A very New Zealand corruption

There was an interesting opinion piece in the Herald yesterday by Robert MacCulloch, on "Chumocracy" and how it threatens our future. The term is English (of course), and the proper kiwi term would be "mateocracy", but its the same underlying problem: governments hiring their mates, regardless of merit (or lack thereof).

MacCulloch is concerned because such networked inbreeding means the person appointed is unlikely to be the best for the job - and indeed, they are likely to be out-of-date, applying yesterday's thinking to today's problems. But he also points to another problem beyond the mere one of anti-meritocratic hiring: decisions based on helping out mates, rather than the public interest:

When connections matter, we become distrustful of the decisions made by the inner circle. Are they in the public interest, based on the merits of the winning argument, or are they based on satisfying the special interests of a friend, or an industry?

Why is the Government ramming through highly unusual backdated law, wiping legal claims of customers suing ANZ and ASB for disclosure breaches, retrospectively smashing their property rights?

How can helping banks by letting them off law-breaking and clobbering the little guy be in the public interest?

Why has the Government still not taken on the supermarkets, power companies, banks and big construction firms with a big stick?

Why has it not properly addressed the lack of competition that has caused the cost-of-living crisis?

None of it adds up, unless one realises that few of the top decision-makers in New Zealand are any longer making the best decisions for us all, because they don’t know how to, and should not be there themselves. They live in a world of who you know, not what you know.

And we had a perfect example of this the same day MacCulloch's article was published, when the government refused to do anything meaningful about the supermarket duopoly (again), instead preferring some half-measures which basically amounted to wishing that someone else would solve the problem for them. Which makes sense, because Foodstuffs North Island - one of the big players in the duopoly - had just hired former National MP Steven Joyce, effectively buying protection because mates don't regulate mates.

This is corruption, pure and simple. It replaces the rule of law with the rule of men; regulation with relationships. It is crony capitalism, where those in power and their friends get rich, and everyone else gets screwed.

This should have no place in Aotearoa. As for how to stop it, the HR problem can be solved by taking the power of appointments away from Ministers and putting it in the hands of an independent, neutral agency dedicated to appointing on merit. As for the close relationships between business and government, we need lobbying regulation, and a ban on Ministers taking jobs in industries they have previously been regulating. But of course all that would require the turkeys to vote for christmas - and they're not going to do that unless we threaten them with a fate even worse.

Chipping away at National's gang-patch ban II

The regime passed its racist gang-patch ban a year ago, with great fanfare. and since then, the police have used it with great enthusiasm, ignoring domestic violence and retail crime in favour of attacking funerals and kicking in doors to seize banned clothing, assert their dominance, and humiliate gang-members. Except the humiliation may be on them: a district court judge has ordered a seized patch to be returned (depaywalled):

Ultimately, the judge opted to give the vest back.

“Mr Leef made it very clear to the court when he pleaded guilty that he placed such value in his patch that there is no way that it would leave his house again.”

The judge noted the Gangs Act had only recently come into force on November 21. Leef would have been aware of it, but was unlikely aware that it could result in him permanently losing his patch.

There was no information in the summary of facts to suggest any member of the public was caused fear, intimidation or disruption.

“Mr Leef clearly places considerable personal value in his patch. It signifies, for him, a sense of belonging and family that he does not find in the community.

“While Mr Leef has previous convictions, he has not committed a serious offence since the 1990s. His offending more recently has been irregular and at the minor end of the scale.”

Which makes sense. The government told us that the purpose of the gang-patch ban was to prevent intimidation in public places. That's not inconsistent with returning forfeited items where there was no intimidation in the offence and where such intimidation seems unlikely in future. And in fact a rights-consistent interpretation of the law seems to demand it.

(The police were also forced to return two other items which they had seized, but not laid charges over - because only items charged for are forfeited. Which invites the question of how often this has happened, and how many times they have used one charge to cover the theft of multiple items...)

I expect the police and government to go apeshit about this, but its the law they passed, and they have to live with it. If they don't like it, they can of course amend it to require destruction without trial, on the say-so of a police officer, but I think the courts would take a very dim view of that too. You'd think the ACT Party might have a few things to say about it as well, being supposedly the party of property rights and the rule of law...

(There's another similar case from Palmerston North, with the added spice of excessive force, but I haven't seen any news on how that one has turned out yet).

A terrible idea

RNZ reports this morning that the regime is conspiring to abolish the "demographic ministries":

The Public Service Commissioner is considering a major shakeup of several government agencies, including the Ministries for Women and Pacific Peoples.

Sir Brian Roche is refusing to rule out that they would be absorbed into larger ministries and said "all options are on the table" and he was "not going to get into ruling things in or out".

To point out the obvious - which the white men running this government don't seem to have noticed - these ministries exist for a reason. They exist to give a formal voice in government to people that the power structure systematically ignores. Like women, who are ignored distressingly often, despite being a majority of the population.

Abolishing them wil remove those perspectives. It will mean that women, Pasifikia and the disabled will not be heard in government, and policy about them will be made without them. This isn't just misogynist, racist and ableist - it is also a mistake. The lack of those perspectives will lead to worse policy and expensive but unexpected (to the bland white econodudes in the regime) outcomes.

The fundamental problem here is that said bland white econodudes do not recognise that they do not know everything - that there are entire worlds outside their experience, which they don't bother to model because they're "not important" (to them and the things they care about). We've known this for decades - Marilyn Waring literally wrote the book on it - but they prefer their models of perfectly spherical people in a vacuum, and if reality doesn't match, well, it is reality, and the annoying reminders of it, which must change. This is not a recipe for good policy. It is not a recipe for good governance. And it is certainly not a recipe for happy politics. And this regime needs to have that rammed home when we vote them out at the next election.

(Meanwhile, as for Rimmer and his cries that we shouldn't have ministries for specific types of people, that's rather rich, coming from a guy who had a whole ministry for weirdo libertarians created just for him. He should just smeg off back to the far-right thinktank which spawned him and stop fucking up our country).

A referendum on the regime

The Justice Committee has reported back on ACT's Term of Parliament (Enabling 4-year Term) Legislation Amendment Bill, recommending that it be fundamentally amended. Instead of ACT's weird variable term length based on a pinky-promise by the executive (which is explicitly revokable with no consequences), they recommend simply a straight up-down referendum on moving to a four year term - without any additional safeguards. Which is the worst of both worlds. The only party to vote against this was (ironically) ACT - which tells us that the political elite are united in their desire for less accountability and less democracy.

Meanwhile, this regime is providing a perfect reason why a four-year term is a terrible idea (can you imagine it? An extra year of this?) And a perfect example of why we need a shorter term, not a longer one. Because given the lack of other safeguards and accountability mechanisms in our constitutional system, our only real check and balance is the frequent opportunity to throw the bums out. And as the executive accrues more and more power and behaves in ever more anti-democratic and unconstitutional ways - abusing urgency, corruption, undermining te Tiriti, cracking down on protest - we need to have more opportunities to topple them, not less.

Fortunately, this is subject to a vote. And any referendum is inevitably going to end up as a referendum on the constitutional practices of this regime. Which means we should look forward to it going down by the same margin as it did in 1967 and 1990.

Open Government: Business-as-usual, as usual

Aotearoa has been a member of the Open Government Partnership since 2013. And it has never taken its core mechanism of co-creation with civil society seriously. Our first national action plan was a hastily cobbled together pile of business-as-usual actions, imposed without any real engagement. The second was a little better, in that they actually pretended to consult civil society and ask for policy proposals, before chucking anything actually ambitious in the bin and (once again) doing what they were planning to do anyway. There were some signs that they were beginning to learn, and the third action plan seemed to have some real consultation, which foundered on the lack of any budget or process to get one for anything civil society proposed. It was quite apparent by this stage that civil society was wasting its time on this, and being used as a PR prop by a state unwilling to listen to them, let alone actually do anything real, and top civil society organisations wrote to then Public Services Minister Chris Hipkins telling him so. Hipkins actually listened, and the fourth action plan actually had some stuff in it suggested by civil society (though watered down by the bureaucracy, of course). Which was then simply chucked in the bin by the current government, who just saw it all as a waste of money (not to mention harmful to their money-laundering, tax-cheating backers).

And so we come to today, when Te Kawa Mataaho has announced a new "consultation" on a new action plan... which will center on their pre-existing action plan to strengthen Public Service integrity. In other words, the outcome is pre-determined, and its pure business-as-usual, as usual.

I will not be wasting my time with this farce. I have better things to do than making suggestions which will be rejected, or engaging with people who are not there in good faith. I recommend others do the same. When the government actually wants to co-create something with civil society, then I might be interested. But I'm not interested in being a PR prop for their bullshit, so they can tick a little box saying "consultation!" and pretend that it means something. Fuck that, and fuck them.

If this is all they're going to do, maybe they should have quit after all. And if they don't quit, I hope the OGP activates its accountability mechanisms and throws us out.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day. First up is a private bill, the Carter Trust Amendment Bill, aimed at tweaking the law enacting the provisions of some old dead rich dude's will. Its a perfect example of privilege, and the sort of thing we should be eradicating from our parliament.

After that classist waste of time, there's real business: the third readings of Tracey McLellan's Evidence (Giving Evidence of Family Violence) Amendment Bill and Camilla Belich's Employment Relations (Employee Remuneration Disclosure) Amendment Bill. After that its the committee stage of Deborah Russell's Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill. If the House moves quickly it might make a start on Cameron Brewer's Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill, in which case there will be a ballot for one bill tomorrow.

National says "fuck you" on the right to repair

The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee has reported back on Marama Davidson's Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill, recommending by majority that it not be passed. The bill would be the first real advance in consumer rights in decades, creating enforceable rights to have goods repaired rather than replaced, and to parts and repair information to enable people to do it themselves (or get a qualified expert to do it for them). It would help undermine monopolies and their strategy of planned obsolescence, letting us actually use the stuff we buy. The bill is backed by ConsumerNZ and overwhelmingly popular with the public: 95% of 1250 submissions supported it, with only 2% opposed.

But the government sided with the 2%, as usual. No, they didn't say why. But the Labour-Green minority report says that the government majority strung them along, working on amendments in apparent good faith, before bloc voting to reject everything at the last minute. And they note how this undermines the collaborative nature of select committee work. I wonder if there will be consequences for that?

Presumably the National, ACT, and NZ First stooges on the committee got their marching orders from higher up to oppose the bill. And presumably they'll vote it down in the face of that overwhelming public support, tarring themselves as the regime for the 2%, a government of causes with no supporters. And yet, they're not even united on it themselves - a National MP has their own member's bill in the ballot on a right to repair for motor vehicles.

Either way, I don't see this issue going away. And if National votes it down, Davidson should take what has been learned from the committee process, strengthen it (including by adding provisions to prevent companies using intellectual property and technological protection measures to prevent repairs), and then get the next government to introduce it as government legislation.

Foreshore and seabed 3.0?

Back in 2003, in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, the Supreme Court recognised that the settler government had not actually stolen all the beaches, and that (depending on the specific history of specific areas) some of them still might belong to iwi and hapu.

Naturally, the government went apeshit, passing a law to confiscate any remaining Māori property, with consequences we are still living with today.

Fast forward 22 years, and, in a case about rights over a specific part of the foreshore, the Supreme Court has recognised that the settler government hasn't actually stolen all the riverbeds either. The law the government relied upon to claim that it had - section 261 of the Coal Mines Act 1979 - didn't mean what they claimed it did, and in fact had essentially the same wording as the law the government relied upon to claim it had stolen the foreshore and seabed (section 7 of the Territorial Sea, Contiguous Zone, and Exclusive Economic Zone Act 1977). The interpretation of that sort of law as not expropriating existing customary rights was settled by Ngati Apa, and it applies to purported expropriations of riverbeds just as it did to the foreshore and seabed.

Of course, whether any particular iwi or hapu still owns any particular riverbed is a matter of fact. But the government can no longer simply deny it as a question of law. I wonder how long it will be before they go apeshit and use it to open another front in their racist hate campaign against Māori? And will ACT, who back in 2003 claimed to be the "party of property rights" and opposed retrospective expropriation, support or oppose a racist law change?

What do we do with a lawless Speaker?

Yesterday, Speaker Gerry Brownlee purported to eject Chloe Swarbrick from the House for the rest of the week after she implicitly called regime MPs "spineless". The decision did not comply with parliament's standing orders, so Swarbrick turned up today to litigate that and give Brownlee a chance to admit he made a mistake and move on. Instead, he doubled down on his wrongness, named her, and had her suspended for 24 hours on a partisan vote. But in his incoherent rage he fucked that up too, so he had to do it a second time.

We were then treated to 20 minutes of litigation over the decision, its (lack of) past precedent, and whether Brownlee was simply making it up as he went along (he is) - during which Winston Peters, who had just voted to suspend Swarbrick, disagreed with Brownlee's decision and his own vote (which is another data point on his senility, I guess). Brownlee cycled through justifications, which ultimately came down to him - a purportedly "neutral" chair - being personally offended by Swarbrick's call for government MPs with a spine. Which apparently justifies a week's suspension, because an old white man's widdle feelings were hurt.

The decision was arbitrary and capricious. It ignored the rules parliament is supposed to operate by. In a normal government institution, there are remedies to prevent such lawlessness: the Ombudsman and (ultimately) the courts. They exist to prevent such abuses of power, and force government agencies to follow their own rules. But thanks to Parliamentary Privilege, such remedies are unavailable. Which invites the question: what do you do with a lawless Speaker? What do you do when a significant constitutional figure behaves like an arbitrary tyrant? What is the check and the balance here?

Meanwhile, like the (far more serious) lynching of Te Pāti Māori, this shows that Parliamentary "order" is just a tool for the partisan oppression of the opposition by the regime. And everyone can see it. It's another nail in the coffin of the idea of a neutral Speaker, and another shovel of earth on the grave of Parliament's legitimacy and social licence.

If you don't like this, the Standing Orders Committee is currently calling for submissions on parliament's rules for next term. So you can submit, point out the problems with arbitrary decisions and parliament's procedures for maintaining "order", and ask them to fix it it. If you care enough, you can even suggest solutions. Though honestly, that's really a "them" problem; its fine to say "this is a problem, and you parliamentary big brains who know and care about standing orders need to find a way to stop it". And if they refuse, then they can face the consequences for parliament's reputation.

Principles versus parliament

Yesterday the regime announced that it wouldn't consider recognising Palestine as a state until next month - so basically, waiting until Israel has murdered or deported every last Palestinian and stolen all their land. Parliament had an urgent debate on this today, with a banger of a speech by Chloe Swarbrick:

At the end of it, she challenged government MPs to support the Greens' Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill, saying that "[i]f we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history".

The Speaker threw her out.

I guess he didn't want a politician with actual principles making the rest of the cowards look bad.

Meanwhile, there's an obvious comparison here with John Key's famous "get some guts" over backing America's re-invasion of Iraq. On any normal analysis, its a similar allegation of cowardice. So why was it OK, when Swarbrick gets ejected?

I think the answer is obvious: It's OK When You're A Man.

"Our" Parliament is an archaic, deeply racist, deeply misogynist institution, whose "rules" are applied arbitrarily and nakedly for the political advantage of the regime and to lynch its opponents. Its no wonder MPs don't respect it. And its no wonder the people don't either. If it wants to retain its social licence to legislate, to rule by anything other than naked force, it needs to be better, to reflect modern Aotearoa, to drag itself into the present, to not do shit like this.

But good luck getting the fossils in there to understand that.

Gagging the medical professions

Aotearoa has had a public health system since the First Labour Government in the 1930s. And for as long as it has existed, medical professionals have been speaking out about its failures, criticising cuts, and generally acting as a watchdog on government policy. This has been inconvenient to those governments, but the professional role of medical staff has always been respected, because it is recognised that - like academics - they have a duty to their patients and to the public.

...until now. Faced with a public health system collapsing due to systematic underfunding, National wants to silence medical professionals. Its Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill (which is primarily about imposing white supremacy) includes a clause classifying Health NZ staff as public servants, and requiring them to uphold the principle of political neutrality.

This is a complete novelty in Aotearoa. As noted above, medical staff in the public health system have never been classified this way. And this isn't about a change in status - DHBs have been legally "crown agents" since the 2004 reorganisation and reclassification of the wider public sector with the Crown Entities act 2004, and were effectively in that position since their foundation in 2000 (as were their Area Health Board, Regional Health Authority, Crown Health Enterprise, and Hospital and Health Service predecessors). Instead, the motive is obviously to gag critics of the regime.

You might think that this would engage the right to freedom of expression affirmed by the BORA - and you'd be right. But weirdly, the Ministry of Justice, who did the BORA vet on the bill, didn't think so - they don't mention it, even to say it is a justified limitation. Though possibly this is because, as usual, they "ha[d] not yet received a final version of the Bill" (which should raise questions about the quality of the Ministry's BORA vetting process, and the quality of the advice on this core constitutional responsibility...)

What might a BORA vet have looked like? In the case of ordinary public servants, we accept that political neutrality and consequent restrictions on publicly criticising the government of the day are a justified limitation, because a neutral public service is an important public purpose, and the restrictions are proportionate. But ordinary public servants don't have a professional obligation to protect the public of medical staff, or a decades-long tradition of doing so. And the latter is relevant - as the Attorney-General noted in her section 7 report on the voter suppression provisions of the regime's Electoral Amendment Bill:

Expectations based on longstanding legislative settings are salient to judging potential prejudice and proportionality.

We have an expectation based on long-standing legislative settings that medical staff are free to act as critics of the public health system. They have been part of the wider state sector for nearly a century, and have always been free to speak. Restricting that right, when nothing meaningful has changed in terms of their status, therefore seems disproportionate.

The regime could have made a case that this change complies witht he BORA. The fact that they haven't even bothered speaks volumes. It must be rejected. If you'd like to speak up on it (or the other, racist changes in the bill), you can do so here.

Wag or be wagged

The Greens held their AGM over the weekend, and in her speech, co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick claimed to be leading the opposition. Which seems to be obviously correct, in that the Greens are setting the direction for the entire opposition bloc, by virtue of being the ones providing the ideas. And this isn't just a question of Labour's current policy-silence, but of their long-term ideological emptiness and their focus on being managers of the status quo (and getting the prestige and salaries) rather than leading the changes we need to make.

The only policy area Labour has any real interest and skill in is workers rights (and even then: income insurance? Really?) In other key areas - income inequality, tax policy, climate change, industrial policy - they just follow the Greens. Green policy one election tends to become Labour policy at the next one (and, if the public is won over, National policy after that - see home insulation schemes, or the bright-line test). And partly this is a victory by default: Labour's perpetual cowardice and fear of criticism means they're too chickenshit to put their own ideas out there, so the Green ones become the de facto left solution because Labour isn't offering any alternative.

Which makes the stuff about the Greens wagging the Labour dog amusing. They're already wagging that dog - just very slowly.

Obviously, as a Green voter, I would welcome speeding up that process. The more MPs the Greens and Te Pāti Māori bring to a left coalition, the louder their voices will be, and the more Labour will have to give them. But also, I want them to play hardball on this. Which will admittedly be easier if Labour doesn't have any agenda of its own.

As for Labour concern that the prospect of Green-led policy could drive voters to National, that sounds like a "you" problem. It also sounds untrue, given public attitudes towards wealth taxes and higher public spending. In fact, in light of those polls, one might also call it an elite lie to deter change to the status quo. But either way, Labour's solution is obvious: if it doesn't want people to think it will adopt Green policy by default, get some of your own, and stop whining that people expect you to actually stand for something.

Dancing on Kapuni's grave

Ballance Agri-Nutrients' Kapuni Urea plant is shutting down for four months due to a shortage of natural gas. Good. Its one of Aotearoa's biggest polluters, and the fertiliser it produces poisons our water and our people. And from an emissions point of view, we're better off without it.

According to Ballance's FY24 Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, Kapuni produced 166,605 tons of CO2 in 2023-2024. In calendar year 2023 the government gave them 333,084 tons of carbon credits as a pollution subsidy - over twice their actual emissions. In its 2024 annual report, Ballance valued its FY2024 pollution subsidy at $18.8 million - more than its pre-tax profit, and three times more than the amount of tax it paid. And its been over-subsidised so much that it is sitting on nearly a million tons of surplus units, enough to cover its emissions for six years (see p43 of their annual report).

We should not be subsidising companies to destroy our environment and poison our people. It is that simple. Like Methanex, any shutdown in production reduces emissions and subsidies, so that's a Good Thing. And if it becomes permanent, and we don't have to subsidise this evil any more, that seems like a Very Good Thing Indeed.

But what about the jobs? Kapuni employs 120 people. So we're subsidising those jobs to the tune of $156,000 a year (on Ballance's valuation). Which makes them very expensive jobs. The government could just pay them $100,000 a year each to not destroy the environment, and we'd still be better off.

Of course, if the actually cared about jobs, they could clean the place up, and move to lower emissions production. The previous government might even have helped, through the GIDI program. And Ballance was looking at that, through a thing called the Te Ata project, which promised to reduce the plant's emissions by 90%. But they discontinued it in May 2024. And as a result, they're now left in a situation where they have no way forward, no future but a knife-fight for ever-decreasing amounts of gas. I guess we can call that the consequences of their own shortsightedness...

RUCs vs excise taxes

The government has problem: it gets people to pay for the roads in part through petrol excise tax. But cars are becoming more efficient, and people are switching to EVs and not using petrol at all, so in the long-term it is going to have to find some other way to pay for it. So yesterday it announced its solution: force everyone to pay road user charges (RUCs) instead. Of course, being National, they're doing it in a way which penalises drivers of clean, fuel-efficient vehicles, while subsidising dirty, inefficient hoons; and of course, being National, they've added in private gouging middlemen and extra surveillance to enable future road privatisation (because of course they have). And their vision of how it should eventually work is

"Eventually, paying for RUC should be like paying a power bill online, or a Netflix subscription. Simple and easy," he said.

Or as someone on Kikorangi put it, the government is going to send you another bill.

And that's what it is going to feel like. Because around 80% of us still drive petrol vehicles, and so we just don't have to think about "paying for the roads" at all. Its invisible to us, because its built into the petrol price. So requiring us to monitor usage and buy the appropriate amount of RUCs like the truckies and Rurals do is going to be pretty alien - and alienating. And it raises the obvious question of whether there aren't better alternatives.

There are a bunch of competing values underlying our existing "pay for the roads" policy. There's a strong one of "user pays", and its converse, "non users don't pay": the roads should be paid for by people who use them, and our means of doing so should generally avoid impacting people who don't (which is why we have RUCs at all, rather than a fuel tax on diesel: because it used too often for non-road uses, so that would be unfair). On top of that, we've got simplicity, efficiency, equity, and ease of enforcement. Petrol excise tax ranks highly on all of these: non-road uses are insignificant, so its user-pays by proxy; its simple, easy to administer, invisible to the end user, and very easy to enforce (it is basically unavoidable, unless you have your own secret oil well and refinery setup). RUCs, OTOH, score poorly: while they charge directly for distance travelled (rather than using a litre of petrol as an increasingly rough proxy), they are administratively complex, and require actual enforcement: someone needs to check that you've paid, and force you to pay if you haven't. They're also "lumpy" - you need to buy them in large blocks with a fixed transaction cost - which means you get sticker shocks and resulting enforcement problems. What they have going for them is that they're fuel-neutral (because they charge directly on distance travelled), and its an existing system which can in theory be expanded. Though whether it can be expanded 500% without horrific teething problems at a time when the government is slashing public service capacity remains to be seen...

(I would also add in "privacy" and "difficult to privatise" as values here, but the governments mileage clearly varies on that one...)

Looking at those policy values, it seems that there are other ways to pay for the roads which would meet those values better than RUCs. And one obvious solution which immediately stands out is some equivalent of petrol excise tax for EVs, charged through (for example) public and private fast-chargers and collected by power / charging companies as part of your regular bill. There are a number of questions that would need to be answered: what proportion of EV charging is done by fast-charger (rather than normal household plugs); how many fast-chargers have separate meters and can power companies bill separately for them; what the cost of installing new meters at existing setups would be; how to deal with things like solar panels and vehicle to grid (because we expect both these things to increase, so the policy should deal with them upfront); How much there might be in residual costs and whether they are best dealt with by over-charging on fast-chargers, through a far lower levy on all residential electricity, or an annual fee somewhere. But the government knows how much it needs for the roads, it knows what proportion of that it wants EVs to pay, it can know or reliably guess how much energy they use, so in theory it can just work out a simple cents / kWh price, just like petrol excise: efficient, invisible, difficult for normal people to avoid, and so not requiring huge effort to enforce.

Such a system would obviously take time to develop. But there doesn't seem to be a huge need for urgency here - this is a policy we need in 2030, not tomorrow. We could take the time to do it properly and avoid lumping ourselves with a complex, difficult to enforce, intrusive and surveillance-and-privatisation-ready system. And it would be nice if opposition parties committed to doing so.

Secrecy to protect criminals

Fishing is a criminal industry, with fishers routinely violating quotas, under-reporting bycatch, and engaging in fraud to profit from pillaging the ocean. To stop this criminality, the government has finally been dragged into putting cameras on fishing boats, so they can monitor what is caught and ensure fishers obey the law. But fisheries minister Shame Jones is a bought-and-paid-for tool of the fishing industry, so he's decided that the resulting footage will be exempted from the Official Information Act:

An overhaul of fisheries rules will allow greater catch limits when fish are abundant and stop on-board camera footage being made public.

[...]

The move to exclude footage from the OIA was supported by Seafood New Zealand.

Chief executive Lisa Futschek said while it supported cameras on fishing vessels, they were a tool for "verification, not vilification".

"We accept that the regulator should have access to footage to ensure that we are doing what we say we do, but to enable members of the general public to see this footage is unfair," she said.

Which is exactly what burglars would say about security cameras, or police child-pornographers would say about their computer-use being audited. As for "vilification", if the fishing industry doesn't want to be vilified, they should not behave like villains. Simple.

As for the policy, there's a strong legal argument against it - OIA exemptions violate the BORA-affirmed right to freedom of expression, so must be demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society. But "protecting fishers poor little fee-fees" isn't an "important public purpose", and that's before we even get to questions of proportionality. But beyond that, the reason we have cameras is because MPI (and its predecessor Fisheries NZ) were completely captured by the industry they were supposed to be regulating, and was ignoring its serious crimes, until their enforcement reports were leaked and OIA'd, creating public pressure for them to do their job properly. The lesson here is that transparency is vital to keep the regulator honest and prevent capture. All secrecy does is protect criminals. But then, that's precisely why the fishing industry and their $10,000 mouthpiece Jones support it.

36,000 unemployed under National

The June labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen to 5.2%. There are now 158,000 unemployed - 36,000 more than when National took office.

This is the highest level since Covid - and it will get worse, with ANZ suggesting it could rise by another 0.5% (another 15,000 people) as companies get the message that there is no economic recovery from this government. So much for "better economic managers"...

"An illegitimate exercise of kāwanatanga"

That was the Waitangi Tribunal's assessment of the National regime's plans to gut the Marine and Coastal Area Act and steal the foreshore and seabed for its greedy fishing-industry donors. It found that the regime had violated te Tiriti of Waitangi by failing to consult iwi and hapu, and failed to identify any actual policy problem requiring the changes, and warned that continuing would "significantly endanger the Māori–Crown relationship".

So of course racist National are doing it anyway:

The government is forging ahead with plans to change the law governing New Zealand's foreshore and seabed, despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that appeared to undercut the rationale for the change.

The proposed legislation stems from a clause in National's coalition deal with NZ First, which promised to revisit the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act.

That commitment was driven by fears that a 2023 Court of Appeal decision could have made it significantly easier for Māori groups to win recognition of customary rights over parts of the coastline.

[...]

On Tuesday, Goldsmith confirmed to RNZ that Cabinet had agreed to press ahead with the law change regardless and to pass it before October.

Let's be clear: the underlying motive here is racism, pure and simple. Māori were having their rights over the foreshore upheld by the courts, and the white supremacist government did not like that. Neither did their donors and cronies in the aquaculture and commercial fishing industries, who did not want to pay iwi and hapu rent for the coastal space they want to use, or face an iwi veto over that use (because apparently property owners shouldn't get to decide what happens on their property if they're brown). So, they're overturning the law, and forcing the courts to revisit and overturn their decisions (rather than letting settled decisions stand as usual).

I do not expect Māori to take this lying down. We've already seen one hikoi which outnumbered the entire NZ police force five to one; I expect there'll be another. And it won't just be Māori. Modern Aotearoa recognises that Te Tiriti is the foundation of our constitution. It gives the government its right to exist. If the regime wants to rip that up, they will effectively be ripping up their own legitimacy and undermining their own foundations. And that seems like a very stupid and dangerous thing to do.

One thing is clear: if we are allowed to have a free and fair election next year - something the regime has also put in doubt - then this government must go. Whatever it does must be reversed by the next, with the courts required to revisit (again) any decisions they have been forced to revisit in the meantime. Racism and corruption cannot be permitted to stand.

"Longstanding expectations"

In her section 7 report declaring the government's voter suppression bill to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, Attorney-General Judith Collins noted that New Zealanders have had an expectation, since 1993, that electors can register to vote either on the day before polling day, or on polling day". Furthermore,

Expectations based on longstanding legislative settings are salient to judging potential prejudice and proportionality.

The TL;DR is that the prejudice from such a significant change from those longstanding expectations was more than enough to outweigh the uncertain benefits of the change on the vote-count.

That was for an expectation dating from 1993. But our expectation of being able to enrol at least the day before the election actually goes back much further than that. The relevant law is section 60 of the Electoral Act 1993. Section 60(g) is a recent (2020) addition, and allows same-day voter registration. Section 60(b) is part of the original Act, and allows registration up to the day before the poll. And as the law notes (in the handy little "compare" note at the bottom), it has a history. The current form, allowing voting by anyone who enrols before polling day - dates to 1990 (see s49). But we've allowed late enrolment well before that. The Electoral Act 1956 (s99(b)) allowed newly-qualified voters to register up until polling day, and that provision seems to go back to 1948 (s10). So our expectation that people who have moved or just turned 18 should be able to register right up to the election, and to vote as a result, goes back over three-quarters of a century, and no-one under the age of one hundred has voted under rules as restrictive as those National is proposing.

If a mere 32 year policy setting was a sufficiently longstanding expectation to make change a restriction of the right to vote, what does 77 years of stability - and fewer than 500 people who remember any different - mean?

National's policy is bullshit. It goes against the entire history of our democracy. It cannot be allowed to stand. And nor can they. Throw the tyrants out!

"A review"

When the government passes legislation trampling on civil liberties it loves to insert - and crow about - "safeguards" which will supposedly prevent abuse. For example, when it passed the Gangs Act 2024, which enables the government to designate a group as a "gang", banning its insignia and enabling all sorts of additional search and harassment powers and other fuckery - the select committee responded to concerns that protest groups would be designated by inserting a clause stating that civil disobedience for the purpose of political activism did not qualify. They also responded to concerns that groups would be designated forever by inserting a clause requiring the list to be regularly reviewed:

To ensure that the list is regularly reviewed, we also recommend inserting clause 30(3A) and (3B). These would require the Minister to review the Schedule before making a recommendation to amend it, and every 5 years if no amendments were made.

The government accepted these changes, with Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith saying in the bill's second reading debate:

To ensure that the list remains up to date, the police will review the entire list each time an addition or removal is considered, and every five years if no changes are made.

The clauses were discussed in the bill's committee stage, where it was taken to mean that the minister must check that every gang on the list still meets the criteria, and remove any that do not.

So how much of a safeguard is this really? Earlier this year police minister Mark Mitchell designated two additional gangs. I was curious to see whether he had complied with his legal obligation to review the entire schedule, so I asked for the review. His response:

There is no standalone document specifically titled or formatted as my review of Schedule 2. The review was undertaken as part of the broader policy development process that informed the introduction of the Gangs Act 2024 and the subsequent Gangs (Identified Gangs) Order 2024. As such, there is no discrete document in scope of your request.

So, he didn't need to do a review because he'd passed the law (including a list of gangs, 11 of which were outdated and removed by the select committee) just a few months earlier (unfortunately, that's not what the law actually says). Instead, the Minister pointed me at the police's advice and the relevant cabinet papers on the matter - which are interesting reading. The police's advice makes no mention of the need to review the schedule, and does not consider any gang other than those targeted for designation. As for the cabinet paper, it includes this:

I have reviewed the list of identified gangs in Schedule 2 as required under section 32(5) of the Act before making a recommendation to update the list.

Given the (lack of) documentary record, I leave it for readers to judge whether Mitchell was being honest with his cabinet colleagues, or fulfilled his legal obligations under the Act.

Meanwhile, this shows the contempt the government - and the public servants who support them - have for safeguards for our civil liberties. And it shows why it is a fool's bargain to trust them.