Is petitioning parliament effective?

Aotearoa is ostensibly a democracy, and in a democracy there is a spectrum of methods you can use to register discontent, from writing letters to the media or starting a blog, to organising protests to occupations to civil disobedience to smashing and burning stuff. One of the tactics pushed by politically institutionalised people is petitioning parliament. But is it effective?

In the past, Parliament would take your petition, and assign it to the most relevant select committee, who would basically ignore it, before producing a three-line "report" where they said they had "no issues to bring to the attention of the House". But one of the major reforms of the current parliament was to introduce a specialist Petitions Committee, whose job was basically to hear these things. And as a result, petitions are more likely to actually get looked at. While some are still quickly dismissed, petitioners are more likely to at least be asked to give evidence on their petitions, and agencies and other groups are more likely to give a response, which the committee weighs. And the committee is more likely to make formal recommendations, which the government has to respond to. Sometimes, the government just says "go fuck yourself" in its usual, evidence-free way. But usually their response at least looks like they're taking the issue seriously, and promises action of some sort at some stage in the future.

So how does that work out? Unlike the old system, the Petitions Committee actually does followup, reviewing the government's actions against what it promised. Their latest report on this was released yesterday, and its dismal. Of 9 petitions reviewed, the government had failed to keep its promises on 5 of them:

• A 2024 petition to limit light pollution resulted in recommendations to immediately develop national guidelines on the matter. The government responded that it wasn't going to do that, but that MfE and MBIE were investigating how to gain accreditation as a "dark sky" nation. But it turns out they hadn't done anything beyond sending an initial letter - a perfect example of how agencies inflate what they're doing to prevent action.
• In 2025 the committee recommended that MPI the use of shock collars on dogs. The government said it would do this as part of a review that the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee was doing at the time. Associate Agriculture Minister Andrew Hoggard then killed that work in favour of changing animal welfare codes for livestock instead. MPI promises that it will be done "as soon as the NAWAC work programme allows", but that doesn't appear to be any time soon.
• Around the same time, the committee made a similar recommendation to review the use of "virtual fencing" for cattle. MPI said that the relevant animal welfare code was being reviewed (see above). They then promised it would be released in 2026. It hasn't been yet.
• In 2025 the committee recommended the the government prioritise a survey and risk assessment of the RMS Niagara - a major environmental disaster waiting to happen. The government promised it would "continue to monitor the situation", but didn't fund any actual monitoring, so none happened. Presumably, their plan is to simply read the news to find out when oil starts washing up on Auckland's beaches.
• In 2025 the committee recommended the government review gambling advertising. The government said it would, then folded that work into existing work on online gambling. So advertising for online gambling was regulated, but not advertising for offline gambling. Another example of how the public service avoids work, pretending existing work is what is wanted, rather than actually looking at the request.

In addition, there are two followup reports on earlier petitions, which outline continued non-compliance by the government. So that's 7/11 failures.

The overall conclusion has to be that petitioning parliament is not effective. While things are better than they used to be, when the petitions committee makes recommendations, they are overwhelmingly either rejected or ignored. But at least we know this now - under the previous system there was no followup (because committees had too much other stuff to do and did not regard petitions as a priority), and so no feedback.

As for what can be done about it, I think the petitions committee needs to be more aggressive about policing its recommendations, and start summoning Ministers and officials to question them about their implementation (or non-implementation). Because both clearly hold the petitions system, petitioners, and parliament in contempt, and the latter is something parliament can not afford to tolerate.

As for those considering a petition, looking at this record, I'd suggest not wasting your time. Politely asking power to be nice and reasonable does not work. The only value in a petition is to highlight an issue to build support for less polite action.

So when is he resigning?

Today, the Privileges Committee found that MBIE chief executive Nic Blakeley and former Deputy Secretary of Immigration Alison McDonald deliberately misled Parliament, by knowingly withholding information from a select committee conducting a review of ImmigrationNZ. Which invites the obvious question: when is Blakeley resigning?

As the committee noted in its report,

officials appearing before select committees have an absolute obligation to tell the truth. Being truthful, responsible, and acting in good faith is the very essence of public service. To fail to meet these obligations is an insult to the entire public service.

Public servants lying to Parliament fundamentally undermines Parliament's ability to perform its function of scrutinising the executive and holding it to account for its expenditure of public funds. It is fundamentally incompatible with both the values of the public service, and our constitutional system of government. It is simply untenable for a public servant who has been found to have deliberately misled Parliament to remain in their position. So, again: when is he resigning? And if he's not going to, when will the Public Service Commissioner fire him? Or are we going to be treated to another public spectacle of elite impunity, which will further degrade both our democracy and our public service?

Update: So, Blakeley offered his resignation, both to the Public Service Commissioner when the matter first arose, and today to the Minister. Both refused. I guess if they allowed him to do the proper thing, then people might expect them to do the same in the future, and they can't be having that. So instead, we get impunity.

No way to run a country

Twenty years ago I joined a protest march over the Manawatū River. Fonterra and local farmers were using the river as a sewer, making it one of the most polluted in the western world, and people were sick of it. The march was a success: the state of the river became a serious issue in subsequent local body elections, and Horizons, the regional council was forced to act. They began a series of public consultations on cleaning up the river, and in 2010 they introduced the One Plan, which set limits for pollution, particularly nitrogen.

Basically, farmers wouldn't be allowed to shit in the river anymore, and they hated it. So they engaged in their usual tactic of predatory delay, dragging the plan through the courts on any excuse in an effort to prevent its implementation. But their appeals backfired, with the Environment Court strengthening the plan and the High Court upholding that. Even then, Horizons tried to rubberstamp pollution, until the courts stopped that as well, and made them actually enforce the law. But the Council's reliance on a tool called Overseer to calculate nitrogen loads caused further litigation, which eventually resulted in a change to the plan.

Which brings us to "Plan Change 2". It updates the nitrogen limits in the One Plan to account for Overseer's software change, and sets out pathways by which farmers who currently exceed them can get temporary consents. Like the One Plan itself, its the result of a careful process of consultation and consensus-building, and has been approved by the Environment Court. It should be becoming active any time soon. But it won't - because the regime has decide to simply overturn it by legislative fiat to protect its donors and cronies and let them keep on shitting in the river. Twenty years of democratic action and tens of millions of dollars in planning costs and legal fees gone, because one man - Andrew Hoggard - never liked the outcome, and decided to abuse his ministerial position to put his thumb on the scale, outside the normal process.

It's not just the One Plan - Hoggard will also be over-ruling Waikato Regional Council's similarly long-consulted rules to protect the Waikato, outraging Tainui (who view it as undermining their Treaty settlement). Its not just rivers - they're also stomping all over local councils who, after consulting their communities in accordance with the law, decided to use the RMA to regulate inshore fishing to mitigate its destructive effects. And it continues a trend displayed on climate change, transport, Māori representation, of the Beehive arbitrarily overturning court decisions and/or well-consulted local government decisions to impose their own views from above, without consultation or evidence, usually at the behest of some deep-pocketed industry lobby and tens of thousands of dollars in "donations". That's just how this regime operates. Its an affront to democracy, the rule of law, and local decision-making. Instead, we have arrogance, dictatorship and corruption.

This is no way to run a country. Local decision-making should mean exactly that. We can't have our lives micromanaged by Wellington, intruding into our lives and vetoing our decisions at the behest of lobbyists or their own weirdo freak ideology.

We need to overthrow this regime. Vote it out in November, prosecute those responsible for their corrupt practices and ban them from office, and reform the system so that it cannot happen again.

National channels Orban

Last year, at the behest of its Five Eyes "allies", the regime passed a tyrannical anti-"foreign interference" law, criminalising "improper conduct" on behalf of a "foreign power". The law effectively allows the regime to criminalise anyone based on its own fantasies and misconceptions, and would have outlawed virtually every major protest movement in Aotearoa's history. It is a horrific assault on our democracy. And the National Party thinks it didn't go far enough.

National's Tim van de Molen has introduced a new Foreign Influence Transparency Bill to the ballot. The TL;DR is that it requires "foreign agents" to register. Sounds pretty mild, right? Except that when you unpack it, its even more horrific than than the "foreign interference" law.

Who needs to register? Anyone conducting any "political influence activity that they are directed to undertake by a foreign principal". Unpacking this:

• A "foreign principal" is a foreign government, a foreign political organisation, a foreign public enterprise, or an entity acting on their behalf. This is not the same definition as used in the "foreign interference" clauses of the Crimes Act - it is both broader and narrower, excluding some "foreign public officials" and all government-supporting companies, but including "foreign political organisations", which encompass not just governing political parties and their agencies (which are in the foreign interference law), but also

  any political party, political movement, or other organisation operating in a country or territory outside New Zealand that has as one of its primary purposes the participation in, or influence of, political processes or public office in that country or territory

  In other words, any formal or informal political group, and any NGO engaged in "politics". Which basically means everything: any non-NZ environmental, human rights, consumer rights or privacy NGO. It also covers international political groupings such as the Global Greens, Socialist International, International Democracy Union, and foreign think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, and the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation. The Atlas network is absolutely covered.
• "Directed" means requests as well as instructions. It likely covers the sharing of common tactics and strategies.
• "political influence activity" is where it really gets weird, covering not just formal lobbying, but also "communicating to the new Zealand public" about any election, bill, policy, or exercise of power; as well as "organising, coordinating, or funding any campaign, network, or activity" to mobilise individuals to lobby or protest or attend meetings, as well as collecting information to tailor activities. In the Crimes Act, there's specific protection for engaging in protest, advocacy, or dissent. Here, those things are specifically covered.

So basically any democratic activity which can be imagined to be connected to a "foreign principal" requires registration. All NZ political parties will be required to register, because they are members of international networks. So will most major NGOs. Because this is the modern world, with easy travel and the internet, and we talk to each other, share problems and tactics and what-worked-in-our-country and maybe-you-could-try-this, and that's apparently suddenly suspicious and foreign and practically seditious.

People engaged in these activities would be required to register. Failing to register or providing false or misleading information is an offence punishable by two years in jail (which is... pretty severe for an administrative offence – the same penalty for fixing an election!) There are open-ended administrative search powers, not subject to judicial oversight, to allow the registrar to investigate suspected offences. Finally, the government can designate “specified foreign powers” as posing an “enhanced risk” on very broad criteria, though this doesn’t seem to have any actual effect. Finally, every election candidate must be vetted against the register to see if they are on it, and the government must publish a gazette notice identifying them, the foreign principal, and the registrable activity. In other words, legally required state propaganda against candidates the regime doesn’t like.

Meanwhile, look at who is not covered:

• Billionaires: they're not governments, so they can do as much lobbying, electoral manipulation, and influence-buying as they want.
• Foreign corporations: These routinely engage in "political influence activity" in Aotearoa - witness the "grassroots" campaigns by dairy owners against tobacco regulation, or in favour of Pharmac buying the latest expensive new drug, or just the regular lobbying by the oil and gas or money laundering industries. This is all aimed at changing law or influencing the exercise of government power. But apparently its all OK because its "just business". But actual grassroots organisations - Amnesty, Greenpeace - are not.
• Diplomatic activity: foreign governments and groups like the Five Eyes (and all its spinoffs) get to lobby us to change our intellectual property laws, our privacy laws, outlaw encryption, criminalise protest, or indeed pass laws like this. But they get to be exempt from them.

While this is a member’s bill, being put in the ballot means it has the backing of the National caucus. They are all on board with this.

If this all seems awfully familiar, its because its a basic part of the "illiberal democracy" pioneered by Victor Orban in Hungary, and indeed of Russian tyranny. Call your enemies "foreign agents". Demand they register. Use the registrar to force searches and gather intelligence. Then jail them or shut them down. And while van de Molen points to similar laws passed by "like-minded liberal democracies" such as the UK and Australia, I would instead classify them as democratic backsliders hellbent on reintroducing tyranny.

These are not countries we want to be like. If this bill is drawn, it must be rejected.

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.

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.

His place is in Parliament

Its 100 days to the election, so NZ First is going all-in on gutter racism to whip up its base of racist zombies. First, we had Winston Peters telling Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan to "go back to your own country", and now we have Shame Jones saying he should "know his place". Both of which are just fucking boggling. Xu-Nan has lived here since he was eight, and is a New Zealand citizen. Aotearoa is his country. He belongs here just as much as any other kiwi. As for Winston's suggestion that he opposes democracy because of his ethnicity, I think he's shown a far greater commitment to it than the urgency-abusing, vote-suppressing, racist zombie currently serving as foreign minister. Not least because he's part of an actually democratic party, where power is held by the members, rather than one which is an autocracy where all decisions are made by a withered corpse smothered in hair gel.

As for "knowing his place", the implicit assumption here is that there is a natural hierarchy in Aotearoa in which some people are or ought to be in charge, and others should be subservient and not question them. And I think when you put it that nakedly, most New Zealanders would have a very simple response to that proposition: fuck that. And fuck the parties who advocate it. Lawrence Xu-Nan is a kiwi who was elected to Parliament by Green voters. His place is in the House.

In a democracy, everyone gets to vote

Its election year, so Winston is back on his bullshit, spewing racism in an effort to pander to his voting base of mostly old, mostly white racists. His latest idea? That only citizens should be allowed to vote:

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has announced a policy to restrict voting rights to only those with New Zealand citizenship.

Peters announced the policy at a public meeting in Warkworth on Sunday afternoon.

Currently, legal residents living in New Zealand continuously for a year or more, and whose visa does not require them to leave within a certain time are eligible to vote.

Announcing his new policy on Sunday, party leader Peters said voting "should be a privilege of those who have sworn allegiance to New Zealand, and who have made the commitment to make New Zealand their home and their future".

"If you haven't made that commitment or sworn that allegiance, we are happy to let you live here permanently, but why should you get a say in how this country is run or governed?" he said.

To which the short answer is "because they live here, you disgusting zombie".

The longer answer is that Aotearoa has a long tradition of recognising that everyone who lives here should have a say in the future of this place. Its been the case for over 50 years now, and its part of our democracy. And one of the reasons for it is that we were late to establish our own citizenship, and thus had to deal with a huge population of migrants from the old imperial center, who had made lives here, belonged here, but never had to do any formal paperwork to do so. And so, when we had to seriously grapple with that in the 1970's (thanks to Britain deciding that people it had invaded and oppressed and passed laws saying they were British whether they liked it or not, suddenly weren't British after all, especially if they might actually want to exercise their right to live in Britain), the easiest way of doing so was simply to delete the words "He is a British subject" from the 1956 Electoral Act, reducing the qualification to simply being "ordinarily resident in New Zealand" (plus the usual stuff about living here for a year and in the relevant electorate for a month etc). And then, once we'd passed our own citizenship legislation, the law assumed the form we know today, recognising voting rights for New Zealand citizens as well as permanent residents.

Ironically, the group protected by that transition - old British migrants who came here in the 1950's and 60's - are one of the cores of NZ First's support today. And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if some of them still aren't citizens (because they have never had any need to be; they live here and they belong here).

The other irony is that when Winston talks about how voting "should be a privilege of those who have sworn allegiance to New Zealand", he would effectively exclude almost all native-born New Zealanders from the electorate. Because if you were born here, you've never had to do anything of the sort! The only people who have actually "sworn allegiance to New Zealand" (in reality, to a foreign monarch who lives on the other side of the world) are immigrants who have made a conscious choice to become citizens, and weirdos (soldiers, police officers, and MPs). That might be Winston's vision of a perfect democracy, but it isn't mine - or, I think, Aotearoa's. In a democracy, everyone gets to vote. Its that simple. And people who try and undermine that need to be de-elected.

The fastest legislature in the west strikes again!

In his book Unbridled Power, constitutional scholar (and future Prime Minister) Geoffrey Palmer described New Zealand's parliament as "the fastest legislature in the west" in reference to its constant abuse of process to speed legislation. Usually this is all-stages urgency, but recently we've had a problem with abbreviated committee processes as well, with tight deadlines used to ram laws through with a veneer (but not the substance) of democratic process.

This week's example is the Te Here ā Nuku (Nelson Tenths) Bill, which implements a court settlement over the state's theft of land from Nelson iwi and hapu. The bill was introduced to the house last Monday, and passed its first reading on Thursday. So far, so ordinary. Submissions on the bill are now open - but they close this Thursday, having been open for all of a week. And the bill will report back to the House by 29 July, having had just a month for select committee consideration.

Why the speed? Presumably because the regime has decided it wants it passed before the election. But its a bullshit process which leaves no time for real scrutiny or input. If there's a problem in the bill - if it is poorly drafted, or fails to properly implement the agreement, or whatever - then there's no time for anyone to notice, and no time for the committee to fix it. And no way to fix it afterwards, because the bill protects the state from all future claims in relation to the underlying proceedings or the settlement act itself.

While stemming from a different process, the bill covers similar ground to Treaty settlement bills. Those bills receive full process, with normal submission periods and committee consideration (and some then linger on the Order Paper for years, because there's no political urgency to actually implement Treaty justice). While on the one hand I'm pleased to see the government treating injustice against Māori with some urgency, this is not good legislative practice, and there are significant risks of getting it wrong. State-Māori relations are too important to be treated this way. Parliament needs to slow the fuck down, and make sure they get it right, rather than trampling on our democracy while risking serious and irreparable errors.

Screaming works

Last month, the regime introduced the Conservation Amendment Bill, a steaming pile of shit which would allow it to sell off huge chunks of the conservation estate while opening up more of it to mining, development, and exploitation. Pretty obviously, this did not fit with the public's expectations and the value it placed on our natural taonga, and people started screaming about it. This week, after being challenged in the House, Chris Luxon tried to claim it was just about selling a few old buildings - but no-one believed him. And so just like that, the regime has backed down:

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka has announced the controversial exchange and disposal provisions for conservation land will be dropped from the Conservation Amendment Bill.

The minister said he never intended to dispose of vast swathes of the conservation estate, but acknowledged the public outcry over the bill. He took personal responsibility for giving New Zealanders that impression. “That’s on me – that’s on us,” he said at the Environmental Defence Society conference in Auckland. “We were not clear enough.”

Good. Our taonga places are exactly that - taonga, to be kept for future generations. No government has any right to sell or despoil them.

Obviously there's more work to do here. The bill guts regional boards, compromises Treaty settlements, and includes an odious "economic opportunities" clause in the department's functions which push it towards enabling rather than stopping the bulldozers. But stopping conservation land from being sold is a good first step. And if it helps drive a wedge between National (who want to get re-elected) and NZ First (who want to pay off their mining industry donors with public taonga) then that's a bonus. The sheer scale of public opposition has also opened space for a serious push-back - something the Greens have recognised - which could be leveraged into giving our taonga places greater protection. Hopefully people will push on that as hard as they can.

Meanwhile, the lesson in this is that if we scream loud enough, the regime backs down. Their desire to be re-elected is a weapon we can use against them. So keep screaming. Screaming works.

A victory for democracy in Hungary

Hungarians went to the polls yesterday in parliamentary elections, and responded with a resounding "Ruszkik Haza!", telling Putin (and Trump) proxy Victor Orbán to fuck off. The opposition even gained a two-third majority, enabling it to amend the constitution and undo all of Orbán's fuckery (including the stacked electoral system which translates bare majorities into supermajorities).

The opposition front may be led by a right-winger, but I (and more importantly, Hungarians) will take a normal, democratic, conservative over a fascist any day. And he's promising the right things: normalising relations with the EU, joining the European Public Prosecutor's Office, and prosecutions for the corrupt beneficiaries of Orbán's regime. Hopefully that will include Orbán himself, for his role in channelling public money to his friends and family. Which means Orbán will either need to flee back to his master in Moscow, or face a prison cell.

A flagrant abuse of power

When the regime rammed through its law gutting pay equity and stealing $13 billion from the women of Aotearoa, it didn't bother with a select committee process. That might have let people have their say - and worse, seen the media report on what they were saying, which would have been bad for the regime. But a group of former MPs organised their own select committee process to do what parliament had refused to. Now, it has reported back, calling the process an abuse of power, a breach of human rights, and a violation of the rule of law:

The committee described the processes of planning for and enacting the legislation as a "flagrant and significant abuse of power".

It also found the law breached the Bill of Rights, the Human Rights Act, and the Regulatory Standard Act principles, as well as a number of international conventions that New Zealand was party to, including International Covenants on Civil and Political, and Economic and Social Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

[...]

Committee members also said it could find no evidence in available Cabinet documents or parliamentary debates to support scrapping the scheme.

There are a lot of recommendations, chief of which (of course) is limiting the use of urgency for laws restricting fundamental rights, as well as statutory consultation requirements and constitutional recognition of pay equity as a human right. All of which would be a good start. Both Labour and the Greens have pledged to repeal the Act and restore pay equity if elected; it would be good to see them also commit to constitutional reform to prevent such an abuse from ever happening again.

You can read the full report here.

An attack on democracy as well as the homeless?

Over the weekend the regime announced its long-expected policy of "move on" orders for homeless people. Having massively increased homelessness while slashing emergency housing, National's "solution" is get get the police to kick its victims round our cities, threatening them with fines or jail if they don't "move on". Which is pointless and cruel and far more expensive than actually housing them - but the regime clearly thinks there are more votes in performative cruelty than in actually solving problems.

Its a terrible policy, of course, which is going to further ruin lives and waste a lot of time and money doing so. But its not just the homeless under threat. The regime's proposed amendments to the Summary Offences Act allow orders for "disorderly, disruptive, threatening or intimidating behaviour" and "[o]bstructing or impeding someone entering a business". Which, given both common protest tactics and the prevailing interpretation of police that public protest is inherently "disorderly, disruptive, threatening or intimidating", seems like a clear threat to the public's right to protest. While the bill hasn't been published yet - the regime doesn't like to do that in advance, preferring to spring its legislation on people by surprise - unless it includes significant safeguards, we should regard it as an attack on our democratic rights as well as an attack on the homeless.

Submit!

The Environment Committee has called for submissions on the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill. Submissions should be made tot he link above, by 4.30pm on Wednesday, 11 March 2026.

(Yes, they're going with a middle-of-the-day deadline rather than the usual midnight one, in an effort to make it just that much harder for people to submit. Because that's the sort of "democracy" we are now).

There will no doubt be proper submission guides from various NGOs in due course, but the TL;DR is that the bill does exactly what it says on the label: destroys the Ministry for the Environment. While the regime is pitching this as a minor, technical change, part of folding it in to a new mega-ministry, the effect will be to silence the voice for the environment, reduce it to a budget line and an internal debate within an overwhelmingly development-focused agency, avoiding embarrassing notes in Cabinet papers with formal warnings of environmental impacts and consequences. And of course it will enable the shreds of that voice to then be quietly cut.

This is how the regime sees the environment: something which should be kept out of sight and out of mind, while the big boys pay to play with their bulldozers. I don't think kiwis feel this way. And if you don't, submit, and tell them so! Sure, the regime will ignore you and pass the bill anyway, because autocrats gonna stomp on your face. But speaking up still matters. National hates headlines like "100,000 oppose bill; government passes it anyway", they hate everyone seeing that everyone hates them, and that's why they try so hard to stop people submitting. And that's why we have to. Every voice raised against this bill imposes a political cost on the regime. It encourages the present-opposition to commit to restoring an independent MfE, and it encourages other voters to vote out the regime and get one which respects the environment.

An avalanche is made up of pebbles. Be a pebble, and help crush this government. Submit on the bill.

Good riddance

The regime has finally decided not to push for a referendum on a four-year term this election. Good. But the bill isn't dead, and apparently won't be withdrawn - it's still on the Order Paper, hanging around to be picked up and advanced in future, by whoever wins the election. And they're not stalling it because they've decided its a bad idea; rather, the three components of the regime simply don't quite agree, so it got set aside because it's not really anyone's priority.

...except apparently Chris Hipkins. Faced with a regime which is a poster boy for why we need more accountability, not less, and which is making people hate the entire political class in a way we haven't seen since the 1990's, he's willing to put himself out there and go on record as being in favour of a proposition which has repeatedly been defeated by two-thirds margins. Because he's just that keen on being less accountable to us plebs. And then you think about what he did with an absolutely majority when he had one - nothing - and how he talks about that time now as the government "trying to do too many things". So he wants an extra year so he can do even less? (But I guess its an extra year to collect his fat salary, putting him even further into the millionaire-class while pretending to represent ordinary people...)

This regime has been a potent reminder of why we need to keep our politicians on a short leash, whatever the colour of their tie. With a unitary state, a highly-centralised government structure, and no real institutional checks and balances, the only safeguard against an executive run amok is the chance to throw them out on their arses as often as possible. I'm glad we'll get to keep that right, for the moment. But it is disturbing that so many of the political class subscribe to the elitist, anti-democratic idea that they shouldn't have to face our judgement, that they should be less accountable to us. That's not good enough. They're not good enough. They've shown by their enthusiasm for dictatorship that they cannot be trusted, so we need to shorten the leash. It is time to cut the parliamentary term to two years, and bring them back under democratic control.

How do we change OIA culture?

Former district court judge David Harvey has a column in the Herald today lamenting the state of the Official Information Act. Like others before him, he agrees that the law is fundamentally sound - its the public service that is the problem. Despite clear statutory language in favour of transparency, they are incentivised by ministers, chief executives, PR departments and deliberate underresourcing to delay, deny, and defend against OIA requests. And the Ombudsman is no help, because they are also structurally underresourced, and culturally focused on turning over complaints as quickly as possible to make their numbers look good, rather than actually investigating.

This isn't an abstract problem. As Harvey points out,

secrecy and obfuscation are not neutral administrative choices; they actively corrode democratic legitimacy.

And that is exactly what is happening. And you only have to look overseas to see where that leads.

What can be done? People have talked about training, but no-one is doing it - at least, not the sort of training that rams home to public servants that their duty is to the people, not the minister, and that they need to release information ASARP. And while criminal penalties for egregious abuses would help (and are entirely normal overseas), Ministers seem unlikely to pass laws which punish those protecting them, and the police seem unlikely to enforce them if they are passed.

The core problem here is that the fish rots from the head. Ministers want to be protected, and chief executives obey because they want to keep their jobs. So breaking the employment nexus by making chief executive contracts non-renewable while imposing clear positive transparency duties would be a start. We already do this for the Auditor-General precisely to prevent cosy relationships and strategic employment-seeking behaviour from corrupting their duties; doing it to the rest of the public service isn't so great a step.

Fundamentally, though, it comes down to ministerial leadership. Everything is downstream of that. When the OIA was passed, ministers decided they wanted it to work, made their expectations clear to the public service, and resourced them to do it. We clearly need a similar drive from ministers to clean out the culture of secrecy they have imposed, and restore transparency. As for how to get that, that seems to be our job, through the electoral process. Those running for office need to be asked about their attitude to the OIA, and what they will do to restore transparency. Those who support secrecy, or who do not keep their promises need to be electorally punished. Until that happens, ministers will keep fucking us over, and we will keep responding to them with the disdain that deserves, and public trust in them and their institutions will continue to decline.

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.

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.

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.

The Commerce Commission's weak case for secrecy

Back in September, the regime announced plans to give new powers to the Commerce Commission. But the announcement also included this:

We have also heard in your submissions that businesses and individuals are increasingly reluctant to share information with the Commission because of fears confidential information could be released under the Official Information Act, potentially leading to retaliation or misuse of confidential information by competitors. This is undermining the Commission’s ability to collect evidence and receive useful information, particularly in investigations and merger clearances.

The regime's solution was of course more secrecy, with a 10-year blanket exemption from the OIA for "confidential" information provided to the Commission, and greater power for the Commission to issue temporary exemption orders. I was curious about the justification for this, so I asked the Commission whether they in fact had any evidence supporting it: were they aware of any OIA release from them actually causing the harms the Minister had alleged, and did they have any evidence their existing secrecy powers were inadequate? In both cases, the answer was "no":

Regarding the first two bullets of your request, the Commission is not aware of any specific instances where information we have released under the OIA has caused harm to the business who provided the information to us.

The Commission is also not aware of any documents containing specific evidence that section 100 of the Commerce Act is inadequate.

What about wider advice on the OIA? Here the Commission said they had information, then refused to provide it for a further two months as they were (illegally) "consulting MBIE and the Minister’s Office prior to making our decision on the potential release of this material". But they finally provided the response yesterday, and a folder full of documents. There are a few interesting things in here, including that the Commission has apparently been running its own private "special advocate"-style system for merger cases, where lawyers are given access to evidence but forbidden from discussing it with or disclosing it to their clients - similar to the system used in "national security" cases here and overseas, with all the unfairness and professional issues that entails, only without any statutory authorisation. But on the actual case for secrecy, its largely fear, uncertainty, and doubt. TL;DR businesses are afraid they will be harmed by the release of "confidential" or commercially sensitive information. There's also fear over the public interest over-ride, and the inability of the Commission to give categorical assurances of total secrecy. Both show that businesses do not understand the law (which is to be expected), but that the Commission seriously entertains this shows that they don't either (possibly due to corporate culture capture). The fact is that there is a clear and obvious case for withholding confidential evidence under s9(2)(ba)(i) (in that it is clearly in the public interest that people are able to give evidence to the Commission, so if release would inhibit the giving of such evidence in future, s9(2)(ba)(i) applies), and while this is subject to the public interest test, the reality is that in practice such information is almost never released, because the usual public interest factors of accountability, transparency, and participation simply don't apply to information provided by third parties about themselves.

(There is the issue of the accountability of the Commission for its decisions, which means they must release the evidence which justifies them, but they should be doing that publicly anyway, so that's not an OIA issue, but a basic one of administrative law...)

However, there is one significant issue: big companies intimidating smaller ones from giving evidence against them:

In cases involving an applicant with alleged market power, dominance, or some other form of power or leverage over market participants, those market participants may be particularly concerned by the prospect of any information provided to us being provided to the applicant. This is of particular concern to us, as cases of this nature generally merit scrutiny.

Which sounds reasonable at first glance. But it isn't specifically an OIA problem - because, as the Commission admits, it is required to provide such information to applicants for reasons of natural justice. So the applicants are going to find out whether a request is made or not, and all attacking the OIA does is hide information from other people.

The obvious move here is not to undermine the OIA, but to target the actual problem of retaliation and victimisation, just as we do for whistleblowers. And the government announcement included that, so there's no need for secrecy at all.

The release also includes a summary of public submissions to a consultation by MBIE, which gives a good overview of their consultees' views on "protecting confidential information". Its worth noting that a broad OIA exemption was not one of the options canvassed in that consultation, so the Commission is going well beyond what was floated. Its also shocking that any government agency would fail to recognise the constitutional nature of the OIA, and that their response to it causing them minor irritations is to try and exempt themselves from a fundamental part of our constitution. But again, this is likely a matter of capture by corporate culture. We know that local and international business are fundamentally hostile to democracy and transparency; its utterly shocking that the body we have established to police them has been so captured by them as to share that hostility. At the end of the day, the Commerce Commission is a public body. That means it must respect democratic norms - including the OIA.