Rotten to the core

There's not one, but two police corruption stories today. In the first, the police are refusing to say how many staff they are investigating over their internet use in the wake of Jevon McSkimming's prosecution for possessing objectionable material. In the second, over a hundred officers are being investigated for faking breath-test results, which from the timing was done in an effort to meet new Ministerial targets. Which is troubling for two reasons. Firstly, because the police received millions of dollars in incentive payments on the basis of those fraudulent tests (isn't there a name for that?) And second, because police who will lie to meet a breath test target will lie about other things as well - like who committed a crime, or whether they have a reasonable basis for that search. It calls their basic organisational honesty into question.

It is clear from this that the entire police force is rotten to the core. It needs a thorough cleanout, from the top down.

Luxon is a poster boy for greed

Yesterday, when talking about his proposed capital gains tax, Labour leader Chris Hipkins pointed out an unpleasant truth about the Prime Minister:

"He sold four houses last year and made more money, tax free, from doing that than he made in the prime minister's salary, which he paid tax on every dollar of.

"Why should he be able to make more than $600,000 in one year from flipping properties whilst the people who go out and work hard every day for a living pay tax on every single dollar that they earn?"

He made more from flipping houses than he did from his huge prime minister's salary, as much as a dozen of us would earn in a year. But unlike those dozen median income earners, he didn't pay any tax on his side-hustle income. It is simply obscene.

Luxon thinks this is unfair, but its not. Luxon is emblematic of a social problem in our country: that the rich are thieves. They steal from us, they do not pay their way, and they write the rules to ensure that that theft is legal. Luxon, a rich-lister worth between $20 and $30 million, is basically a poster boy for what is wrong with our society, a perfect illustration that you don't get rich (or stay rich) by living honestly. He chisels us at every opportunity, demanding to be paid to live in his own house, demanding cuts to his rates, and now demanding that we all ignore his greed and tax cheating. We should not ignore it. Instead, we should throw this rich prick out on his arse, and tax his capital gains and his wealth so that he pays his fair share and no longer distorts our society. And if he doesn't like that, he used to run an airline, so I'm sure he knows what to do.

Still useless

So, Labour has finally, shambolically, released its capital gains tax policy, and as signalled it is a weak extension of the bright-line test, covering only non-residential property (but not farms), pre-compromised into oblivion in a desperate effort to avoid offending anybody. When they teased this idea back in September, I said that they're going to pay the political price of a CGT, in order to not raise enough money to do anything useful. All cost, no benefit. That hasn't changed. About the only thing going for this policy is that it can be implemented quickly, within a year of an election. And it can be extended later to cover the things Labour has excluded, like farms and shares and other financial instruments, some of which might require tricky policy work. But Labour isn't talking about that, so they're not even teasing incrementalism here. So even if you have an optimistic view that this is part of a secret plan to incrementally impose a comprehensive CGT one sector at a time, Labour simply can't be trusted to follow through on it.

(As for their quid pro quo - three free GP visits a year for everyone! - they've lumbered it with a pile of NeoLiberal rationing and a de facto universal ID card. Which is just intrusive, pointless waste. FFS, just fund health...)

It is clear that the state needs money to pay for the things we want it to do. It is also clear that we need to arrest inequality and the political power of the ultra-rich, by taking money away from the wealthy and using it for public purposes. Labour's bullshit half-measure doesn't really do any of these things. So I won't be voting for them. Instead, I'll be voting for a party which promises an actual wealth tax, which whacks the rich and raises enough revenue to actually fix things. I encourage everyone on the left, who wants proper public services and hates billionaires, to do the same. Labour's half-measure is OK as a transitional step towards a real wealth tax. But its not enough - and looking at their institutional culture of complying-in-advance with the demands of the rich, nothing from them ever will be.

We should be celebrating democratic engagement, not limiting it

This parliamentary term has seen a succession of deeply unpopular legislation, leading to an unprecedented number of select committee submissions as people take the only opportunity they've been given to tell the regime that they hate its agenda. Given that we're supposed to be a democracy, you'd expect the government to be celebrating this massive increase in democratic engagement. Instead, they want to limit it:

The MP in charge of handling record-breaking submissions on the controversial Treaty principles bill says politicians may need to think about requiring proof of identity or citizenship if a surge in feedback is not kept under control.

[...]

“While it is natural for controversial legislation to draw wider engagement, the rise of coordinated, largely online campaigns risks undermining the committee’s ability to identify and consider substantive, good-faith submissions.”

Meager said MPs could need to consider whether organisations should be allowed to submit on behalf of others, or if individuals should have to submit their own views.

With few restrictions in place on making a submission, it was possible proof of identity or citizenship could be necessary to guard against abuse of the select committee process, including any use of artificial intelligence tools to generate submissions on behalf of fake people.

“I do not think that is a road our Parliament wants to go down, but it is a very real and possible consequence of recent submission campaigns,” Meager said of implementing additional verification processes.

Which I think again shows the anti-democratic instincts of this regime. Not content with election rigging and suppressing protest, they want to stop us from telling them (and each other) what we think of their bullshit laws. We should not stand for it. A parliament which walls itself off from the people ceases to be a representative body - with all that that implies for its legitimacy and durability.

Ironically, one reason submission numbers are so huge is precisely because of the contempt the regime has shown for the normal democratic process by avoiding the normal consultation and policy development process. If they'd followed those processes, people would likely have had their say earlier, and ideally the regime would have got the message that we hate them and their laws and backed off a little. So maybe its a case of "we'll be less activist if you'll be less shit"...

Drawn

A ballot for two member's bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn:

• Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill (Laura McClure)
• Social Media (Age-Restricted Users) Bill (Catherine Wedd)

So double social media bills. Joy. While the first may be justified, the second has huge privacy risks, and just smacks of another attempt at censoring the web for young people to stop them from finding out who they are. The good news is that its unlikely to make it to a third reading vote before this dogshit zombie parliament will be dissolved for the election next year.

There were 76 bills in the ballot today.

Strike day

Today is strike day. Teachers, nurses, doctors, and assorted other medical professionals and public servants are all on strike today. Its the largest strike since the 1970's, and in numbers it exceeds the Great Strike of 1913 (though that went on for months, not just a single day. Still, early days yet...).

The regime says they don't understand what the strikers want. This is bullshit. The teachers, nurses, doctors etc have all been crystal clear: a decent, above-inflation pay rise, rather than effective pay cuts. Safe staffing, so they're not being overworked and those in their care are not at risk. No erosion of conditions. If the regime can't or won't understand that, that's on them. Likewise if they claim to "have no money" because they gave it all away to landlords, rich people, and the cancer industry.

Unsurprisingly, the public overwhelmingly supports the strikes. The regime needs to listen to that, and start making offers public servants can accept. If not, we'll just have to de-elect the selfish pricks, and get a government which will.

The Right to Repair Bill and parliamentary cooperation

Marama Davidson's Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill was due for its second reading today, but was instead discharged without a vote. Why? Because when the time came, Davidson was not in the House, so the chair dumped it and moved to the next item of business (conveniently, a National member's bill).

Watching the video, this all happens very quickly. Pugh announces the end of the previous item of business, the clerk fluffs reading the bill's name, Pugh looks around, and immediately calls Nationals' Tom Rutherford. Who gets as far as saying "she's not here", and the camera pans across - and Davidson is in her seat (she wasn't ten seconds ago). So there's definitely some eagerness from the chair to move on there. At the conclusion of that piece of business, Davidson politely rises and asks for leave for the bill to be reinstated, which National denies.

Interestingly, in between those two events, the Speaker had taken the chair at the end of the dinner break and asked the House for leave to alter proxy limits to enable MPs to flee back to their electorates and avoid the bad weather. This was of course granted. And maybe the Greens were assuming that having cooperated in the management of the House, the House would cooperate with them. If so, they were played for suckers.

It was clear long ago, but this is another reminder: there is no benefit to cooperating with this regime. And therefore opposition parties should not do it. If the regime asks for leave, even over something like letting their MPs go back to their rural electorates in an emergency, the response should either be "concessions in advance" or "go fuck yourselves" (or, in this case: "you'll get your leave when we get ours"). And if the regime doesn't like that, they can either waste parliamentary time on a pointless vote, or they can restore the cooperation required for parliament to function easily. Because at this stage, with the way they are doing things, there is no point in anyone cooperating. And for those of us outside parliament, there's no point pretending that the House is anything other than a dictatorship for the regime, and no point respecting an obviously rotten institution.

But the thing the regime has forgotten is that they will not be in power forever. The zombie house has less than a year to run, and then there will be an election, and hopefully the boot will be on the other foot. And when it is, I hope National is given a fucking good kicking with it, to remind them of why they should play nice.

Raupatu

That is the only way to describe last night's passage of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill. Drafted in a response to a Māori court victory over the foreshore and seabed, the bill changes the rules, making successful claims all but impossible, and forces already determined cases to be reheard under the new test. It is simply a confiscation. it is a violation of te Tiriti o Waitangi, the ultimate law of this land. It is immoral and it is wrong.

Like all raupatu, it must also be reversed. To their credit, the opposition are making the right noises about this, and you would hope that they will make it (and the reversal of National's other odious, Tiriti-violating legislation on Māori wards, section 7AA, the elimination of Treaty clauses, and the "de-Māorification" of the health and education systems) a high priority. Of course, mere reversal will not be enough: any cases reheard under National's racist new rules will need to be reheard under the proper ones. But that waste of judicial resources is squarely on the present regime, who apparently could not tolerate Māori winning in court even once.

Meanwhile, in another test of how racist the colonial parliament is, Speaker Gerry Brownlee is again threatening Te Pāti Māori for burning a copy of his regime's racist bill on Parliament steps. Which is interesting, because when Rimmer drove a land-rover up those same steps, Brownlee said he could do nothing. It simply was not a violation of Parliament's rules. Those rules have not been changed, so either Brownlee is going to have to invent some in order to punish his enemies in a nakedly arbitrary and racist way, or he will have to admit that what goes for the white supremacist also applies to Māori representatives.

Sadly, the former path can't be ruled out under this Speaker. But if Brownlee wants to set fire to Parliament's legitimacy and social licence, then I guess he can. And all future governments will pay the price for that.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day. First up is the committee stage of the of the Auckland Council (Auckland Future Fund) Bill. Following that are the second readings of Marama Davidson's Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill and Carl Bates' Juries (Age of Excusal) Amendment Bill. If the House moves quickly it may make a start on the first reading of Cameron Brewer's Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill, but given how they dragged stuff out last time that may be a forlorn hope.

This regime is a failure

When running for election in 2023, National's key promise was simple: "we will lower the cost of living". They've repeated that mantra every day since. Last week in question time, they were gloating about "lowering inflation" in a desperate effort to bat away the regime's terrible record on unemployment and economic growth. So how's that working out for them? Badly:

Inflation has edged to a 15-month-high on the back of higher rents, rates, electricity, and food, touching the top of the Reserve Bank's target band but unlikely to prevent further rate cuts.

Stats NZ said the consumer price index rose 1.0 percent in the three months ended September, pushing the annual rose to 3.0 percent from 2.7 percent, the highest since June last year.

The 11.3 percent rise in electricity prices was the single biggest contributor to the annual increase.

"Annual electricity increases are at their highest since the late 1980s, when there were several major reforms in the electricity market," Stats NZ senior manager of prices Nicola Growden said.

In other news, rent is unaffordable, butter is unaffordable, meat has become unaffordable, while the regime tries to suppress wages to keep profits high for its donors and cronies. No wonder people are angry!

This regime is a failure on its own terms. They set themselves a simple target, and they blew it - ruining countless lives in the process. The sooner we kick them out on their arses, the better.

Trumpism in Kaipara

Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson is known as the "Trump of the North" due to his racism and authoritarianism. And now he seems to be mirroring his idol's contempt for democracy, calling an emergency meeting of the Kaipara District Council in an effort to overturn the election results:

Craig Jepson, the outgoing mayor of Kaipara, has called an emergency meeting for Thursday evening challenging the results of the district and regional council elections.

Jepson had endorsed his deputy Jonathan Larsen to succeed him, but on the preliminary vote Larsen is just five votes ahead of challenger Snow Tane. And Newsroom has been told that Tane is set to overhaul him, when election officials announce the special votes tomorrow.

Councillor Pera Paniora, whose Māori ward seat will be disestablished from Friday, says many older Māori and other voters had cast special votes for Tane.

They were dismayed at moves by Jepson and Larsen like banning karakia at council meetings, and disestablishing the Māori ward, she says.

The Local Electoral Act includes provisions allowing candidates or electors to apply for a recount or challenge election results. None of them require a council meeting. Jepson is either attempting to bypass them (and try and illegally direct the local electoral officer to apply instead, and prevent results from being published), or they are trying to get the council to spend public money to support the appeal of his favoured candidate. Neither is acceptable.

Jepson claims there was misconduct in the election (signage for a different election which may not be illegal and which he thinks may have affected Kaipara's). If so that question can be determined by a judge. But in the meantime, he just looks like an outgoing mayor trying to use the council to put his thumb on the scale and overturn a vote rather than accept the will of the people.

Against uniforms in Parliament

On Tuesday, in an act of peak petty tory vindictiveness, Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee threatened to retaliate against Te Pāti Māori for being Māori by revisiting the question of Parliament's dress standards and forcing everyone to wear ties again. Which is about what you'd expect from a former schoolteacher at a stuck-up toff school. Today, the Greens' Ricardo Menéndez March has pointed out the obvious problem with this:

"I do caution against any one Speaker trying to be the fashion police because we do have an intergenerational parliament with several cultures and backgrounds and trying to conform to a very specific dress code will only diminish that representation."

"If voters don't like how a party is presenting, they can punish us on election day," he said.

Menéndez March said any changes to the rules will need to be clearly spelled out, and putting someone in a tuxedo was no guarantee of improved behaviour.

And he's right. Aotearoa has changed massively since Brownlee was born. And because we changed our electoral system, the people represented in Parliament have changed to, to better reflect our society. Our Parliament should reflect those changes - at least if it wants to remain relevant to and legitimate in modern Aotearoa. And that means accepting that not everyone in Aotearoa, or everyone elected to parliament, is a white man who wears capitalism's uniform of a suit and tie. But then, part of the problem is that a significant faction - let's call them "National" - refuse to accept those changes, and also think that it is OK to force everyone to wear their uniform regardless of political belief. That we should all be forced to display allegiance to values and culture we do not share, to conform to their way of doing things.

The polite thing to say here is that that is not appropriate in a liberal and democratic society. But I'd rather put it another way: fuck that, and fuck them. If they wan tto wear a foreign uniform to show that they're good little serfs, then that's up to them; but no-one else should be forced to dress like a bootlicker.

And if Brownlee goes through with his threat, Menéndez March has shown us the perfect way to protest it: wear top hats and tails like its 1910. Make parliament look as ridiculous, irrelevant, and out-of-touch as Brownlee is. Malicious compliance all the way. Which should also include constant points of order complaining that the Speaker is not wearing a wig and robes like he should be, or that his tie is crooked, or tied with the incorrect knot, or that the Prime Minister and his cabinet are wearing ill-fitting blue sacks. Parliament can waste a lot of time on that bullshit if Brownlee wants it to. and he is absolutely asking for it if he pushes ahead on this.

Or, he can just leave people the fuck alone and stop trying to police their clothing choices, like a normal person. His choice.

The obvious question

Stuff has a story about ACC lying in an OIA response, and how it was exposed by a whistleblower under the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act 2022. Its the usual story: journalist hears about expensive party, sends in an OIA request, is pressured to agree to limit scope to parties which cost over a certain amount in an effort to prevent disclosure, then when it turned out that it did cost more than that due to travel costs, they decided they were really travelling for "other work" so they could pretend those costs didn't count. And everyone involved knew it was wrong:

Another staffer disagreed with the manager.

Their message said: “‘other work’ This is wrong. Fundamentally wrong.”

In the discussions, ACC staff had said they did not believe that all of those 11 staff would have flown to Wellington had the farewell function not been held.

The manager admitted it was dodgy. “Everybody knows that,” they said. They then said they would personally sign off the response.

That statement indicates a willingness to take responsibility for the illegal decision. Which raises the obvious question: have they? Have they faced an employment process over it? If not, why not? Because knowingly violating your legal obligations as a public servant is the very definition of "serious misconduct". And people should be fired for it.

Palmerston North keeps the cookers out!

Local body election results were announced on Saturday, and it seems that Palmerston North has kept the cookers out! Mayor grant Smith was handily re-elected, and while progress results showed the Greens' Kaydee Zabelin losing her council seat to Labour's Zulfiqar Butt, the preliminary results (which included Saturday-morning voters) reversed that. Of course, it could change again in the final results as preferences shift on the specials, but its a good place to be in. Meanwhile, no outright cookers were elected (though cooker queen Jackie Wheeler is next in line and could still get in on special votes). But the council has shifted slightly right, with retiring leftish councillor Patrick Handcock replaced by keep rates low loonie Hayden Fitzgerald.

On Māori wards, its also good news, with Palmerston North voting decisively to say "fuck you" to the regime and keep its Māori ward. Horizons was looking like a failure on the progress results, but the preliminaries have reversed that, with "keep" now enjoying a 120 vote lead. So its going to come down to the special votes, due out at the end of the week.

Climate Change: The end of bipartisanship

National has historically been a climate denial party, first refusing to recognise the reality of climte change, then refusing to recognise the reality of its impacts and what we needed to do to stop it, all in service to its farmer-polluter backers. Still, by 2017 that position was no longer tenable to any party which wanted to be thought of as normal, and so in 2019 they were forced into a bipartisan deal to support the Zero Carbon Act. As part of that deal, both the goals and mechanisms of the Zero Carbon Act were weakened, but it was believed to be worth it to finally get stability in climate policy, and break the cycle of setting targets but doing nothing which led to failure.

Except that now National has torn up that deal and taken a big stinky shit on it, with their plans to lower the methane target to a level inconsistent with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees:

The government has announced "science-based" biogenic methane targets for 2050, which it says will provide exporters with a clear pathway to reduce emissions while maintaining productivity and trade competitiveness.

The target would be set at a range of 14-24 percent below 2017 levels by 2050, reflecting the findings of the independent Methane Science Review released in 2024, it said on Sunday.

They've also committed to not pricing agricultural emissions - meaning 53% of our emissions will be effectively uncontrolled, and making it impossible to meet even our 2030 target of a 50% reduction. They say this is because agricultural emissions reduction technology is just around the corner - as it has been for the last twenty years - but with no policy to force its adoption, that technology is effectively an irrelevant fantasy. Technology which will never be used simply does not exist in a real sense, except as a rhetorical shield for inaction.

The regime says their new lower target is "science-based", as Newsroom's Marc Daalder points out, this is technically correct, in that

...the Government asked scientists, “What target would be required to ensure New Zealand’s agricultural sector provides no contribution to solving climate change?” and then selected the number the scientists replied with.

This is shameful backtracking, which will condemn kiwis and their children to a worse future. It may violate our FTA with the European Union. And it is certainly illegal, in that in July the International Court of Justice ruled that the 1.5 degree target was binding and states have an obligation to meet it. So hopefully the EU will begin sanctions, and some small, sympathetic nation will sue us for compensation for the extra climate damage we will be causing.

But while its shameful, it may not last: National seems to be on the way out at the next election, and the next government can and will have to fix this, simply to restore international credibility and avoid those suits (and because the Greens, who will be running their climate policy, won't stand for anything less).

And it is an opportunity. Because having repudiated bipartisanship, National can no longer complain when the next government does the same, legislates stronger targets, immediately brings agriculture into the ETS at the processor level with no subsidies, and pushes hard for herd reduction to limit the environmental damage caused by the polluting dairy industry. Because if National / Federated Farmers won't keep their deals, there's no reason for us to either, especially when they are so obviously harmful. Climate policy needs to be stronger, and farmers need to finally pay their way. The next government should make sure that happens.

Reported back

When Rimmer pushed his Regulatory Standards bill though its first reading back in May, he recommended a report-back date of 23 December. That was subsequently brought forward to November, but that doesn't seem to have been quick enough. So now it has unexpectedly been reported back, with of course a select-committee rubberstamp recommending its passage. it's almost as if the "independent" select committee took their marching orders from National's quarterly KPI list or something...

166,300 people submitted on the bill. 98.7% of them were opposed, and only 0.7% in favour. That's 5% of the people who voted last election - a huge amount, and you'd think a democratic government would pay attention to it, given how hard it is to mobilise people to submit normally. But of course they haven't. Instead, the committee majority seeks to minimise the number of submissions, saying that

from additional analysis, 1,317 submissions were identified as containing detail or unique arguments, and were considered to be “substantive” on this basis.

So apparently 165,000 people - 5% of the electorate - don't count. Hopefully the regime will learn the error of that at the next election.

Labour has already committed to repealing this shithouse bill in its first hundred days. So its basically a dead letter, ideological posturing by a dying regime. If ACT is successful in ramming it through, then I look forward to its immediate repeal by the next, democratic, government.

10/10: World Day Against the Death Penalty

Today, October 10, is the world day against the death penalty. Out of 195 UN member states, 62 still permit routine capital punishment. Today is the day we work to change that.

This year's theme is the same as last year's: the misconception that the death penalty makes people safer. Murdering people does not deter crime. It does not make people safe. If we want to do that, we need to deal with the underlying causes: poverty, inequality, exclusion, discrimination. Build a more just society, and crime will reduce. The purpose of the death penalty is therefore to maintain an unjust society, through terror, oppression, and murder.

While no states abolished the death penalty in the last year, Vietnam removed it for a number of crimes, which should reduce its use. Which is small progress, but still some.

Legalising lawlessness

Back in 2021, RNZ exposed the systematic police practice of coercing "voluntary" photographs from young Māori on the street, leading to a joint IPCA / Privacy Commission report exposing illegality, systematic racism, and widespread ignorance among police officers of the limits on their behaviour, and a formal compliance notice to force them to stop and delete it all (something they still haven't done). This was followed earlier this year with the Supreme Court's ruling in Tamiefuna v R, which upheld the ruling of the Court of Appeal that the police photographing people in public places is a "search" in terms of the BORA (meaning any interference with a reasonable expectation of privacy), and was both unlawful and unreasonable. The police immediately started whining about how it would be impossible for them to do their jobs if they had to actually obey the law, and so predictably the regime ahs announced that they will legalise their lawless behaviour:

Police Minister Mark Mitchell said on Thursday police had been left uncertain about taking people's photos and recording their images in public places.

"Recent court decisions have created uncertainty around police's ability to record images in public places for lawful purposes," he said.

"The proposed amendments will reaffirm the prior common law position, making it clear that police can collect and use images in public spaces, and in places where police are lawfully present, for all lawful policing purposes.

"This includes intelligence gathering and crime prevention and other policing functions and associated activities."

They weren't "uncertain". It was crystal fucking clear that they could not, unless they had a warrant. As the Court of Appeal noted, "there is a reasonable expectation that a person’s photograph will not be deliberately taken and retained for identification purposes by police without a good law enforcement reason", and that seems entirely appropriate. But the police want to be able to spy on us without any restrictions whatsoever, and database us for life, in the absence of any criminal suspicion whatsoever. And that is the attitude of a fascist surveillance state, not the police force of a democratic state which respects privacy and human rights.

Oh, also, the police will be given more powers to "temporarily close areas in response to antisocial behaviour or public safety risks" - which means a blank cheque to shut down protests. So more anti-democratic moves from the regime.

The good news is that "[l]egislation will now be drafted, and the changes will go through a legislative process in due course." Hopefully that process will take as long as possible, so it can be shitcanned by the next government. The regime's cuts to the overworked justice portflio won't help here, and I'd hope that public servants who care about human rights will ensure that it is fully and thoroughly and repeatedly reviewed for BORA compliance. After all, we wouldn't want the regime to get another embarrassing declaration of inconsistency, would we?

Custodes se ipsos non custodient

We give our police significant powers in order to (supposedly) protect the public. But these powers are meant to come with oversight to prevent abuse, either from the judiciary (when issuing warrants), or from parliament and the public (due to annual reporting on their use).

Now capitalism has given them the ability to sidestep that oversight through contracts with private surveillance companies like Auror. And there's significant evidence that police are abusing that capability, and violating their own restrictions on their use. So are the police actually checking? Of course not!

The police say they have not been looking into deliberate misuse of vehicle-spotting cameras by officers despite reports suggesting there had been some, perhaps even tracking, that broke the rules.

Police use of privately-owned automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems jumped almost 50 percent in the year to mid-2024, to over 500,000 times.

Over 8000 officers can access the two systems, which when they enter a number plate can return up to 60 days of footage of the vehicle caught on ANPR cameras.

Newly released internal reports showed "significant" use by staff indicating they were putting the same number plate in again and again.

"This may circumvent the platform's normal controls for the use of ANPR in a tracking context," Police's chief assurance officer Mike Webb warned a camera technology assurance committee meeting last November.

Its almost as if they're deliberately looking the other way, to allow circumvention and abuse by their own.

Its a perfect example of why we need greater controls on private surveillance, and the ability of government agencies to access it. Because the police being able to track people in real time and uncover every aspect of your personal life is a very different thing from an advertiser doing it. The latter can only try and sell you shit; the former can assault, arrest, imprison, or even kill you. The best move would be to outlaw such invasive private surveillance, but if we are not going to do that, we should absolutely forbid its use by state agencies without a warrant, a criminalise the "leaking" of data to them. As the above shows, our watchmen aren't going to watch themselves. So its time we did it for them.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day. First up is the second reading of the Auckland Council (Auckland Future Fund) Bill. Following this is the committee stage of Deborah Russell's Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill, the second reading of Marama Davidson's Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill and the first reading of Cameron Brewer's Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill. If the House moves quickly it may make a start on Julie Anne Genter's Crown Minerals (Prohibition on Coal Mining) Amendment Bill. There should be a ballot for a single bill tomorrow.

Pointless cruelty

That is the only way to describe the regime's sudden policy to apply a parental income test to 18 and 19 year old jobseekers. Legally these people are adults, and their parents have no legal duty to support them. But apparently now they will be made dependent.

The ostensible purpose for this policy is to encourage 18 and 19 year olds to work. That's bullshit, and everyone knows it. The simple fact is that, thanks to National's engineered recession, there are no jobs. And even the people who Chris Luxon thinks 18 and 19 year olds should be working for say so.

(The real reason is to juke the stats so National can meet its self-imposed target to cut jobseeker numbers by 50,000. They can't do it by getting people into work, so they'll just throw them off benefits instead. And they will call this "success").

Cutting benefit eligibility when there are no jobs does not incentivise anything. It is nothing but an exercise in pointless cruelty. But it is so very, very National, isn't it? Its what they always do: blame and victimise the young, rather than admit that they fucked things up.

More attempted voter suppression from National

Back in July, National introduced its Electoral Amendment Bill, containing the widest attack on the right to vote seen in Aotearoa. Rather than following the long-standing policy of wanting people to cote and so making it easy for them, National wanted to make it harder - and especially harder for people less likely to vote for them. And while they clearly felt they couldn't get away with American bullshit like voter ID, they went for widespread voter suppression by closing the roll early. The supposed justification for this was that it would lead to a quicker vote count, but the Electoral Commission has said that's bullshit. The real reason is to eliminate left voters from the voting pool and so rig the election in their favour - just like their American masters do.

That stinks, its undemocratic, and it will destroy public faith in free and fair elections. And now we find out that it could have been even worse: National wanted to prevent people from voting outside their electorates completely:

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith marked the idea of banning people from voting when outside of their electorate “worth exploring” - before ultimately not pursuing it.

This would stop anyone who was working, studying, or on holiday outside of their electorate during the election from casting a vote.

Goldsmith was exploring ideas for cutting down on the number of “special” votes in order to speed up the final count of votes.

You might think that the long advance-voting period would mitigate this, and those expecting to be away on holiday or business could just vote earlier. But the empirical evidence from the last few elections shows that that's not the case: we still get plenty of special votes from those who are casually out of their electorates on election day. Meanwhile, there's a significant group which would be effectively disenfranchised by the move: students. Lots of them enrol when living with their parents, then move away to university, and never update because the move is "temporary" - meaning they are registered in a completely different electorate to the one they actually live in. And this group also tends not to back the current government. So its partisan voter suppression in the name of "efficiency".

Fortunately, they didn't go through with it. But the fact they even considered it shows how desperate National is to rig the election and prevent their enemies from voting - and how convinced they are that they will lose if everyone gets to vote.

We need to defend our democracy from these tyrants. And that starts by throwing them out on their arses next year. But we also clearly need greater constitutional protections for electoral law, to prevent this sort of fuckery in future. And if National won't agree to add further clauses to the reserved provisions, then the next government should push them through by referendum.