Why I'm not voting for Opportunity

This morning one of my bleeps took one for the team and asked to be convinced not to vote for Opportunity. Like me, they're a long-time Green voter. Like me, they see Opportunity as having some attractive policies on land taxes, the environment, and Te Tiriti. And with the party now consistently polling over 5%, but not so high that we can be sure they'll make it, is it worth left voters to lend their votes to get them over the line?

It was a really useful discussion, and you should read the whole thing. If you're that interested, you should probably read Josh Drummond's take on it from last month as well. Meanwhile, here's my thoughts.

I have a lot of problems with TOP. Their origins as the vehicle for rich prick Gareth Morgan's political ideas around taxation and UBI. Their past arsehole behaviour under both Morgan and later leaders. Their undemocratic and completely top-down party structure. Their dodgy techbro funders. I also have some problems with their political philosophy - a naive-to-arrogant technocratic rationalism which fails to consider or simply does not think it is important that other people might not see their conclusions as "obvious", or might even disagree with them, and so struggles to deal with that fact. I'm somewhat sympathetic here, because you need idealists in any productive political coalition, to drive things forward - but TOP's demonstrated inability to cope when their ideas met opposition in the past (see: TOP 2017 and the Gareth Morgan / Sean Plunket shitshow) is not a good sign, and suggests a party culture problem as well.

But fundamentally, it comes down to one simple fact: I do not know these people. Not in a personal sense - I don't hang around with politicians - but in the sense that without a demonstrated track record, I do not know if they are serious about their policies, and I do not know what their values are.

As a contrast, I know the Greens. They've been in Parliament for 30 years, and around for over 50 (if you count Values, and they do). They've been demonstrating their policies and values for long enough that one any issue I can reasonably predict which way they'll go. I know what they stand for, and I know what I am voting for when I vote for them. What would I be voting for if I voted for TOP? Their candidate lineup is pretty good, a collection of public servants, environmentalists, many of whom would fit in very well in Labour or the Greens, plus some startup bros (Eww). Many of them would be an asset to parliament. Against that, they're complete political naifs, and there are a bunch of failure modes here, both in coalition talks and later, which are waiting to eat them. The collapse of NZ First in 1998 and the problems with United Future in its 2002 term are instructive here.

And then there's the big one: coalition options. Or, as we say in Aotearoa, "who are they going to go with?" TOP leader Qiulae Wong says "anyone", and if you're on the left and want to see the regime toppled, its policies repealed, and the earth salted, that is absolutely an issue. Why would I give my vote to someone who might keep the racist, tyrannical, election rigging pricks in power? Why would I risk that, when I can give it to a party who absolutely won't? So that's an absolute deal-breaker for me (and if you don't want the regime toppled, why are you reading this blog?)

So that's why I won't be voting TOP. If they get in, I'll be pleased, because there's clear potential for them to be a valuable part of the left coalition in future. But ATM they're just too uncertain, too big a risk, too untrustworthy to get my vote.

One Country at a time...

The Lebanese parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty:

Lebanon's parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty, a move that would make it the first country in the Middle East to formally end capital punishment.

A majority of MPs in the 128-seat parliament backed the measure on Tuesday, while Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc voted against it.

The legislation will now go to the cabinet before being passed to President Joseph Aoun for signing. The government has already expressed its support for the measure.

This would make Lebanon the first country in the Middle East to abolish the death penalty. Hopefully more will follow (Israel had abolished the death penalty for civilian crimes, but has just passed a law requiring the mandatory execution of Palestinians convicted of "terrorism" by kangaroo courts - so they're officially a murder state now as well as a genocide one).

Chris wins!

So, after a three hour emergency caucus meeting, Chris Luxon has emerged to claim that he has the National Party's full support and that his caucus is united. Which is obviously why he had to have a three hour meeting about it. Which means National will be going into the election with a historically unpopular Prime Minister - unless they change their mind about it next week.

Meanwhile Chris (the other one) will be overjoyed that the political landscape won't be shaken up after all, and he can continue trying to sleepwalk to victory. It would be nice if he actually put some effort in and tried to win, but he seems to have taken the journalists' "oppositions don't win elections; governments lose them" to heart, and interpreted it as meaning he has no agency whatsoever. Which I guess is consistent with his belief that politicians have no agency over the public either, and can't change hearts and minds - but its awfully disappointing tot he rest of us. And it invites serious questions about why we pay him so much - $309,000 plus rorts and slush - to basically do nothing.

As for Chris and Chris, I guess they'll be hoping for a National loss. Otherwise, they probably don't have a place in the post-election Cabinet. Oh dear. How sad.

Shaking it up?

Its 88 days until the election, and I had been planning to post about how the electoral landscape is becoming a little clearer. While the polls are statistically tied (still, with this regime, what the fuck are you doing Chris?), Opportunity is increasingly polling above the threshold, meaning they'll be in Parliament and no coalition seems possible without them. Meanwhile Luxon ruling them out basicly means he won't be in government, while Hipkins finally ruling out NZ First removes the big fear on the left: that Labour will once again choose a far-right coalition partner who will proceed to veto its policies, rather than the party which shares them and wants them to go further. It also crystallises the blocs, giving a clear choice between the current dysfunctional National-NZ First-ACT regime, or a Labour-Green-Opportunity-maybe-with-Te-Pāti-Māori, which seems perfectly workable precisely because of that shared agenda.

...And then Luxon goes and decides to put his leadership on the line (again), in a desperate effort to retain control of his clearly panicking caucus, a quarter of whom look likely to not have a job after the election on current polling. I have no idea which way it will go - I'm not any sort of insider, let alone a tory one - but obviously if Luxon is rolled its going to shake things up a bit, and put a bunch of stuff back on the table that Luxon had taken off it. It also means potential coalition instability, because the first thing a new National leader is going to want to do is put their coalition partners in their place, and they are likely to object to that, and maybe even pull the plug. There's a theory that if that happens Labour will step in and clean up the mess, providing confidence to retain the current election timetable at the price of gutting National's legislative program. That would be a sign of weakness and not being ready to fight, so of course I can see it happening because that pretty much describes Labour at the moment. A real opposition would of course be saying "bring it on" and "if you can't keep the government running, that's your problem", and "there are no votes for us [and there are not] in bailing you out", but its been a while since Labour was anything of the sort. And OTOH, that assumes National doesn't want an early election, which they're ready (or at least funded) for while Labour isn't...

Tomorrow might just be more nothing, another round of pointless National squabbling which results in nothing. And that would be the best outcome, because Luxon is such a loser that even Hipkins might be able to beat him (or rather, be carried to victory by his coalition partners). But if something actually happens, then the election is going to change in a big way, and Labour will actually have to do some fucking work if they want to win it. And honestly, I'm not sure they have it in them.

A state-assisted corruption scheme

Politicians defend their practice of taking huge bribes from the rich in the form of election "donations" by saying that its all out in the open: we can see who is buying them, we can see what they do in exchange and make sure that there is no "undue" influence (as opposed to the "due" influence they have paid for?), and so there is no problem. This is obviously false, and the current regime's actions and the flood of money they have received from fast track applicants, polluters, honours recipients, and other parties with a direct financial interest in their decisions shows that. But even if it were true, there's still a problem: because New Zealand law still allows parties to receive vast amounts of money in total secrecy, so we do not in fact get to see who is buying them after all.

The mechanism is called "donations protected from disclosure", and it has seen nearly half a million dollars funnelled to right-wing parties this election cycle (weirdly, no left-wing party has ever received a cent). It was initially introduced as an ugly compromise in Labour's Electoral Finance Act, to cover their failure to fully eliminate secret donations. And while National repealed the EFA, it kept that part of the law because it was useful to them. The theory is that the donations are made in total secrecy, so there can be no influence - and if you believe that, I have a bridge over Cook Strait to sell you. What it is in practice is the government laundering money for large donors who wish to exercise their influence in secret, or do not wish to suffer the reputational damage of their political views. It is, in effect, a state money laundering scheme to hide corruption.

There are two fundamental principles underlying election finance law: the rich must be prevented from buying government, and any funding that is permitted must be totally transparent. This government money laundry violates both. It allows secret influence, and worse, makes it a crime to expose it. That should not be permitted. This corrupt law must be repealed.

Climate Change: The end of the ETS is in sight

How do you have an emissions trading scheme when there are no permits to emit?

That's a question Aotearoa is eventually going to have to confront as we move towards carbon neutrality. And, thanks to exclusions from the ETS and huge pollution subsidies, that end is beginning to come into sight.

The regime announced its new ETS unit limits and price control settings yesterday. They largely follow those recommended by He Pou a Rangi, with a big exception: He Pou a Rangi had recommended an increased allocation of 3 million tons in 2031, to account for the end of surplus reduction. The regime has cut this to 1.1 million tons, for "stability". Which is great from one point of view: its 2 million tons that won't be emitted! But He Pou a Rangi is already warning that surplus reduction has maybe been too aggressive, and might lead to a unit shortage from 2030 (and maybe as early as 2028). Which means price spikes, demand destruction by the market, deindustrialisation, and arbitrary ad-hoc interventions by the government to try and "fix" things.

He Pou a Rangi has been warning about this for years, and telling the government that it needs to rebalance the ETS by bringing in agriculture, decoupling forestry, and reducing industrial allocation (which will be higher than auction units in 2028, and three times higher in 2031). But that means decisions which will necessarily upset big polluters and their lobbyists, who view their current free ride as an absolute right. It would be work! And instead of doing that work, the regime has chosen to punt, make it someone else's problem, and make it worse, so that the next government will have to fight those polluters (and National can them collect donations from them). Which is a perfect example of how National is simply not serious about climate change.

Meanwhile, if nothing changes, on the current trend the ETS auction volume will be zero in 2033. There'll be subsidies and free rides and trees, but no actual auctions - and no government control over unit volumes or emissions. Which defeats the entire purpose of the scheme.

Something has to change, and the next government is going to have to deal with it. An "emissions trading scheme" where the only way to get permits is to be a regime crony with a pollution subsidy, and where there is no overall control over emissions, is neither viable or credible.

National (still) hates democracy

The National party in Aotearoa has always hated democracy. In the late 70's and early 80's they retained power in the face of majority opposition only by virtue of an unfair electoral system. When popular discontent at that led to a push for MMP, they opposed it. When the people won and imposed it on the traitorous political class who had given us Rogernomics and Ruthanasia, they tried to overturn it. And now, not content with using voter suppression in an effort to rig the next election, they're trying to rig all future ones by going back to the old, unfair system, which reliably delivered absolute power on minority support:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he would hold an MMP referendum if re-elected - but his coalition partner Winston Peters has ruled such a referendum out.

Luxon made the comments on Newstalk ZB.

He had been discussing a long-mooted referendum on whether to bring in a four-year parliamentary term and then started to discuss whether it was appropriate to see if the public was “still supportive of MMP.”

Asked if he would undertake such a referendum if re-elected, Luxon said “Yeah, I think I would.”

Fuck that. We are currently at a historic weak-point for the legacy parties - the latest Roy Morgan poll showed their collective support at less than 60% - and I'd suggest that that alone makes this idea an absolute non-starter. Any regime "elected" under such a system would lack any legitimacy and simply have no mandate to govern.

The good news is that its a non-starter, because Winston says "no". And as any future National government is absolutely reliant on that racist zombie for a majority, that means there's simply no parliamentary majority to pass the legislation required for a referendum, let alone a change. It simply won't happen (and no, Labour isn't going to agree to it either).

Which also makes it a perfect example of how National's "promises" are irrelevant. They can huff, and they can puff, but ultimately they need a majority to act, which means the agreement of multiple coalition partners. And for a lot of what they "promise" that agreement will not for forthcoming. They're simply a party of hot air.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's day, though likely to be a boring one. First up there's the second readings of a couple of private bills: the Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust (Trust Variation) Bill and the Trust Horizon (Trust Variation) Bill. These private tweaks to the law are unlikely to be contentious, so I expect them to whizz through. Following that there's the remainder of the first reading of Stuart Smith's Local Government (Management of Local Authorities) Amendment Bill, an attempt to rein in local authority chief executives and put elected members back in charge which will at least go to committee. Then its the committee stage of Shane Reti's Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill, which is supported by every party but ACT (who think parents should be free to drown their children). If the House moves quickly it will make a start on the second reading of Laura McClure's Employment Relations (Termination of Employment by Agreement) Amendment Bill, which is another ACT attempt to strip basic employment rights from workers and impose a US-style fire-at-will culture. There will be no ballot tomorrow.

This may be the last actual member's day in the term. While looking at the sitting calendar suggests two more (August 26 and September 16), the first is likely to be pushed back or eaten by urgency for the regime's anti-environment bills, and the last sitting block is likely to be eaten entirely by urgency for the end-of-term "wash-up" (in which parliament tries to pass all the normal, uncontentious, keep-the-law-up-to-date legislation its been ignoring in favour of National's culture-war bullshit). Which, allowing for post-election commencement debates, means we might not see another one until February.

49,000 unemployed under National

The June labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen again to 5.6%. There are now 171,000 unemployed, 49,000 more than when National took office.

The next - and hopefully final for this regime - set of unemployment statistics should drop right around election time. But we're basically looking at a regime which has deliberately increased unemployment by 40%, by slashing public service jobs and demanding the reserve bank focus strictly on inflation (meaning that it throws people out of work whenever rich people's money starts to evaporate). And that is an absolutely toxic legacy which should see them de-elected by an angry electorate. If we fail to do so, we have no-one but ourselves to blame when they fuck us over even more.

NZ First's Nazi problem

Over the weekend The Post had a piece about Nazis finding a home in NZ First. The initial article exposed two "Remigration NZ" activists, one of whom is a former member of Action Zealandia. For those who don't know, Action Zealandia are Nazis linked to a spate of crimes, while Remigration NZ demands that migrants or the descendents of migrants "go back to where they came from" (white people, of course, are not migrants in their ideology, but somehow belong everywhere). With Winston demanding the same thing, its pretty clear that their ideas are finding fertile ground in the party.

Today's followup exposes a senior member of the party's youth-wing as an outright Nazi:

Nicholas Newport, 23, was named as a member of the executive of Young New Zealand First in late 2024, and last month spoke at the party’s national convention.

Under a former name, Nicholas Wells, he appeared at two protests involving far-right activists and was linked to accounts expressing support for the National Socialist Network (NSN), an Australian neo-Nazi organisation that later rebranded as White Australia. The Australian Government designated White Australia a prohibited hate group in May.

The accounts repeatedly posted “Hail Hitler”, used slurs against non-white and gay people and made derogatory comments about women. One invoked a claim commonly circulated by Holocaust deniers. Another described its user as a Nazi.

Winston has responded with bluster, claiming it is all a media smear. But its all verifiable. And you have to wonder why Winston is going into bat for a Nazi, when most political parties when confronted with something like this would at least attempt to plead ignorance, drop the person like a hot rock, and try and cauterise the wound. And the natural conclusion is that he at the least thinks there's nothing wrong with Newport's views, or explicitly agrees with them.

Hopefully the media will now start asking other NZ First MPs and candidates how they feel about Nazis in their party, whether they agree with their views, and (if necessary) whether they are Nazis themselves. And we're definitely going to need proper due-diligence on any NZ First candidates for Nazi links.

Meanwhile, the real question is how voters feel about voting for a Nazi party...