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.