Aoteraoa, Ukraine, and Gaza

Today the government designated the political wing of Hamas as a terrorist entity, making supporting them a criminal offence. I honestly don't know much about Hamas' organisation, or how involved its politicians were in planning its crimes in October last year, but when Israel is actively carrying out a genocide in Gaza, designating the political representatives of its victims as "terrorists" seems a little on the nose. And it invites the obvious question: when will we apply a similar designation to the Israeli government and its genocidal "defence forces"?

But beyond that, we should think about what our obligations are as a country which supports human rights and international law and opposes genocide. And unfortunately, we have a very illustrative example right to hand: Ukraine. Ukraine is a victim of invasion by a neighbour which has explicitly announced their intention to eliminate its culture and people, and who has given effect to that intention with numerous war crimes since the invasion began. And in response, the New Zealand government has:

• Applied sanctions to the Russian economy and leadership;
• Explicitly called for Putin to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• Provided money and other support to arm Ukraine to defend itself;

I have not been especially vocal about this, because I have a low tolerance for horror at the moment. But I think that's an appropriate response for a small country at the bottom of the world with our values. Its doing what we can to support Ukraine to defend itself and to support a peaceful world with international law.

But I think we should be doing the same for Gaza too. Hamas's attacks on 7 October were a terrorist act. But the Israeli response since has been disproportionate, indiscriminate, and explicitly genocidal. And that's something we should not tolerate. We should be sanctioning Israel, Netanyahu, and senior members of his genocidal regime. We should be supporting their arrest and extradition to The Hague for trial for genocide. And we should be arming the Palestinians. A people are being exterminated while we watch. The very least we can do is give them the means to defend themselves against it.

Member's Day

Today is an unscheduled Member's Day. It should have been yesterday, but that was eaten by urgency. But while ramming through the government's cancer promotion law, the House agreed to do Member's business today instead. First up is the first reading of Cushla Tangaere-Manuel's Local Government (Facilitation of Remote Participation) Amendment Bill. This will be followed by Todd Stephenson's Parole (Mandatory Completion of Rehabilitative Programmes) Amendment Bill, and Rima Nakhle's Corrections (Victim Protection) Amendment Bill. There'll be a ballot for a single bill later today, then another one next week to fill the new gap on the Order Paper.

Another secret OIA "consultation"

When the previous government decided in 2018 to review the OIA, the Ministry of Justice decided to do the entire thing in secret, planning a "targeted consultation" with a secret, hand-picked group of lawyers, bloggers and commentators. Because obviously, wider civil society has no interest in the operation of the quasi-constitutional legislation which underpins government transparency. That blew up in their faces, but they didn't learn a thing from the resulting mess. Because they're now reviewing secrecy clauses as part of their Open Government Partnership commitments. And once again, they've decided to do it in secret:

The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties (NZCCL) is disturbed by the Ministry of Justice’s strange and secretive approach to open government and the Official Information Act, and is calling on it to consult the public on its proposals regarding the drafting of laws that oust the OIA, rather than five civil society organisations.

“This secretive consultation on secrecy clauses highlights the Ministry of Justice’s strange failure to understand that since the OIA is a law that provides rights to all of us, the public as a whole should be consulted whenever work is done that affects its operation and our rights. Consultation with only a few cherry-picked organisations is not only completely inappropriate for an Open Government Partnership commitment, but also likely to mean the Ministry doesn’t hear from individual experts and other organisations it didn’t favour,” says NZCCL Deputy chairperson Andrew Ecclestone.

“The Ministry’s bizarre thinking about who will be interested in laws that affect our right to information, and its conflict of interest regarding administration of the OIA, also demonstrate why it would be completely improper for the Ministry to conduct the review of the OIA that the National-led Government has committed itself to,” added Mr Ecclestone.

You'd almost get the impression that the Ministry of Justice believes that government is not the business of us dirty peasants, and that we should keep our dirty hands off it, except by voting once every three years. Which is a rather narrow view of "democracy", and calls into question their stewardship of this legislation.

The NZCCL has published the Ministry's consultation document, and I encourage everyone with an interest in freedom of information and the use of secrecy clauses to submit on it.

A revolting breach of Te Tiriti

In 2019, the Waitangi Tribunal released a preliminary report in the Wai 2575 inquiry, finding pervasive inequities in the New Zealand health system which systematically disadvantaged Māori, in breach of Ti Tiriti O Waitangi. It recommended the creation of an independent Māori Health Authority as one way of remedying these inequities. And for once, the government listened, backing the idea in a subsequent Health and Disability System Review and passing legislation to establish the Authority in 2022.

...and now, its gone, disestablished undder urgency by a racist government eager to eradicate Māori from public life. That disestablishment continues and perpetuates the Tiriti-breach the Authority was established to remedy. But on top of that, there's an extra layer of bad faith, with legislation brought forward specifically to forstall an urgent Waitangi Tribunal inquiry. Its contemptuous as well as wrong.

But "contempt for Māori" seems to be the government's primary agenda. The problem is that their very legitimacy as a state depends on Ti Tiriti. And every breach undermines that legitimacy. That has a long-term cost to Aotearoa. But as the government's climate change, infrastructure, and financial policies make clear, this government doesn't give a shit about that.

More dishonesty from Costello

When Cancer Minister Casey Costello was caught lying to the media and to Parliament about whether or not she had requested advice on cutting tobacco excise tax to benefit the cancer industry, her explanation was to blame "confusion arising from my understanding of the differentiation between seeking specific advice and accepting advice being offered". But now it turns out that she wasn't in fact passively "accepting advice being offered", but insisting on a particular policy and rejecting all advice to the contrary:

Health officials urged the government to retain key aspects of the smokefree law it plans to repeal, confidential briefings to Associate Health Minister Casey Costello reveal.

[...]

Officials provided Costello with multiple compromise options - including introducing a purchase age of 25 - which they said would have saved lives and money.

Costello rejected all of them.

Throughout this, Costello has behaved dishonestly and with contempt for the public and for Parliament (not to mention the officials whose advice she binned). The impression is of a Minister hellbent on inflicting her donor's plans on us, who will tell whatever lies she thinks are necessary to try and get away with it. And again, not so long ago Ministers were sacked for such deceit. But clearly Chris Luxon has lower standards than any of his predecessors. And given his lack of action, I think we're now entitled to draw some conclusions about his character and lack of honesty from this as well.

An anti-constitutional government

Aotearoa has a lot of problems at the moment: climate change, housing, water, rich people refusing to pay their way. So of course the government has decided to crack down on gangs, as a distraction from all of the above. Their proposals violate the freedoms of expression and association, and based on past court cases, the Supreme Court is likely to say so. But the government says it doesn't care about that either, and that it will simply ignore the courts:

The Justice Minister says if the ban being imposed on gang patches is found to breach the Bill of Rights, that would not stop the government enforcing it.

[...]

Asked whether banning gang patches would breach that right, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said "people have also got the right to be able live peacefully in a society without being intimidated and harassed".

"There's always a balance and we'll work our way through the human rights implications but of course we campaigned on bringing in these policies, we've been elected, the Cabinet's made the decisions, we've prepared the legislation and we're going to do what we said we're going to do."

If the bill ultimately was found to breach the Bill of Rights, Goldsmith said it would not stop the government from making it law.

Effectively they are saying, out loud, that they will ignore our constitution to inflict their policies. And combined with other recent moves - abuse of urgency, one-day "submission periods" for select committees, attempting to bypass the Waitangi Tribunal - it makes it clear that this is an explicitly anti-constitutional government.

This sort of authoritarian bullshit is exactly what the BORA is meant to prevent, both through pre-enactment policy checks and post-enactment scrutiny by the courts. And while section 4 in theory gives Parliament the final word, the scheme of the BORA, the recent changes from the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Declarations of Inconsistency) Amendment Act 2022, and actual practice around such declarations makes it clear that if the courts find an inconsistency, it is absolutely Parliament's - which means the government's - job to listen and fix it. Refusing to do so violates our constitutional norms and undermines the legitimacy of Parliament (see also: the voting age).

Fortunately, we have a solution for that: if Parliament can't be trusted to do the job assigned to it and guard our human rights properly, then we can replace s4 BORA, take the job off them, and give it to the courts (who clearly can be trusted to do it). And the more the government bangs their authoritarian drum, the better and better that solution looks.

Bought and paid for

Candidate donation returns for the 2023 election are out, and surprise, surprise - Shane Jones has been taking money from the industries he is now responsible for regulating:

Newly released donation information for 2023 election candidates show the Fisheries Minister received $5000 from West Food Seafood (Westfleet Seafoods Limited).

Earlier this month, Westfleet chief executive and shareholder Craig Boote was one of the industry leaders lobbying Jones to review policy around cameras, catch limits, bottom trawling and immigration waivers at an exclusive wine and oysters function.

[...]

Fisheries wasn’t the only industry to contribute to Jones’ more than $95,500 in candidate donations.

He received $3000 from Northland Forest, $5000 from J Swap – a logistics firm dealing with construction, transport and forestry – as well as $15,000 from high-profile property developer Andrew Krukziener.

[..]

Meanwhile, Jones received $20,000 from Vladimir Barbalich – a Wellington property developer and former financial backer and board member of fringe anti-mandate party Democracy NZ.

And as Minister for Fisheries, Economic Development, and Resources, he'll now be making the rules for the people who oh so generously gave him money (including devising an entirely new corrupt Muldoonist resource consent scheme which will place decisions in the hands of Ministers). But apparently he won't be influenced by it, because $20,000 is just a trivial amount of money to him.

Yeah, right. And if you believe that, I have some fish to sell you.

This sort of corruption undermines trust in government, and calls every decision Ministers make into question. And that alone should be reason to ban it. If we want government decisions to be made on the merits, and no be influenced by bribes, we need to get money out of politics entirely. And if that means politicians can't enrich themselves on the side, and have to be content with their very generous salaries, boo fucking hoo.

(Meanwhile, we also have a foreign-owned mining company blatantly interfering in our politics by buying themselves an independent to kneecap a candidate they didn't like. So I guess we can chalk that up as another fail by the SIS. Or is it only "foreign interference" if its from China?)

This is corrupt

Earlier in the month, a panel of "independent" experts in Wellington produced recommendations for the future of housing in the city, and they were a bit shit, opposing intensification and protecting the property values of existing homeowners. Its since emerged that they engaged in some pretty motivated reasoning on the latter issue, but why? BusinessDesk has the scoop: they had huge undeclared conflicts of interest:

Members of a controversial panel setting the agenda for Wellington’s housing own more than $7 million worth of property in the capital city, with five of the six properties not declared in the independent hearings panel's published conflicts-of-interest register. The properties include homes in Mt Victoria and Te Aro, suburbs in which the eight-member panel (IHP) recommended expansions to character precinct designations, which would hinder the construction of new housing.

I don't know about you, but making a decision which you will profit from while hiding that fact seems pretty fucking corrupt to me. And it should be enough to have their recommendations tossed for apparent bias.

But not just that. We've prosecuted, convicted, and even jailed people in the past for lying on their CVs in order to obtain a position. Lying on a conflict on interest statement seems to be no different. So, will these people be prosecuted? Or is fraud OK when it is done by rich people?

Then why did she do it?

Earlier in the month, Cancer Minister Casey Costello was caught lying to the media about whether or not she had requested advice on cutting tobacco excise tax to benefit the cancer industry. She repeated her lies in Parliament. But today, she stood up and pretended to apologise for "causing confusion" with those lies:

I'd like to make a personal statement regarding my answers as Associate Minister of Health to oral questions on 30 January 2024. I'm speaking specifically to the questions that asked if I was being truthful when I denied to the media that I had requested advice on freezing tobacco excise tax. On review of my response, I acknowledge that there is confusion arising from my understanding of the differentiation between seeking specific advice and accepting advice being offered. I had no intention of misleading the House, and I apologise for any confusion.

Which might satisfy her coalition colleagues looking for an excuse to fend off a Privileges Committee complaint. But it shouldn't satisfy any of us. Firstly, because its the usual victim-blaming bullshit, which doesn't explain anything. And secondly, because it invites the obvious question: if it wasn't her intention to mislead, then why did she do it?

And again: once upon a time Ministers were sacked for lying to the public like this. But instead of upholding public standards, Luxon appears to be allowing a culture of outright dishonesty among his Ministers from the outset. I think we're entitled to draw some unpleasant conclusions about his character and truthfulness from that as well.

Equality comes to Greece

The Greek Parliament has voted for marriage equality:

Greece has become the first Christian Orthodox-majority country to legalise same-sex marriage.

Same-sex couples will now also be legally allowed to adopt children after Thursday's 176-76 vote in parliament.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the new law would "boldly abolish a serious inequality".

Good. But there are still EU members who refuse to recognise marriage equality, or have constitutions specifically enshrining bigotry. The ECHR needs to step in and deal with them.

A rejection of the rule of law

As if we didn't have enough reasons to hate National's corrupt, Muldoonist RMA fast-track legislation, now we have another: it will be used to overturn the decisions of independent panels - and potentially the courts - to forcibly "consent" projects which have been rejected under existing law.

If this sounds familiar, its exactly what Muldoon did with the Clutha Development (Clyde Dam) Empowering Act 1982, only potentially on a much broader scale. Its not just a rejection of established principles of community consultation and independent, merits-based assessment - its also an outright rejection of the rule of law from the National Party and their corrupt business backers. Instead, it seems they prefer a model where those who can buy the ear of Ministers get what they want, and those who can't, don't.

Australia shows us what happens under such models: universal, wide-scale corruption, and regular prosecutions of Ministers. And to clean it up, we'll need an Independent Commission Against Corruption, empowered to continuously investigate Ministers, officials, consent applicants and lobbyists for any hint of bribery or undue influence. If National passes this legislation, Labour should announce such a body as an immediate priority.

An unlawful directive

An interesting question in the Parliamentary written questions feed today, from Jan Tinetti to the Minister of Education:

Has she or her Office directed the Ministry of Education to not release Official Information Act material prior to the full twenty working days, if so, why?

Given that people don't ask such questions unless they already know the answer, I think we can assume that such a directive actually exists, and its just a matter of time before its exposed to full public light.

Such a directive would of course be completely unlawful, violating the clear statute that requests must be responded to "as soon as reasonably practicable". The problem is that public servants don't really have much recourse against even clearly unlawful directives, because shit flows downhill from the Minister. Which is why we need to move away from the current OIA enforcement model of government as a cosy gentlemen's agreement with the Ombudsman there to remind people to be a good chap, and towards one where the law is actually legally enforceable, and there are criminal penalties for deliberately violating it.

Drawn

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

• Parole (Mandatory Completion of Rehabilitative Programmes) Amendment Bill (Todd Stephenson)
• Goods and Services Tax (Removing GST From Food) Amendment Bill (Rawiri Waititi)
• Income Tax (ACC Payments) Amendment Bill (Hamish Campbell)
• Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill (Deborah Russell)
• Local Electoral (Abolition of the Ratepayer Roll) Amendment Bill (Greg O’Connor)

The last one is going to be a flashpoint for current tensions over housing, rent, and landlords, given that it would remove a democratic anomaly which currently gives absentee landlords multiple votes in local body elections.

There were only 59 bills in the ballot today, so someone has been slacking.

Climate Change: Arsonists

Today, a major fire broke out on the Port Hills in Ōtutahi. Like its 2017 predecessors, it is almost certainly exacerbated by climate change. And it is still burning.

The present government did not start the fire. But they piled the tinder high last time they were in power, gutting the ETS, delaying action on agricultural emissions, encouraging fossil fuel development, and generally reversing policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And they're doing it again, killing the clean car discount, cutting the GIDI scheme to reduce industrial emissions, killing public transport, delaying action on agricultural emissions (again) and encouraging fossil fuel development (again). Today, in Parliament, they effectively admitted that their corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" resource consent legislation will be used to ram through new coal mines - in the middle of a climate crisis. While an actual fire is burning on the edge of the South Island's largest city, one change in wind direction away from devastation, they are metaphorically pouring petrol through the house. They are arsonists, pure and simple. The question is whether we'll be able to vote them out before we have our own version of Lahaina or Black Saturday - or whether their climate arson is going to have a bodycount.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day, the first of the new Parliament. And to start the Parliament off, there's a bunch of first readings. A bunch of other bills have been postponed, so first up is Duncan Webb's District Court (Protecting Judgment Debtors on Main Benefit) Amendment Bill, followed by Katie Nimon's Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) (Improving Mental Health Outcomes) Amendment Bill. Then there's a bill likely to be contentious: Arena Williams' Electoral (Equal Protection of Māori Seats) Amendment Bill. In previous parliaments the racist parties have united to vote down giving Māori seats the same constitutional protections as general seats, but its now backed by a recommendation from the Independent Electoral Review. And in the context of the present government-led hate-campaign against Te Tiriti and all things Māori, it will be an important sign of how far National is going to try and push its racist agenda.

If the House moves quickly it should make a start on Cushla Tangaere-Manuel's Local Government (Facilitation of Remote Participation) Amendment Bill. And we should see a ballot for five or six bills tomorrow.

Brownlee enables corruption

One of the few positive things Chris Hipkins did as Prime Minister was to throw the lobbyists out of Parliament, cutting off their free access and requiring them to make an appointment like everybody else. But now, under National, they're back - and with extra secrecy:

The identities of people allowed to freely come and go from Parliament have been made secret by the new Speaker.

Gerry Brownlee told RNZ he did not agree with the blanket ban on lobbyists having swipe card access and some discretion was needed.

He had approved swipe card access for about four new people, who he said could be described as having lobbying roles. But they were not employed by professional lobbying firms and largely had jobs assisting parties in Parliament.

He would not be "facilitating commercial activities" for lobbying firms. But in a departure from previous Speakers, Brownlee said he wouldn't publish the 'approved visitor list' of people with swipe card access to Parliament, in order to protect their privacy.

So, instead of trying to clean up our political system, we have a Speaker who is actively trying to re-introduce and protect corruption. Because that's what the unequal and undemocratic influence of lobbyists on our political system is: corruption. It means that policy is determined by who spends the most money (and possibly, makes the biggest donations), rather than who wins the most votes. As for “privacy”, these people are trying to influence public business. If you or I do that, by writing to Ministers, submitting on proposed legislation, or even meeting with a Minister, our names and the content of our submissions get published. And rightly so – there’s no privacy interest at all when people are trying to influence policy. Brownlee’s special protection for these racketeers is simply saying that the rich and their tools should be allowed to exert such influence in secret. And who does that benefit?

But the mere fact that Brownlee has declared these people's identities secret should give the press gallery a powerful incentive to unmask and expose them. News, after all, is something someone doesn't want you to print. Everything else is just public relations.

Luxon can't be trusted on Te Tiriti

When the new government's coalition agreements were released last year, the most shocking aspect was National's agreement to an explicitly racist campaign to repudiate Te Tiriti o Waitangi, replacing it with some weirdo Libertarian charter. Luxon has spent the last four months trying to say that he was forced to agree to this as the price of power (that is, he has no moral character and was happy to throw Māori under the bus so he could call himself "Right Honourable" for a few years), and that he had only agreed to support it to select committee. As the unpopularity of destroying the foundation of the New Zealand state has become apparent, he has focused more and more on the latter, saying that it was unlikely that National would support the bill any further. And yesterday, after his disastrous performance at Waitangi, he went further, ruling it out completely. The problem? Rimmer doesn't believe him:

ACT leader David Seymour is refusing to back down on his controversial Treaty Principles Bill, saying he believes the Prime Minister's opinion can be changed.

Seymour believes Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was "nervous" after Waitangi and could still back his Treaty Principles Bill despite ruling out doing so.

[...]

But Seymour is undeterred by Luxon's comments and came out with fighting words when he joined AM on Thursday morning.

"I mean, last week, he wouldn't rule out supporting it further, yesterday he would. I think perhaps he got a bit nervous after Waitangi," he told AM co-host Lloyd Burr.

But there was one part of Luxon's comments that Seymour said he didn't believe.

"But ultimately the bit I don't believe is he won't change his mind if the public really wants it," he said.

Rimmer is quite clear that he is trying to twist Luxon's arm on this. And it seems likely that he will get away with it. Because no matter what Luxon says, at the end of the day, Rimmer gets to decide whether he remains Prime Minister or not. And he has already shown a willingness to use that to impose a racist, white supremacist agenda on Aotearoa, and Luxon has already grovelled in the face of it. Given that, it is likely that he will do so again.

So here is what will happen: National will make a lot of noise opposing the bill at first reading, while voting it to select committee "as part of the coalition agreement". It may even order its MPs to issue a negative report on it at select committee. And then Rimmer will threaten to roll the government unless he gets his way and the bill is passed. And the question then is whether Luxon, a man who has already backed down to this once, will show some moral character and stand up against Rimmer's divisive racism, or whether he will meekly roll over and in effect allow Rimmer to dictate to his whole government. And unfortunately, I think we all know the answer to that one.

Climate Change: The climate will get its day in court

As the climate crisis has worsened, and the politicians have proven themselves ineffective, corrupt, or both, people around the world have turned the courts to provide a solution and pressure polluters to reduce their emissions. Here in Aotearoa the local case is Smith v Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd, which alleges that a group of seven major polluters collectively responsible for a third of the country's emissions are committing negligence, public nuisance, and breaching a new environmental duty by failing to cut their emissions. The polluters have of course denied this, arguing sociopathically that the carbon and methane they spew just isn't their problem, and even if it was, they owe no duties to anyone not to do it (in other words, "fuck you"). But today, the Supreme Court disabused them of that, ruling that Smith has an arguable case which should be heard in court:

Iwi leader Mike Smith has won the right to sue seven big polluters for their role in causing climate change, in a Supreme Court ruling delivered this morning.

The Supreme Court reinstated Smith's case, after it was earlier thrown out by the Court of Appeal on the basis there was no reasonable basis for argument.

The climate activist, of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu, says the group including Fonterra, Z Energy and Genesis Energy (which together make around a third of New Zealand's emissions) have a legal duty to him and others in communities who are being damaged by planet-heating gases.

He wants them to either stop polluting, or start bringing emissions down quickly.

An important feature of the case is the role of tikanga Māori, and how it determines Smith's relationship to coastal land and waters which are being flooded and damaged.

The Supreme Court noted it was not ruling on whether the case had a good chance of succeeding, only that "Mr Smith now gets his day in court".

Which isn't victory - but it is the first step. And the polluters are now going to have to go full sociopath and argue that they owe no duties to anyone, effectively destroying all their greenwash marketing, or that they're doing enough, and expose their emissions reduction plans (if any) to legal scrutiny. And if they win (or just settle) on the latter, those plans become something they can be legally held to.

Of course, there's a third option: buy politicians to legislate legal impunity for polluters. Which would of course be nakedly corrupt as well as sociopathic. Unfortunately, with our current crop of politicians, that can't be ruled out.

Government says "Fuck the poor"

One of the big achievements of the two previous Labour-led governments was regular, large increases to the minimum wage. These lifted incomes and helped drive wage growth for all workers, while incentivising employers to invest in productivity and technology rather than low-skilled production. Well, that's definitely over now, with the government ordering a sub-inflation increase:

Minimum wage workers will get a 2% increase from April 1, when the minimum wage rises from $22.70 to $23.15.

That is despite a warning from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that an increase below the rate of inflation could make it hard for minimum wage workers to keep up with the cost of living.

Inflation was running at a rate of 4.7% a year in the 12 months to December.

And lest anyone forget, a sub-inflation increase is effectively a cut. So National is deliberately cutting the real wages of the poorest workers.

Reading the Cabinet paper its even worse, because employment minister Brooke van Velden wanted only a 1.3% increase, on the basis that it had increased above inflation since 2018. MBIE recommended 4%, to almost keep pace with the PREFU inflation projection. The overwhelming tone of that paper is of the Minister - a woman who is paid $296,007 a year plus slush - saying "fuck the poor". Which seems like a strong argument for Ministers to be put on the minimum wage, to see how much they like it.

Drawn

A ballot for a single Member's Bill took place today, and the following bill was drawn:

• Corrections (Victim Protection) Amendment Bill (Rima Nakhle)

There were 64 bills in the ballot today, which is a healthy number. Obvious trends: Labour has a lot on employment law, and there are three bills seeking to improve things for renters. Government MPs meanwhile are doing various shades of toxic law and order bullshit, just like they always have.