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.

Climate Change: Losing the battle but winning the war

Aotearoa declared a climate emergency in 2020. Despite this, the government granted petroleum exploration permits to two companies in 2021, letting htem explore for gas and, if successful, convert the permit into a mining permit. Climate Clinic Aotearoa (previously Students for Climate Solutions) have been challenging that decision in the courts ever since, and losing at every turn. Today, they lost their final appeal in the Supreme Court. But in doing so, they might have won the war, because the Court ruled that Ministers must consider climate change when offering permits:

The country's highest court has found that governments must consider climate change when deciding whether to offer oil and gas blocks for tender.

The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal on Friday that former Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods was required to take climate change into account when she granted on-shore exploration permits to two companies in 2021.

However, the court found that climate change is a mandatory consideration at the earlier stage of offering blocks for tender.

Climate change was "so obviously relevant" to a decision that could lead to the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels that it must be considered, the panel of five Supreme Court justices ruled.

The full judgement is here, and there's a bunch of good stuff in it. First, the court found that the words "for the benefit of New Zealand" in the Crown Minerals Act's purpose clause isn't just meaningless praise for the mining industry, but an actual constraint. Prospecting, exploration, and mining can be carried out only when it is "for the benefit of New Zealand". Which means Ministers must assess that overall benefit. The court is clear that they have pretty wide latitude, but there are things they need to consider beyond just jobs and GDP.

Secondly, the headline: thanks to our international agreements and the scale of the issue, climate change is so obviously relevant that it is a "mandatory consideration", something the Minister has to consider.

So why didn't Climate Clinic win the case? Because they were too late. The government argued, and the court agreed, that the important step where climate change must be considered is the decision under s24 of the Act to allocate permits by public tender - what the government calls a "block offer".

This is because the decision to offer an area for tender is an in-principle decision that exploration may be permitted in the area. And as the respondent concedes, the process thereby set in motion is undertaken in expectation that successful exploration may in the future lead to successful extraction of petroleum. We accept also that it would undermine the promotional intent of the CMA to invite tenders pursuant to a s 24 decision but then decide under s 25, and for reasons that could have been weighed at the s 24 stage, not to allocate any permits. Such an approach would not build the investor confidence necessary to promote exploration and mining.

But that decision was made in 2020. Climate Clinic was challenging the 2021 decision under s25 to grant the permits. They needed to go to court earlier and challenge the block offer decision itself. Also significant is that, while not required to do so, the Minister of Resources at the time, Megan Woods, did consider climate change to some extent in her s25 decision-making, at a level of the court found appropriate given the limited climate change framework in existence at the time (a 2050 target, but no budgets or emissions reduction plan).

So what does this mean for the future? It seems like it will be very hard for future governments to lawfully open block offers, unless they can demonstrate that they are consistent with climate budgets and targets. And while the regime has moved away from the block offer system in favour of allowing direct applications for petroleum permits, it is going to cause problems for that as well. Because if climate change is a mandatory consideration for a block offer, its hard to see how it will not be for essentially a direct grant, and the problems the court identified of opening land for exploration then not actually allocating any permits would not arise.

So, when the regime decides to hand out gas permits to its foreign cronies early next year, that decision should be challenged. Given the regime's demonstrated problems with both proper record-keeping and making lawful decisions, such a challenge is likely to prove successful (for example, it will be hard for regime lawyers to argue that Shame Jones, a man who rants about "green banshees" and "demonic eggbeaters" while spewing outright climate denial into the parliamentary record, approached the issue of climate change with the open mind required of a decision-maker). And at the least, it will delay any permits until after the election, allowing the next government to surrender in court and accept their revocation.

Unlawful appointments

Last year, the regime sabotaged the Human Rights Commission by appointing a pair of terfs and hatemongers as chief human rights commissioner and race relations commissioner. And when people dug into the appointment process, we found it to be the usual crony stitch-up: both candidates had been shoehorned in at the last-minute and were appointed against the recommendation of the independent panel (and in the case of for-the-time being chief commissioner Stephen Rainbow, because he was an ACT-party crony).

Now, the High Court has ruled that both appointments were unlawful, as Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith applied the incorrect legal test and ignored mandatory considerations in his decision-making. They have not overturned the decisions - Rainbow and Derby get to keep their jobs. But there's a clear statement that the Minister of Justice failed to do what was legally required of him.

What does this mean? Firstly, I've looked at a lot of government appointments over the years, and a lot of them follow this pattern. Some of them are potentially at risk of being overturned (for example, the 2024 appointments to EECA, or maybe this year's appointments to the Waitangi Tribunal). A big problem is that ministers shoehorn candidates in and appoint them and don't say why - because the "why" is unseemly and corrupt: "jobs for the boys" / getting your own people in regardless of merit to sabotage an agency. While Ministers can subsequently explain why in court of challenged, the court was pretty suspicious of Goldsmith's evidence, implying it was an ex post facto invention to fit the case, nad basically disregarded his bland statements that of course he followed the rules, because he provided no actual detail. The upshot: Ministers are going to have to provide a better documentary record of why they make appointment decisions, and exactly how candidates fit the statutory criteria, or risk having them overturned.

Secondly, of course, this obviously affects the mana of both the candidates and the commission itself. And given the centrality of mana to the work of the commission, a decent, professional person would recognise that this made their position untenable, and resign. It remains to be seen if either Rainbow or Derby are such people.

If they're not, well: from the outset I've said that as they did not meet the statutory criteria, and are unable to credibly perform the functions of their office, the next government should exercise their lawful powers under the Crown Entities Act and simply sack them. Now that there is an explicit ruling saying their appointments were illegal, that seems even more urgent. Unlawful appointments cannot be allowed to stand. it is that simple.

Finally: again, this highlights that the key problem in state appointments is corrupt Ministers, and the solution is to remove them from the process entirely. If we want independent, lawful, merits-based appointments according to statutory criteria, then we should give the job to a permanent independent appointments panel. We already use such a process for appointing the Government Statistician (with criminal penalties for any Minister who attempts to interfere in it); we should do the same for other roles, starting with constitutional appointments and independent crown entities and working our way downwards. Ministers cannot be trusted not to behave corruptly; we can fix that problem simply by taking the job off them.

A victory for Māori in Nelson

Way back in 1839, the New Zealand Company bought the area that is now Nelson from local iwi and hapu. As part of the deal, they promised that Māori would retain their homes, fields, and burial grounds, and that in addition, 10% of the land in the planned township and surroundings would be set aside for them. The New Zealand state inherited this deal, and proceeded to break it systematically, refusing to allocate the land promised, and stealing that which had already been allocated. In 2017 the Supreme Court ruled that the state must honour the deal, and last year the High Court found that the state must return land and pay compensation. And after a year of negotiations, they've finally done it:

In Wellington on Wednesday, Attorney-General Judith Collins and Conservation Minister Tama Potaka announced that an agreement had been reached.

Under the agreement, 3068 hectares will be returned to descendants of the original owners, including the Kaiteriteri Recreation Reserve and the Abel Tasman Great Walk.

The agreement also includes a $420 million compensation payment to recognise land that has been sold by the Crown since 1839 and in recognition of the lost earnings and land use.

Which is pretty cheap for 180 years of back-rent and interest. There's also the quirk that a lot of the land being returned is coastal, while the regime, though its climate change policies, is ensuring that it will be flooded. Which seems like they're undermining the settlement even before it was signed. But that's the "honour" of the New Zealand state, I guess.

Enjoined!

Last month, out of the blue, the regime banned the use of puberty blockers in trans healthcare, over-riding the medical decisions of doctors. Of course, doctors would still be able to use them for cis patients, making the move nakedly discriminatory, an effort to eliminate a generation of trans kids. The decision was denounced by every relevant medical professional body, and the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa started court action, seeking an injunction to preserve the status quo pending a full judicial review. Today, that injunction was granted. And the judge is pretty clear in thinking the underlying regulation is unlawful:

The second cause of action is also clearly arguable and perhaps more than arguable given the material that has become available since the proceedings were filed. The Minister did not take a preferred position to Cabinet. Rather, he chaired a meeting at which strong views were expressed and appears to have accepted the views of Cabinet. The views of Cabinet do not reflect the medical advice set out in the RIS. Whether that suffices as an exercise of the Minister’s statutory power will need to be decided, but the factual picture is now quite clear, and it supports PATHA’s position that this was a political decision and contrary to advice from the Ministry which also feeds into the third cause of action.

[Emphasis added]

So basically a case for inappropriate decision-maker and irrationality right there.

The judge has urged that the judicial review be heard urgently, so we'll probably get a final decision on this in the middle of next year, just in time for regime parties to use it to whip up hate for their election campaign. Oh joy.

National has fucked the economy

National's core promise as a government is to be "better economic managers" (meaning: bald men in blue suits). And they made specific promises last election to return the government to surplus by the next election. So how's that working out for them? Terribly:

There is still no surplus in sight, according to Treasury’s latest economic forecasts.

Treasury sees the deficit deepening further, from $14.0 billion in the year to June 2025 to $16.9b in 2025/26, before narrowing to $60 million in 2029/30.

While this is an improvement from when Treasury last published forecasts at the May Budget, it still undershoots National’s pre-election pledge to return the books to surplus by 2026/27.

Unmentioned in any of the media coverage (which is all about surpluses and GDP and debt) but in the HYEFU is that unemployment still hasn't peaked and will remain high as far ahead as treasury is looking, while wages won't grow. So life is going to suck for normal people, no matter what the overall economy does.

And all because Nicola Willis crashed the economy by cutting everything and sacking everyone. Worse, she's promising more of the same, in a desperate effort to meet that self-imposed budget target.

The evidence is clear: things won't get better until we remove this government and replace it with one which understands that making things better requires investment, not cuts. The sooner the election, the better!

End this outrageous prosecution

When the IPCA report into the Jevon McSkimming saga was released, we were all outraged to learn the depths of the police's depravity and the lengths they would go to to cover for one of their own. Not only had they systematically covered for abusive creep and child sex-abuse fan McSkimming, hiding the facts from the Public Service Commission and ignoring investigation guidelines to bury and railroad an investigation into allegations against him - they had also prosecuted his victim. And worse, they're still doing it:

Police are continuing with a prosecution against the woman who accused former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming of sexual offending in relation to charges of harassing another police officer and his wife.

A damning report released last month by the Independent Police Conduct Authority found serious misconduct at the highest levels, including former Commissioner Andrew Coster, over how police responded to the allegations.

The woman was charged in May last year with causing harm by posting digital communication in relation to over 300 emails she allegedly sent to McSkimming's work email address between December 2023 and April 2024.

The charge against the woman was withdrawn in the Wellington District Court in September because McSkimming did not wish to give evidence. But the woman remains before the court on two charges of causing harm by posting a digital communication in relation to another police officer and his wife.

At this stage, this looks like nothing less than a revenge prosecution. Fundamentally, Mrs Z's "crime" is to forcefully demand the justice the police should have given her in the first place, the justice police denied her for years because they were covering up for their Special Boy. Prosecuting her for that is immoral and unacceptable, and seems calculated to punish her for daring to stand up to police and deter allegations against police officers in future. Its just another part of the McSkimming cover-up, another example of the institutional corruption in the police force, the way they put protecting their own ahead of justice and enforcing the law.

This prosecution is not in the public interest. It further undermines public trust in police and damages their social licence. It is purely an act of official revenge. It should be dropped, and McSkimming's victim compensated for by police for her mistreatment.

Climate Change: The "market-led transition"

A key feature of the previous government's climate policy was the idea of a "just transition". Aotearoa would decarbonise, but the government would work to protect jobs, retrain workers, and ensure it didn't fuck up people's lives any more than it had to. For the gas industry, this meant the government managing its decline, through a "gas transition plan" and bans on new connections, while helping its customers switch to electricity through the GIDI fund. But the current regime, stuffed with climate deniers, fossil shills, and ideological opponents of any government action anywhere (other than subjugating the poor, of course) hated that idea, so they scrapped it immediately on coming to power. Instead, they want a "market-led transition", where industries would just decarbonise naturally based on ETS prices and the phase of the moon.

RNZ's Kirsty Johnston has taken an in-depth look at how that is working out, and the answer is "terribly". The gas is running out quicker than expected, there's no government plan to ensure it goes to the most (rather than least-) valuable users, so businesses are facing skyrocketing prices and huge capital costs to decarbonise, with no government support to make the switch. Meanwhile, the regime's crashing of the carbon market has destroyed direct financial incentives for decarbonisation while its teasing on LNG and attacks on remaining climate policy have created further uncertainty, further delaying decision-making. Meaning the most-likely response is "demand destruction": businesses shutting down, people out of work, jobs and communities destroyed. And this isn't just a social disaster, but an economic one:

BCG estimates that once big users like Methanex and Ballance have exited, every petajoule of additional gas demand destruction hits GDP harder and harder - about $400m for the first PJ, up to $700m for the tenth. Losing 5 PJ could wipe out around $3b of GDP a year; 10 PJ, around $7.3b, or nearly two percent of total GDP.

Compare that with the supposedly horrific cost of 0.5% of GDP in 2035 which the regime is using as a justification to gut methane targets and you really have to wonder what they're thinking.

And all of this is completely avoidable. As the article points out, $200 million of government co-investment can decarbonise 10-20PJ of industrial gas use. A one-off investment of $200 million to avoid $7.3 billion a year of loss. Which should be a complete no-brainer - its like paying $20 a year to insure your house. But this regime is so cheaparse / corrupt / ideological that they'd rather destroy half of small-town Aotearoa than admit climate change exists and that they need to do something about it.

If we want action on this, we need regime-change. Whether the regime's voter suppression allows that remains to be seen.

Update: Removed sentence based on a mathematical error.

Parliament shuts out the people

Yesterday there was a small protest in Parliament. The protest was caused by months of inaction by the New Zealand state to Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza. It was greeted with seeming amusement by Speaker Gerry Brownlee, disrupted proceedings for a minute or two, and then Parliament moved on.

Today, Brownlee has responded by locking out the public for the rest of the year, preventing people from directly watching at the very moment the regime is ramming through its unpopular agenda - including climate arson, Shame Jones' corrupt fast-track bulldozer, and Paul Goldsmith's voter suppression law - under urgency. This is what National calls "democracy": legislating behind closed doors, using urgency to prevent even a pretence of "consultation", to ram their agenda through and stomp on our faces.

This has an obvious cost to the social licence and legitimacy of both parliament and the state. And if people are wondering why people are attacking electorate offices, maybe parliament should look in the mirror, at what it is doing and how it is doing it, before it complains too loudly.

Climate Change: A regime of arsonists

The House is in urgency today to ram through the regime's bill to weaken our methane targets and decouple ETS settings from our international commitments. The bill is a terrible idea, and it turns out that the public service was not afraid to say so:

Officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment advised that the commission's recommendations were the least feasible of all the options, "due to the significant policy change, market drivers, and private sector action required to achieve the technological uptake and system shifts".

However, they also warned that the lower end of the government's preferred target could be seen as "inconsistent" with New Zealand's obligations under the Paris Agreement.

[...]

"If the lower end of the target (14 percent) is achieved, it will increase the warming caused by New Zealand by [about] 3.3 per cent by 2050 and by [about] 6.2 per cent by 2100 when compared with our current trajectory."

Lowering the target could also "dampen the ambition of mitigation actions and behaviours, including investment decisions by businesses".

Basically this is an act of pure arson by a regime that would rather than planey burned than see its donors and cronies inconvenienced in any way. But while they may not be inconvenienced by regulation, at least for as long as this regime lasts, they are sure as hell going to be inconvenienced by the fires, floods, and droughts that will result from this stupid policy. But I guess they'll just stick their hand out and expect the rest of us to bail them out when they are hit by the inevitable consequences of their own short-sightedness as well.

The next government is obviously going to have to repeal this. But they're going to have to go further, and make farmers pay their way, by bringing them into the ETS at the processor level with no subsidies. Farmers have had over 20 years now to adopt lower-emissions methods; if they have refused to do so, then that is a poor economic decision, and it should be them, rather than us, who pay the cost of it. The cities should no longer be subsidising them, or pandering to their backward, arsonist ideology.

A rubberstamp for Shane Jones' bulldozer

Last month, the Environment Committee caused outrage by allowing only ten days for public submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill. At the time, I pointed out how this was an abuse of the parliamentary process, a ratfucking of our democracy which did not give submitters sufficient time to make the "high-quality" submissions elitist Ministers supposedly want, and which would undermine the legitimacy of parliament and the state.

The committee has now reported back on the bill, approving it despite 95% of submissions being opposed. They've recommended no changes, because they simply didn't give themselves time to do so, and because it has emerged that the bill is still being written: the regime plans to introduce substantial amendments at the committee stage, without even a pretence of public consultation or democratic process.

This isn't "consideration" or "scrutiny" of legislation - it's a rubberstamp for executive autocracy. And it's not "government by consent" - it's simply a naked exercise of power, to bulldoze through corrupt legislation and ensure that Shame Jones gets his payoffs. Which probably makes Jones and Bishop feel big and hard and powerful, but there's a cost to bulldozing through democracy like this. And now that the regime has bulldozed through the democratic limits to pass their law, opponents of both it and any specific projects rubberstamped may not feel constrained by thse limits in their methods of opposition. Which isn't great for our democracy or our society. But I guess the regime simply regards that as a problem for next quarter...

Companies who buy "consents" under this law should not expect either the next government or the public to treat them as legitimate. And the next government should legislatively nullify every single one of them under urgency. Because a bulldozer works both ways, and having driven it through our parliamentary process, Jones and co can hardly cry foul when someone else seizes control, kicks him off, and reverses it back over him and his mates.

Climate Change: National rejects ambition

Late last year He Pou a Rangi Climate Commission reviewed our climate change targets, including whether to start including a share of shipping and aviation emissions in them. Their analysis showed that we could move further and faster and were likely to meet our existing targets a decade early. As a result, they recommended including aviation and shipping, and that our overall targets be strengthened, to -20 million tons of long-lived gases by and a 35% - 47% reduction in biogenic methane by 2050.

National was legally required to respond to these recommendations, and a year later, they finally have. Their response? Fuck that! Let the planet burn!

The government has rejected all of the Climate Change Commission's recommendations to strengthen New Zealand's emissions targets.

The move comes despite the Commission warning the effects of climate change are hitting New Zealand sooner and more severely than expected, and that New Zealand can and should be doing more.

[...]

The government acknowledged strengthened targets would help with efforts to limit global warming.

There also would have been co-benefits from a stronger target, including greater energy security and improved health outcomes, the response said. However, its analysis showed that would come at an economic cost to New Zealand.

So they're going to leave us to pay the economic costs of perpetual storms, floods, droughts, and fires instead.

Its unclear if this is driven by pure climate change denial, or a cynical desire to be able to criticise the next government when they do the necessary, responsible thing and adopt these strengthened targets and the policies required to meet them. Neither is acceptable. This is not the action of a responsible party governing for the long-term. As with their decision to renege on Paris, is is the action of a dogshit vandal regime, intent on ratfucking us out of a better future. The quicker we throw these scum out of office, the better.

Climate Change: A year of failed auctions

The final ETS auction of the year was held today, resulting in another failure. No-one bid, no units were sold, and so the year's entire allocation - 6 million tons, plus 7.1 million tons of cost-containment reserve - goes in the trash. Broadly speaking, because National destroyed confidence in the durability of climate policy, crashing the carbon price to ~$40/ton, well below the auction's reserve level.

The good news is that that unsold carbon won't be burned, and won't be reintroduced to the system in future auction allocations. Its gone for good. Which, insofar as ETS allocations reflect our desired emissions pathway and/or actual future emissions, is a good thing. But its not how the ETS is meant to function, and an artificially low carbon price set by political expectations is not going to provide a financial incentive for polluters to decarbonise. Instead, it does the opposite: encourage them to keep on polluting. Which is not a good thing at all.

On the other hand, if its all about political expectations now, maybe the opposition parties - who if we remain a democracy will be in power some day (and hopefully sooner rather than later) - should just start setting them directly. They've already signalled that the gas industry has no future, by announcing the intention to restore the drilling ban. Maybe they should start setting similarly direct expectations for coal users, or for fossil cars, or for our biggest polluter agriculture? Or would that be too great a departure from capitalist orthodoxy for the "Labour" party?