Climate Change: Grovelling harder

Back in October, Labour grovelled to the sacred cow, accepting a nightmarishly complicated system to pretend to price farm emissions while really shovelling money at farmers for bullshit "offsets". Today they've doubled down on that shit decision, committing to insulating farmers from the ETS carbon price and instead subsidising them so they pay the "lowest price possible":

The Government is promising farmers that it will charge agricultural emissions at the “lowest price possible”, and won’t regularly alter the prices – to give farmers more certainty.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the commitment on Wednesday, confirming the Government plan to price agricultural emissions was on track to start in 2025.

This means two things: firstly, the scheme will be even less effective at reducing emissions, as farmers will face a lower incentive to cut. And secondly, you and I are going to pay for it. Because every extra ton of carbon farmers emit thanks to low prices will have to be paid for in 2030, so low prices for them means higher taxes for us.

To put a number on that, in 2020 agriculture emitted 39.425 million tons of CO₂-equivalent. The difference between the default option of putting agriculture in the ETS at the processor level and this bullshit low carbon levy was a 16% reduction vs a 10% reduction. So, the government has committed to emitting an extra 2.4 million tons a year. At their expected 2030 international carbon price they'll need to pay to cover this extra pollution of $150 / ton (which is almost certainly too low), that's $355 million going straight overseas. And that's without even considering the overall subsidy from free allocation - which will amount to $4.8 billion a year in 2030. If you want to know where your schools and hospitals and public transport systems are - all that stuff Grant says the government can't pay for - they're in a paddock, polluting the atmosphere and shitting in a river.

Which just shows that if we want nice things (and not just clean rivers), we need herd-reduction, now. Anything less is ripping off the rest of Aotearoa for the benefit of this tiny, entitled, ute-driving minority. But we clearly won't get that from Labour. If we want progress, we need a radical, anti-climate change government.

Democracy returns to Fiji?

In December 2006 then-Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrew Fiji's elected government in a military coup. While Fiji officially returned to democracy in 2014 with new elections, post-coup decrees on political parties, public meetings, and freedom of expression kept the opposition out. But now, its over: Fiji went to the polls last week, and despite opposition candidates being arrested and a convenient election-night "anomaly" with the results, produced a hung Parliament. And now, after a few days, the party holding the balance of power - SODELPA, the successor to the government which was overthrown in 2006 - has made its decision, and there's the happy sight of every opposition political party uniting to throw out Bainimarama and the coup regime. After 16 years, Fiji will finally be getting a new Prime Minister: Sitiveni Rabuka. Yes, this guy:

On the morning of 14 May, around 10 am, a section of ten masked, armed soldiers entered the Fijian House of Representatives and subdued the national legislature, which had gathered there for its morning session. Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, dressed in civilian clothes, approached Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra from his position in the public gallery and ordered the members of parliament to leave the building. They did so without resisting. The coup was an apparent success and had been accomplished without loss of life.

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, including seven years in which Rabuka was elected Prime Minister (under a stacked constitution he wrote, just like Bainimarama did), and apparently he now regrets his actions, but still: couldn't they find anyone better? Anyone not... tainted by dictatorship and authoritarianism?

Still, this is a moment of hope: the coup regime is out. Fiji once again has a chance to move back towards being a normal democracy. Hopefully the military won't fuck it up for them this time.

A judicial earthquake

In 2015, racist Australia started dumping its problems here, deporting people who had lived in Australia for their entire lives to New Zealand on the grounds that they born here. The government panicked at the thought of having thousands of hardened criminals sent here, and so passed legislation under all-stages urgency to subject them to a post-arrival parole and supervision regime, even if they had completed their sentence in Australia.

Today, the High Court found that that regime was not retrospective, and so simply did not apply to one of the people subjected to it. Their rights - and by extension, those of every other returnee in similar circumstances - were breached. They further found that as it was punitive in effect, then it constituted double jeopardy, banned by international law. The question of damages will be resolved by other hearings, but given the number of people involved - everyone who had been sentenced before the law was passed - then the wrong could be substantial. Which is a pretty big judicial earthquake just before the holidays.

The ruling is entirely orthodox, resting on a prior finding that Extended Supervision Orders - a similar post-sentence "control order"-style regime - was punitive, and the obvious proposition that if Parliament wanted to over-ride the BORA and Aotearoa's obligations under international law, it would explicitly say so. Having not said so, the BORA is therefore assumed to apply as usual. On this point, then Attorney-General Chris Finlayson's oh-so-clever advice that these orders weren't punitive, but merely a means of protecting the public, and therefore the issues of retrospective punishment and double jeopardy did not arise, looks very poor. It also highlights the underlying flaw in the BORA's section 7 regime: the Attorney-General is advising Parliament, but in practice they work for the government, and their advice constantly reflects that, being crafted to fit the government's political needs and sanitising and downplaying issues. Its an inherently conflicted role, which results in Parliament being poorly-served and fed bullshit by a government spokesperson, and shows the danger of listening to Someone Else's Lawyer. For Parliament to fulfil its proper role under the BORA, it needs its own advice, rather than advice from a government mouthpiece.

As for what happens next, this is a big legal problem for the government, and they'll likely respond to it in the way they have responded to previous big legal problems: with more urgent, all-stages legislation to patch their earlier urgent, all-stages legislation, overturn the judgement, and get them off the hook. This is neither moral, nor respectful of the rule of law, and would once again shows how poor a guardian of our human rights they are. Which would be a further argument for taking the job of BORA oversight off them entirely and giving it to the courts.

Climate Change: Labour is on the side of polluters

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is Aotearoa's major policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While Labour improved it with the Zero Carbon Act, their changes around price controls - which undermine the purpose of the ETS by trying to stop carbon prices from rising - have resulted in a fundamentally broken market, with polluters deliberately triggering the "cost containment reserve" (CCR) to get the government to flood the market with additional credits, on the basis that they'll be worth more later. This is costing us a billion dollars a year, while allowing millions of tons of extra pollution which would not otherwise occur.

Back in July, the Climate Change Commission recommended fixing this, reducing auction volumes to use up the stockpile polluters had built up, while raising the CCR trigger price so that it only triggered if the market hit truly absurd prices. At the time, I said that this would make a difference, and so be a real test for the government. We were going to see whose side Labour is really on: the planets, or the polluters'.

Well, Cabinet finally made a decision on this, and now we know: its the polluters:

Cabinet papers show the Government has gone against the advice of both the independent Climate Change Commission and Climate Change Minister James Shaw.

Shaw recommended following the commission’s advice and letting the price of carbon rise – and stopping pumping extra credits into the market so frequently. That would have given big polluters more incentive to rein in planet-heating emissions, as heat waves, floods and droughts keep worsening.

Instead, Cabinet has chosen to allow only small, inflation-linked price rises.

But its worse than that, because they're also not cutting the auction volume, while handing over more free credits to polluters. Which makes yesterday's projections of a small but useful cut in emissions by 2035 a bit of a joke: the government has just ensured that won't happen.

As for Labour's "nuclear-free moment", and it's "climate emergency", they were both lies. This government is deliberately trying to keep emissions high. They're just climate criminals, hostis humani generis. And we need to vote them out on their arses next election, and replace them with a government who will actually confront our biggest problem, rather than desperately trying to preserve the rotten, polluting status quo.

Climate Change: Another baby step to decarbonisation

In 2018 the government banned issuing new offshore oil and gas exploration permits. It was the first baby step towards decarbonisation, essentially cutting off part of the pathway to new supply, gradually phasing out the industry. And it has worked - there were 22 offshore exploration permits in 2018, and now there are only four (the number of onshore permits has also reduced from nine to six). The fossil fuel pipeline is being slowly closed off. So now the government has announced the next baby-step: banning onshore exploration:

In a continuation of the Government's staged phase-out of fossil fuel exploration in New Zealand, Energy Minister Megan Woods will pause the issuance of any new oil and gas permits until after next year's election.

[...]

The fate of the next onshore block offer has been uncertain for the better part of a year, amidst mounting evidence that the world cannot exploit most known fossil fuel reserves without blasting past the 1.5C and even 2C temperature goals.

Now Woods said she will pause any further block offers until the next Parliamentary term.

"“I am not committing to any further block offers now. Decisions will be made early in the next Parliamentary term when there will be a better evidence base of future demand," she said.

Which is good, but before anyone gets too enthusiastic, this is basicly an extension of the existing policy (which has seen only three new onshore permits issued since the ban, and no new block offers), and it is only until the election (meaning that they might reverse it afterwards). In other words, rather than actually doing something, they're playing the usual mealy-mouthed chickenshit game and not actually committing. And this is a policy they need to commit to. If we are to survive the climate crisis, that means no new gas, oil or coal, which means cutting that pipeline now. But more than that, it means phasing out existing fossil fuel production and banning imports of these destructive, environmentally damaging substances. And that means setting a date or dates to kill this industry. Sooner is better, but the mere act of setting a date will give us all certainty about the need for change and let us move forward.

Instead of doing what is necessary, Labour is trying to cling to the past and trying to pretend that nothing needs to change. And this makes them little different from the dirty climate deniers in National and ACT.

Fiji's election "anomaly"

Fijians went to the polls yesterday in the third post (latest) coup election. In the leadup to the poll, the (now elected) coup regime arrested opposition candidates and there were allegations that regime Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum had visisted the ballot-printing centre and ordered the CCTV cameras turned off while he was there. Last night, the release of initial results was delayed. And then this happened:

Initial results indicated a strong, then very strong showing for opposition parties, before the Fijian Elections Office (FEO) advised of issues with the provisional count at around midnight last night.

Elections supervisor Mohammad Saneem held a press conference late in the evening, saying the FEO had detected an anomaly in the system.

"To cure this, Fijian Elections Office had to review the entire mechanism through which we were pushing our results," Mr Saneem said.

[...]

The updated provisional results published early this morning, with about 60 per cent of polling venues counted, showed a surge in votes for the incumbent ruling party.

Fiji First, led by incumbent Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, was narrowly ahead with 45 per cent of votes when the FEO announced it would stop processing provisional results this morning.

All of which invites the suspicion that the "anomaly" was that the wrong people were winning, and that the regime chose the Mexican solution: a "computer problem" followed by new results. And the opposition is already planning to challenge the results on exactly that basis (whether they'll get justice in regime courts with regime judges is another question).

There are international observers present, so it will be very interesting to see what they have to say about this "anomaly", and about whether the poll was free and fair and the results honest.

Freedom comes to Barbados

Last year, Barbados they threw out the colonial monarchy. And now, they've legalised gay sex:

A top court in Barbados has struck down colonial-era laws that criminalize gay sex, becoming the third nation in the conservative Caribbean region to do so this year.

The ruling issued Monday by the Barbados high court is a pivotal moment for activists and non-profit organizations who have long fought against such laws on the eastern Caribbean island, including one that demands up to a life sentence for gay men found guilty of having sex.

“It’s gone from a certain ripple effect to a tidal wave in the Caribbean, which is what everyone involved set out to achieve,” said Téa Braun, chief executive of the London-based Human Dignity Trust, a human rights organization.

There's now only 6 countries in the Americas which still criminalise gay sex, and only 67 in the world. This sadly includes far too many in our own region - Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands and Niue all criminalise gay sex, though like Barbados none really enforce it. But as in Barbados, the mere existence of such a law is discriminatory and stigmatises LGBTQ people. It would be nice if these countries followed through on their promises of legalisation.

Another example

Last week, I asked "why won't Labour keep its promises" when implementing them would be overwhelmingly popular with voters? And today, we have another example: climate change. According to a poll in the Herald today, 60% of kiwis think the government should be taking stronger action on climate change - and its 70% in the 25 - 34 demographic. And yet they're dragging their feet on pricing agricultural emissions, and have just introduced legislation to increase pollution subsidies in the Emissions Trading Scheme - the opposite of what the public wants.

Again, this suspicion that the government is working for lobbyists and donors, rather than the people who elect them. Again, it undermines trust in both Labour and the political system. And again, it means that people who care about climate change have no reason to vote for Labour. And given that climate change is a significant issue, which is only going to grow in salience as the climate crisis gets worse, that cannot be good news for the Labour party.

Good riddance

Its the end of the political year, and with an election coming up, the pre-election retirements have started. Paul Eagle is going, and that's good, because he was a waste of space who spent his time as an MP trying to become mayor of Wellington, rather than doing his job. But the retirement I'm most glad to see is Aupito William Sio. In case anyone has forgotten, Aupito was a rabid opponent of marriage equality, protesting against it alongside people who compared gay people to animals, demanding that the bill be withdrawn, and ultimately voting against it. And as of last year, he regrets none of it. The man is a bigot who panders to the worst bigots in our community. And our parliament is better off without him.

Now can Damien O'Connor fuck off too please?

Bad faith all the way down

When the government created state-owned enterprises in the 1980's, Māori were concerned. Land stolen from them could be transferred to these SOEs, and effectively put beyond the reach of future treaty settlements. So the New Zealand Māori Council took the government to court, and won a landmark ruling that that the government had to safeguard Māori interests. As part of the settlement of this case, the government agreed to pass legislation making land transferred to SOEs subject to a permanent right of resumption if ordered by the Waitangi Tribunal.

While the law was passed,it wasn't used, with iwi preferring to negotiate with the government rather than go to court. Until 2010, when a Wairarapa hapu decided that it wanted its land back. That land was on the Waikato river, had been stolen by the government from other iwi before being gifted to the Wairarapa group, and is the location of a pretty important power station, so its a complicated case which has been in court for over a decade. But on Friday the Supreme Court finally ruled on it, declaring that it was a problem for the Waitangi Tribunal to sort out. Which seems sensible: they're the appropriate body with the specialist knowledge to determine who, if anyone, the land should be returned to. And that's ultimately what the 1987 settlement envisioned: the Waitangi Tribunal would consider claims, and order return if required.

But the government isn't going to let that happen. In the interim they've negotiated a settlement with the "large natural grouping" the hapu belong to. Naturally, it includes the usual clause declaring the crumbs the government gives back to be a full and final settlement of all historical claims and cancelling all the resumptive memorials allowing land to be returned. In effect, kill the process, keep the land, and fuck you. They've done this despite advice from the Waitangi Tribunal not to do it, and despite pointy questions from the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee (LDAC - an independent body which oversees legislation to stop this sort of thing) about why they're legislating when the court process is still ongoing (rather than, say, removing the case from the settlement so it can take its course). And they're ramming it through tomorrow, just to make sure everyone knows that Māori will never get their land back except by the grace and favour of the government, and that while the law says they have legal rights, in reality they have none at all.

It is difficult to see this as anything other than a tremendous exercise of bad faith, which effectively overturns the 1987 SOE court settlement and makes the promise of resumption a lie. As for the Treaty "partnership", is it really a "partnership" when one party calls the shots without consulting or considering the other? And of course its another ongoing Treaty breach. And I can't think of a better way of undermining the entire settlement process than this.

(OTOH, it is also going to undermine the concept of "full and final" settlements. A settlement is not full and final unless the victims agree it is, and continue to agree that it is. Effectively, they're only final by ongoing Māori goodwill. And the government's weaponisation of settlement legislation is likely to significantly erode that goodwill...)

This is unjust. It is wrong. It is stupid. The government should not do it.

Another useful OIA decision

Back in June I asked Ministry of Health for information about long covid. At the time, I was challenging extensions, and Ministry of Health knew it, so they tried a new tactic: on the due date, they sent me this:

Pursuant to section 15(1)(a) of the Act, the Ministry is writing to advise you that a decision has been made on your request; however, it will take us some time to prepare the information for release. As it stands, some information will be withheld under the following section 9(2)(a) of the Act. We will send you the information by 11 August 2022.

Which smelled a lot like a 20 working day extension by another name, so I complained to the Ombudsman. Today, they issued their final opinion on the question. The short version: Ministry of Health hadn't actually made a decision, and even if they had, the delay before actually releasing the documents would have been unreasonable. There's some useful stuff in there about what actually constitutes a "decision": they need to actually decide what will be released and what will be withheld, and the specific grounds for the latter, as well as complete any consultation and review involved (the discussion there makes it clear that Ministry of Health's claim to have made a decision was an outright lie, and it was just a shameless grab for more time). There's also useful guidance on exactly when a delay between decision and release will be reasonable - basicly, when its huge. And 6 documents totalling 20 pages doesn't remotely qualify.

Ministry of Health has been ordered to apologise, and I guess I can add that to my collection. But more importantly: another dodgy tactic has been squelched at the outset, before it could become established. And that's ultimately why I challenge: because otherwise, the government would get away with shit like this, and the system wouldn't even pretend to work.

(As for the actual information, the documents they released are here, and my commentary is here).

Why won't Labour keep its promises?

Back in 2017, Jacinda Ardern promised "There will be no new mines on conservation land". NZ First stopped her from doing it in her first term, but since winning an absolute majority in the 2020 election Labour has refused to move on it - and has explicitly voted down a bill which would implement that promise. So why? Its not as if keeping conservation land for conservation is unpopular. Quite the opposite:

But a new poll commissioned by Forest and Bird found the majority of Kiwis (66 percent) think the Government should implement its 2017 promise to stop new mines on public conservation land. Sixteen of the respondents disagreed and eighteen percent were undecided.

That's a pretty big public mandate, and more people than voted for Labour and the Greens in 2020. Actually keeping their promise would be a popular move. So why won't Labour do it? Do they work for their voters, or just for a small clique of big donors?

This sort of betrayal undermines trust in the Labour Party, and in the political system as a whole. It builds the impression that politicians are just liars. But its also a driver behind Labour's fall in the polls. After all, Labour clearly doesn't care about its voters. So why should they care whether Labour stays in government?

Putting the environment in the BORA

Since the 1970's there has been a growing recognition that environmental rights are part of - and necessary for - human rights. The 1972 Stockholm Declaration began its principles with a statement that "Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being". More recently, the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment was formally recognised by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2021, and by the UN General Assembly in July. And now, Green MP Julie Anne Genter has a member's bill to recognise it in the BORA.

The bill itself is simple, and adds a new section 18A to the BORA, with the UN-recognised language: "Everyone has the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment". If it passes, then laws would have to be assessed for consistency with the right, and laws could be declared to be inconsistent and the declaration referred to Parliament so the law can be corrected.

What this would mean in practice would depend significantly on the standard of scrutiny adopted by the courts and the degree of latitude they grant to the executive. On that front, the courts have already said that climate change policy requires the highest level of scrutiny because of its impacts; less significant issues will likely have a lower standard (just as the right to be free from torture has a higher standard of scrutiny than the right to be free from discrimination). Being inconsistent with the right is likely to be a high bar to cross. So as with the BORA, a lot of the actual impact would come from the pre-legislative scrutiny, forcing the government to run a stricter environmental ruler over policy before introducing legislation, and from the courts interpreting existing legislation in order to be consistent with the right. And given how much change that process has led to in e.g. public order or search and seizure law, having it happen to environmental law is likely to be significant. So I'm hoping this gets drawn from the ballot next year.

Drawn

A ballot for a single member's bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn:

• Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Shared Leave) Amendment Bill (Nicola Willis)

The bill allows paid parental leave to be split between carers of a child and taken at the same time. Which isn't necessarily a terrible idea, but I'd rather just see a straight-up expansion.

There were 69 bills in the ballot today.

A bad sign

On Friday, a New South Wales court heard the case of Violet Coco. As part of a protest against inaction on climate change, Coco had blocked a Sydney motorway for 25 minutes. Using anti-protest laws passed by NSW's fossil-fuel-funded government, the judge jailed her for 15 months, with a minimum non-parole period of 8 months. The outrageous sentence has been condemned around the world, and has drawn more attention to Australia's attacks on the right to protest and transition into a fossil fuel tyranny. And now, the National Party wants to bring that tyranny here:

A new member’s bill will be lodged in the ballot that would make obstructing state highways, major roads, tunnels and bridges a crime.

The bill proposes up to two years in prison, a $20,000 fine, or both.

After disruptive rail protests on Wellington state highways, National are taking a stand against further obstructions.

Its only a member's bill, but member's bills tend to become official policy. Which makes this a very bad sign. At a time of increasing climate crisis and ongoing catastrophe's, National's answer is not to cut emissions, but to jail those demanding they do so. In addition to being grossly undemocratic, that simply does not seem to be a credible response.

Update (8/12/2022): Apparaently NewstalkZB memory holes its interviews really quickly, but fortunately the Wayback Machine had it, so I've updated the link. There's also a press release on Scoop for those looking for more information.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day, the last one for the year. First up there is a bunch of new private and local bills - the Thomas Cawthron Trust Amendment Bill, the New Plymouth District Council (Perpetual Investment Fund) Bill, and the Hawke’s Bay Agricultural and Pastoral Society Empowering Bill. None of these should be very contentious (or at least, not at this stage), and they're all likely to be sent off to select committee before the dinner break. After that, there's the committee stages of Ginny Andersen's Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill and Deborah Russell's Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill, which will probably take the rest of the night. If the House moves quickly it may get on to the second reading of Ian McKelvie's Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for Race Meetings) Amendment Bill, which has the weird feature of the committee refusing to make a recommendation on whether it should be passed or not as it is a "conscience issue" (a perfect example of how our political system simply abrogates responsibility on alcohol policy). There is unlikely to be a ballot tomorrow.

Justice for Ukraine?

Overnight, Russia launched more missiles against Ukraine, targeting apartment blocks and electricity facilities in an effort to terrise civilians and freeze them to death over winter. And there are more photos of Russian war crimes in occupied areas doing the rounds. So I'm glad to see some progress at the UN towards holding Russia's leadership to account for their crimes:

A draft resolution is circulating at the United Nations in New York for a Nuremberg-style tribunal to hold the Russian leadership accountable for crimes of aggression in Ukraine amid signs that US opposition to the proposal may be softening in the face of lobbying by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

[...]

The international criminal court has already started investigating war crimes in Ukraine, but Ukraine’s leadership argues that the ICC is hampered in that while it can try those charged with individual war crimes, it cannot prosecute the Kremlin leadership over the broader crime of aggression since Russia is not a signatory to the relevant statute.

Van Schaack, speaking in London at a Lawyers for Justice in Libya event, said the US had not taken a firm position on a special tribunal. However, she believed there was merit in holding trials in absentia of Russians accused of war crimes if it was not possible to extradite them.

The EU has already expressed support for such a tribunal, so the question here is whether its done by them or the UN. The latter obviously has more moral weight, and will be a stronger condemnation by the international community of Russia's crimes. And its in the interests of the international community to do it: non-aggression and human rights are the cornerstones of the modern international order (even if they are observed in the breach), and allowing aggression and war crimes to go unpunished will encourage them. Whereas trying aggressors and criminals protects everyone.

Whether Putin and his cronies actually end up before such a tribunal obviously depends on how the war ends (and what happens inside Russia in response). But at the least, this will make sure they can never set foot outside Russia or its tiny club of fellow tyrannies ever again. And that they'll never be able to enjoy their stolen wealth ever again.

Submit!

The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee has called for submissions on the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill. Submissions can be sent using the form here and are due by Monday, 23 January 2023.

The main thing the bill does is fix this problem, where the purpose of the Crown Minerals Act to "promote" mining means that nothing miners want to do can ever be refused and major environemtnal issues like climate change cannot be considered, even when another law says they can be. Which is a good thing, and its probably worth telling the committee that. But weirdly, despite this being absolutely urgent (especially given that there are mining permits up for extension soon), it won't take effect until July 2023.

This is likely because of the other thing the bill does - strengthen consultation requirements with iwi and hapu. Obviously, that's something which takes time to set up, and so a delay for that is reasonable. But there's no reason the bill has to come into effect all at once, and the vital change to the purpose clause should not be delayed. Instead, it and the related changes (part 1 and sections 7,8,9,17 and 20) should come into effect the moment the bill becomes law. That way, the problem will actually get solved, rather than NZPAM having another 6 months in which to rubberstamp permit extensions. So, if you're planning a submission, please add a few words urging immediate implementation of the change to the purpose clause.

Writing a submission isn't hard - basicly "I support this bill, but this is what I'd like to see changed". Mine was all of 189 words, which is about a hundred words shorter than this post. So please, fill out the form and send yours in today.

Yet another OIA inquiry

All year the Ombudsman has been trying to tell us that everything is fine with the OIA. But earlier in the year he released another report showing problems, particularly around ministerial interference and stonewalling, and now he's been forced to open another inquiry into precisely those problems:

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier will investigate journalists' complaints that government departments excessively delay responding to Official Information Act (OIA) requests.

[...]

Boshier said reporters had complained that when information was finally released “it belongs in the history books rather than the headlines” and limited the public’s ability to participated in decision-making.

“I am worried delays are leading to the perception – especially among journalists – that the Official Information Act is being used as a bureaucratic tool to stifle the flow of information. This is not in line with the principle of availability that is the foundation of this law,” Boshier said in a statement on Monday.

I have stuff I'd like to say here, but I can't, because I'm gagged - by the Ombudsman. Which is a bit shit really.

But what I can say, without breaching any "confidentiality" the Ombudsman purports to unilaterally impose, is that we have known for a long time that there are effectivley two OIA's - one for routine, non-controversial requests, and one for "political" requests about information Ministers and officials would rather not reveal. Requests of the first type are granted speedily, or at least within the time limit. Requests of the second time are extended, stonewalled, or just shitcanned. And government gets away with this in part because the Ombudsman drags his feet investigating, doesn't open formal investigations, doesn't use his powers to put Ministers and public servants on the carpet, and never, ever reports formally to Parliament when he discovers unlawful behaviour. In other words, the watchdog is asleep, and is disinclined to bite. And so Ministers get away with murder.

Meanwhile, at her postcab press conference the Prime Minister was hiding behind Te Kawa Mataaho's statistics to claim that everything is fine. The problem of course is that the statistics are... not good, distorted by statutory non-OIA requests, and gamed by agencies seeking to make themselves look good. But that doesn't matter, because the purpose isn't so much to illuminate problems as to help Ministers bury them - as we're seeing today.

Anyway, the Ombudsman will inquire, and in six months to a year they'll release a report, which may highlight some problems. And it will join all the other ones on the shelf. The OIA has been under permanent investigation for the best part of a decade. But part of the problem is that Ministers and officials aren't willing to actually do anything about the findings, and the Ombudsman isn't willing to step up enforcement to force them. Which suggests that what we need isn't yet another Ombudsman's inquiry, but an actual law with teeth,and a watchdog willing to enforce it.

Climate Change: More subsidised pollution

Back in 2020, the government realised that the industrial allocations in the ETS - supposed to protect large polluters from unfair competition from countries who didn't pay for their carbon - was overallocated. They were giving away too many free credits, resulting in windfall gains to polluters. So, they started talking about reducing industrial allocations (in 2024, letting polluters rort another hundred million dollars from us). Now, they've introduced a new bill to tweak the industrial allocation scheme. And as might be expected from this useless pack of quislings, it seems designed to massively increase pollution subsidies.

The problem is in section 15 of the bill, which amends the clause which defines eligible industrial activities. At present an industry is defined as "highly emissions-intensive" (and eligible for a 90% pollution subsidy, decreasing over 40 years) if it emits more than 1600 tons of CO2 per million dollars of revenue. An industry is "moderately emissions-intensive" if it emits more than 800 tons per million dollars. The bill would scale these thresholds to a carbon price of $25 / ton - which we haven't seen since pre-2020), which effectively lowers them significanly.

To put that in concrete terms, at today's carbon price of $81 / ton, the threshold for being "highly emissions intensive" will be 247 tons per million dollars of revenue. Which means that every current moderate activity will now be reclassified as "highly emissions-intensive", giving them an immediate 50% increase in their subsidy. As will a whole bunch of other industries that previously were not considered emissions-intensive at all.

And in practical terms, rather than fixing the carbon rort, Labour will be massively expanding it. They'll be giving free carbon credits to more and more polluters, at higher and higher rates, effectively turning the "polluter pays" principal on its head.

Oh, and while they're at it, they'll also be reducing the penalty for not paying your ETS liabilities when deforesting from triple the carbon price, to half or a quarter of it. Which means a direct financial incentive for deforestation. Merry xmas!

This is not consistent with reducing emissions. It is not consistent with human survival. Always foot-draggers, this government has now flipped into directly encouraging emissions. Some "nuclear-free moment".

Still asleep at the wheel

A couple of months ago, I asked various government agencies whether they had produced any advice on the impacts of Long Covid, and was shocked to learn that they hadn't. Newsroom's Marc Daalder has been keeping an eye on this issue, and in an article today, he reports that the government is still flying blind on Long Covid:

We know very little about the impact of Long Covid in New Zealand, largely because no one is looking into it.

Official Information Act requests to the Treasury, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Ministry for Social Development and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment on work done to discern the potential impacts of the illness all came up blank. More specific requests to the health and education ministries seeking any information about the impact of Long Covid on the health and education workforces, also returned nothing.

Astoundingly, while the rest of the world has woken up to this pandemic legacy, New Zealand is still flying blind.

This is an abdication of the basic duty of the public service to prepare New Zealand for future challenges and to contribute to informed decision-making by ministers. It both leaves the country vulnerable to a future wave of disability and workforce shortages and means Covid-19 policy-making lacks crucial considerations about the impact of virus spread.

As he points out, Long Covid is likely to have significant impacts on the health and welfare systems, and on the economy. It means more people unable to work, meaning higher healthcare and welfare costs, reduced wages, and reduced tax income to pay for it all. Responsible agencies would be thinking about this. But they're not. And as a result, the advice on Covid policy is one-sided, considering only the economic costs of restrictions, and not the economic benefits from less Long Covid. Which helps explain how its so shit, I guess.

Entrenching entrenchment

Last week, Parliament passed a rare entrenchment clause, protecting water assets from being sold by future governments without a referendum. As a supporter of anti-privatisation as a constitutional principle, I don't really have a problem with this - the supermajority which passed it represents a broad consensus across Aotearoa, and such supermajorities should be able to do things. But some people do, and as a result Labour is chickenshitting out, claiming (falsely) that they had no idea what they were voting for (which isn't the excuse they seem to think it is), and sending the issue back to Parliament's Business Committee to be "resolved" (which means repealed).

(I recognise that there are issues with passing such provisions under urgency, and that's on Labour for choosing to do their bill that way. As for the opposition being unaware of it until after it happened, that reflects as badly on them as the government's false claims of not being aware of what they voted for. Or are we really expected to accept that we pay MP's the big bucks to pay no attention whatsoever to the legislation they are voting on?)

Meanwhile, in all of the excuses and whining, the actual issue of how to protect public assets from being looted by the government of the day is being lost. But writing on Public Address, Graeme Edgeler has a suggestion there: a referendum on asset protection:

If you are someone who thinks public ownership of water infrastructure is so important that the government should act to entrench it, you do not need to convince National to agree with you. You need to convince the public (that shouldn’t be difficult: public ownership of water infrastructure is very popular!). Because there are two ways to entrench a law in New Zealand, and both have been used: the entrenched parts of the Electoral Act 1956 were entrenched by Parliament a supermajority of MPs (in fact, all of them) voted for it. But the Electoral Act 1993 isn’t law because Parliament voted for it, it’s law because the public voted for it: the entrenched bits of that are actually entrenched because there was a binding referendum.

If you are a Gordon or a Max, or a Eugenie, that’s your solution. Don’t settle for 60% protection. Go into the next election with the policy: if we cannot get 75% support in the House of Representatives to protect the continued public ownership of water infrastructure, we will hold a binding referendum on it, requiring a future Parliament to either agree by a 75% majority to sell water assets, or to come back to the public in a further binding referendum.

Which is good, but invites the question: why wait? Why not have the referendum at the next election instead? Because an easy fix for this is to amend the commencement clause so that entrenched protection for water assets only takes effect when backed by a referendum held under the Referenda (Postal Voting) Act 2000.

It is however an excellent suggestion for the broader issue. Because water assets aren't the only public assets in danger of being looted by future governments and sold off corruptly to their cronies. There are also state-owned enterprises, mixed-ownership model companies, crown-owned companies, and assorted other entities. All of these should be protected. And the way to do it is by an anti-privatisation law, backed by a referendum, which protects and entrenches public ownership and limits the ability to divest without a similar referendum or supermajority. And obviously, I think the Greens should offer such a bill among their policies at the next election, and demand it as part of the price for any coalition (I'd like to see it from Labour too, but that would require them to deliver on their public rhetoric, and my expectations on that front are low).

Constitutional scholars say "parliament can't bind its successors". But there's a power in Aotearoa which can bind future parliaments: us. And we should do it.

Open Government: Not achieved

Newsroom reports on the reaction from civil society organisations to Labour's new draft Open Government Partnership National Action Plan, and its pretty scathing:

The Government’s claims to greater openness and transparency have yet again been called into question, with New Zealand’s latest open government plan containing proposals “so weak as to be a joke” according to some.

Civil society groups have lashed officials’ and politicians' failure to properly include their voice and produce an ambitious document, questioning whether it is worth their time to take part.

Transparency International rates it as "not achieved". The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties feels they wasted their time. Amnesty International "had stepped back from involvement in the process due to internal capacity issues" - meaning that they judged it as not worth the effort of participation. Which makes sense: the government has demanded a significant amount of free labour from these very busy organisations, then ignored them. They have basicly used them as a prop for their claims of co-creation, which were really nothing more than a box-ticking exercise, in order to boost their reputations. You can see why people might feel exploited by that, and why they might not be willing to participate in future.

There are countries which actually manage to do this right, which give real power to civil society to tell them "this is what we would like you to do", "this is how you can open government". The New Zealand government has been absolutely uninterested in that. They joined the OGP for the headline, and then focused resolutely on using it as a PR-scam, pretending their business-as-usual policies were change. The problem now is that even if they changed tomorrow, they're fucked. They've burned activists and civil society organisations on this four times now. Do they really think they'll get anyone to contribute again? Instead, it seems that we could get more progress by asking the OGP to throw New Zealand out, because it looks like the government needs that sort of shock to change its approach.

Climate Change: Be careful what you wish for

Throughout the (misnamed) he waka eke noa process, farmers have insisted on farm-level pricing, largely as a way of getting more subsidies for their pollution - and sadly, Labour looks set to give it to them. They're already complaining about the "bureaucratic nightmare" - a nightmare entirely of their own making - which means they're going to spend a lot of time to learn what we knew all along: their choices are basicly to shoot cows or plant trees. But there's another nightmare they're setting themselves up for. Farm-level pricing means that there will be farm-level emissions-data. And banks look likely to demand this and use it in their lending decisions:

Fonterra and its farmers risk not being able to access debt funding in the future if they don’t meet banks’ sustainability expectations.

“We're starting to see more and more pressure come from the banking sector,” Fonterra chief executive Miles Hurrell said in an interview at Fieldays near Hamilton on Wednesday.

Banks were wanting to set Scope 3 carbon emissions targets, which includes emissions they are indirectly responsible for, and not meeting their expectations could result in less favourable funding rates or ultimately not being able to access funding in the future, he said.

[...]

Farmers would be facing similar risks with their businesses, he said.

This is because banks are setting scope 3 emissions targets, covering everything they are responsible for - which includes the farms they lend to. They want to meet and exceed those targets, so the pressure is going to go on borrowers to reduce their emissions. Farmers with poor emissions records may find themselves with less favourable terms, or even unable to get credit. banks are already facing pressure over lending to the fossil fuel industry; this is going to enable environmental groups to pressure them on lending for cows as well as coal.

But its not just the banks. Fonterra is also setting such a target, and is already facing significant consumer pressure over its emissions. So it will also be demanding that farm-level data, and using it to make decisions about who they accept milk from and how much they pay for it. So dirty farmers may find themselves unable to sell their product, and unable to renew their mortgage, and be forced out of business. Which is I think a win for the rest of us.

The irony is that farmers had accepted putting agriculture in the ETS at the producer level a decade ago, they'd be facing only pressure from Fonterra. Dragging their feet and insisting on the less efficient and less effective pricing mechanism has left them more exposed. Perhaps they should have been more careful in what they wished for?

Reported back

The Justice Committee has reported back on the Electoral Amendment Bill. The bill implements the recommendations of the Ministry of Justice consultation on election funding - the one where the Ministry of Justice conspired with the labour party to keep its highly influential submission totally secret - and the Labour-dominated select committee has recommended that that regime is basicly unchanged. So, the disclosure threshold will be lowered from $15,000 to $5,000 - which is better, but not far enough - but at the price of reduced transparency over very large donations. Coming in the wake of Monday's report on how donations buy influence over policy, it just seems like the big parties writing the rules to suit themselves (and their donors) in the usual corrupt stitchup. And it seems unlikely to go far enough to resolve the real trust issues that have built up around election donations.

Meanwhile, National and ACT are screaming bloody murder over the lowered threshold. Which really makes you wonder: what corrupt deals are they trying to hide?

The SIS: spying on the government's political critics

The big worry about the SIS and GCSB is that they will be used to spy on the government's political critics. Whenever this worry is expressed, the spies and their Ministers say that of course that would never happen. The problem? It has:

Journalist Nicky Hager will receive $66,000 from the Security Intelligence Agency after his phone records were unlawfully spied on.

[...]

The SIS sought Hager’s phone records after the journalist published a book, Other People's Wars, in September 2011. The book contained details of New Zealand's involvement in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, obtained from confidential sources.

A particular Defence Force officer was suspected of being Hager's source, but sufficient evidence could not be found and the Defence Force asked the SIS to assist. It gathered metadata from the officer's home phone and cell phone, and tried to link it with two months of metadata from Hager's home phone.

This was unsuccessful, and both the SIS and the Defence Force pursued the investigation no further.

Acting Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Madeleine Laracy later determined the SIS had no lawful power to investigate.

"I have been unable to find that the [SIS] showed the kind of caution I consider proper, for an intelligence agency in a free and democratic society, about launching any investigation into a journalist's sources," she said.

This was an outright case of the state spying on a journalists who had criticised it. And while this happened in 2011, the current SIS director, Rebecca Kitteridge, defended it to the hilt. Which shows that all their promises of "reform" are lies. They're the same bad old organisation they always were, a threat to our democracy rather than its defender. And it is long past time we disbanded them, or nobbled them so they can never threaten us again.

Interestingly, when I submitted on the Protection of Journalists’ Sources Bill arguing that it needed to be expanded to cover intelligence agencies, DPMC said that it would never be a problem because the purpose of the Intelligence and Security Act's was to "protect New Zealand as a free, open, and democratic society". It turns out they were lying, and that while they were saying this the SIS was covering up exactly the sort of spying on journalists the bill was intended to address. Which tells us that we should never believe anything the government tells us about "national security". Its just self-serving lies from spies.

We need greater transparency on party funding

Yesterday Max Rashbrooke and Lisa Marriott released their report on political party funding. The gist of it can be gathered from the title: Money for Something. Big donors are donating big money for big influence over policy, and the current regime seems designed to facilitate rather than prevent this undermining our democracy. But they have some solutions as well:

Donors giving more than $1,500 to political parties should be identified, no individuals should be able to give more than $15,000 in a year and only eligible New Zealand voters should be able to donate to political parties, a new report recommends.

If this seems familiar, its because its what people have been recommending, and parties resisting, for years. And the reason it never happens is because our political parties and the politicians who belong to them are corrupt, addicted to a stream of dirty money. Currently the government is trying to make some moves on donation reform, but its basicly half-measures, undermined by that addiction and corruption (so corrupt in fact that the Labour party thinks that its submisison to the Ministry of Justice on the issue, which is likely to highly influential given that the Ministry serves the Minister, can be kept secret).

The report also recommends state funding of political parties, linked to tax credits or "democracy vouchers". The cost of this - $6 to $8 million a year - is a pittance, especially compared to the known cost of corruption (just look at how much Winston forked over to the racing industry, or how Ministers funded by the fishing industry just cost NZ $200 million). And its a tiny price to pay to break the influence of the rich over our political system, and kick them out of their perpetual government.

Entrenching anti-privatisation

Last week, Labour put the House into urgency to push on with its legislative agenda. Part of this included the committee stage of the three waters bill, and something unusual happened: they passed an entrenchment clause protecting the bill's anti-privatisation clause - meaning that a future government would need the support of a 60% majority in the House, or a referendum, in order to privatise water assets.

Constitutional scholars were outraged as this eroded our constitutional norm of entrenchment. And Labour being Labour, it looks like they're doing their usual chickenshit thing and reversing course because someone criticised them, rather than standing up for what they voted for. And I think they should stand up for it, because this is an important battle and there's no better chance than this to establish a constitutional norm against privatisation.

In case anyone has forgotten, successive hard-right governments in the 1980's and 1990's betrayed Aotearoa and sold off state assets to their mates at bargain basement prices, looting the state to enrich a clique of connected businessmen. The privatisations were corrupt, many of the former state assets were then asset stripped and run into the ground, and several had to be bailed out (some multiple times), or bought back so that we would have functioning infrastructure. This exercise in right-wing looting established privatisation as a dirty word in New Zealand politics. Many New Zealanders regard it as a crime, and something that should not be allowed to happen ever again. That's difficult in our constitutional system, and our way of doing it is effectively a constitutional warning sign: an entrenchment clause. While on the face of it an entrenchment clause says "you can't repeal this without a supermajority", the clause can itself simply be repealed (or in some cases bypassed by altering things elsewhere). So its actual force lies in the respect politicians have for it.

(Arguably, we don't do this often enough. The BORA is not entrenched, and has already been altered by a government to gut the right to a jury trial simply to save money. MMP (as opposed to its FPP bits) is not entrenched either. Or the list of prohibited means of discrimination in the Human Rights Act. Governments can, have, and are going to fuck with these for piss-poor reasons, and we should make it more difficult for them to do so. But that's another post...)

Those constitutional scholars are worried that using entrenchment for a mere "policy" issue will erode that respect. Which misses the point: the question of whether public assets belong to the public or to the government of the day to be corruptly distributed to its cronies is a constitutional one. The entrenchment clause simply makes that clear and answers "never again". And in terms of respect, that gets established by doing the thing and making it stick. Norms become norms by becoming normal.

Those constitutional scholars are also trying to scare people with the prospect of future governments doing this for other issues. What about if National and ACT entrench a three strikes law? What about if they entrench low taxes? Whatabout? Whatabout? Whatbaout?

Well, what about it? Under Parliament's standing orders, entrenchment clauses must be supported by at least the level of support needed to overturn them (so if something would require a 60% supermajority to overturn, it needs a 60% supermajority to pass). Under MMP, governments have tended to be weak, with coalition majorities of 5 votes or less. Gaining anything beyond a bare majority almost always requires gaining the support of parties outside the governing coalition. The current government is unusual in that respect, with a single-majority party and an extra 10 or 12 votes likely to support its agenda. The only other example is Helen Clark in 2002, where a collection of centrist parties in the House potentially allowed large majorities to be assembled (and resulted in much more consensus policy than usual). Otherwise, it would mean working with the opposition. And I honestly don't have a problem with that. Under MMP, party strength in the House reflects voter strength at elections. If a government can build a coalition behind an issue to entrench it to require a 60% majority to overturn, then all power to them. We live in a democracy, we get the governments we vote for, and we live with the results. If we don't like them, then we vote differently next time, throw the bums out, and don't let them back in until they've changed their ways.

Yes, doing this by an SOP under urgency is not ideal (and that's on Labour for how they chose to do this stage of the bill). Ideally, the government would have introduced an anti-privatisation bill at the beginning of its term, with anti-privatisation and entrenchment clauses for all classes of public assets. But they didn't, so its left to the Greens to do this piecemeal as things come up. Anti-privatisation is supposed to be a core principle for Labour. If they chickenshit out now, they'll be confirming their weakness and lack of principle. But then, that seems to be Labour in a nutshell now, doesn't it?

Open Government: Another farce

Yesterday the government released its draft Fourth Open Government Partnership National Action Plan 2023-24 for consultation. Like previous versions, the plan was meant to be "co-created" with civil society. And like previous versions, that obligation seems to have been observed mainly in the breach, with the government conducting a series of sham "consultation" events around the country, then ignoring practically every piece of input they got from them. As for the outcome, the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties is scathing:

In spite of the Minister’s instruction to officials, the ‘draft’ Action Plan launched today for 2 weeks of public consultation is yet another weak action plan stuffed full of pre-existing or already planned programmes of work by government departments.3

Only two of the eight commitments in the plan are pieces of work that would not have taken place without civil society input, and one of these is so weak as to be a joke.

They then go on to describe the plan as full of "tools for officials" which would have happened anyway - a clear violation of the OGP's additionality requirement.

Last year, ten top civil society organisations wrote to Chris Hipkins about the co-creation process, threatening to walk away unless they saw improvements. I'm now wondering if they'll carry out that threat. Because clearly participating in the government's sham "co-creation" process is a waste of time, and a distraction from other things they could be doing. And after four times round, the government is clearly not going to change its stripes on this. They signed up to the OGP solely for the PR value, with no intention of actually opening government, and they've given no indication that that attitude has changed. Its time to end the farce, and instead of collaborating, call for NZ's suspension from the OGP.

An engineered recession is class warfare

The Reserve Bank has just come out and admitted that they are engineering a recession to protect the rich:

The Reserve Bank is deliberately engineering a recession to reign back inflation after being slow to raise interest rates, Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr admitted to a select committee on Thursday.

But he forecast the 1% decline in the economy that the central bank is forecasting could be “job rich” and said the country was relatively well-positioned internationally.

The Reserve Bank raised the official cash rate by 75 basis points to 4.25% on Wednesday and surprised economists by forecasting the rate would peak at 5.5% next year while also predicting a further rise in inflation and a year-long recession beginning in April.

The bank forecast that official unemployment would climb to 5.7% in 2025, from 3.3% currently.

And all of this to keep wages low and prevent the wealth of the rich being eroded at a slightly faster rate. What else should we call it but class warfare?

Recessions have consequences. The IMF goes into some of them here. People lose their jobs and livelihoods, children lose their futures. In addition to the bankruptcies and suicides, there's a general reduced life expectancy for the victims, and poorer educational outcomes (and so reduced lifetime outcomes) for their children. This is what Adrian Orr has chosen. This is what he is inflicting on us. Every business failure, every bankruptcy, every suicide will be his fault. And we should hold him accountable for it.

But we also need to hold accountable the politicians who have enabled him to commit this awful crime, while washing their hands of the consequences in the name of "reserve bank independence". Because there are other ways to reduce demand in the economy, which don't involve throwing people onto the bonfire to satisfy the greed of the rich. We could for example tax away the excess corporate profits which are driving inflation. Or raise income taxes on the rich to soak up excess demand. Or tax wealth directly. Instead, our political class - and both major parties are guilty here - have chosen for the last thirty years to make ordinary people pay the price. Like I said, its class warfare, by the rich and their politicians (who are also rich) against the rest of us. And we should not accept it.

That's no how you do democracy

Last night, the English Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish government cannot hold an independence referendum. Having said that Scotland is not a colony, they then turned around and effectively said that they are, by forbidding them from holding a democratic vote on their own constitutional arrangements unless another country says they can.

Pretty obviously, this is incompatible with any notion that the UK is a democratic country, let alone a voluntary union. In a voluntary union, the parties can choose to leave. Instead, Scotland is locked in, trapped in a cage unless England decides to let it out. They're handcuffed to a partner who economically abuses them. Which makes the need and desire to break those chains even stronger.

But the ruling goes further than that. Because the Supreme Court's logic of looking at the extended (rather than strictly legal) effects of a Scottish law for constitutional impacts can apply to other things. For example, Scotland has a democratic system of government, rather than Westminster's backward first-past-the-post. It has lowered the voting age to 16. While the legal effect is restricted to Scotland, each of these presents an alternative, and implicitly makes a moral case for it, putting pressure on Westminster to change its rotten constitutional system. That is, they affect the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Will Scotland's domestic policies now be micromanaged by England to stop Scotland from making them look bad, on the basis that everything is constitutional?

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that the SNP will run a de-facto referendum on independence at the next available election, and polling is already saying that they will receive more than 50% support. So there's going to be a democratic mandate for independence whether Westminster wants one or not. The next question is whether they will recognise it, and allow Scotland to leave peacefully and democratically, or whether they ignore the expressed democratic will of the Scottish people, and effectively announce their intention to retain Scotland by oppression and force?

Labour attacks LGOIMA - in secret

Today the government used urgency to introduce a new Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. The bulk of the bill deals with land information memorandums (LIMs), requiring local authorities to notify of natural hazards and granting them immunity for doing so in good faith (hopefully forestalling lawsuits by coastal property owners worried about the effect of such notification on their property values). That bit's fine. But part 2 of the bill amends the disclosure regime, adding national security to the withholding grounds, and introducing a Prime Ministerial veto on release. This aligns LGOIMA withholding grounds with those in the OIA,and according to the explanatory note is being done as

The lack of these conclusive grounds for withholding information may inhibit the ability of local authorities to seek or receive advice on security risks and increase the risk of disclosure of information that could prejudice New Zealand’s security or defence or the international relations of the Government of New Zealand.

Of course, the reason they aren't in the LGOIMA at present is because councils don't do that shit, and nor should they. The Ministers promoting the bill need to be asked for specific examples of such inhibition, or what foreign governments or intelligence agencies our councils are cooperating with, whether information has been released, and what harm it has actually caused. And if they have no such examples, if this is just an arse-covering exercise "just in case" or to enable such cooperation, this part of the bill should be rejected.

According to the bill's departmental disclosure statement DIA "did not engage with local authorities or speak to local government sector organisations about the withholding grounds due to time constraints" (the thought of consulting the real stakeholders - the public - seems not to have occured to them). And yet, they supposedly produced a regulatory impact statement on it in June, which still isn't online and has been kept secret for the last five months. There is also apparently a BORA vet, but its also secret, and likely won't be released until after the bill's first reading. Sadly, given Ministry of Justice's track record, I doubt they'll engage with the freedom of expression issues raised by expanding withholding grounds, let alone the rule-of-law problems of allowing the Prime Minister to over-rule the Ombudsman. But it is highly disturbing that a bill restricting freedom of information rights and expanding secrecy was developed in total secrecy, without consulting those primarily affected: the public.

OTOH, it is a pattern sadly typical for Labour. And when they're currently wanking internationally about their participation in the Open Government partnership, while expanding secrecy at home, it just looks two-faced.

Climate Change: Fixing the Crown Minerals Act?

Back in August, the High Court ruled that the Zero Carbon Act isn't worth shit and that the government can continue to approve new fossil fuel exploration without having to consider climate change. The core of the problem is the Crown Minerals Act, and in particular its purpose: "to promote prospecting for, exploration for, and mining of Crown owned minerals for the benefit of New Zealand". Now, the government is finally fixing the problem:

The Government will change “nonsensical” mining legislation that requires it to grant oil companies permits to look for new fossil fuels.

[...]

Energy Minister Megan Woods announced that a crucial sentence about promoting mineral exploitation will be changed, so the Government can say no to companies.

This is good, of course - but the government needs to go further. We don't just need a minerals regime that allows mining companies to be controlled - we need to phase out fossil fuels. And that means not just being able to reject new permits for coal and petroleum, but banning them, while sunsetting existing permits and their associated resource consents. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's Prohibition on Seabed Mining Legislation Amendment Bill will do that for offshore mining, and Eugenie Sage's Crown Minerals (Prohibition of Mining) Amendment Bill would do it for coal. Labour opposes both. Which tells us exactly how un-serious they are on climate change.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the court decision, NZPAM has been extending gas and oil permits right, left and centre. It would be good if the legislation explicitly overturned those self-interested, politically-motivated decisions.

Finally

At the 2020 election, Labour promised to regulate property managers. Now, they're finally doing it:

The Government’s announcement that rental property managers will be regulated has left the industry asking for more detail, and tenants calling for landlords to be regulated too.

Regulating property managers was one of the Labour Party’s campaign promises in the last election, because the industry is not currently regulated.

Earlier this year the Government proposed a licensing scheme for them, and on Tuesday Housing Minister Megan Woods announced a new regulatory system for the industry.

It would involve compulsory registration and licencing for both individual property managers and their organisations, training and entry requirements, practise standards, and a complaints and disciplinary process which would be administered by the Real Estate Authority (REA).

Property managers are unhappy, but they would be, wouldn't they? Now they'll have to behave like the professionals they say they are, and they'll be able to be held to account for unprofessional behaviour. Which seems to be a Good Thing from a basic consumer rights perspective. But bad I guess if you like having unaccountable power over your serfs.

But while this is a good thing, there's a big gap in the system: private landlords. They need to be regulated and licensed, to ensure basic standards. And if they're unwilling to meet such standards, they should leave the industry.

A victory for democracy!

Today, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Make it 16 Inc v AG, declaring that the law forbidding 16 and 17 year olds from voting was inconsistent with the right to be free from discrimination, and that it had not been justified under the BORA. Its a massive victory for Make It 16, who have fought hard on this issue and pushed it all the way to the Supreme Court, and for the Bill of Rights Act. The government has not been allowed to get away with not bothering to justify discriminatory provisions, or with arguments that it should be immune from scrutiny. Faced with an argument that the voting age was a constitutional issue and that the court should not intervene, the court applied the constitution.

Unfortunately, fixing it will still require a law change, and that law will need a supermajority to pass. The moral and legal argument for change is insurmountable. But it could still not happen because the National Party decides to be dicks and refuses to accept our constitution.

...which will cause further problems. Because this is also going to be the first test of Parliament's new declaration of inconsistency procedures, which were passed earlier in the year. The Attorney-General is going to have to notify the House of the ruling, and the Minister of Justice is going to have to report back on what the government intends to do about it. And if their response is anything other than "immediate and urgent legislation to apply the ruling and allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in the 2023 election", Parliament is going to be seen to have failed to protect our human rights again, and the pressure is going to go back on to strengthen the pissweak law they passed, take power from the politicians who refuse to do their constitutional duty, and give it to the courts (who clearly will).

Labour grovels to the bigots

In the wake of the March 15 terror attack, the inquiry recommended tougher hate-speech laws. And after dragging their feet on it for a full year, the government has basicly said "fuck that":

The Government has drastically watered down its hate speech reforms, Justice Minister Kiri Allan said on Saturday.

Proposed last year in response to the March 15 terror attack and the Royal Commission report that followed, the reforms were due to expand protections to women, religious groups and rainbow and disabled communities, among others. As it stands, only hate speech on the basis of race, skin colour or national origin is prohibited.

The reforms were also going to increase the maximum sentence for hate speech and raise the legal threshold for what might be considered hate speech so that only a narrower band of violent and threatening expression would be banned. The law currently forbids speech that is intended to "incite ill-will" against a group while the Government's proposals would have raised that bar to inciting "hatred".

However, Allan said, the scope of the reforms is now severely curtailed. Only religion will be added to the list of protected grounds and no further changes will be made to hate speech law.

On the plus side, Muslims will at least get some protection. On the minus side, groups who have been routinely targeted by both hate speech and the violence it incites will be left out. And all because Labour would rather grovel to bigots and throw their own supporters under the bus than stand up for its principles.

Fuck Labour. They're as useless as a proverbial useless thing. Grovelling to the rich, grovelling to farmers, grovelling to bigots and misogynists. If they won't do what they say they will, and will back away from their principles at the first sign that someone might disagree with them, what is the fucking point of them?

More police racism

The police annual report was released this month, with the usual statutory information on surveillance warrants and DNA samples. And it turns out there's some shocking evidence of racism among the latter:

The proportion of youth DNA samples collected by police that belong to rangatahi Māori continues to rise, while the figures for other ethnicities reduce.

For the year ended June 2020, 63 percent of bodily samples taken of people aged 14 to 17 were Māori, and 22 percent were European. 

But for the year ended June 2022, that proportion for Māori had increased to 69 percent, while the European figures dropped to 18 percent. 

The total number of young people providing bodily samples overall under the provisions in the Criminal Investigations Act has dropped, but the practice remains controversial.

There are obvious parallels here with the police's unlawful photographing of kids, for which they were recently excoriated by the Privacy Commissioner and Independent Police Conduct Authority. Though in this case there's explicit statutory authority for collection, there's also obvious questions about the reality of "consent" for samples obtained that way, and about who they choose to collect from in the first place and why.

But I think there's also questions which we need to ask about removal. Various provisions of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995 require samples to be removed from the databank when their retention period expires. Are the police actually complying with these provisions, or actually retaining stuff forever? And do they even have any procedures to check retention dates and whether someone has actually been convicted of a relevant offence? Because judging by their data-handling around photos, the answer is "probably not". And the Privacy Commissioner should absolutely be checking to make sure that they are complying with the law.

Climate change: The cost of inaction

A couple of days ago I highlighted National's opposition to all actual policies to reduce emissions. Now, the government has put some numbers on the cost of that, and it is staggering: nearly 24 million tons by the end of the decade:

Labour says National’s promises to repeal its climate policies will see an extra 23.92 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions in the atmosphere by 2030.

“Our modelling shows that the net effect of constantly opposing policies to reduce emissions leaves [National leader] Christopher Luxon with a hole greater than Auckland’s annual emissions twice over if he keeps New Zealand’s climate targets,” Labour’s climate change spokesperson and Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods said.

[...]

The figures come from modelling prepared by the Ministry for the Environment which tallied up the emissions the policies would reduce for the Government. Labour has taken those calculations and added them together to calculate how much emissions would increase by if National won the next election and repealed the policies.

Unmentioned in the Herald article is the financial cost of this: $2.1 billion at today's carbon price, or nearly $3.6 billion at the government's internal valuation of $150/ton (which is almost certainly too low). By opposing all actual policy, that's what National is committing us to pay. Its fiscally as well as environmentally irresponsible.

But underlying it is the real problem: National ostensibly accepts that climate change is a problem, and supports action, but in practice refuses to do anything about it. In this, they're basicly indistinguishable from climate change deniers. And that should exclude them from government forever.

Grant says "no" again

Yesterday the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists released a report on dental care in Aotearoa, highlighting its unaffordability and recommending free, universal dental care. This is something the left has been campaigning for for a long time - Jim Anderton pushed for it before the 2011 election, and Helen Clark has advocated for it. It would massively improve people's lives, reduce pain and suffering, and save money in the long-term. But it would involve spending money, so naturally Grant Robertson has vetoed it:

The Tooth be told report, commissioned by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said free or subsidised access to dental care in Aotearoa would save millions of dollars in healthcare over time.

But Acting Prime Minister Grant Robertson told Morning Report moving directly to universal dental care would require over a billion dollars a year in extra funding and any additional investment needed to be weighed against other priorities in the health sector.

Instead of free and universal provision, he wants people to go crawling to WINZ, with all the added pain and suffering that entails. Weirdly, he thinks that this isn't a deterrent - which I guess tells us either that he has never dealt with them, or that nine years on an MP's salary and six on a deputy prime minister's has destroyed all memory of it (and WINZ has got massively worse since Grant was a student).

Its a stupid and short-sighted decision - every dollar spent today on dental care saves $1.60, which is a far better benefit / cost ratio than you get from an Auckland motorway. But the money has to be spent up front, and how does that help Grant's next budget? Also, apparently voters hate long-term investment - or at least the donors he talks to in the Koru Club do, and they're the people who matter to him now.

It's a perfect example of Labour's metapolicy of austerity - can't do anything, gotta keep taxes on the rich low! It's also a perfect example of why they deserve to lose the next election. Labour is giving us nothing to vote for. So why should people lift a finger to keep paying Grant $334,734 a year?

Privatisation screws the future

There's a major report out today from 350 Aotearoa, First Union and the CTU about how National's privatisation of the electricity sector has led to entirely predictable outcomes of price gouging and underinvestment:

Meridian, Mercury, Genesis and Contact Energy paid out $8.7b in dividends to shareholders between 2014 and 2021, which was more than the $5.35b they earned in profits over the period, their report said.

The former three companies had achieved that by increasing the book value of their assets by more than $10b to reflect “high and rising electricity prices” while taking on extra debt, they said.

“What we are seeing here is asset-stripping that delivers disproportionate benefits to a privileged few at the cost of residential consumers and global warming.

“It’s doubly ironic that this is possible because of the investments made over decades by the taxpayer, yet it's the poorest New Zealanders who are paying the price in higher energy prices.”

Essentially, the big gentailers borrow to pay dividends, while deliberately under-investing in new generation, ensuring both ongoing scarcity and that fossil generation remains part of the mix, keeping prices high. Because the thing we want from our electricity system - cheap, reliable, renewable electricity - just isn't as profitable as expensive, unreliable, and dirty generation. Its a perfect example of how markets don't care about social outcomes, and why the electricity system needs to be fully in government hands.

And if anyone is in doubt about the underinvestment, just look at who is building the big new solar power projects, or the big offshore wind projects that are going to power us in the 2030's. Hint: it isn't the established players. Instead, its all startups, foreign companies, or big consortia backed by the Cullen Fund. The power companies you'd expect to be building these things just aren't. Instead, they're getting projects consented, and then sitting on them and letting them expire, specifically to ensure that no-one else can build them and disrupt their supply. Because they have no interest in lower prices or a cleaner, cheaper electricity supply.

350 and the unions are calling for the government to use its majority ownership of the major gentailers to cut dividends and force investment into renewables. However, in echoes of Contact Energy's proposed "ThermalCo", they're proposing the government buy all the old fossil generation and ringfence it for security of supply purposes - essentially a public bailout of Genesis and Contact (both of whom have invested heavily in new thermal generation since the Kyoto Protocol was signed, and who therefore deserve to lose their money). Instead of that, I'd rather see the government just invest directly in renewables, and drive the dirty generation out of business, rather than "compensating" dirty generators for their poor business decisions. If Genesis and Contact want to try and split off their liability generation to prevent it from dragging down the clean, then let them. But we shouldn't be spending a cent on fossil fuels.