More lightning legislating

The House has been in urgency this week, as the regime struggle against the clock to pass its agenda. In addition to the inherent abuse of urgency, this has led to other abuses, with parliament once again returning to being "the fastest legislature in the west" to ram things through. And now there's another one: National has rammed its corrupt bill to protect polluters from liability for the climate change they are causing - the same bill a Ministerial Adviser violated the Public Records Act and hid the lobbyists' draft of from the OIA - through its first reading and sent it to committee. The committee report back date? 30 July. So the committee will have less than a month to "consider" this corrupt atrocity against the rule of law, turning it into little more than a rubber-stamp for Cabinet.

Submissions are open, and due by 9.00am, Monday, 13 July 2026 (note the dirty time chosen; you need to have this in by 12 July to be safe). So we have less than ten days to submit on this corrupt violation of constitutional norms. And this is what National calls "democracy".

The opposition has committed to repealing the bill if it becomes law, so any benefit Fonterra and Z Energy get from their corrupt lobbying will be transitory, lasting only until the repeal bill is passed and Mike Smith (or someone else) files a new case against them. Its probably worth supporting that in your submission, so Labour knows they're doing the right thing. Again, National's over-reach and abuse of power creates the potential to push back, and so we should push back hard, and demand not just repeal, but that polluters have absolute liability for the damage caused by their pollution. Fonterra and Z and their polluting mates have undermined our democracy to protect their profits. We need to punish them harshly for that, just so they don’t do it again.

Climate Change: Overdoing it?

Climate change is here, causing increasingly severe weather. In April, Wellington was flooded by extreme rainfall, making 40 homes uninhabitable and killing one person. Auckland suffered similar floods in 2023. We had more weather-related states of emergency in the first two months of 2026 than in the whole of 2025, and the number has only increased. A severe weather warning affecting multiple regions is issued every two weeks. But weirdly, the minister for climate change and local government thinks councils are doing too much to stop this, and has sent them a shitty letter demanding they pretend its not happening:

Wellington’s mayor has slammed a climate mitigation letter from the local government minister as “tone deaf”, in a city where a man died in flood waters and other residents scrambled for their lives mere weeks ago.

Local Government Minister Simon Watts’ letter to mayors, regional council chairpeople and council chief executives around the country started arriving in in-boxes about 6pm on Tuesday.

In it, he insinuated councils were “gold-plating” climate initiatives and building for worst-case scenarios at ratepayers’ expenses.

[...]

Asked for examples of problem initiatives, Watts’ office highlighted a Greater Wellington Regional Council regional flood hazard assessment, which produced a map showing where is prone to flooding risk. Areas severely flooded in April, such as Emerson St in Berhampore, were identified as being at risk.

The last bit makes it crystal clear why Watts is doing this: because clearly identifying climate change risks means some people's property values will drop. People with houses in flood zones might not be able to insure or sell them, and developers who have hoarded coastal property won't be able to develop it and might lose money. So to protect the imaginary property values of the rich, we all have to ignore what is happening before our eyes and pretend that everything is perfectly normal.

This is, simply, bullshit. And if Watts gets his way, more people will die. But Watts doesn't care. Weirdly, he seems to think none of this bad weather will affect him in any way.

Climate change is an existential threat to future for humanity. The regime has clearly chosen a side in that struggle, and it is the side of polluters and devastation. They have moved from passively not giving a shit to actively trying to stop people from doing anything about it. If we want a future, we need to throw this climate quisling regime out of office, and elect a government which will protect us, rather than protecting polluters.

Completely unsurprising

Back in May, we learned that climate polluters had bought themselves an exemption from the law (an exemption that will be passed through its first reading and sent to select committee under urgency this week), lobbying the Prime Minister in secret for a special law change in their favour. The Ombudsman has now completed their investigation of the failure to release that lobbying, and they are not impressed:

The Ombudsman has released a damning report into the failure of the Prime Minister’s Office to release a written briefing its chief policy adviser had received ahead of a controversial law change.

His report reveals that the adviser - who received the briefing note in hard copy and to his personal email address - was personally consulted on the request for information, but did not provide it.

The Ombudsman has referred the matter to the chief archivist and says it is “surprising” that the adviser does not recall the meetings in which the document was handed over.

The Ombudsman is being polite here. Because it is very clear what happened: the ministerial adviser lied to protect himself and his boss. And then he lied to the Ombudsman about lying, pretending he didn't remember. And the only people surprised by that are people who have to pretend, by virtue of their position, that the government gives one wet fart for the law.

The adviser's initial actions, in getting official documents sent to his private email account and then failing to create a full and accurate record, were a crime. That crime needs to be prosecuted. And while we're at it, we need to make non-compliance with the OIA a crime in its own right, defined as a "corrupt practice" in the Electoral Act, so that Ministers convicted of breaking it will be automatically removed from parliament.

Meanwhile, the next time anyone in power whines about trust in government declining, they can blame the Prime Minister and his staff. Because they've shown conclusively that those in power are corrupt, untrustworthy criminals. And only a fool would trust them.