Luxon dogwhistles racism

Prime Minister Chris Luxon gave a pre-budget speech to the Auckland business community today, in which he promised even more austerity. But he also made a play for ACT and NZ First's racist, anti-immigration voters, with a warning to his listeners:

"And you should expect to see careful policy on immigration from National as we get closer to the election ... when it comes to immigration, when faced with a choice between social stability and your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time."

Which is bullshit, firstly because immigration is not a threat to "social stability"; and secondly because the greatest historic threat to social stability has been inequality, the greed of the rich. But on that front Luxon has their back. He's perfectly willing to destabilise Aotearoa's society to enrich his mates, promising austerity and asset sales while doing nothing to limit inequality or the runaway wealth of the few, preferring instead to rely on ever-more tyrannical anti-protest laws for protection. And of course when it comes to coalition parties pushing white supremacy, tearing up te Tiriti, and attempting to eradicate te reo from public life, he's all in.

But I don't think an unequal, racist tyranny, divided between a small clique of rich Auckland arseholes and a mass of renters forced to work minimum-wage jobs is the sort of society most kiwis want to live in. And hopefully we will tell Luxon that forcefully in November.

Papers, please

At the moment the Trump regime in America is running a pogrom against non-white Americans, with ICE invading cities, disappearing people off the streets and dragging them from their homes to be dumped in concentration camps. And our local Trump-wannabes clearly want in on the action, with a proposed law to allow immigration officers to demand proof of identity from suspected overstayers:

Immigration officers will soon have the power to ask people suspected of overstaying their visa for proof of identification at their homes and/or workplaces.

The powers are part of a legislative proposal introduced by the Government in September last year.

The Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill was announced to strengthen the tools available for immigration officers to respond to serious immigration breaches.

This includes “expanding the ability for immigration officers to request identity-based information from an individual when there is good cause to suspect they may be in breach of their visa conditions or potentially liable for deportation.”

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford told RNZ the Bill would be introduced by the end of the month, with the intention of passing it into law by the end of the term.

Who's a "suspected overstayer"? I guess that's up to the racism of the immigration officer and whatever quotas for detention that might have been set. Meanwhile, it also means they can demand identification from anyone else in those locations as well. And if like many kiwis you don't bother carrying it - because this is a free and democratic society - then I guess its off to the gulag.

This bill is yet another piece of tyranny from our nasty, authoritarian regime. We should not accept it. As for immigration, remember, if they ask you anything, you don't know. You don't know where, you don't know how, and you don't know who. The state depends on cooperation to enforce its will. Refuse to collaborate, and make it hard for them.

Restore birthright citizenship

In 2005, Labour repealed the long-standing principle of birthright citizenship in Aotearoa. Why? As with everything else Labour does, it all came down to austerity: "foreign mothers" were supposedly "coming to this country to give birth", and this was "put[ting] pressure on hospitals". Then-Immigration Minister George Hawkins explicitly gave this as the reason during the law's first reading debate, saying:

Some people may come to New Zealand on temporary permits solely to give birth, so that their New Zealand - born children are citizens. Under current law those children are entitled to access publicly funded services such as health care and education. Restricting citizenship by birth will ensure that citizenship and its benefits are limited to people who have a genuine and ongoing link to New Zealand.

Twenty years later, and we're seeing the cost of this change: kiwi kids being threatened with deportation to foreign countries. And while public outrage seems to have caused the Minister to rethink, this should never have happened. People who were born here, have grown up here, have never known anywhere else should not be exiled from their country, or victimised due to the legal mistakes of their parents.

We should learn this lesson, and fix the underlying law which threatened to result in this injustice. And that means restoring birthright citizenship, not just to those born here in future, but also to those immorally deprived of it by the Clark government's cruel penny-pinching. And if the current government wants to quibble over this, we should ask them: are they really that small?

(And while we're at it: we should restore relationship rights too, so kiwis can be with the people they love).

More petulance from Andrew Little

Back in June, the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee reported back on the Inspector-General of Defence Bill, making numerous improvements. But Defence Minister Andrew Little said "fuck transparency" and petulantly undid them. Now it looks like he's going to do a repeat performance. The same committee has reported back on the Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill, delivering a unanimous report that it was unnecessary and that it not be passed. They recognised that the bill undermined our international obligations under the Refugee Convention and international human rights law, and effectively criminalised seeking asylum. Andrew Little's response? It's the committee and submitters who are wrong:

Little vowed to continue progressing the bill despite the select committee’s concerns. He said classified information, which the committee heard, would explain the need for this law change.

He reprimanded the select committee on Tuesday, saying there was something “seriously wrong” with it.

[...]

Little said the committee had failed to adequately consider “legislation dealing with a pretty serious potential national security risk”.

...Or maybe his bill really was an ill-considered power grab which infringed fundamental human rights without any justification - and one so awful that even the authoritarians in the National Party could see it (you know you're in trouble when the National Party is acting as your conscience...)

Unfortunately, thanks to single-majority government, Little will probably get his way. He'll convince Cabinet, Cabinet will whip the Labour caucus, and that's 61 votes. The actual merits simply don't come into when one party holds a majority. Which means the sooner this aberration is over and we can get back to the checks and balances of normal consensual MMP politics, the better.

How convenient

Visa processing times have gone through the roof, and the holdup appears to be SIS security checks. But the SIS now refuses to release basic performance data on whether it is doing the job properly because "national security":

The SIS has refused to reveal its average processing time but said the timeframes were being formalised in a service level agreement with Immigration New Zealand (INZ).

[...]

Director-General of Security Andrew Hampton said to reveal the number of security checks (NSC) and how long they took may prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand or international relations.

How convenient that suddenly basic accountability information is suddenly a state secret. I'm sure that will help ensure SIS does their job properly. Even more convenient: if they've actually classified the statistics, its a crime punishable by 5 years imprisonment to leak them. So there's not even the usual check on underperformance.

The supposed "justification" for this is that unnamed "adversaries" could "exploit the border screening system" if given time-series data on processing times. How? By knowing whether SIS was doing its job quickly and efficiently? And do they think that those supposed "adversaries" don't know that already?

This is a perfect example of how "national security" is used to hide embarrassing information and evidence of underperformance. And the only interest it serves is that of an agency which is too busy chasing imaginary enemies to perform its basic functions.

Government-sponsored debt-slavery

Stuff this morning has an appalling story about the exploitation of RSE workers in Blenheim, with workers being overcharged for substandard accommodation, denied sick-leave, and held in what is effectively debt-slavery:

Migrant horticulture workers are being housed six men to a room, charged $150 a week to sleep in freezing and damp conditions which see them fall sick repeatedly, and then refused paid sick leave.

One worker living in a crowded motel unit in Blenheim became so unwell he was coughing blood, but his boss initially refused to take him to the doctor, telling him to go to The Warehouse and buy paracetamol instead.

[...]

Conditions are so bad, some of the workers say they are desperate to go home, but have been unable because they are in debt to their employers for flights, work clothing, or tools. Some have so many deductions from their pay each week, they end up with as little as $100.

Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Saunoamaali'i Karanina Sumeo, who investigated this, is quite explicit in calling this as debt bondage, "where salary deductions are being used as a means to financially control workers". This is meant to be a crime in Aotearoa, but the way the RSE scheme is set up virtually guarantees it. Rather than being free to work for anyone, RSE workers are "bonded" to a particular employer, held captive to allow their exploitation. Effectively, we have a system of government-sponsored debt-slavery for the benefit of the horticultural industry.

We need to end this exploitative system. And the easiest way of doing it is to end bonding and give people real visas, so workers can move to non-exploitative employers. Of course, that would defeat the purpose - to provide the horticultural industry with cheap, captive labour to subsidise their profits. So I guess our chickenshit Labour government - supposedly a worker's party - will let this exploitation continue.

An immediate perception of corruption

Over the course of the Covid crisis there has been unease with border restrictions, as people have found it difficult to get MIQ spots. And meanwhile, the government has been secretly letting billionaires in:

Billionaire Google co-founder Larry Page visited New Zealand amid Covid-19 border restrictions after his child fell ill in Fiji, Stuff can reveal.

Kiwi businessman and philanthropist Sir Stephen Tindall, who knows Page personally, confirmed he visited New Zealand because his young child required hospital treatment in Auckland.

[...]

Various details of the visit, including where Page stayed, whether he spent two weeks in a managed isolation facility and the grounds on which he was granted entry across New Zealand's closed border, remain a mystery.

Immigration and internal affairs ministers won't comment on the case and the Government refused to say whether Page was a citizen.

The fact that Page is a billionaire and isn't known to be an NZ citizen - he wasn't born here, and has no known association with this country - creates an immediate perception of corruption. Which makes the government's silence on this case simply unacceptable. As with Peter Thiel, who National sold citizenship to in 2011, there is a strong public interest in transparency about whether they have cut a similar deal (or are just letting page skip the queue and potentially endanger us all because he is rich). And an even stronger public interest in accountability if they have. And until the government comes clean, we're entitled to think they're dirty.

An end to imprisoning refugees?

Back in May, Amnesty International exposed New Zealand's repuslive system of refugee detention, and the ongoing human rights abuses it leads to. It clearly embarassed the government, because today they've announced a formal inquiry into the practice - the first step to ending it:

But following the release in May of a damning report by Amnesty International into the practice, the Government is now acknowledging swift action is needed.

The Minister of Immigration Kris Faafoi and Associate Minister Phil Twyford have ordered a review into Immigration New Zealand’s processes following Amnesty's research. The review will focus on the appropriateness of the use of Corrections and Police facilities for immigration detention.

[...]

[Amnesty International Executive Director Meg] De Ronde welcomes the Government’s prompt response to their meeting but cautions there is still work to be done.

“We’re heartened to see such a prompt and direct result to our research and to the meeting we had with the Ministers and the Asylum Seeker’s Support Trust. A review is a good first step, but we along with others in civil society will be keeping the pressure on until we see legislative change to stop the imprisonment of asylum seekers in criminal justice facilities.”

Good. This practice needs to end. We don't accept it when Australia does it, and we should not acept it from our own government either.

Saying the quiet bit out loud

Normally when people complain about unemployment, its that its too high. But the Employers and Manufacturers Association is complaining that it is too low. Why? Because it might mean they have to raise wages and compete for workers:

Unemployment is at present estimated at 4.5 percent and trending down. But the Employers and Manufacturers Association argues it needs to be closer to 5 percent, to make it easier to recruit and retain staff, and constrain wage inflation.

This really is saying the quiet bit out loud: that NZ business relies on the government to maintain structural unemployment to suppress wages and keep profits high. But it gets worse, because they then explicitly link it to immigration as well:

"And I think really what's exacerbating the problem is, we haven't got immigration. We might be able to cope with 3 to 4 percent unemployment, in terms of finding people, if we have the other side of the equation which is immigration."

Business (or at least the body purporting to represent them) views immigration not as a way of welcoming new citizens, but as a regulatory subsidy. No need to improve pay or conditions if you can just exploit a migrant! No need to change your sector's business model if you can just bring in someone who doesn't know that people don't work 18 days in a row with no breaks here! But the pandemic (and the petri-dish states breeding new and nastier variants) means the borders are unlikely to open anytime soon. Which means business will have to compete and innovate. Things like actually training staff, rather than expecting there to be someone with the perfect skill-set available from overseas or just waiting around due to structural unemployment. Offering better, more flexible conditions. And above all, paying more. And the sooner business gets the message the market is sending, rather than whining for the government to put its thumb on the scales for them, the better off we'll all be.

Finally, one of the reasons we have a housing crisis is because housing costs have massively outstripped wages. You know what would fix that? A decent bout of "wage inflation". But clearly the EMA doesn't want workers to have houses either.

A long-overdue apology

The New Zealand government is going to formally apologise for the "dawn raids" which targeted Pacific peoples in the 1970's. Good. Terrorising people on the basis of their race was wrong and something which should be a lasting shame to New Zealand. But there's another wrong they need to apologise for, and that is Muldoon's law stripping Samoans of their New Zealand citizenship. This law was immoral, racist, and wrong; it needs to be repealed, people's citizenship restored, the victims compensated, and measures put in place to allow their descendents to claim citizenship by descent should they choose to do so.

Refugees do not belong in prison

We like to think that New Zealand is a better, kinder place than Australia. We welcome refugees, while racist Australia puts them in Pacific gulags where they are tortured and abused. Except its not true: New Zealand operates its own refugee detention system to discourage and punish those who dare to believe our rhetoric. And according to Amnesty International, it involves widespread human rights abuses:

Shocking allegations of rape, assault and attempted suicide have emerged from asylum seekers who Amnesty International argues are being unfairly detained in prisons by Immigration New Zealand (INZ).

The human rights organisation has released its first extensive report into the treatment of 12 of 86 detained people who sought asylum here between 2015 and 2020.

Amnesty International said at every stage there were failures to ensure basic rights to a fair process.

You can read the full report here. Refugees are unreasonably and unlawfully detained, not informed of the reason for their detention and denied access to lawyers, incarcerated with criminals for years, and abused. The courts, which are meant to protect human rights, rubber-stamp this. It violates the Bill of Rights Act and international human rights law. The underlying reason for detention - to deter claims and punish those who enter New Zealand unlawfully or without travel documents - violates the Refugee Convention.

This has to stop. Prison is an inherently dehumanising environment. Putting people who have been tortured, abused and persecuted there is simply cruel and vicious. But I guess this is another example of Jacinda Ardern's "kindness".

Refugees have no place in prison. If you'd like to tell the government that, you can send a message here.

Labour adopts NZ First's racism

New Zealand First were a nasty pack of racists. One of the ideas they pushed was that immigrants - which in NZ First-ese means "non-white people", not those lovely people from the UK or South Africa - are coming here to steal the pensions of "hardworking" (white) New Zealanders by the dirty deceitful trick of becoming New Zealanders themselves. They constantly had member's bills in the ballot to stop this - one of which was voted down in 2015. They're out of Parliament now, but it seems that their racism has found a new home, in the Labour Party. Because their latest bill on the topic - the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill - was drawn and sent to select committee just before the 2020 election. And the Labour Party has apparently decided to back it, with a select committee report recommending its passage. The only party on the committee which opposed its passage was the Greens.

I guess its another example of how Labour is "bringing kindness back": by making older immigrants second-class citizens and raising the risk that they'll spend their final years in poverty, in order to pander to the myths of racist old people. Which doesn't actually seem very "kind" at all.

Billionaires aren't essential

RNZ reported yesterday that several of the billionaire backers of Moneyboat have been unable to enter Aotearoa to watch their lawyers fight, because they haven't been able to get a quarantine slot. Boo hoo. Those slots rightly belong to returning kiwis, and so I'm not sad at all to see foreign billionaires being made to wait their turn. But what really stinks is that they were allowed to apply at all. That's because their Moneyboat teams said they were "essential workers", which is pure bullshit. Billionaires aren't essential in any way. Like tapeworms, they're purely parasitic. They're contributing no useful skills to their teams, or to Aotearoa. They're simply coming here as tourists. In normal times, that's fine. But now, they're taking spaces which rightly belong to kiwis. They should be told to fuck off, and if they want to take their stupid boats with them so we don't have to subsidise them any more, so much the better.

Labour sells out kiwis

So, Labour has given in to the whining from farmers, and will be allowing 2,000 RSE workers into the country to pick their fruit, though with tighter conditions: they'll have to be paid a living wage and employers must pay for their quarantine. Which sounds good, until you remember that the employers control their workers' accomodation (described by some workers as "“camps”, “prisons” and “reservations”", which is what you get when people are literally forbidden from living in normal houses) and get to deduct its costs, so are in a perfect position to claw back the headline increase through increased charges. So while it might raise wages across the horticultural sector, the actual RSE workers probably won't see the benefit. But hey, this prick will have more peasants to abuse.

But the real cost here is the quarantine spaces. They're a highly limited and contested resource, and the government is saying that they're going to use them to subsidise courgette-guy's bottom line. Every couple of days I see stories in the news about kiwis trapped overseas, separated from their loved ones and forced to wait out there risking death in the plaguelands because they can't get one of those over-subscribed MIQ spaces. And "kind" Jacinda has just said they need to wait longer so this guy can get his courgettes picked. Meanwhile, MIQ workers - who are already quitting because of the conditions - will be expected to risk their lives not so kiwis can return to their families, but for the horticulture industry's bottom line. I wonder how many of them will be willing to do that?

Fuck that. Those quarantine spaces belong to kiwis. And we shouldn't be giving them to businesses until every kiwi who wants to return is home. As for the fruit, let it rot. No-one is going to starve if they don't get their christmas cherries or their fancy wine. Kiwi lives are more important than exporters' profits.

Taking the piss

While the borders are closed, employers can still get visas for "essential" workers. But some of the jobs deemed "essential" don't seem to be:

Applications were approved for 633 different jobs ranging from low skilled roles including taxi driver, cafe worker and cleaner, through to highly skilled jobs such as paediatrician, aircraft engineer and chemical engineer.

The visa approvals come at the same time as many New Zealanders are finding themselves out of work as a result of Covid-19’s impact on businesses and the economy.

Taxi drivers, cafe workers and cleaners. And the longer list includes things like bank workers, accounts clerks, call centre operators and bus drivers (and that's just the first few pages). As with the shortage of rural agricultural workers, its hard to escape the conclusion that the reason no kiwis are available to fill these roles is because we won't accept the terrible pay and conditions offered, and the problem isn't so much a "skills shortage" as a shortage of people willing to work for the wages these cheapskates are prepared to pay.

These employers are simply taking the piss and looking for a licence for exploitation: someone they can threaten to deport if they don't accept whatever shit is offered. And the government is aiding and abetting them in this by giving them access to migrant labour, which is functioning purely as a regulatory subsidy. Its time that stopped. Outside of a few areas of genuine shortage, if you can't find workers in a market economy, then the answer is to offer more. And if employers aren't willing to do that, then they deserve to go bankrupt.

Let them rot

Another farmer is complaining about leaving crops to rot because they can't get cheap foreign workers to pick them. So why can't he get kiwi workers? Just look at the conditions:

With their focus on the short work period, the RSE staff worked the two-to-three month picking season with seven-day working weeks and working days that begin at dawn and finish on dark.

Hiring local staff meant juggling domestic and lifestyle responsibilities, and often social issues stemming from areas where regular work hadn't existed for decades. The working days were shorter which meant fewer courgettes got picked.

Heap said the productivity differences between RSE workers and local workers was enormous. He needed at least two New Zealanders to do the work of one RSE worker, and the churn of local workers was huge.

Basicly, these are Victorian working conditions, the sort of shit Samuel Parnell threw people off a wharf to end. As for "domestic responsibilities", he's basicly saying that workers having lives and families is a problem for him. Clearly, what he wants is a compliant, disposable peasantry, one he can ship in when he needs work done then ship out or just abandon when he doesn't, and he's surprised we're refusing to endanger ourselves by letting him do that in a pandemic. But what surprises me is that we let him do it in the first place. It ought to be a baseline in our society that workers are well-paid, well-treated, and able to have lives outside of work. And if denying those basic rights is the price of cheap courgettes, I say "let them rot".

The Australian courts have had enough of refugee detention

For the past decade, Australia has had a racist, anti-refugee policy. Those claiming refugee status are imprisoned without trial and left to rot in the hope they would "voluntarily" return to be tortured and murdered. When the courts have granted them visas, the government has immediately revoked them on racial "character" grounds, so they never leave detention. Now, the Australian courts have finally had enough of this bullshit:

A Syrian man who has spent the last six years locked up in Australian detention centres after his visa was revoked is free after a landmark legal ruling.

Lawyers for the man, who has lived in Australia since he was 13, successfully argued that he was being held unlawfully because nothing had happened on his case for a year, and no attempt had been made to return him to his war-ravaged homeland.

His solicitor Alison Battison said it was the first time in Australian legal history that someone has been freed from detention under the ancient writ of habeas corpus, which puts the onus on the state to prove a valid reason for imprisoning someone.

As in New Zealand, the courts have ruled that the purpose of detention is to enable a decision or deportation. If there is no decision or deportation process, then the detention serves no purpose and is illegal. The twist in this case is that, because the Australia government has refused to even consider granting a visa, the courts have said that it doesn't matter: the man is free, they can't detain him for immigration purposes, and if they try and arrest him for being unlawfully in the country then that will be contempt of court. The next step is of course a civil claim for damages for false imprisonment, as well as multiple cases applying the same logic to every other long-term immigration detainee.

How will the Australian government respond? Based on their past behaviour, probably with more tyranny. But removing habeas corpus rights is a big step, even for a racist tyrant like Peter Dutton. And hopefully the Australian Senate will refuse to go along with any such attempt.

About time

New Zealand likes to think of itself as not a racist country (despite being founded on the racist dispossession and subjugation of Maori). But for years, we've had a racist refugee policy, which basicly excludes refugees from Africa and the Middle East unless they already have relatives here. Now, the government is finally getting rid of it:

A refugee policy that's been labelled as racist by migrant advocates is being scrapped by the government.

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has announced as part of the government's three-year refugee policy that it will get rid of the requirement for Middle Eastern and African refugees to have relatives already residing here.

The announcement has come just months before the refugee quota will jump from 1000 to 1500 for 2020.

Africa and Middle East regions will have their allocation increased from 14 percent to 15 percent.

Good. Because the sole aim of the policy seemed to be to limit the number of brown faces old white racists like Don Brash saw on the street. And that is not a legitimate aim of policy at all.

NZ should sign the UN Global Compact on Migration

One of the foundations of New Zealand foreign policy has been support for international institutions and international law. Now, the National Party is opposing that foundation over the UN Global Compact on Migration, saying that "it's not for the UN to tell NZ what to do", and threatening to withdraw from it if the government signs it. So what does this evil UN compact do?

having read the final draft version, the answer seems to be "what we're doing anyway". The Global Compact is a non-binding agreement - an aspiration statement more than anything - written in pure business quack-speak rather than the legal language of UN treaties. It basicly says that orderly migration is good, and better when migrants are welcomed by the societies they move to. It sets out some broad principles which should govern it - including human rights and national sovereignty - along with a series of objectives and "actions to be considered" in achieving them. Most of these objectives and actions are completely unobjectionable, and things New Zealand does anyway. So there's stuff like making it easy for migrants to know whether they'd actually meet the legal requirements to move to your country (duh), opposing people smuggling, and reducing the scope for migrants to be exploited. Plus boring things like working towards portable social security, mutual recognition of skills, and making it easy for migrants to send money back to their families. Through this, there's a constant focus on human rights, gender, and the rights of children, but this echoes actually-binding treaties NZ is a party to, like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and Convention on the Rights of the Child.

So what's controversial? National says it "treats legal and illegal migration in the same way". This doesn't seem to be the case. The principles section makes it clear that states may distinguish between regular and irregular migration status, including in the implementation of their commitments. And this is made clear in the section on providing basic services to migrants:

We commit to ensure that all migrants, regardless of their migration status, can exercise their human rights through safe access to basic services. We further commit to strengthen migrant-inclusive service delivery systems, notwithstanding that nationals and regular migrants may be entitled to more comprehensive service provision, while ensuring that any differential treatment must be based on law, proportionate, pursue a legitimate aim, in accordance with international human rights law.

What is a "basic service" is undefined, but New Zealand is already a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which requires us to recognise the right of all persons, without discrimination, to social security, health, education, housing, and an adequate standard of living (developing countries get to decide the extent to which they implement these rights for non-nationals. Developed countries like NZ don't). So, to the extent that we see this as an obligation, its one we signed up for fifty years ago. As for what it actually means, I'd interpret it as ruling out UK-style "hostile environment" policies (under which illegal migrants - or people who have forgotten their papers - cannot even rent homes or open bank accounts, let alone get jobs, go to school, use the hospitals, or receive benefits, in an explicit attempt to starve them out). We can't leave illegal migrants to starve in the street, or punish their children, but under that provision it seems lawful to treat them in the same manner as tourists or make them subject to the same residency requirements for services as citizens - or at least, no more unlawful than it is at present.

Iain Lees-Galloway says there's some areas of concern, such as "having identity cards for migrants, and what could be viewed as regulation of free speech". The former is an objective to implement the right to a legal identity by ensuring that both nationals have proof of nationality and migrants are issued adequate documentation at all stages of migration. The specific actions make it clear that this is largely an obligation on source countries to make it easy for people to get passports, birth and marriage certificates etc, rather than some Orwellian requirement to give migrants ID cards to mark them out from the rest of the population. As for the free speech stuff, suggested actions include enacting or maintaining anti-hate crime legislation and to cease public funding for media outlets that systematically promote xenophobia, racism and intolerance. We already have obligations to do both under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, so its hard to see any problem here.

So what's the real problem with this compact? Simple: it says immigration detention should only be used as a measure of last resort and outlaws leaving migrants to drown at sea. Racist countries such as Australia and much of Southern Europe hate this. And their racist discourse has been picked up and used locally by the National Party. Its kindof disturbing that they have those sorts of friends, but that's National for you. And so now they've become a party which explicitly opposes a rules-based international order. Except for trade in dairy products, of course.

Good

"Collateral Murder" leaker Chelsea Manning has been granted a special direction to apply for a work visa, effectively making her entry into New Zealand a formality. Good. Quite apart from showing a suitable respect for free expression, Manning is a hero whose leaks exposed war crimes and dubious decision-making by the powerful. While the party of the powerful (or rather, the party of toadying to the powerful) dislike this, New Zealand should welcome her.

Meanwhile, it seems that Australia intends to make the opposite decision and refuse her entry. Which is I think another example of how our countries are drifting apart. New Zealand is a much more liberal country than Australia, and a much more free one. Meanwhile, Australia, with its security laws and domestic religious oppression really seems to be trying to turn into a tyrannical shithole like the UK.