An empty suit

Another weekend, another climate change disaster in Aotearoa. Flooding, people without power, roads blocked, people dead. And the Prime Minister is announcing a fucking foreign football game. And when asked about the disaster he says shit like "it's raining here too".

We used to have prime ministers who understood that their job, in times of national disaster, was to show up. Express the country's shock and anguish, provide reassurance that the government was going to help. But this regime is doing less than nothing to help, and is in fact doing everything it can to make things worse. And instead of reassurance, its just "make sure you have your personal survival kit ready" - in other words, you're on your own. He's not a leader; he's an empty suit. And rather than empathy, he just projects contempt for everyone else, us "bottom-feeders" who can't run away to Waiheke when disaster strikes.

This isn't the first time that Luxon has done this. His repeated absenteeism in times of national disaster makes it clear that he is fundamentally unfit for office. The sooner we vote this prick out, the better.

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 They've repealed all effective climate policy, destroyed the ETS, and rejected He Pou a Rangi's recommendations for tougher targets.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 policy of murder

Unreinforced masonry buildings killed 40 people in the Christchurch earthquakes, and as a result owners were required to fix their deathtraps. Except they didn't. Instead, they whined and dragged their feet and asked for more time and more time and more time - and now, National is letting them off the hook:

The government says a new "risk-based" approach to earthquake strengthening will save building owners more than $8.2 billion across New Zealand, and reduce risk from derelict empty buildings.

The Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk said the current 'New Building Standard' used by engineers was too broad and inconsistent and would be scrapped.

[...]

Replacement standards, called the Earthquake Prone Building system, will mean unreinforced masonry buildings with unsecured facades and walls facing public areas or above neighbouring properties will be deemed earthquake prone.

However, those under three storeys and in towns with under 10,000 people would no longer need strengthening, remediation or warning notices - and could be removed from the earthquake-prone register after having the facade secured.

So, provincial New Zealand will be allowed to keep using its deathtrap buildings, and people will almost certainly die as a result. And when they do, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk will have murdered them. It is that simple. They have decided to put rich people's money ahead of human lives, and that is simply murder.

Climate Change: Arsonists

Today, a major fire broke out on the Port Hills in Ōtutahi. Like its 2017 predecessors, it is almost certainly exacerbated by climate change. And it is still burning.

The present government did not start the fire. But they piled the tinder high last time they were in power, gutting the ETS, delaying action on agricultural emissions, encouraging fossil fuel development, and generally reversing policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And they're doing it again, killing the clean car discount, cutting the GIDI scheme to reduce industrial emissions, killing public transport, delaying action on agricultural emissions (again) and encouraging fossil fuel development (again). Today, in Parliament, they effectively admitted that their corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" resource consent legislation will be used to ram through new coal mines - in the middle of a climate crisis. While an actual fire is burning on the edge of the South Island's largest city, one change in wind direction away from devastation, they are metaphorically pouring petrol through the house. They are arsonists, pure and simple. The question is whether we'll be able to vote them out before we have our own version of Lahaina or Black Saturday - or whether their climate arson is going to have a bodycount.

ACT: the party of climate change denial

Over the weekend, a no-longer rare "medicane" flooded the city of Derna in Libya. The confirmed death toll is already over 5,000, and could go as high as 20,000. But according to ACT's climate change spokesperson, there is no climate emergency:

The Act Party’s climate change spokesman says there is no climate emergency, which drew gasps from the audience during a pre-election debate last night.

Simon Court, who is also the party’s spokesman for transport, energy and resources, and environment, was speaking during an event hosted by the Environmental Defence Society at the law firm Bell Gully in Auckland.

[...]

Society chair and moderator Gary Taylor opened by asking the panellists for a one-word answer on whether a climate emergency is occurring.

Court answered, “not because politicians said there is” in an apparent reference to former Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern declaring a climate emergency in the House in 2020.

When pushed by Taylor, Court clarified that meant “no”.

Which invites the question: if 20,000 dead in a single climate disaster isn't an emergency, what is? And while Derna is an extreme example, news of climate change-induced fires, floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts is now a daily occurrence. Including in Aotearoa, where Auckland has flooded twice this year, and the East Coast has been devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle.

But ACT refuses to recognise this, because at their core they're a climate change denier party. They always have been, and they always will be. And when they're promising to use all the power they have in parliament to hold the government to ransom and impose their extremist ideology, it means that any coalition involving them is going to be a climate change denying government as well. And at this stage in the climate crisis, that's just not something we can afford.

Climate Change: Is FENZ prepared?

RNZ has a piece today revealing that Fire and Emergency NZ had not trained to deal with landslides before Cyclone Gabrielle in February. There are historical reasons for this - before the 2017 amalgamation they were officially responsible only for fires, despite being the default first-responders for everything. But two firefighters died as a result.

Meanwhile, like everyone else, I'm looking at the news of the destruction of Lahaina in Hawaiʻi in shock. 53 people are dead so far, and an entire town of 12,000 has been destroyed. In an NZ context, that's a town the size of Waikanae, razed to the ground by climate change-driven fires. Which makes you wonder whether FENZ is prepared for this threat, and whether they have plans in place to limit loss of life if we have a similar disaster in Aotearoa.

We've had a warning sign of this already: the 2020 Lake Ōhau fire. But that was a much smaller town. The official FENZ report on that disaster said that everything had been planned for, but that turned out not to be the case. Weirdly, the report made no major recommendations - the implication being that FENZ thought it had nothing to learn from the disaster. Which is a little bit worrying. Multiple ICC reports had warned of increased fires as a result of climate change, and the Australian bushfires the year before Lake Ōhau should have been a screaming warning sign. In the wake of Lahaina, it would be good to know that our emergency services are actually prepared for the future we face.

We need change

Over on The Kaka, Bernard Hickey is calling the Loafers Lodge fire a symptom of our bipartisan, low-tax, low-debt, no-housing, fuck-the-poor, asset bubble for the rich political consensus. And he's appropriately cynical about the response:

So far, the response in real financial terms by the Government is business as usual: investigate the individual disaster, change some regulations and blame the residents and/or the landlord.

But will there be more spending on social housing, and on benefits, so people at the bottom aren't warehoused in firetraps, waiting to be burned to death because neither government nor landlord is interested in paying for basic safety (let alone dignity)? Finance Minister Grant Robertson says "wait for the budget", but we know the answer will be "no". Quite apart from pre-election risk-aversion, the Labour party is completely uninterested in fixing anything, in changing the toxic status quo. They're the party of excuses. That's all they ever offer. Excuses for why nothing can be done, for why things have to stay the way they are. And meanwhile the Ministers making those excuses are sitting on their $296,007 salaries (plus slush), and on their piles of hoarded houses (paid for by the public, thanks to generous parliamentary allowances and rortable expenses), collecting their tax-free capital gains. They are the problem. They are profiting from this mess. Of course they're uninterested in fixing anything.

We know what the solutions are. More social housing and higher benefits, so everyone has a decent home and enough to live on. Taxing the rich, with wealth taxes, land taxes, and inheritance taxes, both to pay for that and other public services, and to break the intergenerational cycle of hoarding which drives inequality. And rapidly lowering emissions, so our homes aren't all flooded, burned, or blown down by the consequences of the richs' pollution. These are popular policies, but Labour won't offer any of that in the budget tomorrow. While they may pretend to offer some of it come election time, the moment they're elected it'll be back-burnered and it'll be back to excuses and the status quo, just like it was in 2017 and 2020. If we want those things, we need to vote for parties who will offer it: The Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

Utterly tone-deaf

This morning a hostel burned down in Wellington, killing ten people. Aotearoa is a small country, and a disaster of this scale is unusual, so every political party leader was asked to comment. What did National Party leader Christopher Luxon have to say? An American-style "thoughts and prayers":

National's leader Christopher Luxon said his thoughts were with the victims and responders.

"It's pretty shocking what we've seen here overnight, and our thoughts and prayers are definitely with the people who've lost their lives, the families who've lost loved ones, and those that are now fighting for their lives in hospital as well as being grateful for our responders."

Luxons comments were later echoed by ACT leader David Seymour in Parliament.

The problem with this is that that particular phrase is very obviously an American import, used most notoriously by American politicians to pretend to care about the daily mass-murders of schoolchildren by psychopaths with military weapons. I say "pretend" because it is obvious that those politicians do not care - if they did, they'd do something about it (like, you know, having sensible gun laws). While it might sound great to Luxon, to kiwi ears, its pure dismissal, a "fuck you, I don't care" (and with weirdo religious overtones to boot). And in the context of a disaster, where the building didn't have sprinklers, where there are already calls for improvements in building regulations to ensure that it doesn't happen again, Luxon sounds just like one of those American politicians. If he actually does care, he's made a terrible job of showing it.

Auckland is drowning... again

As I write, Auckland is flooding, for the second time this year. One once-in-a-hundred year weather event in a year is unfortunate; two in a few months is beginning to look like a trend. Of course, we know what that trend is called: climate change. So its distressing to see the government still dragging its feet on this: still refusing to make farmers, who are responsible for 50% of our emissions, take responsibility for the pollution they produce; still refusing to shut down the fossil fuel industry; still subsidising industrial polluters; still fucking around.

That fucking around costs. People might be dead. People will lose their homes, or face serious disruption to their lives. And then there's the money. The government is already on the hook for billions after the last floods, and it'll probably be on the hook for more for this lot. Isn't it time we tried to minimise those costs, by addressing the cause, rather than just blithely dragging out feet to apocalypse (or, in the case of National/ACT, running headlong into it)?

Twice in one year should be a warning. We need to stop fucking around on climate change. And any government which doesn't heed that warning, and apply their maximum efforts to cutting our emissions as quickly as possible should be regarded as trying to murder us.

A crime against democracy

Yesterday the government introduced the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill to the House. The bill is a response to Cyclone Gabrielle, and (like the Christchurch earthquake legislation) enables Ministers to amend laws by order in council across half the North Island, for five years. The list of laws allowed to be amended is huge (and can itself be amended), and includes laws such as the Climate Change Response Act 2002, Conservation Act 1987, and of course the RMA - so if Ministers felt it "facilitated the improvement of the economic well-being" of the affected area (or their donors there), they could exempt polluters from the ETS, allow mining in Schedule 4 land, or of course greenlight specific projects. The potential for corruption in this Henry VIII scheme is obvious, so what oversight will there be? A panel of government stooges. And that's it. There will be no requirement for orders to be automatically reviewed by the Regulations Review Committee, or for them to be automatically revoked unless confirmed by the House. Similarly, there will be no regular review and confirmation of the necessity of these powers by Parliament as there was with the Covid-19 legislation. Instead, its absolute, despotic power, for five years.

That's bad enough, and a reason for the bill in its current form to be rejected. But it gets worse. Because Labour rammed it through its first reading yesterday and sent it to select committee. You'd expect such a bill to receive serious and prolonged scrutiny and the input of constitutional experts and legal academics. But Labour has made this practically impossible by allowing less than 24 hours for submissions and requiring the bill to be reported back (so it can be rammed through under urgency) tomorrow.

This isn't public input or democratic oversight. It is a joke, which shows utter contempt for the public and our constitution. But that's what happens when you allow majority government: the bad old habits of elected dictatorship return.

Labour's constitutional habits are a disgrace and a crime against our democracy. And we should tell them that in October.

13,000

There's a lot going on today - the political circus in Westminster, an apparent political assassination in Japan, the ongoing war in Ukraine - but the only story that matters is this one: there were 13,344 new community cases of Covid-19 reported in Aotearoa today, and a further 23 deaths. That, and the government's repeated refusal to do anything at all about it - not even a public mask mandate, let alone work from home support or lockdowns. I've castigated Labour as chickenshits over the years - but now their chickenshittery has a bodycount: 1600 people so far, and between four and eight thousand a year on current numbers. And for what? So they can avoid criticism and bad headlines from certain noisy industries whose profitability depends on us all being exposed to risks.

Well, fuck that. The first duty of the government is to keep us safe. And Labour is failing that duty. And whether it is from cowardice or sociopathy is immaterial: I can never forgive them for it. And neither should you. A government which just lets us die is not worth anyone's support (some would say its not really a "government" at all).

And because some people will need it said explicitly: the other bunch also being sociopathic murderers isn't an excuse. Both major parties are failing the most basic test of governance, and fail to meet even the most minimal ethical standards we should expect from our "leaders". They need to do better, or fuck off.

Update: And the Ministry of Health is now saying there was a computer glitch, and today's number is only 9,318. Which is good, so far as it goes, but it really only delays the anger by a week.

This isn't normal

There were 9,495 new covid cases today, and another 15 deaths. So naturally, the government is lowering the alert level to Orange (which is basicly the old Green).

The idea here is to return to "normal" to keep business happy. But 9,400 cases and 15 deaths a day isn't "normal". In fact, its exactly the sort of not normal we locked down last year to avoid. Its a slow-motion disaster which threatens the health and safety of everybody in Aotearoa. And our government is now just letting it happen, and throwing us under the bus so their business cronies can make money (which is probably why their polling has fallen off a cliff...)

Well, fuck that. If the government wants me to behave normally, they can actually make things normal. Which means no covid, no covid deaths, and not feeling like I'm gambling with my life and health every time I get within 2 metres of another human being. And if they're not going to do that, I'm going to stay home, not spend money, and fuck what that does to their precious "economy".

Surrendering to the virus

So, having saved us from Covid for 18 months, our government has just surrendered to the virus, announcing a "transition plan" to loosen restrictions while Covid is still spreading in the community. This is exactly the sort of insanity which has led to outbreaks and mass death in the UK and NSW, and there's no reason to think it will end any differently here.

I'm just glad I don't live in Auckland (and glad that there will still be a hard border to slow the coming shitshow's spread to the rest of Aotearoa). But I'm also sorry for everyone who lives there. You deserved better than this. And you deserve a government which will keep you safe, rather than sacrificing your lives for a pack of greedy whiners.

I'm also personally fucked off, because when the PM told people to go out and get vaccinated 3 weeks ago, like thousands of people I did what was asked, moved up my appointment, and got jabbed with the six week spacing for maximum effectiveness. My second booking isn't for three weeks, and I won't be safe until two weeks after that, and the government has just said they'll let the virus rampage before then. Obviously, I'll be looking at moving that up. But it feels like a personal betrayal to have the government change its mind on something so vital like that.

(And there's a whole cohort in this situation, and under 12s who still can't be vaxxed at all, plus minorities with low uptake and high vulnerability. But waiting a bit longer to solve those problems was apparently too hard for the government, so it's "let her rip")

Meanwhile, I guess Aotearoa's days of being a "model Covid response" are over. The government has just decided to surrender to the virus, because they were sick of the whining from the Auckland business class. They've basicly become quislings for the virus, just like Boris Johnson and Gladys Berejiklian. And we'll be paying the price for their cowardice in deaths and long Covid.

Taking shortsighted penny-pinching to a whole new level

Over the weekend Westport was hit by devastating floods. Half the town had to be evacuated, 89 homes (so far) are uninhabitable, and another 400 (of ~1700) need serious repairs. The total cost hasn't come in yet, but its going to be well into the tens of millions of dollars. And it turns out that the entire thing was preventable:

A $10 million flood protection scheme proposed for Westport would have prevented most of the devastation caused by the weekend's massive flood, the West Coast Regional Council operations director says.

[...]

Randal Beal said the scheme involved extensive stopbanks and floodwalls – essentially ringfencing the town from the Buller and Orowaiti rivers – and would cost $10.2 million. “It is designed for a one-in-a-hundred-year flood in the Buller, and whether it would have protected the town this time, the simple answer is yes, unless there was a flood bank failure,” he said.

[...]

The regional council originally pitched the project to Westport ratepayers in 2017, but they had little appetite for it, Beal said.

Only 10.8 percent of respondents supported it; 24.6 percent preferred to do nothing about their town's flood risk and 30 per cent had no opinion.

“It would have been an expense for ratepayers, certainly, and without a majority supporting it we couldn't go ahead,” he said.

This takes Keeping Rates Low to an entirely new level. Wellington's regular poonamis are embarrassing, but it takes real shortsighted penny-pinching to make 5% of your town homeless. They're lucky no-one died. But hey, at least some old dudes didn't lose an election.

Meanwhile, I'd hope that other councils around the country are looking at their flood protection, and their climate change projections, and prioritising improvements. And if they're not, they should face the rage of voters in 2022.

The government needs to act on this warning

Over the weekend devastating floods hit the South Island. Half the population of Westport were forced from their homes, and it looks like hundreds have been made permanently homeless. Its a taste of what we can expect in the future due to climate change, and things are only going to get worse. The only way they stop getting worse is if we stop spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

In this context, the government's plan to flood the market with carbon and allow polluters to emit an extra 7 million tons this year in order to keep carbon prices low looks wildly irresponsible. Every ton of carbon matters. Every ton makes it worse. While how bad things ultimately get depends on total global emissions, its trivially obvious that us allowing extra makes things worse, not better. And to do it because essentially you can't be arsed stopping it is a perfect illustration of the banality of evil.

We've had a warning here, and the government needs to act on it. And if they don't, if they just continue sleepwalking us deeper into the apocalypse because its just "too hard" for them to do otherwise, we need to hold them accountable for it.

A clear violation of Parliamentary intent

The COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 includes significant powers required for the government to manage the pandemic, including powers to make orders imposing significant restrictions on individual liberty, to enter homes, and close public places. These powers are necessary and justifiable, but also deeply uncomfortable in a democratic society. Parliament expressed our discomfort and a desire that the powers be retained for no longer than was absolutely necessary by requiring that the law be frequently debated and renewed. They required this to happen every 90 days, with the wiggle room of allowing Parliament to set a different period if required. In the debate on this clause (which was suggested by National), Attorney-General David Parker made it clear that it was solely to accommodate the Parliamentary calendar: "Parliament can choose a longer period if it wants, and it might want to do that around the time of the election if there was risk that Parliament wouldn't be resitting within that 90-day period". So I'm a little shocked to see that in Government Notice of Motion #1 on today's Order Paper the government is planning to extend it by nine months, until 31 December.

This makes an absolutely mockery of the law. Nine months is not 90 days, and there's no conceivable interruption of the Parliamentary calendar which would justify such a long extension. Instead, it seems to be being done solely because the government simply cannot be bothered to renew it regularly - a clear violation of Parliament's intent (not to mention a clear sign of Labour's arrogance now that it has an absolute majority, and a clear sign that their "promises" are meaningless and not to be relied on).

I have no problem with the law being renewed at present. It may well need to be kept in force until the end of the year. But that renewal should happen as intended, with frequent and regular Parliamentary oversight. Parliament explicitly rejected the idea of the government having a blank cheque on this, and Labour should abide by that decision, rather than trying to sneakily and dishonestly undermine it.

"Justified but unlawful"

That is the finding of the High Court on the first nine days of New Zealand's lockdown, when we were all "ordered" to stay in our bubbles by the Prime Minister on television. Which is fairly unsurprising. We've known since Fitzgerald v Muldoon that you can't legislate by press release, and that the Prime Minister saying something doesn't give it legal effect. In this case, the order was eventually given legal effect, in the form of formal orders issued under the Health Act (the legality of which the court has upheld: it turns out that the Health Act quarantine power really does apply to everyone in the country all at once). But for those first few days, until those orders were issued, the lockdown order was unlawful and had no legal effect, which meant that it also breached our freedoms of association and movement (because justified limitations must be prescribed by law). At the same time, it was also a justified and proportionate health response, and this was recognised when the legality of the subsequent orders was upheld. So basicly the government's problem here is failing to do its paperwork properly. Which is understandable given the speed at which things were happening, but does actually matter when you're a government.

What does this mean in practice? Anyone prosecuted in those first few days for breaching lockdown has an easy appeal. Apparently that is unlikely to affect many people, but it still matters. There's no issue of potential liability for business closures because, unlike the instruction to stay at home except for essential travel, they actually had an order legally closing all premises. But the chief effect is to remind the government that we are not a monarchy, and that the Prime Minister cannot purportedly order us around from a podium like a King. When they want us to do something, they actually need to pass a law or use some other effective legal instrument. And hopefully in future they'll remember that.

Delayed

Its official: the 2020 election has been delayed until October 17. Which, given the difficulties of campaigning in Auckland at the moment, seems fair and reasonable. The change has taken place entirely within existing laws and constitutional conventions, and apparently after consultation with other parties (who didn't necessarily agree, but their views were sought). The downside is that, being closer to the US election, there's more chance of our vote being affected by American cray (which will be even more intense than usual). And of course while we hope to have the current Covid cluster under control by then, another one could spring up. In which case the amendments to the Electoral Act for voting during disasters will spring into action, and we'll get to see how they work.

Parliament will now resume on Tuesday, though it has a pretty light Order Paper. Most of its business will likely be accountability - I expect an urgent debate on the current outbreak - and any necessary Covid legislation. We'll also get another Member's Day, which should see Ginny Andersen's miscarriage leave bill advance. But having done the usual end-of-term rush to clear away business, there's now less for them to do unless another crisis happens. A bunch of retired MPs will now have to come back to work as well, which they will no doubt hate. But at least with current border restrictions, they are unlikely to have fled the country.

On the plus side, another month worth of 17 year olds will now get to vote. If you know anyone in this category, get them to enrol here.

Showing us who they are

What's National's first move under lockdown? Call for elections to be delayed:

National leader Judith Collins is demanding Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delay the September election after the discovery of Covid-19 community transmission cases in Auckland. A clearly frustrated Collins on Wednesday afternoon said she was directly asking Ardern to shift the election to November, or instead call back MPs to Parliament so they can vote on pushing polling day into 2021.

Obviously, Collins wants all the time she can get to have Brownlee spread conspiracy theories. But its also quite revealing that her instinctive reaction is to try and abrogate our democracy for her own advantage. The National Party is showing us exactly who they are: instinctive authoritarians who think only of themselves, who will happily try and sabotage a critical public health response if they think it helps them (see also: Michelle Boag). People should remember that at the ballot box.

Here we go again

So, the inevitable has happened and we have Covid in the community again. So now we have to do it all again to try and get it back under control. And already the usual suspects are whining, pretending that they don't know what the plan is when really they simply do not like the idea that we will all lock down for as long as necessary. But sadly, what this crisis has revealed is that there are some kiwis who would rather we face mass deaths than see any disruption to their money-grubbing or loss of profit. Which is another reason why we need to tax these parasites out of existence.

But what its also revealed is that we can do this. Lockdowns work, and people understand that. So, we all stay at home and wash our hands, and we'll beat this again, just like we did back in April. If we're lucky, it's a limited outbreak, it'll be tracked down and isolated, and this won't last too long. If it has spread further, then it will take longer.

As for what it means for the election, it depends on how serious the outbreak is. The dissolution of parliament has been delayed until Monday while the government works that out, but if its a limited outbreak, then things will proceed as normal - there's a bit of wiggle-room in the statutory timeline. Otherwise, Parliament expires in October, which would mean a November or December election. But obviously, if this goes on for any length of time, there are going to be limits on the ability of MPs to campaign in person and hold public meetings, which obviously isn't ideal. As for the voting itself, Andrew Geddis covers that here. We have a functioning government which has planned for this contingency, so our democracy will continue despite the virus.