A desperate delay

So, that was a bit of a damp squib. Everyone having geared up for an epic filibuster battle which would upset the government's legislative program for at least the day, National has now abused its parliamentary majority to adjourn the debate on its outrageous and anti-democratic punishment of Te Pāti Māori MPs until June. Officially this is to allow those MPs to participate in the budget debate, but Chris Bishop said the quiet part out loud: it's to "allow this week to focus on the Budget", rather than on a tyrannical government abusing parliamentary processes to effectively lynch its primary opposition. In other words, to ensure the government gets to control the headlines, rather than having to deal with the "distraction" of its own abuses.

The government is clearly hoping that public anger over this will dissipate. I am hoping it won't. And hopefully that anger will be shown to government MPs where-ever they go. This is a government which seriously suggested arbitrarily imprisoning its political opponents, merely for the opposing them. As Chris Hipkins noted in his speech, this regime is departing significantly from the democratic norms of Aotearoa. It is acting like a tinpot dictatorship. It is directly attacking our democracy. And that is not something the people of Aotearoa should tolerate or forgive.

(And yes, I'm glad to have been wrong about Hipkins on this; he moved that the penalty be reduced to a 24 hour suspension, in line with past practice, and seemed to be willing to fight for that).

National's move to ram through an adjournment caught everyone by surprise, including Brownlee. It was yet another abuse of parliamentary procedure to prevent debate and stifle opposition. Which is the central feature of this government: urgency and abuse of process all round. They are the worst, most abusive government we have had since Muldoon. And we should kick their arses out at the first opportunity.

Reported back

The Justice Committee has reported back on the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill. The bill as introduced was a tyrannical law which threatened to outlaw protest and ordinary democratic activity in Aotearoa on the basis of government conspiracy theories and fantasies about its motivations. The good news is that its been made less bad, with the addition of "avoidance of doubt" clauses protecting protest, advocacy, dissent, and strikes, as used in the Terrorism Suppression Act. The bad news is that their attempts at a similar clause, clarifying that "protect[ing] information for a lawful purpose in the ordinary course of business, a profession, or an occupation, whether paid or unpaid" is not "improper", is too narrow, capturing only "jobs" (for want of a better term), rather than ordinary democratic activity. So if you organise a protest using invitation-only meetings and encrypted online messaging for the high-level planning, and you're not doing it as a job (if your "occupation" isn't "protest organiser"), then you're still at risk of the government having some fantasy about your motives and using it to imprison you. Likewise if you merely blog occasionally, rather than being able to say "actually, this is what I do". As for protecting journalism, the government (in its departmental report)is quite clear that it sees journalists as de facto enemy agents:

Journalism cannot be exempted from the definition of improper conduct because some journalistic endeavours are deliberately false or misleading and could be conducted for a foreign power intended to compromise a protected New Zealand interest(s).

...which confirms my suspicion that the government views even well-justified exemptions as undercutting its core purpose of all-encompassing criminalisation, so there are no "loopholes" for their "foreign agents" to wiggle through. The problem is that such "loopholes" are our democratic space, and blocking them blocks us. But I guess a government which will happily disenfranchise 210,000 Māori voters for 21 days by abusing its majority to kick their representatives out of parliament doesn't really give a shit about democracy.

Which side are you on, Labour?

Today will see an unprecedented moment in Parliament. A racist government whose leader opposes the "Maorification" of New Zealand is using its parliamentary majority to suspend opposition MPs from the House for being Māori, silencing them and the people they represent for up to 21 days. It is outrageous and anti-democratic; their own Speaker knows it is wrong, and they clearly do too. They're so ashamed of what they are doing - and scared of the public's reaction to it - that they have closed the public gallery, preventing anyone from watching their abuse of power.

This is a golden opportunity for the opposition Labour Party to stand up for our democracy and against this racist abuse of power. To show their voters which side they're on. To actually stand for something. So of course spineless jellyfish Chris Hipkins doesn't want to. Oh, he agrees the punishment is "too extreme", but he says Labour is "pretty unlikely" to filibuster the debate. So, he's going to take the leverage the Speaker handed him to force the government to compromise and adopt a more appropriate penalty, and he's going to do... nothing. Which is perhaps why the racist prime minister is now declaring there will be "no compromise" - because he knows Hipkins is weak and won't do anything other than whine and wring his hands.

But the Labour caucus isn't just Hipkins, and its MPs can speak even if its leader won't. And they should, if they want to continue in their gold-plated careers. Because their voters will be watching. And they will be judging. And silence, cowardice, and collaboration is unlikely to impress anyone.

Chipping away at National's gang-patch ban

National's racist gang-patch was clearly intended to humiliate gangs and allow them to be punished for being seen in public, and police have taken on that mission with enthusiasm, attacking funerals and kicking in doors to seize banned clothing (meanwhile, they've also abandoned domestic violence and mental health callouts, in a clear preference for violent, aggressive policing over core work). But while the government loves this, the courts might not. A local story in the Manawatu Standard last week about two gang members seeking the return of their seized patches shows the judiciary is showing some reluctance, especially where police have been unnecessarily aggressive in their seizure:

Nepia Wall, a member of the Black Power, had a sweatshirt seized by armed police at his family home, one that was given to him by his brother who had died.

Mongrel Mob member Raneira Tamaki was also asking the court to return his “side patches” that had been passed down generations, including from his own deceased brother.

Judge Lance Rowe said the Gangs Act 2024 made it an offence to wear gang insignia in public, but it was unclear whether the item could be returned to an offender or their whānau if it was proven to be of sentimental value.

[..]

[Wall] was not involved in any gang activity at the time, but it prompted armed police to go to his family home to seize the item, something which the judge said was concerning.

The judge is asking the police to explain why they thought guns were necessary for a seizure from someone not involved in gang activity, and signalling that excessive force will be relevant (because searches and seizures must be reasonable, and this seems... not to be). But the real red rag to National's racists is that the judge has said they will need to consider tikanga, mana, and whanaungatanga in their decision. To which we could also add te Tiriti, since an heirloom passed down for generations is a taonga, continued ownership of which is guaranteed by article two, and which should not be seized without a significant public policy reason. These are all part of the law of Aotearoa, and are clearly relevant here.

National will be spitting over this. But while they clearly intended that all patches would be seized and destroyed in order to humiliate their victims, the actual law gives courts discretion over their ultimate disposition. And return doesn't seem contrary to the purpose of the Act, which is explicitly about prohibiting public display, not about prohibiting private ownership. Where offending is low-level, the item in question is a taonga, and police have clearly been abusive in their seizure, then return does not seem at all unwarranted - if only to encourage the police to behave better in future.

We won't see a decision until June or July, but it looks like it will be interesting, and potentially litigated further up the chain. And while a positive ruling won't unravel the gang-patch ban, it will poke a few holes in it, and absolutely infuriate the government and the police.

Climate Change: Now what?

When National came to power in 2023, one of its first acts was to repeal all useful climate change policy. When they finally released their amended emissions reduction plan, it relied on a single project using a fantasy technology for the bulk of its reductions. And now, that project has fallen over:

Fully a third of the carbon savings needed to meet the government's legal obligations to cut emissions from 2025-2030 was supposed to come from carbon dioxide being stashed permanently under the ground of Taranaki, at the Kapuni gas field.

Kapuni's owner Todd Energy says the project's future is uncertain unless it gets some kind of extra incentive or subsidy from the government - something the government currently shows no signs of offering.

This was entirely predictable. As I pointed out when National first floated its CCS fantasy, carbon capture requires very high carbon prices. The perfect use-case - switching geothermal stations to closed- rather than open-cycle - did not happen when Aotearoa's carbon price was at $85 a ton with a credible pathway to keep rising. And since then, we've elected a climate-denier government, whose market-fuckery and lack of credibility on future emissions reduction policy has destroyed credibility in the ETS and crashed the carbon price to below $50 a ton (it has since recovered marginally to $55). So its entirely unsurprising that Todd Energy doesn't want to take the risk of investing in carbon capture when they won't get any financial return from it, and when National's ETS/forestry policy seems guaranteed to ensure they lose money.

Of course, Todd Energy is sticking their hand out for a subsidy. There are cases where that is justified - for example, when it would be offset by reduced pollution subsidies, or cause structural changes which would reduce emissions elsewhere (for example, by helping to destroy the future financial viability of the gas industry), or just when the cost of buying those reductions is substantially cheaper than the government would expect to pay. Glenbrook, the poster-child for the GIDI policy, did all three. But none of that is the case here. Instead, this particular CCS project would increase emissions, because Todd Energy would be using the "stored" CO₂ to push out more gas, both creating additional direct emissions and extending the lifetime of an industry we need to eliminate. And according to MBIE's highly optimistic Climate Implications of Policy Assessment, that would offset a huge chunk of any savings. But for National, subsidies aren't about economics, but about corruption and cronyism, and I expect they'll be more than willing to throw away hundreds of millions of dollars rather than publicly admit failure.

Even so, we are going to have a huge hole in our carbon budget. National won't want to do anything about it, because they clearly don't plan to be in government then to be held accountable for their failure. But the opposition needs to be planning now for how they're going to plug that hole, and drawing up policies to quickly reduce emissions by the required amount. And the ideal one, with some excellent knock-on effects for both reduced subsidies and destroying the gas industry, is to shut down Methanex permanently...

Maybe Little should actually win the election first?

So, Andrew Little thinks the Wellington City Council should cancel its plans for the Golden Mile, because there's an election in five months:

Andrew Little told Nine to Noon he'd be disappointed to see the council march ahead with the plan, given local body elections are to be held in October.

[...]

He said he'd repeat his message to the council - asking them to pause on signing more work contracts for the Golden Mile.

"Given that there is going to be a change of mayor after 11 October - and there'll be a new line-up in council - I don't think it's ethically correct for this council to be signing off significant new contracts that will bind the next council at a time when things are so sensitive for the Wellington economy."

...which is assuming a whole lot, not the least that Little will be elected as mayor, and that the future council will be as anti-redevelopment as he is. Meanwhile, the actually existing council were elected to serve a three-year term, which won't end for five months, have consulted repeatedly on this project, and many of them were elected on a platform of doing it. But apparently all of that counts for nothing against the whims of an unelected dude who feels entitled to power.

There's an obvious comparison here with US Republicans who refused to allow Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, on the basis that their dude - Trump - would win the next election. And its as ugly and entitled and undemocratic from Little as it was from them

But then, ugly and entitled is Little's campaign to a t, starting from the moment he shoved Tory Whanau aside. The problem is that he needs Whanau's progressive urbanist pro-Golden Mile project voters to win. And if they correctly conclude that he is offering them nothing, and don't turn out for or second-preference him, and he loses, he will have no-one but himself to blame.

Brownlee stands up for democracy

Yesterday, parliament's white privilege committee recommended that three Te Pāti Māori MPs be suspended for up to three weeks for opposing the racist Treaty Principles Bill with a haka. The penalty is outrageous and antidemocratic - and surprisingly, even National's Speaker agrees. At the beginning of question time today, he denounced the recommendation as unprecedented and unfair, made the point that it could be amended, and effectively invited the opposition to filibuster and hold the Budget hostage to force the government to do so:

[T]he committee's recommendation was adopted by a narrow majority. That is an important point when the effect of the recommendation would be to deprive members of a minority party of their ability to sit and vote in this House for several days.

As the committee's report states, the Speaker has a duty to protect the rights of members of all sides of the House. In particular, there's a longstanding convention for Speakers to safeguard the fair treatment of the minority. I intend to honour that convention by ensuring the House does not take a decision next week without due consideration. In my view, these severe recommended penalties placed before the House for consideration mean it would be unreasonable to accept a closure motion until all perspectives and views had been very fully expressed.

[...]

As with many other situations when proposals are made to this House, it is not an all-or-nothing decision. I also note Standing Order 129, which provides that when an amendment has been moved, a member who spoke before the amendment was moved may speak again.

Just to spell that out: privileges committee reports trump all other business, and if everyone gets a 10-minute speaking slot, that's up to 1240 minutes - 20.6 hours - if everyone speaks once for their full time (550 minutes / 9 hours if only the opposition speaks, and 210 minutes / 3.5 hours if just the Greens and Te Pāti Māori do). And if an amendment is moved, everyone gets to speak again. There are 6.5 hours in a normal sitting day (less an hour for question time), and there are only two of them before the government wants to present its budget (and it wants to do some legislating before then, and hold a member's day). So if the government doesn't agree to vote for a more appropriate penalty (say, one day), this debate will drag on, eat their carefully-planned legislative calendar, eat Member's Day, and ultimately prevent their budget from being presented on schedule, disrupting their big PR setpiece.

So, I guess National gets to choose: do they want vicious racist vengeance and to undermine the legitimacy of their parliament? Or do they want to have the budget as normal?

Outrageous and antidemocratic

That is the only way to describe the Privileges Committee's recommendation to suspend the leadership of Te Pāti Māori for 21 sitting days for their haka protest against the racist Treaty Principles Bill (the haka's leader, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, gets only 7 days). Outrageous because this is the harshest penalty ever handed out by parliament; a clear case of the government abusing its majority to silence and exile the opposition - exactly like a corrupt tinpot dictatorship. And anti-democratic because in the process, they're depriving 210,000 Māori voters of their democratic representation, at the precise time the government will be introducing racist legislation to further undermine their rights, in the form of Rimmer's radical racist libertarian Regulatory Standards Bill.

I was expecting Te Pāti Māori to be convicted by National's kangaroo court, and I was expecting it to be both a badge of honour for its victims, and a source of shame for Parliament. But I was not expecting this level of punishment. It not only brings the entire house into disrepute; it undermines Parliament's very legitimacy. Because, very obviously, if Parliament ejects and suspends and gags its Māori members for vigorously defending, in a culturally appropriate way, the interests of their constituents, then it loses any claim to either represent or be owed allegiance by those constituents. And equally obviously, if a government can use its majority to do this to Māori, it can do it to everyone.

While a New Zealand government using the privileges committee and its House majority to suspend and silence all opposition was previously only a theoretical possibility, now it is real. And we must therefore defend ourselves, and our democracy, from that threat. And that means not just evicting this repulsive, racist, anti-democratic regime; it also means nobbling Parliament and ensuring it can never do this again. Parliament needs to actually be forced to follow the fundamental human rights it has promised to obey. As for how, repealing the 350 year old law which gives them their impunity and making them subject to the courts would be a good start. Politicians have shown they cannot be trusted, and will abuse whatever power they are given. Time to put some neutral adults in charge of them instead.

An alternative vision for Aotearoa

Its the budget next week, where National will inflict another round of cuts on kiwis in order to keep funding handouts to landlords and rich people. And while Labour is doing nothing (sorry, "keeping its powder dry"), the Greens are acting as the main opposition, releasing an alternative budget to show what we could be doing. The core idea? Tax the rich properly, with a wealth tax, higher company taxes, and reversing the landlord tax breaks, and using the money to pay for things people need: a better health system, more state housing, free dental care, free ECE, better public transport, and better support for students and people out of work. Oh, and there's a "fuck you" tax on private jet passengers, because fuck those people and their polluting luxury lifestyle.

Its a compelling vision, which shows us that we can have a better society; all we have to do is vote for it.

Naked corruption

When National passed its corrupt, Muldoonist fast-track law, they were criticised for accepting donations from fast-track applicants. You'd think that after such criticism, and the consequent effect on the reputation of our state, they might have ceased the practice - but of course not. Instead, they're still taking money from people whose cases they will later be deciding on:

Ministers Shane Jones and Chris Bishop continued to make decisions about several fast-track projects despite their respective parties receiving donations linked to the applicants.

One political scientist says such donations could be perceived as a conflict of interest and erode public trust in government.

However, both ministers said that donations to parties were not considered to be a conflict.

"The long-standing approach of the Cabinet Office to donations to political parties is that they are not generally treated as resulting in a pecuniary conflict of interest for individual Ministers belonging to the party," a statement said.

Which is a transparently self-serving approach. The stooges in DPMC, eager to please their political masters, may say it, and the politicians, out of self-interest, may (pretend to) believe it - but no member of the public does. No ordinary person outside the Thorndon Bubble believes that company managers, with legal obligations to their shareholders, give free money to politicians and expect nothing in return. And no-one belives for a moment that the politicians take tens of thousands of dollars and then says "fuck you" to the people who gave it to them. They reserve that attitude for us plebs, the people who vote for them without giving them enormous gifts.

NZ First has taken $121,680, and National $58,897.25 from fast-track companies. We should call these "donations" what they really are: bribes. And we should call the practice what it is: naked corruption. That is actually a crime in Aotearoa, and its time these ministers went to jail for it.

More constitutional vandalism

Since the national government embarked on its racist campaign against Māori, the Waitangi Tribunal has emerged as one of its chief adversaries, putting the impacts of its racist policies formally on the record so they can not be denied. National has responded by sabotaging it, replacing almost the entire membership with unqualified crony appointments. But apparently that's not enough, so they've decided to "review" the Tribunal to undermine it further:

Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka has announced a review will take place into Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 and the Waitangi Tribunal, in a move the ACT Party says will “rein in [the] activist tribunal”.

The review comes as part of a coalition agreement between National and NZ First, and aims to refocus the scope, purpose and nature of the Tribunal’s inquiries back to its original intent, Potaka said.

As ACT's response shows, this is simply more constitutional vandalism, intended to eliminate one of the few checks and balances on our overpowered executive. And its moving in completely the wrong direction. The lesson of this regime is that the Tribunal needs to be strengthened, not weakened, with stronger protections against government fuckery.

Hopefully Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori will make it clear that they will reverse whatever the racist dogshit regime does, and restore and strengthen the mana of the Tribunal. As for the government, it needs to think about it this way: it can either resolve claimed Treaty breaches calmly and quietly through a Tribunal, or it can resolve them through protest, occupation, and confrontation, with all the consequent impacts on the legitimacy of the state. Lawyers and historians, or Ihumātao everywhere. Their choice.

A calculated policy of deceit

This week the government rammed through legislation under urgency to cancel all outstanding pay equity deals and make them impossible to get in future, balancing their books by stealing $17 billion from New Zealand women. It was an outrageous abuse of the democratic process, and since it passed, we've learned just how abusive it was. According to an analysis by Stuff, the government first started plotting this move in December 2023, right after they gained power. The real work began in December last year, and was deliberately kept outside the normal policy process to prevent us from learning about it:

Even many officials who would normally work on a proposal like this were kept in the dark. For instance, no regulatory impact statement was made to assess the lawmaking.

Similarly, the BORA vet was - unusually - issued by the deputy Attorney-General himself, rather than the usual Ministry of Justice team (of course, he said stealing from women was OK, and absolutely did not impact their rights - a case of mansplaining away human rights?)

The government "justifies" this by talking about "legal risk". But what risk is that? The risk that the Employment Relations Authority would rule on and approve deals before they could legislate them away. Which is really a financial risk, that they wouldn't be able to steal as much money. But the real risk they were worried about was democracy: that we would object, that we would protest, that we would submit on the bill, that we would make it clear to their backbench that pursuing this misogynistic policy would result in a bunch of them losing their jobs. And to avoid that, the government pursued a policy of total secrecy, unseen before in modern policy-making.

In short, they followed a calculated policy of deceit, pissing all over our constitutional norms in order to steal from women and attack our democracy. And we should hold them to account for it. There are protests tomorrow in most major centers outside government MPs' electorate offices. Be there, and speak out against this dogshit misogynist regime.

Government of the 0.3%

A couple of months ago, the government held a public "consultation" on their proposed Regulatory Standards Bill. People responded en masse, and made it crystal clear what they thought of it:

The Ministry received approximately 23,000 submissions and worked with a specialist consultancy to quantitatively assess support and opposition to the proposed Bill. This analysis showed that 20,108 submissions (around 88 per cent) opposed the proposed Bill, 76 submissions (0.33 per cent) supported or partially supported it, and the remaining 2,637 submissions (almost 12 per cent) did not have a clear position.

76 supporters out of 23,000. That's not even lizardman's constant (the 4% of senile-dementia victims who habitually support the most cooked option). Its not even the ACT voter percentage they got for their racist Treaty Principles Bill. And meanwhile, it is crystal clear that the public overwhelmingly opposes this extremist libertarian bullshit.

So guess who the government listened to? Yes, the 0.3% of weirdos who want to drown them in the bathtub: they're advancing the bill. Meanwhile, they ignored the rest of us; our voices apparently don't matter. And of course neither does our time, which they wasted with their bullshit "consultation" (again).

But while the government can ignored our submissions, there are other things they can't ignore. Such as our votes. So, if they've wasted your time and ignored you. tell them to go fuck themselves at the ballot box, and vote the whole lot of them out on their filthy arses.

Still 34,000 unemployed under National

The March labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment unchanged at 5.1%. There are now 156,000 unemployed - 34,000 more than when National took office.

While better than expected, there's been a shift from full-time to part-time work, and total weekly paid hours has dropped - meaning people are working less, while nominally remaining in jobs. Underutilisation - people who would like to work more hours - is also up. So this isn't exactly good news. The questions is whether it will get worse, and how many people will throw in the towel and cross the Tasman for fairer work in response to National's misogynist attack on women.

Dropped

All charges against the Restore Passenger Rail protestors have finally been dropped. Good. But they should never have been laid in the first place, and it shouldn't have taken a jury telling the police to go fuck themselves (or the threat of them doing so again) for the state to see that.

The obvious question is whether the state will be properly held accountable for this abuse of process. Sadly, I think we all know what the answer to that will be.

National supports sexism

That's the only possible conclusion we can draw from their decision to legislatively terminate all pay equity claims, and make future claims much harder to win:

Workplace Minister Brooke van Velden announced the moves to raise the threshold for proving work has been historically undervalued to support a claim, on Tuesday saying changes back in 2020 had created problems.

"Claims have been able to progress without strong evidence of undervaluation and there have been very broad claims where it is difficult to tell whether differences in pay are due to sex-based discrimination or other factors."

Claims were concentrated in the public sector, with costs to the Crown of all settlements so far totalling $1.78 billion a year, she said.

"The changes I am proposing will significantly reduce costs to the Crown," she said.

So, they're explicitly going to balance the government's books and pay for landlord tax cuts and new war toys by paying women less. Sexist fuckers.

But there's a reason we have a legislated process for this: because the alternative is that workers go to court, and win a settlement that way - as they did in 2015. And if National cuts off that route, then it gets "negotiated" through industrial action - which, given that nurses are significant claimants, means hospital shutdowns and their healthcare metrics being shat out the window. But I guess their thinking is that that will all happen later, in another budget cycle, so it all gets ignored in favour of the short-term goal of making the books balance this year.

And that's what you get for putting the white male businessman parties in charge. I hope we all remember this at the next election, and kick them out on their arses.

Another unfair Australian election

Australians went to the polls on Saturday in an election originally expected to be a tight contest between an uninspiring ALP government, and a full-on monstrous radical Coalition opposition. But then Trump happened, and Dutton doubled down on culture war bullshit, and so instead its been a Labour landslide. Which is welcome, I guess - shit-lite is still "lite", and everyone loves to see Trump get kicked in the balls - but it again shows the rank unfairness of Australia's electoral system.

The ALP won 56% of the seats on (at current count) just under 35% of the primary vote. The coalition - which got a slightly lower primary vote of 32% - won 26% of the seats. The Greens, who won 12% of the vote, and One nation, which got 6%, received no seats at all, while independents got 10% of seats for 7.5% of the vote. 10% of seats are still in doubt, so these numbers may change a little, but its also very obvious that this is a wildly disproportionate result, practically British levels of unfairness. And I'm not sure why Australians continue to put up with it, especially when it turns their politics into a cosy oligopoly where both shit and shit-lite push racism while pandering to the fossil-fuel industry, in pursuit of some horrific conception of a racist, coal-addicted median-voter.

Australian politics could be better. And the way to make it better is by moving to a fairer electoral system. It worked here, after all. But why would shit and shit-lite support that?