A threat to democracy

People have also suspected that New Zealand's spy agencies saw people who wished to limit their powers, cut their budgets, or disestablish them as a "threat" to "national security". And it turns out they were right. According to former Green MP Keither Locke, the SIS has been forced to apologise to him after documents emerged showing exactly that mindset:

Last April I received a letter from Rebecca Kitteridge, the director of the Security Intelligence Service, apologising for the way I was referred to in internal SIS documents. She wrote that I had been described as a “threat” in speaking notes for a Joint Induction Programme run by the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau since 2013.

In the SIS documents I was identified as an “internal” threat because I “wish[ed] to see the NZSIS & GCSB abolished or greatly modified”. The documents labelled this a “syndrome”.

In her apology, Kitteridge said “the talking point suggests wrongly that being a vocal critic of the agencies means you are a ‘threat’ or a ‘syndrome’. In fact, people who criticise the agencies publicly are exercising their right to freedom of expression and protest, which are rights we uphold, and are enshrined in the Intelligence and Security Act 2017.”

But pretty obviously, these are not rights the SIS upholds. They have a long and dirty history of political surveillance, of which this is just the latest outrage. And their closed, cold war mindset and the iron law of bureaucracy gives them clear and ongoing incentives to continue to paint critics in this light. All of which means that it is the SIS, not its critics, which is a threat: a threat to our democracy. And the best way of eliminating that threat is to disband it.

Thankyou Keith Locke

I've just finished watching Keith Locke's valedictory speech. Keith has been in Parliament for twelve years, and during that time he's been a consistent voice for peace and human rights, for tolerance, secularism and republicanism. While he never had any of his bills passed, he unquestionably drove the debate, and changed things for the better, just by being there and speaking up and making sure that abuses were not allowed to happen in silence and that our government's hypocrisy on human rights did not go unchallenged.

Because of Keith, we don't have a sedition law anymore. Because of Keith, we no longer indefinitely detain refugees. Because of Keith, Ahmed Zaoui and his family are still in New Zealand rather than being deported in secret. These are achievements we should all be grateful for.

But now, after twelve years, he's going (though not far - apparently he'll be back on Parliament's front lawn with a placard whenever it is necessary). People have said the Greens won't be the same without him, and they won't - but at the same time, others will step forward to provide that voice. Kennedy Graham is already doing it in the case of international law. Someone else will no doubt step up to be the critic and conscience of the House on human rights issues and America's "war on terror". But Keith did those jobs while he was there, and he made our country a better place by doing them. And for that, I thank him.

Bugger

For the past 12 years, Keith Locke has been a constant and principled voice for peace and human rights in our Parliament. Now, he's planning to retire. Like Nandor and Sue before him, he's given more to us than we have any right to expect. But his departure will still be a tremendous loss, both to the Greens and to our politics as a whole.

It also means the torch will have well and truly passed to a new generation in the Greens. Locke and Sue Kedgley are currently the only two Green MPs remaining from their 1999 intake - and Kedgley is also retiring. The turnover has been so complete that Metiria Turei will be their only MP dating from before 2008. While parties need to renew, this has been an enormous and quite sudden loss of Parliamentary experience and likely institutional memory; hopefully they'll avoid similar bloc-retirements in the future.

Strengthening the BORA

Over the weekend, in my post celebrating 20 years of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, I called for the BORA to be entrenched and strengthened to allow inconsistent laws to be overturned. Today, Green MP Keith Locke has announced a Member's Bill which does half of that job, and takes an interesting approach on the other half. His New Zealand Bill of Rights Amendment Bill [PDF] entrenches the BORA, requiring a referendum or a 75% supermajority in the House to repeal or amend it. And it allows the courts to declare legislation to be inconsistent with our supreme human rights law. But instead of allowing those laws to be overturned or rendered invalid, it instead requires Parliament to be formally notified of, and to formally respond to, any inconsistency. We already use such a provision in the Human Rights Act (see s92J and s92K), but that applies only to the right to be free of discrimination. Locke's bill would extend it to all rights. So, for example, in future the courts could find s11 of the Flags, Emblems, and Names Protection Act 1981 to be in violation of the right to freedom of expression, and Parliament would have to say publicly what, if anything, it was going to do about it. While its not overturning, this would still be an advance, as the pressure will then be on Parliament to repeal or amend offending provisions so as to make them consistent.

The bill also has a couple of other amendments around s7 notifications, requiring the Attorney-General to give reasons backing up a notification of inconsistency (not required; they always do), and select committees and members proposing amendments to legislation to assess their consistency with the BORA (a role which should instead go to the Attorney-General). A more important change is to clarify that a justified limitation must be the least restrictive measure reasonably possible. This still involves a judgement call, but it again forces government to pursue less restrictive over more restrictive alternatives.

Overall, these are positive changes, and I look forward to them being passed. And while the entrenchment is a big move, I don't think it is such to require a referendum - the inconsistency provisions still leave ultimate power in the hands of Parliament, rather than the courts, so its not the sort of constitutional change that must be put to the people. Instead, these are changes which will make our BORA work better, make the politicians justify any deviation from it, and symbolise our commitment to human rights. And that's definitely worth doing.

Voting down the republic

Tonight, the New Zealand Parliament debated a republic for the first time, in the form of Keith Locke's Head of State Referenda Bill. The bill would have established a process by which the people of New Zealand could have their say on our constitutional future, through a two-stage referendum process. Unfortunately, Parliament voted it down, 68 - 53.

The debate is up on In the House. There are some good speeches there, on how a republic would better reflect our national identity as a diverse, egalitarian, democratic nation, on how the monarchy is discriminatory and does not accord with New Zealand values, and on how the people should be allowed to have their say. And then there are the speeches from National MPs, who were whipped into opposing the bill, and whose best argument against it was that a debate on the republic would be a distraction from the issues they wanted to talk about. But to put it bluntly, that is not their decision to make. The constitution belongs to the people, not to MPs, and they should be enabling us to discuss it. By standing in the way of such a discussion, the National party has marked itself as opposed to democracy. But then, we already knew that, didn't we?

While the bill was defeated tonight, the issue is not going to go away. Its an issue of identity, about who we are as a nation, and thus a generational issue. Pretty much every young MP who entered the House last election was a republican, and that trend is only going to get stronger. Its been a long time since New Zealanders were raised on imperialism, longer still since we thought of Britain as "home" or ourselves as British. The generations who believe those things are withering and dying by the day, and their toxic memes are dying with them. The only question is how long their dead hands will maintain a death grip on our future.

Laws are made by Parliament

Over on FrogBlog, Keith Locke decries the High Court decision that police were misapplying firearms law in attempting to ban "sporting configuration" guns. He shouldn't be. A fundamental principle is at stake here: whether laws are made by our democratically elected Parliament or by our unelected and unaccountable police force. And on that question, any democrat, liberal, or supporter of the rule of law should be on the side of Parliament. The police's role is to enforce the laws, not make them. Letting them just make it up as they go along is an invitation to arbitrary tyranny.

(Meanwhile, Police Association President Greg O'Connor demands more respect for police officers. Perhaps if they didn't engage in the sort of behaviour described above...?)

National fights the future

John Key has announced that National will oppose Keith Locke's Head of State Referenda Bill. This doesn't mean the bill will fail - National only has 58 votes out of 122 - but things just got a lot tougher. Now in order to get to select committee so the people can have their say, Locke will have to gain the backing of every other party in Parliament. That's not inconceivable (United Future already supports the bill) - but its a very big ask.

With this decision National has shown its true colours. The party of the past is attempting to strangle our future. But then, this is the party which restored feudal honours so its business backers could ape a foreign aristocracy and try and lord it over the rest of us. And I guess there's a few people in National still hoping to join that club before we close the doors on it forever.

The bill may very well be defeated. But if that happens, it will simply go back into the ballot next year. Like electoral reform in the early 90's, this issue is not going to go away. And it will keep being raised until Parliament finally allows us to discuss it properly.

Support for the republic

The Dominion-Post repots that Keith Locke's Head of State Referenda Bill almost has the numbers to get to select committee:

A bill for a referendum on New Zealand becoming a republic will go close to passing its first reading in Parliament, with high profile Kiwis set to support it.

It is understood Green MP Keith Locke's bill, which is expected to reach Parliament in March, will have enough support that only two National or ACT Party MPs will have to add their backing for it to pass.

This is good news - this is an important bill which deserves a select committee hearing. But it would be better news if it actually had the numbers. So, I guess its time to start lobbying National and ACT MPs...

[Hat-tip: New Zealand Republic]

Bringing on the republic

Republicanism has been a sleeping issue for the past decade or so. Most politicians freely acknowledge that it is "inevitable" that New Zealand will grow up and become a republic, but none seem willing to do anything to bring that about.

Today, that changed, with the drawing of Keith Locke's Head of State Referenda Bill from the ballot. The bill would establish a two-step referendum process on whether to become a republic. In the first referendum, we would be offered a choice of the status quo, a republic with a President elected by a supermajority in Parliament, or a republic with a President directly elected by the people using STV. If any option gets a majority (unlikely, given that republican support will be split on the issue of election), then we go with it. If none does, then there will be a run-off between the two strongest options.

The important thing to note is that this bill makes the absolute minimal changes to create a republic. It would not see a powerful executive President with powers to veto legislation. Instead, if we go republican, the President would have exactly the same powers and be bound by convention in exactly the same way as the present Governor-General. All that would change is their method of appointment and who they work for: us, or a foreign monarch.

The Republican Movement has a guide to the bill here. If you want to show your support, you can join them here.

Drawn: the Republic

A ballot for member's bills was held today, and the following bill was drawn:

• Head of State Referenda Bill (Keith Locke)

So, we get to have the debate. It will be interesting to see which way people will jump.

There were only two new bills in the ballot this week: John Boscawen's KiwiSaver (Contribution Flexibility) Amendment Bill and Raymond Huo's Local Government (Auckland Council) (Asian Advisory Board) Amendment Bill. While the Greens and ACT are continuing to make full use of their ballot slots, National and Labour continued to underuse theirs, with only 5 and 13 bills (out of a possible 35 and 43) respectively.

The full list of bills is on Red Alert here.

And worse...

It turns out the Worker's Party weren't the only political party caught up in the police's dragnet of left-wing groups. According to a press release from Keith Locke, the police also spied on the Greens:

"The Green Party is also concerned that some of its own emails were forwarded by their agent, Rob Gilchrist, to the Special Investigation Group. We will be asking the Police whether they encourage this practice. There is no evidence to date that they have discouraged it."

As Keith notes, spying on political parties is an anathema in a democratic society. Our police are dangerously out of control, and it is time they were brought back into line.

Meanwhile, I find it interesting that all our legislative and judicial safeguards against wiretapping and intercepting emails can be legally circumvented by bribery. Those safeguards exist for good reasons, and the sorts of crimes the police claim to be investigating these groups for are things they would never be able to get an interception warrant for. But apparently that all goes out the window if they pay someone. It's a nasty end-run around a law designed to protect us from exactly this sort of abuse of power, and a loophole Parliament should look at plugging.

How many people does China have to kill?

The Chinese regime's crackdown in Tibet and our government's lacklustre response has raised an important question: where do we set the line on human rights and free trade? How many people does a regime have to kill or torture or force to work in sweatshops before we decide that we will do no favours for them and we do not want their tainted money? The Greens' Keith Locke will be trying to get an answer on the government's moral limits in Question Time today:

3. KEITH LOCKE to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What human rights abuses, if any, would lead him to advise the Prime Minister to reconsider the April signing of a preferential trade agreement with China?

Unfortunately, I don't expect any real answer. Instead, I expect Locke will be showered with abuse for daring to ask such an uncomfortable question. Which in itself will speak volumes about the immorality of the government's position.

Update: As predicted, evasion and abuse. Our government seems to have no moral limit in trade policy at all. "Fuck the morals, does it make any money" seems to be the name of the game.

Voting down progress

Keith Locke's proposed amendments to part 1 of the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill have just been voted down, 109 - 10. Given the nature of the amendments - and specifically one ensuring that the law could not be applied to peaceful protest - it is difficult to see this as anything other than the two major parties and their authoritarian hangers-on voting to explicitly criminalise political dissent and supress human rights. And this is not something we should either forget or forgive.

Amending the terrorism bill II

Keith Locke's Supplementary Order Paper on the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill is out, and the amendments look rather interesting. In addition to omitting clauses 6 and 7 (which create the general offence of committing a terrorist act and remove the "democracy" defence for terrorist financing), he also proposes omitting clause 12 (which would change the level of intent required to be considered to be participating in a terrorist group from knowledge to mere recklessness) and making numerous changes to the designation rules (priarily, requiring the Prime Minister to take the ICCPR into account and consult with the Attorney-General on designations). More importantly, he also proposes amending the existing "disruption of infrastructure" clause in the definition of "terrorist act" to read:

serious interference with, or serious disruption to, an infrastructure facility, with the intention of endangering human life

This would ensure that the law can not be used against non-violent but disruptive protests targetted at infrastructure facilities - e.g. protestors chaining themselves to railway lines, or climbing the chimneys of a coal plant.

Finally, Locke also proposes a review, at the end of 2008, to consider the operation of the Act and whether it should be retained, repealed, or amended. That's a good idea as well - security legislation should always be temporary, and should always be monitored to ensure it is necessary and to prevent its misuse.

It will be interesting to see how many of these amendments pass, and whether the government will recognise public concerns around the bill, or whether they'll collude with National to ram it through regardless.

How effective is indefinite detention?

At the moment, Ali Reza Panah is being detained in Mount Eden Prison by the Immigration Departmnet in an effort to force him to sign travel documents permitting him to be deported back to persecution and death in Iran. In Ali Panah's case, the detention has been sepctacularly unsuccessful - he has been there for eighteen months. Three others are similarly detained under s60 (6) (b) of the Immigration Act, two of them for over a year.

This raises the question of how effective this sort of indefinite detention is generally. My efforts to find out have been unsuccessful - Immigration apparently "doesn't keep records" of the number of people they have detained in this fashion over the years. But the Greens' Keith Locke has been on the case, and through Parliamentary written questions has managed to get a partial answer out of the Minister. In response to his question (14105 (2007)) about the outcomes of indefinite detention under s60 (6) (b), the Minister replied:

As at 13 August 2007, of the people detained under Section 60 (6) as a whole, two have been removed in the financial year 2007/08, four are in detention, and eight have been released on conditions, awaiting either removal or a decision on an application with Immigration New Zealand.

So, it's been successful in only two out of fourteen cases in the last year. And against this dismal backdrop, the Minister wants to increase the use of indefinite detention and make it easier to keep people in jail for longer?

This policy isn't just wrong - it is also, on the evidence, ineffective - a hugely expensive exercise in pointless sadism. It should be scrapped, and the sooner the better.

Not on her agenda

For the past five years, the United States has been engaged in serious human rights abuses. It has detained hundreds of people without trial in its Caribbean gulag at Guantanamo Bay, it has introduced the practice of extraordinary rendition, kidnapping suspected terrorists and flying them to third world countries so they may be tortured, they have admitted torture in the form of "enhanced interrogation techniques" completely recognisable to the Spanish Inquisition and Gestapo.

Where you stand on this is, as Keith Locke has said,

an acid test of whether you really stand for justice and human dignity.

So where does the Prime Minister stand on it? In Question Time yesterday she was asked, and her answer speaks for itself:

Keith Locke: What will she say to George Bush about the United States’ barbaric treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the American Government’s practice of rendering prisoners to torture in third countries?

Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: It is not on my agenda to raise issues of that kind with the President.

That's right: torture just isn't on her agenda. The policy of shameful, sycophantic silence, continues...

Sedition in Question Time

It looks like sedition is on the agenda for Question Time today:

5. KEITH LOCKE to the Minister of Justice: Does he agree with Law Commission President Sir Geoffrey Palmer that in a free society like New Zealand, which respects the democratic value of free speech, people should not be able to be punished for defaming the Government; if so, will he act to implement the recommendation of the Law Commission “that the seditious offences set out in sections 81 to 85 of the Crimes Act 1961 be abolished.”?

It will be interesting to see whether they have developed a view yet.

The Greens on sedition

The Greens have strongly backed the law commissions call for the repeal of sedition, saying that these archaic laws have no place in a democracy, and pointing out that

"Many New Zealanders convicted of sedition as now considered heroes, including Te Whiti and Rua Kenana. Catholic Bishop James Liston was also charged.

"Helen Clark should remember that three former Labour Party leaders - Harry Holland, Peter Fraser and Walter Nash - were once convicted of sedition under conservative governments. Given this history, it is a sad irony that the first sedition prosecution for decades (of Tim Selwyn) recently occurred on Labour's watch.

But they save the best for last:

"The Government should move with some urgency to get rid of this draconian law. If Labour won't take action the Greens will. I already have a Private Members Bill drafted and ready to be put into the ballot," Mr Locke says.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to it.

Supporting the Head of State (Referenda) Bill

Keith Locke's Head of State (Referenda) Bill hasn't been drawn from the ballot yet - but its supporters are preparing just in case. They now have a website here with information on our current constitutional system and why we might want to change it. It's well worth a look.

The only question is why I'm hearing about this via OzPolitics, rather than a local source.

Better late than never

The Greens have finally spoken up on sedition, calling for a review of the law and an inquiry by the justice and Electoral Select Committee. Keith Locke gets it exactly right in saying that

“[t]he police are taking us down a very dangerous road in prosecuting a person for making a generalized call for civil disobedience.

“New Zealand has an honourable tradition of civil disobedience against injustice, most notably during the Springbok tour of 1981. Thankfully the sedition laws weren’t used at that time, but the police now seemed prepared to prosecute anyone advocating such resistance.

“Next thing we might see farmers facing charges for encouraging others not to get their dogs micro-chipped.

Though actually, I doubt the latter, simply because the bald, bullet-headed thugs in the New Zealand police who are now the self-appointed guardians of our political discourse will likely see them as being part of the political "mainstream", rather than outside of it.

While a call for a review is good, I would rather see the law repealed in its entirity.