Climate Change: James Shaw's legacy keeps paying off

One of the central planks of the previous Labour-Green government's emissions reduction policy was GIDI (Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry). This was basically using ETS revenue to pay polluters to clean up production, reducing emissions while protecting jobs. Corporate welfare, but it got the job done, and was often a net saving to the government due to reduced pollution subsidies. The biggest success in that scheme was the May 2023 deal with NZ Steel, which saw them being paid $140 million to halve their emissions by 2030 - an effective carbon price for the reductions of $16.20 per ton. Originally this was meant to see reductions from 2027, but yesterday NZ Steel announced that the project would be brought forward to 2025, and it would reduce emissions even further:

Revised estimates from NZ Steel said its carbon emissions will drop by around a million tonnes a year from when the furnace comes online compared with 800,000 tonnes originally announced. That's over one percent of New Zealand's gross emissions.

NZ Steel also said the furnace will start operating sooner than announced, by the end of 2025.

[...]

By his estimate, the government's savings on carbon credits would pay for the up to $140m taxpayer investment in the electric furnace in about three years, though it would depend on the carbon price from 2026 onwards.

This is obviously good news, and shows the soundness of Shaw's scheme (though I'd still prefer the government to be taking an equity stake in exchange for its money). Which makes GIDI's cancellation by National look even worse. This was a hugely successful policy which is producing ongoing benefits, and its removal has left a huge hole in our carbon budget. Its almost as if National is just ideologically opposed to emissions reduction.

As expected

Back in May, we learned that National MP David MacLeod had "forgotten" to declare $178,000 in electoral donations. Filing a donation return which is false in any material particular is a crime, and the Electoral Commission has now referred MacLeod to police, since they're the only people who are allowed to prosecute.

...and now, as expected, the police have ended the investigation and declared that they will take no further action. This is effectively a strict liability offence - while MacLeod may not have had any intention to mislead, he also clearly did not take all reasonable steps to ensure his declaration was accurate - so the police are once again deciding to ignore the law to protect the powerful.

Our democracy deserves better than this. Electoral finance law is a key protection against political corruption, and it needs to be properly enforced. Since the police clearly will not do it, we need to give the job to someone who will: the Electoral Commission.

Councils reject National's racism

Last month, National passed a racist law requiring local councils to remove their Māori wards, or hold a referendum on them at the 2025 local body election. The government was clearly hoping that, despite all their prior opposition, local authorities would bow down, obey, and vote to disenfranchise Māori. But instead the opposite has occured. I've been tracking this out of curiosity, and so far 24 councils have voted to retain their wards, and only two have voted to remove them. Twenty councils are still undecided, so already a majority of councils have rejected National's racist policy. A surprising number of councils have also voted to explore the option of just ignoring the law, and not having a referendum, which says something about the depth of opposition.

Its also worth noting that its not big cities voting to retain - Wellington, Hamilton, Tauranga and Porirua are yet to formally decide on the issue. Instead, the opposition is from provincial and rural councils - National's base. In Palmerston North, the mayor and all National councillors opposed the government. In the Manawatū-Whanganui Regional Council, the most vocal opponent was Jono Naylor, a former National MP. And the reason for this is simple: like the Māori seats, Māori wards work, and once they exist, everyone can see it. Which is I suspect what racist National was afraid of.

So now it looks like the 2025 local body elections are shaping up to be a nationwide referendum on this racist government. And while we can't vote them out directly, we could send a useful message which might change their direction and shape the narrative for the 2026 election. So next year, more than ever, you should pay attention to that local body elections envelope which shows up in your mailbox - and vote "fuck you" to the government.

Jurors are being ripped off

I had to do a morning of jury service this week, and was fortunate to not get selected for what sounded like an unpleasant and psychologically damaging case. I still have to check whether I have to go back tomorrow (hopefully not), but in the meantime I've begun thinking about the related administrivia.

Jurors and potential jurors are paid. Its not a wage - jurors are not employees - but it is meant to be some compensation for the trouble. The rates are specified in the Jury Rules 1990, and were last updated in 2004 - twenty years ago. Back then the hourly rate for a half day was $10.33 / hour - a bit over the minimum wage of $9/hour. Twenty years later its still the same, while the minimum wage is $22.70 / hour. Even merely adjusting for inflation would raise it to $17/hour.

Jurors are getting ripped off, nickelled and dimed by a government which uses any excuse to "save" money. Until compensation is restored, they should refuse to serve.

Not a solution

Aotearoa is currently suffering from one of its regular electricity crises, thanks to systematic underinvestment by the power cartel. Today. driven by business outrage over high power prices, the government announced its response to this, consisting of:

1. a thing which won't lower electricity prices at all (but will please donors);
2. a thing which will guarantee they remain high; and
3. a thing which might actually help, but probably won't.

And together, its hard to see how these are much of a solution. Looking at each of them in turn:

Reversing the offshore fossil exploration ban: this isn't going to lower power prices, because there isn't any gas to find (if there was, it would have been found already), and because of the ten to fifteen year lag between exploration and exploitation. So in the unlikely event that the fossil companies find gas, it might come to market in, oh, 2040 or so. Which is, coincidentally, well after the time by which we should have stopped using it altogether. If the government is worried about gas supply, it should shut down Methanex and free up their gas for other users. Sure, this would cost 300 jobs, but they're jobs we're already subsidising to the tue of $200,000 a year each, and the power crisis has probably cost us that many already (Winstone Pulp plus Oji recycling balances it). Shut down this pack of foreign exploitative polluters, and the problem goes away.

Importing LNG: the government is on-record as saying that imported LNG means an electricity price of $260 / MWh - lower than current crisis levels, but over twice the "normal" price that industry expects. And that's only based on fuel prices; once you factor in the costs of the terminal, and the profit margin for whoever builds it, it'll be much higher. So, building a terminal and importing LNG will mean sustained high electricity prices every winter. Great for the power cartel, but terrible for electricity users (including us retail peasants, who pay significantly over the average spot price as an effective hedge for the cartel). About the only good thing you can say about the government's plan is that at least they're refusing to pay for it. Instead, we will be - and through the nose. On the plus side, leaving it in the hands of Genesis, Contact, and Todd Energy will mean that it will take years, even if fast-tracked - which means there should be time for the next government to say "nope" and shut down the whole stupid idea.

Reviewing the electricity market: could do something useful, if allowed to look at the pricing model, but probably won't. Really just a way of appearing to do something while not really doing anything at all.

So what should the government do instead? The things which will help this year - a temporary Methanex shutdown and allowing the hydro lakes to dip into their contingency - have already been done. As for next year, the government needs to make that Methanex shutdown permanent to free up gas supply (in case we need it), then do some serious public investment in renewable generation and battery storage. The power cartel won't invest, so the government will have to do it itself. Rooftop solar is a useful part of this, because it doesn't need resource consent and can be built quickly - so a subsidy scheme to roll out an extra 50MW a year of that (on top of the 70 - 100 MW that is expected to be built) will help. As for grid-scale generation, the government doesn't need to build it itself: there's over a GW of solar generation and another GW of wind consented but unbuilt, and spending some money on pushing those projects forward so they get built next year rather than in 2026 or 2027 would help. But longer-term, setting up an SOE with the specific purpose of building renewables, flooding the market, and crashing the power price so we get negative electricity prices in summer would seem to be a Very Good Idea. And if in the process it burns all those thieves who bought into the public assets National part-privatised last time it was in office, all the better.

Alternatively, the government could use its ownership interest in three quarters of the power cartel to demand investment rather than dividends. But how likely is that?

Simply not credible

RNZ has more information this morning on Phillip Morris Minister Casey Costello's mysterious tobacco policy document, and it just gets worse and worse. Costello has consistently claimed to have no idea who authored the document; now she's saying she has no idea how it even got into her office:

A politically charged document arguing for tobacco tax cuts was sent to health officials by a NZ First minister - even though she says she has no idea who wrote it or how it ended up in her office.

[...]

Costello now acknowledges the document existed but says she does not know who wrote it - only that the author does not work in her office.

"The document you have referred to was not generated or collated by any members of my office and was only received as a hard copy on December 6," she wrote in response to RNZ's OIA request.

She said she still did not know who wrote the document or even who gave it to her.

I have more information about this from an Ombudsman's complaint, where she has told the Ombudsman that:

the document was not generated or collated by any members of my office’, ‘a hard copy of the document had been placed on my desk and…I did not receive the document through any other correspondence’ and that she has ‘confirmed with all members of my office that none of them placed the notes on my desk’

The Minister also advised that she ‘enquired with staff in my office about whether they knew who had authored the document and they advised that they did not’.

The Ombudsman is satisfied that this is a reasonable effort required to justify refusing a request for authorship, and on face value, it is. The problem is that even if we believe her, her explanation is simply not credible. Essentially she's saying that some unknown person - a ninja, perhaps? - walked into her office, put something on her desk without anyone noticing, and that despite supposedly not knowing where this document came from, it became government policy. Which is... not how government is meant to operate in a democracy, and raises serious doubts about whether she is fit to be a minister. It also raises serious doubts about both the level of security on ministerial offices, and the quality of the ministers that they're such credulous fools to advance any crackpot idea placed on their desk (OTOH, it does suggest a way of altering government policy for the better, if only we had some better ninjas with better documents to feed them...)

The other problem is that we have no reason to believe her. Quite apart from the sheer incredulity of her story, this is a Minister who has acted in a systematically dishonest way over this document, down to lying over its existence (she's also lied over what advice she considered, and withheld evidence from the Ombudsman). We have no reason to treat her statements as honest this time. But I suppose that if she is shown to have lied, that would be a crime, and you'd hope that the Ombudsman would be sick enough of her bullshit to actually refer her to police this time.

Justice for Alan Hall?

In June 2022 the Supreme Court quashed Alan hall's conviction for murder. Along the way, they found that the case against him - built on coercive and oppressive interviews, doctored witness statements, and exculpatory evidence concealed from the defence - was so bas that as to be the result of "extreme incompetence or of a deliberate and wrongful strategy to secure conviction". Following the quashing, the Solicitor-General announced an investigation into the crown lawyers involved in the case. And now, it seems there might finally be some justice for their wrongdoing:

Police have issued summonses for three people to appear in court, in connection with one of the country’s worst miscarriages of justice.

After a two-year police investigation, The Post understands police issued summonses and executed search warrants this morning, for three people involved with the conviction of Alan Hall for murdering Arthur Easton in 1985.

The three are due to appear in court next month.

Good. Because cops and lawyers who stitch people up need to be treated like the criminals they are. And maybe a few prosecutions of corrupt cops will help ensure there are fewer of them in future.

The power cartel's nightmare

Aotearoa is currently suffering from one of its regular electricity crises, thanks to systematic underinvestment by the power cartel. Meanwhile, in Europe, electricity prices have gone negative:

European power markets are experiencing a notable shift as renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar, become a larger part of the energy mix. On Wednesday, power prices in several European markets, including Germany, dipped below zero due to a surge in green electricity production.

In Germany, wind generation is expected to hit 22.7 gigawatts, the highest level in four months. This spike in renewable output has overwhelmed the grid, leading to negative prices during six separate hours on Tuesday, as recorded by Epex Spot SE. Negative pricing occurs when there is more electricity supply than demand, a scenario becoming more frequent as Europe continues its aggressive push toward renewable energy.

Why? Because energy companies have invested in renewable generation, driving expensive fossil generation out of the market and producing an oversupply. And its a similar story in California.

This is the power cartel's nightmare: free power! Which means no profits for them. And with more renewables and batteries being installed, its only going to get worse (though likely become merely very cheap, rather than negative).

So while NZ businesses are shutting down because power is too expensive, and National talking about expensive imported LNG as a "solution" (a "solution" which means a permanent rise in electricity prices for both industrial and residential users), think about the future we could have: a future where the government uses its control of the power cartel (or just a new SOE) to rapidly roll out solar panels and batteries to permanently lower power prices and bring cheap power to everyone. A future where it builds energy storage to end the dry year problem. A future where instead of shutting down, companies can use that power to make cheap, clean, goods. But there's no lobbyists for that future, and plenty of lobbyists for shortages and energy poverty. So we won't be getting it from National.

Climate Change: National (almost) does the right thing for once

Back in March, He Pou a Rangi laid down the gauntlet to the government, recommending ETS price and volume settings which would slash the amount of available carbon, in an effort to force polluters to burn their stockpiles. I had low expectations of the government, and expected them to repeat Labour's mistake of ignoring the Commission in order to ensure cheap carbon for their cronies. Fortunately, I've been disappointed: the government has (mostly) accepted the Commission's advice, and even strengthened it in some ways.

The good news is that they've accepted the recommendation to continue the two-tier, high-trigger point cost containment reserve - meaning that it should never trigger and that carbon should stay out of the system. Their annual auction volumes actually total 1.5 million tons less than the recommended amount - though of course National has backloaded this, with slightly higher volumes for the next two years, offset by deep cuts later ("cuts later" is basically their policy in a nutshell). But this is more than offset by higher industrial allocation volumes, signalling that they refuse to end the outrageous pollution subsidies which see NZ Steel given 50% more credits than it actually emits. Which isn't just a commitment to ongoing corporate welfare - its also a refusal to fix an existential threat to the system, kicking the can down the road for the next government to fix (I guess those polluter lobbyists earned their pay). And the upshot is that their total volumes are about half a million tons higher than that recommended by the Commission. Which means half a millions tons we will need to make up later, somehow.

The silver lining is that that extra half million tons might not be emitted. Pollution subsidies are production-based, so if the polluters shut down - due to high electricity prices, say - then they don't get an allocation. Winstone Pulp's announced shutdown will more than offset the extra volume. Of course, if they weren't being subsidised to pollute, we wouldn't have to cheer their destruction. But policy choices have consequences.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day. Unfortunately its all late stages again. First up is the committee stage of Dan Bidois' Fair Trading (Gift Card Expiry) Amendment Bill. This will be followed by the second readings of Tracey McLellan's Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill and Deborah Russell's Family Proceedings (Dissolution for Family Violence) Amendment Bill. If the House moves quickly it will make a start on Katie Nimon's Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) (Improving Mental Health Outcomes) Amendment Bill, but I'm not sure it will get that far. There's a full slate of first readings still, so there will be no ballot.

Not getting the message

Yesterday almost all political parties attended the Koroneihana at Tūrangawaewae, and Chris Luxon and Shane Jones took the opportunity to make it crystal clear that the government's racist, divisive, Tiriti-breaching Treaty "Principles" Bill has no future. Which is good, but if they're not going to vote for it at second reading, why even go through the farce of giving it a first? Especially when the racist outpouring ACT and its white supremacist allies hope to whip up at select committee will inflict further damage on our society?

Meanwhile, Rimmer is simply not getting the message, and still seems to think he can persuade National and NZ First to vote for his steaming pile of racist horseshit. Which means he's either completely delusional, or he's planning to destabilise the government and sabotage the rest of its agenda, or even topple it, unless he gets his own way. And given what a fanatic racist he is, the latter can't be ruled out. Which means the opposition parties might want to make sure they have a plan for an early election next year, just in case...

Unfinished business on corruption and transparency

Over the weekend the Helen Clark Foundation released Shining a Light: Improving transparency in New Zealand's political and governance systems, a report on reducing corruption in Aotearoa. It makes the point that while we have a relatively corruption-free culture, and regularly top the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, our lack of formal institutional protections gives us a false sense of security, and we are in fact highly vulnerable - a fact that National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track legislation is ramming home to us. It makes a number of recommendations around lobbying, political donations, the OIA, and anti-corruption laws to strengthen our defences.

One thing which stands out from these recommendations is how many of them have been made before, and simply ignored by successive governments. So the report endorses Health Coalition Aotearoa's recommendations on regulating lobbying, the Independent Electoral Review's recommendations on political party finance (both of which echoed earlier work), Transparency International's recommendations on transparency of online political campaigning and foreign influence, the Ombudsman's recommendations on criminal penalties for the OIA, and (the majority of) the Law Commission's 2012 recommendations on reforming the Official Information Act. Putting it all in one place makes it clear that there is a huge amount of unfinished business around transparency and integrity in Aotearoa, which our political class has simply refused to implement - in some cases for over a decade. And you could draw some very unflattering conclusions about their integrity and their incentives for refusing the longer they do so.

There's also some new recommendations around the OIA which would be an improvement. These are focused on reducing interference by Ministers, and include removing existing transfer and consultation provisions which are abused to enable ministers to stick their oar in, creating statutory independence for OIA decision-makers, creating an offence of attempting to improperly influence an OIA decision (separate from the proposed offences for destroying or concealing information), and making agency chief executives liable for OIA abuses in the same way that they are for failings under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (so, a duty of transparency, similar to the primary dury of care, and an offence of failing to comply with it). All of which sounds like a good idea, and a way of incentivising public servants to resist ministerial fuckery.

The current government being institutionally corrupt, I don't expect them to pay any attention to this report. So the pressure needs to go on the opposition parties to commit to implementing it in its entirety.

Sabotaging human rights

That is the only way to describe National's shock appointments to the Human Rights Commission on Friday. New Chief Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow is on-record as a terf and a supporter of Israel's genocide in Gaza; new Race Relations Commissioner Melissa Derby is a terf whose chief "human rights" achievements seem to be supporting white supremacists and arguing that the "trans movement" - that is, people just trying to live their lives without being molested by bigots like her - should not be tolerated in civil society. These are not appointments which give confidence that the Commission will fulfil its purpose of supporting everyone's human rights. Instead, they're the sort of appointments seemingly designed to undermine the Commission's work, destroy public confidence, and bring it into disrepute. Which makes perfect sense when you remember that one of the government parties wants the Commission to be abolished. While National does not publicly share that agenda, these appointments suggest they're on-board with it, and are willing to appoint commissioners who will sabotage the work of the Commission.

Interestingly, Paul Goldsmith, who made the appointments, said that his appointees had been subjected to "appropriate background checks". It will be interesting to see if these checks included their repugnant views, and whether they were seen as a positive or a negative. But I expect National will try and hide that as "free and frank advice" from the inevitable flood of OIAs.

As for what to do about this: the immediate problem of bigots on the Human Rights Commission can be resolved by the next government simply sacking them. People with these views are unable to credibly perform the functions of the office, which is just cause for removal.

As for the long-term, there's a long-standing problem of political appointments to key constitutional offices, and this incident makes it clear that politicians can no longer be trusted with the job. So, we should take it off them, and give it to a permanent independent appointments panel, tasked with ensuring that appointments are based on merit rather than cronyism or political agendas. We know how to do this: we use an independent process for appointment of the Government Statistician (but not other public service CEOs), with criminal penalties for any Minister who attempts to interfere in it. And we know how to set up a permanent, non-partisan body because we do that for the Representation Commission, which ensures our electorates are not gerrymandered. We could, with the political will, establish such a process for the Human Rights Commission and other independent crown entities of an important or constitutional nature (such as the Privacy Commissioner, Children's Commissioner, Electoral Commission, IPCA, Waitangi Tribunal, and Climate Change Commission) to ensure merit-based appointments, insulated from cronyism and political sabotage. But I guess the problem is: why would any politician vote for that?

The government should listen to the Waitangi Tribunal

The Waitangi Tribunal has reported back on the government's proposed Treaty "Principles" Bill, and as expected, declared it to be a steaming pile of racist horsehit:

In her letter to Ministers the chair of the Waitangi Tribunal Caren Fox said both policies were part of an alarming pattern of the Crown using the policy process and parliamentary sovereignty against Māori.

By engaging with this policy the Crown was sanctioning a process that will take away indigenous rights, she said.

"For the Crown to entertain 'principles' that contain inaccurate representations of the text and spirit of the Treaty / te Tiriti and warped interpretations of te reo Māori from te Tiriti o Waitangi is a breach of the duty to act in good faith and to act reasonably."

The letter highlighted multiple problems with the Bill: including that it "is a solution to a problem that does not exist ; there is no policy imperative that justifies it ; it is 'novel' in its Treaty interpretations ; it is fashioned upon a disingenuous historical narrative ;its policy rationales are unsustainable ; and its current text distorts the language of the Treaty / Te Tiriti."

The latter is particularly important, as the Tribunal has exclusive authority "to determine the meaning and effect of the Treaty as embodied in the 2 texts and to decide issues raised by the differences between them". So you'd expect them to know what they're talking about better than a bunch of weirdo racist bumpkins from ACT and NZ First. As for solutions, they recommend that the bill be dumped, that the review of Treaty clauses be put on hold and re-done in partnership with Māori, and that the Crown should consider a restorative justice process to mend its relations with Māori.

While these are formally only "recommendations", like those of the Ombudsman, they should be taken extremely seriously by the government. Te Tiriti is one of the foundations of state legitimacy in Aotearoa, and a government messes with that at its peril. The Tribunal has both the expertise and the mana here, and the government should listen. That approach is implied by the structure of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975: Parliament established the Waitangi Tribunal to inquire into alleged breaches of te Tiriti. In giving the Tribunal the power to inquire into proposed legislation before it is placed before the House, Parliament clearly envisioned that such inquiries would have an element of preventing such breaches before they occurred. Having done this, it is incumbent upon Parliament and the government to listen when the Tribunal speaks and address its concerns. And if they can't be relied upon to do that informally, then we need to bind them and require them to do so formally.

The full report, "Ngā Mātāpono – The Principles", is here.

Stranded assets are not the answer

The power cartel's systematic underinvestment in generation has given us another electricity crisis, and the climate-denying government is using this to push its dirty solutions: new fossil generation, with an LNG import terminal to ensure there is enough gas. Which probably looks very attractive as a temporary stopgap measure. The problem is that once the current crisis is over, the investment in that stopgap measure will effectively be a stranded asset - making it a hugely expensive "solution" to a temporary problem.

Even the polluter lobby seems to understand this, with Energy Resources Aotearoa demanding an "investment guarantee" - otherwise known as a subsidy - for a new thermal power plant. Meaning they know such a plant would have no future; that even if it could secure a supply of gas to keep it operating, the pipeline of consented wind and solar being built will rapidly drive it out of the market, meaning it won't have the usual payback period required for such an investment. Its basically not a commercially viable proposition, even allowing for fossil generation's role as the price-maker and the resulting windfall profits to the power cartel.

The equation for LNG is even worse. Imported LNG is roughly twice as expensive as domestic gas (US$12.37/MBTU = NZ$19.63/GJ, vs NZ$10.97/GJ for industrial users).Methanex, which uses 45% of all our gas, won't want to pay that. Neither will anyone else. The exception being electricity companies, who can pass on those prices and (due to the broken market pricing model) generate windfall profits from them. So it will drive up electricity prices for everyone, but because electricity is more efficient than gas for most uses, will also further drive electrification as well. So, an expensive import terminal to supply fuel to a dying industry, which will increase the speed of death of that industry. Only a fool would pay for it. Unfortunately, as their whole conversation around energy and climate change shows, we are currently governed by fools.

If the government is going to subsidise or promote things to fix the underlying problems in the electricity industry, it could at least subsidise good things: renewables and batteries, or even baseload geothermal. These would increase electricity supply, lower electricity prices by driving fossil generation out of the market, and do so while not cooking the planet. But I guess none of that benefits the government's donors and cronies, so they'll be wasting money subsidising a polluting dying industry instead. But if they so so, the next government can and should repudiate their bullshit, and legislate to recover any wasted money.

Cheating their victims

Last month, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care delivered its report, detailing a horrific litany of abuse for which the government was ultimately responsible. One of its key recommendations was for redress, for the government to compensate its 250,000 victims, with a priority on those tortured at Lake Alice who the government has been deliberately waiting to die. Yesterday, the government produced its response to that recommendation: a measly $20,000 each:

The Government will make a “rapid payment” of $20,000 to terminally ill Lake Alice abuse survivors.

The payments would be available to persons who were 17 years old or under and placed in the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit between 1972 and 1977.

In a statement this evening, the minister responsible for co-ordinating the Crown Response to the Abuse in Care Inquiry, Erica Stanford, said Lake Alice survivors had “informed us there are a small number of their group who are expected to only have a short time left to live”.

$20,000 for torture which destroyed people's lives, and which the commission costed at an average $857,000. So the government is going to give these people 2% of the damage it caused. Well, its not like they're landlords, is it?

This miserliness does not come remotely close to meeting the government's moral obligations to its victims. It just doesn't. Instead, it just seems like a continuation of the government's ongoing policy of denial and minimisation of liability. And that's just not good enough.

National's self-serving secrecy protects corruption

One of the many problems with National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law is that the entire process is designed to cut the public out of decision-making and prevent us from having a say. The bill was rammed through its first reading under urgency, its time for submissions was ludicrously short given its complexity, and we won't even get to see the list of projects the government wants fast-track until the committee-stage - by which time there is nothing we can legally do to oppose them. And when the list of those invited to apply is a who's who of New Zealand's dodgiest companies, some of which are run by government donors or relatives, that simply fails the political hygiene test.

The Official Information Act is meant to be a solution to this. And someone has in fact asked for the list of projects. But surprise, surprise, the government is refusing to release it. Their reasoning however is a little weird:

Bishop’s response went on to explain that because decisions on the bill are yet to be made, “releasing the list of applicants at this time would impact the orderly and effective conduct of executive government”, and “result in extensive lobbying, even campaigning, both for and against applications ahead of Cabinet consideration”. Bishop explicitly feared “attempts would be made to influence Cabinet Ministers”.

The problem here is that there is already "extensive lobbying". its just that its been done by corrupt companies desperate to have their projects fast-tracked (sometimes in secret dinners with corrupt Ministers). But Bishop doesn't have a problem with that. Instead, what he's worried about is "lobbying" by the public. Or, as it is normally called, public participation in government. Promoting that is one of the purposes of the OIA, not to mention an obligation of the public service. By shutting us out and cloaking its dirty dealings under a veil of secrecy, National is simply enabling its own corruption. And we should regard it and its law as permanently tainted by this.

Finally

When National announced the re-introduction of its corrupt charter schools back in May, Labour "leader" Chris Hipkins impressed nobody by refusing to commit to their immediate abolition. But now, finally, Labour seems to have discovered some principles:

Fixed-term contracts being signed for the schools are 10 years long, but former education minister Jan Tinetti told Q+A that a hypothetical future Labour administration wouldn't back down at scrapping the schools and their contracts.

"Labour has got rid of these before, and we will get rid of them again, because they are bad for young people and bad for their learning," she said.

"We will be looking at legal advice around that, but we will get rid of charter schools.

"We will not have charter schools."

The length of the contract doesn't matter, because parliament trumps contracts and can overturn them by statute. And if this deters corrupt profiteers from signing such contracts with National governments in future, so much the better. Those seeking to steal from us should be uncertain (at the least) over whether they will get to keep their ill-gotten gains. And if they're not, that's another failing of the Labour Party.

Reaping what they sowed

Wholesale power prices are high at the moment, factories are shutting down, and big users are whining to the Minister to intervene and lower prices. And unsurprisingly, Shane Jones, who never saw a donation he didn't like, seems receptive:

"The gentailers no longer operate in New Zealand in a way that enhances competitiveness number one. Number two, the gentailers no longer operate in a vein that boosts or gives greater primacy to the greater interests. Therefore there are provisions under the existing electricity legislation that enables the Crown to use a code of conduct which has legal force to change their behaviour," he said.

But since the Bolger government sold Contact Energy and the Key government part-privatised Meridian, Mercury, and Genesis, they have had no obligation at all to care about "the greater interest". Their sole legal duty is to make a profit for their shareholders, by gouging as much money as they can from their customers. If Jones doesn't like that, and wants an electricity system that works for us, rather than being a price-gouging cartel, he knows the answer: re-nationalise it, and take back what National stole.

Meanwhile, its a bit rich for the major energy users group to be complaining. They've known that the market works like this for 25 years. They are large, well-capitalised companies. If they wanted lower prices, they've had 25 years to build cheap, renewable generation to drive the expensive, price-setting fossil stations out of the market. But they haven't, because that would be investment, as opposed to mere rent-seeking. They're simply reaping what they sowed. And if the leopards are now eating their faces, I see no reason not to have some popcorn while they scream.

21,000 unemployed under National

The latest labour market statistics have dropped, showing another rise in unemployment. There are now 143,000 unemployed - 21,000 more than when National took office.

This is the result of a deliberate policy choice by both the government and the reserve bank to engineer a recession and throw people out of work to protect the value of rich people's money. And the fact that they've both chosen to do this, chosen to do nothing to moderate its impacts, and in fact chosen to make it worse by throwing public servants out of work (with a consequent flow-on effect on the Wellington economy) tells us an awful lot about their values.

Palmerston North supports Māori wards

The Palmerston North City Council voted this morning on the future of our Māori ward - and voted unanimously to retain it, and have a referendum at the 2025 local body election. They also voted to investigate the option of not having a referendum - that is, directly challenging the government.

This is a provincial council. Its mayor is a Nat. There are open Nats on the council. All of them spoke against the government's agenda, in quite strong terms. And all of them voted for the final motion. It seems that National's programme of enforced, top-down racism isn't even popular with their own party.

The Ombudsman on National's secret schools

National's charter schools bill is curently before select committee. One of the more odious features of the bill is that it makes charter schools secret and unaccountable by exempting them from the Official Information Act. No policy rationale has been provided for this unconstitutional position, but last time round it was pitched as allowing charter schools to avoid "costly and vexatious requests" - which tells us what National really thinks of transparency and accountability.

You'd expect the Ombudsman to have some pretty strong views on this (just as they did last time) - and they do. Their submission points out how this will disadvantage charter school parents and students relative to those in state schools, while removing a key source of information required for them to hold sponsors accountable for the education they're providing and for enforcing their rights in any dispute (for example, when a school makes a questionable disciplinary decision - something which happens all the time). They also point out how unusual it is to have a body subject to the Ombudsmen Act but not the OIA - essentially to be public enough for dispute resolution, but not public enough for transparency. And along the way, they suggest in a couple of comments that this means that charter schools are not going to be able to avoid requests, at least around disputes and the areas sections 22 and 23 would apply to:

If the OIA does not apply, then parents and students would need to seek reasons and relevant information from sponsors in reliance on general principles of reasonable administrative conduct.

And

It may be helpful for me to clarify that if the Bill is passed in its current form I would still expect charter schools to deal with requests for information in a way which is administratively reasonable and consistent with those fundamental rights referred to above.

What does "administratively reasonable and consistent with... fundamental rights" mean? The Ombudsman is on record (in a case regarding an OIA request by an ineligible person) as saying that the administrative reasonableness basically mean "applying the OIA unless there's a really good reason not to". As for fundamental rights, while the submission refers to the section 14 BORA right to receive information, where there is a dispute, the right to justice means a right to be told the reason for a decision and the rule(s) someone is alleged to have broken. So, while National may try and exempt its corrupt charter schools from the OIA, unless it also exempts them from the BORA, the Ombudsmen Act, and any right to natural justice - which is even more unconstitutional and delegitimising - it sounds like the Ombudsman will force them to provide information anyway. It will just be less transparent, more confusing, more time-consuming, and more expensive for everyone involved. Especially the sponsors, who will have to lawyer up to deal with the Ombudsman far more often than they would otherwise. Which just goes to show: clear legal obligations of transparency are easier for everyone.

Inquiring too well

Stephen Lawrence was murdered thirty years ago in a racist attack in London. The murder and the resulting police non-investigation has been the focus of multiple inquiries over the intervening three decades, resulting in official findings of institutional racism against the UK police and multiple corruption investigations. The "Spycops" scandal subsequently revealed that undercover police officers had infiltrated the Lawrence family's campaign for justice, in an effort to dig up dirt and smear them. Those actions were the subject yesterday of the Undercover Policing Inquiry - when it all went horribly off-script:

Asked if undercover police were gathering “intelligence with which to smear the Lawrence family”, [former undercover police officer Trevor] Morris told the Undercover Policing Inquiry on Thursday that that was not his job. Instead, he said it was for MI5 – the Security Service – to do.

Morris said: “I heard this subsequently, and I thought that was … nonsense. That's not what we’re about. We're about gathering intelligence, not smearing individuals.

“That's a Security Service job. Let them do that. We're bothered about gathering intelligence. That's what we were doing.”

Morris then said: “Sorry I shouldn’t say that. Let’s scrap that last bit. I’m not saying that.”

The interrogating lawyer asked: “Are you or are you not in a position to say whether or not the Security Service was seeking to smear …”

At this point the live feed of the Undercover Policing Inquiry was suspended.

Which is all just a bit Orwellian. I guess the inquiry was inquiring too well, and uncovering things the British establishment really didn't want the public to know. But no amount of Orwellian censorship can disguise the truth here: that the British state is rotten to the core.

Democracy vs billionaires

The G20 is currently considering a global agreement to tax billionaires. The plan - a 2% wealth tax on those controlling assets over $1 billion - would raise US$250 billion, and could be done simply by applying already-agreed rules on taxing multinational corporations. As the Financial Times points out, its basically a "presumptive income" tax: "a 2 per cent tax on wealth could be seen as a 33 per cent income tax on a presumed 6 per cent return." Obviously, I'd prefer that rate to be higher, because billionaires should not exist and need to be taxed out of existence. But at this stage, anything which starts that process and helps stop them is good.

The question is, will governments agree to it? George Monbiot address this in the Guardian, pointing out how billionaires have used their wealth to corrupt democracy, and as a result, governments tend to serve them rather than their voters:

Every so often, UK governments promise to act, then deliberately vitiate their own proposals with loopholes wide enough to contain an oligarch’s mansion. When poorer countries propose global initiatives to prevent the ultra-rich from escaping taxation, rich nations, including the UK, have sought to stop them. They do so not in response to public demand, but in response to pressure from a tiny proportion of the population – billionaires, the newspapers they own and the concierge class that works for them.

So here’s the test the G20 governments face: 3,000 versus 8 billion. Do their loyalties lie with 0.00004% of the world’s population, or with the rest? If your government seeks to block the Brazilian proposal, you will have your answer.

I'd put it more bluntly: a government which refuses to tax billionaires is a traitor to its people. And we should treat them as such.