New Fisk

The people make a stand over the lies of Lebanon
UN finds evidence of official cover-up in Hariri assassination

Illustrating the real issues

Just when the foreshore and seabed is back in the news, there's a court case which perfectly illustrates the real issues involved. In 1865, Charles Hatfield built a hotel on a triangle of land near the Wellington railway station. In 1942, the hotel was compulsorily acquired by the government to house US troops, and the government retained it after the war as it was "required for defence purposes". It has never been used for such purposes, and now the family is suing to get it back.

No doubt people will point to the obvious difference - that Maori claimants have not proved ownership of the foreshore - but that's a red herring. Whatever your opinion on the merits of their claims, it is unquestionable that there are facts there which can be discovered by a court. It can be shown that either they owned it, or they didn't. The important difference is that in the hotel case, the crown legally acquired the land (and subsequently breached its duty to return it). In the case of the foreshore, it has not (or at least, not universally; various parts of foreshore and seabed have been acquired under various acts governing harbour boards and such, but that, like ownership, is a fact to be discovered by a court). The question for opponents of Maori claims to the foreshore then is why they are not also opposing efforts by this family to regain their property?

Watching democracy in action

Helen Clark is defending plans to televise Parliament as "direct democracy" in action. but it is not the filming that people are objecting to, but who will control the cameras. Currently, Parliament restricts the media to filming or photographing only the MP who is standing to speak. They are not allowed to show the empty benches of those who could not be bothered to show up, they are not allowed to show the yawns and gestures of those supposedly listening, and they would not be allowed to show two MPs brawling in a corner. Even use of stock footage is frowned upon by the Speaker if it casts MPs in a less than dignified light. With the cameras under Parliamentary control, these restrictions are only likely to get worse; if there's one thing most MP's agree on (other than the size of their pensions) its that their "dignity" must be protected - by censorship, if need be.

There is no question that seeing what our representatives are doing every day would be a Good Thing. But let's see what they're actually doing, rather than the carefully sanitised image they wish to present.

New and old

Span is back, and has a roundup of information and gossip on Matt McCarten's new left-wing party. The key fact is that, despite all the talk, the party has completely failed to eventuate, and given that parties had to be registered with the Electoral Commission by the end of February in order to get broadcasting funding, it is now probably too late. Which might not be a bad thing. While the launch of a new party on the left might excite people and get them out to vote (in the same way the launch of the NLP did), there's already a perfectly serviceable (if a little old and battered) electoral vehicle there: the Alliance. Unfortunately, it has a lower profile than Brian Tamaki at the moment (despite similar polling), which means that I'm not holding out too much hope of their returning to Parliament.

Dicey on sedition

Albert Venn Dicey is considered to be one of the classic authorities on (British) constitutional law. Here's what he had to say about sedition:

Every person commits a misdemeanour who publishes (orally or otherwise) any words or any document with a seditious intention. Now a seditious intention means an intention to bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection against the King or the government and constitution of the United Kingdom as by law established, or either House of Parliament, or the administration of justice, or to excite British subjects to attempt otherwise than by lawful means the alteration of any matter in Church or State by law established, or to promote feelings of illwill and hostility between different classes. And if the matter published is contained in a written or printed document the publisher is guilty of publishing a seditious libel. The law, it is true, permits the publication of statements meant only to show that the Crown has been misled, or that the government has committed errors, or to point out defects in the government or the constitution with a view to their legal remedy, or with a view to recommend alterations in Church or State by legal means, and, in short, sanctions criticism on public affairs which is bona fide intended to recommend the reform of existing institutions by legal methods. But any one will see at once that the legal definition of a seditious libel might easily be so used as to check a great deal of what is ordinarily considered allowable discussion, and would if rigidly enforced be inconsistent with prevailing forms of political agitation.

(A V Dicey, An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885), ch VI "The Right to Freedom of Discussion")

Neither our sedition laws or our prevailing forms of political agitation have changed significantly since Dicey's day, and his criticism still stands. Almost any criticism of the government can be said to "excite disaffection", and almost any speech or article on race relations, employment relations, or welfare can be said to "excite... hostility or ill will between different classes of persons". Both of these constitute sedition, which means that much of contemporary political discourse is technically illegal. While the law is not enforced, that is not a sufficient proection in a democracy. It should be repealed.

Sedition by Example VIII: The Green Ray

(Being an ongoing series exposing the abuses perpetrated under our archaic law against sedition)

Editorial, The Green Ray, May 1st, 1918:

The Memory of the Dead.

Once again it is our privilege to commemorate the men and deeds that made Easter Week, 1916, the most glorious pages in the annals of our race. "Life springs from death," said the first president of the Irish Republic, and fully believing in the truth of his words he ventured everything, and gave up all. We see that the vision God vouchsafed him was interpreted faithfully by the scholar and soldier, for can we not see rising from the rim of the northern ocean the resusciated Irish nation. Seventeen graves there are in Erin on which no man or woman may lay a flower, but vain! vain! vain! is that malice that extends beyond this world - to the tyrant it returns with redoubled fury, confounding him and laying him in the dust before the eyes of the nations, and raising up in power before him the little nation he attempted to destroy. To-day we see the value of those seventeen graves upon which no man or woman may lay a flower; we realise that the spirits of the martyred are permeating the soul of Erin, and that never before did she present so united a front to the world as she presents to-day. Truly God exalts the humble and cast down the proud. Precious to us should be the memories of the brave who gave up everything that the soul of Erin might be saved.

Let us remember the words of the First president of the Irish Republic, as, standing over the grave of O'Donovan Rosa in Glasnevin, he spoke for Ireland's untameable soul: "While Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree will never be at rest." - The Editor

These words were deemed seditious for exciting disaffection against the government, inciting disorder, and encouraging the commission of offences against the public order, and both the newspaper's manager, Albert James Ryan, and its editor, Thomas Padraic Cummins, were prosecuted. Both were convicted and sentanced to 11 months imprisonment with hard labour.

(Source: The Green Ray, May 1st, 1918; New Zealand Truth, August 3rd, 1918 - though the latter has an extended version of the seditious editorial. I have gone with the primary source)

New Fisk

What the Lebanese fear most is not Syria’s army but a power vacuum

And more stupidity

No, not would-be ACT leader John Banks for publicly demanding a top placement on ACT's list, but the ACT board for not forseeing and managing it. What did they think he'd want for throwing them an electoral lifeline? A polite "thank you" note and a party T-shirt?

Submit!

The Education and Science Committee is seeking submissions on the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill. 20 copies, by Friday, 15th April 2005, to:

Kirstin Lambert
Education and Science Committee Secretariat
Parliament Buildings
Wellington

Unfortunately the pilot project allowing submissions to be submitted electronically hasn't started yet, so you'll have to post it.

I am not yet sure whether I will be submitting on this bill, but those of you out there who feel strongly about GE may want to. Submitting on legislation is not difficult; there's a guide here, but if you can't be bothered going to all that trouble, you can simply write them a letter. Democracy works best when people get involved, so please make your opinion known.

Correction: Well, I look like a plonker, don't I? I had posted this notice - without having had time to read the bill - because I had assumed from its title that the bill covered GE. But as has been pointed out in the comments, it actually only deals with hazardous substances. Which makes it rather less interesting...

We ought to be ashamed

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has slammed the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 as discriminating against Maori by extinguishing possible customary title over the foreshore and seabed without providing a guaranteed right of redress. This violates our obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and particularly Article 5, which guarantees everyone, "without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin... equality before the law" as well as "the right to equal treatment before the tribunals and all other organs administering justice". I have not been able to find the actual report, but we are mentioned in this press release - right below the "Decision on Situation in Darfur":

In a decision on New Zealand, the Committee noted its review of the compatibility of the New Zealand Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 with the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in the light of information received both from the Government of New Zealand and a number of Maori non-governmental organizations and taking into account its General Recommendation No. XXIII on indigenous peoples. The Committee expressed its appreciation at having had the opportunity to engage in a constructive dialogue with the State party and the State party’s written and oral responses to its requests for information related to the legislation, including those submitted on 17 February and 9 March 2005. Bearing in mind the complexity of the issues involved, the legislation appeared to the Committee, on balance, to contain discriminatory aspects against the Maori, in particular in its extinguishment of the possibility of establishing Maori customary title over the foreshore and seabed and its failure to provide a guaranteed right of redress, notwithstanding the State party’s obligations under articles 5 and 6 of the Convention.

The Committee acknowledged with appreciation the State party’s tradition of negotiation with the Maori on all matters concerning them and urged the State party, in a spirit of goodwill and in accordance with the ideals of the Waitangi Treaty, to resume a dialogue with the Maori community with regard to the legislation in order to seek ways of lessening its discriminatory effects, including where necessary through legislative amendment. Moreover, the Committee requested the State party to monitor closely the implementation of the Foreshore and Seabed Act, its impact on the Maori population and the developing State of race relations in New Zealand and to take steps to minimize any negative effects, especially by way of a flexible application of the legislation and by broadening the scope of redress available to the Maori.

I'm hoping that the full report will eventually show up here. A description of the submissions process is here.

This is a decision we should all be ashamed of. But what's even more shameful is that this had to go before the UN in the first place. The bill's violation of the equal right to justice was identified the moment it was put before the house, and yet the government chose to ram it through anyway. Now our international reputation is suffering because of their desire for a "quick fix" to satisfy the redneck vote...

The committee's decision is only going to strengthen Maori resolve over the foreshore - not to mention providing the Maori Party with a serious piece of ammunition in its competition for the Maori vote. And if they are successful in sweeping the Maori seats, we may find the Foreshore and Seabed Act being revisited...

Farce based on lies

The UK's Prevention of Terrorism Act is barely 24 hours old, and it has already been used to impose control orders on ten detainees just released from Belmarsh prison, where they had been kept in solitary confinement for up to three years without charge or trial. But the detainee's release and the imposition of the orders has turned into a total farce:

On a day laced with high drama and farce, the police warnings came after one of the suspects had to be taken to the psychiatric wing of a London hospital. The police tried to transfer him to a secure flat, but had to break in because they did not have keys. A 24-hour hotline that was supposed to have been installed was also not working, meaning the man had no access to Home Office officials. Psychiatric social workers deemed it unsafe to leave him alone in the flat.

Another former detainee was released with no money or food and spent yesterday alone and hungry in his empty accommodation. He had been served with a control order which prevents him from making phone calls, inviting anyone into his accommodation or arranging to meet anyone outside unless he has prior permission from the Home Office.

The latter is particularly cruel. The penalty for violating a control order is up to five years in jail - a handy way around the need for actual proof - but people are being left in conditions where the conditions simply cannot be met, or where they must choose between eating or going back to jail, with no official support. You'd almost think the government wanted the orders to be violated...

The Guardian has more, as well:

Suspects must phone a private tagging company before they leave the house. But in one case, suspect P, who has no arms, was supplied with a phone that had not been adapted for his disability.

Lawyers acting for Abu Rideh, a Palestinian also held at Broadmoor said police had told him that they knew he was no danger to the public.

The mother of one former detainee visiting from abroad had been thrown out of the family house because she was not on a list of people authorised to visit the suspect under the terms of the control order.

So we have people being forcibly seperated from their families, being demanded to do the impossible, and being subjected to all of this because the government cannot admit it made a mistake. And to top it all off, we find out that - once again, Tony Blair lied about what he had been told by the intelligence services:

At Prime Minister's question-time last Wednesday, Tony Blair suggested intelligence chiefs had specifically warned against a Tory proposal to set a time limit on the legislation: 'It would be contrary to the strong advice given to us by our security services and our police and I am simply not prepared to do it.'

But a senior intelligence source told The Observer MI5 'was not driving this process', adding: 'They gave an assessment of the threat and allowed [the government] to decide what was to be legislated.'

This whole farce has been driven by one thing: politics. In the run-up to a general election, the British Labour Party is desperate to portray themselves as "tough" (and the opposition as "soft") on terrorism. And if doing so requires ramming an ill-thought-out law through Parliament with no debate or planning, pissing all over due process and the rule of law, and grossly violating the fundamental human rights of a few suspected terrorists, well, you don't win an election without breaking eggs.

One way or the other

Having failed to gain access to Attoney-General Lord Goldsmith's advice to the British Cabinet on the legality of the Iraq war through the UK's new Freedom of Information Act, those seeking democratic accountability for the Iraq war are trying another method: they have laid a complaint with the Bar Council (the British equivalent of the Law Society) asking that Lord Goldsmith be struck off for failing to provide proper advice. The basis of the claim? Reports from Britian's top civil servant that the final opinion was a single piece of paper. As one lawyer said, this is "frankly extraordinary";

You can't produce serious legal advice on a single piece of paper. I would expect legal advice on war to run to 10 to 20 pages of argument at least supported by a couple of ring binders of documents

Will it work? I don't know. But one thing it does show is that, despite Blair's fervant wishes, the public is not going to "draw a line" under Iraq. One way or another, there will be justice; one way or another, we will get them.

New Fisk

In the Middle East, those who are about to die believe profoundly in the afterlife

Against Parliamentary Censorship

Nick Venter had an excellent piece in the Dominion Post yesterday (sadly not online) on Parliament's plans to censor press coverage from the debating chamber so as to prevent MPs being shown in a poor light. Not that they're putting it like that, oh no - but a vital part of their plan to broadcast Parliament seems to be the removal of all other TV cameras. And the resulting footage will be fully under control of MPs themselves.

To see what this ultimately means, we only have to look across the Tasman. The Australian Parliament has an in-house unit to provide TV and still images of Parliamentary debates. And when President Bush visited in 2003, this footage was sanitised by the government to avoid "embarassment". The Australian media were reduced to having to buy footage from CNN - who had illegally filmed proceedings within the chamber for their US audiance - in order to show the interjections of MPs opposed to Bush, and the way their were roughly manhandled out of the chamber. Later, still photos of Bush meeting the leader of the opposition were banned, while those of him with Howard were provided to the media; the Australiam government used its control over footage to present itself in the best light, while denying the opposition coverage.

But we don't need to go to such Orwellian extremes to see that Parliamentary control of footage would be a Bad Thing. Members of Parliament are rather touchy about their image, and so Parliament already place heavy restrictions on what the media is and isn't allowed to film. Apart from the occasional wide-angle background shot, the media are currently allowed to film or photograph MPs only when they are on their feet and speaking. They are not, for example, allowed to film them yawning, knitting, reading the paper or sleeping in their seats - and as Venter recounts, illustrating a story about MPs granting themselves a pay rise with footage of them laughing in the chamber results in being summoned to the Speaker's office.

There is a word for this - censorship - and we should not tolerate it. Instead, we should demand that Parliament operate in a fully open and transparent manner, and allow the media free access to film whatever is most interesting or newsworthy. In the television age, media coverage is a vital means of ensuring democratic accountability, and that is far more important than MP's dignity.

Stupidity

No, not ACT President Catherine Judd's vicious attack on National, but would-be ACT leader John Banks' contention that National's recent change of direction is wrong because

a drift to the centre and the politics of ‘me too’ don’t attract additional votes.

Now, it may be true insofar as National hasn't managed to gain much by doing so, but that does not change the fact that under MMP, you win an election by capturing 50% of the vote. And as a simple matter of political sociology, this means that a party (or rather, the broader coalition of which it is a part) must gain the support of the political center ground. This means presenting policies which appeal. And the problem for ACT is that their policies don't (and are in fact regarded as pure poison by a large segment of center voters, who suffered under them during the Revolution). The fact that ACT does not understand this simply shows how deluded they are.

The broader problem for ACT is that the unpopularity of their policies may make it difficult to put together a governing coalition on the right. On current long-term polling trends, any such coalition will have to include a "centrist" party - and both the possible alternatives are likely to have significant problems with wholesale privatisations and cuts to health and education spending. This means that one or other party is going to have to swallow serious dead rats, to the extent that it may suffer a grassroots revolt from its constituency. Needless to say, this is not a recipe for stable or long-lasting government...

New Fisk

Syria reasserts power in Lebanon as its ally returns as prime minister

Improving MMP

New Zealand Political Comments considers ways to improve MMP. His suggestions include changing the formula used to assign seats so that a majority of votes guarantees a majority of seats (something not guaranteed under Sainte-Laguë), removing the electorate seat exemption to the threshold, and using preferential voting for the party vote. But there's a far easier way of ensuring that everybody's vote counts: removing the threshold entirely (or rather, lowering it to 0.8%, the amount required to get one seat). This would remove the greatest distortion to proportionality - the fact that around 5% of votes are simply ignored. More importantly, it would allow new parties to rise to challenge the existing ones - something the threshold seems designed to impede. And while most of those who would benefit from such a change are parties I despise - Christian Heritage, ACT, maybe even the National Front - I cannot deny that if I am worthy of Parliamentary representation for my views, then so are they.

As for the discussion in the comments regarding the Maori seats, I see them both as an important way of guaranteeing Maori representation and as no more distorting than any other electorate seat (the "Auckland seats" are equally likely to produce an overhang, for example, but nobody is contemplating getting rid of them). And the fact that Maori have voted with their feet to be represented in this manner, despite the electoral disadvantages of doing so, strongly suggests that the seats should be retained.

A stunning victory for Al Qaeda

The Prevention of Terrorism Bill has finally passed, after the government compromised by allowing the bill to be reviewed in a year's time. But they have not compromised on the substantive amendments to the bill regarding judicial oversight and the burden of proof - meaning that the UK is now the only western democracy which allows its citizens to be imprisoned in their own home on "reasonable suspicion" solely on the word of a government Minister. It's a stunning victory for Al Qaeda, and one that did not require a single terrorist act on British soil. Instead, all it needed was for politicians to sacrifice the very thing they are supposed to be defending in favour of a sordid bidding war about who can be "toughest" on terrorism.

The bill has yet to receive the Royal Assent, but it will - and this should thoroughly disabuse local Monarchists of the notion that the Queen is somehow "the defender of democracy". No bill has been rejected since 1707, because to do so would spell the end of the British monarchy. As a result, any power the monarch might have to defend democracy and human rights is effectively neutered. So why keep the fiction?

"High-tax" New Zealand

An incessant mantra from National and ACT is that New Zealand is a "high-tax" country, with the the tax burden here being heavier than in other, comparable countries. We saw a classic example of this earlier in the week, with National declaring that "5% in ’05 won’t go far under high-tax Labour". But how does this claim actually stack up? Not very well, it seems. According to a report from the OECD, New Zealand's tax burden is among the lowest in the developed world. The overall tax rate for a single-income couple with two children earning the average wage is just 20.7% - the tenth lowest out of thirty OECD nations. Workers without children compare even better; while the tax burden is the same, we rank third lowest for this group, behind only South Korea and Mexico.

The opposition is, in other words, talking shit. But is this really surprising? For years they've been harping on about the need to cut the top personal tax rate "to remain competititve with Australia" - despite the fact that Australia has a higher top rate than us, as well as dedicated payroll taxes. I expect they'll pay a similar lack of attention to today's data...

The UK's last defenders of freedom

It's more than a little ironic that in the current struggle over anti-terrorism legislation, the House of Lords, the rump of the British aristocracy, are turning out to be the UK's last defenders of freedom.

For those who haven't been following the story, in December the Law Lords ruled that the UK's system of detention without trial was discriminatory as it applied only to those who were not British citizens, and thus violated the European Convention on Human Rights. The British government's response was to try and introduce an even more draconian system of "control orders" allowing suspected terrorists (regardless of citizenship) to be subjected to restrictions on their freedom of movement, speech, and association, solely on the word of the Home Secretary. These restrictions extend to house arrest with a ban on all visitors. The only difference between this and detention without trial is that the incarcerated victim pays for their own prison cell.

The bill has passed the Commons after an acrimonious debate which saw one of the largest backbench rebellions in recent years, but it has run into trouble in the House of Lords. The Lords have insisted on a number of amendments to key parts of the bill, including increasing the burden of proof required for an order from "reasonable suspicion" (the standard required to get a search warrant) to a balance of probabilities (the standard used in civil cases), insisting that all control orders be issued by a judge rather than by the Minister, and insisting on a "sunset clause", making the bill expire unless renewed by Parliament. This is simply unacceptable to the Blair government. As a result, the two houses of the British legislature are now engaged in a game of legislative "ping-pong", bouncing different versions of the bill back and forth, back and forth, with neither willing to give in (and the government presumably unwilling to use the Parliament Act to force the bill to become law). The bill will apparantly fail unless the Lords and Commons can agree on a version soon, and IMHO this is the best thing that can happen to it. As Lord Hoffman said in his judgement on indefinite detention,

[t]he real threat to the life of the nation... comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.

The Lords, it would seem, agree.