Climate Change: The sin of cheapness

Tairāwhiti has a problem. Thanks to decades of forestry strip-mining the land, every major storm washes down sediment and slash from the hills, covering fields and smashing bridges. And as we saw last month, major storms are happening more often and getting worse...

Tairāwhiti also has a solution: a transition programme agreed with farmers, foresters, environmental groups and the wider community, which would see the hills replanted with native trees to prevent erosion. But to do it, they need government funding: $359 million over a decade - $36 million a year - which will be matched by $241 million from the community. And it should be a no-brainer, because the damage it averts is estimated at at least four times that much. In 2023 the damage from flooding was a billion dollars alone...

But of course, the government said "no". It turns out they have infinite money for landlords, for tax cuts to the rich, for -ve BCR roads in Auckland, or for war-toys - but nothing for actually protecting people from real risks, even when it is profitable to do so.

Its stupid. It's short-sighted. And its simple cheapness. The government just... doesn't want to pay. But if they won't, then its worth asking the question: if the government won't pay to protect people from real risks, why do we even fucking have it? What is it for? And if the answer to that is just "giving more money to rich people and Shame Jones' corrupt mates", then maybe its time we did away with this bunch and got a new one?

43,000 unemployed under National

The December labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen again to 5.4%. There are now 165,000 unemployed - 43,000 more than when National took office.

...which is what happens when you strangle public spending and crash the economy. Meanwhile National's Ministers enjoy their fat salaries of $304,300 a year (plus slush, plus housing, plus kiwisaver) while telling people to "economise on... the volume you eat". Maybe its time we ate the rich instead?

The same old problem

Another day, another IPCA report finding unlawful use of force by the police. This time, its a police officer who saw a woman give him a thumbs-down signal while driving, chased her nearly a kilometre to her home, violently assaulted her and tore her clothing under the pretext of "arresting" her, tried to break in, and pepper-sprayed her in the face when she surrendered. The IPCA found that none of that was legal - none of it. The purported "traffic stop" in response to the gesture was completely unjustified:

In our assessment, Officer A stopped her because he was annoyed by her gesturing to him in what was no doubt a rude and disparaging way. Therefore, in our view, the stop was unlawful.

...which means there was no basis for an arrest, and so no basis for use of force, so all if that was unlawful too.

This happened three years ago. In the interim, the victim pleaded guilty to failing to stop when signalled to do so, refusing to give an officer her details, and resisting arrest. The IPCA concludes that as the stop and arrest was unlawful, the conviction is unsafe, and recommends that the police use an available legal mechanism to ask for a rehearing of the sentence, then offer no evidence. Which is a way of letting them back away gracefully, without a formal judicial finding of wrongdoing on their part. But naturally, the police are having none of it. The Blue Gang always stands by their man - whether they're a child pornographer, a rapist, an evidence-planter, or just a petty bully in uniform.

And then the police wonder why the public don't trust them. This is why. Naked abuse of power shielded by official corruption. No accountability. A commitment to being unreformable. Its enough to make you think that abolition is the way forward. Certainly, we should be stripping powers and functions from them, and giving them to other agencies, without inherently abusive coercive powers, to reduce the harm police cause. To point out the obvious, the police can't do abusive bullying traffic stops under a pretence of legality if its absolutely not their job.

Meanwhile, the police simply saying "no" to the IPCA's recommendations makes it clear that we have a problem with accountability. The most obvious solution is to let the IPCA do directly what the police refuse to do, whether it is making applications for convictions to be set aside, or bringing employment proceedings or even prosecutions against police officers. The police won't hold themselves accountable, so someone else will have to do it for them.

How do we change OIA culture?

Former district court judge David Harvey has a column in the Herald today lamenting the state of the Official Information Act. Like others before him, he agrees that the law is fundamentally sound - its the public service that is the problem. Despite clear statutory language in favour of transparency, they are incentivised by ministers, chief executives, PR departments and deliberate underresourcing to delay, deny, and defend against OIA requests. And the Ombudsman is no help, because they are also structurally underresourced, and culturally focused on turning over complaints as quickly as possible to make their numbers look good, rather than actually investigating.

This isn't an abstract problem. As Harvey points out,

secrecy and obfuscation are not neutral administrative choices; they actively corrode democratic legitimacy.

And that is exactly what is happening. And you only have to look overseas to see where that leads.

What can be done? People have talked about training, but no-one is doing it - at least, not the sort of training that rams home to public servants that their duty is to the people, not the minister, and that they need to release information ASARP. And while criminal penalties for egregious abuses would help (and are entirely normal overseas), Ministers seem unlikely to pass laws which punish those protecting them, and the police seem unlikely to enforce them if they are passed.

The core problem here is that the fish rots from the head. Ministers want to be protected, and chief executives obey because they want to keep their jobs. So breaking the employment nexus by making chief executive contracts non-renewable while imposing clear positive transparency duties would be a start. We already do this for the Auditor-General precisely to prevent cosy relationships and strategic employment-seeking behaviour from corrupting their duties; doing it to the rest of the public service isn't so great a step.

Fundamentally, though, it comes down to ministerial leadership. Everything is downstream of that. When the OIA was passed, ministers decided they wanted it to work, made their expectations clear to the public service, and resourced them to do it. We clearly need a similar drive from ministers to clean out the culture of secrecy they have imposed, and restore transparency. As for how to get that, that seems to be our job, through the electoral process. Those running for office need to be asked about their attitude to the OIA, and what they will do to restore transparency. Those who support secrecy, or who do not keep their promises need to be electorally punished. Until that happens, ministers will keep fucking us over, and we will keep responding to them with the disdain that deserves, and public trust in them and their institutions will continue to decline.

Climate Change: Fossil government

If we are to avoid even more dangerous levels of climate change, we need to get off fossil fuels. The process is already happening - just look at the ongoing global switch to EVs and solar power, and the messy demise of the NZ gas industry - but we need it to happen faster, and we need our government to actually commit to it. There was an opportunity to do so at the recent climate change COP in Belém, Brazil last year, with a side-agreement on the Transition away from Fossil Fuels. MFAT looked at it, noted that it did not conflict with our policies, and recommended joining. But Shame Jones, the regime's most absurd fossil fuel advocate, vetoed the idea:

An assessment against government priorities found that signing up to the declaration would have a neutral or even positive effect.

While drafting the submission, officials noted there was "an open question about engaging Minister Jones for concurrence, consultation, or information".

The final submission was sent to Jones for consultation.

It was also sent to Trade Minister Todd McClay, but for information only - his input was not sought.

An email sent the next day said Jones had been consulted.

"Minister Jones does not want New Zealand to join the Declaration," a Ministry for Foreign Affairs official informed his colleagues.

So our entire climate change policy is now being driven by a corrupt fossil advocate committed to ignoring the problem for as long as he can (while people drown and burn and are buried by landslides). It's government of the fossils, by the fossils, and for the fossils. And if it stays in place for much longer, it will kill us all. Voting them out a necessary act of self-defence.

No deals with the US

So, Shame Jones is officially trying to sell our country to Donald Trump, by negotiating a secret critical minerals deal behind everyone's back. My immediate reaction - along with a lot of other people's - is "fuck that"! And there are all sorts of good reasons why we should not be pursuing any deals with the US - and the Trump regime in particular - at present.

Firstly, there's the US's present status as a rogue nation. Aotearoa depends on a rules-based international order, but as Canadian prime minister Mark Carney pointed out, the United States has destroyed that order. We should not be rewarding them for doing so. Instead, following Carney's suggestion, we should be working with other like-minded countries to reconfigure the international order around the US. Which means no deals.

Secondly, there's Trump himself. It ought to be obvious to any observer by now that Trump does not regard any "deal" as binding on him, instead viewing them as a form of criminal interview, testing whether his chosen victim will resist escalation or comply. Just look at his various "deals" with Canada: he broke NAFTA to force them to negotiate the USMCA, then broke that by imposing tariffs, then broke the settlement he reached on that with more tariffs, and on and on it goes (Trump is currently threatening tariffs against Canada for making a trade deal with China, and is going to ground half the US domestic air passenger fleet by attacking the Canadian aircraft industry). So there is simply no point to making any "deal" with him, and instead we ought to be refusing to on principle, simply because his word can't be trusted.

And then of course there's the fascism... should we really be supplying critical minerals to a fascist state who will use them to wage war on the world (and on China, our largest trading partner) and oppress its own people?

We should have no fucking part of any of this. Even if you thought the US was once our ally, that situation has clearly changed. The US is now a nakedly predatory power, openly threatening its allies while working with imperialist Russia to enable aggression. I don't think any New Zealander wants that sort of world. And while Trump won't last forever, the underlying dynamics in the US political system which have brought them to this don't seem like they'll change any time soon. We shouldn't be making deals with them under these circumstances. Instead, we should cut them out of our lives as much as possible, and work with like-minded nations to build a new world system which does not depend on them. A regime which meets this situation by seekign deals with the US are simply quislings and traitors.

ACT supports slavery

Good news today, as a coalition of Labour and National MPs have teamed up to bypass the biscuit tin and force legislation against modern slavery onto the order paper. Its the first time that particular mechanism has been used, but its unusual that its been used for this issue. Chris Luxon has said this is a personal priority of his that he would "march in the streets" for, and the New Zealand government has promised legislation targeting it in both its UK and EU free trade agreements. Yet nothing has been done. Why not? Because regime coalition partner ACT, which holds the "workplace relations" portfolio, has consistently opposed it. In 2024 they disbanded the government working group on the issue, and their opposition around the Cabinet table prevented government action. A former ACT leader has also written in support of historic chattel slavery - with whips and chains and rapes and murders - which tells you that this support for the most abusive forms of exploitation is built into the DNA of the party. For them, anything goes, provided a rich person can make a buck out of it.

So, we have a member's bill instead, so it'll get done, though slower than it should. Meanwhile, the ACT party has really shown us what it stands for. And having done that, it should be driven out of our society permanently. Slavery is a crime against humanity, and slavers are our common enemies. There should be no place in our politics for supporters of this atrocity.

Naked cronyism

Judith Collins, the toxic piece of shit responsible for National's campaign of dirty politics, is finally retiring. Yay! But we're not rid of her yet, because in a parting gift (and an effort to continue her malign influence), she'll be appointed as president of the Law Commission.

The appointment is naked cronyism, a retirement package to ease her way out the door. As president of the Commission, Collins will be paid over half a million a year - more than the Prime Minister. She's not unqualified for the role, and if this appointment had been made five or ten years after she had left politics, then it would have been far less controversial. But the Law Commission is meant to be a politically neutral expert body advising on law reform - and there is simply no way Collins, with both her reputation and recent political involvement, can meet that part of the brief.

Meanwhile, looking at the list of the Commissions current projects - which include hate crimes and director's duties and liabilities - and you can see all sorts of ways for a far-right scumbag like Collins to put her thumb on the scale, and distort the direction of our law for decades (let alone of the Commission is requested to examine terrorism or protest law). But then, the solution to a politicised Law Commission is for elected governments to keep throwing its reports in the bin. But then, there's simply no point in having such a body - and paying Collins half a million a year - if that is the result.

As I've said on other crony appointments, this corrupt culture of political cronyism around public service positions has to change. Appointments should be made on merit, not on connections or patronage, and appointees should be able to demonstrate they meet basic political neutrality criteria. Politicians have repeatedly demonstrated they are incapable of doing that job properly, so its time to take it out of their hands, and give it to an independent appointments body. That is the only way to end this corruption in our political system.

The Electoral Commission refuses to play along

When National introduced its voter suppression law in a naked effort to rig the next election, they said it was all about saving time and producing faster election results. But now we have an election date, and the Electoral Commission has published its timeline, showing they will be taking the usual 20 days to count the votes properly. And they're clear why: they expect the number of special votes to increase, rather than decrease, thanks to National's voter suppression efforts:

But the Electoral Commission’s chief electoral officer Karl Le Quesne made clear to The Post the date would not change.

“We need to plan for what could happen. We have allowed 20 days to declare the official results because we are forecasting an increase in special votes, including overseas votes. Even with the enrolment change, we expect many people to enrol or update their details after writ day which results in special votes,” Le Quesne said.

“The date for the release of the official results is not legislated or set in stone, but it’s important to allow time to get the final results right.”

In response, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith seems to be trying to unlawfully direct the Commission to take less time, in direct contravention of s105 Crown Entities Act. Naturally, there's no penalty for that - there never is when the government behaves illegally - but its another example of the fundamentally unconstitutional approach of this regime.

Meanwhile, if you don't want to get caught by National's voter suppression law, make sure you are enrolled, and get your friends and family to check too. They have not yet corrupted the system so fully that we cannot vote them out, but we better take the opportunity to do that now, because we may not have the option if they get another three years.

Climate Change: Murderers

Aotearoa is currently in the tail end of our first climate disaster of the year, with flooding in Northland, Tairawhiti, and Coromandel, and slips in Mount Maunganui. Two people are already confirmed dead, and more are still missing. The government has been out-to-lunch for most of it, but they've finally realised that the "working from home" prime minister needed to put in an appearance. But when he did, he was greeted by climate protesters. Because while the regime is in denial, ordinary people can see the clear links between these disasters and regime policies.

Weather disasters are worsened by climate change. And this regime has done everything it can to make climate change worse. They've repealed all effective climate policy, destroyed the ETS, and rejected He Pou a Rangi's recommendations for tougher targets. They are a death cult whose policy is to let it burn. And people are dying as a result.

The regime as good as murdered those people in Mount Maunganui. How many more will we let them kill? This regime has to go, and the sooner the better.

A zombie regime

So, here we are: in accordance with constitutional convention. Luxon has announced the election date as 7 November. Meaning that his regime has only 290 more days before we get to vote it out on its arse.

But while the regime will hold office right up to election day (and a little beyond, under the caretaker convention, if things go well), its effective power to enact policy will end sooner. Parlaiment will likely rise on 24 September, so no more new laws after that. And if this was a normal, democratic government which respected the parliamentary process, that would mean that legislation would have to be introduced and sent to committee by March to be passed by the end of September. But this isn't such a government. Instead, it is an anti-democratic one, which seems to positively revel in abusing urgency and passing legislation with no notice - so they'll be ramming shit through all the way to the end. But even then, the ability of the public service to write policy is limited, and while the regime likes to shorten that as well, there's still a minimum amount of time - probably about six months if they want it done well, or maybe three if they're happy for a complete shitshow which has to be fixed later. Which means that if policy isn't announced by April or June, it probably isn't happening this term. And if we de-elect the regime, it probably isn't happening at all.

Even if the regime abuses urgency all the way to the end, everything they do can be reversed. Its fundamental to our constitution that no parliament can bind its successor, so what they enact can simply be repealed. That doesn't undo the harm caused in the interim, but if legislation hasn't come into force, then it can be as if it never happened. The next government needs to make this a core part of its programme. Labour will have a big agenda here on restoring workers' rights, and good on them for that, but immediate repeal also needs to extend to National's flagship policies of destroying te Tiriti, fast-track, voter suppression, climate denial, and of course the Regulatory Standards Bill. It all needs to go, as quickly as possible. We need a Treaty Restoration Bill, a Corruption Repeal Bill, a Democracy Restoration Bill, a Climate Defence Bill, and a Constitution Restoration Bill. Or just shove it all in one as an Omnibus Repeal Bill. Do unto National what they did unto Aotearoa, and chuck everything they did out on the first day. And if they don't like it, well, they chose to govern like that, so they can have it right back.

People are sick to fucking death of austerity and NeoLiberalism, of government that simply makes excuses rather than solving problems. We've seen both here and overseas that government can get shit done when it wants to. We want it to. It is time for the opposition to rise to that challenge, tell us how it will use government power to make our lives better. And if it can't, well, fuck them; they'll lose to the most hated and incompetent regime in living memory, and they'll have no-one to blame but themselves.

Coalition of cronyism

Another day, another naked crony appointment from the regime. This time its gun minister and former gun lobbyist Nicole McKee appointing fellow gun loonies to the Ministerial Arms Advisory Group:

The search for two new members took place last year after four MAAG members came to the end of their three-year terms. McKee decided to reappoint two (Shayne Walker and Debbie Lamb) and cut two (Yasbek and Helene Leaf).

McKee also agreed to the Ministry of Justice seeking nominations through “agencies, ministers, Cabinet, caucus and interested groups”, according to a ministry briefing in July, released under the Official Information Act (OIA).

A week and a half later, she changed her mind when the ministry sought permission to invite nominations from groups including the police, Te Puni Kōkiri, the Māori Firearms Forum, MAAG members and the Arms Engagement Group. The ministry should only proceed if there were no nominations from her coalition colleagues, McKee’s private secretary told the ministry.

According to the OIA documents, McKee, who is an Act MP, then told two people she wanted for the group (Mike Spray and Michelle Roderick-Hall) to send their CVs to the Act Party’s chief of staff at the time, Andrew Ketels, who nominated them.

Who are her preferred nominees? Both gun nuts, one has worked directly for McKee's company Firearms Safety Specialists NZ Limited, and the other has worked indirectly for her through an organisation FSS founded. So its naked cronyism.

This isn't a statutory position, so the appointments can't be declared unlawful (unlike the regime's unlawful crony appointment to the Human Rights Commission). But its morally no different. And it makes it clear that this government is about abusing government to hand out public salaries and policy influence to its mates.

This has to change. The culture of crony appointments has to stop. That's not just a matter of de-electing this regime, because Labour is no different. Instead, all government appointments, whether statutory or ministerial, need to be taken out of the corrupt hands of politicians, and be made by an independent appointments body. The politicians have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted to apply the law correctly when jobs are involved. Time to give the job to somebody else instead.

Under-protecting privacy

If you've been following the news, you will have seen the enormous Manage My Health shitshow, which has seen the medical records of 127,000 new Zealanders offered up for ransom (with the alternative of sale on the dark web). The information was obtained due to an absurdly basic security failure by the company, suggesting a complete failure of any duty of care for people's sensitive health information. It also seems to be an open and shutt violation of Information Privacy Principle 5 and/or rule 5 of the Health Information Privacy Code, both of which require information to be protected by "such security safeguards as are reasonable in the circumstances" - but there's no fines for breaching this, and the penalty even for violating a formal compliance notice is a derisory $10,000. The entire regime expects each affected individual to complain to the Privacy Commissioner, who can escalate complaints to the (over-worked and under-resourced) Human Rights Review Tribunal, which can issue damages. In, oh, six or seven years.

And its not like the Privacy Commissioner can help - they can't do own-motion investigations, and the regime has cut their budget. It's almost like they want our privacy to be violated and our information to be sold.

This isn't good enough. The Privacy Commissioner should be actually able to protect our privacy, rather than merely being an overworked mediator when someone has violated it. And where there has been an egregious failure to follow basic privacy practice like this, then there needs to be a criminal offence, and fines large enough to actually incentivise companies to obey the law, with personal liability for directors. Manage My Health didn't give a shit about the people whose information it was "safeguarding", because a $10,000 fine for not caring was just a cost of business. And the Facebooks and X's of this world won't give a shit either. If we start having fines in the millions, or charged as a percentage of global revenue (European-style), then maybe they will start obeying.

The enemy of the world

Over the weekend the United States mounted an unprovoked attack on Venezuela, killing a hundred people, and kidnapping its president. Since then, they have threatened further attacks, as well as similar action against Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Iran and Greenland. All of which is illegal under international law, but I think it's pretty clear by now that the US doesn't give a shit about that, or anything other than naked force. What we are looking at here is a rogue empire, using force or threats of force to extort territory, resources, or even just money from the rest of the world. And the world - and in particular the status quo coalition of countries who want peace and quiet - needs to wake up and start treating it as such.

How can the rest of the world respond to such a state? We already know part of the solution, because the US has done it to those it has deemed "rogue" before: comprehensive trade and financial sanctions. Unfortunately, this is difficult when the US is the center of so much, but personal sanctions against regime members and their supporters are eminently possible, and likely to have an impact. The US has done this to ICC judges and officials in an effort to intimidate them into dropping cases against Israel and US troops in Afghanistan; but we can do the same to them. And it will hurt. Trump's a billionaire, he has money and investments all over the world. Ditto Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and the rest of his fascist cabal. We can take it from them. They will scream like Russian oligarchs if they can't access the money they've stashed in their foreign tax havens, or holiday in their usual places. And that in turn means internal pressure on the regime.

Longer term, its pretty clear that the US can no longer be trusted as a responsible member of the international community. Even if the current regime is overthrown and things return to "normal", it might happen again. Better therefore to reduce our dependence on them as much as possible. If we want a peaceful, stable world where we can just get on with our lives without fear of random attack, that world can no longer include the US.

Under-resourcing transparency

The Ministry of Health is in my experience one of the worst performing government agencies when it comes to handling OIA requests. They unlawfully extend any non-trivial request, hyper-parse everything and adopt the most unhelpful and self-serving interpretation without consultation (and in violation of the principle of availability and the duty of assistance), and in the end are late anyway. Their Minister reportedly blames resourcing pressures for this. But as the PSA points out, resourcing is decided by the Minister:

However, the PSA's national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons told RNZ the minister should be taking responsibility instead.

"It shouldn't take the Ombudsman stepping in for Health NZ to provide information to the public, but really this does come back to the minister. He can't keep demanding savings and then blame officials when the impacts of cuts are felt," she said.

"Health NZ has lost over 2000 roles either through early exits, voluntary redundancies, or vacancies not being filled. This includes teams that support official information requests. They've lost critical expertise."

She said it was no wonder the public wanted information when the government was making such cuts, and the minister, his office, and health agencies should have seen it coming.

"This government is undermining the Official Information Act. It plays an absolutely critical role in enabling the participation of the people of New Zealand in public administration, but also in holding ministers and officials to account."

Its also worth noting that the courts have ruled (in relation to Corrections) that resource limitations do not justify failure to comply with statutory duties; if there are resource issues, then it is the chief executive's duty to reallocate resources so there are not. In the case of Corrections, the High Court ordered the chief executive personally to obey - raising the prospect of fine or jail if they do not. If government agencies keep making similar pleas when it comes to the OIA, then its time we took them to court and subjected them to similar orders.

Meanwhile, RNZ also quotes Labour's Carmel Sepuloni as blaming under-resourcing and cuts for OIA delays. So obviously, if she becomes Minister, she'll be ensuring that transparency is fully resourced, and that information is released expeditiously, and she'll resign if its not, right? I look forward to a public commitment from her, and all Labour's potential Ministers, on this.