No place for secret trials in New Zealand

Secret trials with evidence hidden from the defendant are rightly viewed as a mark of tyranny, the sort of thing that happens in Iran or China. But one is happening right now in New Zealand:

A secret hearing was being held under tight security at the High Court in Wellington on Wednesday.

The case was so secret that it was not listed in any form on the court's list of fixtures for the day.

Access to the basement level courtroom was barred by court and other black-clad security staff. The usual access between a public cafe on that level, and the court building, was also stopped.

The court manager, Jane Penney, said Justice Robert Dobson had directed that it was a closed court, and media could not attend.

Stuff has suggested that the hearing is connected to A v Minister of Internal Affairs, and is a closed material proceeding where the government is presenting secret "evidence" to the judge which is withheld from the defence. If that is the case, it is abhorrent. Such procedures have been found repeatedly to violate the right to a fair trial, and the UK Supreme Court is on record as ruling that secret evidence "may positively mislead". Keeping secret, potentially misleading evidence from the defence prevents them from effectively challenging it or presenting reasonable explanations, effectively turning the hearing into a kangaroo court. That was certainly the view of the New Zealand public when the government tried to use such procedures against Ahmed Zaoui.

We should not tolerate this sort of process in New Zealand. Whichever law this is being held under must be repealed.

Will Sage stop tenure review?

Last year, in a decision on irrigation in the Mackenzie Country, the Environment Court said there were strong ecological reasons to end the process of high country tenure review. The message was reiterated in a report last week on the future of the Mackenzie basin. And the good news is that, unlike her predecessor, Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage might actually act on it:

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage is not ruling out a moratorium on the tenure review process, as pressure on the process mounts on land use in the central South Island's Mackenzie Basin.

Sage's remarks follow the release last week of a $70,000 report on the future of the basin's governance that suggests all agencies work closer together to improve environmental outcomes.

Sage, who is also Land Information Minister, told Stuff she would be reviewing all aspects of the issue over the next six months. A moratorium on tenure review, as previously suggested by Environment Court Judge Jon Jackson, was one option.

She declined to mention other options, but also said she would be talking to pastoral lease-holders in the region.

Hopefully she'll follow up on this, because tenure review has led to the privatisation and environmental destruction of the Mackenzie Country. It has also been a phenomenally corrupt process, with the government selling land to farmers for a pittance, which is then subdivided and onsold for a thousand times more money. And that in itself should be reason enough to stop it.

Updating our democracy

At the moment, if you want to petition Parliament, you have to collect physical signatures on paper forms. Nowdays, petitions are largely done online, and so this is circumvented by having a petition of one person, asking that the House take note that so many thousand other people have signed an online one. But it looks like change is finally brewing, with Leader of the House Chris Hipkins introducing a motion for a sessional order to allow Parliament to receive electronic petitions:


A lot will depend on the specific requirements imposed by the Clerk, but it is likely that this will make the petition system significantly more accessible than at present. Hopefully it will be introduced soon.

(And then we'll need the next step: a formal system like that used int he UK or US to force Parliament to debate issues raised if enough people petition it).

A failure of due diligence

Last week the government announced the first recipients of its billion dollar a year regional development fund. But it turns out that in addition to funding railway lines and sawmills, they're also funding alleged fraudsters:

A flagship Government programme is funding a project tied to a businessman who has been referred to the Serious Fraud Office.

Among the projects by the Government's new regional development programme is a $350,000 feasibility grant to investigate whether a waste-to-energy plant can be built on the West Coast, Radio New Zealand reports.

The scheme will involve burning rubbish from around the country to generate electricity.

The company behind the scheme is Renew Energy and one of its major shareholders is Gerard Gallagher.

An investigation last year, prompted by a Stuff investigation, found Gallagher and another former official from the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) tried to use their positions for their own financial gain.

The State Services Commission found the pair committed "serious misconduct" when they set up a private company in an attempt to leverage off business deals connected to their Cera jobs. They were referred to the SFO.

This is an appalling failure of due diligence by MBIE. While there's nothing suggesting that the project isn't real, handing over wads of cash to people to people who resigned from public positions over corrupt behaviour found to be "serious misconduct" and are currently under investigation is Not A Good Look. I expect the grant will be withdrawn, but the fact it was offered has got the programme off to a very bad start.

Feeding big brother

I got my census form yesterday. The PR around the census is all about how it will provide data to enable the government to make better policy decisions. Quietly unmentioned: that the data you put on your census form will be combined with pretty much everything the government has in one giant pile called the Integrated Data Infrastructure for future data mining.

I've blogged about this before, back in 2016. I started by comparing the IDI to a certain dystopian science fiction TV show:

You are being watched. The government has a secret system which contains records of everything you have ever done. Where you went to school. Where you worked. How much you earned. Who you lived with. Your sexual orientation. Whether you have ever been a victim - or a suspect - of crime. Whether you have ever had a mental illness or addiction problem. Where you went on holiday. Whether you have been on a benefit. What drugs you have been prescribed, and for what conditions. Your census records. Whether you have had a sexually transmitted disease. Everything you have ever told a government agency, or anything they have learned or inferred or suspected about you, all in one big database for them to look through.

If you think that's overblown, take a look at the official list of data in the IDI. It includes benefit records, CYFS records of "concerns", MSD data about whether people are "at risk" of becoming NEET (not in education, employment, or training - in other words, whether MSD thinks you will end up on a benefit), NCEA grades, border crossings, comprehensive health records including immunisations, prescriptions, and outpatient and inpatient records, tax records, driver's licence, any answers you gave to the General Social Survey - basicly, everything. Officially, it can't be searched for individuals, but that can always change, and its always available to police, immigration, or other agencies with a production order. It is one hell of a capability to leave lying around in government hands, and the potential for abuse is almost endless.

This data was not gathered for the purpose of combining it with other datasets in this manner. We were never asked for our consent. Legally, they don't need it, because the data is "anonymised" (meaning "we know whose it is but we pinky-promise never to look"). Morally? Its all been gathered under false pretences and the government has systematically lied to us about what it is doing with our data.

(The fact that they could do that BTW also shows how worthless their promises never to identify specific individuals are. They've lied to us already about how they would use our data. Why would we place the slightest trust in their current assurances?)

Census data is a key component of the IDI. In particular, it allows Stats to create links across multiple data series, to identify (via an anonymous hash, of course) specific individuals and combine their records into a complete picture. By completing your census form, you are feeding this massive, privacy-invading beast. And you have to do it: failing to complete a census form or providing false information are crimes, and Stats are gearing up to prosecute people for them. Chillingly, their prosecution guidelines specifically target those who have "a strong negative attitude" towards invasion of privacy for prosecution.

But while we have to fill out our forms and feed big brother, we don't have to like it. And if you don't like it, I recommend you contact James Shaw, the Minister of Statistics (j.shaw@ministers.govt.nz) and politely let him know why. Politicians funded this beast, and politicians can (in theory) be convinced to de-fund it. But they won't do that unless we tell them. So, speak up. Its time to demand our privacy back.

OIA handling is getting worse

The Ombudsman and State Services Commission released the third lot of OIA and complaint statistics today. The data is scattered across several websites and spreadsheets, and for some reason they don't do a temporal comparison, which would be the most useful thing in telling us whether performance is getting better or worse. So I've done one - and the news isn't good.

First, the raw data: the overall volume of requests increased slightly, from 40,273 to 41,935 - an increase of 4%. Timeliness generally improved - an example of how a watched agency is an agency that actually does its job - and most core agencies are above the 90% mark where we want them to be. TPK is still the worst public service department, completing only 69.7% of requests on time, with MfE the second worst on 75.4% (a decrease from 77.9%, so they've actually got worse). For non-core agencies, its a similar story. Hawke's Bay DHB is still the shittest, with only 63.6% of requests completed on time - and the scary thing is that that's a massive improvement (last year it was less than 40%). Hopefully repeated publication of these stats and scrutiny on failing agencies will result in their doing better.

The complaint data tells a far more unsettling story. Its sliced differently - every six months rather than every year - and resolution data doesn't necessarily map to complaints received in the same period. But the headline is that complaint numbers are up, from 538 in the second half of 2016 to 673 in the same period in 2017. Insofar as you think complaints are any sort of proxy for the quality of decision-making, that's not good news. And when you look at the resolution data, and at the proportion of resolved complaints which resulted in a remedy, that's up too, from 56% to 65% in just 6 months. Since a remedy implies poor decision-making, that suggests strongly that OIA decisions actually got worse over the course of last year (I can't compare with late 2016, because it looks like the Ombudsman's Office changed what they were recording between the first and second set of statistics).

SSC has now started tracking complaints itself, with the number f complaints notified and final views against, and this should help us spot some trends in future years. But what we really need is UK-style statistics on outcomes, measuring whether a request resulted in release, release in part, or a refusal. Because that will help us identify problem agencies which aren't as open as they could or should be, who need their institutional cultures (and probably leadership) changed. Hopefully we'll start getting that next year.

Update: I've based my comments on timeliness and which departments are doing badly on the 2016/17 full year statistics. SSC has also released half-year stats for Jul - Dec 2017, aligning them with the Ombudsman's complaint data, which show a significant increase in timeliness. In particular, TPK and Hawke's bay DHB have significantly improved their performance, which is good to see.

National's teacher shortage

When National was in power they increased teacher workload with national standards, while freezing pay. They also made tertiary education and teacher training harder to access. The result? A collapse in those training to be teachers:

The number of people training to be teachers dropped 40 per cent in six years, leaving a huge teacher shortage, the Government says.

A boomer-aged teachers prepare to retire, New Zealand is facing a "ticking time bomb" Education Minister Chris Hipkins said.

Figures released today showed the number of people training to be teachers dropped from 14,585 to 8895 - nearly 5700 students.

"The numbers are staggering," Hipkins said.

Early childhood education teacher trainees were down from 6760 to 3615, primary teacher trainees down from 5740 to 4065 and secondary teacher trainees were down from 1865 to 1120.

"In each case, the numbers were going in the opposite direction between 2008 and 2010."

And the result of that combined with retirements and inaccessible housing is that Auckland is expected to be short 3,000 teachers by 2027. There will no doubt be similar shortages in the rest of the country. Which is what happens when you under-invest, then leave others to carry the can.

Fixing this is going to be expensive. The PPTA will apparently be demanding a 14.5% pay rise this year, plus a housing allowance in expensive regions - and there's going to be increased costs to improve accessibility of tertiary education as well. And no doubt National will spend the next three years screaming that that's all "waste", and studiously ignoring the fact that its basicly been forced on the current government by their past penny-pinching. Just like they do with everything else.

Giving the BORA (tiny) teeth

Last year, the Court of Appeal made a landmark constitutional decision, by declaring National's anti-prisoner voting law to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act. This didn't mean that the law was overturned - s4 of the BORA explicitly forbids this - but it was a serious warning to Parliament about the quality of its lawmaking. And now the new government has responded, announcing plans to amend the BORA to require Parliament to formally respond to future declarations of inconsistency and review any law declared to be inconsistent.

Its a small step forward, but a significant one. Most importantly, it recognises that Parliament doesn't always get it right, and that the courts have an important role in checking abuses of our fundamental human rights. The teeth it gives the BORA are tiny, but they may be enough in our system to force significant amendment or repeal of odious laws. And that, after all, is the point of constitutional safeguards.

Why the road toll is rising

After years of going down, in the past couple of years road deaths per capita have been going up - contrary to the trend in the rest of the world. Why? Because the police have cut basic enforcement:

New figures supplied to RNZ News show 1.75 million alcohol breath tests were recorded by Police last year, the lowest in at least 10 years.

It is down 43 percent on 2013 - when more than three million breath tests were carried out.

During that same time frame, 2013 to last year, the road toll rose 50 percent.

The Police Commissioner Mike Bush argues the Police are focussed on quality not quantity.

They might be - but as a matter of law, his budget appropriation requires him to do 2 - 2.4 million breath tests in 2017 [p. 24]. He hasn't. But more importantly, if you look back through past budget appropriations, it appears National cut the expected number of breath tests, from 2.7 - 2.9 million in 2014/15 [p. 58] to 2 - 2.4 million last year. And it wasn't the only decrease. Sam Warburton has documented how National has systematically cut performance expectations for road safety, resulting in fewer dedicated staff. Police officers themselves, via their union, have explicitly linked this to increased deaths.

Which is pretty obvious: the biggest thing deterring speeding and drink-driving is the risk of getting caught, and that risk obviously goes down if there are fewer police officers running checkpoints and ticketing speeders. Looking at the Ministry of Transport's historic road toll data, there are at least 150 excess deaths attributable to these cuts, and that doesn't include last year (which will probably add another 50). That's two hundred deaths from one funding decision. And those deaths were entirely foreseeable, which makes it no different from murder. Shouldn't we hold National's policing and transport Ministers accountable for that?

New Fisk

Negotiations continue between rebels and the Syrian Army, but the bombardment of Ghouta won't stop any time soon
There's a reason why anti-Muslim ideology hasn't found a home in Portugal

Justice denied

How do we enforce human rights and privacy law in New Zealand? Generally, if you have a problem, you complain to the Human Rights Commission or Privacy Commissioner. If mediation fails and/or the problem is serious, it then goes to the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT), a judicial body able to make binding rulings. And there your case will be lost in limbo, because the previous government systematically under-staffed the HRRT to prevent it from hearing cases:

People fighting for their human rights face "beyond unacceptable" waits of more than two years for justice, after politicians and officials ignored repeated pleas for a law change to help clear the backlog, documents reveal.

"Access to justice is being denied to almost all," Human Rights Review Tribunal chairman Rodger Haines said in his latest letter, to new Justice Minister Andrew Little. "For a tribunal charged with protecting human rights the situation is ironic, to say the least."

Claimant Lyn Copland – a grieving mother publicly shamed by the chief executive of the health board in whose care her son died – said the delays were disgusting, insulting and cruel and made a mockery of human rights protections.

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards also labelled the delays unacceptable and said planned Privacy Act changes would further stress the struggling tribunal: "Any justice delayed is justice denied."

The core problem is that all cases must be heard by the chair, which imposes a bottleneck. Despite repeated requests for multiple co-chairs to be appointed to allow the HRRT to deal with its caseload, National appointed only one, and refused a law change to remove the bottleneck entirely. As for why, it's pretty obvious: it would have cost money, both directly in the form of salaries, and indirectly, because the HRRT is a key institution in holding the state to account for its failures, and those failures are often expensive. The family carers case, which has seen the government ordered to pay parents who care for their adult disabled children, began in the HRRT. Stopping the tribunal from doing its job effectively is cheaper for the state.

Its also obviously unjust. Which is why this needs to be fixed as quickly as possible. The new government needs to make this a priority, so we have a functioning justice system and an effective remedy for human rights breaches by the state and by others.

Finally, some action on EQC

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake - and a reminder of what a terrible mess National made of the rebuild. On a macro scale, huge parts of Christchurch are still wasteland seven years on, while the infrastructure is still a mess. On a micro scale, EQC massively failed earthquake victims, with bureaucracy, shoddy repairs, and claims dragging on and on. Apparently 2600 EQC claims are still unresolved after seven years - something which should be utterly unacceptable.

National tolerated this incompetence, because it didn't affect their voters and they expect government to be broken anyway. Labour, OTOH, has sent a clear message that they expect this to be sorted out swiftly, effectively sacking the chair of EQC and appointing an independent advisor to help manage it:

The chair of the EQC board has resigned, as the government vows to speed up all remaining Canterbury earthquake claims.

Megan Woods - the Minister Responsible for the Earthquake Commission - announced today that an independent Ministerial advisor will be sent in to EQC to help speed up the remaining claims.

"I've made it clear I am not satisfied with where EQC is at in respect of the Canterbury Earthquake work seven years on from the February 22nd event. For the around 2600 people with unresolved claims, being stuck in limbo is unacceptable. We've got to see faster progress for these people so that they can get their lives back on track.

"Today I have accepted the resignation of Sir Maarten Wevers, chair of the EQC board, and I thank him for his service. Next week I will be appointing an interim chair to oversee the changes I believe need to be made to speed up this process.

Good. And hopefully those claims will be settled ASAP - because seven years is far too long for people to wait for help after a natural disaster.

No "breakthrough" in the Mackenzie country

ECan has released a report on the environmental governance of the Mackenzie basin, which they're hailing as some sort of "breakthrough":

After more than 10 years of wrangling between environmental and farming interests, a "breakthrough" report on the Mackenzie Basin proposes everyone comes together if the area is to be properly protected.

While emphasising a need for better collaboration, the 54-page "Mackenzie Basin: Opportunities for Alignment", released publicly this week, stops short of suggesting a formal amalgamation of local council and government departments.

Commissioned by Environment Canterbury (ECan), Land Information New Zealand (Linz), the Department of Conservation (DOC) and the Waitaki and Mackenzie district councils, the report recommends joint consent hearings, clearer plan guidelines, new tenure review guidelines and staff sharing among affected organisations. It also suggests all of the major agencies look into ways of managing the pressures of tourism in the Mackenzie.

Mackenzie District Mayor Graham Smith said the report was a "breakthrough".

Hardly. Because if you read the report, and in particular the issues summary table, its clear that there is a huge divergance in views between farmers (who want to profit by despoiling the area and drowning it in pivot irrigators) and everyone else. While there's obvious potential for government agencies to work more closely together to ensure that e.g. ECan's water consents don't undermine district council efforts to control land use, there's no kum-bah-yah group hug "everyone wins" moment to be found here. As the report itself notes, "a common understanding of the appropriate extent of pastoral intensification compared to landscape / ecological protection has not yet been achieved". And given that that is the central problem, this isn't any form of "breakthrough".

The central idea of the report is a drylands park to protect the natural landscape, now downgraded to a non-contiguous drylands natural heritage area because so much of it has been privatised and destroyed while they've been talking. If we're to have any hope of achieving this, then the first step has to be stopping the corrupt process of tenure review, at least in the northern part of the basin, so the government can work out what land we would need to make it happen. The good news is that the relevant portfolios are both in the hands of Eugenie Sage, so we we now have a Minister and a government which might actually be interested in doing this.

But why would we want to do that?

The Queenstown Lakes District Council wants luxury houses exempted from the Overseas Investment Act's foreign-buyer ban:

The Queenstown Lakes District Council wants luxury homes to be exempt from the government's foreign buyers ban.

Some expensive homes owned by the exeptionally wealthy may not sell if they are only available to New Zealanders, it said in its submission on the bill.

[...]

The council said the district had benefited "significantly" from people who have purchased in the luxury home market.

"Not only have we seen traditional investment in local business, but we have seen the launch of ground breaking social enterprises and incredible impact investment," the submission said.

That part of the housing market attracted high net worth people to the country who help the economy by bringing expertise, connections, investment and philanthropy, it said.

Yeah - people like anti-democratic vampire capitalist Peter Thiel and his silicon-valley doomsday prepper friends. Or the various foreign millionaires who have restricted access to public land. Or foreign criminals stashing and laundering money. Why would we want people like that?

The proposed law doesn't apply to anyone who actually lives here, so what QLDC is saying is that non-resident foreigners should be allowed to own parts of New Zealand for use as emergency boltholes for when they've fucked up the world, or as a commodity, effectively a house-shaped gold bar. And I just don't see why we should accept that, especially when said house-shaped gold bars are fucking things up for the rest of us. While QLDC is correct that the luxury property market is effectively a foreign market, utterly out of reach of almost all kiwis, those empty luxury houses are still taking up land which could be used for real homes for real people - something Queenstown is desperately short of. If they are devalued by the law, then maybe that land will be used for other purposes. The only losers in that will be the foreign speculators and the parasitic developers and real-estate agents who service them. But I guess the latter are exactly the sorts of people who get elected to local authorities and use them as a platform to promote their own economic interests.

Disappointed

Last year, the Palmerston North City Council voted to ensure Māori representation with Māori wards. Now, thanks to a visting band of out-of-town racists whipping up hate, we're going to be forced to have a referendum on it:

Petitioners opposing a decision to guarantee Māori seats on the Palmerston North City Council have succeeded in forcing a city-wide poll on the matter.

Organiser Don Esslemont, whose campaign has been supported by Hobson's Pledge, presented nearly 4000 signatures to the city council on Wednesday afternoon.

Only 2727 signatures needed to be verified as those of registered voters to require a referendum.

Council officials confirmed about 7.20pm on Wednesday the threshold has been reached and the poll would be held on Saturday, May 19, by postal vote and using the first-past-the-post system. The result will be binding.

So, we're going to have vote where the majority will vote on the democratic rights of a minority. Hopefully it'll go the right way, but no matter what the outcome, the situation is not acceptable. The decision of how they want to be represented is really one for Māori, and its not really the place of Pakeha to try and veto that. Such polls should be restricted to those on the Māori roll, and I'd love to see a Member's Bill to require that.

National vandalised our health system

Surprise, surprise! The health system in Auckland is collapsing due to underfunding:

Auckland health bosses have revealed a picture of a health system at breaking point from underfunding and population growth.

Reporting to MPs at Parliament yesterday, they spoke of a wave of unprecedented demand for acute services and staff who were extremely stressed at having to cope with more and sicker people.

"Our staff were working unexpectedly long hours and became increasingly stressed about not just how hard they were having to work but about the numbers of extremely unwell people they were having to look after," the head of Manukau Counties District Health Board, Gloria Johnson, told the health select committee.

"The problem we have at the moment, particularly over the last 18 months, [is] we've become overwhelmed by demand."

Its so bad that the former chair of the three Auckland DHBs believes they no longer have the resources to deal with a pandemic.

This isn't surprising: National deliberately underfunded health for its term of office in an effort to pay for its tax cuts for the rich. While they played up large nominal increases, these were always less than that required to counter inflation, let alone population growth and demographic change. Instead, like the rest of the public service, the health system was expected to "do more with less". The results of that policy can be seen above. What's changed is that with a new government, DHB chairs feel they can openly say it, rather than risking dismissal and revenge funding cuts under National.

It is going to take the best part of a decade to undo this damage. And no doubt, National will spend that time complaining about "overspending" and "inefficiency" and promising more vandalism if re-elected. Just like they did during the Clark government after Jenny Shipley and Bill English vandalised the health system in the 90's.

New Fisk

Western howls of outrage over the Ghouta siege ring hollow – we aren't likely to do anything to save civilians

Drawn

A ballot for four Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn:

• Election Access Fund Bill (Chlöe Swarbrick)
  
• Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill (Barbara Kuriger)
  
• Employment (Pay Equity and Equal Pay) Bill (Denise Lee)
  
• Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill (Harete Hipango)
  

Despite the hopeful title, Denise Lee's bill is National's pre-election bill designed to overturn caselaw and make pay equity and equal pay claims more difficult. It was widely criticised, and allowed to lapse by National when Parliament was dissolved for the election, which tells you a) how little support there was for a pro-employer framework; and b) how little National really cared about it anyway. I'm sure we can expect a lot of tub-thumping from them about how the government is opposing pay equity by voting it down, and it should put the pressure on them to introduce their own legislation ASAP.

There were 68 bills in the ballot today, so its back to running near capacity again.

Local government fails the transparency test

That's the view of Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier:

The chief ombudsman says local democracy is being undermined as councils fail to meet obligations to release public information.

Peter Boshier said councils are not meeting their responsibilities under the Local Government Official Information and Meeting Act and that some councils seem to resent having to be held accountable.

"The performance of many councils is disappointing. Local government is absolutely fundamental to democracy, and in that respect the need for accountability and supply of information is just as strong as it is with central government, and yet many local councils don't see it that way.

"We will commence a better process of publicising our data on complaints, giving better guidance and encouraging an earlier dispute resolution process so ratepayers who often have legitimate complaints can get to the end of the journey earlier than before."

This matches my experience. Local government agencies tend to be less familiar with the requirements of the LGOIMA, and generally less forthcoming with information. And if you look at the sorts of responses they give on FYI, its the same picture. As for what to do about it, for central government agencies, we address this sort of problem with training and performance statistics. Extending that regime to local government would seem to be a good first step.

No freedom of speech in Spain

Oh look - Spain still has an archaic lese majeste law:

Spain's Supreme Court confirmed Tuesday rapper Jose Miguel Arenas, known as Valtonyc, will serve three and half years in prison for insulting, slandering Spain's monarchs and "exalting terrorism." Arenas was found guilty by a national tribunal on Feb. 7.

Valtonyc had argued he was exercising his right to free speech and artistic creation, but the court dismissed his defense saying the songs he wrote and published via internet include support of terrorist groups and attacks against the king and his family.

Spain is supposed to be a democratic country which respects freedom of expression, as required by the European Convention on Human Rights. But as we've seen from the state use of violence to suppress Catalonia's democratic desire for independence, it has abandoned those values. Civilised states don't have special criminal libel laws protecting the monarch, and civilised states allow people to criticize corrupt aristocrats and comment on politics without going to jail. But I guess Spain isn't really civilised any more.

Muppets

That's the only way to describe Ministerial Services, who are apparently incapable of paying MPs and Ministers the correct amount of money:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters were both mistakenly paid over $21,000 for accommodation they didn't need.

The pair put out a press release on Tuesday afternoon explaining the overpayment, which resulted from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) continuing to pay them an accommodation allowance despite each moving into an official residence.

Ardern received $12,082.19 while Peters received $9123. They have both repaid the amount in full and received an apology for the error.

"As soon as we were advised of the error, we both immediately took steps to reimburse the money. That has now happened," the pair said.

"The error occurred when the DIA's Ministerial Services continued to pay each of us a Member of Parliament's Wellington accommodation allowance after they had moved us into official accommodation, at which point payments should have stopped."

This wasn't a case like Bill English's of MP's trying to rort the system - instead it was a pure fuckup from Ministerial Services. They've accepted complete responsibility for the error, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence, and it invites the question of how many other times they've fucked up, and whether they've even noticed. As for Ardern and Peters, their salaries had just doubled or tripled. Unless they're getting a detailed payslip every month setting out which of the multiple allowances they are and aren't receiving, I can't blame them for not noticing this.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day, and it looks like its a chance to clear space for a ballot. First up is protest-suppressing Jonathan Young's Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill, which has been found to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, so hopefully it'll be voted down. Next is Fletcher Tabuteau's KiwiFund Bill, which would establish a government-controlled Kiwisaver provider. Then there are two education bills: Jan Tinetti's Education (National Education and Learning Priorities) Amendment Bill (which is about diversity) and Jenny Marcroft's Education (Protecting Teacher Title) Amendment Bill (which is about preventing unregistered instructors at charter schools from misrepresenting themselves as registered professionals). The latter has also been found to breach the Bill of Rights Act, so hopefully it too will be voted down. Finally, the House should make a start on Louisa wall's Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Renewal of Licences) Amendment Bill (No 2). If they get that far, there should be a ballot for four bills tomorrow - which should hopefully allow some more exciting bills to be drawn.

Blasphemous libel is getting closer, and the debate on the first reading of the bill to repeal it should be in a month, on March 21.

Good news for once

The Gambia has put a moratorium on use of the death penalty, and is working towards abolition:

The Gambia's President has announced a suspension of the death penalty as the West African country seeks to rebuild its international standing following the removal of its authoritarian ruler last year.

"I will use this opportunity to declare a moratorium on the use of the death penalty in The Gambia, as a first step towards abolition," Adama Barrow said in a speech to mark the 53rd anniversary of the country's independence from Great Britain.

If Gambia abolishes the death penalty, it will be the first former British colony on West Africa to do so. Hopefully they'll do it soon.

Time to lock the revolving door

Stuff reports that former National Chief of Staff Wayne Eagleson has become a lobbyist within months of quitting. He's the second high profile public official to do this recently, with former Labour Chief of Staff Neale Jones joining Australian lobbyists Hawker Britton in November. In both cases, these former public officials are seeking to leverage the knowledge and contacts they built up in their highly paid public careers for private profit.

Why do we allow this? Many other democracies don't. Australia, Canada, the USA and the European Union all have cooling off periods for public officials, preventing MPs and senior public servants from seeking to use their networks for private gain for up to five years. Such cooling off periods can be specific to issues in which the official worked (e.g. generals can't go and work for defence contractors, but can work for tobacco companies), or a general prohibition. The justification is to prevent the distortion of democracy, to prevent conflicts of interest and the abuse of knowledge and networks gained in public service for private gain, and to prevent post-retirement payoffs. All of which seem like something we need here.

(In fact, we have one provision: s15(2) of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007 prohibits former Immigration Ministers and officials from working as immigration advisors for 12 months after leaving office. So we recognise that there is a need)

Regulation of lobbyists was another key demand of the Open Government Partnership consultation which was ignored by the government. They're supposed to be working on a new OGP action plan this year, so this is an opportunity to get them to commit to it.

Fifteen

This blog turned fifteen last week, and my first post on it (about the run-up to the Iraq war) was on February 18, 2003.

Well, shit. That's a long time.

Things have slowed down here over the past few years as I've moved a lot of my commentary to Twitter. And they've been particularly slow in the past few months due to the post-election / holiday break from politics (and some of the big stories being about the personal lives of politicians - something I am resolutely Not Interested in). But I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Will they prosecute?

Over the weekend, farmers poisoned two Manawatu streams:

Stockyards are the most likely source of a significant discharge of animal effluent into Feilding waterways, the regional council says.

Residents have been told not to swim, wade or fish the Makino Stream and Oroua River because of the waste contamination.

Manawatu-Whanganui Regional Council staff last night discovered a significant amount of effluent being discharged into the Makino Stream near Rata Street.

The council's manager for strategy and regulation, Dr Nic Peet, said the discharge most likely came from the yards where sheep and beef sales were held every Friday.

He said the council was alerted by a call by a member of the public to its pollution hotline.

"There was a really obvious discharge via the stormwater system," he said. Staff traced it back to the stockyards and from there were able to have it stopped and shut off.

There's now a public health warning in place, because this pollution could make people sick. Which leads to the obvious question: will they prosecute? Because the discharge of contaminants to water without resource consent (which this doesn't appear to have had) violates the Resource Management Act. It is a criminal offence with a penalty of up to two years' jail and a $300,000 fine.

Or is Horizons just going to look the other way, just like they have on nitrogen pollution?

NZDF lied to us all along

When the New Zealand SAS raided two villages in Afghanistan in a revenge attack over the death of a kiwi soldier, they told us they hadn't killed any civilians. When Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson published Hit & Run showing that they had, NZDF claimed they were wrong. But it turns out that while they were making those claims of no civilian deaths, they had been sitting on intelligence reports saying the opposite:

The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) received intelligence updates within one or two days of the August 2010 SAS raid in Afghanistan that reported civilian casualties, including the death of a child, new Official Information Act documents reveal. This is what was written in the book Hit and Run but the NZDF had denied the whole book.

Hit and Run co-author Nicky Hager, who has been probing the defence force using the Official Information Act (OIA), says this is an important crack in the NZDF denials.

The 13 February 2018 NZDF OIA response admitted that five New Zealand military intelligence reports written after the SAS raid “mention the death of a child” and also injuries to a woman. The intelligence reports were dated 24 (two), 25 and 26 August 2010, the days following the 22 August 2010 raid, and 27 July 2011.*

The NZDF letter said the reports of civilian casualties were “unconfirmed” – but under international law and the NZDF’s own internal rules, the SAS should have thoroughly investigated any reports of civilian casualties during an operation that it had commanded. Instead, it appears they did not bother to investigate nor made any effort to help the victims.

So, they lied to us all along - and not for any reason of protecting lives or operational security at a critical moment, but to protect their own reputation and maintain public support for their dirty little war. And that fact alone should be reason enough to bring them all home and take their toys away forever - they have clearly shown that they can not be trusted to respect democratic control while involved in a war, so we shouldn't let them play their little war games until they have proven otherwise.

Our reserves are open for pillage

The Reserves Act 1977 is meant to protect our environment, by placing some areas off-limits for development. Except, it turns out that it doesn't. Where a reserve is owned and managed by local government, they can apparently let it be dug up for an open-cast coal-mine:

One of several legal attempts to block a new coal mining venture on the West Coast has failed, but campaigners say the fight to stop the mine is far from finished.

[...]

Forest and Bird fought a separate legal campaign over an earlier decision by Buller District Council to allow the mining company access to its Water Conservation Reserve.

The council then rescinded that decision after being threatened with legal action from Forest and Bird.

Rangitira replied by challenging that reversal in the High Court.

That case has now produced a verdict, and it went against Forest and Bird and in favour of the mining company.

The court argued the original approval of access - granted under the Crown Minerals Act - had higher legal standing than the Reserves Act that Forest and Bird had relied on to block access.

This follows straightforwardly from s109 of the Reserves Act in combination with s22(2) of the Interpretation Act 1999. While local councils are required to have regard to the purpose for which land is held, it can be balanced against other considerations such as supposed economic benefit. Which, given the usual quality of local government decision-making and its propensity for capture by large donors and special interests, means open pillage.

As for fixing it, I'd suggest repealing s109. Does any MP want to bring a member's bill?

The full decision is here.

...and on whistleblower protection

Abortion isn't the only area where Labour is moving to act on its promises. last year, the newly elected government suggested it would strengthen whistleblower protections. Now, they're doing that too:

Work has begun on a review of the Protected Disclosures Act 2000, Minister of State Services Chris Hipkins said today.

The Government is exploring whether the law and procedures to protect whistle blowers need to be strengthened. The review will start with a series of targeted workshops next week.

“Getting this right is critical to building public confidence in the integrity of government and business in New Zealand,” Mr Hipkins says.

“It is crucial that employees feel safe to report cases of serious misconduct. Anyone who raises issues of serious misconduct or wrongdoing needs to have faith that their role, reputation, and career development will not be jeopardised when speaking up.

“The first step in this review is to identify possible gaps and weaknesses in the current Act.”

There are a couple. Firstly, that whistleblowers can't go to MPs or the media if their reports are ignored by their proper reporting chain. Secondly, that (thanks to National) it is literally a criminal offence for staff in some departments (notably those with significant intrusive powers) to pass on evidence of wrongdoing. Thirdly, that it is not currently a criminal offence to retaliate against whistleblowers. All those things need to change. Hopefully this review will be the first step in that process.

New Fisk

In the cases of two separate holocausts, Israel and Poland find it difficult to acknowledge the facts of history

Labour acts on abortion

During the election campaign, Jacinda Ardern promised that if elected she would decriminalise abortion. Now Labour are taking the first step towards that, with a review by the Law Commission

Justice Minister Andrew Little intends to ask the Law Commission to update the archaic law on abortion, including looking at decriminalising it.

This morning, the Abortion Supervisory Committee (ASC)​ told Parliament that the 41-year-old law was impractical and made the difficult lives of women seeking abortion even more difficult.

The committee added that it had been years since it had seen any meaningful engagement from Parliament, including over three years since a minister had met with its members.

A review by the Law Commssion is a good idea - it will formally document how badly the current archaic law works, while examining more modern laws from overseas (e.g. Victoria). And it should give us decent draft legislation for any change.

The question is whether it will pass. In order to get enough votes, any bill will need substantial support from National, but their current leadership contest shows that even "liberals" like Amy Adams are grovelling to the Christian right and defending the status quo. That might not last - there's nothing as two-faced as a politician - but its a bad sign. There's also a real danger of wrecking amendments such as mandatory scolding "counselling" or parental consent requirements, which may undermine the right to abortion in practice. So we may end up with a great proposed law, which we can't pass due to too many National misogynists in Parliament. Though given the expected length of time for a review, it'll probably be the next Parliament which has to deal with this anyway, so we'll at least get a chance to fix that first.

Extending the bright-line

The government has announced it will extend the de facto capital gains tax on investment properties:

Government is extending the amount of time for which investment properties must be held before their owners can avoid capital gains tax - despite a warning that it could be bad news for renters.

Revenue Minister Stuart Nash confirmed the "bright-line" test would be extended from two years to five in legislation working through Parliament.

"The extension of the previous government's bright-line test will help dampen property speculation and make homes more affordable," Nash said.

He said reducing speculative demand would help to improve affordability for owner-occupiers.

Good. Because the way the rich get to enjoy tax-free capital gains on property speculation, while the rest of us pay taxes on everything we earn, is unjust and wrong. Its good to see it limited. At the same time, it clearly doesn't address long-term speculation, or financial assets (which the ultra-rich own almost all off). Labour has punted that problem till next election. Hopefully they'll actually show some spine and implement a proper capital gains tax if they win, rather than continuing to protect the untaxed rich.

Dunne on the OIA

Despite no longer being in Parliament, former MP Peter Dunne is still writing a weekly column. And today, he has a few thoughts on the Official Information Act. Dunne's perspective is useful, because he's been on both sides of the Act, as a requester and as a Minister, so he's seen how it works from both ends. His conclusions are that the government plays games and that this needs to stop, and that the Act needs to be extended to cover Parliament (but not MPs) and the courts. But his way of getting there is just bizarre:

Therefore, it is time for a joint working party, involving the Ombudsman's Office, the news media, and the politicians (not just the government of the day) to be convened to prepare a new OIA that upholds its original principles and the good things about the current legislation, but which also modernises its scope, processes, and, if possible, operating culture in the light of contemporary circumstances. And then we should commit in these rapidly changing times, to carrying out a similar review every five years.

We don't need another review - everything Dunne suggests was recommended by the Law Commission review in 2012. What we've lacked since then is a government willing to implement its substantive recommendations. It remains to be seen whether the current government is interested in real change or not. But one sure sign that its not will be if it sets up another review.

Genesis lied on coal

Back in 2015, SOE Genesis Energy committed to shutting down the last two coal-fired units at its Huntly power-plant by December 2018. Of course, they lied:

Genesis Energy has pledged to stop using coal to generate electricity except in exceptional circumstances by 2025.

And it will stop using coal entirely by 2030.

The company has been criticised for using coal to generate electricity at its Huntly power plants because coal produces far more greenhouse gas emissions per therm of energy than gas does.

Of course, there's no mention that this is a repudiation of their 2015 promise, and one which will cause significant damage to the climate. And while they complain a lot about "security of supply", as Greenpeace points out, there are over 3 GW of renewable generation already consented (up to 850 of it by Genesis in one wind farm). But that stuff isn't being built because Genesis is still flooding the market by burning dirty coal in its hugely inefficient 70's-era power station.

If we are to meet our renewable energy targets and save the climate, we need to stop burning coal. And that means shutting down Huntly - permanently.

Oh FFS

Labour is considering dumping plans to put cameras on fishing boats:

Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash said many in the fishing industry were unhappy with the camera proposal and all options were on the table - including dumping it entirely.

One of Mr Nash's first moves when he became the Fisheries Minister was to put the brakes on the rollout of electronic monitoring of the commercial fishing fleet.

The former National government came up with the plan last year, saying it would protect the sustainability of fish stocks and act as a deterrent against illegal activity, like fish dumping.

But Mr Nash said National forced it upon the sector, and he was getting advice from officials on what should be done.

"There are certainly concerns in the industry that there hasn't been a proper process followed and a complete and utter lack of consultation.

...which is like a burglar complaining about a "lack of consultation" when people install burglar alarms. Because that is what is going on here: an industry which is 80% criminal and which has relied for decades on regulatory capture to get away with serious criminal behaviour is finally looking at being properly regulated. So naturally, they are squealing about it. The government should ignore that squealing, regulate the fuckers, and target the loudest for investigation since they obviously have something to hide.

...and I'd expect the Greens to be demanding this of their "partners". Because this is fundamentally about environmental crime, and the Greens should not let NZ First and Labour turn a blind eye to it like they did in the past.

National's legacy

The Salvation Army released its annual State of the Nation report today, revealing the mess National has left us in:

The number of food parcels being handed out at the Salvation Army's foodbanks has jumped 12 percent in the last year, according to the organisation's latest State of the Nation report.

Between 2011 and 2016, the Salvation Army was handing out about 56,000 food parcels a year.

Last year, that number jumped to 63,000 - helping almost 32,000 families - and the report's author, Alan Johnson, said they were not exactly sure what's behind the increased demand.

The report attributes this to National's housing crisis. While MSD has become more generous with emergency assistance, its not enough to offset the squeeze on renters (and MSD are vicious arseholes which discourages people from seeking or receiving the help they are entitled to).

This is National's legacy - mass poverty and inequality. And no doubt they'll spend the next three years pretending to care about it and complaining that Labour hasn't fixed in five minutes a problem that it took them nine long years to create and exacerbate.

Australia's biggest tax cheats

Big companies are supposed to be good for us, right? They make money and pay taxes, allowing the government to fund the stuff we need. Except in Australia, that's just not true: their largest corporations pay no tax:

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, one of the most prominent supporters of the Turnbull Government's proposed big business tax cut, presides over a company that hasn't paid corporate tax for close to 10 years.

The period roughly coincides with Mr Joyce's tenure at the helm of Australia's flag carrier.

Despite generating income of $106.4 billion, the flying kangaroo has avoided paying tax on that bounty since 2009, thanks to Australia's generous tax concessions, depreciation provisions and the ability to offset company losses against past and future profits.

New analysis by the ABC reveals Qantas is not alone — its tax behaviour is consistent with about 380 of Australia's largest companies. ATO corporate tax transparency data — confirmed in email exchanges with company representatives — reveals about one in five of the country's biggest companies have paid no tax for at least the past three years.

The article has a long, long list of large companies who pay nothing, preferring instead to launder their money and play complicated shell games to steal from the public. It includes airlines, banks, mining companies, and media giant APN (which owns the New Zealand Herald). Which makes you wonder whether this happens in New Zealand. It almost certainly does, but unfortunately, we'll never be able to prove it, because while the Australian Tax Office publishes an annual transparency report on how much tax is paid by big business, IRD considers whether corporations are stealing from us to be "private". Which puts them in the position of actively covering up for tax thieves. It also leaves us in the position of not being able to decide appropriate policy, because the public is actively denied the data necessary to judge the scale of the problem.

There's an obvious member's bill here to set up a statutory transparency regime, for an MP who wants to stick it to the tax cheats. Does anyone want to take it up?

Good riddance to Bill English

So, Bill English has resigned as leader of the National Party and will be leaving Parliament. Good fucking riddance. He's done a lot of shitty things in his career, and I'm glad to see the back of him. There's his role in pushing climate change denial as National leader in the early 2000s, which delayed real action on climate change until... well, we still haven't seen it, have we? There's his racist response to the foreshore and seabed case, which in turn helped push Labour down the racist path of dispossession. There's his constant battle to undermine abortion rights and women's health. And then, there's his own personal dishonesty in claiming to live in Dipton so he could get the taxpayer to pay for the house in Karori he actually lived in. Bluntly, the man was a racist and a thief, and the sooner he goes, the better.

NZ's history is secure

Over the xmas break, we learned that the British government was conveniently "misplacing" documents from its national archives - documents which detailed the crimes of empire or which might be inconvenient or embarrassing for the establishment in the future. The mechanism for this crude coverup is temporary loan back to the originating agency, which then somehow "loses" the embarrassing file (or in some cases, only the embarrassing pages).

(That's of course the stuff that makes it into the archive. The British government has also had systematic processes to stop records of their crimes being archived in the first place)

When I read this, I was curious: New Zealand has a statutory process for temporary return of archive material, so does anything similar happen here? I used the OIA to ask Archives New Zealand some questions about temporary returns and missing documents, and the response I think is one that can give us confidence that our history is secure:

The number of items temporarily returned to originating or controlling public offices differs each year based on demand. The Government Loans service processed 3,482 files for offsite loan during the 2017 calendar year. For 2016, a total of 3,408 items were issued; 4,166 items were issued in 2015. These numbers cover all of our offices (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin).

[...]

We find that our government loans clients take the security of the items they borrow very seriously. There are 22 items listed as ‘Missing – Government Loans’ in our system.

I've asked for a list of those files, but the overall picture appears to be good. You'd expect a small rate of loss as part of the bureaucratic process, but this appears to be extremely small indeed. Unlike the UK, we don't appear to have systematic government destruction of our history. But I guess we have far less to be ashamed of...

"A lottery"

That's how UK immigration staff are describing their refugee decision-making process:

The British asylum process is a lottery and many asylum interviews are rushed, biased and resolved by “cut and paste” decisions by overworked Home Office staff, whistleblowers have told the Guardian.

Former staff employed in deciding asylum claims said some colleagues had a harsh, even abusive, attitude towards applicants, mocking them to one another and employing “intimidation tactics” during interviews.

As a result, the whistleblowers said, the asylum system was in effect a lottery, depending on the personal views of the decision-maker who picked up the file. They said some staff took pride in rarely, if ever, granting asylum.

[...]

“It’s just a lottery,” said another. “Because if you’ve got a caseworker who was particularly refusal-minded and was determined to catch you out then you’re going to have a hard time … There was one particular guy who had a reputation for never granting anything. He kind of took pride in that as well. On the one occasion when he did grant someone, I think someone brought him in a cake.”

It is difficult to see how this meets the requirements of international law, let alone administrative law requirements of fairness and reasonableness. But I guess if its dificult for people to get lawyers, then those requirements mean nothing in practice, and can be ignored.

Further on, the article talks about staff being required to process 225 applications a year - a rate which leaves them no time to properly read the cases, let alone make a good decision. Its reminiscent of the dystopian computer game Papers, Please, rather than the sort of thing you expect to happen in a civilised and functioning country. But I guess where refugees are concerned, the UK hasn't been civilised for quite some time, if indeed it ever was.

I'd like to think that New Zealand does a better job than this, but we've had the same budgetry pressures that the UK has had. Maybe its worth someone sending some pokey OIA requests about staff numbers, caseload, and expected work rates?

Worse than we thought

So, it turns out that National's housing crisis is much worse than we thought, with an enormous hidden pool of homeless people exiled from state housing, massive undersupply, and long-term consequences for health and our society. And fixing it is going to be far more work and far more expensive than Labour imagined:

Eaqub said the new Government was actually lacking ambition in the area - they needed to double the number of state houses and build 500,000 homes over the next ten years instead of 100,000.

He said the Government's budget responsibility rules were an unnecessary straitjacket which could hold the Government back from properly addressing the crisis.

The Herald version has some even blunter language about this:

Eaqub said investment was needed in infrastructure and housing such as the KiwiBuild programme yet the Government was restricted because of the fiscal responsibility rules.

He said the infrastructure issue could be resolved by "borrowing s***loads of money" and only a "fiscal idiot" would not have been borrowing money in the current climate or over the past decade.

So basicly we're going to need long-term and very expensive reinvestment to fix National's infrastructure deficit. And while the government is doing that, National will spend the entire time screaming about debt and taxes. Because fundamentally, National doesn't care about housing and everyone having a roof over their heads - that was clear enough from their policies. What they care about is rich people not having to pay for anything. Just like the local government morons who whine perpetually about rates while letting their sewage systems, roading networks, and other public infrastructure decay.

But it has to be done. The report makes clear that failing to fix this will cost us in health costs, education costs, and significantly in superannuation costs. Not fixing it is dereliction of duty. The good news is that building state houses is an investment: you borrow money, and you get an asset, which then rises in value and delivers social and economic benefits (e.g. reduced health costs). Eaqub is right: when interest rates are low, it is mad not to do that (even National accepts this, at least when it comes to interest-free student loans). The big problem is going to be the capacity of the building sector to deliver a mass house-building programme. So the government is going to have to do a lot of work building the capacity to build. The good news is that having permanent work from the government will remove the boom-and-bust cycle from the building market, and allow serious long-term investment to make it more productive. Assuming of course that a National government doesn't just come along and scrap the entire thing again.

The full report is here.

Bring them home and put them on a leash

Stuff has a piece this morning about research from human rights campaigner Harmeet Sooden about what NZDF is doing in Iraq. Sooden's full report is here, but the short version is that National expanded NZDF's mission from training to "advise-and-assist", including planning and coordinating the combat missions of a force which shows no respect for human rights. Naturally, they did this secretly, and just two months before the 2017 election. NZDF has also been involved in a US program to collect biometric data from the Iraqi population (similar to the program the SAS was participating in in Afghanistan, exposed in Hit and Run), which given the Iraqi government's penchant for torture and sectarian oppression, has significant human rights implications (effectively, we're helping them compile a sectarian hit-list). Again, they did all of this in secret too. So, its the usual story: NZDF goes to fight other people's wars and lies to us about what its doing.

We have seen this again and again over the years - in Iraq during Bush's war, in Afghanistan, in the Arabian Gulf, and now in Iraq, and it has to fucking stop. We cannot tolerate a military which regards the people it works for - the New Zealand public - effectively as an enemy to be mushroomed, propagandised, and lied to. That is simply not acceptable in a democracy.

As for how, in the long-term we clearly need Parliamentary approval for any foreign military deployment. That automatically prevents mission creep and provides direct Parliamentary oversight. In the short term, the best way to stop NZDF misbehaving is to bring them home. Back in 2016, Labour promised to do just that, and withdraw kiwi troops from Iraq. The Australians (and presumably their American masters) are currently wanting us to extend our deployment (despite having declared victory over ISIS). We should resist that demand. And specifically, the Greens should put their foot down and demand it. After all, if they're going to be asked to compromise their democratic values as the price of getting along in government, they should get something for it. Ending our involvement in Iraq seems like a fair price for that stinky dead rat.

New Fisk

Israel's outrage over the Palestinian President’s new private jet is hypocritical

Good riddance to charter schools

The government has introduced legislation to end charter schools:

The Government has introduced a bill to scrap national standards and charter schools in New Zealand.

However, charter school operators wanting to be involved in education could apply to establish another form of school, such as a designated character school, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said.

The new legislation was introduced by Hipkins on Thursday, who said it was backed by the vast majority of the education sector.

Good riddance. Privatised, subsidised, profit-making entities have no place in our education system, especially when they're funded at a higher rate than state schools while being exempt from both any quality standards and any oversight via the OIA. I am glad to see them go. If their communities actually want them, then they can be turned into special character schools under existing provisions of the Education Act. Otherwise, they can and should shut down.

More cronyism

The government is apparently planning to give former Labour MP Annette King a diplomatic sinecure:

Former MP Dame Annette King is tipped to be appointed the next High Commissioner to Australia by the end of the year.

King left Parliament at the last election and was made a Dame in the New Year's Honours.

It is understood King is now in line to be appointed as High Commissioner for Australia in the middle of the year and will take up the post when the current High Commissioner Chris Seed leaves after August.

If true, this is simply more cronyism. While heads of mission are technically appointed by the Governor-General rather than the Chief Executive, they still become public servants. The principle of appointment on merit should apply - especially to our most important diplomatic position. The idea that you just appoint a crony as a political favour so they can drink themselves senseless for three years at public expense is a loathsome relic of the British monarchy and belongs in the dustbin of history with the rest of the imperial baggage.

Pre-election, Winston Peters reportedly said he would restore appointment on merit for diplomatic posting, and recall National's crony appointments. I'd like to see him keep his word on this. Those appointments were wrong and should never have been made. If Winston wants a legacy, ending this culture of high-level cronyism would be an excellent one.

But I guess then he'll never get the diplomatic post he's been dreaming of as a retirement sinecure... and so the self-interest and greed of our political class screws us all again.

New Fisk

On the front line in Syria, a confusing conversation with a doctor who may be an official of the YPG

4,000 employed under Labour

The labour market statistics have been released, showing a decrease in unemployment in the new government's first quarter in office. Where National ended its term with 21,000 more unemployed than when it began, Labour has already decreased it by 4,000. That's luck rather than policy - Labour hasn't yet made any changes to employment law or to the Reserve Bank's economic settings - but it does establish a baseline from which their future performance can be judged.

A change in government will mean a change in attitude. National believed it was helpless in the face of market forces, so abandoned the unemployed to the market, while complaining about the cost of its own inaction. Labour sees unemployment as a moral failing of government, a failure to set economic policy to ensure that everyone who wants to work can (and get paid well for doing so). Which means that if we get a shock to the economy in their term, they will at least try and do something to help, rather than just shitting on people.

A good start

When it was first elected, the government promised to end coal mining on conservation land. Now they've taken a step towards that, by blocking the sale of land on the Denniston Plateau to foreign coal company Bathurst Resources:

The government has blocked the sale of 19 hectares of land on the West Coast to a coalmining company.
The Stockton mine on the West Coast.

The Overseas Investment Office had recommended that Bathurst Coal be allowed to buy three separate areas on the Denniston Plateau.

But that recommendation has been rejected by the Conservation Minister, Eugenie Sage, and the Associate Finance Minister, David Clark.

The land required OIO approval because it was surrounded by land held by DoC. The OIO as usual rubber-stamped it. But the Ministers said no, on the basis that there was no economic benefit to New Zealand. Officially this was because the mine on the land was closed and Bathurst had no plans to re-open it. While its not clear if they considered Bathurst's real plans - using the land to force access to the conservation estate for a giant open-cast mine instead - recent experience with this company getting resource consent and stealing conservation land, only to shut down operations immediately suggests there's no economic benefit there either. And that's without even having to get in to whether the government would keep its promise to refuse access (if they do, no economic benefit either).

Either way, the net result of this decision appears to be preventing the possibility of a giant, open-cast coal pit in an environmentally sensitive area. And that's a good start on the government keeping its promise.

New Fisk

As my recent trip to Syria proved, wars can be at their most dangerous when they're coming to an end

A crony appointment

When National was in government, I spent years criticising their crony appointments. Now it looks like I'm going to be doing the same for Labour as well. The first one I've noticed: they've appointed former Labour MP and cabinet minister Pete Hodgson as chair of Callaghan Innovation.

Hodgson isn't a terrible choice for the role - he's a former Minister of Research, Science and Technology and chair of Otago University's technology spinoff company. If he was appointed on his merits via a transparent process in which he was obviously the best candidate, then that would be fine. But being appointed by his own party automatically raises doubts and suggests that it was a crony appointment. I guess we'll find out the truth in 20 working days...

Time to increase aid spending

Stuff reports that the government is reviewing its level of spending on foreign aid. Good. As the article shows, our level of foreign aid - which was never particularly good - was systematically underfunded by National, and has eroded from 0.3% to 0.23% of GNI. This compares badly with Australia (0.27%), the OECD average (0.4%), and our longstanding international commitments (0.7%). If we're to meet the latter, we're going to need to more than triple our funding to ~$1.5 billion a year.

This is a big ask, both in terms of priorities, and MFAT's capacity to actually do it. Its likely that we'll see a much smaller increase initially. But it would be good to see a pathway laid out for us to meet our international obligations.

Drawn

A ballot for four Member's Bills was held this morning, and the following bills were drawn:

• Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill (Simeon Brown)
  
• Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill (Kieran McAnulty)
  
• Crimes (Offence of Blasphemous Libel) Amendment Bill (Angie Warren-Clark)
  
• Accident Compensation (Recent Migrants and Returning New Zealanders) Amendment Bill (Melissa Lee)
  

The repeal of blasphemous libel is something I've been pushing for for nearly as long as this blog has been around. I'm glad that it will finally make it to the House. The question is, will anyone actually oppose it?

Disappointed

Yesterday the House debated Chlöe Swarbrick's Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill - and voted it down 73 - 47. I'm disappointed. While the government has made some positive moves on medicinal cannabis, its regime doesn't go far enough. In particular, it doesn't cover long-term chronic pain, and it doesn't cover the problem of supply. These are serious problems which are causing real suffering (and seeing people unjustly prosecuted), and they deserve a serious response from our elected representatives. Instead - pushed mostly by the old farts in National who identify medicinal cannabis as "drugs" rather than "medicine" - they've ignored it and left people to suffer (often while voicing pious platitudes about how the problem needed to be "debated" or "investigated", while voting against a select committee doing exactly that). What a pack of arseholes.

This issue isn't going to go away. Sick people are going to continue to suffer, and continue to take cannabis to ease their suffering. The only question is whether that suffering is compounded by prosecution. Personally, I would prefer a government which treated the sick with compassion rather than victimising them. But apparently that's too much to expect.

In the meantime, the governments bill did go to select committee. When they call for submissions, it might be worthwhile submitting asking for the regime to be expanded. And if you don't like how they voted last night, I suggest you email your MP and express your disapproval.