As expected

Back in May, we learned that National MP David MacLeod had "forgotten" to declare $178,000 in electoral donations. Filing a donation return which is false in any material particular is a crime, and the Electoral Commission has now referred MacLeod to police, since they're the only people who are allowed to prosecute.

...and now, as expected, the police have ended the investigation and declared that they will take no further action. This is effectively a strict liability offence - while MacLeod may not have had any intention to mislead, he also clearly did not take all reasonable steps to ensure his declaration was accurate - so the police are once again deciding to ignore the law to protect the powerful.

Our democracy deserves better than this. Electoral finance law is a key protection against political corruption, and it needs to be properly enforced. Since the police clearly will not do it, we need to give the job to someone who will: the Electoral Commission.

A post I hope is incorrect

In May, we learned that National MP David MacLeod had "forgotten" to declare $178,000 in electoral donations. Filing a donation return which is false in any material particular is a crime, and the Electoral Commission has now referred MacLeod to police, since they're the only people who are allowed to prosecute.

Sadly, from past incidents, we know how this will go: despite the enormous amount of money involved and the clear threat to the integrity of our political system, the police will ignore it, fail to investigate, drag out the clock, and then say "whoops, too late to bring charges". Or just nakedly go "not in the public interest" (which is police for "he's rich and white and powerful"). They've done it before, and they'll do it again. Which is why we need to take this power off them, and give the Electoral Commission the power to prosecute electoral crime in their own right. Because unlike police, they at least take it seriously, and don't see their primary role as being bodyguards and bootlickers to the powerful.

I desperately hope that this is a post which will prove to be incorrect, and for which I will have to issue a correction. But from the police's past performance, I'm not betting on it.

Unacceptable

That is the only way to describe an MP "forgetting" to declare $178,000 in donations. The amount of money involved - more than five times the candidate spending cap, and two and a half times the median income - is boggling. How do you just "forget" that amount of money? And like Rimmer's recent claim that $34,000 isn't enough money to matter to anyone, it shows how out-of-touch our highly-paid political class has become.

The MP - National's David MacLeod - says that it is because he misunderstood the law. Which really makes you worry about whether he is properly understanding the laws he is voting on. He has been stood down from his committee positions, but it is not enough. Because filing a false donation return isn't just a mistake - it is a crime. And one that is utterly inconsistent with remaining in Parliament. MacLeod should resign. If he does not, it will tell us something significant about his, and his party's, attitude to electoral fraud.

National hates democracy

Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it another way, to stop 110,000 people - almost 4% of last year's turnout - from voting. These people are mostly people who thought they were on the roll, and didn't realise they'd been removed - so, not exactly culpable. And with renters forced to move increasingly frequently so their landleeches can raise the rent and steal their bond, you can draw some obvious conclusions about who these voters might be, and why National, the party of landleeches, wouldn't want them to vote.

Naked partisan reasons aside, the actual problem here is that the Electoral Commission weirdly didn't expect such a large number of people to have to enrol on election day, and so didn't have enough staff to process them all quickly. But the proper solution to that in a democracy is to resource them properly. The fact that National instinctively moves to stop people voting tells us that they don't want us to be a democracy - at least, not one which includes everyone.

Bought and paid for

Candidate donation returns for the 2023 election are out, and surprise, surprise - Shane Jones has been taking money from the industries he is now responsible for regulating:

Newly released donation information for 2023 election candidates show the Fisheries Minister received $5000 from West Food Seafood (Westfleet Seafoods Limited).

Earlier this month, Westfleet chief executive and shareholder Craig Boote was one of the industry leaders lobbying Jones to review policy around cameras, catch limits, bottom trawling and immigration waivers at an exclusive wine and oysters function.

[...]

Fisheries wasn’t the only industry to contribute to Jones’ more than $95,500 in candidate donations.

He received $3000 from Northland Forest, $5000 from J Swap – a logistics firm dealing with construction, transport and forestry – as well as $15,000 from high-profile property developer Andrew Krukziener.

[..]

Meanwhile, Jones received $20,000 from Vladimir Barbalich – a Wellington property developer and former financial backer and board member of fringe anti-mandate party Democracy NZ.

And as Minister for Fisheries, Economic Development, and Resources, he'll now be making the rules for the people who oh so generously gave him money (including devising an entirely new corrupt Muldoonist resource consent scheme which will place decisions in the hands of Ministers). But apparently he won't be influenced by it, because $20,000 is just a trivial amount of money to him.

Yeah, right. And if you believe that, I have some fish to sell you.

This sort of corruption undermines trust in government, and calls every decision Ministers make into question. And that alone should be reason to ban it. If we want government decisions to be made on the merits, and no be influenced by bribes, we need to get money out of politics entirely. And if that means politicians can't enrich themselves on the side, and have to be content with their very generous salaries, boo fucking hoo.

(Meanwhile, we also have a foreign-owned mining company blatantly interfering in our politics by buying themselves an independent to kneecap a candidate they didn't like. So I guess we can chalk that up as another fail by the SIS. Or is it only "foreign interference" if its from China?)

A cruel, vicious, nasty government

So, after weeks of negotiations, we finally have a government, with a three-party cabinet and a time-sharing deputy PM arrangement. Newsroom's Marc Daalder has put the various coalition documents online, and I've been reading through them. A few things stand out:

• Luxon doesn't want to do any work, so he hasn't taken a policy portfolio. Which also tells us there's no serious policy agenda he wants to push, and nothing he really cares about beyond the job title and salary. Even Key took tourism. Luxon, who constantyl tells us that he used to run an airline, can't even be bothered with that.
• Shane Jones is Minister of Regional Development again, which basicly makes him Minister for Pork. Given his other famous ministerial role, the jokes write themselves.
• Judith Collins is Attorney-General, so she'll be telling us what the BORA means. I have no confidence that she will properly fulfil her duties under section 7 to advice Parliament whether legislation breaches our human rights.
• The Ministers for Climate Change and the Environment are both outside Cabinet. Which shows us how important National thinks those issues are, despite their centrality to the government's agenda. So are Commerce and Tertiary Education (which tells us how they feel about monopoly-busting and students), and of course Women and Disability Issues.
• The expected ultra-right policies are in there: 90-day trials for all workers, ending Fair Pay Agreements, no-cause evictions, landlord subsidies, viciousness and cruelty in the name of "law and order". Also the expected climate denial (restarting offshore drilling, weakening emissions targets for farmers), and the expected white supremacy around co-governance and Te Tiriti and trying to turn the clock back to the 1950's.
• There's also some more disturbing stuff: "introduce a policy to allow state schools to become partnership schools" - so basicly school privatisation. "Investigate build and lease-back arrangements for new hospitals" - which means UK style PPPs (which were a disaster for everyone but the lenders). "Explore allowing home builders to opt out of needing a building consent provided they have long-term insurance for the building work" - an invitation to a second leaky homes crisis, which will require a permanent warning on the LIM of any house built under such an arrangement.
• National has promised ACT it will send its weirdo "4 year term at random in exchange for vague, easily breakable promises of greater parliamentary scrutiny" bill to select committee, while also promising NZ First that they would support a bill providing for a binding referendum. Rimmer's bill requires one, so this could be the same promise, but it suggests that unaccountability is a bipartisan project and that someone maybe didn't understand someone else's policy agenda.
• Guns will be back of course, and ACT wants to permanently undermine firearms policy by transferring it from police to DIA, where they will have direct ministerial control.
• And then there's the cooker and culture war shit: making university funding contingent on accepting ACT-defined "free speech" (which means freedom for terfs and racists, and a ban on protests against them). "Restore balance to the Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories curriculum" - so back to white supremacist history. A "National Interest Test" for "agreements from the UN". "Investigate the reopening of Marsden Point Refinery" (a weird fixation of the cookers, but its just a hole in the ground now and they'd need to build a new one). Requiring government agencies to be named and communicate primarily in English, and making English an official language, because What About White People?
• ACT will get a "Treaty Principles Bill based on existing ACT policy" sent to select committee ASAP. Existing ACT policy is for a referendum, so they're going to be hugely divisive. And even if National takes the "only to select committee" out to avoid a referendum, the policy agenda makes it clear that they will be gutting Treaty rights and rolling back the clock in other ways, by gutting the Waitangi Tribunal, legislating to override the courts on the foreshore and seabed, and forcing racist local government referenda to remove Māori wards.

All up, this is not an agenda which inspires confidence. Its going to be a cruel, vicious, nasty three years.

Good riddance to authoritarian rubbish

Former spy minister Andrew Little has announced he will not be taking up his list seat in the new parliament. Good. As justice minister he failed to deliver on a promised review of the OIA, as spy minister he presided over a further expansion of spy powers, and as defence minister he over-rode a bipartisan select committee to impose secrecy to protect NZDF war crimes. So I'm not at all sorry to see the back of him.

The downside? He'll be replaced by the next candidate on Labour's list - in this case, Shanan Halbert, who is a known bully. It would be good if he did the decent thing and stood aside too.

The political holiday

Well, the election is done, and the result sucks, but now we're into the interregnum. The outgoing government is in caretaker mode. While there are negotiations to form a new one, nothing is likely to happen until after the specials are counted and the results formalised in early November. So there's no policy, and nothing really but feverish speculation about what Winston will demand. In other words, three weeks' holiday.

I think I might as well make the most of it, because once Parliament sits we'll be straight into the pre-xmas rush of urgent repeals and all-stages bullshit that National traditionally starts government with.

The afternoon after

So, yesterday we voted, and unsurprisingly, the party which stood for nothing and offered nothing lost. Anyone surprised by this clearly hadn't been paying attention - the collapse in Labour's party vote had been clear for the past two months, and while there was a bit of a rally in the last week, it was too little, too late. So, we're stuck with National and ACT - and if the specials go the usual way, they'll be forced into the clammy embrace of Winston, which means its chaos ahoy!

Labour hacks are already blaming the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, both of whom had a very good night, which just shows that the relic status quo party still doesn't understand MMP. As a reminder, electorates don't matter - all that counts is the party vote. And the equation for the left there is that the Greens need to deliver 10%, and Labour 40% (TPM and the wasted vote can fudge these numbers a bit, but that's the basic shape of it). The Greens kept up their end. Labour didn't. This is their loss, and they need to own it, recognise why (I'd start with being a bunch of useless, uninspiring, status quo hacks), and most of all, fix it. But this being the Labour Party, I doubt that will happen. Instead, we'll have three years of them deciding they need to be more centrist and promise even less - and then they'll whine "why does nobody like us?" again.

(That equation above also explains why the Greens are happy: whether they're in government or not is largely up to Labour, so all they can do is deliver their end. They did, plus won a bunch of electorates to build their party's long-term base, and are on-track to have their highest vote ever after the specials. And all after having been in government, breaking the minor-partner curse for the second time. They're also very much playing a long game, but for policy, not power. Its never a good time for a party to be in opposition (and now is a very bad time for the right to be dismantling climate policy) - but its going to happen in a democracy, so its a time to advocate and build. Success or failure will be measured in how far the political consensus shifts towards core green policies in the next three years, not in how many people get ministerial salaries).

I expect the next three years to be vicious, cruel, and stupid - and that's before even considering the divisive effects of ACT's proposed Treaty referendum (which is an invite for social unrest). My hope is that National is forced into the arms of Winston, and then suffers his curse (two out of three governments forced to work with Winston have lost the next election - the exception being Ardern, who was saved by covid). My big worry is that Labour has fucked things up so badly they won't be able to present a credible alternative against even that low bar in three years, and so we'll all suffer the consequences of their uselessness.

The last day

Today is the last day of the 2023 election campaign for now), and after midnight, its illegal for us to talk about politics for a bit - which is likely to be a welcome relief. Its been a gruelling and yet also boring election campaign, in which the status quo parties wanked on about law and order and the size of each other's fiscal holes, while ignoring the murderous cow in the room. There was also the sight of them desperately avoiding appearing next to the smaller parties, for fear that actual ideas might enter the campaign, and even to avoid debating each other. The message I took from it was that the status quo parties were arrogant, irrelevant, cowardly, and had nothing to say to me - at best they were intent on ignoring Aotearoa's real challenges of climate change, inequality, and housing, and in National's case, they wanted to make all of those problems worse.

From the beginning, Labour's sheer cowardice and reluctance to offer anything suggested they wanted to lose, and were going to do so by default. But National's desperate step of ruling Winston in, then their desperate threats to call another election if they had to work with him - a decision not up to them - plus a late rally from Labour means the outcome is a lot less certain. I still think we're likely to get a National-ACT-NZ First coalition of racism, cruelty and chaos out of this, but there's now a slim chance of Labour making it back (in which case I guess we get to see what the long-dreamed-of Labour-Green-Te Pāti Māori coalition will look like in practice). In any case, it looks like the Greens are on track to have a good election, so that voice will be there to demand a better future, even if National and ACT try to burn us all to death. We'll know tomorrow night, or in early November when the specials are counted and the results finalised.

(And if the worst happens, well, any coalition of chaos is likely to be short-lived, and taint the participants thoroughly. So there’s always that to hope for...)

Anyway, at this stage, all I can say is: if you haven't voted: please remember to do so. You can vote at any polling place, and you don't need ID (though having your EasyVote card will make it fractionally quicker). If you're not enrolled, you can do it on the day. Elections are won by those who turn up. So make your voice heard, and vote.

More class warfare

National's tax plan is to cut benefits to give money to landlords. That's bad enough, but it gets worse when you look at how many people are affected. On the one hand, we have 170,000-odd people on jobseeker benefits, who will face reduced living standards. And on the other, we have 300 mega-landlords, who will get a million dollars each:

New analysis released exclusively to Newshub shows a group of 300 landlords are set to become tax-cut millionaires under National's tax plan.

[...]

In 2021, data showed there were 346 landlords who owned at least 200 properties each. The CTU analysis shows those landlords are in for an average tax cut of $1.3m each over five years - the total going to that group: $464m.

"There is no benefit to giving millions of dollars to already wealthy landlords and taking it from disabled people, single mums and others who desperately need every dollar they can get," said CTU economist Craig Renney.

National's grand plan is to steal from the poor to give to the ultra-rich. It is that simple. And that's their basic philosophy of government: rob. Steal. Redistribute upwards, so the mega-landlords and deca-millionaires who used to run airlines get everything. As for the rest of us, the other 99.9%, we're just marks to be robbed and driven into poverty so they and their friends get rich.

Obviously, unless you're a multi-millionaire, don't vote for them or their allies on Saturday.

National's arrogant and contemptuous attitude

Last month, National Party leader Chris Luxon proudly declared that he would work with Winston to oust Labour. Today, his party is trying to threaten another election if he's forced to do what he said he would do:

The National Party has ramped up its efforts to try to stop NZ First holding the balance of power by raising the prospect of a second election, warning there was “a very real and growing possibility” National could not get a deal done, or of a hung parliament.

It comes as polls show it is increasingly likely National will need both NZ First and Act to form a government, despite National leader Christopher Luxon’s pleas to voters to deliver a clear two-party hand to him.

National’s campaign chair Chris Bishop said there was a scenario in which the left and right blocs got 60 seats all - “that chance is a real one and growing.”

“The second scenario is when there is essentially a hung Parliament and NZ First is in the middle, but it is just impossible to do a deal between National, Act and NZ First. That is a very real and growing possibility and that would necessitate, essentially, a second election.”

"Necessitate" is doing a lot of work there. Because it seems there's plenty of negotiation space on all sides for deals to form a government which don't require that at all. But National here is basicly demanding a do-over unless it gets exactly the sort of government it wants, as if the views of voters - and in particular, other voters, which they are forced to consider because MMP requires coalitions - didn't matter at all. It's as if they were saying "no coalitions; we'll go back to the polls unless you give us majority government".

This is an arrogant and contemptuous attitude, both to democracy and their potential coalition partners. And it conflicts fundamentally with the strong convention in Aotearoa that politicians must accept the election result and try and make it work, no matter how much they dislike it. That may mean a weak government which can't do anything (NZ First or ACT providing confidence and supply and nothing else, hamstringing each others' policy agenda). But if that's what we voted for, that's what we get. And if the politicians want something better, they need to make it work, and find some common ground. Jim Bolger could do that. Helen Clark could as well. So could Jacinda Ardern. Today, Chris Bishop is saying that National can't - or won't.

(And even if they apparently can, he's just signalled an intention to call a new election at the first excuse. I don't think Winston will take kindly to that threat. Demanding UK-style legislation to protect against such abuse unless a supermajority of parliament votes for an early election seems to be an obvious coalition demand).

If National's coalition of chaos negotiations fall apart, and Winston doesn't respond by offering confidence and supply to Labour as a "fuck you", and National gets its way and forces people back to the polls, I doubt people will be happy. Voters punish Prime Ministers who try and game the system by calling a snap election (Muldoon, Clark); I expect the punishment for those who try and game it even more by forcing a do-over because they don't like our choices to be even more severe.

The police do not care about election violence

At least, not if it targets Māori, apparently. That's the obvious conclusion from this morning's news that Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke was targeted by a second home invasion yesterday, by a high profile National Party supporter, and all the police did was issue a trespass notice:

Party president John Tamihere said the person involved in the latest incident was "an elderly Pākehā man" who was a well-known advocate and campaigner for the National Party, and the incident was politically motivated.

"Huntly's a small town, and what he wasn't aware of is that whānau were in residence when Hana on her schedule on her facebook page was out campaigning. When he entered the house and was confronted he advised 'oh I thought Hana was out on the campaign trail'," he told Morning Report.

"He then fled the scene and was followed to his house in Huntly, his house has National Party hoardings on it ... these are facts."

Police trespassed the man and could have laid a criminal charge of unlawful entry but had chosen not to, he said, so the party would be seeking further action.

You'd think, given the past targeting of Maipi-Clarke, with burglaries, vandalism, home invasion, and threats, they might take the issue a bit seriously, as a way of protecting the integrity of the electoral process. But no. But we all know it would have been a very different story had the races of the perpetrator and victim been reversed...

The public deserve better than this. Sadly, it seems like the NZ police are just utterly unreformable.

The duopoly's contempt for voters

Over the weekend we learned that Chris Hipkins has Covid, and so would not be able to participate in The Press's leader's debate (which was scheduled for last night). Labour and national then proceeded to bicker over rescheduling and substitutes, with Chris Luxon desperately trying to avoid another appearance (since he came off so badly in the last one). The Press meanwhile read the room, said "screw this", and invited all party leaders for a proper debate, so that voters could see all the options, as well as how they got along. So naturally, the status quo duopoly refused to participate:

After postponing, The Press invited the leaders of every party tracking to return to Parliament to a debate next week.

Leaders of NZ First, the Greens, ACT and Te Pāti Māori have accepted.

They will face The Press and a crowd of more than 2000 people at the Christchurch Town Hall, on Tuesday, October 10. This will be the final power brokers debate before polling day.

Hipkins, who said he wanted to debate Luxon at The Press debate next week, declined to face the other parties.

[...]

In Christchurch on Tuesday, Luxon stood by his decision not to return for a rescheduled debate with Hipkins. Labour has published photos of Luxon dressed as a chicken, saying he’s trying to wriggle out of debates.

This is simply utter contempt for voters. Hipkins and Luxon supposedly want to be Prime Minister. But they won't front up to face the public - or their potential coalition partners. And the natural conclusion is because they fear being shown up by the far superior offerings (both policywise and of leadership) from the smaller parties. It is arrogant and undemocratic. And then they wonder why people call them a political elite...

And its particularly stupid from Hipkins, who now needs all the exposure he can get. And with Labour polling so low its practically a minor party itself, and looking to lose core MPs, you'd think he'd be trying to save them.

Labour still protecting the status quo

Aotearoa has a cost of living crisis. And one of the major drivers of this crisis is the supermarket duopoly, who gouge every dollar they can out of us. Last year, the Commerce Commission found that the duopoly was in fact anti-competititve, giving the government social licence to fix the problem. Instead, Labour decided to protect the status quo, by slow-walking minor changes which will do sweet fuck-all. But now there's an election, so suddenly they're promising action:

If Labour is returned to government, it says it could look to finance new grocery retailers setting up business in New Zealand in a bid to cut the price of groceries and increase competition.

Consumer Affairs spokesperson Duncan Webb said in Auckland on Monday that Labour would back credible companies wanting to get into or expand in the New Zealand grocery business.

“This could include finance, making sure land is available, regulatory changes, incubating innovation and accelerating competition,” he said.

“We need to go further than we have to date to force the type of competition shoppers overseas experience.”

While I appreciate the sentiment, the timing on this is utterly cynical, effectively holding something they should have been doing anyway hostage to electoral outcomes in an effort to grub votes. But in addition to that, it's also weaksauce. The duopoly has already crushed efforts by others to enter the market, and looks likely to continue, even if they are backed by Labour market buzzwords. So even when they're trying to appear to do something, Labour are also still trying to protect the status quo and its unjust profits.

As I said, its weak. The supermarket dupoly is a scourge, and there is an obvious solution: break it up. Force the duopolists to split into two companies each, and limit them from growing too much. Any party which proposes anything less is simply not serious about the problem.

And after that, do the banks...

Pure class warfare

National unveiled its fiscal policy today, announcing all the usual things which business cares about and I don't. But it did finally tell us how National plans to pay for its handouts to landlords: by effectively cutting benefits:

The biggest saving announced on Friday was $2b cut from the amount forecast to be spent on benefits over the four-year forecast period.

In 2019, Labour indexed benefits to wages, rather than CPI inflation, meaning benefit levels increase more quickly. New Zealand’s main benefit, superannuation, is indexed to wages too.

National wants to change this back, costing someone receiving the basic rate of jobseeker $33 a week by the end of the forecast period. The benefit payments will still go up, but not by as much.

"Still go up, but not by as much" nicely obscures the fact that this is effectively a cut, made worse by the fact that poor see higher inflation than the rich because of what they buy.

So, National's plan is to rip $2 billion directly out of the pockets of the poorest kiwis, in order to give that money to rich landlords. There is a name for that: it is pure class warfare.

Competing on cruelty

The right-wing message calendar is clearly reading "cruelty" today, because both National and NZ First have released beneficiary-bashing policies. National is promising a "traffic light" system to police and kick beneficiaries, which will no doubt be accompanied by arbitrary internal targets to classify people as "orange" or "red" to keep the police and kickers busy (and cut costs). Meanwhile, Winston, a zombie sitting pretty on his UBI, has announced a two year lifetime time limit on jobseeker benefits.

This is pretty dubious for unemployment, equating to a 4.4% working lifetime average unemployment rate. How the Reserve Bank feels about that is unclear, but given that their job is literally periodically throwing people out of work to save rich people's yacht money "the economy", their opinion seems kindof important. Its also unclear how it would survive a s19 BORA challenge for indirect discrimination, given that some groups suffer higher unemployment due to systematic discrimination, and therefore can be expected to have a higher lifetime average unemployment rate and so be harshly impacted by the policy. But jobseeker benefits are also for disabled people, and there Winston's policy descends into pure nonsense. A two year lifetime limit on permanent disability? What part of "permanent" do you not understand?

But then, its not supposed to make sense, let alone work. It's just supposed to be performatively cruel, to attract the votes of vicious arseholes who can only feel good from the suffering of those "below" them. And when some other government has to clean up the resulting social mess, that's all the better, because that can then be criticised as "cuddles" and "waste", and they're off for another round on the cruelty wagon (which is probably a Ford Ranger).

It is appalling that in just six short years we've gone from "kindness" to parties competing on viciousness. And it really makes you wonder about what is wrong with our political class, that it produces so many vicious arseholes. And what is wrong with us, that people keep voting for them.

A pallid shade of Green III

Clearly Labour's focus groups are telling it that it needs to pay more attention to climate change - because hot on the heels of their weaksauce energy efficiency pilot programme and not-great-but-better-than-nothing solar grants, they've released a full climate manifesto. Unfortunately, the core policies in it - a second Emissions Reduction Plan, more renewable energy, more money for "research" and the Green Investment Finance fund, plus listening to the Climate Commission on the ETS - is all basicly business as usual. The first and last are both legal commitments, actually required by statute, while the middle is just BAU meh. Meanwhile, the cow in the room is conspicuous by its absence - meaning Labour is still refusing to do anything at all about our biggest polluter.

This is orders of magnitude better than National's "repeal all the policies, make some handwavy noises about electricity" excuse for policy, but its also vastly less than what is required. Labour doesn't deserve a cookie for promising to do the absolute minimum (and not even reverse their previous cuts to climate funding). If you want real climate action, you really need to vote for a party that promises it: Te Pāti Māori or the Greens.

A coalition of racism, cruelty, and chaos

Today's big political news is that after months of wibbling, National's Chris Luxon has finally confirmed that he is willing to work with Winston Peters to become Prime Minister. Which is expected, but I guess it tells us something about which way the polls are going. Which raises the question: what would a National - ACT - NZ First government (or governing arrangement) look like anyway? First, it would be unspeakably awful. Second, it would be total chaos.

On the first front, there are three things National, ACT, and NZ First all agree on: racism, cruelty, and climate denial. They all (with varying degrees of intensity) want to shit on Māori and roll back the real progress we've seen in empowering them. While National might not want to go the full ACT and have a referendum on our founding constitutional document (whose repudiation would mean that Pakeha would literally have no right to be here), they're certainly wanting to roll back co-governance, limit consultation, and generally disempower Māori, because they see all of these things as barriers to rich people getting to do whatever they want "economic growth". On cruelty, all three parties are basicly singing from the same song sheet on "law and order", which means harsher sentences, more criminalisation, and billions wasted on new prisons to cope with the victims (and billions more wasted on the social cleanup of mass criminalisation). And on climate denial, ACT and NZ First are explicitly denier, while National is denier but knows that doesn't sell well to the public, and so merely wants to repeal almost all climate policy and return to the "good old days" of setting targets and doing nothing to meet them. So "repeal and do nothing" will end up being the policy, which will then result in the inevitable criticism from the Climate Commission and lawsuit for failing to follow the Zero Carbon Act, until the government repeals the latter to shut down the legal challenges. At which stage they get to explain themselves to the EU and other trade partners and try and convince them why they shouldn't tear up our FTAs given that we just have...

That's a terrible policy agenda which would be terrible for Aotearoa. Racism and cruelty are Not Good, and ignoring our biggest problem is going to see more people killed and more communities destroyed. We will all suffer under such a government.

The bright side, insofar as there is one, is that they will suffer too. Because while the three parties agree on racism, cruelty and climate denial, they disagree on practically everything else. National plus ACT would mean a radical neoliberal government, slashing taxes, sacking public servants, and privatising everything in an awful rerun of the early 1990's. Winston will veto all that. Ditto raising the superannuation age, benefit cuts, or cuts to the minimum wage. Labour's experience from 2017 to 2020 is a useful guide here: Winston nuked anything that wasn't explicitly agreed in his coalition agreement, often at short notice with no consultation. ACT will hate being thwarted like that. And with Rimmer already making noises about holding the government to ransom over every budget, its likely to end in tears.

(Note that this analysis applies regardless of what sort of governing arrangement is ultimately agreed between the three parties. Its possible that National tries minority government, with support from the other two, rather than trying to manage two bitter enemies around the cabinet table. It doesn't matter, because this is about what there's a majority to legislate on. And if the numbers are such that they force Luxon into the arms of Winston, it means that there just won't be a parliamentary majority for any of ACTs economic agenda...)

So, it would be awful, and we'd all suffer. But they'd suffer too, and it might not last beyond a term (pre-2020, I'd have said Winston was cursed, in that anyone who went into government with him lost the next election. 2020 was not a normal election though, so the curse may still hold). And if things are going to be awful, I'll take my grim satisfaction where I can. If people really are going to vote for us to all burn to death, I can at least derive some amusement by watching their racist cooker climate denier government tear itself apart.

Climate Change: National's policy for failure

We already know that the National Party are de facto climate change deniers who want to reverse virtually all climate change policy. So how do they think they'll cut emissions? According to their climate change spokesperson, polluting corporations will do it out of the goodness of their hearts:

The National Party won’t use subsidies to incentivise companies and families to buy EVs and fossil-free equipment because “social obligation” would fill the gap, its climate spokesperson Simon Watts has said.

Asked about the party’s criticism of the Government’s heaviest-hitting emissions policies at the Climate Change & Business Conference this week, Watts indicated ministerial pressure might replace them.

“Let’s be clear, if you’re making a couple of billion bucks a year, then I think you’ve got a social licence to do what you need to do in order to reduce emissions,” he added.

If taken at face value (rather than just as a cloak for more denial), this is at best dangerously naive wishful thinking. Polluting companies have had twenty years of increasing pressure to reduce emissions. Where they've done so, it's been because there has been policy imposing emissions charges or providing subsidies to align incentives with that social goal, or just directly regulating emissions to reduce them. How do we know this? Because in the agricultural sector, which has faced social pressure but - thanks to climate quislings like National and Labour - has had no policy to impose costs or subsidies transition or regulate emissions down, emissions haven't really dropped at all (and the sector continues to ferociously resist any effort to do so). So basicly National's "policy" would extend the agricultural sectors failure to reduce emissions to transport, energy, industry, and all other sectors of the economy. And at a time when the planet is literally on fire, that is downright dangerous.