly, Duncan, Dunne, Eckhoff, Ewen-Street, Fairbrother, Fitzsimons, Gallagher, Goff, Gosche, Hartley, Hawkins, Hereora, Hide, Hobbs, Hodgson, Horomia, Hughes, Hunt, Hutchison, Kedgley, King, Laban, Locke, Mackey J, Mackey M, Maharey, Mahuta, Mallard, Newman, O'Connor, Okeroa, Parker, Peck, Pettis, Pillay, Prebble, Ririnui, Robertson, Robson, Roy, Samuels, Shirley, Simich, Sowry, Stewart, Sutton, Swain, Tamihere, Tanczos, te Heuheu, Tizard, Turei, Ward, Wilson, Woolerton, Yates.

Apart from the usual suspects from United Future, National, and NZFirst (who really are a bunch of moral neanderthals), there's also two Labour MPS: Harry Duynhoven and Taito Phillip Field. I'm not sure that they're really in the right party. And judging by Tariana Turia's vote, Labour is well rid of her.

(Refreshingly, this was a morally authoritarian motion that was not backed by a single ACT MP. Maybe they're remembering that "liberal" word they claim to be so proud of...)

Two amendments were suggested by National's Judith Collins for a milder regime which still required the notification of a parent or judge. The first vote attempted to insert two clauses.

Ayes (45): Adams, Alexander, Ardern, Awatere Huata, Baldock, Brash, Brown, Brownlee, Carter D, Carter J, Catchpole, Collins, Connell, Copeland, Dunne, Duynhoven, English, Field, Franks, Goudie, Gudgeon, Heatley, Jones, Key, Mapp, Mark, McCully, McNair, Ogilvy, Paraone, Perry, Peters J, Peters W, Power, Rich, Ryall, Scott, Smith L, Smith M, Smith N, Tisch, Turner, Williamson, Wong, Worth.

Noes (75): Anderton, Barker, Barnett, Benson-Pope, Beyer, Bradford, Burton, Carter C, Chadwick, Choudhary, Clark, Coddington, Cosgrove, Cullen, Cunliffe, Dalziel, Donald, Donnelly, Duncan, Dyson, Eckhoff, Ewen-Street, Fairbrother, Fitzsimons, Gallagher, Goff, Gosche, Hartley, Hawkins, Hereora, Hide, Hobbs, Hodgson, Horomia, Hughes, Hunt, Hutchison, Kedgley, King, Laban, Locke, Mackey J, Mackey M, Maharey, Mahuta, Mallard, Newman, O'Connor, Okeroa, Parker, Peck, Pettis, Pillay, Prebble, Ririnui, Robertson, Robson, Roy, Samuels, Shirley, Simich, Sowry, Stewart, Sutton, Swain, Tamihere, Tanczos, te Heuheu, Tizard, Turei, Turia, Ward, Wilson, Woolerton, Yates.

The second vote, on Supplementary Order Paper 293, was almost identical, with Bill English and Hutchison switching positions (so English voted against, and Hutchinson for).

Stephen Franks betrays himself as numbering among the moral conservatives. here the dichotomy between Labour and National couldn't be any more stark, with only the same two labour MPs voting for this, while it was backed by around 80% of National MPs.

There was also a fourth vote, on an amendment proposed by NZFirst's Dail Jones, which was defeated 97 - 22. Unfortunately, I don't know what it was, so I'll hold back on the voting record on that one until I find out whether it is relevant.

Update (06/11/2004): Added links to amendments.

It's the center, stupid

SageNZ loks at the NBR's poll showing that more Kiwis consider themselves right than left, and asks So why the hell are helengrad in power?. The answer is in the part of the spectrum he doesn't talk about: the center. It's the largest group, and Labour dominates it - and rather than fighting for this centre ground (or trying to shift it significantly), National under Brash are going harder and harder right.

There's also the fact that in New Zealand, support for public services and the welfare state is not simply a left wing position, but stretches a long way up the spectrum. But by saying essentially that they want to repeat the failed policies of the 90's, which actively threatened these core components of New Zealand society (remember the hospital reforms, anyone?), National are cutting themselves off from the bulk of New Zealanders. Which frankly suits me just fine.

So, to put it bluntly: Labour are still in power because their policies are far more acceptable to the majority of New Zealanders than those offered as an "alternative". And as long as National looks as if it is stealing its policies from ACT or the Business Round Table, it is likely to remain that way.

Victory on abortion notification

Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to defeat two amendments to the Care of Children Bill which would have required doctors to notify the parents of teenagers requesting an abortion. Judith Collins' amendment proposing that either parents or a family court judge be informed was defeated 75 - 45. Murry Smith's proposal to prevent any teenager from having any abortion without written confirmation that parents had been advised (in effect, to use notification as a barrier) was defeated 94 - 25. This represents a victory for the status-quo, and a defeat for the relgious wingnuts.

I'll post voting records when I receive them. This is the sort of vote where we want to know who voted how, because it will affect our judgements of MPs regardless of which side we are on.

Update: Forgot the link, dammit.

Dichotomies

Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram points out that the inheritors of the American dream are the Democrats. All the things that people admire about the US, and which Americans quite rightly point to as national achievements, came from states which backed John Kerry:

- The thirteen original states that brought us the Constitution voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry.
- The states that didn’t secede and which fought against slavery voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry.
- Black America which brought us in Martin Luther King, one of the greatest moral exemplars of modern times as well as the blues, jazz and soul voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry.
- California, home of the modern motion picture industry, voted for Kerry.

What'd the "red states" give us, by contrast?

• The states which seceeded from the Union to protect the "right" of men to own other men voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.
• The states which opposed civil rights and gave us the Ku Klux Klan voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.
• The states which voted for bigotry and rejected any legal recognition of gay couples voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.

In short: slavery, bigotry, and hate. The contrast couldn't be any greater.

Also on Crooked Timber: Kieran Healy has some interesting maps of voter distribution. While by counties, it looks as if you can see the red/blue split from space (basically coming down to urban cosmpolitans vs rural hicks), a continuous distribution which colours counties with a mix of red and blue depending on the proportions of Republicans and Democrats shows that the picture isn't quite that clear-cut...

Paying the price

Tony Blair sent a British unit to Baghdad to cover for the Americans. Now, three of them are dead, and more look likely to follow. Take a big bow, Tony!

The British should never have sent their troops into an area where the security situation had been defined by American stupidity and ignorance. They are now paying the price for the Americans' treatment of Iraqis, for the fundamental lack of respect which saw every "hajji" as the enemy and placed no value on Iraqi lives.

Tinfoil hats indeed

The Sock Thief points to a post on Crooked Timber entitled "MASSIVE VOTING MACHINE FRAUD!" and calls them

Desperate, pathetic, counter-productive.

I suspected that's what they were like.

But perhaps he should actually read the article rather than unthinkingly reacting to the headline or its author. For a start, it's about Venezuela, not the recent US election. Secondly, it's in part a commentary about how the dispute has been conducted honestly and respectfully, rather than (for example) in the manner Sock Thief so obviously prefers. But why let what people have actually written get in the way of what Sock Thief thinks they have written? Easier simply to label them tinfoil-hat wearers, while continuing to see Bush-hating anti-Americanism everywhere. Tinfoil hats indeed...

Endorsements

The White House has been quick to label yesterday's results as a strong endorsement of the President, and there's really no other way to see it. The American people have endorsed Bush - and by doing so endorsed Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, disappearances and torture, lies about WMDs, and an imperialistic attitude towards the rest of the world. They saw the photos of the hooded and wired Iraqi standing on his box, and of Lynndie England dragging her helpless and naked victim around on a leash, and they voted for it.

Like the Dred Scott decision, this endorsement is going to be a permanent stain on the US's record, and take a long, long time to live down.

Foreshore and seabed: reporting back

The Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation committee has reported back - or rather, failed to report back - on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. Their reports can be found here.

The Labour-Progressive section centres on the ability to create "Maori Reservations" under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993, and suggests that this is a form of trusteeship solution. I'll need to look at the law a little more closely before making any judgement on that.

National's section is predictable, calling the bill "divisive" and expressing the opinion that Parliament had not intended the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 to apply to the foreshore and seabed. Which misses the point that Maori claims do not rest on that act, but on the long-standing common-law doctrine of aboriginal title. They also oppose customary rights as they encourage "rent seeking behaviour", while insisting that the rights of existing property owners (including, presumably, their right to charge or impose conditions on those wanting to impinge on their property) be protected. Their overall thrust is one of property rights for all - except brown people.

ACT opposes the bill as an infringement on private property rights - but also on the basis that government should not be attempting to define Tikanga Maori with respect to coastal land ownership. Of course, if the government doesn't define it, the courts will - but I suspect that they'd object to that too (and have in the case of the Wanganui headwaters case). So their "respect for private property" essentially boils down to a denial of any recognition of the basis of that property, no different from the racism of Justice Prendergast.

ACT also opposes customary usage rights, on the contradictory grounds that they "fail to provide the holder with any meaningful or clear property right" while at the same time "invite application as instruments of leverage for obtaining blackmail payments". But the ability to make such side deals (or "blackmail payments" as ACT calls them) was one of the chief purposes of the RMA - it freed people up to decide for themselves the value of their property rights, without involving the state. ACT's real complaint, as with all of their whining about the RMA, is about the distribution of property rights, not with the ability to make deals. And in this case, they're objecting to the thought that anyone brown (or rather, anyone other than a developer?) might posses such rights.

The Greens have a constructive report which favours the crown granting only inalienable title, negotiated co-management, and protection of public rights of access. They seem to favour a trusteeship model, with the sole difference of which party the underlying title is vested in. Frankly, if public access and recreational use is guaranteed, it doesn't matter who owns it, and if this sort of solution is acceptable to Maori, the government should adjust the bill to suit.

United Future is also constructive, and suggest both further consultation and a number of technical amendments. One interesting one (which is also supported by the Greens) is a requirement for a supermajority to alienate any foreshore or seabed in the future. While I sympathise with the sentiment, such a clause would (for example) prevent any grant of foreshore or seabed as part of a Treaty settlement. Given the desire of right-wing parties to play politics over righting the injustices of the past, I think that this would be a bad idea.

The independent specialist advisor's report has a lot of interesting material about customary rights and aboriginal title and integrating these with the common law. The ISA favours ancestral connection as a "given", requiring proof only for its boundaries, and given the cultural context of maori as tangata whenua, this is fair enough. However, they separate this sort of ancestral connection (granting a general right to participate in the planning process) from guardianship or co-management, which should still require some form of court order.

The ISA also calls for the redress provision (which currently calls for negotiations) to be modified to state that redress will consist of the recognition of some form of qualified title, to be exercised subject to certain conditions: in other words, co-management or trusteeship. Which again is a solution I can support. The core problem with the bill is that it threatens to rob Maori of aboriginal title; specifying redress in this fashion makes it clear that aboriginal title is being codified and protected, rather than extinguished.

So, there's a lot of good stuff in the report, and far more agreement than you'd get simply from reading the press releases. There's probably a way forward here, and I look forward to seeing the government's proposed amendments.

Beacons of hope

DPF seems to think that my comment about the Soviet Union having once been a beacon of hope was some sort of endorsement. Hardly - like DPF, I think that it was a murderous totalitarian despotism whose passing should not be mourned for an instant. At the same time, I recognise the fact that, in the 1920's and 30's, it really did seem to hold out the hope of a better society to a great many people in the west, and was looked to as a model to be emulated. Stalin finished that, though the seeds of its downfall were present right from the beginning, both in the bloody manner in which it came about, and in an ideology which followed Rousseau in thinking that people could - or should - be "forced to be free".

But I guess that sort of recognition of historical fact is just a little too nuanced for those who can't go beyond "communism = bad"...

As for the US, Just Left lays out why the United States was a beacon of hope: the values espoused in the US Declaration of Independence, and its constitution, of freedom, equality, and tolerance, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". As Jordan says:

The real reason America fires so many hearts in praise and anger is that the values it claims to stand for speak to everyone, and usually to the better part of people.

Unfortunately, a majority of voting Americans no longer seem to believe in those values anymore. Quite apart from the election of Bush and endorsement of his policies (more on that later), they also voted to ban gay marriage in eleven states. The US is no longer a beacon of hope or freedom - it is a nation of theocratic bigots.

The other elections

Almost a month ago there were three elections, two of which remained unsettled. But today, Afghanistan has a president, and I have a District Health Board. Congratulations to Hamid Karzai, and congratulations to Datamail and Electionz.com, who ensured that what should have been a simple election took as long to resolve as one requiring ballots to be transported on donkeys and a probe into irregularities...

Bigger news than it sounds

I know people can't hear about the link between cows and global warming without cracking up with laughter at the thought of cow flatulance and "fart taxes" - so I don't really expect people to have paid much attention to today's story in the Dominion-Post about a wee pill to save the planet. But it's big news, and good news, and worth paying attention to.

The short version: urine - cow, human, or otherwise - has nitrates in it. When "deposited", nitrates do two things: they act as fertiliser, which (given the tendency for water to flow downhill) eventually ends up in the nearest stream, then the nerest large body of water, and gives us messes like Lake Rotoiti and algal blooms. And secondly, it breaks down into nitrous oxide, a very powerful greenhouse gas which makes up a large portion of New Zealand's (and the world's) emissions.

The good news is that New Zealand scientists have invented a pill that reduces the amount of nitrogen in cow urine. Which means less pollution in our waterways, and lower greenhouse emissions (which with the Kyoto Protocol almost certain to come into force, will save us money). There's also the prospect of international sales - which will help other countries reduce their emissions as well.

The problem is that there seems to be little incentive for farmers to actually use the thing, and therefore little incentive to reduce emissions. And any policy to make them do it (by regulation, for example) is going to have significant enforcement problems. The easiest mechanism would have been to rely on market incentives - a pollution tax on cows, with a rebate for reduction - but the government has already backed away from this sort of mechanism (the fools). Which leaves direct subsidies (which still run into the incentive problem), or using the projects mechanism. I think the latter is the answer, but rather than offering carbon credits to farmers on an individual basis, it would be better to try and cut a deal with Fonterra to provide credits in exchange for their enforcing emission reduction through a code of practice.

Shrinking coalition watch

Hungary is next off the sinking ship, and will withdraw its 300 troops by March. While they're non-combatants (similar to New Zealand's contingent), it still marks a withdrawl of international support for the US project in Iraq, backed by enormous public opposition to the US in Hungary.

Four More Years

While Ohio is still undecided, things aren't exactly looking good, and several media outlets have called the election for Bush. It's looking as if we'll be facing four more years. Four more years in which Bush will further isolate the world's most powerful nation from the international community. Four more years in which Bush will continue to undermine human rights and international law. And four more years in which America will continue its transformation from a shining beacon of freedom into a shitty little despotism which condones (if not practices) torture and disappearances.

A recent New Statesman editorial commented that having watched one great beacon of hope - the Soviet Union - collapse into a nightmare, the world could hardly bear it if the other one - the United States - fell as well. But that seems to be what is happening. There's not a fuck of a lot separating Osama bin Laden's Islamofascists and Dubya's Christian fundamentalists - they even follow the same god. The only real difference lies in who they want to kill. There's nothing there worth believing in, and nothing to hope for, except maybe that they'll all kill each other so that we members of the reality-based community can get on with our lives in peace.

Amputation

It's clear after yesterday's question time that Helen Clark is preparing to amputate the supperating wound that is John Tamihere. Pressed on the allegations against him, she repeatedly declared that she shared the opposition's concerns. And in monday's press conference, she said she that she would not wait for the SFO to finish its investigation before making a decision. The implication is that Tamihere will be sacked from Cabinet when the QC's investigation is complete. Depending on what it finds, he may later be reinstated, but certainly not while the SFO is still looking into possible fraud.

The question then is whether Tamihere will go for a by-election (and thereby force an early election), or whether he'll take his medecine like a good boy...

Update: The amputation is happening sooner than I thought - according to One News, Tamihere will resign his cabinet seat within the hour, and retire to the backbenches.

The world holds its breath

That's what it feels like. America has a choice today, between being a part of the world or waging war upon it. And everyone is watching and waiting to see which way they jump...

New kiwi blog

Dialectical Materialism - filling the Marxist niche.

Turnout

According to a secondhand report from a friend-of-a-friend in Milwaukee (hi Jim!), early voting is so popular there that there is a four hour wait to vote. And according to Kevin Drum,

In Florida, Iowa, and Tennessee, about a third of all registered voters have already voted.

This is good news for democracy - high turnout is always better than low - and good news for the Democrats - if people actually vote, they tend to win. But of course we won't know until tomorrow afternoon...

Maori representation

Span has a good post on the history of the Maori seats, in which she attacks the myth that they were established to ensure Maori representation, pointing out that their history is one of ensuring that Maori were under-represented. She begins with the establishment of the seats in 1867:

At that time eligible Maori voters (considerably less than the number of adult Maori) were at least a quarter of the voting population. But non-Maori were given 60 seats to represent them, while Maori were given four. Yes, four. You read that right - four (4). Quite ignoring the voter eligibility dodginess, they should still have got 20, to be proportionate. But no, four was deemed sufficient to represent Maori in Parliament.

There's some quibbling over the numbers - according to the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System, there were 72 general seats, not 60 - but the fact remains that from their outset, Maori were consciously denied full representation by the New Zealand government, and while the dramatic growth of the non-Maori population made this under-representation less severe, it was still present, and still deliberate. While many of the problems with the Maori seats (such as the denial until 1937 of a secret ballot, or until 1949 of a formal electoral roll) seem to have stemmed from neglect - lawmakers just not caring about Maori - one thing that Span misses is that underrepresentation was consciously and deliberately renewed as recently as 1976. In 1975, the Rowling Labour government introduced the "Maori option" allowing Maori to choose which roll they would be on; they also made Maori seats subject to the rules as other seats, with their number varying with the numbers on the Maori roll, and their boundaries set by the Representation Commission rather than the Governor-General. Muldoon kept the former change, but reversed the latter. While coincidentally there would have been around four Maori seats at that time, not permitting the number of seats to increase along with the roll represented a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise Maori.

Much is made by the right of the fact that the Maori seats were originally a temporary measure, designed to ensure (under)represenation until permanant arrangements were made (similar measures were taken for West Coast gold-miners). But this overlooks the fact that the seats were made permanent in 1876 and reaffirmed by subsequent legislation. Hearkening back to "original intent" misses the fact that that intent changed in response to changing circumstances. But then, isn't that what conservatives do?

As for the seats themselves, it's instructive to read the Royal Commission report. They recognised the importance of the seats to Maori as a recognition of their status under the Treaty, and felt very strongly that Maori interests ought to be represented by Maori MPs. However, they also noted that the Ghettoisation of the Maori vote reduced its power, in that general MPs were not accountable to Maori, while the fact that the Maori electorates were all safe Labour seats meant that Labour could to some extent take them for granted. The Royal Commission believed that Maori interests would be best served if all parties had to compete for the Maori vote, and favoured the elimination of the seats in favour of an electoral system which properly represented minorities. However, it seems that MMP has met this challenge by making all parties accountable to Maori through the party vote. The number of Maori seats has since grown with the Maori roll, emphasising their importance to Maori, but they have no more effect on the outcome than any other electorate seat.

No more Holmes!

I don't like Holmes, and avoid watching him unless I absolutely have to. His "interview" style is grating, to say the least - he seems to think that the purpose of an interview is to expound his views rather than question his guests - and the braying voice and bullshit lifestyle articles (Algy the one-legged spider, anyone?) just make it worse. And after seeing his caricature on Face Lift, it seemed that he had descended to the level of self-parody. So I'm not sorry at all to see him go - hopefully TVNZ can take this opportunity to get a real news and current affairs program.

New Fisk

Democracy Now interview: "Bin Laden's Vote is For George Bush"

Benefits of Genetic Modification

Non-allergenic cats. It's certainly a better application than GM-decaf coffee...

Andreas Schafer

Remember Andreas Schafer, the New Zealander who spent three months in coalition custody in Iraq? His story is in Salon. It's not particularly flattering to the Americans, who Schafer says couldn't imagine that anyone would "come to a country less pleasant than their own, unless they're invading it" and at one stage after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke threatened to transfer him there with the implication that he would be abused. And the IPs don't exactly come across well either. While they treated him well,

Schafer says that Iraqi police under coalition authority tortured suspects regularly. He claims to have seen beatings by police and, after he was transferred to a more brutal prison in Kut, at least one instance of an Iraqi electrocuted to the point of unconsciousness lasting three days. Americans, he says, visited the prison regularly and did nothing to stop or discourage the torture.

Which provides some confirmation of the allegations of torture by the Iraqi regime originally carried in the Oregonian, as well as a powerful reason why we should not be providing aid or assistance to the Iraqi regime.

As sure as night follows day

The Lancet study alleging that the invasion of Iraq caused an estimated 100,000 deaths has naturally drawn criticism from those who desperately want to believe that wars don't kill people. Crooked Timber has an excellent response to those criticisms here.

Disgusting

National has reacted to Helen Clark's visit to Niue by accusing her of a $20 million shopping spree in an effort to "buy the votes" of Niueans in New Zealand. This is simply disgusting - there's just no other way to put it. Why? Because first and foremost, Niueans are New Zealanders, every bit as "kiwi" as you or I. And secondly, while they are self-governing, New Zealand has a continuing responsibility under the Niue Constitution Act 1974 "to provide necessary economic and administrative assistance" and to co-operate in any other area as required. What this adds up to is that Niueans have a right to expect (and the New Zealand government has an obligation to provide) basic public services of the sort enjoyed by people in New Zealand. You don't see National bitching when the government spends money to ensure that New Zealanders in Eketahuna or Geraldine or on Stuart Island have access to acceptable education and medical care, and you don't see them bitching when the government spends money on disaster relief for New Zealanders in the Manawatu or Bay of Plenty - so why are they bitching when the government does exactly the same thing for New Zealanders in Niue?

There's an obvious answer, and it doesn't reflect at all well on the National Party or their view of who is and who is not a fellow New Zealander.

Made it

The Campaign for Civil Unions has made their target and raised the money needed to put their ad in the paper. However, they note that

It is still possible to sign the ad until Friday 12 November - every name makes our statement stronger

If you want to add to the strength of that statement and haven't already done so, you can do it here.

Democratic Transparency VIII

National has finally come through with their votes on the HART Bill - kindof. Generally, National split 22-5 on the bill, with the larger faction voting in favour. The factions were:

For: Ardern, Brash, Carter, D, Collins, Connell, Goudie, Hutchison, Key, McCully, Mapp, Power, Rich, Ryall, Scott, Simich, Smith, L, Smith, N, Sowry, Tisch, Wong, Worth, Williamson.

Against: Brownlee, Carter J, English, Heatley, Te Heuheu.

Unfortunately, their disclosure has been less than full. I am still seeking answers as to whether it was always the same split, or whether some members changed their votes on some amendments, and on who was absent from the house on ocassions when the split was 20-4. But more importantly, there are a number of controversial amendments which were supported by a single National MP. One of these, from United Future's Judy Turner, attempted to redefine "embryo" to include any cell or group of cells that "has the capacity to develop into an individual" in order to bar stem-cell research. A second attempted to restrict genetic selection to the very limited purpose of preventing serious genetic disorders. The National Party has so far refused to name the MP or MPs who voted for these amendments. Which is precisely why voting records must be completely public. At least one National MP is an unreconstructed right-to-life fanatic. We have a right to know this, so we can judge them and their party accordingly.

Reason to be suspicious

Many on the left are suspicious of the third way as providing semantic cover for a shift to the right, and after reading Anthony Giddens' latest article in the New Statesman, I can't blame them one bit. In an article headlined The left must open up more clear water between itself and its opponents, Giddens compares the current situation of social democratic or left parties in Europe with the triumphalism of the Blair / Schroeder joint statement. Where once social democrats held power in thirteen states of the European Union, they are now reduced to nine. According to Giddens, this is due to too little "revisionism". Social democratic parties have failed to move to the right far enough or fast enough. The German Social Democratic Party is in trouble because its members have rejected the revolutionary neo-liberal "reforms" laid out in Schroeder's joint statement (which is a very familiar recipe to New Zealanders: tax cuts for the rich, flexible labour markets, and a move to a low-wage, low skill, service economy); in Denmark and the Netherlands, the left lost power because they "failed to anticipate and respond to a wave of [anti-immigration] right-wing populism". Giddens' "solution" is for left-wing parties to adopt wholesale neo-liberal economic policies, and on other fronts to

...generate left-of-centre solutions to "rightist" problems - such as those to do with crime or immigration.

In practice, this means outflanking right-wingers on the right, by being even more vicious and reactionary. And so we see the paradigm third way government, Tony Blair's New Labour, demonising asylum seekers and eroding civil and human rights in an effort to win the bidding war for the redneck vote. If there's "clear water" being opened here, it's on the other side of the right-wing boat.

Then there's Giddens' attitude towards dissent. Internal division must be suppressed in order to achieve electoral victory. "Reforms" must be rammed regardless of objections from party rank and file; delays simply make the "backlash" greater. There's more than a whiff of the Douglas blitzkrieg here, which is surprising from someone who claims that democracy must be democratised.

Looking at this program, there is every reason to be suspicious. Giddens' third way isn't a third way at all - it's a wholesale appropriation of the policies of the extreme right, and a sacrifice of core left-wing values for electoral advantage. While it's necessary for left-wing parties to gain power to actually achieve anything, applying Giddens' recipe means forgoing any chance of achieving anything worthwhile. As with the war on terror, if you have to sacrifice everything that would make winning valuable in order to achieve victory, then you really have to wonder what the point is.

But what's truly tragic is that the total compromise Giddens advocates isn't even necessary. Take Britain, for example: it's argued that 18 years of Thatcherism has created an ideological hegemony and destroyed any support for anything closer to "traditional" social democratic policies. Which sounds reasonable, until you realise that in the most recent British election, turnout dropped by 20% as traditional Labour supporters stayed home rather than vote for Blair. Factor in those who held their noses, and it's clear that traditional social democracy (or at least a far "lefter" compromise) still has a large constituency - but urged on by people like Giddens, Blair has simply abandoned them.

A special nag for American readers

I probably don't have to say this, but: if you're an American reading this, please remember to vote on Tuesday. While electoral systems and constitutional forms may vary, one thing that is true of all the world's democracies is that they only work properly when people participate. The United States of America is supposed to be the example to the world of democratic government. Please do your bit to make it true.

Unlike other people, I'm not going to tell you who to vote for - it's your decision, not mine, and you are the people who will primarily have to live with the results. What I will say is that if you can't stomach any of the candidates, don't stay at home - let them know. The number and type of Presidential candidates will only change if there is public demand for it; using a write-in option or spoiling your ballot by writing "none of the above" on it are both ways of expressing that demand (alternatively, writing to your local paper or calling talkback radio is probably more productive). If you're dissatisfied, doing nothing will not solve the problem.

Policies for the labour shortage

At the end of a post discussing the documentary In A Land of Plenty, Big News notes that "at the moment, we seem to have too many employers chasing too few qualified workers", and then asks

what is the answer to increasing productivity (and skills and wages), and decreasing unemployment in this current political climate

To which I'd answer that in the short term, the labour shortage itself should see to that. Employers cannot simply add more workers anymore, so they have little alternative but to invest in their staff or invest in their plant. Wages should also naturally rise as a consequence of the free-market boot being on the other foot, helped along by the restoration of employee and union bargaining power under the ERA. As for decreasing unemployment, the market seems to be dealing with that as well. The problem is really with skills, but the government seems to have reasonable policies to encourage training, and has reduced the economic risk of moving from a benefit to full-time work, so I'm not sure what else can be done in this area (other than encouraging migrants with the right skills - but that doesn't really lower unemployment).

What I am sure of is that Brash-style policies of engineering a labour surplus solely for the purposes of keeping wages (and hence inflation) down is not any sort of solution. In fact, that's one of the reasons we've fallen behind Australia: real improvements in our standard of living come from investing in increasing productivity, but the ECA and Reserve Bank-engineered high unemployment gave employers no incentive to do this, and instead encouraged them to slash wages and hire more lower-skilled workers. Unfortunately, ACT is still stuck in this mindset, as betrayed by their calling solo parents a "130,000-strong latent workforce". I guess Marx was right about employer's desire for a "reserve army of labour" to hold worker's claims in check - either that, or Muriel Newman couldn't find anyone to clean her toilet...

Halloween

People complain about the arrival of Halloween and trick or treating in New Zealand, but I don't mind a bit. In fact, it's the only holiday I greet with utter glee. Probably this is because in spite of its roots in Roman and druidic custom, it is effectively an entirely secular celebration of a human universal: fear. The fact that fundamentalists hate it is simply another reason to celebrate. And so rather than being burdened by history, culture, or religion, we can settle down and have some fun and a good laugh at all the things that haunt our imaginations and terrify us (or, alternatively, a good scare, just to remind us what its like).

I have spent the afternoon carving a pumpkin; after dark I will light it, and hand out chocolate to anyone who comes to the door.

New Fisk

The truth is that Yasser Arafat died years ago.

Victory to the European Parliament!

The Italian nominee to the Eurpean Commission, Rocco Buttiglione, has stepped down in the face of overwhelming opposition from the European Parliament. This is a significant victory for democracy in the EU - the European Parliament has basically acquired the power to vet and veto individual members of the Commission (rather than the Commission as a whole), and will therefore be able to enforce some minimum standards over the EU's executive.

Bin Laden's October Surprise

Al-Jazeera has broadcast a video featuring Osama bin-Laden, in which he threatens to repeat the attacks of September 11th and says that the security of the US people depends on US policy - not on who their president is. From the BBC report, he seems to mention Kerry by name, which suggests that he's a) still alive (or was three or four months ago), and b) not in CIA custody. Which I guess means that Bush won't be pulling him out of a sack tomorrow, as people half-expected.

As for what this means for US politics, god only knows. It's a powerful reminder that Bush has utterly failed in the chief objective of the war on terror: capturing bin-Laden (who he once famously called "irrelevant"). And OTOH, there are plenty of Americans stupid enough to say "who cares about Osama? We got Saddam!", or who will rally behind the President in the face of this "new" threat (which is really the old threat that Bush just let lie around for three years).

Dirty tricks

Via Daily Kos: an example of the dirty tricks being used by Republicans in Wisconsin to suppress the African American vote:

What sort of a party uses fear and lies to "win"?

Tariana Turia on Zaoui and human rights

Tariana Turia has come out in support of "freedom or a fair trial" for Ahmed Zaoui. In a speech delivered in New Plymouth yesterday, she compared Zaoui's plight to that of Te Whiti-o-Rongomai, one of the leaders of Parihaka who was arrested and imprisoned without trial for two years after government troops destroyed the pa. She goes on:

Some have said it is not our business because this is war time. But that was said also of Te Whiti as people washed their hands of responsibility.

So understand this. The Maori Party stands for Justice, for Maori and for all. We seek an honest country, for the sake of Maori, and for the sake of everybody. We are not here just to define ourselves but to define the country.

I support the call of Amnesty International that Zaoui should have a fair trial, with public exclusion only in respect of those parts of the evidence that the Judges find necessary for national security. I seek your licence to take this position so in honour of the memory of Te Whiti o Rongomai.

The rest of the speech is quite interesting as well, calling for a written constitution and an entrenched bill of rights.

Second-guessing the Reserve Bank

The political kerfuffle surrounding the Reserve Bank's latest rate increase has reminded me of something I read earlier in the month, and which has been chewing at the back of my mind for the last few weeks. While in Washington a month ago, Michael Cullen warned of the danger of an "overshoot" by the Reserve Bank, but noted that the government was "in a very fortunate position", and that fiscal policy would "come into play". While he was quick to back away with talk about "automatic stabilisers" (the tax-take declining and benefit spending increasing during a recession), there's a definite implied threat there: if the Reserve Bank does a Brash and tries to strangle the economy to keep inflation down, the government could simply start spending the surplus. It's unclear whether this threat played a role in the Bank's decision to forswear further rate increases in the near future, but it's a possibility.

What's interesting is that this exposes a possible problem with our monetary policy framework, and perhaps with independent central banks in general. The idea that central banks should be independent came about during the 70's, in response to the failure of Keynesian demand-management policies. The Keynesian response to a recession was for the government to spend money to create jobs. This drove up inflation, but this was seen as an acceptable cost for pulling the economy out of a recession. However, in the 70's, this seemed to stop working; recessions continued, and we got "stagflation" (a stagnant economy with high inflation) instead. The neo-liberal response was to claim that the government should stop intervening in the economy, and instead focus on "price stability" (low inflation) - if left to itself the market would naturally work itself out and solve all problems. However, there was a significant impediment to this goal, as politicians would constantly be tempted to pursue Keynesian policies to secure re-election - exactly as Muldoon did in New Zealand - and this would detract from the credibility of low-inflation policies (Kydland and Prescott just won the Nobel in Economics for pointing this out).

The neo-liberal answer was simple: remove the economic levers from democratic control, thus allowing central banks to pursue "credible" low-inflation policies. Which is why we have the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 1989.

The problem is that there are two major levers on the economy: monetary policy, to do with the money supply, and fiscal policy, to do with how much the government spends. The Reserve Bank only controls one of them. While they are interdependent, and the Bank can with time adjust to changes in fiscal policy, the government could still in theory pursue old-style Keynesian policies. This wasn't a problem when the idea of independent central banking was first conceived or when the Reserve Bank Act was passed, because back then governments were invariably running deficits - in order to "prime the economy", the government would have to borrow, and this was countered by a commitment not to do so (backed in New Zealand by the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994 and fear of foreign investors). But if the fiscal policy is tight enough and results in large surpluses (as ours has), the government has no need to borrow. And this puts it in a powerful position to second-guess the Reserve Bank. If the government thinks the Reserve Bank is unnecessarily strangling the economy or driving up unemployment (as Don Brash did repeatedly in the 90's), it can actually do something about it. While I don't for a minute think that the government is going to go to war with the Reserve Bank, the fact that it could is a constraint on the Bank's behaviour. As long as they continue to run surpluses, we're unlikely to be Brashed again.

Businessmen, brains, and risk

First Against the Wall has a few thoughts on NZPundit's claim that Bush has a businessman's brain. Quibbles about how good a businessman Bush actually is aside, there's also the question of whether an autocratic, "executive" style is appropriate in a democracy. It's fine if private individuals want to play entrepreneur and risk everything in pursuit of their goals - but Bush is gambling with a country, and it isn't his to risk.

Sending a message

MusiCal thinks that the main value of the Chilean lawsuit against President Bush is not its remote chances of success, but that it sends a message. I agree. It sends a message to Bush and his cronies that they will be held accountable for their decisions. It sends a message that they will be hounded to the ends of the earth by those wanting justice. It sends a message that they can never relax, and never forget, because we will never forget, and never rest. And it sends a message that justice will prevail: we will get them in the end, just as we are finally getting Pinochet and sundry other torturers and murderers from South America's military despotisms.

Not enough intellectual muscle

NZPundit's attempt at a right-wing "high-brow" group blog, No Free Lunch, seems to have finally withered away: the URL now points directly to NZPundit, and he has ceased advertising it on his site. Before its demise, No Free Lunch suffered from a chronic lack of serious content - it seems that even collectively, our local right-wing bloggers couldn't put together the intellectual muscle to sustain it...

At least they're dying free

A study published in The Lancet claims that the US invasion of Iraq has led to one hundred thousand extra deaths.

Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US city of Baltimore gathered data on births and deaths since January 2002 from 33 clusters of 30 households each across Iraq.

They found the relative risk of death was one-and-a-half times higher for Iraqi civilians after the 2003 invasion than in the preceding 15 months.

That figure jumps to two-and-a-half times higher if data from Falluja - the scene of repeated heavy fighting - is included.

Before the invasion, most people died as a result of heart attack, stroke and chronic illness, the report says, whereas after the invasion, "violence was the primary cause of death."

Women and children are reportedly the biggest casualties of air strikes

Violent deaths were mainly attributed to coalition forces - and most individuals reportedly killed were women and children.

Dr Les Roberts, who led the study, said: "Making conservative assumptions we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more, have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

One hundred thousand extra dead. And note that this is on top of the already terrible death toll wreaked by sanctions. This makes a mockery of claims that the Iraq war was "worth it" and that Iraqis are better off today than they were under Saddam.

The US excuse will no doubt be a flippant comment that at least they're dying free. I'm sure that that will be a great comfort to the grieving families of the deceased.

Update: More here. The BBC article has downplayed the involvement of local Iraqi doctors. And in response to the expected post from NZPundit claiming that the article "isn't peer-reviewed" and that the author is a communist or similar undesirable: The Lancet is one of the most respected journals in the world. Any article published there has met high academic standards. While there's no doubt some of the authors had an axe to grind - they deliberately timed publication in the hope of influencing the US election - it does not follow from that that the study is flawed. In fact,

Richard Peto, an expert on study methods who was not involved with the research, said the approach the scientists took is a reasonable one to investigate the Iraq death toll.

However, it's possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq, said Peto, a professor of medical statistics at Oxford University in England.

To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7,868 people, agreed to participate in the survey. At each one they asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002.

The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.

Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.

(Emphasis added). Note that the 100,000 additional deaths excludes data from the obvious hotspot of Fallujah.

The full article should be going up sometime today or tomorrow.

Democratic transparency VII

Someone has just pointed out to me some interesting exchanges on the matter of secret split voting in last wednesday's Hansard. First, in the debate on the Human Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill, the National Party digs its heels in and clings to the secrecy gained two weeks before; their greatest concession to transparency is to say "give us a ring and we’ll tell you". Having been able to hide behind the Standing Orders, they and United Future then proceeded to split their votes in the subsequent debate.

A few hours later, the Animal Welfare (Restriction On Docking Of Dog's Tails) Bill comes up, and the debate is revisited. This time, though, NZFirst is in a position to deny leave for a secret-split vote, and is therefore able to ensure that names are recorded when a party splits its vote.

Hopefully, the latter is how it is going to be until the Standing Orders are amended: leave for any split vote should be denied unless names are recorded.

Irony

One of the architects of Reserve Bank autonomy criticising the bank's decisions.

If Richard Prebble wanted interest rates to be under the ultimate authority of Parliament, he shouldn't have pushed so hard for the Reserve Bank Act 1989.

Shrinking the democratic deficit II

ObservatioNZ has a few thoughs on the EU crisis as well:

It is interesting that the MEPs who are opposing the new Commission are doing so against the wishes of their "home" political parties. One interesting scenario would be that one or more Euro-Parties (these are currently alliances of various national parties) establish themselves independently and contest future Euro-elections on a Europe wide policy platform. This could involve a commitment to agricultural reform, for instance. It is conceivable, if unlikely, that a victorious grouping could face up to national governments and demand that their nominee be made Commission President.

This would turn the EU (or rather, the European Parliament) into a government in its own right, seperate from the national governments, and with its own source of democratic legitimacy. The question is how much this change can be accomodated within a constitutional structure that explicitly views the EU as being an organisation of nation-states - and how much those nation-states will resist. It's easy to see an active European Parliament effectively being able to dictate member-state's choices of commissioners (by building a tradition of vetoing any commission containing anyone chosen without their consent, in the same way that our Ministers are chosen from Parliament because otherwise the King doesn't get his taxes) - but it's also easy to see member-states getting very upset about this usurpation of power. The EU has an exit clause, and its possible that a member-state who felt their interests were consistently being trodden on by the parliament (for example, by continually forcing them to choose commissioners from parties that were locally in a minority) could use it. And OTOH, they're Europeans, and their politics tends far more towards consensus rather than US-style winner-take-all hardball. What's most likely is that things will slowly evolve towards European Parliamentary democracy, working out the balance of power through crisis and compromise - in exactly the way we (or rather, Britain) did.

Brash on Zaoui

There's an interesting report on Scoop about Don Brash's view of the Zaoui case:

National Party Leader Don Brash this morning told 95bFM listeners that the length of time Ahmed Zaoui has spent detained in prison is "unsatisfactory".

Brash said, as leader of the opposition, he has been privy to a SIS briefing on why it issued a security risk certificate against Zaoui, but added that he remains unhappy with the way the Zaoui case has been handled.

He said Mr Zaoui has been detained for "near on two years" and that for almost half of this time Mr Zaoui was detained in solitary confinement.

Which is great as far as it goes, but at the same time looks unconvincing against the background of successive National Party immigration spokesmen claiming that the court cases are "vexatious", demanding that Zaoui let the Inspector-General decide rather than pressing for a fair and open process, or screaming that he should simply have been thrown on the first plane out of the country. Until we see a formal repudiation from the National Party of those views, and a statement demanding the full application of due process and human rights standards, then it simply looks like Brash is trying to have it both ways.

Who said this?

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander-in-chief"

No, it's not Kerry attacking Bush for his decision to invade Iraq seeking weapons of mass destruction that only Bush believed were there - it's Bush attacking Kerry. He really has no shame, does he?

Florida again?

Thousands of absentee ballots go missing in Florida. Why am I not surprised...?

Shrinking the democratic deficit

The current power struggle in the EU is absolutely fascinating to watch, and not just from schadenfreude, but because of the way it mirrors the early struggles of the British Parliament and the birth of our own democracy. For those of you who don't follow such things, the incoming president of the European Commission has been choosing his team and assigning portfolios among his commissioners. Neither the president nor the commissioners are elected - the presidency rotates, and the commissioners are appointed by the member-states - but they are subject to confirmation by the elected European Parliament, in that the EP can vote down the entire commission. Now they seem to be trying to leverage that power into a veto on the roles of individual comissioners. The Italian appointee, Rocco Buttiglione, is a conservative Catholic who hates gays and thinks women should stay in the home. Naturally then he's been nominated for the portfolio of justice and home affairs. The European Parliament's socialist, democrat and liberal groupings won't stand for this, and have threatened to vote down the entire commission if he is appointed. And last night, the president blinked, saying he could not name a commission at this time.

I'd originally thought that the likely result would be shuffling Buttiglione off into a portfolio without human rights implications - agriculture, anyone? - but it now seems that the EP wants to assert itself even more, and that there are "three or four other commissioners who do not appear to be up for the job". In other words, the ability of national governments to appoint any old hack or crony to a powerful position in the EU government is at an end. This represents a significant shift in power in the EU away from the national governments and towards the elected European Parliament, and therefore a significant shrinking of the EU's "democratic deficit". And that's something that ought to be welcomed.

Hobbits!

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a new hominid species on Flores Island in Indonesia:

The 18,000-year-old specimen, known as Liang Bua 1 or LB1, has been assigned to a new species called Homo floresiensis. It was about one metre tall with long arms and a skull the size of a large grapefruit.

The researchers have since found remains belonging to six other individuals from the same species.

Because of their size - only 1m tall - the media have been quick to dub Homo floresiensis with a new name: hobbits!

The discovery raises new questions about the technological sophistication of our earlier relative Homo erectus, from which H. floresiensis is believed to have evolved. You need boats to get to Flores Island - modern humans made the journey around 40 - 50,000 years ago on the way to Australia - which is something believed to be beyond the toolmaking ability of H. erectus. But what's really interesting is that the Hobbits were contemperaneous with human settlement in the area - and that this is reflected in local legend:

Flores' inhabitants have incredibly detailed legends about the existence of little people on the island they call Ebu Gogo.

The islanders describe Ebu Gogo as being about one metre tall, hairy and prone to "murmuring" to each other in some form of language. They were also able to repeat what islanders said to them in a parrot-like fashion.

[...]

The last evidence of this human at Liang Bua dates to just before 12,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption snuffed out much of Flores' unique wildlife.

Yet there are hints H. floresiensis could have lived on much later than this. The myths say Ebu Gogo were alive when Dutch explorers arrived a few hundred years ago and the very last legend featuring the mythical creatures dates to 100 years ago.

12,000 years is an awfully long time for oral history to survive, but not entirely inconceivable, and people are probably already gearing up to go Hobbit-hunting...

But the best of all is that the remains are recent enough to possibly yield DNA. We'll be able to test it and find out exactly where it fits in the human family tree.

I wish them luck

President Bush is scheduled to visit Chile for the APEC summit next month. And so the locals have decided to greet him in the best way they possibly can: with a lawsuit demanding he and his cabinet be arrested and questioned regarding human rights violations in Iraq.

I don't fancy their chances, but I wish them luck. And I hope the Americans are taking note: while they may enjoy impunity within the US, if they travel internationally after retirement, they may face arrest and prosecution. If there is any justice, then Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rice and Bush himself will join Henry Kissinger in being unable to travel to large parts of the world for fear of facing an extradition warrant with their name on it...

More evidence that Hersh was right

High-level Bush administration officials - Powell, Wolfowitz, and Rice - knew of the "ghost detainees" kept at Abu Ghraib and at various other prisons in Iraq and elsewhere, and specifically denied the Red Cross access. I guess those "bad apples" aren't just at the bottom of the barrel...

Something to be proud of

New Zealand has been ranked ninth in the world in Reporters sans frontieres' annual worldwide press freedom index. We were the highest ranking country outside of Europe, and scored better than the United States (22nd equal), Britain (28th equal), or Australia (41st). The index measures the practical freedom of journalists and the media to do their job - whether they are assaulted, imprisoned, murdered, censored, or simply harassed, the legal framework surrounding the media, and whether those violating press freedom are punished or enjoy impunity. As a stable, liberal, and above all peaceful democracy, we rate fairly well on all of these things. The US fell down for arresting journalists and denying visas; Australia for similar actions and for its efforts to prevent coverage of its treatment of refugees.

I guess it's another sign that GDP per capita isn't everything...

The Grey Shade has a good defence of STV.

Frankly, I'd find the criticism of STV's teething troubles more credible if it wasn't coming from sniffy conservatives who have so obviously benefitted from the undemocratic features of FPP in the past, and who have opposed any representation of minority interests at any level...

Liberals and civil unions

David Young argues that liberals are wrong to support the Civil Union Bill as it is a half-measure, and asks whether we will join a fight for full marriage and parental rights. To which my answer is "absolutely". I have made it clear from the beginning that I think Civil Unions do not go far enough and that we should simply amend the Marriage Act instead, but that under the circumstances progressives should grit their teeth, support progress now, and keep on fighting for true equality. As for parental rights, opposition to gay parents is nothing more than bigotry which equates homosexuality with paedophilia, or regards liberal attitudes towards sexual orientation as a parentally transmitted disease which must be stamped out. There's no good reason why gays shouldn't enjoy exactly the same parental rights as anybody else - including the right to adopt children. And when that battle comes up, I'll fight for it too.

Broken records

One of the more memorable bits of In A Land Of Plenty, the documentary on the rise of unemployment in New Zealand that was on the other night, talked about how neo-liberals at Treasury wanted to increase the economic gap between workers and the unemployed, and so gave us the 1991 benefit cuts. Then, when the ECA had lowered wages at the bottom end of the scale, wanted to do it all over again.

Now we're hearing the same broken record from the OECD - except this time they want to target solo mothers and slash the DPB. Fortunately, the government isn't having a bar of it:

"We have invited people in the OECD to come and live on a benefit here. I haven't actually seen any of them volunteer to do it yet," Social Development Minister Steve Maharey told the Herald.

But isn't that always the way with those proposing welfare cuts?

Ending work testing for those on the DPB was one of the best decisions the government made. It sent a clear message to single parents that it was acceptable to spend time on their children. Forcing single parents into low-paid work simply compounds disadavantage; allowing them time to get their lives together and actively assisting them to find decent work that does not interfere with parenting may be slower, but is far better strategy for both parents and children.

Riverbend Endorses Kerry

Here. And she has the perfect answer to those Americans who claim that it's none of her business:

who is *in* the White House *is* my business- Americans, you made it my business when you occupied my country last year

You can't really argue with that, can you?

More on the March for a MultiCultural Aotearoa

BlogGreen:

I will however, give a big thumbs down to whoever it was that thought getting violent with the NF would solve anything. Poking fun at them was entirley effective, pissed them off no end and best of all completely diminished their power. Getting violent not only sunk to their level but it also proved the NF point that their not the only intolerant ones and it gave them opportunity to claim that they're being victimised.

Left and Lefter:

We in the left cannot condone violence. As Ghandi once said, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". If we are going to truly oppose these National Front idiots, we have to show that we ARE the bigger, more moral people. We cannot let them drag us down to their level, where violence is the only way to solve problems.

I'm in complete agreement with both of the above. The left's vision of a better society is one that is free of violence as well as racism. Trying to promote that vision with violence is self-defeating in the extreme.

I have no illusions that truth will naturally win any battle in the marketplace of ideas, but that is where we must compete, simply because there is no epistemic link between your beliefs being true and beating someone with your fist.

Election speculation

Speculation about an early election is growing thanks to the John Tamihere saga. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that. Even if Tamihere loses his seat, the government is no worse off with regards to enacting its legislative program - they've always been a minority government, and have had to negotiate for every bill. The only problem is confidence and supply - but here they can easily cut a deal with either NZFirst or the Greens, or even the Maori Party for that matter. While it would require policy concessions (which I'd hope would be relatively minor, given that they're after less than a year's support and won't have much time to enact new legislation), it's perfectly do-able. The only barrier is pride and stupidity.

Films from the Revolution

As a dedicated political junkie, I spent much of my Labour Weekend watching TV One's excellent trio of documentaries on the NeoLiberal Revolution: Reluctant Revolutionary about David Lange, Someone Else's Country on the Revolution itself, and In A Land Of Plenty on the rise of unemployment.

Tom Scott's Reluctant Revolutionary seemed to be trying to eulogise Lange before he dies - and in some ways this seems appropriate. There's no question that he's our best-loved former Prime Minister, thanks to his excellent representation of our stand against nuclear weapons in the 80's and because he tried (unsuccessfully) to stop the madness. Lange has defined our foreign policy for the last twenty years, and in the process helped us define ourselves and our place in the world. That's something worthy of a little eulogising.

And OTOH, Scott did seem to go a little beyond eulogising and into whitewashing over the USS Buchanan incident. According to Reluctant Revolutionary, Lange had been on the verge of working out a deal with the Americans but had mysteriously failed to brief Geoffrey Palmer on it; Palmer was then strongarmed into refusing entry by then-Labour Party President Margaret Wilson. Unfortunately, as the Herald's John Roughan pointed out on Agenda on saturday morning, this wasn't actually the case - Palmer expounded at length on how the government was going to squeeze the Buchanan through its anti-nuclear policy (essentially by operating a "don't ask, don't tell" standard), and was rightly crucified by his party for doing so. As for Richard Prebble's contention that Wilson's involvement was somehow unconstitutional and that the decision was one for the executive branch, last I checked the Acting Prime Minister is very much a part of the executive. Wilson's involvement was essentially to point out that he might not remain part of the executive if he blatantly went against the wishes of the people who elected him, but there's nothing at all unconstitutional about taking such political considerations into account.

Someone Else's Country skimmed over the 1984 - 93 period. It's familiar ground to many - the grey suits, the bad haircuts, the rampant neoliberal ideology - and I'd have thought relatively uncontentious. I'm surprised it hadn't been screened earlier.

In A Land Of Plenty was more interesting, focusing on the link between unemployment and monetary policy. Until the 80's, New Zealand had pursued a policy of full employment, ensuring that there were jobs for all, even if it required spending money to do so. Much of our pre-1984 economic mess was the result of trying to sustain this policy in the face of a changing economic climate which made it vastly more difficult (if not impossible). Post-1984, we simply gave up, and instead pursued low inflation instead. The cost was thousands of people thrown out of work, and the embedding of significant unemployment as a permanant feature of the New Zealand economy.

Much of the focus was on Treasury, and frankly they were simply evil. There's simply no other word for people who decide that we need more unemployment to drive wages down, or who take a budget sufficient for minimal nutrition and then cut it by 20% when calculating "optimum" (starvation) benefit levels. But there's also a very familiar face involved in all of these decisions: Don Brash. As Governor of the Reserve Bank, he seemed to think that 6% unemployment was too low, and so hiked interest rates to throw people out of work whenever things started heading that way (one shudders to think at how he's reacting to the current figure of around 4%). Once the ECA had taken effect and lowered wages, he argued that benefit levels were once again too high and had to be lowered. And then there's his Hayek Memorial Lecture, "New Zealand's Remarkable Reforms", in which he says that things had not gone far enough, and advocates abolition of any minimum employment standards, further welfare cuts, further "reform" of the health-care sector, and further privatisations. It's a powerful reminder of just how involved he was, and the message is clear: if Brash is elected, be prepared for more of the same.

There's also a lot of information on the plight of the unemployed during the "reform" period. Just in case anyone needs reminding, thanks to welfare cuts and market rents we had people living in garages, and food-banks were a growth industry (along with pawn-shops and loan-sharks). That is the New Zealand Don Brash wants to return us to, and that is why he should never be allowed to influence policy ever again.

Removing discrimination

Georgina Beyer has drafted a private member's bill to declare "gender identity" a prohibited ground of discrimination in the Human Rights Act; if passed, it would prevent discrimination against transgendered people or transvestites in matters of e.g. employment, housing, or the public provision of goods and services, and insist that they are treated just like everybody else. It's a small thing, and doesn't affect an enormous number of people, but is worth doing all the same. If we want a society in which everyone can participate, then that means everyone, not just "most" people.

Here's hoping the bill gets drawn from the ballot...

Possible good news on torture outsourcing

According to TalkLeft, US legislation that would allow the US government to outsource torture to despotic regimes looks set to die in committee. If the conference committee cannot agree by Tuesday, the bill is effectively dead.

Maybe the American Dream isn't dead after all...

Smaller every day

A few months ago, we learned that the US Department of Justice had authored a memo in which they used semantic nitpicking to try and argue their way around the US constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" and the UN Convention Against Torture to claim that torture was entirely legal. Today more documents have been leaked, showing that they provided legal justification for the US to violate the Geneva Conventions and transfer detainees out of Iraq:

United States intelligence officers have taken detainees out of Iraq for interrogation, according to The Washington Post.

At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department allegedly compiled a secret memo allowing transfer of a dozen detainees over the last six months.

International Red Cross officials have not met with the detainees, an unnamed officer told the newspaper.

This contravenes Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids "individual or mass forcible transfers" or deportations, "regardless of their motive". For those wanting to quibble over whether the convention applies, both the US and Iraq have ratified, and it protects anyone

who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals

In other words, any Iraqi or any non-US citizen in Iraq.

As for why this is important, Senator John McCain summed it up perfectly when he said

"The thing that separates us from the enemy is our respect for human rights".

Under the Bush administration, that seperation is looking smaller every day.

Another foreshore and seabed rethink

First it was (seemingly) John Tamihere, now the Progressives are rethinking their support for the foreshore and seabed bill. Like others, they favour a trusteeship solution. Those filled with fear at any retreat from expropriation and crown ownership have nothing to be afraid of; the Herald sums it up pretty well:

"Trusteeship" would leave open the possibility that some Maori could claim ownership rights - customary title - in the High Court while overriding legislation would guarantee navigation and access.

In other words, we'd all still be able to practice our customary right of going to the beach.

In itself, the Progressive's move isn't a problem for the bill, but Labour's Maori caucus are also rethinking support, and if they change their minds, then the government will have to do some serious rethinking of its own.

Progressive opinion seems to be moving towards trusteeship as a solution. It would be nice if Labour remembered its progressive roots and followed along.

Updated blogosphere graphs

I've finally got around to updating my graphs of the New Zealand blogosphere to incorporate several results sent to me (not so) recently. The political compass is getting a little crowded, and I'm tempted to post a culled version. The political survey is a lot less popular, but I did have to extend the left/right axis to accomodate Left and Lefter.

If you'd like your political blog to be added to either graph, please take the respective tests (found from the graph pages) and email me the results.

NZPundit hypocrisy watch

NZPundit is disgusted at an article in the Guardian which calls for Dubya's assassination. However, as I have pointed out before, NZPundit himself has repeatedly called for the assassination of political figures he doesn't like, notably Yasser Arafat.

NZPundit should make his mind up: either political assassination is acceptable, or it isn't. But he can hardly complain about people calling for political figures to be murdered when he does exactly the same thing.

Update (26/10/04): If you followed the link above and found the Guardian's apology, ObservatioNZ has saved the original from the memory hole...

Putting my money where my mouth is

I've long argued that the answer to distasteful speech is more speech, and that people should oppose groups like the National Front by speaking out against them, and so yesterday I put my money where my mouth is and joined Chinashop, Beautiful Monsters, Archaeology and hundreds of others in standing up for tolerance, diversity, and a decent society. The march itself was good - people old and young, from all cultures and ethnicities, standing up for a society based on inclusion rather than exclusion. Some of the speeches were a little dull (though Tze Ming Mok (from MultiCultural Aotearoa) had a good one focusing on politicians using recent immigrants as a political football), and it was sometimes more a shuffle than a march, but that goes with the territory I guess.

Unfortunately, there were a few dickheads along. A group called the "Scary Faeries" counter-protested the National Front gathering, then followed them around downtown Wellington harassing them. Which is fair enough as long as it's confined to (noisy) speech. Unfortunately, they went further than that, trying to steal flags and placards and eventually starting a fight when the National Front wanted to go home for the day. In the process, they proved themselves no better than the fascists they were opposing. One of the things that is absolutely definitive of fascism is its use of street violence in pursuit of its ends - and that is one of the things we are supposed to be opposing, not just the exclusivist and racist ends themselves.

The tragedy here is that this thuggery has handed the National Front a propaganda coup, and is likely to discourage people from opposing them in future for fear of being caught up in a similar incident or tarred by association. The National Front themselves are fairly insignificant and not a real threat; all that is necessary to defeat them is for people to stand up and say "no, we don't agree". Today's violence is going to make that much less likely in the future.

More from RebMob, Left and Lefter, DPF, IndyMedia, Scoop, more Scoop, and even more Scoop.

Fresh Python

George, God here: President Bush has words with the Almighty

Impotent frustration

Nick Bryant in the NBR today laments the fact that "the current splitting of the vote on the right is causing Act and the right serious harm", and pins the blame squarely on United Future. He demands that United Future either merge with National or publicly renounce the possibility of coalition with Labour - which just goes to show that a) he's arrogant; and b) he doesn't understand MMP.

While Bryant refuses to recognise it, there clearly is some difference between United Future and National. It's hard to imagine the latter supporting assistance to first home-buyers or the government's "Working for Families" package, for example. Instead, National's policies are dominated by its right wing. But while United Future would clearly belong in the National Party - they're in pretty much the same position as centrist National MPs - there's a very good reason for them not to merge: they have more power seperately than they would if subsumed into a larger grouping. As a seperate party, they are accorded an independence that would not be granted to a group of centre-leaning MPs.

Questions of power aside, Bryant is demanding that anyone who leans vaguely right should shut up and let the extremists dominate, rather than advocating their own position. That's the sort of arrogance you expect from those on the left who try and bury dissent beneath "solidarity". But it also shows that he does not understand MMP. Under MMP, wing parties are not the "vote stealers" they are under FPP systems. Voters switching between parties in a faction (say, from Labour to the Greens, or National to ACT) do not affect that faction's overall share of the vote or ability to form a government. To the extent that United Future has common ground with National, then, vote-splitting on the right does not affect National's ability to govern. And this exposes Bryants real beef with United Future: they don't have enough common ground with National (or rather, with the right-wing faction that is currently dominant), and b) National has no ability to govern anyway - the right's share of the vote simply is not big enough. He's just lashing out in impotent frustration at the thought of neo-liberal policies being rejected yet again (as they have been in every election since 1990).

And while I'm at it: if Bryant was seriously concerned about ACT, he should advocate for abolishing the undemocratic, distorting threshhold - or rather, reducing it to 0.8% (the level required to get a single MP). That would allows ACT's support to stabilise at it's natural level of around 2%, without the worries every election about them being evicted from Parliament.

Conflation

The Sock Thief notes Ahmed Zaoui's comments in his essay about Islam being an all-encompassing system of law, and tries to use it to tar Zaoui's supporters:

If liberals here in NZ want to support some one who does not believe in the separation of Church and State then that's their choice but perhaps they should moderate their criticism of the influence of certain Christian church groups in NZ. Or maybe its OK if you're a Muslim fundamentalist. I'd be very interested to see Destiny Church or the Maxim Institute appear on the Public Address web site.

Unfortunately, he's deliberately conflating support for someone's human rights with an endorsement of their views. I do not support Zaoui's position on Islam or the separation of church and state, any more than I support the position of David Irving or Destiny Church - but that does not mean that I think they should be silenced, imprisoned without charge or denied a fair trial.

Liberals do not have any sort of double standard over Zaoui. They are consistent in standing up for human rights, regardless of the views of the person in question. Sadly, it seems the same cannot be said of Sock Thief.

Democratic Transparency VI

NZFirst's Peter Brown is trying to get Parliament's standing orders changed to end the practice of secret split voting:

"New Zealand First will not stand by and let this practice continue, and I have raised the issue in the House. I have also written to the Standing Orders committee asking them to make an amendment to Standing Orders that will make it compulsory for each party whip to table with the Clerk the names of its members who voted for, against or abstained.

The Standing Orders Committee consists of Jim Anderton, Peter Brown, Michael Cullen, Rod Donald, Peter Dunne, Jonathan Hunt, Jill Pettis, Simon Power, Richard Prebble, and Clem Simich. If you support an open and transparent Parliamentary process, why not drop one of them a line, just so they know we're watching?

New kiwi blog

Front: Leftire

The other 9/11 report

Previous investigations into 9/11 by Congress and the Independent 9/11 Commission were scrupulous in their refusal to point the finger and name names. Instead, they blamed "systematic failure", and talked of "lost opportunities" (while being exceedingly careful to apportion what blame they did allocate in a bipartisan manner). However, there is another official report which does thoroughly investigate 9/11 and names those whose failure allowed it to happen. It's by the CIA, and they're suppressing it:

According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."

[...]

"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."

I guess it must look really bad for the Bush admininstration then.

More on Tamihere

The Herald has a summary of the case for and against John Tamihere. It leaves out the bonus authorised at a meeting which seemingly did not occur, but other than that it's fairly complete.

People have asked why we need an inquiry when it is quite clear that Tamihere lied about refusing to accept a golden handshake? The answer is that it's for the other allegations - tax evasion, fraud, failing to declare gifts given to him as a Minister. There's no question that he mislead the public, and (more importantly), no question that he has embarassed the PM. The latter alone is a sacking offence.

What the inquiry is really for is to determine whether Tamihere has to quit Parliament as well as Cabinet; and if he only has to go from Cabinet, how long he must stay out. It's quite possible for him to come back from misleading the public over a golden handshake (though I'd expect him to spend a while in the sin bin for that). It's far less likely that he will be able to return if he is tainted by the perception of fraud and corruption.

Meanwhile, the government's tactic of trying to muddy the waters about whether Tamihere received a golden handshake (by calling it an "ex-gratia payment", for example) is truly pathetic. He got paid a large bonus on leaving. It wasn't to get rid of him - the parting was amicable - but it was still a golden handshake. They wouldn't accept this sort of semantic quibbling if they were on the other side of the house, and we should not accept it from them.

Enabling the kiwi dream

According to Stuff, the government is planning on including assistance for first-time home buyers in next year's budget. This is a Good Thing. Quite apart from the economic benefits of encouraging home ownership pointed out recently by the New Zealand Institute, it's always been part of the kiwi dream. We're supposed to be a middle class nation, a "property owning democracy" of people who own their own homes rather than renting. But over the past decade, this dream has been slipping away. While the housing boom has played a role, it is only a proximate cause; the real reasons are the growth in inequality during the 80's and 90's and the student loan scheme (which makes it far more difficult for university graduates to pay off a mortgage). It's good to see the government trying to counter this trend and make the kiwi dream attainable for all (or at least more).

New Fisk

Kidnapped: The heroine who offered hope for Iraq

Words of a terrorist?

The full text (rather than the excerpted Herald version) of Ahmed Zaoui's lecture on the clash of civilizations is here. It's interesting reading, and stresses the need for tolerance and understanding - hardly what you'd expect from a "terrorist".

It's quite significant that he mentions Averroes. The intellectual tradition Averroes represents was a liberal one of tolerance and scientific inquiry; it was suppressed during the thirteenth century for much the same reason as the Catholic Church attempted to suppress Galileo: because the results of that inquiry did not match religious dogma. This suppression is considered to be one of the causes of Islam's subsequent decline.

Reminders

The Wellington launch of Selwyn Manning's I almost forgot about the moon is being held tonight at Parliament. Details here.

Also, there's the March for a Multicultural Aotearoa in Wellington on Saturday. The National Front have responded to the march by changing their theme from opposing "asian influence in New Zealand" to "defending the New Zealand flag". I guess those who worry about wannabe nazis "stealing our flag" may want to bring one. Things kick off outside Te Papa at noon; here's hoping the weather holds.

Inquiries

I see that the opposition is already trying to label the inquiry into John Tamihere as a "whitewash", with Gerry Brownlee noting yesterday that the QC has no power to compel evidence and asking how the government can be certain that Tamihere will co-operate . I would have thought that the answer was obvious: if he fails to co-operate to the satisfaction of the Prime Minister, she'll sack him.

So far the government has acted properly on this, in swiftly standing Tamihere down while an independent inquiry investigates the allegations against him. While I would expect him to be sacked anyway on the grounds of what we already know (that he mislead the public and failed to declare gifts received while a cabinet minister), given the existence of further allegations (fraud, tax evasion, receiving a large payment in exchange for work done in Parliament) it is probably better to deal with it all at once.

Progress report

Looking at their online progress counter, I see that the Campaign for Civil Unions is 84% of the way towards putting their ad in the Herald. Why not help make it 100%?

Back for another go

David Irving is once again applying for permission to enter New Zealand. I've said everything that needs to be said about why he should be allowed in here; hopefully this time the government will do the right thing rather than trying to suppress his unpopular views.

Memes

Two memes floating round the blogosphere this morning which I thought I'd bring to your attention. The first is Matthew Yglesias' coining of a new phrase: the Putinization of American life, in reference to

the Sinclair incident, the threatening letter to Rock The Vote, the specter of the top official in the House of Representatives making totally baseless charges of criminal conduct against a major financier of the political opposition [shades of Mikhail Khodorovsky], the increasing evidence that the 'terror alert' system is nothing more than a political prop, the 'torture memo' asserting that the president is above the law, the imposition of rigid discipline on the congress, the abuse of the conference committee procedure, the ability of the administration to lie to congress without penalty, the exclusion of non-supporters from Bush's public appearances, etc.

He's right - under the Bush administration, there has been a disturbing trend in American politics towards the sort of dictatorial tactics used in Russia. But hopefully, they'll be able to correct that in a couple of weeks.

The second is a piece by Ron Suskind from the New York Times which discusses the role of faith and certainty - rather than facts - in the Bush administration. It's packed with anecdotes of Bush being (as Kerry put it) certain and wrong, or just plain dumbshit ignorant - but it's not just Bush. As Suskind points out,

Each administration, over the course of a term, is steadily shaped by its president, by his character, personality and priorities. It is a process that unfolds on many levels. There are, of course, a chief executive's policies, which are executed by a staff and attending bureaucracies. But a few months along, officials, top to bottom, will also start to adopt the boss's phraseology, his presumptions, his rhythms. If a president fishes, people buy poles; if he expresses displeasure, aides get busy finding evidence to support the judgment. A staff channels the leader.

A cluster of particularly vivid qualities was shaping George W. Bush's White House through the summer of 2001: a disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners. Already Bush was saying, Have faith in me and my decisions, and you'll be rewarded. All through the White House, people were channeling the boss. He didn't second-guess himself; why should they?

The resulting attitudes are truely scary:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Once upon a time, comments about the "faith-based Presidency" were a joke. Now it's a mark of pride for the Bush administration that it rejects reality in favour of its own faith in itself. The results of that faith - that deliberate rejection of facts, analysis, or "discernible reality", not to mention self-doubt or second thoughts - are beamed live into our homes from Iraq every evening, and can be seen in the bodycounter to your left.

More American stupidity in Iraq

At the moment there are serious questions about the ability of the UN to assist in organising January's elections in Iraq. The UN withdrew after the bombing of their headquarters and death of Sergio Vieira de Mello last year, and will not return unless there is adequate security. As a result, they have only a skeleton staff in Iraq.

However, it turns out that there was a solution to this problem: a special security force solely to protect the UN, made up of troops from Muslim nations (who would hopefully be better able to negotiate with Iraqis and therefore far less likely to be shot at). The UN and the Saudis had lined up several countries to contribute troops, and the interim Iraqi government was on board - but the deal was nixed at the last minute by the Americans. Why? Because the troops "would have been controlled by the UN instead of by U.S. military officers who run the Multi-National Force in Iraq". A compromise deal where the troops would have been under Iraqi command was similarly rejected (I guess allowing the Iraqis to control foreign troops in their own country would have set a bad precedent...)

American pride and stupidity have once again undermined the prospects for democracy in Iraq. But given their past actions, this is hardly surprising.

Bring it on

Michael Cullen has hinted that other MPs may be subjected to the same financial scrutiny currently being enjoyed by John Tamihere. Good. I have no stomach for political corruption, and if John Tamihere's misbehaviour results in a general airing of financial dirty laundry and exposure of dubious practices to public scrutiny, then he will have done us all a tremendous favour.

As for Tamihere himself, I agree with Colin James that his departure from Parliament would be a loss for New Zealand - but OTOH if the charges against him stack up, we are well rid of him.

Elections and DHBs

According to Stuff, I'm unlikely to know who my District Health Board is until the end of the week. I really hope DataMail doesn't get paid - and they get taken to the cleaners for such a blatant screw up.

As for the DHB, the lack of results doesn't make a blind bit of difference, because DHBs are essentially powerless. While they are nominally in control of hospital finances, much of their spending is pre-allocated by central government, meaning that they have very litle discretion to change things. At the same time, their elected nature means that the government gets to use the DHB as a blame sink - it's not the government underfunding hospitals and underpaying medical staff, oh no, it's the DHB. While I'm very keen on democratic governance, straight-out bureaucracy would at least make it clear where the responsibility really lies.

I guess what we need are DHB members who will not only exercise proper oversight, but ruthlessly hold the government to account when funding is inadequate. But I suspect that that would result in a swift neutering rather than any real change.

Liberals and Zaoui

The Sock Thief looks at the FIS article in the Herald and declares that Zaoui should go. He also comments:

There has been this very odd tendency for Western liberals to go soft on Islamic extremists. In New Zealand the human rights industry is up in arms trying to ensure Zaoui stays in NZ. Bizarre. I think it unlikely that there would be the same reaction if some American Christian fundamentalist was trying to enter the country illegally.

Hardly. We who oppose the government's treatment of Zaoui don't do it because of who he is or what he believes; we do it because of who we are and what we believe - namely, that imprisonment without trial on secret evidence cannot be countenanced and should be opposed, no matter who it is done to. Algerian or American, Christian or Muslim, no-one should be treated like that.

As for going "soft" on Islamic extremists, one of the basic tenets of liberalism is tolerance. Thus, we can not oppose people living amongst us simply because we do not like the way they think - that would make us no different from the extremists. As I've argued in the case of David Irving, the proper way to fight extremist memes is in the marketplace of ideas. If Zaoui wins his freedom and then attempts to establish a fundamentalist Islamic party in New Zealand, I will be raising my voice against him, just as I will be raising my voice against the National Front in Wellington next Saturday.

Worse than dogs

Another story which caught my attention in yesterday's SST was their expose on third-world conditions in police remand cells. Remand prisoners - who have not yet been convicted of any crime - have been imprisoned in police cells for up to three weeks, without natural light, fresh air, exercise, or even washing facilities, in violation of New Zealand guidelines and UN conventions. That's quite apart from other violations to do with visitors, mail, reading material and communication with the outside world.

The linked article is only a teaser for a larger feature (sadly not online), entitled "I can't wait until I get to prison". Yes, conditions are so bad that people want to be convicted to escape them. Prisoners have no sense of time, are fed on microwave TV dinners and pies (this should raise warning bells with anyone who has recently seen Supersize Me), and individual police officers have ended up bringing them clothes and buying them toothbrushes. The feature article has a rather interesting table, which I'll reproduce below:

How police cell conditions compare - minimum standards for prisoners (and dogs):

	UN Human Rights Commission minimum standards	Dept of Corrections minimum standards	MAF animal welfare code for dogs	Conditions in police cells
Exercise	One hour a day	At least one hour a day	Between 30 minutes and two hours a day	No guaranteed exercise
Food	Nutritional, wholesome food, well prepared	Nutritional, wholesome food	Nutritious, balanced food	Microwaved TV dinners
Lighting	Enough natural light to read or work by	Natural light. Even isolated prison cells must have windows	Should have access to fresh air	No natural light or fresh air
Remand rules	Prisoners not convicted must be seperate from convicts	Remand and sentenced not to mix	-	Remand and sentenced mix. Remand dressed in convict clothes
Access to reading material	Books, magazines, and newspapers must be available	Books and other reading material must be available	-	No guarantee. Some police bring books from home

To summarise: remand prisoners (who remember have not been convicted of any crime) held in police or court cells are treated worse than dogs. People can go to jail for animal mistreatment, and yet the Department of Corrections is not held accountable in any way for the conditions these prisoners are held in.

We should not be doing this. Not only is it grossly indecent, it also wastes police resources and threatens an uncontrolled release of prisoners on bail. Given these conditions, it is only a matter of time before a prisoner uses a writ of Habeas Corpus to win bail and possibly compensation. If the government wants to have any choice over who is released, then it needs to start remedying this situation now.

Shrinking coalition watch

Faced with enormous grassroots opposition and a confidence vote in Parliament, the Polish Prime Minister has promised to start withdrawing troops from Iraq from the beginning of next year:

"Poland will reduce its contingent from the start of 2005 and will discuss subsequent reductions," Belka said Friday during a speech to Parliament.

Democracy beats Bush again. And it's particularly ironic in light of Bush's angry accusation of "you forgot Poland!" in the first Presidential debate...

Speaking of the Third Way...

Over the weekend Helen Clark attended the Progressive Governance Summit in Budapest. The Progressive Governance Network is a loose affiliation of "third way" and social democratic governments founded by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as an alternative to the more traditional Socialist International. It gets together every year to network, talk shop, and issue a joint communique. This year's communique reflected the summit's broadening membership - leaders from South Africa, Ethopia, Chile and South Korea attended as well as the usual Europeans - and thus had a heavy focus on development aid and building an "open and fair-rules based global economic and trade system" (which isn't necessarily a bad thing - it all hinges on what the rules actually are). The "peace and security" section also took a wider view, including HIV/AIDS and environmental degradation as threats to global peace, rather than just terrorism and WMD. However, it does seem that you can't invite the British to a meeting without their trying to ram an American agenda through; if they were really concerned about WMD, they'd start by getting rid of their own.

Interestingly, two key terms missing from the communique were equality and human rights. Sure, there was talk of "empowerment" and the need to "increase opportunity and social mobility", even of "social justice", but this is all equality of opportunity stuff. The old egalitarian ideal of striving to improve equality of outcome seems to be entirely absent. As for human rights, they don't even get a look in. I guess this is what happens when you have to share a meeting with a "progressive" regime which "continues to deny its citizens' basic human rights and to repress the unarmed opposition"...

Alien mindsets

Every culture has its moments when they come across like utter martians, and one of our particular ones is up on BBC at the moment. A BBC reporter asked farmers how they coped without subsidies. The answers exposed an alien mindset...

New kiwi blog

Left and Lefter - "random thoughts from a left wing, socialist, zionist New Zealand Jew on modern day politics, war, poverty, and more".

Retracted

John Tamihere has retracted / repudiated the comments reported in this morning's Sunday Star-Times. I guess political reality asserted itself...

Ahmed Zaoui: background and attacks

The Herald has a good background piece on the FIS, the political party Zaoui was a member of before he was forced to flee Algeria. It's an interesting look at the sort of chaos you get in broad-based movements in aspring democracies, where there's little agreement even on what would seem to be the fundamentals.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Star-Times has launched a stinging attack on the government's handling of the case, accusing it of "breathtaking arrogance and an amazing contempt for civil liberties". Here's a sample:

Last week the Supreme Court threw out the government's reprehensible bid to continue the ban on TVNZ's proposed interview with the Algerian. The government will never recover the damage it has done to itself over this affair. Apparently its case is so weak that it is too frightened even to let Zaoui speak. In this, it not only treats him with contempt, it also shows it does not care for fundamental democratic rights. It is telling the people of New Zealand that they will not be allowed to hear Zaoui put his case in his own words.

In other words, this is a government which spurns one of the most basic principles of justice. The behaviour of this government is profoundly offensive to anyone who cares about democracy. And if Attorney-General Margaret Wilson agrees with this policy, she should resign. Her support would be just as repellent as David Benson-Pope's outbursts. "Get on a plane," he yells at Zaoui in parliament. Zaoui's detention "is not an imprisonment", says Wilson. Zaoui is free - to return to Algeria and an uncertain future.

There's more, and it's brutal. Stories on Stuff tend to disappear after a while, so best to read it while you still can.

Tamihere and the foreshore

John Tamihere has withdrawn his support for the government's Foreshore and Seabed Bill. This means he'll almost certainly be sacked from Cabinet, meaning he'll resign from Parliament, meaning a by-election and possible loss of the government's majority.

The timing means that this probably isn't a reaction to the allegations against him - according to the Sunday Star-Times article, he told them the day before the scandal broke. But it's not going to be making him any friends in Labour, and it's hardly going to inspire people to stick their neck out to defend him (not that anyone really was, because the allegations against him are such that nobody wants to be tainted by association).

The article talks up the possibility of a rebellion by some of Labour's Maori MPs. This would mean that the Foreshore and Seabed Bill is unlikely to pass - getting both NZFirst and United Future on side is unlikely. On the one hand, this is good - the bill as introduced unjustifiably extinguishes aboriginal title and violates the Treaty's guarantee that Maori will enjoy the same rights as other New Zealanders, and while it is held up in Parliament, the court cases are progressing. And OTOH, there's a danger that Labour will decide that if they can't pass a good bill, they'll pass a bad one, and try and get together with National to ram a simple but stupid solution through.

While there's always the hope that National would play political games - they would benefit greatly the longer the government's discomfort is dragged out - that's not really a comforting thought. Now would be a very good time for someone like the Greens to advance a compromise trusteeship solution, to get the Maori caucus back on side with the government and prevent National from making an issue of it. Is that too much to hope for?

As for Tamihere, I think he's finished. He's definately out of Cabinet for the foreseeable future, and while he may be able to win a by-election, that won't save him. The charges against him aren't political in nature - they're criminal. That's something that not even the mandate of the people can wash away.

Answers on the BMR

Last month I submitted an Official Information Act request to the Department of Corrections seeking answers to some questions regarding the Behaviour Management Regime and whether anybody had been held responsible for the poor decisions which had cost the government (at that stage) a little over half a million dollars. The following is a summary of the response.

• The BMR was introduced and implemented by Auckland Prison management. Its introduction was approved by Phil McCarthy, the General Manager of the Public Prisons Service.
• The Site Manager / Superintendent of Auckland Prison was originally responsible for decisions to place inmates on the scheme. They were guided in this by "established criteria for placement" and recommedations from prison management. A recommendation from the Chief Ombudsman in October 2001 resulted in the decisions being moved to the Public Prisons Service's National office, where they were made by Phil McCarthy.
• The BMR was suspended indefinitely following the court judgement.
• The total legal cost to Corrections of defending its unlawful and inhumane system of imprisonment was $635,914.87. As the Herald pointed out, this takes the total cost of the BMR fiasco to over a million dollars.
• Bringing the Department into disrepute, failing to comply with the law, or costing the Department over a million dollars in legal fees and compensation payouts may not necessarily result in disciplinary action. Such action requires "deliberate actions" amounting to "serious misconduct".
• Finally, and most importantly, no Department of Corrections staff have been disciplined in any way for this fiasco.

It's the last point which is truly staggering. Prisoners have been subjected to inhumane conditions, the law has been broken, and the taxpayer faces a bill of over a million dollars, and no-one has been held responsible. Where is the accountability?

Another reason not to vote Labour

I've previously argued that the government's approach to prisoner compensation means that those who support human rights should not support Labour. Their approach to the Zaoui case is also a strong argument against them. But now we have another reason to give our suport to parties which actually support human rights rather than sneering at them: David Benson-Pope. Scoop reports that during Question Time on thursday, they noticed several interjections urging Zaoui to "get on a plane". The source of these comments was Mr Benson-Pope. Scoop talked to Benson-Pope's spinner, and had this fascinating conversation:

Pete Coleman: I had a chat to David and he thought the comments he made were 'tell him [Zaoui] to get on the plane' but you may have heard it differently in the bluster of the House. Those comments are sincere and he [Mr Benson-Pope] was trying to emphasise the same point that Margaret Wilson was in fact making that he [A genuine refugee adjudged to be at risk of torture and death] is free to leave anytime.

Scoop: So he was actually saying to 'get out of the country' then - that was pretty much it wasn't it?

Pete Coleman: Yep

This is the sort of attitude I'd expect from NZFirst, not from a progressive party like Labour.

Unfortunately, Benson-Pope has a majority of more than 14000, so there's little hope of using electoral pressure to change his mind. But if you'd like to let him know how disgusting you think his comments are, you can email him here.

Tamihere

What to say about John Tamihere's latest scandal? Firstly, the issue of tax may very well be a misunderstanding: Tamihere may have thought that the Waipareira Trust was paying it, while the Trust thought that he was. But as Rodney Hide pointed out on Holmes tonight, the question can be resolved very clearly by Tamihere's tax records: if he declared the payment to the IRD, both net and gross figures, then he's essentially in the clear. If he failed to declare it - almost $200,000 - then he should go - and not just from Cabinet, but from Parliament as well.

There are other issues - among them whether it was proper for the Trust to bankroll Tamihere's election campaign. I'm more comfortable with this: an iwi or urban Maori organisation wanting to send someone to Parliament is in principle no different from the rich wankers in the BRT who bankrolled ACT. Provided it was not done with government money, and complied with the rules regarding electoral funding, then I have no problem with it. What I do have a problem with is MPs being paid large sums of money once elected, especially in light of the comments by a Waipareira Trust spokesperson on 3 News tonight that it wasn't a golden handshake, but a payment for things they'd wanted Tamihere to do while in Parliament (which sounds suspiciously like bribery to my untrained ear). I'm also disturbed that such a large payment could be kept secret. Shouldn't we be demanding that our politicians declare all such gifts and payments in the interest of political hygiene?

Finally, one point that none of the commentators seem to have raised so far is that if Tamihere is forced to resign from Parliament, the result will be a by-election. This will threaten the government's majority (already razor-thin following the defection of Tariana Turia). While I don't think that this will result in the government falling - they can almost certainly cut a deal with the Greens or NZFirst for confidence and supply - it does make the stakes rather higher than they first appear.

First thoughts on the Third Way

I've been reading a lot about the Third Way recently. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, the Third Way is the name for the sort of nominally (but maybe not really) left-wing policies pursued in the UK or here. It represents an attempt to reconcile social democracy (the first way) with neo-liberalism (the second) in order to produce a more centrist ideology which remains true to social democratic values while being relevant to a world in which class is dead and markets are triumphant.

At first glance, this doesn't sound too bad. After all, markets are a tool, just like government; does it matter so much which tools we use in pursuit of our goals? Unfortunately, the theory of the Third Way - as espoused by Anthony Giddens in his book The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy - goes a little further than that. He lays out a list of "Third Way values":

• Equality
• Protection of the vulnerable
• Freedom as autonomy
• No rights without responsibilities
• No authority without democracy
• Cosmopolitan pluralism
• Philosophic conservatism

...except that they don't realy mean what they seem to mean. "Protection of the vulnerable" turns out to mean "tough on crime", "no rights without responsibilities" means workfare, and "freedom as autonomy" is not about personal liberty but about obligations to the community. As for equality, it is first recast as a neutered equality of opportunity with a slight mention of redistribution, and then (in his later book The Third Way and its Critics) weakened still further: having noted that "equality of opportunity typically creates higher rather than lower inequalities of outcome", Giddens goes on to say that social democrats should accept this outcome; his comments on redistribution later in the same section are little different from those seen from neo-liberals.

And in terms of concrete policy specifications, a joint pamphlet by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder The Third Way / Die Neue Mitte advocates the usual neo-liberal recipe of price stability, tax cuts, shrinking government and tough welfare policies.

So looking at the theory, the Third Way seems to be nothing more than neo-liberalism cloaked in Orwellian newspeak.

What about the practice? Here we run into another problem: the Third Way is a broad path (so broad that one critic has compared it to a carpark), and there are many different variants. Blair's version seems to be little more than Thatcher in drag; while he has made important moves on child poverty, the rest of his program seems distressingly familiar to those who voted against neo-liberalism in 1997 (which is why they stayed away in droves at the last British election). In other words, his Third Way is just an attempt to disguise a continuation of neo-liberal policies from the left. But in New Zealand, it seems that the opposite is the case - our Third Way is far lefter than Blair's, and the label seems more an attempt to hide a (gradual) return to social democracy from the local right!

While the Clark government has left the underlying neo-liberal foundations mostly intact, it has not abandoned its commitment to equality of outcome. Neither has it abandoned low-income workers in favour of flexible labour markets, or government provision of core services in favour of the market. And so we've seen the renationalisation of ACC, the Employment Relations Act, and, in Working for Families, the first serious expansion of the welfare state in over twenty years. I guess the strategy of subterfuge works both ways.

As for how we have this seemingly ridiculous situation of an ideological platform which is objectionable in theory but (at least sometimes) acceptable in practice, I think the answer lies in its origins. The Third Way was conceived and propagated as an electoral strategy, a grab-bag of disparate positions chosen to appeal to the supporters of neo-liberalism, by disillusioned social democrats who seem to have taken Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" far too seriously. They didn't believe social democratic values could be defended any more, and so sacrificed them. However, as the Clark government - and the poor reaction to Blair - shows, that isn't really the case. And it shows the way forward for the Third Way: not by abandoning social democratic values such as liberty and equality, but by re-confirming them. Buried under the Third Way's hype is something that can be defended: an attempt to update social democracy for an era where class isn't so relevant, and where the old tools seem less effective. But it cannot be defended if that "update" involves sacrificing the core values which made social democracy worth pursuing in the first place.

Public Address has a new section, The Great New Zealand Argument, dedicated to republishing important speeches, pamphlets, essays and opinion pieces from the past so that they will not be forgotten. This week's offering is David Lange's 1985 address in the Oxford Union debate, that Nuclear Weapons are Morally Indefensible. It is well worth reading as a reminder of why we established an anti-nuclear policy, and why we continue to hold to it.

Existing processes

Critics of compensation payouts to prisoners have argued that they should only be allowed access to the courts once they have exhausted existing processes. Unfortunately, those existing processes don't seem to work. A report by the ombudsman has revealed that Corrections were uninterested even in complaints of serious assaults by guards on inmates, and uninterested in taking simple steps to prevent them:

In his annual report to Parliament, John Belgrave says prisons were not dealing promptly with assault allegations against staff, and had yet to install surveillance cameras in "volatile units", where many incidents were claimed to happen.

In a statement, Mr Belgrave said Corrections had been told in 1999, 2002 and last year that there were concerns about delays in investigating assault claims, but had failed to act. The department had also been asked in 2002 and last year to install video cameras in trouble spots to allow incidents to be monitored.

(I guess Garth George won't be complaining about their loss of "traditional values" then...)

Under these circumstances, the demand that prisoners with complaints exhaust existing processes is nothing more than a cruel joke designed to deny them any form of justice or redress. But then was there even any pretence to the contrary...?

Technicalities

The Herald is up in arms today about a manslaughterer who was "released from prison on a technicality" (to quote their front page lead). Except that when you look into the story, you discover that he is currently suspected of arson, and the "problem" is the inability of Corrections to recall him to prison on the manslaughter charge because he had legally completed his sentence.

Next no doubt they'll be complaining about people being set free on the "technicality" of being found innocent...

Zaoui event at Parliament next Wednesday

Amnesty International, Matt Robson and Keith Locke are hosting a Wellington launch at Parliament next Wednesday (October 20th) for Selwyn Manning's book about the Zaoui case, I almost forgot about the moon. The thing kicks off at 17:45, and speakers will include Selwyn Manning (author), Ced Simpson of Amnesty International, Ross Wilson from the CTU, and Deborah Manning (one of Zaoui's lawyers). Due to Parliamentary security, you'll need an RSVP with your name on it - email matt.robson@parliament.govt.nz or keith.locke@parliament.govt.nz to get one.

It's also good to see the unions coming out in support of Zaoui - the CTU has called for the government to accept the Court of Appeal judgement and assess Zaoui's security risk certificate by the rules the court has laid down, while the Association of University Staff has called for his release. And if you're at Vic, please go to the SGM tomorrow to award Zaoui life membership of VUWSA.

A use for the Cullen fund

One of the longstanding problems with the New Zealand economy has been a shortage of capital. Because we have no "old money" here - no aristocratic families with vast wealth accumulated from centuries of squeezing every last groat out of the peasantry - we are forced to look offshore when we need to borrow for capital expenditure or infrastructure development - or when we need to find a purchaser for any sizable business. Which is why we persistantly run large trade deficits: money borrowed from overseas results in interest being paid overseas, while the foreign owners of our large businesses naturally want to take their profits back home with them.

The Cullen Fund has some capacity to fix this, simply by virtue of being a large pot of money controlled by New Zealanders. While we can't invest very much of it in New Zealand (it is simply too big for our sharemarket), the income from the profits it is supposed to make will be returned to us, helping to offset the flow of foreign investment.

But there's also another problem, which the Cullen Fund can help with: venture capital. We see the story in the news all the time: a kiwi entrepreneur comes up with a brilliant idea, but is unable to fund it properly. Either they lack the capital to turn it into a successful business, or having turned it into a business, they find themselves unable to expand it to meet market demand. In both cases, the result is usually the same: they sell out to foreign investors (assuming the IRD doesn't bankrupt them first).

This is a particularly New Zealand problem. In the US, where they have old money (though slightly newer, and made from slaves and corruption rather than peasants), they have venture capital companies, which provide funds and investment in these sort of situations. The entrepreneur gets the money they need to make a go of it, and the venture capital company gets equity, which (they hope) will eventually pay off. While the venture capital firms do their best to "pick winners", they are effectively gambling: some (most?) of the companies they fund will fail or only be marginally profitable, but enough are successful for it to be profitable, and there's always the hope of getting in on the ground floor of the new Microsoft.

There isn't much in the way of venture capital in New Zealand (due to not having enough capital in the first place), which is where the Cullen Fund comes in. Part of it could easily be spun off into a wholly-owned venture capital firm with the purpose of making a return for the fund by helping to establish New Zealand companies. This would not only provide something not currently provided by the market, but it would also help keep New Zealand companies in New Zealand, and in New Zealand hands, thus helping to fulfil the government's economic development goals.

Obviously a business case would have to be made, but if the key problem is that there's not enough money to fund startups, rather than there not being enough decent startups to fund, then it would seem to be a worthwhile venture.

The role of think tanks

Che Tibby is considering the role of think tanks, and struggling with how a left-wing think tank should or could respond to a fear campaign such as the Australian federal election (or, I suppose, National's constant playing of the race card over here). But I think this is misconstruing the role of think tanks. Their role is to fight the long-term battle in the marketplace of ideas, by producing and critiquing policy, conducting studies, providing media comment, and generally propagating the memes and providing "intellectual ammunition". They are a strategic weapon, not a tactical one. While they could use their research ability and expertise to counter misinformation, as Che points out, that requires that people listen. Getting people to do that is the sort of thing best done by politicians, not by researchers.

And OTOH, the above is pretty much academic, given that the New Zealand left is pretty much unarmed on the think-tank front.

Ahmed Zaoui: what you can do...

If you watched "Enemy of the State" last night and are wondering what you can do to help Ahmed Zaoui, the Human Rights Foundation (who are representing him in court) have posted a handy list on Scoop. I recommend emailing Paul Swain or any Labour MP myself. A short note supporting the fundamental right to a fair trial and mentioning that you will be judging the government on its human rights record at the next election is probably sufficient.

The Human Rights Foundation release ends with the following quote from Winston Churchill:

"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

Perhaps the government needs reminding of that as well.

Update: (15/10/04) corrected Paul Swain's email address. Ooops.

Another must-read

The Holden Republic has a detailed and highly informative post on the Te Arawa settlement, which dispels a great deal of the racially divisive bullshit propagated by Don Brash.

Conflicts of interest

Former US Secretary of State James Baker is touring the world trying to get countries to forgive Iraq's US$200 billion debt. At the same time, he's in a consortium working for the Kuwaitis, trying to extract the US$57 billion in debt and war reparations Iraq owes them - for US$1 billion up front plus five percent of any monies they recover. That's some conflict of interest, neh?

But then, did we really expect any different from the same corrupt kleptocracy which gave us Enron and Halliburton?

Enemy of the State

I watched this documentary tonight, in which a TVNZ reporter travelled to Algeria, France, Belgium and Switzerland in an effort to find out whether Ahmed Zaoui is a terrorist. He seems to have decided "no", but it would have been nice if he'd done it a year ago (or maybe even almost two?), rather than waiting until this late in the piece.

And at the same time, the whole question is also fairly irrelevant. People are not objecting to Zaoui's treatment because they think he is innocent (though that fact makes it worse); they are objecting because not even a terrorist should be treated like that. No-one should be imprisoned without trial. No-one should be denied access to the evidence against them. And no-one should be subjected to a process which so grossly violates the principles of natural justice. The banner at the top of the page says "free Ahmed Zaoui, or give him a fair trial", and that is what people have demanded since the beginning: that Zaoui either be charged and the evidence against him tested in a court of law before an impartial judge, or that he be set free - just like any other criminal suspect. But the current process - arbitrary imprisonment based on laughably thin secret "evidence" - is simply an affront to our fundamental values. As Tom Scott said, we are a better country than this. It's long past time we started acting like it.

Score one for transparency

ACT Leader Rodney Hide has stood up for transparency and declared which way ACT MPs voted on the HART Bill. ACT split its vote on four motions, one to amend and three to accept parts of the bill, and always 6:2. According to Hide, the two MPs who voted together were Heather Roy and Ken Shirley; the identities of the larger faction ought to be obvious.

United Future, meanwhile, says that "the matter of how individual MPs voted is for them to reveal" (though they also note that Peter Dunne voted for it). I guess that says everything that needs to be said about their commitment to transparency.

Destroying America

Over the last few years, we've seen disturbing glimpses of how the US treats top-level Al-Qaeda members, and how the war on terror has undermined its commitment to fundamental human rights. Inadvertant admissions by admininstration officials and leaks by insiders have painted a picture of rendition, children being held hostage as "leverage" to get their parents to talk, and outright torture. Now Human Rights Watch has assembled those hints in one place, and it's not a pretty picture:

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the Bush administration has violated the most basic legal norms in its treatment of security detainees. Many have been held in offshore prisons, the most well known of which is at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. As we now know, prisoners suspected of terrorism, and many against whom no evidence exists, have been mistreated, humiliated, and tortured. But perhaps no practice so fundamentally challenges the foundations of U.S. and international law as the long-term secret incommunicado detention of al-Qaeda suspects in "undisclosed locations."

"Disappearances" were a trademark abuse of Latin American military dictatorships in their "dirty war" on alleged subversion. Now they have become a United States tactic in its conflict with al-Qaeda.

[...]

the use of forced disappearances and secret incommunicado detention violates the most basic principles of a free society. When Argentina tortured and "disappeared" suspected dissidents in the name of fighting what it characterized as "terrorists," it was wrong. When the United States tortures and "disappears" alleged terrorists, even those suspected of plotting the most terrible attacks, it is also wrong. That the terror being fought by the United States is of a different character does not change the illicit nature of the methods employed to combat it.

This represents a betrayal of America's fundamental values - "liberty and justice for all" - and ultimately a loss in the war on terror. Even during World War II or the Cold War - conflicts which posed a definate threat to the survival of the US as a nation - successive US governments refused to sell out those values because they recognised that it would in a real sense be losing. Now the Bush administration has sold them out in an eyeblink when faced with a small number of terrorists who, while they pose a threat to US interests and the lives of US citizens, pose no threat whatsoever to the US's survival. Despite the horrors of September 11th, Al Qaeda couldn't destroy America. But they didn't need to, when they had George W. Bush to do it for them...

Democratic transparency V

And finally, a thoughtful response from Rodney Hide:

Peter Brown must have agreed to the split vote procedure. It requires leave of the House to have a split vote. Any one member can veto the leave.

Standing order 144 (1) (b) requires that a party vote either noe or aye. There is no provision for a split vote in the rules.

If the rules were applied then a party would vote, say, aye, and then the individuals who opposed would have to stand and have their vote recorded (they could have someone vote on their behalf, but their name and vote would be required).

Occasionally, parliament agrees to a split vote. This is done by agreement of all the parties.

It’s frustrating not knowing how people vote. I had this on my shop trading bill. However, I agreed to a split vote cos I thought my congeniality might pay off. The result was I actually don’t know how people voted ... and nor to the public.

You raise a good point though. The solution is not in changing the rules - it’s just in MPs not agreeing unanimously to suspend them!

Hide has a point in that this isn't just about the rules - Parliament can suspend them with leave, and so a change of political culture is required. We must have MPs who take transparency and accountability seriously. At the same time, changing the standing orders would help bring about that change, and make it clear that openness rather than secrecy is the norm.

Also, having reviewed Hansard, I see that ACT split its vote four times during the debate over the early stages of the HART Bill: once for an amendment to clause 3(a), and then three times as each part was confirmed. On all occassions it was a 6:2 split. I've asked Rodney to publicise which way his MPs voted, and I'm awaiting his response.

DPF on secret split voting

DPF agrees with me on the public's absolute right to know how our representatives are voting. And he suggests the amendment to the standing orders:

144(1)(f) "If a party, by leave, splits its vote, the party shall table by the conclusion of the next house sitting day, a statement listing which members were represented by the ayes, and which members represented by the noes, as cast by the party's representative.

This ensures that Parliament won't be unnecessarily bogged down with roll-calling on procedural matters, while guaranteeing transparency and accountability.

The trick now is to get the bastards to pass it...

Local body clusterfuck

I was shocked by last night's news about inconsistencies and problems counting the local body vote, which have called into question some of the results. But I think people are being too eager to lay the blame at the feet of STV. This is not a problem with the STV system; it is a problem with the incompetance of the companies who were hired to count the ballots. They had more votes than expected, their software had the inevitable bug, and they seem to have had no plan to count the ballots by hand in the event of a problem. In short, it is what happens when you outsource to a company which has never done elections before.

Fortunately, there's a simple solution, backed by politicians across the political spectrum: give the whole thing to the Electoral Commission. They know how to run elections, they have an institutional memory longer than that of a goldfish, and they're far less likely to fuck it up. But I guess the private sector wouldn't be making any money off it then.

And as a final point, what do you think the odds are that any of the contracts with Datamail included a massive penalty clause in the event of this sort of screwup? Fortunately, we have a Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 for just this purpose (DHBs are of course covered by the Official Information Act) - though they'll almost certainly try and hide behind "commercial sensitivity".

Ahmed Zaoui update

So, what does our supposedly "pro-human rights" government do when faced with a court decision which upholds human rights and affirms a wide-ranging right of judicial review? Appeal, of course.

The government's actions in the Zaoui case are getting more disgusting by the day. They've invested so much in keeping him in prison and trying to throw him out that they now face serious damage if he is released or allowed to stay. And so they find themselves selling out their basic values in order to avoid admitting they were wrong...

As for the Supreme Court, other than Donna Awatere-Huata, it looks like it may be Zaoui all the way...

Democratic transparency IV

National party Whip Lindsay Tisch has responded to my request that he reveal which way National MPs voted on the HART Bill:

In regards to the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, "Leave of the House" was sought under Standing Order 144 for a Split Vote on the report back of the Health Select Committee 25 August 2004. NO PARTY OBJECTED. In the subsequent Committee stages the process continued. If a Party doesn't grant leave for a split vote then it doesn't happen. Under Standing Order 144 it is not a requirement to name which way a Member voted and that was the process that was followed.

I've also received a similar response from United Future:

Thank you for your message. All United Future MPs voted absolutely in accordance with Parliamentary Standing Orders.

Both responses miss the point. There's no question that secret split voting is legal under Parliament's standing orders; the problem is that this lack of transparency undermines democratic accountability. Our system of democracy rests on the electorate being able to hold politicians accountable. In order for this to happen, we need to know which way they have voted.

The standing orders need to be amended to ensure that names are recorded when a party vote is split in this fashion. Those parties who believe in a transparent and accountable Parliament should deny leave for any split votes until they are.

As for Tisch, while the standing orders currently don't require parties to reveal voting records, they don't forbid it either, and his unwillingness to do so speaks volumes about his - and National's - commitment to accountability.

Smart-arses and complexity

A throwaway comment in Che Tibby's latest caught my eye:

All I have to say is this, the truly great theories are really, really, hard to understand. Once upon a time there were only two people in the world who understood the theory of relativity. Einstein, and some smart-arse. These days everybody knows that if you send a clock into space at the speed of light when it gets back to Earth it's only advanced five minutes while society has advanced a billion years. Or something.

Just by way of establishing my smart-arse credentials, the above-mentioned smart-arse was the astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, who translated some of Einstein's work from German into English. And the time-dilation example Che uses is an example of Special Relativity; it was General Relativity that was "only understood by two people". The former deals with observers moving at constant speed with respect to one another, and results in time varying along with velocity depending on the frame of reference used. The latter throws in observers who are speeding up and slowing down as well, and reconceptualises gravity as the curvature of space (resulting in all those irritating examples where people roll marbles across rubber sheets). It also utilises the Lovecraftian horror of tensor calculus, which drives people insane and ruins their hair.

As for complexity, being difficult to understand is often simply a sign that someone is a bad writer, or that they are applying the old strategy of "if you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit". In fact, where science is concerned, it's simplicity and elegence which are appreaciated, not complexity. All the "greatest" scientific theories - natural selection, Newton's Laws, Maxwell's Equations, even special relativity - are all at their heart extremely simple ideas which will frequently fit on a T-shirt.

Must read

Welcome to the Green Zone by William Langewiesche. It's a potted history of the Green Zone, its disconnection from Iraq, and the growth of a seige mentality within it, which manages to simultaneously be utterly scathing about the CPA's flaws (right-wing ideology, power-tripping officials, and a near-total ignorance of Iraqi society) while praising its successes.

New Fisk

Future generations will struggle to escape the legacy of the disaster in Iraq

Not about race

In his press conference in Rotorua yesterday, Don Brash once again played the race card and accused the government of giving things to Maori solely on the basis of race:

"The compensation payment should be recognised because the annuity Te Arawa got in the 1922 agreement was never indexed to inflation, but giving them the lakes is wrong and so too is setting up a board that gives them representation purely because of their race."

Except of course that Te Arawa are not being represented on that board "purely because of their race". They are being represented on the basis of their significant historical and present ownership interest in the lake, and because government mismanagement adversely affected rights that were specifically protected by the 1922 settlement. It's a way of ensuring that it doesn't happen again - or rather, that Te Arawa is actively involved and can protect their rights. And given that they will actually own the lakebed (but not apparantly the water above it), co-management seems a fairly good solution - certainly better than the alternative of managing by court action and suing the regional council, DOC etc whenever they make a decision that impacts on those rights.

Of course, all of that is far too long and complex for a shallow soundbite by the lakeside, and wouldn't play very well with the rednecks Brash is targetting in any case.

Democratic transparency III

Don Brash has responded to my query regarding National party whips refusal to disclose who had voted which way on the recent Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill:

Your comment surprised me, and I have been investigating the matter. Individual votes should be recorded, and I will be endeavouring to find our why this is not happening. Thanks for drawing this to my attention.

Not much of a response, but it at least acknowledges the requirement for transparency. Hopefully he'll publish a list in a few days.

There has been no word yet from either Peter Dunne or Rodney Hide.

Wednesday's Hansard is now on the web, and it does not record who voted which way. Peter Brown's complaint about secret voting is near the end, directly above the debate on part 4 of the bill (click here and scroll upwards). From the look of it, the Business Select Committee recently agreed to abrogate democratic oversight and allow MPs to vote secretly without recording names. It's also interesting to note that Simon Power was very very careful to ensure that things were being done in secret before any voting actually took place. I guess he felt he had something to hide.

This is simply unacceptable - it is a deliberate attempt by our representatives to hide their votes from us so that they cannot be punished for them. It is simply untenable in an open democracy for an MP to say, as National Whip Lindsay Tisch said on Wednesday night, that:

We have written proxies from our members, which I hold here. I am not prepared to divulge who voted which way. I have cast the votes with the leave of the House for a split vote, and it is certainly not my intention to divulge the information about our members’ preferences.

Tisch's email is lindsay.tisch@parliament.govt.nz. Why not email him and ask him what he's trying to hide?

Dangerous minds

Last night I watched the documentary "Singer: A dangerous mind", about the controversial Australian ethicist Peter Singer. For those who aren't familiar with his work, Singer is most famous for his views on animal rights and euthanasia, both of which revolve around his theory of personhood. According to Singer, it is not enough to say "human life is valuable"; we must ask why. Investigating this question leads us to the idea that what makes human life valuable is that we are "persons" - we have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, but more importantly, we can conceive of ourselves existing over time, plan for the future, and experience pain when those plans are frustrated. It's a very compelling viewpoint, but it has the consequence that not all persons are human beings, and not all human beings are persons. To the extent that higher animals can also conceive of themselves as existing over time (and there is some evidence that at least some - such as our close primate relatives - do), then they too are worthy of moral consideration - which bars eating them or using them for medical experimentation. And to the extent that some human beings are unable to do this - if they are severely intellectually disabled, in a vegetative state, or simply very young - it allows them to be treated in the same way that we would treat an animal.

This is obviously a controversial viewpoint - it uses our desire for consistency to on the one hand challenge our treatment of animals, and on the other hand undermine our traditional assumptions about the value of human life. And it has attracted a great deal of opposition, not all of it intellectual. Singer has had trouble with the German government for advocating active euthanasia of the severely mentally retarded, and his lectures in the United States have met with protests and disruption. So I wasn't sure what to expect from a documentary on him - whether it would be a fair assessment of his views, or a hatchet-job from religious-fanatic Americans. Fortunately, it was the former.

"A dangerous mind" followed Singer to various parts of the world: to America, where he lectured his students and had them visit a hospital ward full of premature babies; to Britain, where he met with the family of a disabled boy whose doctors had tried to euthanise him without their consent; to Austria, where he researched the fate of his Jewish grandparents in the Holocuust and speculated on the merits of thinking with the head rather than "with the blood" or the gut; and to Australia, where he talked to medical ethicists and the family of an elderly woman who had committed suicide rather than suffer further cancer treatment. It also had comments from other ethicists, both supporting and opposed to Singer's viewpoint. It was a good, thoughtful piece of television, which is obviously why it was on at 11:30 at night.

One of the things that came across very clearly was that while Singer's critics abuse him for "playing god" and making decisions about the value of human life, these decisions are made all the time. Doctors faced with marginal cases - premature babies with little chance of a normal life, elderly patients with Alzheimers who are just a walking, breathing shell - disguise these decisions under the label of "medical futility". The perniciousness of making these decisions in this way was illustrated in his visit to Britain, where doctors had decided that a disabled boy did not deserve basic medical treatment, and in fact tried to kill him (and won a court case saying that they could override the wishes of parents and relatives when making this decision). What Singer does is bring this debate into the open, and provide us with clear criteria against which such decisions can be assessed. Those who don't like those criteria and their consequences really only have one option: to develop better ones. So far though they have been unable to present a credible alternative.

Desperation

Following his defeat in Auckland, John Banks is apparantly considering returning to national-level politics. Russell Brown is mystified at why Don Brash would be interested in such a move - Banks will bring the taint of a loser, and possibly be a potential challenger to Brash's leadership. However, it's much easier to see why ACT would be interested: desperation. ACT desperately needs an electorate, and however tainted, Banks is still far more likely than most of their existing MPs to bring them one.

Progress

The Campaign For Civil Unions now has a nifty progress-counter so you can see how well they're doing.

Good news from Afghanistan...

Many of the candidates who had earlier responded to fears of electoral fraud with a boycott have now decided to accept the results of a UN inquiry. This is definately good news. The allegations of fraud and the boycott threaten to tarnish the legitimacy of whatever government is finally elected, and undermine the whole project of moving to a democratic constitution. The candidates placing their trust in an investigation by international observers, in the process, in the idea of the rule of law rather than force makes it far more likely that democracy will stick.

...and good news from Tonga

The Tongan Supreme Court has overturned restrictions on freedom of the press. It remains to be seen how the Tongan establishment will respond to this - whether they will accept the ruling, pass further legislation in an effort to once again stifle public oversight, or ignore it and censor things illegally.

Long-lost cousins

Scientists claim to have discovered a new species of Great Ape in Nothern Congo, sharing characteristics of both chimpanzees and gorillas. If confirmed, it would be fantastic news, the discovery of a long-lost cousin. And it will be very interesting to see where they fit in in the primate family tree, and how their behaviour compares with that of our other relatives, such as chimpanzees and bonobos.

I guess I'll have to hunt down next week's New Scientist then...

The American Dream is dead

On Friday the US House of Representatives passed the inelligence reform bill 282 to 134. The bill restructures and reforms the US intelligence services in line with the reccommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but it also

• allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to order the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, with no possibility of judicial review;
• allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to deport or remove suspected terrorists to any country in the world (even one where they have never visited or lived and do not hold residency or citizenship), again with no possibility of judicial review; and
• allows the US government to outsource torture, by deporting suspected terrorists to nations where they are likely to be tortured, provided that the recipient nation gives an "assurance" ("nudge nudge wink wink") that said suspects will not be tortured.

Obsidian Wings has a few things to say about the worthlessness of such assurances, as does Human Rights Watch.

The bill has not yet become law - it still has to go through a conference committee and be signed by the President, but hope is fading; I can't imagine Bush vetoing this bill simply because it grossly violates human rights and all standards of common decency. Which means the American Dream is effectively dead. In 228 years the United States has gone from being a beacon of freedom and hope for the world to being a nation which allows indefinite detention without trial and endorses (and actively promotes) torture.

Progress on the foreshore and seabed

The government is backing away from Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed, in favour of a trusteeship model.

This is a good move. As I've said time and time again, any solution to this issue must be ultimately acceptable to Maori, otherwise it will simply be relitigated (either in the courts, or through the electoral system). A trusteeship model which recognises the burden of aboriginal title and allows for co-management or "ownership" limited by public rights of access and navigation where such title can be proved is far more likely to be acceptable than the current model. The problem is selling it to Pakeha, and particularly getting it through Parliament. National's latest attempt to stir up the rednecks - a speech by Brash explicitly opposing an almost-finalised Treaty settlement - isn't going to help.

It's also ironic that we may very well end up with a law which explicitly recognises the Ngati Apa judgement and provides a legal framework for its implementation, rather than overturning it.

Good news and bad

Good news and bad on the election front. Aucklanders got rid of John Banks. Australians decided to keep John Howard. Christchurch confirmed its reputation as a city of racists, with 1654 people voting for a nazi wannabe. And in Afghanistan the elections went off peacefully, but 15 of 18 presidential candidates joined a boycott after widespread allegations of fraud.

In my own neck of the woods, results seem to be few and far between. Red heather is mayor, Matthew Hodgetts missed out on the regional council, and other than that I have no idea. Unfortunately the Palmerston North City Council doesn't seem to think the internet exists on weekends.

Oh, and Aaron Bhatnagar was de-elected from the Hobson community board.

Update: Palmerston North election results are up, and unfortunately it looks like seven of eight shitlisted candidates have been re-elected. Bugger.