A busy week

Do you hate the regime? Do you hate their tyranny, their transphobia, and their desire to destroy the environment? If so, you're in for a busy week - because submissions on bills on all of those things all close on Thursday.

The details are on Parliament's select committee page. Submissions on the following all close at 11:59pm on Thursday 2 July:

• The Conservation Amendment Bill. This bill allows the regime to sell off the conservation estate to foreign billionaires, repurposes DoC towards economic exploitation of conservation land, disestablishes regional conservation boards, and violates Treaty settlements.
• The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill: NZ First's anti-trans hate bill, which seeks to legally define trans people out of existence.
• The Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill, which aims to persecute the homeless while also allowing police to ban any public protest.

Also closing at the same time is the Local Government (Port Companies Accountability) Amendment Bill, a members bill which would bring some much-needed transparency and accountability to port companies. That one's worth submitting on too if you're a transparency advocate, though in support rather than opposition.

Stacking up controversial bills like this seems to be a clear attempt to deter submissions. So don't be deterred. We've already seen that if we scream loud enough at the regime, it backs down, and its likely to be even more sensitive in the lead-up to the election. So scream at them. If you don't have time to write a full submission on everything, pick one to do a good job on. For the rest, saying "I oppose this bill, and recommend that it not be passed" is a perfectly valid submission, though it will count for more if you can specify particular things you hate. And if you can, submit early - with so many controversial bills due at the same time, parliament's servers may end up overloaded by the backlash. Submitting early, rather than trying to do everything at once, may avoid this.

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.

The opposite of localism

At the 2023 election, National promised "localism", the devolution of power from central to local government. How's that working out? Today, they're demanding local authorities amalgamate or be punished:

The government has given councils an ultimatum: come up with amalgamation plans within three months or the government will do it for you.

Local Government Minister Simon Watts and RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop announced the move on Tuesday afternoon, giving a three-month deadline for reorganisation plans to be delivered.

It followed an announcement in November that groups of city and district mayors - with some government oversight - would be formed to come up with such plans.

But the ministers on Tuesday said if councils failed to make use of the new 'Head Start' approach, they would be forced into changes.

The three-month deadline leaves no chance for public consultation, which is fundamental to local body reorganisations. And of course there's no mention of examination by the Local Government Commission, or referenda to approve any changes. Instead, National seems to think it can do all this by central government fiat.

The amalgamations must be to become "unitary authorities". In other words, its about abolishing regional councils and turning their regulatory functions over to local authorities. So in Palmerston North, it would mean the same people who want to pump shit into the river would be in charge of deciding whether people should be allowed to pump shit into the river - an inherent conflict of interest. It would also mean abolishing our Māori wards (which two-thirds of us voted to retain just last year) - as well as those pesky Ngai Tahu seats that ECan refuses to get rid of. Meanwhile the fixed size of councils would effectively mean reduced representation for everyone, while allowing National to gerrymander disproportionate representation for its rurals. They might also take the opportunity to do away with STV, allowing all local government to be dominated by narrow pluralities via the undemocratic block-vote.

National's August deadline is a clear attempt to pre-empt the election and present the next government with a fait accompli. But councils could just refuse to play along. There's no law saying they have to do this, only Trumpian threats from two regime Ministers. And that seems a weak justification for spending a lot of time and money, especially when there may be a new government in November which will throw it all out the window. Its probably better to just wait and see, rather than waste time and local money on National's bullshit.

National's attempt to dictate the merger of councils, abolish regional government, and reduce local representation is the very opposite of localism. There is an established process for this. Councils can use it if they want to, after consulting their electorates. The fact that so many have chosen not to speaks for itself about what they want.

Maybe the regime isn't united on tyranny?

When the regime introduced four tyrannical bills last week, I joked that the reason for the theme was that it was one of the few things the coalition could agree on. But it turns out that maybe they don't? RNZ's Phil Pennington has a piece on the Policing Amendment Bill today, focusing on the surveillance aspect rather than the protest-suppression clauses. Which it turns out were opposed by both the Ministry of Justice and the Privacy Commissioner as overly broad and lacking safeguards. Opposition parties are jumping on that and wanting changes, which is good. But the problem for the regime is that ACT also agrees:

ACT's Todd Stephenson gave qualified backing to [the bill].

"This bill does clarify and expands the police's power to collect, record and use information, including images, sounds, for lawful policing purposes," he said in the debate.

But with a kicker.

"Our support is conditional on ensuring that there is strong privacy protections and safeguards against mass surveillance powers."

So maybe the regime isn't as united on tyranny as they appear...?

My own thoughts on the bill are here. Unless safeguards are added, it will give the police power to shut down any protest, and to engage in mass or targetted surveillance without any need for a warrant - overturning both fundamental constitutional principles and long-settled law. These are not things we should accept.

If you'd like to have your say on the bill, you can submit on it here. Submissions are due by 1.59pm, Wednesday, 22 April 2026.

More tyranny

The regime introduced a bunch of bills today: an Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill to introduce a "papers, please" regime for anyone MBIE (which also means the police) suspects they may be liable for deportation or in breach of their visa conditions; a Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill to enable them to torture prisoners with solitary confinement more easily and stop them from writing books about it; a Fisheries Amendment Bill to make the Quota Management System a matter of ministerial fiat and introduce a secrecy regime for boat camera footage; and a Policing Amendment Bill, to allow the police to arbitrarily close public places and spy on people without warrants. There's a couple of themes across these bills. The first is overturning court decisions, including some that have affirmed quite significant protections for human rights. The second is replacing statutory protections with executive discretion, which means executive arbitrariness and corruption. And the third, linking the two, is tyranny. Because that's what we call an arbitrary executive which does not respect human rights: tyrants.

The Fisheries Bill secrecy clause deserves its own post, so I'm going to talk about the policing bill here. And it is awful.

One part of this is the creation of a new regime allowing any police officer to close access to any "accessible area" - meaning "an area of land that is accessible to the public, or a section of the public, by motor vehicle", and apparently including private property. So anywhere that is a road, or connected to a road. They're probably thinking of car-parks, but of course the definition also applies to your backyard, and even your house if you have an indoor garage. These closures can be done for a variety of reasons, some of which are good (for example, if there is a danger to the public, like a gas leak or incipient landslide, or a serious offence has been committed and there is a need to secure the crime scene). But most of it is of course aimed at one of the regime's perennial targets: boy-racers. So they can close roads to everyone if an "antisocial road use offence" is being committed or might be committed; if people are operating (or are expected to be) motor vehicles in an antisocial way; or if people are creating (or are expected to create) excessive noise with a motor vehicle, or if there is (or is imminent) "public disorder". If they close an area, its an infringement offence not to leave immediately.

The regime will be looking at this and thinking "anti boy-racer law". But the public disorder and noise clauses also make it an anti-protest law, because the police have a history of regarding public protest as inherently disorderly, and noise (say, from a vehicle-mounted PA system leading a protest march) which upsets those in power as "excessive". Naturally, there's no protection against this - no Terrorism Suppression Act-style clause saying "for the avoidance of doubt, protests, strikes, lockouts, and industrial action are not 'disorderly', and their noise is not 'excessive'". The drafting is so shoddy they haven't even excluded dwelling-places or marae from the definition of "accessible area". And given the regime's anti-protest noises, this should be regarded as deliberate until proven otherwise.

That all stinks, but its not the worst of it. The other part of the bill "reaffirms" the rules about the police collecting intelligence and recording people in public places. I put "reaffirms" in quotes because it does nothing of the sort. The courts and the Privacy Commissioner, in a long series of judgements (Tamiefuna v R, but also Hamed v R), have said what the law is, and that the police have been systematically breaking it. The regime's response is to dramatically broaden the law, and legalise the police's unlawful behaviour.

The new amendments start with a list of "purposes for which Police may collect information", which is a good start. It then says that the police can record anything they can see or hear in or from a public place, or anything they can see or hear on private property if they are lawfully there. No warrants required. To see how much of an intrusion this is, we have only to look at the police's illegal photographing and databasing of young Māori, or the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamed v R, which found that the police could not just covertly film and record people on private (but generally publicly accessible) property under "implied licence" without a warrant. That ruling led to a temporary law change, which was later incorporated into the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, which set limits on the police's ability to spy from public places without a warrant. The amendment bill would void that long established law.

If this passes, the police will be able to park outside your house with a camera and spy on you in your yard or through your windows, and record anything visible (to what wavelength?) or audible (with how much amplification?), without needing any type of warrant. They won't even need to be physically present, because the "by any means" allows remote cameras and microphones. Or they can use a drone, with thermal cameras and high-gain directional microphones and just spy on you 24/7, without any warrant, oversight, or reporting. Those are unquestionably "searches" in terms of the BORA (clearly being interference with a reasonable expectation of privacy) - but they'll be lawful. And of course they can hassle people on the street, photograph them, database them, and record their conversations without any suspicion of a crime.

This is obviously very convenient for police. But it is not the sort of thing done in a free and democratic society. We need to stop it. We need to topple the tyrants at the election.

"Papers, please" for the internet

Yesterday the Education and Workforce Committee released its report into online harm to young people, recommending (among other things) a ban on social media for young people. Which, in practice, means "age-verification", mandatory identification and registration of social media users, and banning VPNs to prevent evasion. Basically "papers, please" tp use the internet. There are all sorts of reasons why this is a terrible idea - not least because the companies doing it are poor custodians of our personal information, if not trojan horses doing shady shit for fascists - but I'll focus on the simple one: there are already countries where people are forced to register and be identifiable to the state to use social media, and which ban VPNs to prevent evasion. They're tyrannies like Russia and Iran. And while "making sure the state can tell who says what" is not the ostensible purpose of the policy, its a very obvious side-effect, one which needs to be seriously considered. And when you look back at its history - press licensing, government observation of public meetings - its tyranny all the way down. But apparently tyranny is the bipartiasn position of our two status quo political parties now...

Meanwhile, we have an example from right next door in Australia that none of this works, and that it drives kids to use even more dangerous technologies (ChatGPT, FFS, which sycophantically reinforces user delusions, driving them to psychosis and suicide, or Roblox, which is so notorious as a site for predators that child safety on it has its own wikipedia article). And we also have examples from the UK, where the regulatory burden of complying with moderation requirements of their Online Safety Act has forced the shutdown of small internet forums. This has a very real impact on the freedom of expression of adults, but apparently, none of that matters: any amount of collateral damage is acceptable to our parliament of tyrants.

I was lucky enough to grow up in Aotearoa when it was still free. When the state couldn't say "papers, please" to you on the street, or on the internet. Our two major political parties now seem to be colluding to eliminate that freedom. Neither of them deserve your vote. And if they pass this law, like other tyrannies, their state deserves neither your support or your loyalty.

(There are other suggestions in the report which are worth pursuing, such as adopting the EU Digital Services Act model of making platforms responsible for online harm, regulating algorithims so they can't shovel shit onto our feeds, banning non-consensual deepfake pornography, and aligning online and offline advertising restrictions. Sadly, those are the bits parliament is likely to chuck out, in favour of the stupid, simple and intrusive age ban / identification requirement, because our MPs prefer easy headlines to doing the actual work of designing good regulation...)

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.

An attack on democracy as well as the homeless?

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

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

Overturning local democracy

A month ago we had local body elections in this country. As part of that, we elected new members to each of the country's eleven regional councils. Five regions also held referenda on Māori wards, with two voting to retain them.

But apparently we wasted our time with all that campaigning and voting, because National is just going to overturn the elections and smash the lot of them:

The Government is set to announce local government reforms that could spell the death of regional councils, it is understood.

Multiple well-placed sources have confirmed reforms being announced on Tuesday will mean the dissolving of regional councils.

It is understood the first steps could be within this current three-year council term with talk of a panel of regional mayors taking over the running of regional councils. This would be the first steps towards removing the councils all together, it is understood.

And of course it will likely be done under urgency, because National doesn't do consultation or democracy any more.

To do this so soon after elections displays a complete contempt for the democratic process, and invites suspicion that National just didn't like the results. Though the alternative - that National just made us all vote knowing we were wasting our time and didn't tell us isn't exactly great either. As for temporarily installing panels of regional mayors in the place of properly elected representatives, this effectively silences the cities and ensures rural over-representation, allowing these unelected bodies to make environmental decisions while ignoring the wishes of their local populations. Which is exactly what they did to ECan in 2010. And the result was giving Canterbury's water to farmers and letting them intensify and pollute with abandon - with consequences we are still suffering from.

Overturning elections and removing democratic representation in order to advance the interests of cronies and donors is the act of a corrupt and undemocratic tyranny. We should not accept it, or the regime which does it. So its something else to be reverted in the Omnibus Repeal Bill.

What do we do with a lawless Speaker?

Yesterday, Speaker Gerry Brownlee purported to eject Chloe Swarbrick from the House for the rest of the week after she implicitly called regime MPs "spineless". The decision did not comply with parliament's standing orders, so Swarbrick turned up today to litigate that and give Brownlee a chance to admit he made a mistake and move on. Instead, he doubled down on his wrongness, named her, and had her suspended for 24 hours on a partisan vote. But in his incoherent rage he fucked that up too, so he had to do it a second time.

We were then treated to 20 minutes of litigation over the decision, its (lack of) past precedent, and whether Brownlee was simply making it up as he went along (he is) - during which Winston Peters, who had just voted to suspend Swarbrick, disagreed with Brownlee's decision and his own vote (which is another data point on his senility, I guess). Brownlee cycled through justifications, which ultimately came down to him - a purportedly "neutral" chair - being personally offended by Swarbrick's call for government MPs with a spine. Which apparently justifies a week's suspension, because an old white man's widdle feelings were hurt.

The decision was arbitrary and capricious. It ignored the rules parliament is supposed to operate by. In a normal government institution, there are remedies to prevent such lawlessness: the Ombudsman and (ultimately) the courts. They exist to prevent such abuses of power, and force government agencies to follow their own rules. But thanks to Parliamentary Privilege, such remedies are unavailable. Which invites the question: what do you do with a lawless Speaker? What do you do when a significant constitutional figure behaves like an arbitrary tyrant? What is the check and the balance here?

Meanwhile, like the (far more serious) lynching of Te Pāti Māori, this shows that Parliamentary "order" is just a tool for the partisan oppression of the opposition by the regime. And everyone can see it. It's another nail in the coffin of the idea of a neutral Speaker, and another shovel of earth on the grave of Parliament's legitimacy and social licence.

If you don't like this, the Standing Orders Committee is currently calling for submissions on parliament's rules for next term. So you can submit, point out the problems with arbitrary decisions and parliament's procedures for maintaining "order", and ask them to fix it it. If you care enough, you can even suggest solutions. Though honestly, that's really a "them" problem; its fine to say "this is a problem, and you parliamentary big brains who know and care about standing orders need to find a way to stop it". And if they refuse, then they can face the consequences for parliament's reputation.

"Longstanding expectations"

In her section 7 report declaring the government's voter suppression bill to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, Attorney-General Judith Collins noted that New Zealanders have had an expectation, since 1993, that electors can register to vote either on the day before polling day, or on polling day". Furthermore,

Expectations based on longstanding legislative settings are salient to judging potential prejudice and proportionality.

The TL;DR is that the prejudice from such a significant change from those longstanding expectations was more than enough to outweigh the uncertain benefits of the change on the vote-count.

That was for an expectation dating from 1993. But our expectation of being able to enrol at least the day before the election actually goes back much further than that. The relevant law is section 60 of the Electoral Act 1993. Section 60(g) is a recent (2020) addition, and allows same-day voter registration. Section 60(b) is part of the original Act, and allows registration up to the day before the poll. And as the law notes (in the handy little "compare" note at the bottom), it has a history. The current form, allowing voting by anyone who enrols before polling day - dates to 1990 (see s49). But we've allowed late enrolment well before that. The Electoral Act 1956 (s99(b)) allowed newly-qualified voters to register up until polling day, and that provision seems to go back to 1948 (s10). So our expectation that people who have moved or just turned 18 should be able to register right up to the election, and to vote as a result, goes back over three-quarters of a century, and no-one under the age of one hundred has voted under rules as restrictive as those National is proposing.

If a mere 32 year policy setting was a sufficiently longstanding expectation to make change a restriction of the right to vote, what does 77 years of stability - and fewer than 500 people who remember any different - mean?

National's policy is bullshit. It goes against the entire history of our democracy. It cannot be allowed to stand. And nor can they. Throw the tyrants out!

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.

A further descent into tyranny

A protest group carries out repeated non-violent actions to highlight its cause, highlighting the fact that the regime's foreign policy is in violation of international law and is at odds witht he values and wishes of its people. The regime responds by banning the organisation, and threatening 14 year jail terms for anyone who expresses support from it.

Putin's Russia? No, it's Starmer's UK:

MPs have voted in favour of legislation to proscribe group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, passing by 385 votes to 26.

The order, which amends the Terrorism Act 2000, is now expected to be signed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and come into effect later this week.

Once in effect, supporting Palestine Action will become a criminal offence, with membership or expressing support for the direct action group punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

This is exactly what civil libertarians and human rights groups warned about when western governments passed "anti-terrorism" legislation in the wake of September 11th: that the tools used to target terrorists would ultimately come home and be used against peaceful protest groups. Its taken 25 years, but its happened, and there's no coming back from it. Along with the UK's anti-protest laws and the jailing of peaceful activists, it makes it clear that the UK is now a tyranny in all but name. And there's one thing we all know about tyrannies: they deserve to be overthrown.

Parliamentary privilege is a threat to all of us

People are rightly outraged about psycho fascist Parmjeet Parmar "inquiring" about using the privileges committee to arbitrarily imprison her political opponents. As Chris Hipkins said yesterday, that is the sort of thing which happens in tinpot dictatorships, undemocratic and wrong, and a permanent stain on our Parliament. But its worse than that. Because parliamentary privilege doesn't only affect MPs, but all of us. Among the examples of contempts listed in the standing orders is:

reflecting on the character or conduct of the House or of a member in the member’s capacity as a member of the House.

Taken literally, this means that saying that Shane Jones is a corrupt mining industry stooge, or Winston is a senile old racist, or Casey Costello is a tobacco lobbyist, or David Seymour is a racist little incel are all contempts, punishable by parliament's private star chamber, the privileges committee. And its not just a theoretical problem: its not that many years since Matt Robson - then a private citizen, not an MP - was dragged before the privileges committee and forced to apologise for saying that Peter Dunne was in the pocket of the liquor and tobacco industries and had always faithfully delivered his vote for their interests.

That was outrageous enough when it was a mere apology. But now government MPs are discarding years of parliamentary precedent and openly speculating about throwing people in prison on the basis of pure political animus. That is beyond "outrageous"; it is a threat. A threat to every single one of us. Because "reflecting on the character and conduct of MPs in their capacity of MPs" is something we all do, and something we all should do. Our democracy is predicated on it. So when the government is "inquiring" about the ability of their kangaroo court to throw people in jail for breaching their bullshit "privileges", it sounds a lot like they are trying to outlaw democracy.

There is something we can do about this. Currently there is a bill before the House - the Parliament Bill - which would codify and re-enact the existing law around parliament, including parliamentary privilege. During its select committee hearings, several submitters raised the House's purported power to imprison for contempt, and recommended that they be explicitly repealed (just as its power to fine was limited in 2014). They were ignored. As a result, the House continues to claim the power to imprison people for up to two years (or maybe longer), for pretended offences like "making an MP feel bad", on the say-so of a kangaroo court which convicts on a partisan vote.

This cannot be allowed to stand. Parmjeet Parmar's "inquiry" turns this power from a theoretical historical anachronism to an active threat to each and every one of us. It is an active threat to our democracy and our liberty. It must be repealed.

(And while we're at it: in 2014 we also explicitly said that the House cannot expel a member, because of the impact of such a decision on democracy. Suspensions have a similar impact, so its time we legislatively limited them as well, to a maximum term of three days. Parliament clearly needs its wings clipped, and its time we did some clipping).

Update: Graeme Edgeler has already drafted the required amendment paper. So, which MP wants to stand up and move it?

A desperate delay

So, that was a bit of a damp squib. Everyone having geared up for an epic filibuster battle which would upset the government's legislative program for at least the day, National has now abused its parliamentary majority to adjourn the debate on its outrageous and anti-democratic punishment of Te Pāti Māori MPs until June. Officially this is to allow those MPs to participate in the budget debate, but Chris Bishop said the quiet part out loud: it's to "allow this week to focus on the Budget", rather than on a tyrannical government abusing parliamentary processes to effectively lynch its primary opposition. In other words, to ensure the government gets to control the headlines, rather than having to deal with the "distraction" of its own abuses.

The government is clearly hoping that public anger over this will dissipate. I am hoping it won't. And hopefully that anger will be shown to government MPs where-ever they go. This is a government which seriously suggested arbitrarily imprisoning its political opponents, merely for the opposing them. As Chris Hipkins noted in his speech, this regime is departing significantly from the democratic norms of Aotearoa. It is acting like a tinpot dictatorship. It is directly attacking our democracy. And that is not something the people of Aotearoa should tolerate or forgive.

(And yes, I'm glad to have been wrong about Hipkins on this; he moved that the penalty be reduced to a 24 hour suspension, in line with past practice, and seemed to be willing to fight for that).

National's move to ram through an adjournment caught everyone by surprise, including Brownlee. It was yet another abuse of parliamentary procedure to prevent debate and stifle opposition. Which is the central feature of this government: urgency and abuse of process all round. They are the worst, most abusive government we have had since Muldoon. And we should kick their arses out at the first opportunity.

Reported back

The Justice Committee has reported back on the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill. The bill as introduced was a tyrannical law which threatened to outlaw protest and ordinary democratic activity in Aotearoa on the basis of government conspiracy theories and fantasies about its motivations. The good news is that its been made less bad, with the addition of "avoidance of doubt" clauses protecting protest, advocacy, dissent, and strikes, as used in the Terrorism Suppression Act. The bad news is that their attempts at a similar clause, clarifying that "protect[ing] information for a lawful purpose in the ordinary course of business, a profession, or an occupation, whether paid or unpaid" is not "improper", is too narrow, capturing only "jobs" (for want of a better term), rather than ordinary democratic activity. So if you organise a protest using invitation-only meetings and encrypted online messaging for the high-level planning, and you're not doing it as a job (if your "occupation" isn't "protest organiser"), then you're still at risk of the government having some fantasy about your motives and using it to imprison you. Likewise if you merely blog occasionally, rather than being able to say "actually, this is what I do". As for protecting journalism, the government (in its departmental report)is quite clear that it sees journalists as de facto enemy agents:

Journalism cannot be exempted from the definition of improper conduct because some journalistic endeavours are deliberately false or misleading and could be conducted for a foreign power intended to compromise a protected New Zealand interest(s).

...which confirms my suspicion that the government views even well-justified exemptions as undercutting its core purpose of all-encompassing criminalisation, so there are no "loopholes" for their "foreign agents" to wiggle through. The problem is that such "loopholes" are our democratic space, and blocking them blocks us. But I guess a government which will happily disenfranchise 210,000 Māori voters for 21 days by abusing its majority to kick their representatives out of parliament doesn't really give a shit about democracy.

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.

National's tyrannical "foreign interference" law

Yesterday, under cover the the biggest political fight of the year, National quietly - covertly, even - introduced anti-foreign interference legislation. The bill is the product of a years-long work-program aimed at countering shit like this and this, and there's unquestionably a need to do something to counter foreign states' attacks on the democratic rights of kiwis. Unfortunately, the government's preferred solution - the creation of two very vague new criminal offences - goes too far, and will criminalise basic democratic activity such as protests. And under a straight and direct reading of the law, it would have criminalised most of our historic protest movements.

Much of the bill is unproblematic, if a bit weird. Tweaking the law of parties in relation to espionage offences to fill a gap? Fine. Changing existing offences around wrongful retention and corrupt use of official information to refer to "relevant information" instead so as to cover bodies excluded from the OIA? Fine, but there was another solution to that - include those bodies! - which of course the government didn't even consider. Amend the definition of "information" so that it "includes information about military tactics, techniques, or procedures"? Weird status-driven flex, but as those things are information and so already included in the definition, harmless as well as pointless. And the new offence of "commission of imprisonable offence to provide relevant benefit to foreign power" seems to target exactly the sort of problems linked to above, and not be problematic (it may be pointless, because foreign agents won't be deterred in the slightest by it, but the existence of the law isn't a problem).

The problem lies in new section 78AAA, improper conduct for or on behalf of foreign power. This makes it an offence to engage in improper conduct for or on behalf of a foreign power when you know (or in the government's opinion, ought to know) that you are acting on behalf of a foreign power, with the intention of or being reckless as to whether it compromises a "protected New Zealand interest". If that sounds vague, it gets worse when you start unpacking the definitions:

• "Foreign power" means essentially a government or agency, so that at least is OK. Neither the UN or Amnesty International are "foreign powers" in terms of the law. But...
• "acting for or on behalf of a foreign power" includes doing things that are merely "instigated by" or "with the agreement of" a foreign power. Does the government believe that all protest stems from nefarious foreign actions? Did a foreign PM give your protest photo a "like" on Facebook? Congratulations, you a criminal! (more on this later);
• "protected New Zealand interests" include not just important things like lives and public safety, the functioning of our elections and government and the democratic and human rights of our citizens, but also state bullshit like "international relations" and (more worryingly) "the economic well-being of New Zealand". Does your protest offend a foreign government, or a powerful industry lobby group? You're compromising those interests, and a potential criminal.
• "improper conduct" isn't just criminal or corrupt (indeed, actual crime seems not to be part of its definition at all), but instead conduct which is "covert", "deceptive", or "coercive". And here's where it gets nasty, because the Regulatory Impact Statement implies that merely holding confidential meetings or using encrypted communications falls within the definition of "covert" (and its excuse is that its not a problem because usually "the purpose of the activity is not to harm designated interests"). Do anything without inviting the police or SIS or narks to spy on you and read all your stuff? Covert! "Deceptive" means hiding or obfuscating consequences, or lying, or even "omitting any material particular"; what's a lie or an omission is of course entirely in the eyes of the state here, but the scope there seems very broad. Writing anonymously or under a pseudonym is absolutely covered. And "coercive" includes not just intimidation and threats, but also "enabling the denial or restriction of access to property or services that another person would otherwise be entitled to access". Did a fragile white incel feel "threatened" by your protest? Was someone late to work? Congratulations, it's coercive!

The latter point of course covers a huge swathe of legitimate democratic protest. Occupations and blockades are a normal part of the push and shove of democratic society. This law would define them as "coercive".

But wouldn't they only be illegal if they compromised protected New Zealand interests on behalf of a foreign power? As noted above, those interests include "international relations" and "economic wellbeing", while links to a foreign power can be highly tenuous. We've seen protests blockade streets and buildings, occupy land, ships and oil rigs, and the targets of those protests - the dairy, oil, and weapons industries - have all claimed that it threatens "economc wellbeing" (they've even called it "economic treason"). And the government and SIS of the day have slandered virtually every major protest movement in our history - the union movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-nuclear movement - as a tool of foreign interests.

Essentially, this law allows the government to criminalise people based on its own misconceptions, conspiracy theories, and outright fantasies of their motivations (and its belief that we "ought to know" about their weirdo fantasies). It would have allowed Muldoon to jail John Minto and all of HART for 14 years for being foreign agents. It would have allowed them to jail every anti-nuclear protestor who blocked a street or rowed a canoe in front of a ship, and everyone who wrote a letter to the editor under a false name advocating against nuclear ship visits. It potentially - depending on what weird fantasies the SIS and Federated Farmers have - allows them to jail every member of the climate, environmental, and indigenous rights movements.

This is massive over-reach. And it being done in the name of "protecting" our rights adds insult to injury. As noted above, foreign interference is a threat. But the real threat here seems to be our own government, and its contempt for basic democratic rights.

Can this bill be saved? Removing s78AAA entirely would fix it. Alternatively, it could have an "avoidance of doubt" clause protecting protest, advocacy, dissent, and strikes, as used in the Terrorism Suppression Act might work. But I suspect that the government would view that as undercutting the core purpose of the bill: an all-encompassing criminalisation clause, with no loopholes for foreign agents to wriggle through. The problem is that that purpose criminalises us. And while the government will no doubt say "trust us, we wouldn't prosecute you", their record on this shows that they simply cannot be trusted. This law needs to be gutted. And any MP who votes for it in its present state needs to be voted out on their arse.

Stomping on democracy

That's the only way to describe National's actions in appointing a crown observer to the Wellington City Council. Wellington didn't vote for National. They elected a council which supports public transport, housing intensification, and making Wellington a nicer place for people to live (rather than landlords and house hoarders to bank capital gains). So they've started the process to overthrow that council, using the disruption created by National's own proxies on the council as a justification. Which sounds an awful lot like Putin's tactics of using "instability" caused by local proxies to justify invasion...

But its not just Wellington. The Otago Regional Council is trying to pass a land and water plan which will protect its rivers. The government has just decided to legislate to stop them from doing so - and of course it will have retrospective effect (a favourite tactic of this government). In Auckland, they're trying to over-rule the Auckland Council's commitment to safe speed limits, so they can hoon to the airport in their government limos. In Canterbury they seem to be gearing up to overthrow local democracy to steal the water again. And then there's all those councils who want to keep their Māori wards...

it seems that rather than being committed to localism, National wants to micromanage our councils from Wellington. And if voters disagree, well, they'll just stop us from voting. Which probably sounds fine to them - except (so far) we can still vote in 2026, and we should take the opportunity to vote these anti-democratic authoritarian tyrants out on their arses.

A violation of law, justice, and decency

This morning, in a desperate effort to distract attention from the suppurating sore of contempt that is Andrew Bayly, National announced that it would be bringing back its "three strikes" regime. The policy never worked and had no significant quantifiable benefits; but National doesn't care, despite a commitment in both coalition agreements that policy would be "evidence-based". Instead, they seem to think the reason it didn't work was because they simply weren't vicious enough. So this time round, they'll not only be lowering the threshold for a 'strike" - they'll also be imposing them retrospectively:

The regime would also be retrospective, capturing all the strike convictions in the old regime that would count in the new one.

This is despite officials warning this would “contravene a fundamental justice right only to be subject to penalties that were in place at the time of the relevant offending (Bora section 26)”.

Murder Minister Nicole McKee disagrees, which I think shows her complete lack of understanding of not just the BORA, but of justice. The right to the lesser penalty has been black-letter law in this country since at least 1980, thanks to s22 of the Criminal Justice Amendment Act 1980, and I suspect it goes back much further in caselaw (the law codifying practice rather than creating a new principle). We're committed to it under Article 11 of the UDHR and Article 15 of the ICCPR, so National's tyranny will put us in breach of our international obligations. And as we are subject to universal periodic review as well as an individual complaints mechanism, they will be called on it.

But National doesn't care about any of that. All they care about is the sugar hit of "tough on crime" headlines. And as with their prisoner voting law or their climate change policies, complying with our international obligations will be a problem for the next government (which National will of course criticise them for).