Climate Change: Holding conservatives responsible

Last week the regime released its approach to climate adaptation: basically "you're on your own". The government won't use policy to manage retreat and minimise costs, but rather just let people keep building in stupid places where they will be flooded and eroded. But they won't bail people out for that either; at least, not after some transition period designed - as usual - to ensure the Boomers are protected while everyone else gets fucked. Basically, the worst of all worlds, with no responsibility by anyone for managing the effects of our biggest policy failure. And meanwhile the costs of the failure keep rising and rising and rising...

(Oh, but of course they bailed out the farmers, who caused this. So I guess not all of us are on our own...)

Over on The Spinoff, Max Rashbrooke asks a very good question: Where do I send conservatives the bill for climate change?. Because as they point out, it is conservatives, here and abroad, who have systematically thwarted efforts to reduce emissions and prevent this ongoing disaster. Internationally, conservative billionaires spent millions to build a vast network of denialist mouthpieces (and that was a decade ago; they've spent a lot more since). As for here, well...

As the documentary Hot Air reveals, in the early 1990s Simon Upton, the minister for the environment, wanted to introduce a carbon tax, but was thwarted by the likes of the New Zealand Initiative – in its former guise as the Business Roundtable – bringing in climate deniers to disrupt the debate.

[...]

[The Clark] government did introduce the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), and if she didn’t go further, it was substantially because of opposition from – you guessed it – the right. Remember National MP Shane Ardern driving a tractor up parliament steps to protest against the ETS? That’s the story of this issue, over and over: left-wing governments trying to do more in the teeth of right-wing opposition, and right-wing governments doing very little despite being urged to do more by left-wing ones.

Basically, we are in this mess because conservatives, out of ideology, greed, partisan hostility, and a desire to protect their status quo, worked very hard to put us here. Its time we recognised this. But not just by making them pay - but by holding them criminally responsible for ecocide.

Drawn

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

• Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill (Rachel Brooking)

(Thanks to Dave for getting the results up before parliament did)

There were 72 bills in the ballot, including two new right to repair bills (one for motor vehicles, and one for agricultural equipment). Which makes me worry about the fate of the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill...

ACT means secrecy

Back in April an OIA request exposed the absurd cost of ACT's charter schools - five times more per student than the government spends on public schools. ACT obviously didn't like that, but they have a solution: keep the number of students secret:

The seven charter schools set up at the start of the year have been told to keep their enrolments secret, by The Charter School Agency.

The organisation, which manages charter school contracts and funding, told RNZ it was not appropriate to share information about the rolls of the publicly funded private schools.

"The Charter School Agency does not intend to release the numbers of students currently enrolled at each individual school during the crucial establishment phase as this could undermine their commercial position and their efforts to build their roll and deliver quality education," it said.

...which means no more bad headlines about stupidly high costs per student. Convenient for a minister and an agency wanting to avoid criticism. But terrible for the public wanting to know whether these gold-plated luxury schools work or not, and if the cost is worth it.

(Of course, it's illegal: most of the schools in question are non-profit, and so cannot have a commercial position to protect, and for those that aren't, there's a clear over-riding public interest in transparency and accountability, in that student numbers are essential to determining whether the people of Aotearoa are getting value for money. But that would require a complaint to the Ombudsman, which would take a year or two, so the government wins simply by virtue of shit enforcement...)

There's an obvious parallel here with the government's boot camps - also run by an ACT minister - where after several high-profile failures, all outcomes were declared secret. And that's how this government prevents criticism: not by performing well, but by censorship and secrecy. Transparency? Our right to know? Not under this regime.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day. First up is the first reading of Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's Resource Management (Prohibition on Extraction of Freshwater for On-selling) Amendment Bill, and then it's the second readings of Tracey McLellan's Evidence (Giving Evidence of Family Violence) Amendment Bill and Camilla Belich's Employment Relations (Employee Remuneration Disclosure) Amendment Bill. Then it's back to the first reading of Ingrid Leary's Property Law (Sunset Clauses) Amendment Bill. If the House moves quickly it might make a start on Cameron Brewer's Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill. There should be a ballot for one or two bills tomorrow.

This industry should be destroyed, not subsidised

The health insurance industry is parasitic on our public health system, taking people's money, providing them with th easy, cheap stuff, then sending them straight back into the public health system for anything which might cost them money. But not enough people are buying it anymore. So they're doing what all NZ industries do when the going gets tough: demanding a government subsidy:

Health insurance is becoming too expensive for some New Zealanders and it's prompted a call from the industry for tax breaks to help.

Research from the Financial Services Council, which represents life and health insurers, shows that a third of people with health insurance have downgraded or reduced their cover in the past year.

They're wanting full tax deductibility for premiums, and an exemption from fringe-benefit tax for employer-paid schemes. Which would obviously be great for them, and great for the rich people using their system to try and jump the queue. But any money spent subsidising their profits like this would be far better spent directly through the public health system. And spent there, it would benefit everybody, not just health insurance executives and their shareholders.

This is not an industry that should be subsidised. Instead, like foodbanks, the government should be actively trying to drive health insurers out of business, by building a stronger public health system that provides for everyone's needs.

A step towards freedom in Kanaky

Last year, New Caledonia burned after colonial France attempted to renege on a hard-won decolonisation deal and unilaterally impose constitutional changes without the consent of Kanaks. But now, after months of negotiations, France has finally consented to a further devolution of power, making Kanaky a state within France:

One of the most notable developments in terms of future status for New Caledonia is the notion of a "State of New Caledonia", under a regime that would maintain it a part of France, but with a dual citizenship (France, New Caledonia).

[...]

The text also envisages a gradual transfer of key powers currently held by France (such as international relations), but would not include portfolios such as defence, currency or justice.

In diplomacy, New Caledonia would be empowered to conduct its own affairs, but "in respect of France's international commitments and vital interests."

[...]

On police and public order matters, New Caledonia would be entitled to create its own provincial and traditional security forces, in addition to national French law enforcement agencies.

Its not independence. But its getting close, and it will allow the people of Kanaky to run their own country in their own way. And from here, its a very small change to full independence, or being an "associated state" of France.

Whether the deal will stick remains to be seen. But on that front, there's an obvious question: when will France release the political prisoners it took hostage?

Gas is still dead

The National regime, with its outdated fossil thinking, is desperately trying to revive the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile, that industry seems to be voting with its feet: one of my regular checks of the gas permit map, and comparison with the permit spreadsheet, shows that OMV has surrendered another two offshore exploration permits: 57075 and 60092. So of the nine offshore Taranaki exploration permits which existed when I started tracking this, seven have been surrendered, and only one is still active, and it expires in 2028.

(If you're wondering why I say nine offshore permits but the spreadsheet shows ten, its because the government was forced to grant another one under pre-ban rules by the courts in 2023).

The bad news is that National has converted Todd Energy's Karewa exploration permit off Kawhia into a mining permit. Which is weird, because the exploration permit had expired in July 2023, but NZPAM conveniently sat on an application to convert it for the last two years. Then, Todd Energy apparently applied again in May, and had it granted in just two weeks. Which seems... unusual. And only possible because of Labour's bad faith in banning new permits, but allowing existing ones to be extended and even converted, rather than guillotining the industry like it needed to do, which allowed the application to hang around until National had changed the law.

But on the plus side: Todd Energy's permit may simply end up as an accounting fiction, used to boost the nominal value of the company while the gas stays in the ground. Any possible development isn't going to happen until the end of the decade at the earliest, and there simply won't be a market for gas by then. And of course there'll be plenty of time between now and then for the next government to reimpose the offshore ban and legislatively revoke their permit. Which in itself ought to deter any development, because the risk of wasting a shit-ton of money is simply too great. The only question is how much this zombie industry is going to shamble around groaning before it finally realises it is dead.

A criminal nation

The European Court of Human Rights has found Russia guilty of horrific human rights violations during its unlawful invasions of Ukraine:

Russia has committed flagrant and unprecedented abuses of human rights since it invaded Ukraine in 2014, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and forced labour, the European court of human rights has found.

The court’s grand chamber unanimously held that between 11 May 2014 and 16 September 2022, when Russia ceased to be a party to the European convention on human rights it had committed “manifestly unlawful conduct … on a massive scale”.

[...]

In its judgment, published on Wednesday, the court said there was evidence of widespread and systemic use of sexual violence, accompanied by acts of torture, such as beatings, strangling or electric shocks. Civilians and prisoners of war were subjected to mock executions, the severing of body parts and electric shocks, including to intimate areas of their bodies, the court said.

Finding repeated violations of the convention, many of which had taken place over a period of more than eight years, the court said: “These actions seek to undermine the very fabric of the democracy on which the Council of Europe and its member states are founded by their destruction of individual freedoms, their suppression of political liberties and their blatant disregard for the rule of law.

The court also found Russia guilty of shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, murdering 298 people.

Russia withdrew from the court in September 2022, so the ruling isn't directly enforceable. But its enforceable within Europe, and Russian assets frozen there could lawfully be seized to pay compensation. More importantly, if Russia ever wants to normalise its relationship with Europe, it is going to have to address this, accept the ruling, and make restitution. And until it does, the world is justified in treating it as a criminal nation.

"There is no corruption in New Zealand..."

A government lavishes corporate welfare on a project managed by one of its donors, then appoints him as a director of a government body. The USA? No, its National's New Zealand:

A newly-appointed KiwiRail board director is associated with a company which donated to NZ First.

Scott O'Donnell is one of the four directors of Dynes Transport Tapanui, which donated $20,000 to NZ First in July 2024.

The company is also involved in a project which recently received a government regional infrastructure loan of $8 million.

A $8 million loan and a fat package of directors fees for a $20,000 donation? That's a hell of a return on investment...

The government says none of this is a conflict of interest, and its all perfectly OK. Bullshit. Its simply naked corruption - and the NZ public recognises that instantly. If our political class can't, then it shows how corrupt and institutionally rotten they are.

So how can we stop this? Getting money out of politics - banning donations and publicly funding political parties - is the ideal solution. But if that's not going to happen, we need a cordon sanitaire between money and politics. Which means long cooling off periods - at least the length of a parliamentary term - before a former donor is allowed to be appointed to any government role or receive any honour, and similar prohibitions on any body they control or are involved in being awarded any government contract or discretionary benefit. And if this deters donations, then it will simply confirm the suspicion that the primary driver is corruption.

Another attack on the rule of law

Over the past few years New Zealand fisheries ministers have been repeatedly found to have acted illegally in their quota decisions, ignoring the Fisheries Act's environmental and information principles and setting quota at unlawfully high levels to pander to the fishing industry. But current fisheries minister Shame Jones has a solution: ban court cases:

But a “frustrated” Jones is signalling a dramatic response: he’s considering changing the law to limit such court action altogether.

In an interview with The Post, Jones said he had asked officials to review the Fisheries Act to determine whether it had become “weaponised” by environmental groups.

[...]

“The frequency of this litigious activity has caused me to explore with the officials as to whether or not the law is fit for purpose,” he said.

“We cannot have a situation where we’re outsourcing to litigants and the judiciary the statutory role of resource management on behalf of the citizens of New Zealand.”

But of course that wouldn't be happening if ministers were obeying the law in the first place. The problem here is not the courts - it is consistently unlawful behaviour by ministers, who seem to regard the whims of their fishing industry donors as being more important than the law.

More generally, interpreting the law and ensuring that the government actually follows it are key duties of the courts. When you remove that, you don't have legal government in any real sense. Instead you have the arbitrary whims of a dictator. That may suit Jones very well - he's made no secret of his authoritarian and autocratic inclinations. But I don't think it suits kiwis at all. But if Jones goes ahead and pushes this through in his narrowing time window before the election, it will simply be another piece of bad law to be nuked in the next government's Omnibus Repeal Bill.

A further descent into tyranny

A protest group carries out repeated non-violent actions to highlight its cause, highlighting the fact that the regime's foreign policy is in violation of international law and is at odds witht he values and wishes of its people. The regime responds by banning the organisation, and threatening 14 year jail terms for anyone who expresses support from it.

Putin's Russia? No, it's Starmer's UK:

MPs have voted in favour of legislation to proscribe group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, passing by 385 votes to 26.

The order, which amends the Terrorism Act 2000, is now expected to be signed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and come into effect later this week.

Once in effect, supporting Palestine Action will become a criminal offence, with membership or expressing support for the direct action group punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

This is exactly what civil libertarians and human rights groups warned about when western governments passed "anti-terrorism" legislation in the wake of September 11th: that the tools used to target terrorists would ultimately come home and be used against peaceful protest groups. Its taken 25 years, but its happened, and there's no coming back from it. Along with the UK's anti-protest laws and the jailing of peaceful activists, it makes it clear that the UK is now a tyranny in all but name. And there's one thing we all know about tyrannies: they deserve to be overthrown.

This is what the IPCA's anti-protest laws mean

Back in February, the "Independent" Police Conduct Authority issued a radical, out-of-the-blue proposal to ban protests. The core of their proposal was a requirement for protesters to notify police well in advance of any protest action, and to obey whatever conditions police subsequently set or directions they made, with failure to do so being an arrestable offence. The latter proposal has since been adopted as a Member's Bill by a National MP, so its very much the regime's agenda as well.

The IPCA's proposal was based in part on draconian Australian anti-protest laws. And there's a perfect example of what they mean in practice, with the possible blinding of a protestor by police in Sydney:

A former Greens candidate has been injured after allegedly resisting police arrest while picketing a business in Sydney’s west, with friends and family warned she may lose sight in her right eye.

The protest, which attracted between 50 and 60 people, sought to stop pedestrian access to a business that was accused by protesters of “supplying electroplating and surface coating services for a variety of applications including aerospace and defence technology” to Israel.

[...]

According to police, officers issued a move-on direction to the protesters at about 5.30am on Friday.

The force alleged the protest was “unauthorised”, as those involved had not given advanced notice nor submitted a form that protected them from being charged under anti-protest laws.

The key thing to realise here is that police may use "reasonable force" to effect an arrest. So creating an offence of "disobeying police" or "refusing to tell police your plans" is effectively a licence for police to beat people at will, an invitation to the sort of violent and brutal policing exemplified above. Or to the sort of violent and brutal policing we see in America, where police respond to protests with barrages of tear gas, rubber bullets, and baton charges, because apparently that's an appropriate response to people yelling and waving banners in the streets.

This sort of policing is profoundly incompatible with democracy. It is not the sort of policing we want to see here. And if the IPCA wants it, then they are no longer fit for purpose, and should be dissolved.

National is afraid of kids

As the government - or one of its Ministers, anyway - keeps reminding us, Parliament is meant to be a place of free speech, where MPs (but not apparently select committee witnesses) need to be able to robustly criticise government policy and hold Ministers to account. But Youth MPs at this week's Youth Parliament won't be able to experience this. Instead, they're being censored, to stop them from criticising the government:

Some young people taking part in Youth Parliament 2025 say they’ve been censored and told to avoid speaking on major political issues — including voting rights, climate action, pay equity and financial literacy — or being critical of ministers.

“We’ve been told to soften our language, drop key parts of our speeches, and avoid criticising certain ministers, as speaking out could ‘cause problems’,” said Nate Wilbourne, founder of Gen Z Aotearoa and Youth MP for Labour’s Damien O’Connor. “That isn’t guidance — it’s control.”

In a statement, the coalition of youth organisations accused the Ministry of Youth Development of censorship, saying decisions made by officials have undermined the event.

Youth MPs have been specifically banned from speaking on the issues that matter most to them, including voting rights, pay equity, and climate action. And they have been banned from clapping or "expressing dissent" in the chamber. The RNZ version of the story suggests that the Ministry of Youth Development is trying to enforce "political neutrality" on youth MPs - a standard which applies only to public servants, not young members of the public.

This is pathetic. But it is certainly revealing about what the regime is afraid of. And what they're afraid of are young people who overwhelmingly disagree with them freely expressing their views. But if they won't let youth MPs properly express themselves in Parliament, maybe they should do it outside, and make it clear how rotten this dogshit government is.

This has to stop

Another day, another crony appointment - this time, of former National candidate (and general racist arsehole) Paul Henry to the board of TVNZ. Coming in the wake of revelations that a member of the PM's science and technology advisory council got their job by sending the prime minister a text message, it really looks like its cronyism all the way down, and that people simply get appointed to high-paying government positions on the basis of connections and who they can text, rather than on merit.

This is no way to run a country, and it has to stop. As for how, the solution is simple: take appointment decisions off Ministers. Instead, have them made by a neutral statutory appointments body, with total transparency over all applications, decisions, and communications, to ensure that Ministers can't get their grubby, corrupt paws on the process. We already use such a mechanism for the Government Statistician, and weaker, shame-based ones for public sector chief executives and members of He Pou a Rangi. it is time we used them more widely. Because it is abundantly clear that politicians cannot be trusted to make neutral, merit-based appointments, and instead regard this part of the public sector as simply the spoils of office to be used to reward their donors and cronies.

Climate Change: National cheats the world

Back in 2022, Aotearoa joined the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance, a group of countries dedicated to fighting climate change by phasing out fossil fuels. Because our oil and gas ban was only partial, affecting only new offshore exploration, with no phase-out date for existing permits, we were only an associate member. But it was an important symbol of our intent and direction of travel, something to build on for the future.

But now, National has cheated our partners and withdrawn from the alliance:

Christopher Luxon’s Government pulling out of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance is just the latest sign they care little for the climate crisis or cost of living it’ll exacerbate, says the Green Party.

[...]

“Yesterday, we revealed that it took the Government just six months to breach a trade agreement they themselves signed up to with a $200 million handout to the fossil fuel industry. Today, we wake up to news that they are pulling our country out of an alliance to support nations’ transition away from dependence on fossil fuels.

...which is I guess a signal of their intent: to destroy the climate and make the earth uninhabitable for us and our descendents.

The good news is that what this regime can do, the next government can undo. And this fact is already deterring the polluters the regime hopes to attract. The problem is that the damage National does to our international reputation with its climate denial and grovelling to polluting sunset industries may be hard to undo.

Making the world a more dangerous place

Like much of the rest of the world, I've been watching in horror for the last week as nuclear-armed, genocidal Israel started a war of choice against Iran, bombing its military facilities and cities, then screaming like a Russian when its victim hit back. And now they've dragged the nuclear-armed US into their little war, making things even more dangerous.

Firstly, the war is clearly an illegal act of aggression under international law. Iran had taken no aggressive action against Israel, let alone the US, and there was not a clear and imminent threat of it doing so which would justify a pre-emptive strike. Instead, its just Israel kicking over another neighbour in an effort to distract from its ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is a clear international crime - the supreme international crime, even - and its architects should be facing trial in The Hague for it. Which makes the New Zealand government's refusal to condemn the attacks pure cowardice, a betrayal of our long-standing support for peace and international law.

The ostensible purpose of the war is to "stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon". Which is ridiculous on a number of levels. Most obviously because Iran has been a member of the non-proliferation treaty for over 50 years, and had renounced weapons of mass destruction in 2003. Israel and the US didn't believe them, so they signed an anti-nuclear deal in 2015, which subjected them to enhanced monitoring in exchange for a relaxation of sanctions. The first Trump administration tore it up, simply out of hostility to anything done by his predecessor. In response, Iran began to gradually do the things it was no longer forbidden to do, to remind the US of why it had signed the deal in the first place, and the US finally seems to have figured out that withdrawal was a mistake. They were due to restart negotiations to restore it a week ago - the day before Israel started bombing. And then, when Iran was about to start talking to the EU (who were also partners to the deal), the US started bombing. You'd almost get the impression certain countries had simply renounced diplomacy entirely...

But even taking the supposed goal seriously, it seems unlikely to succeed - and more likely to have the opposite effect. On the immediate level, the US has now admitted that it has no idea where Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium is anymore, while Israeli bombing means the IAEA has lost track of all sorts of stuff. Nuclear material and equipment may have been destroyed, or it may have been moved to be used in secret later, so any future monitoring effort is basically doomed. But given that the bombing has destroyed all trust between Iran and the IAEA, that's pretty much moot.

In the longer term, if Iran didn't already have a Bomb, it now has a very strong incentive to get as many as possible as soon as possible, to deter future bullshit. And apparently a bunch of countries are willing to help them with that. Along with the invasion of Ukraine, its basically the death of the NPT, and the birth of a more dangerous, nuclear-armed world. Oh joy.

And that's the real tragedy here. Nuclear weapons were invented 80 years ago, and are now well-understood technology. There are now nine nuclear-armed states, a bunch of countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea who can build them at the drop of a hat, and a much larger group who could build them if they set their mind to it. Iran is one of those countries. Its a large, modern state, with universities, research institutes, and a nuclear power program. The interesting question isn't whether it has nuclear weapons, it's why it doesn't. And the answer to that is the same as for other large, modern states: because it didn't want them. Because weapons are wasteful, and it didn't feel the need - even when its spent the last 20 years being constantly threatened by Israel and the US. The Israeli-US bombing campaign has almost certainly destroyed that, both for Iran and a bunch of other countries who feel threatened (or might feel threatened) by the hegemon or their neighbours. It is stupid, counterproductive, and dangerous. But its the world Netenyahu and Trump have given us. And we should curse them forever for it.

(As for the Iranian regime, fuck ‘em, they’re tyrants. But that’s a problem the Iranians will deal with in their own time and in their own way. And again, its hard to see how Israel or the US are helping to do anything other than keep the tyrants in power...)

A parliamentary purpose?

Rimmer's Regulatory Standards Bill is unpopular, and like his unconstitutional Treaty Principles Bill, has seen a massive outpouring of public opposition. So for the past week, he has been using his platform as deputy prime minister to publicly attack high-profile submitters, with a series of ads calling them "victim of the day". It is effectively a hate-campaign against submitters, attempting to incite harassment and violence against them, in an effort to deter submissions in future. It has already resulted in thousands of hate-filled online messages directed at Rimmer's targets, including misogyny, racism, and threats of gender-based violence.

That's bad enough. But to add insult to injury, at least one of those ads bears a Parliamentary logo. It's being done with out money!

Parliamentary communications "must only be used for parliamentary purposes". Readers might want to consider whether organising harassment campaigns against members of the public who submit on legislation is a "parliamentary purpose". And if it turns out that it is "within the rules" - as MP's love to say when caught doing something immoral - whether those rules, or indeed the entire institution, is fit for purpose.

Secondly, among the examples of contempt of parliament are these:

intimidating, preventing, or hindering a witness from giving evidence, or giving evidence in full, to the House or a committee...

assaulting, threatening, or disadvantaging a person on account of evidence given by that person to the House or a committee.

Rimmer is not (to my knowledge) sending hate-filled messages himself to intimidate, threaten, and disadvantage committee witnesses in retaliation for their evidence - he has an online mob to do that for him. Which he is inciting. And on that front, anything which "has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such a result" qualifies as contempt.

Some MP should lodge a complaint. And if the Privileges Committee finds him guilty, then he should be hoist by his own petard, and suspended for a month.

More colonial bullying

Back in February the Cook Islands - a former New Zealand colony which is now "self-governing in free association with New Zealand" - signed a strategic partnership agreement with China. Winston Peters was upset, feeling that he should have been consulted about such a move, and jerked the colonial chain. And now he's jerking it harder, cutting off support funding for the Cook Islands government:

New Zealand has paused its core sector support funding for the Cook Islands after its government signed partnership agreements with China earlier this year, Winston Peters' office says.

The Foreign Minister on Thursday confirmed the message was sent to the Cook Islands government "in its finality" on 4 June

However, it only become public on Thursday (19 June) after media reports in the Cook Islands.

While its easy to see this as Winston sabotaging Luxon (who is in China ATM), I think Peters' outdated world view is the real problem here. Like his protégé Shane Jones, Peters is a fossil politician with a fossilised worldview. Born during WWII, his model of how our society and politics should work is frozen sometime in the 1950s and 1960s - when New Zealand "had the best race relations in the world" (Māori were seen and not heard), was a loyal vassal of Britain and the US, and communism existed outside of the imaginations of sad far-right weirdos. More relevantly, the Cook Islands were still a colony. While they became self-governing in 1965, the relationship was very much in favour of New Zealand, which exercised political control through its high commissioner, judicial control through New Zealand judges, and even sent New Zealand police to enforce the rulings of said judges when premier Albert Henry was found to have committed election fraud in 1978 (shortly before Winston first entered parliament after an electoral petition in 1979).

But things have evolved a long way since then. The Cook Islands are now basically an independent country, with diplomatic relations with over 60 other nations. Even MFAT admits that it "conducts its own affairs", and that New Zealand's role is limited to "respond[ing] to requests for assistance with foreign affairs, disasters and defence". And in that context, Peters' attitude looks like a very ugly colonial throwback, the sort of international bullying modern Aotearoa is meant to oppose. It also seems unlikely to actually help things. Instead, it sets a clear incentive for the Cook Islands to seek that funding from China instead. And if that comes with strings attached which Peters doesn't like, well, he will have no-one to blame but himself.

Stealing from their victims

Between 1950 and 1993 the New Zealand government tortured and abused up to 250,000 children in residential care facilities. Following decades of cover-up and denial, dragging out cases, slandering their victims, and denying redress, the government finally gave a two-faced "apology" last year. You might think that that would mean they'd finally provide proper compensation for their victims, but no - that would cost money. So instead, they're spending two-thirds of their announced $774 million package on "administration" - that is, on denying claims:

Less than a third of the government's $774 million abuse in care redress package will end up in the pockets of survivors.

Figures obtained by RNZ revealed only $205m was earmarked for paying new claims with $52m to go towards topping up previously closed claims.

In defence of the figures, Erica Stanford, the Minister leading the government's abuse in care response, said redress payments were not the most important thing for some survivors and some of the $774m in this year's Budget was going towards changing the care system and providing other supports.

However, $92m was for the civil servants who administered the redress funds and another $37m would pay for operating costs like premises and IT.

So basically they're stealing from their victims, while bundling up other costs to make a Big Number for PR purposes. Its revolting, the sign of a government driven more by austerity and PR concerns than by righting its past wrongs. And combined with the news that none of the public servants identified as being responsible will ever be held accountable, it makes it crystal clear that this government does not give a single sloppy shit about its victims.

Dismantling the state

The New Zealand state has traditionally taken an expansive role in our society, providing health, education, and welfare systems to enrich and enable all our people. But ACT's weirdo radicals want to change that, and are directing the weak National government into enacting their agenda of dismantling the state. There's charter schools, obviously - publicly funded, at inflated rates, but not accountable; as well as funnelling public money into private schools to subsidise the rich. But today they've taken two other significant moves. Firstly, there's directing Te Whatu Ora to outsource all routine operations on ten-year contracts, intended to strip the public health system of capacity while granting windfall profits to the providers. And then there's "reviewing" - meaning cutting - ECE funding, while "making trade-offs between the quality of early learning and its cost" (meaning dumbing it down, deskilling the workforce, and turning it back into a high-profit, low-skill business for their donors in the kiddy-farm industry).

The latter is especially stupid. We've known for literally decades that arly childhood education is one of the best investments we can make in the future of our society, with enormous returns in future education, wellbeing, and earning potential (and savings on crime and welfare). It should be nationalised and incorporated in the state education system, to ensure everyone gets a good start in life. But National simply sees it as babysitting; a cost on the state, rather than a positive benefit. And their cheapness here is going to have long-term consequences for the future.

The good news is that their stovepiped "review" won't report back until this time next year, meaning there will be little time for them to do anything about it before we throw them out on their arses at the next election. As for the health system changes, if the contracts do not allow Te Whatu Ora to set the volume of operations and bring them back in-house, I would expect a future government to simply legislate them away. We should not let this temporary regime steal our health system from us piece by piece, for the profit of its private donors and cronies.

Today in dysfunctional government

The big news this morning was that the Prime Minister thought the government he leads was going to steal your sick leave. But apparently even the ACT zealots could see that that would deeply unpopular, so they've "clarified" that the Prime Minister was wrong, and really they're just going to steal the sick leave of those lazy, shiftless part-time workers instead. Given that ~20% of those with jobs work part-time, its unclear how this is really much better. But what it does tell us is that the government doesn't know what its own policy is - its just dysfunction all the way down.

Meanwhile, if you're worried about your sick leave being stolen, join your union. Union collective contracts usually include sick leave provisions, which are often more generous than the statutory minimum. And even if they simply restate the current law, its then in the contract, meaning it doesn't just disappear because some government minister had a brain fart or took a bribe (sorry, a "donation") to change the law.

Trying to attract a stranded asset

Shane Jones is an outdated fossil of a minister. Born in 1959, his model of how our economy and society should look is stuck sometime in the late 70's: a dirty, fossil-fuel powered, racist, sexist, homophobic shitstain of a country which most of us never experienced, and most of those who did are glad we moved on from and desperately want to forget. But he's energy minister now, and that means being able to inflict his peculiar pathologies on the nation, including promoting the gas industry. And not content with moving to return us to the 70's by repealing the offshore drilling ban and making the government liable for oil companies' cleanup bills, he's currently touting for business in Singapore, offering new concessions in a desperate effort to attract foreign gas companies to come her and drill:

In a speech to the energy industry in Singapore this week, Shane Jones signalled a major change to New Zealand’s oil and gas exploration rules.

It appears the Government plans to remove restrictions that previously limited oil and gas exploration to defined block offer areas and instead allow oil and gas companies to apply for exploration permits across all of New Zealand’s territory.

Reading the speech, Jones doesn't just want drilling off Taranaki - he wants it in "the East Coast basin, Canterbury basin, and the Great South Basin" as well. Which would be a disaster for Aotearoa. But the good news for us - and the problem for Jones - is that no matter how far he lowers his pants to attract the oil industry, only a moron will take him up on it.

Part of this is what Jones calls "political risk" - the risk that the next government will simply ban drilling again and legislatively revoke all the permits without compensation. And part of it is because there's probably no gas to find (companies have been looking for years, and we haven't had any new offshore fields discovered since the early 2000s). But the fundamental reason is simply economics: even if they discovered a huge new field tomorrow, it would take a decade and a billion dollars to develop. And there simply won't be a market for gas in Aotearoa in a decade to repay the investment.

Gas was already dead - being driven out of the electricity market by wind and solar, and out of the industrial sector by the ETS and the push to reduce emissions. The writedown of supplies last week (if real, and not an industry scam to panic the government) is going to be the nail in the coffin. Methanex, the cornerstone user of the entire industry, won't stick around without supply, and will likely shut down permanently in a year or two (its already more profitable for them to simply onsell its gas to others). And the remaining big industrial users will see price hikes and supply shortages in their future and run for the exits. So, by the time a hypothetical new gas field came online in 2035 or so, it would be a stranded asset, with no-one to buy the gas. Anyone who wants to do it is ether a fool or a scammer.

Unfortunately, Jones seems unable to understand this. Which means we'll have to put up with more of his desperate efforts to "attract business" until we finally rid ourselves of him and his outdated worldview in 2026.

Doing less than the bare minimum

Last night, after nearly two years of genocide in Gaza, the New Zealand government finally began to do the right thing, and sanctioned two Israeli cabinet ministers for promoting genocide. Which is a good first step, but its not enough. Firstly, the sanctions are just a travel ban, saying "you can't come here", which is pretty whoop-di-shit as far as sanctions go. Secondly, wanted international criminals Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant are not sanctioned - and nor is the state of Israel itself. In other words, the New Zealand government is still doing as little as possible.

This isn't good enough. Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza and an illegal occupation of the West bank, in flagrant violation of international law. We should be treating it like we treat Russia, with a full trade and investment ban and restrictions on financial dealings. IDF members should be banned from travelling here. Israeli officials complicit in or with political responsibility for these crimes should similarly be subject to asset seizures, travel bans, and trading restrictions, just like Putin and his cronies. And those sanctions should stay in place until the genocide and occupation stops, reparations (such as they can be) are made, seized land is returned, and everyone responsible is sent to The Hague to face justice before international courts. That seems like the absolute minimum we should be doing. Instead, though inaction, our government is sending a clear message that it approves of genocide. And that is not acceptable.

The problem is the regime, not MMP

There's an interesting article on The Spinoff, worried that with so many parties ruling out working with each other, MMP is collapsing back into left-right, "winner take all" politics. It points to a shift back to the pre-MMP elected dictatorship model of government by decree, "outsized" influence of small parties, and stronger political alignments between parties as problematic. I'm not so sure.

The first is definitely a problem. But its a problem specifically of this regime, and to a large extent it seems to be a self-correcting one, in that the public has shown little appetite for this government's preferred model of retrospective laws rammed through under urgency without consultation, and seems likely to punish them for it. As for the future, this sort of contempt for democracy seems to be a right-wing problem: in the past, National has always had a greater appetite for abuse than Labour, and the latter has been specifically constrained by coalition partners who denied the use of urgency outside of accepted norms (the budget, end of year wash-up, and the rare cases when things are actually urgent). National has usually not faced such constraints, and this term has had coalition partners who are explicitly anti-democratic and anti-constitutional. The lesson for voters is not to let that happen again, and to punish those parties until they credibly commit to respecting a democratic, consultative style of government.

On the second point, the article notes that

It is neither possible nor desirable to quantify the degree of sway a smaller partner in a coalition should have. That is a political question, not a technical one.

Ultimately, it is we voters who are going to decide how much of this we are going to accept - and what we do about it. And on that, I'd note that no parliament can bind its successor, and so what is done can simply be undone. If we don't like radical fringe parties using coalition bargaining and big-party weakness to impose unpopular, radical policies by undemocratic means, we can simply repeal them. And if we are successful in making this a one-term regime (or better yet, a half-term one), then that is exactly what we should do, with an Omnibus Repeal Bill to restore the status quo ante and make it as if this regime never happened.

(And to those crying foul over the threat of such policy ping-pong, I'd point out that its pretty much what the current regime has done; they just took a year and multiple bills to dismantle everything, rather than having the honesty to do it in one go.)

On the third point, there's the usual lament about the lack of a "center" party to change sides every election and moderate the demands of the wing parties. The traditional answer to this is to point to the long list of such failed projects in the past, and argue that people don't vote for that (or at least, not enough people; the unfair and undemocratic 5% threshold almost certainly has prevented such a party from gaining a foothold and then demonstrating credibility to potential voters). But I think we've also really already got two such parties, in National and Labour, who are naturally chasing the center voter in competition with each other. Normally this gives them an incentive to push back against demands from their respective wing-parties in coalition, and creates a dynamic where those wanting real change vote for the wings rather than the center. Where there are multiple coalition partners there are also usually competing demands, which means that everyone constrains everyone else. And again, what's unusual about the present regime is that this isn't happening: NZFirst and ACT are largely in policy agreement about racism and environmental destruction, while National, bereft of an agenda of its own, simply accepts the one handed to it by its "partners". So again, the problem is that this is not a normal regime, but that doesn't seem like it'll necessarily be a problem in future (especially if voters kick National out of power at the first opportunity as punishment for their abnormality).

And all of that said: none of this means I disagree with the final conclusion of the article: that our lack of constitutional safeguards means we need to "look beyond MMP for other ways to limit the power of its governments." Because that is one thing that this debacle of a government has made crystal clear. We need to shift power away from the over-mighty parliament (and the over-mighty executive which pulls its strings and uses it as a rubber-stamp), and move it back to voters, to local government, to the Waitangi Tribunal, and to the courts. As for those demanding we surrender even more power to this abusive institution via a longer parliamentary term, they can get fucked.

Climate Change: Labour chickening out again

For the past 20 years, agriculture has been the glaring gap in our climate change policy. Responsible for 50% of our emissions, it was initially excluded from the ETS, and then - under Green Pressure - was to be slowly bought in at a 90% subsidy. But National repealed all that, and so farmers are back to enjoying a free ride, spewing out methane while gouging us for butter.

We were all hoping that the next government would change that, and finally force farmers to pay their way. But of course Labour is chickening out again:

Labour might not campaign on putting agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme at the 2026 election, saying the longstanding policy is “under review”, along with the rest of Labour’s policy.

Asked about Labour’s policy on agricultural emissions, Hipkins told Herald Now’s Ryan Bridge “we’re reviewing all of that at the moment”.

“We’re talking to the farmers about that as we go through that review process,” Hipkins said.

But note who they're not talking to: the 90% of kiwis who live in cities, and who pay for every gram of carbon we emit. The 90% of us who have been subsidising the pollution of a privileged, wealthy, rural elite for the past 20 years, and will be expected to keep subsidising them if Labour gets its way. The 90% of us who might actually vote Labour, and whose votes actually determine elections.

But I guess no-one ever thought the Labour Party was smart. Their continued protection of the status quo and desperate attempts to appeal to people who will never vote for them, at the expense of people who actually do, shows that their political model is just fundamentally broken.

As for what to do about it, Hipkins' message is crystal clear: the Greens need to make bringing agriculture into the ETS immediately and with no subsidies a bottom line at the next election. And if you want real climate policy, you need to vote for it - not for Labour chickenshittery.

The rich-list is a social failure

RNZ has a piece this morning on the latest NBR rich list, reporting that the ultra-rich are doing great (despite the government-induced recession). The 119 individuals and families listed are now collectively worth more than $100 billion - 40% of Aotearoa's annual GDP.

Meanwhile, while they're revelling in their wealth, we have record homelessness, half a million kiwis are using food-banks every month, the government is driving children into poverty. And the Prime Minister - himself a wannabe rich-lister - thinks this is something we should be "celebrating".

Bullshit. The existence of such extremes of wealth and poverty in a country like ours is a failure, not a "success". We are a rich country and we have more than enough for everybody. And its hard to escape the conclusion that the reason so many people are so poor is precisely because we have allowed a clique of people who don't pay their fair share to use corruption, regulatory capture, wage theft, and (in some cases) outright fraud to steal the country's wealth and siphon it into their own pockets.

Its time we took it back. Its time we reclaimed our wealth, taxed the rich, and built a society where we all have enough. And if the rich don't like it, fuck 'em; we have more votes.

A parliamentary lynching

I have spent the afternoon watching the debate on the outrageous and anti-democratic privileges committee report on Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, and Rawiri Waititi. And after three hours, Waititi moved closure to get it over with. The government, which used its majority on the privileges committee to recommend an unprecedented punishment of Māori MPs for being Māori, has just used its majority to suspend them for 7, 21, and 21 days respectively.

I could talk about a dark day for our democracy, and so on, but fuck that. This is nothing less than a parliamentary lynching. The silencing of Māori MPs for being Māori violates the fundamentals of our democracy, stripping 210,000 people of their representation, precisely because it was too effective for the government's taste. Our government has now become a shitty Putinist tyranny, and it should be treated as such.

As for parliament, by deliberately excluding these MPs, it can no longer make any claim to represent Aotearoa. It has lost any shred of legitimacy it had. Instead, its just a shitty, colonial, white supremacist institution – a Westminster by the sea. Let it burn.

Giving the finger to democracy

So, the same day Rimmer is insulting the public by claiming everyone who disagrees with him is a bot, the Finance and Expenditure Committee is is insulting by voting - on party lines, of course - to refuse to read submissions on the Regulatory Standards Bill. Instead they will be "read" by a bot.

This is an insult to every citizen who takes the time and effort to participate in our democracy and submit on the bill. And in addition to creating doubts about the process, it is a clear disincentive to submit. After all, why bother, if no-one is going to actually read it? It clearly signals that the government is not interested in running an honest democratic process. That it does not care what we think. That it will ram its bullshit bill through regardless, even in the face of mass public opposition.

Aotearoa is a peaceful democracy. One of the reasons we are a peaceful democracy is because so far successive governments have at least pretended to listen. But its clear that this regime is done with listening, and done with pretending. And that is both stupid and dangerous. Because when the government says "we won't listen", it invites people to make them. And our ways of doing that are a whole lot messier and uglier and more disruptive than filling out a form on a website saying "I oppose this bill and ask that it not be passed for the following reasons..."

Anyway, if you want to object to this, while staying well-within the polite end of the escalation ladder, I suggest objecting to the process in your submission, and emailing - or better yet, posting - a copy of your submission to every government member of the committee, with a polite note that its being sent to them because they voted to have submissions read by a bot, and how this is an insult to democracy. Their staff will at least inform them of the cover letter, and if they get enough, it may cause them to worry about their electoral future. And that ultimately is the solution: to vote these pricks out, pour encourager les autres...

Retreating into his far-right bubble

When Rimmer proposed his weirdo libertarian Regulatory Standards Bill, the public reaction was clear and unequivocal. 88% of the 23,000 submissions on the initial consultation rejected it completely. Only 0.3% thought it was a good idea. Faced with this level of public opposition, a sensible, reality-based politician - or at least one who could count - would have realised they were on dangerous ground and dumped the bill, or at least paused to reconsider. But not Rimmer. Instead, he's decided that everyone who did not completely support the bill was a "bot":

ACT leader David Seymour has claimed 99.5 percent of the submissions received on the Regulatory Standards Bill were created using "bots".

[...]

"You're smart enough to know that those 23,000 submissions, 99.5 percent of them, were because somebody figured out how to make a bot make fake submissions that inflated the numbers," Seymour said.

The figures quoted were "meaningless" and represented nothing more than somebody "running a smart campaign with a bot".

When asked what evidence Seymour had that the submissions were fake, he said it's because "we've looked at them. Because we know what the contents of them is".

...except they didn't. Because the Ministry for Regulation got an AI - a "bot", if you will - to "read" and categorise the submissions. And it didn't make any such finding. Neither did they find a huge number of duplicate or form submissions (as used by far-right groups in support of Rimmer's racist Treaty Principles Bill). Those 20,000 submissions clearly opposed to the bill? They're from actual people, iwi, and organisations. They're not "bots"; they're simply people saying things Rimmer doesn't like.

(I should note that normally submissions on this sort of consultation are released, so normally you'd be able to check all this yourself. But Rimmer's quack ministry has refused to follow the normal democratic process, and refused to release them under the OIA. Which conveniently allows him to lie about them with impunity. Which is another example of how this government weaponises secrecy to undermine democracy).

Someone on kikorangi observed that "Bot submitters are just the digital version of the paid protesters trope." That seems accurate. And like claims about paid protestors or "crisis actors", claims of "bot submitters" (or his new one about "online campaigns") are an attempt to delegitimise clear and public signs of opposition. Its a sign that Rimmer is retreating into his far-right bubble - a bubble in which people organising to oppose the government is somehow suspicious and undemocratic - rather than admit the reality that his agenda is deeply unpopular. But while he can spout these absurdities, there's something he's not going to be deny: when we vote him and the rest of his dogshit regime out at the next election.

Naked corruption and cronyism

It was foreign monarch's fake birthday over the weekend, which meant an honours list, which turned out to be a demonstration of everything wrong with the "honours" system. Those the government deemed worthy included outright cronies, a politician so reviled that her name is synonymous with social murder and whose grave will be a piss-soaked sewer when she dies (if we don't just dig up her corpse and stake it), and a man who had given $150,000 to coalition parties in 2023 alone (strangely, this was not mentioned in any of the media stories around his honour). The inclusion of these people on the list was a naked "fuck you" to the people of Aotearoa, not to mention an implicit defamation by association of all the actually worthy recipients.

This is a perennial problem, and the government gets away with it in part because it uses those other recipients as a human shield. It hides behind the worthy while reward its donors and cronies, and the media plays the game and lets them get away with it. They shouldn't. When the government introduced a corrupt and Muldoonist fast-track law, the media published stories about exactly how much fast-track applicants had donated, and what they were getting for their money. They should do the same with honours lists. And if the rich donors cry foul, well, maybe they shouldn't behave in a manner which looks so nakedly corrupt.

Long term, it is clear that the system needs to either be completely destroyed, or taken out of the grubby hands of politicians. Having honours recommended by an independent board, according to statutory criteria, with strict rules against rewarding anyone who has ever worked in government or politics (no honours for cronies and time-servers! No retirement perks!), or ever donated to a political party (no corruption!), would be a good start. But why would the politicians ever vote for that?

Climate Change: Maybe we can take the win after all?

Last month, He Pou a Rangi shockingly recommended increasing the supply of carbon credits auctioned under the Emissions Trading Scheme. Their reason for this was essentially that climate policy had been too successful - plant closures of major emitters had reduced both emissions and pollution subsidies, while auction failures had forced polluters to use stockpiled units. Meaning that the huge pile of the latter was being reduced "too quickly", and we might - gasp - overachieve our goals.

You might think that this was a good problem to have: long-term there's effectively a finite pool of government credits in the ETS, effectively representing a long-term emissions budget, with anything extra having to come from trees. Cancelling some of this pool rather than using it - which is what the auction failures did - reduces total long-term emissions, or at least requires them to be compensated (for what that's worth). And anything which reduces the supply of units increases the price, and hence the economy-wide incentive for emissions reduction. But He Pou a Rangi was weirdly fixated on the idea of reducing the surplus over the period to 2030, and not before. Doing it too early - in 2029, say - was Bad. So it had to increase auction allocations to stop that from happening.

The good news is that they don't get the final say. There's another round of consultation before a Ministerial decision, and the Ministry for the Environment has included an option of maintaining the lower status quo allocations, with a proportionate allocation for 2030. Which would mean auctioning 13.6 million tons less than He Pou a Rangi's recommendation:

...which seems like a good idea. Partly because surplus estimates seem to be very uncertain and move around a lot, so its avoiding having to reverse things in a hurry, and partly because insofar it increases the chances of us actually meeting the second emissions budget (something which is now looking in doubt thanks to National's stupidity) - not to mention reduces our Paris liability. But mostly because we should be using every excuse we possibly can to grind down emissions budgets so as to reduce emissions.

The consultation is open until 29 June. I urge people to read the consultation documents and submit on it.

Getting what they paid for

So, having stolen $13 billion from New Zealand women by shitcanning pay equity negotiations, the National government is again attacking women - this time by reversing long-standing pay equity provisions for ECE teachers and allowing ECE providers to go back to paying them minimum wage:

The Associate Education Minister is changing who decides how much new Early Childcare Education (ECE) teachers can be paid, leaving it up to individual centres to determine their starting salary - rather than be set by the government according to the pay parity scheme with primary school teachers.

David Seymour says it will help ECE centres stay "viable" and not pass on costs to parents.

The education union says the change scraps pay parity rates for new teachers, undermining the scheme which took decades to secure. The Greens are concerned it will drive down wages and Labour says it means new ECE teachers will be at the "whim of their employers".

What this actually means is bigger profits for corporate baby-farms. And on that front, its worth noting that the Wright family - who own and profit from the biggest corporate baby-farm, Best Start - donated $32,450 to the National Party in 2016.

I guess they got what they paid for.

Climate Change: Denying our obligations

In 2016, the then-National government signed the Paris Agreement, committing Aotearoa to a 30 (later 50) percent reduction in emissions by 2030. But since then, successive governments have failed to do enough to meet the target, leaving us with a huge shortfall, currently estimated at 84 million tons. The target is legally binding, and Aotearoa is expected to make up that shortfall using Paris' international cooperation mechanisms. But despite that clear international commitment, the government is refusing to publicly say whether it will meet our obligations. Instead, Ministers have repeatedly talked openly about cheating on the deal.

RNZ has a piece today about the problems this is causing. The lead is potential trade problems, as both the EU and UK FTAs include commitments to meet our Paris obligations (so: we can expect trade sanctions, likely targetted at the polluting dairy industry, if we don't). But its also affecting domestic policy. Currently this is predicated on the government meeting its obligations. But if it does not, then He Pou a Rangi will have to recommend stronger action, as they are legally required to consider "New Zealand’s relevant obligations under international agreements" as well as our (weaker) domestic targets:

The commission needed to clarify whether offshore purchases were still on the table, because otherwise it would need to change its recommendations on the level of carbon cuts the government should make here using the Emission Trading Scheme, in order to remain compliant.

The commission noted that making all the cuts here would be "costly and disruptive" and also not possible using only the country's main climate tool of the Emissions Trading Scheme, which covers less than half the country's greenhouse gas emissions.

Basically, if the government isn't going to use international cooperation, then the Paris 2030 target becomes a default domestic 2030 target, and He Pou a Rangi will be legally obliged to recommend radical cuts to meet it. Of course, National could remove that obligation, but that sort of overt repudiation would completely end their game of pretending to care while doing nothing, alienating kiwi voters and triggering those international trade sanctions.

RNZ also talks about Treasury not knowing whether to recognise the cost of meeting Paris - estimated at up to $24 billion - as a liability on the government's books. Which is something that would both focus the mind and act as a clear financial incentive for emissions reduction policies, effectively setting a government carbon price of $285/ton for policies to be measured against. But it would also blow all future surplus projections out of the water, which is another reason why Ministers really want to talk up uncertainty and won't commit. And given what they did to pay equity to remove a liability half that size, uncertainty is probably the lesser of two evils at the moment.

But whether the government recognises that obligation or not, we will be paying regardless - if not under the international cooperation mechanism, then in cleaning up after floods and drought and fires and cyclones, plus the social costs of insurance retreat and sea-level rise. The Paris Agreement is meant to reduce those long-term costs. Refusing to meet it is just another example of the long-term problem of New Zealand governments: taking the cheap, short-term option, and refusing to invest for the future.

A people's select committee

Two weeks ago, National rammed the Equal Pay Amendment Bill through Parliament, nuking all current pay-equity claims and stealing $13 billion from New Zealand women. The bill was passed under all-stages urgency, so it didn't get a select committee phase, and the public had no chance to object. But now we do, thanks to Marilyn Waring:

Former National MP Dame Marilyn Waring has gathered a group of female former MPs to hold their own 'people's select committee' on the government's pay equity changes.

The unofficial committee is rounded out with former MPs Jackie Blue, Jo Hayes and Belinda Vernon from National, Nanaia Mahuta, Lianne Dalziel, Steve Chadwick and Lynne Pillay from Labour, Ria Bond from New Zealand First and Sue Bradford from the Greens. All are working on a 'pro bono' - unpaid - basis.

Independent consultant Amy Ross, previously the Public Service Commission's lead on pay equity, and former Parliamentary librarian and researcher Bessie Sutherland would provide additional research support, and would be paid.

Dame Marilyn said they were planning to hold their first session, hearing from submitters, in Wellington on 11 August with subsequent sittings via Zoom to allow for submitters to attend from around the country. All sessions would be public.

Full details, including how to submit, are here. Submissions are due by Thursday, 31 July 2025.

This is a completely informal process, which carries no legal weight. Its primary purpose is to embarass the regime and build a public case for immediate reversal of their theft. But it is still worth submitting to. While parliament is the formal center of politics, in a democracy it should be responding to what happens outside. This is part of showing that it needs to respond, and quickly, or else we will de-elect it and get a new one which will.

Aotearoa should not have places named after slavers

What do Picton, Ashburtn, Stokes Valley, and Ellice St in wellington have in common?

They're all named after slave-owners.

This is abhorrent. Naming stuff after foreign imperialists is bad enough, but slave-owners were participants in one of the greatest crimes against humanity in human history. We should not be naming our towns and suburbs and streets after them. Renaming these places seems like the least we can do.

Unfortunately, given the attitude of land information minister Chris Penk, who today refused to return Russell to its original name of Kororāreka, that seems unlikely to happen under this racist dogshit regime.

National's "investment boost"

I've been thinking a bit about National's "investment boost", the centrepiece of its dogshit budget. Its pitched by the government as encouraging big capital investments which will create jobs for the future. But I don't think there's much chance of that. The problem is that the policy just won't last long enough for that sort of investment.

The first reason for this is politics. We're due an election in the next 18 months - maybe sooner if the increasingly irritable Winston throws a tanty when Rimmer takes his job - and at best its a crap-shoot for National (and those odds will only have gotten worse after they stole $13 billion from women). A future Labour-Green government may toss the whole policy simply to make fiscal space for their own policy choices. At the least, they'll limit it to promote better investment, and rip out the bits promoting mining, fossil fuels, and farming, because they don't want to subsidise them. The second is that poor policy design means there is no cap to government exposure for this depreciation, meaning it runs the risks of a huge cost blowout and turning into another film subsidy disaster. So even if National somehow clings to power, they'll need to change it to stop the financial bleeding. They'll be slow about it, because they won't want to admit they made a mistake, but eventually it'll have to be limited, probably after three or four years.

What does that mean for the policy? Most obviously, it is not going to result in the sorts of big new capital investment National is talking up, because there's simply no time to get something conceived, designed, consented, and built (and so paid for) before the tax break gets changed. Planning a big, multi-year project around this tax break is a great way to lose money (though people may plan in hope, then shelve projects and whine for a handout when the inevitable happens. NZ businesses apparently love whining, and its almost as if that is their real business model).

So what will we get? Small, quick, cheap stuff. Utes and computers, obviously, which don't really do shit to boost productivity, and are effectively consumer spending for businesses. National is probably hoping that that might give them a quick economic juice before the next election so they can say "things are getting better". For bigger projects, it'll be either short planning cycle stuff - again, small and quick - or stuff which is already consented and planned for, which can be brought forward. And on that front, there's an obvious type of project which has plenty of pre-consented stuff sitting around, and which can be built in two years from saying "go": solar farms. Yes, National may just have strengthened our solar boom. Their farmer-cronies (who want rural land "protected" from more productive uses so they can instead use it to pollute) will be spitting.

(It may also help with wind farms - which again have a lot of projects pre-consented and waiting - but they take longer to build).

Which also brings me to how a future government could use this policy: use it solely to push decarbonisation. Building a renewable energy project, electrifying a factory and getting it off gas, switching your fleet of delivery trucks to EVs? Have a depreciation break. Want to keep buying old, fossil infrastructure? Fuck you. We need to decarbonise quickly, and this seems like an excellent way to bring that investment forward and make it happen.

Drawn

A ballot for three member's bills was held this morning, and the following bills were drawn:

• Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill (Lemauga Lydia Sosene)
• Financial Markets (International Money Transfers) Amendment Bill (Arena Williams)
• Military Decorations and Distinctive Badges (Modernisation) Amendment Bill (Tim van de Molen)

The first would extend some (but not all) of the provisions covering council controlled organisations to port companies and their subsidiaries (which are excluded from the definition of CCO by s6(4)(c) and (ca) of the Local Government Act 2002). This would include the principal objective statement - setting up a legal clash with the principal objective clause of the Port Companies Act 1988 - and (most importantly) the LGOIMA and Ombudsmen Acts. If passed, it would be the biggest statutory expansion of transparency since the OIA was extended to cover Parliamentary Undersecretaries in 2016, but why its being done in this convoluted way rather than simply repeal the exemption isn't clear. Rachel Brooking, the original sponsor of the bill, told me there were "other consequences involving more moving parts" when she first put it in the ballot in 2021. Possibly there are worries about guarantees and lending, but it does also create direct conflicts of law, and set up problems for future (or past?) privatisations, in that all port companies would be subject to LGOIMA, regardless of whether they would be CCOs if not for the exemption. But that's what happens if you try and unravel a nearly 40 year old failed privatisation campaign, I guess.

The other bills are just basic consumer protection, and weirdo flagshagging (increasing the penalty for wearing medals you're not entitled to to $10,000, which seems wildly disproportionate - the penalty for equivalent offences under the Flags, Emblems, and Names Protection Act 1981 is $5000. But flagshaggers gonna shag flags, I guess). Given what else was in the ballot, it could have been much, much worse.

$13 billion

That's how much Nicola Willis thinks she stole from New Zealand women by repealing pay equity:

A tax incentive for businesses, boosts to health and education spending, and Crown funding for new gas fields are among new Budget initiatives made viable by nearly $13 billion in cuts to the pay equity regime.

[...]

The Government initially refused to disclose how much money it had saved as a result of the pay equity changes. However, the Budget says there is now $12.8b in “fiscal headroom” over the next four years as a result of the new, tighter system.

And she's using the money "saved" to pay for... more business tax cuts! Not health, housing, welfare, or any of the other countless things we desperately need as a result of National's cuts-driven recession, but to shovel more money to her donors and cronies. It's pure class warfare, based on outright theft. But that's so very very National, isn't it?

Meanwhile, there'll also be $200 million set aside for "co-investment" in the gas industry. This is an industry with literally no future - no future in electricity, no future in industry, and which faces a death spiral for its network. Only a complete sucker would invest in a pre-stranded asset. But then, its not about investment; its about creating a conflict of interest for the next government between its role as an investor and its role as a regulator and policy-maker, which will reliably generate advice and headlines about how much money the government will be burning by doing either. Essentially an ideological poison pill. The good news is that its a contingency, so there are no concrete plans yet for such investments (because there's no new gas fields to invest in), and this government has only 18 months left to run. And the quicker we kick it out, the less we'll lose on this bullshit.

National grovels to Trump

Its budget day, and the government has been whining about how it has no money and so can't afford anything. Meanwhile, they've just given away half a billion dollars a year to foreign fascist techbros:

New Zealand financial statements filed by tech firms including Google, Facebook and Amazon show how they're moving their local profits to tax havens like Ireland, allowing them to declare little or no taxable revenue here.

Treasury estimates a proposed Digital Services Tax would have pulled in $479 million from these firms over the next four years – but this week, under the shadow of Donald Trump's tariff threats, the Government announced it was dropping the bill from its legislative agenda.

The Herald has a closer look at Google's tax-cheating. They shipped over a billion dollars offshore by paying dodgy "service fees" to themselves, ensuring that there was nothing here to tax. If those profits had been taxed here instead of laundered through overseas tax havens, it would have been an extra quarter of a billion dollars we could have used to pay for the things we need. Instead, it will pay for political corruption and promoting fascism in the US.

A tax on tech revenue would have been one way of disincentivising techbro money-laundering. But National has cancelled it in order to grovel to Trump. But in the process, they've shown us a truth they'd rather deny: when they claim "there is no money", it is a choice, and a lie.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day. Unusually, its not starting with bills; instead there will be two debates, the first on ACT MP Joseph Mooney's disallowance motion for the tikanga provisions in the Professional Examinations in Law Regulations 2008, and the second to authorise a select committee inquiry into online harm. After that there is the committee stage of the Auckland Harbour Board and Takapuna Borough Council Empowering Amendment Bill, followed by the first reading of Shanan Halbert's Enabling Crown Entities to Adopt Māori Names Bill and Andy Foster's Financial Markets (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment (Duty to Provide Financial Services) Amendment Bill. If the House moves very quickly, it might get to Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's Resource Management (Prohibition on Extraction of Freshwater for On-selling) Amendment Bill, but that seems unlikely. There should be a ballot for two bills tomorrow.

Parliamentary privilege is a threat to all of us

People are rightly outraged about psycho fascist Parmjeet Parmar "inquiring" about using the privileges committee to arbitrarily imprison her political opponents. As Chris Hipkins said yesterday, that is the sort of thing which happens in tinpot dictatorships, undemocratic and wrong, and a permanent stain on our Parliament. But its worse than that. Because parliamentary privilege doesn't only affect MPs, but all of us. Among the examples of contempts listed in the standing orders is:

reflecting on the character or conduct of the House or of a member in the member’s capacity as a member of the House.

Taken literally, this means that saying that Shane Jones is a corrupt mining industry stooge, or Winston is a senile old racist, or Casey Costello is a tobacco lobbyist, or David Seymour is a racist little incel are all contempts, punishable by parliament's private star chamber, the privileges committee. And its not just a theoretical problem: its not that many years since Matt Robson - then a private citizen, not an MP - was dragged before the privileges committee and forced to apologise for saying that Peter Dunne was in the pocket of the liquor and tobacco industries and had always faithfully delivered his vote for their interests.

That was outrageous enough when it was a mere apology. But now government MPs are discarding years of parliamentary precedent and openly speculating about throwing people in prison on the basis of pure political animus. That is beyond "outrageous"; it is a threat. A threat to every single one of us. Because "reflecting on the character and conduct of MPs in their capacity of MPs" is something we all do, and something we all should do. Our democracy is predicated on it. So when the government is "inquiring" about the ability of their kangaroo court to throw people in jail for breaching their bullshit "privileges", it sounds a lot like they are trying to outlaw democracy.

There is something we can do about this. Currently there is a bill before the House - the Parliament Bill - which would codify and re-enact the existing law around parliament, including parliamentary privilege. During its select committee hearings, several submitters raised the House's purported power to imprison for contempt, and recommended that they be explicitly repealed (just as its power to fine was limited in 2014). They were ignored. As a result, the House continues to claim the power to imprison people for up to two years (or maybe longer), for pretended offences like "making an MP feel bad", on the say-so of a kangaroo court which convicts on a partisan vote.

This cannot be allowed to stand. Parmjeet Parmar's "inquiry" turns this power from a theoretical historical anachronism to an active threat to each and every one of us. It is an active threat to our democracy and our liberty. It must be repealed.

(And while we're at it: in 2014 we also explicitly said that the House cannot expel a member, because of the impact of such a decision on democracy. Suspensions have a similar impact, so its time we legislatively limited them as well, to a maximum term of three days. Parliament clearly needs its wings clipped, and its time we did some clipping).

Update: Graeme Edgeler has already drafted the required amendment paper. So, which MP wants to stand up and move it?