Another anti-protest law

National has introduced its new anti-homeless law to Parliament, and it will receive a first reading next week (which puts them up against it if they want it to pass before the election). The law is a disgusting piece of social cleansing, drafted to enable the police to hide the consequences of National's failed economic policies. But its worse than that, because in addition to enabling social cleansing, it is also, like their anti-boy-racer law, an anti-protest law. The new "move-on" order powers apply not just to people begging or rough sleeping (which is bad enough), but also to anyone "behaving in a manner that is disorderly, intimidating, or threatening", "behaving in a manner that is disruptive" (being "disruptive", whatever the fuck that means, is not a criminal offence), "unreasonably obstructing, hindering, or preventing someone from entering or leaving a place where a lawful trade, business, or occupation is being conducted", or "breaching the peace".

As noted previously, the government and police have a habit of regarding protest as inherently disorderly and disruptive, if not as a "breach of the peace". And the application to the common protest tactic of blockading a building is obvious.

Fascinatingly, the bill's BORA vet finds that the anti-begging and anti-rough sleeping provisions are disproportionate limitations on the freedoms of expression and movement, but does not consider the obvious application to protests at all. Which both shows a distinct lack of imagination and is a complete dereliction of duty on the Attorney-General's part.

This law can be used to limit fundamental rights to protest. Given police attitudes, it will inevitably be used to do so. If that is not the intent, then it needs a Terrorism Suppression Act-style clause excluding its application to any protest, strike, or lockout. If the regime fails to add one, then we should regard the suppression of protest as their intent, and the destruction of our democracy as their ultimate goal. It is that simple.

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.

National takes another step towards tyranny

Earlier in the month, the British government proscribed Palestine Action, a peaceful protest group, as a terrorist entity, over their effective protest action against British support for Israel's campaign of genocide in Gaza. Since then hundreds of people have been arrested for "supporting" them, some for simply holding a Palestinian flag. Its an appalling act of tyranny from a regime desperate to shut down criticism of its support for a genocidal regime. And now, the National government wants to bring that tyranny here, with a secret "consultation" on the Terrorism Suppression Act aimed at making designation easier and outlawing speaking in "support" of terrorist entities:

New Zealanders who publicly express support for terrorist groups could be charged with a criminal offence, as part of secretive proposals being considered by the Government.

[...]

The coalition Government is eyeing reforms to the law, with limited consultation currently taking place behind closed doors with a handpicked selection of groups and experts.

In a copy of the consultation document seen by Newsroom, the Ministry of Justice said the Government had agreed to progress “targeted amendments” to the law, which had not been substantively reviewed since its enactment.

The document said existing offences in the law “don’t capture the full range of behaviours or activities of concern that are part of the contemporary threat from terrorism”, and needed to be updated.

Among the changes being considered were making membership of a terrorist entity a criminal offence, creating new offences to capture public expressions of support for a terrorist act or designated entities (such as showing insignia or distributing propaganda), and modernising definitions for terms like “material support” to capture new online forms of support.

The consultation document also raised the possibility of a streamlined designation process, saying the current decision-making system was lengthy and the designation period was short.

You can read the consultation document here. Its odd that the NZCCL - Aotearoa's premier civil liberties organisation - was not consulted. But then, the whole point of this sort of "targeted consultation" is to exclude opposing voices, and insulate the process from criticism until it is rammed through parliament and is a fait accompli.

As for the merits: criminalising membership of a terrorist organisation does not sound unreasonable, except that such entities don't exactly have membership cards, and all the ways in which membership actually matters - recruiting, training, financing, providing material support, or enhancing the ability to carry out terrorist acts - are already all crimes. As for "public expressions of support", what is happening in the UK at the moment, where virtually any sign of opposition to Israel's genocide in Gaza or support for Palestine in general is being treated as support for a terrorist entity - shows the danger of that. And while the New Zealand government would claim that it is "different", its past actions show that they are not. Just this year, a government minister denounced an opposition MP as "support[ing] terrorism" over Gaza, and I recall him saying similar things about environmentalists opposing coal mines. These are the last people I would trust with stronger anti-terrorism powers.

The Ministry of Justice did not want to hear from Aotearoa about its secret plans. But you can tell them anyway. Read the discussion document, and send your feedback to nationalsecurity@justice.govt.nz by Friday 8 August 2025. While you're at it, tell them that in a democracy, consultations about fundamental civil liberties issues are public, not private.

This is what the IPCA's anti-protest laws mean

Back in February, the "Independent" Police Conduct Authority issued a radical, out-of-the-blue proposal to ban protests. The core of their proposal was a requirement for protesters to notify police well in advance of any protest action, and to obey whatever conditions police subsequently set or directions they made, with failure to do so being an arrestable offence. The latter proposal has since been adopted as a Member's Bill by a National MP, so its very much the regime's agenda as well.

The IPCA's proposal was based in part on draconian Australian anti-protest laws. And there's a perfect example of what they mean in practice, with the possible blinding of a protestor by police in Sydney:

A former Greens candidate has been injured after allegedly resisting police arrest while picketing a business in Sydney’s west, with friends and family warned she may lose sight in her right eye.

The protest, which attracted between 50 and 60 people, sought to stop pedestrian access to a business that was accused by protesters of “supplying electroplating and surface coating services for a variety of applications including aerospace and defence technology” to Israel.

[...]

According to police, officers issued a move-on direction to the protesters at about 5.30am on Friday.

The force alleged the protest was “unauthorised”, as those involved had not given advanced notice nor submitted a form that protected them from being charged under anti-protest laws.

The key thing to realise here is that police may use "reasonable force" to effect an arrest. So creating an offence of "disobeying police" or "refusing to tell police your plans" is effectively a licence for police to beat people at will, an invitation to the sort of violent and brutal policing exemplified above. Or to the sort of violent and brutal policing we see in America, where police respond to protests with barrages of tear gas, rubber bullets, and baton charges, because apparently that's an appropriate response to people yelling and waving banners in the streets.

This sort of policing is profoundly incompatible with democracy. It is not the sort of policing we want to see here. And if the IPCA wants it, then they are no longer fit for purpose, and should be dissolved.

Something to go to in Wellington

Climate Liberation Aotearoa will be holding a rally outside the Wellington District Court on Monday in support of climate defenders:

If you support the climate, or support the right to protest - currently under attack from the secretive IPCA - then please go along.

IPCA hides behind secrecy

On Tuesday, the "Independent" Police Conduct Authority issued an extraordinary report, proposing a complete rewrite of protest law to enable the police to restrict public protests and ban them at a whim. While packaged with several complaints in an appendix, the focus of the "thematic review" was clearly the provision of policy advice - something arguably outside the IPCA's functions. It is normal for other agencies providing policy advice to provide supporting documentation - submissions, briefings, communications, policy documents, and so on - either proactively or via the Official Information Act, so that the public can see that it is well-founded, that all relevant stakeholders have been consulted, and that the policy process has not been captured by any one group.

The problem of course is that the IPCA is exempt from the OIA. Nevertheless, I asked them to provide this information to give the reassurance we deserve in a free and democratic society that they were doing their job properly. They refused, saying

To support our work, our Act contains secrecy provisions and our proceedings and any evidence given to us are privileged. We do not collect statistics about the affiliations of our complainants or submitters and we are not able to release any of the information you request.

Those secrecy provisions however do enable the authority to disclose "such matters as in the opinion of the Authority ought to be disclosed... in order to establish grounds for the Authority’s conclusions and recommendations". The authority's refusal to do so in this case can only lead to the conclusion that they do not believe we ought (or deserve) to know the full basis for their policy advice. That they should be able to recommend significant law changes, while keeping the evidentiary basis (and supporting submissions, briefings, arguments, and testing of their conclusions) completely secret. And that is simply unacceptable in a free and democratic society.

The IPCA's exemption from the OIA has long been noted as anomalous. Its secrecy provisions exist to ensure that complaints can be heard in confidence - an interest already protected by the OIA, and which is protected in other ways for other complaints bodies otherwise subject to the Act. But as long as it stuck to its functions - hearing complaints - that didn't matter so much. Now it is giving significant policy advice, it is a different story. Complaints bodies have a case for limited secrecy around that function. But the idea that government agencies can develop policy in total secrecy is simply monstrous, and incompatible with a free and democratic society. It is precisely the problem that the OIA was enacted to solve.

Rather than rewriting protest law, I think it is time we rewrote the Independent Police Conduct Authority Act 1988. That rewrite must include a complete reassessment of IPCA secrecy, a narrowing of it to protect only the legitimate complaint functions, and the inclusion of the IPCA under the OIA - enabling us to properly scrutinise its administrative and policy work, as well as abstract statistical data on its complaints and outcomes. This would give us much-needed transparency over the IPCA, enabling us to better hold them - and through them, the police - to account.

The alternative is that the IPCA continues to be above the law and effectively unaccountable. The implications for its legitimacy and social licence - and those of the police they supposedly oversee - are left as an exercise for the reader.

Police want to ban protests

The "Independent" Police Conduct Authority issued a radical report today, a Review of the policing of public protests in New Zealand, in which they propose a complete rewrite of protest law, to restrict public protests and enable the police to ban them at a whim. Protest organisers would be forced to notify police of their intention to hold a protest (and would be liable for police overtime if reality moved faster than the police's sclerotic bureaucracy); police could impose conditions about who could do (or say) what and where; violating those conditions would be a crime; and there would be new criminal offences for protesting against "critical infrastructure" and picketing private residences (the latter something the Supreme Court has found to be legal, and which the police are particularly sore about because the target of the protest in that case was an abusive cop). The proposals are a serious and direct threat to the right to protest in Aotearoa, and are explicitly based on laws from anti-democratic regimes such as the UK and Australia.

Its a huge overstepping of their powers by the IPCA, whose functions include hearing complaints and making recommendations on "apparent misconduct or neglect of duty by a Police employee, or any Police practice, policy, or procedure", but do not include "law reform" or "giving policy advice", and perhaps in recognition of that, the recommendations are framed as recommendations that the police propose these changes (so: the IPCA laundering their views through the police. But see later...) As the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties' Thomas Beagle puts it, "Has the IPCA got confused into believing that the PC in their name is for Public Conduct rather than Police Conduct?"

Except its worse than that. Because when you dig into how the IPCA came to do this questionably legal "thematic review", they say:

the need to undertake this review was discussed and agreed with Police from an early stage, and some components of the review have been conducted jointly with Police.

...which invites the conclusion that the police are in fact laundering their policy preferences through the IPCA, which is collaborating with them to give these anti-democratic proposals an imprimatur of "independence". So, the police are laundering through the IPCA, who are laundering through the police, but its cops all the way down. And this shoddy deceit by a supposedly "independent" oversight body makes it crystal clear which side they are really on.

So who else did the IPCA consult in this review? The Ministry of Justice and Department of Internal Affairs, and "stakeholders", including "frontline officers" and "academic and policing experts" from New Zealand and "comparable jurisdictions including the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland and some Australian states". Given their anti-democratic record, the latter are the absolute last people I would ask about protest rights, and the fact that they were consulted suggests a predetermination to suppress protest. Meanwhile, note who is absent from that list: protestors and civil society groups. They've done a big report on how protest law isn't working (for who?), while failing to consult the major "users" (for want of a better word) of that law. And its hard to escape the conclusion that this affected the outcome significantly.

How? Well, the report starts with a summary of protest law, starting with the international and domestic human rights framework, including Article 21 (right of peaceful assembly) of the ICCPR and sections 14 (freedom of expression), 16 (freedom of peaceful assembly), and 17 (freedom of association) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The latter of course are subject "to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". And this is where it gets weird, because the IPCA - which is led by a High Court Judge and whose members are a pair of former senior public servants with experience across the justice and police portfolios - pretends not to understand the law, with repeated statements that what constitutes a "justified limitation" is unclear:

there is no general legislative definition of what reasonable limitations might look like, nor how reasonable limitations might be applied in the protest context

There is of course 35 years of jurisprudence on both of these things, including a detailed framework for the assessment of justified limitations, and a pile of caselaw around protest rights. The IPCA even refers to that caselaw later in the report, but largely to pretend that the law is "uncertain" when it is not. Largely they seem to be whining that when stuff gets to court, police decisions are overturned. Which, again, is a clear sign of bias from the IPCA.

They keep hammering this idea that the law is "imprecise", quoting the UNHRC's General Comment No. 37 on Article 21 (Right of peaceful assembly) that protest laws be

sufficiently precise to allow members of society to decide how to regulate their conduct and may not confer unfettered or sweeping discretion on those charged with their enforcement.

And this is where their failure to consult protest groups really shows. Because if you asked kiwis what we are allowed to do, we would say it is perfectly clear: we are allowed to protest peacefully (and as GC37 notes, "Mere pushing and shoving or disruption of vehicular or pedestrian movement or daily activities do not amount to “violence”"). Protest groups who trespass or block roads are not doing it because they think it is legal - to the contrary, they know it is not, and they expect arrest, and maybe prosecution. And that's one of the many tactics of protest, and All In The Game.

Instead, the people who seem to have an unclear understanding of the law here are those charged with enforcing it. But rather than educating themselves, with better training and a nationally consistent approach, they would rather limit our rights, limit our democracy, gag us, essentially for their own convenience. And it is for their own convenience, as their complaints about the overtime costs of policing protests, or having to manage traffic for a march down Riccarton Road, or their question about whether "the availability of staff and the impact of their deployment on other Police operations... is relevant to an assessment of reasonable limitations on protest activity" show.

The police are basically demanding the very "unfettered or sweeping discretion" to shut down protest the UN HRC rules out, as well as financial penalties against those who do not cooperate in their oppression. We should not let them do it. All political parties should denounce this assault on our right to protest. And those that don't should be vigorously de-elected.

Support the climate strike

Today is school strike 4 climate day. There will be protests around the country in support of climate action and a lower voting age, which are expected to attract over a hundred thousand people.

There's still a pandemic on, so I can't go (curse the pandemic!). But if you feel safe, I urge you to attend and show your support. Numbers matter, and every person counts. The 2019 climate strike forced the then-government into faster action. While this pack of malevolent wankers seem less inclined to listen, at least some among them want to get re-elected, and a large protest is a direct threat to that. We may not be able to stop their ecocidal agenda, but we can make it cost them, and make it easier for it to be reversed on day one of the next government.

A bad sign

On Friday, a New South Wales court heard the case of Violet Coco. As part of a protest against inaction on climate change, Coco had blocked a Sydney motorway for 25 minutes. Using anti-protest laws passed by NSW's fossil-fuel-funded government, the judge jailed her for 15 months, with a minimum non-parole period of 8 months. The outrageous sentence has been condemned around the world, and has drawn more attention to Australia's attacks on the right to protest and transition into a fossil fuel tyranny. And now, the National Party wants to bring that tyranny here:

A new member’s bill will be lodged in the ballot that would make obstructing state highways, major roads, tunnels and bridges a crime.

The bill proposes up to two years in prison, a $20,000 fine, or both.

After disruptive rail protests on Wellington state highways, National are taking a stand against further obstructions.

Its only a member's bill, but member's bills tend to become official policy. Which makes this a very bad sign. At a time of increasing climate crisis and ongoing catastrophe's, National's answer is not to cut emissions, but to jail those demanding they do so. In addition to being grossly undemocratic, that simply does not seem to be a credible response.

Update (8/12/2022): Apparaently NewstalkZB memory holes its interviews really quickly, but fortunately the Wayback Machine had it, so I've updated the link. There's also a press release on Scoop for those looking for more information.

Still striking for a future

In 2017, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern said that climate change was "my generation's nuclear-free moment" and promised action. In 2019 and 2021 school students walked out of classrooms to demand she deliver. And today, they walked out again, because she still hasn't.

The strikes are smaller today, because the movement has lost momentum due to covid. But everyone should be supporting them. The students' basic demand for a liveable future isn't just about their future, but ours as well. We're already experiencing the leading edge of the burning apocalyptic hellscape our elders have left us, and if you're under 80 you can expect to experience it getting worse and worse and worse. On top of the drumbeat of cyclones, droughts and floods, We've already seen megafires in Australia and the US, and megafloods in Pakistan. we haven't yet had out first city-scale wet-bulb event, but we all know its only a matter of time. Unless we stop it. Unless we make our governments stop it, with policy to quickly eliminate fossil fuels, decarbonise the economy, and remediate the damage that has already been done.

This demand for a liveable future is both just and achievable. We have the technology and the knowledge to get there. What stands in our way is a handful of billionaires, who would rather burn the earth than let things change. Our job is to make our governments work for us and not them. Protest is part of that. And if the government refuses to listen, and continues to support the destructive status quo, we should vote them out on their arses and get another one which will.

Thoughts on a riot

Like a lot of Aotearoa, I spent today watching the police's efforts to clear the anti-vaxx / pro-Nazi occupation from Parliament and surrounding streets. Initially, it was mostly pushing and shoving, with some fire extinguishers and pepper-spray when things got heated. But after police began to take back Parliament grounds, it rapidly devolved into a full-on riot, with occupiers setting fires and throwing metal poles and cobblestones at police. They burned the Parliamentary playground, and tried to burn down the Old Government Building, the largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere. At one stage, they (again) tried to use a car as a weapon, reversing rapidly into a police line. I am amazed that no-one was killed.

It was probably always going to end this way. This occupation was violent from the start, with nooses, death threats, and execution lists from day one, and (fortunately muppetlike) attempt to storm Parliament in the first few days. As it embedded itself, it harassed and intimidated locals, while relying on the persistent threats of violence to discourage police action. And when the police finally did take action to stop it from taking over the streets and making them unsafe for local residents, the occupiers escalated their violence, throwing shit and acid and driving cars at police lines. This was just more of the same.

In the aftermath, I'm concerned about what this will mean for the right to protest, and particularly the right to protest at Parliament, where the government has to see you. Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard is already talking about turning it into a walled fortress, allowing the government to lock the gate whenever it doesn't want to hear from the peasants, and in the wake of this shitshow - which was nothing like any protest I have ever seen before in Wellington - he might be allowed to. A better idea would be to focus on the actual problem, and block cars, not people, either temporarily when required, or by pedestrianising the entire government precinct. Parliament's grounds are the People's Lawn, a taonga, and Mallard needs to guard them on our behalf, not try and lock them away from us.

I'm also concerned about what it means for police use of force. Generally, this was very restrained (which is good), but the final stages saw the police using rubber bullets on the streets against stone-throwing rioters. Which is not something I recall happening before in Aotearoa, and seems to be a significant escalation. It may have been a justified and proportionate use of force - cobblestones can cause serious injury, or even kill - but no-one should be comfortable with it, and we should all be deeply concerned that the police will start taking such weapons to protests in future, rather than keeping them in reserve for extreme situations (its bad enough that they're allowed to take tasers, which should never be required at any normal protest in Aotearoa).

Finally, I hope the "celebrities", media figures, and politicians who enabled and excused this shitshow are taking a good, hard look at themselves at the moment. Today's events may not have been what people like David Seymour or rich white boat dude intended, but its how it ended up, and the public are fully entitled to judge them for their role in it, both politically and socially. If you were a friend to the occupiers, you should expect to have no friends now, because that stench sticks. And if they don't like that, well, maybe they should have shown a bit more care in their choice of friends.

Pedestrianise the government precinct

One of the big concerns about the anti-vaxx / pro-Nazi occupation of Thorndon is the consequences it will have for future protests at Parliament. Trevor Mallard reportedly wants to lock Parliament away behind a giant fence, which will be a tragedy both for our democracy, and for the ordinary everyday use of the space by Wellingtonians. But writing in Stuff, Henry Cooke has a better idea: the main problems of the occupation - sustained disruption and harassment - stem from their ability to claim and occupy so much space and turn by parking a car on top of it. So the answer seems to be to stop people doing that, and block the cars, not the people:

Unlike people, vehicles are relatively easy to stop. There should probably not be an easy way for folks to drive onto the cenotaph that sits just below the Beehive. Parliament has already installed retractable bollards at its vehicle entrances after truck-based terror attacks in Europe. It would make some sense – if the council and local residents were fine with it – to install similar bollards on surrounding streets, only activating them if there was another threat of a serious vehicle-based blockade.

This would make much more sense than a fence, and would stop the real threats of these kinds of blockades without limiting the freedom to assemble and move freely around Parliament grounds. We shouldn’t give that right up so freely – to the protesters, or to the state.

And this isn't even that much of an imposition. Every march to Parliament already requires traffic management and temporary street closures anyway, so this would simply involving installing permanent infrastructure to enable that. Alternatively, Wellington is already planning to become a pedestrian city, and those plans could be extended to the government precinct to create a permanent pedestrian zone around Parliament. A place for people, not cars. A place that would actually be nice (though actually, its pretty nice already).

But they'll probably just build a fence instead.

The plague camp and "national security"

Stuff reported this morning that the ongoing plague camp outside Parliament has triggered a "national security crisis meeting":

Top-ranking government officials are holding a national security crisis meeting in response to the ongoing protest and blockade at Parliament.

Government officials that make up ODESC (Officials' Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination) will meet on Thursday to discuss the protest and government response, in an effort to make sure “all risks and potential implications” of the protest are understood.

ODESC is headed by government chief executives and is the primary committee of the National Security System, which swings into action during crises that threaten New Zealand’s security, sovereignty or economy.

"The protest is a national security issue" sounds impressive and scary, but this is unlikely to actually be about the far-right aspects of the protest. According to the government National Security System handbook, "New Zealand takes an 'all hazards – all risks' approach to national security", looking at issues beyond traditional security threats. So instead of just focusing on war and terrorism, our national security infrastructure is also supposed to worry about things like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, hurricanes, and pandemics. You can see the breadth of this in the list of issues ODESC met on in 2017: plant diseases, infrastructure failures, bad weather and earthquakes, as well as "cyber" and traditional security threats. They meet over bad weather; of course they're going to meet over a three-month long traffic jam affecting one of our major cities. The far-right and Kelvyn Alp's fantasies about overthrowing our democracy are likely to get a couple of bullet points (more if the threat is assessed as serious), but the major focus is likely to be the prospect of sustained disruption to Wellingtonians' lives and how to manage and mitigate that.

(It is likely ODESC also met in the last week over Cyclone Dovi and Ukraine, not to mention the pandemic. Its a regular thing, not some mysterious super-secret only for massive crises group).

Unfortunately this "all hazards - all risks" approach is not matched in government budgets, which consistently massively overallocate resources to agencies focused on dealing with traditional threats - NZDF, SIS, GCSB etc - rather than to things which actually keep us safe (like civil defence and public health). And that's something we should fix sometime.

Why do we tolerate this?

This week Nicky Hager has been going after Thompson and Clark Investigations, New Zealand's most immoral private investigation firm, with stories on how they spied for the Exclusive Brethren and employ former SIS agents. Today's revelation is that that agent was spying on school-children for the oil industry:

School children from the group School Strike 4 Climate joined a peaceful protest against the oil-exploration company OMV in New Plymouth a year ago, only weeks after unprecedented numbers joined their 27 September school strike marches around New Zealand. Public concern about climate change had never been so great. These were peaceful, democratic protests.

But a two-year investigation has found that they and other climate change groups were targets of the private investigation firm Thompson and Clark, paid by clients from the oil and gas industry.

The investigation reveals that a major focus of Thompson and Clark in 2019 and 2020 – years of storms, floods, forest fires and marching school children – was monitoring and helping to counter citizen groups concerned about climate change.

Spying on the environmental movement is the core business of this evil company. But spying on schoolkids is a new low even for them. The core client they're doing this for is Austrian-owned OMV, which is basicly paying a former NZ spy to disrupt and undermine our democracy. I guess he has prior experience.

The protest groups TCIL is spying on for its foreign polluter clients are part of our democratic fabric, and by spying on them TCIL is actively undermining our democracy. As noted when the government was caught using this private stasi a few years ago, this sort of spying undermines people's trust in one another and impedes their exercise of their political rights (which is the point). Why do we tolerate this? What possible public good does it serve? We do not let the government do it. So why should we let someone abuse their fellow citizens as a business?

Private investigation firms are required to be licensed, but the licensing conditions are remarkably weak (basicly it boils down to "not having been convicted of a crime", which seems like a very low bar). Its time they were strengthened to include a requirement that licence-holders not spy on political parties or protest groups, or engage in anti-democratic activity. Put the stasi out of business, and our democracy will be better for it.

Striking for a future again

Today tens of thousands of schoolkids have walked out of school to strike for a future free from climate change. And tens of thousands of older New Zealanders have joined them. Their demands are clear: eliminate fossil fuels, implement 100% renewable energy with a just transition, and support our Pacific neighbours by ensuring our climate actions are aligned with the 1.5 degree Paris goal. This is, bluntly, the minimum we need to do to have a decent future, one where we don't have a billion premature deaths and make some of the most heavily populated parts of the planet uninhabitable.

The government will point to the Zero Carbon Act framework and say "we've got this", but they haven't. The targets set by the Act are inadequate, as are the international goals they have chosen. We have less than a decade to turn this problem around, and the government is basicly doing the minimum. And when we have the pandemic response demonstrating what a government can do when it really wants to fix something, what prioritising something actually looks like, it makes it look like they don't really care about this, that saving the world just isn't a priority for them.

When she was running for election, Jacinda Ardern called climate change "my generation's nuclear-free moment". The strikers today want her to live up to that and make it true. Otherwise, well, its not going to be long before they can vote (and they have plenty of friends who already can), and they'll toss her in the dumpster of history if they don't get what they want.

Universities back the climate strike

On September 27, School Strike 4 Climate will be striking for a future to pressure the government for meaningful climate action. This time, they've asked adults to join them. And now, Lincoln University and Victoria University of Wellington have signed on:

Victoria University of Wellington has joined Lincoln University in endorsing a strike by students at the end of September.

[...]

Both are encouraging their staff and students to take part and neither will need to take annual leave nor explain their absence if they do so.

As VUW vice-chancellor Grant Guilford points out, the students are taking charge of their future, so the university needs to support them. And so do the rest of us. I look forward to other universities and employers following suit.

Strike for a future on September 27

Students are striking against climate change on September 27. And this time, they're asking everyone to join them:

Students are taking to the streets, beaches and parks on 27 September, and we're inviting everyone to join us. That's right, this is an intergenerational issue, and you're all invited to put pressure on politicians worldwide to pass bills which will take action to reduce the impacts of climate change.

[...]

On 24 May, we walked out of school alongside hundreds of thousands of students around the globe. We won't sit and watch our futures disintegrate, and we invite you to join us to strengthen our movement. That's you, reading this column; that's the next person you talk to; that's the waiter who gives you your coffee and the woman sitting in front of you in the car/bus/train, it really is everyone.

Climate change isn't just a youth problem, even though it'll hit us the hardest. It's everyone's problem. Everyone has a responsibility to act, in both practical ways and through joining the strike movement on 27 September.

I'll be joining them. I hope you will too. As the article says, pressuring politicians is one of the most powerful things you can do to stop climate change. Sure, you can eat less meat, not fly, use public transport or an electric car, and all of that by everyone adds up. But real change needs policy, and that needs politicians to get the message that if they don't do something about this, they will be de-elected and replaced with someone who will. And that needs people making their anger and demands known.

As the article makes clear, this matters to all of us. If you want a future, strike for the climate on September 27.

Climate Change: Join the climate strike!

If the sight of schoolkids striking for a future has been filling you with hope, good news: they want you to join them on September 27:

Students will take to the streets again demanding action on climate change, and this time they're inviting adults to join them.

Tens of thousands of students took part in strikes in March and May, and organisers are hoping the next action on September 27 will be even bigger.

The strike will mark the end of a global week of climate-focused events and challenges running from September 20.

Students want adults to show their support by walking out of work to join them.

Its part of a global general strike for the climate over the week of September 20 - 27. The problem is "business-as-usual", and the solution is to stop it. So, take the day off, and stand with the next generation so they can have a future.

Climate Change: Strike!

Tens of thousands of students are skipping school today to strike for the climate. If you don't understand what this is about, you haven't been reading the news. The planet is burning, and their future is at risk. So, they're standing up for that future, and demanding change.

But don't take it from me. The Spinoff has given space to some of the students to explain why they're striking (again). And they've included a helpful list of demands:

• That the government acknowledges the magnitude of the climate crisis by declaring a climate emergency. This move will set the narrative for the urgent pace at which we need to act on climate change, but must uphold our democratic systems and obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
  
• That all parties in parliament support passing an ambitious zero carbon act into law that puts into place a legally enforceable plan to get to carbon zero by 2040.
  
• That the government ceases all new exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, including not granting extensions on existing permits.
  
• That the government invests in building a renewable and regenerative economy now. This includes immediate investment in retraining and the provision of alternative jobs in clean, sustainable industries that do not harm the ecosystems on which we depend for survival.

These are the changes we need to make if we as a species are to survive this. And while that 2040 target will be tough, does anyone really think with the way things are going that zero by 2050 will be enough? The selfish old will be going "I don't care, I'll be dead". But if you or people you care about expect to live more than 30 more years, if you have children, friends or relatives with children, or you're just not a sociopathic arsehole, you need to care about this. This is about the world we leave to future generations. And if we want their lives to be as good as our own, or just not completely fucking miserable, then we need real action, now. If you see striking students today, show your support. And if you want to get involved, the international school strike movement is calling for a global general strike for the climate on September 20. Mark the date, and be prepared to stand up for a future.

Striking for a future

Thousands of schoolkids around New Zealand have walked out of class today in a school strike for the climate. They're part of a global movement, sparked by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, which is sacrificing a day of education to demand real action on climate change. The people in power now won't live long enough to be badly affected by the disaster they have made. These kids will. They are striking to make their parents care. They are striking for their future.

As it stands, that future is grim. The decisions their parents and grandparents have made - to knowingly keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere and warm the planet so a few people could keep on making money - have had terrible consequences. On current projections, we are heading for between three and four degrees of warming by 2100 - enough to destroy our food crops, spread tropical diseases, make significant chunks of the world uninhabitable, and cause widespread drought, mass-migration, and conflict. And that's just to 2100. Temperatures will continue to rise after that, making things even worse. This isn't extinction, not yet, but things will be very, very bad, with a huge amount of pain and suffering.

Unless we change. Another future is possible: one where we decarbonise the economy, stop polluting the atmosphere, and live within our ecological means. The schoolkids are striking for that future. And we should listen to them - because it is their future. We should not let the dead hand of the old destroy it.