Another Lebanese politician has been "mysteriously" killed by a car-bomb. He was of course an opponent of the Syrians. Having been forced to leave Lebanon and lost their client government to the Lebanese people, it seems the Syrians are now trying to control Lebanon by murder. This is not something the Lebanese people, or the international community, should tolerate. There's already a UN team in Lebanon investigating the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; it should be expanded to cover these other obviously political killings as well. As for the Lebanese, they are fairly clear on what needs to be done: form a new government, and bring the security services (who are accused of cooperating with Syria and complicity in Hariri's murder) to heel. I wish them luck...
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
It's the politics, stupid
I think the chief aspect of concern in the whole Zaoui saga is the political aspect. This has been there all along, but with an election so close, it has become more prominent. As Deborah Manning said,
"Mr Zaoui's fate could be determined by a politician and we have seen in this election how peoples' human rights become political footballs... Mr Zaoui's fate could be decided by a future Minister of Immigration and for all we know that could be Winston Peters."
But its not just Winston. If things go quickly, then it's all too easy to imagine Labour selling out Zaoui in an effort to cling to power. But if they do that, then they simply do not deserve to be in government.
Responses
I've received a response from the Prime Minister to my open letter regarding President Musharraf's visit:
Dear Idiot/SavantThank you for your email of 14 June 2005.
I have noted the points you make, and can assure you that whenever it has been necessary for me in my international meetings to underscore the importance of human rights then I have always done so. I am not one to sweep difficult issues of any kind under the carpet.
Yours sincerely
Helen Clark
Prime Minister
And to be fair, following the adverse publicity, Clark did raise the issue of women's rights. But it would have been far better if she'd raised it earlier, rather than having to be forced into it.
Zaoui judgement: it's enough
Initial reaction to the Supreme Court's judgement in the Zaoui case has been pessimistic. I'm not so sure. While the Court has delivered a mixed judgement, upholding in part and overturning in part the prior judgement of the Court of Appeal, I think that they have upheld and given enough to ensure that Zaoui cannot be deported.
Pessimism has focused around the Court's ruling that it is not the role of the Inspector-General of Security Intelligence to consider human rights. Instead, they are to determine solely whether the relevant security criteria - identified by the court as s72 of the Immigration Act 1987 and article 33.2 of the Refugee Convention - are upheld. This is a defeat for Zaoui, as it reverses the Court of Appeal's decision that the Bill of Rights must be taken into account. But at the same time, the Supreme Court agree with the Court of Appeal that
the Inspector-General is to come to his own view about the nature, credibility and relevance of information said to be classified, and to his own view as to whether a person in question is properly covered by a relevant security criterion. The Inspector-General’s review is not in the nature of that type of judicial review which examines another person’s decision for rationality. It is a process of independent assessment by the Inspector-General.
This is a long way from the rubber-stamp proposed by the government at the beginning of this process, and provides some small protection for Zaoui's rights (though as Deborah Manning has already pointed out, it is still a one-sided process which violates natural justice by denying Zaoui the right to see and refute the evidence against him).
So why am I optimistic? Simply because the Supreme Court has ruled that article 33.2 of the Refugee Convention - which permits expelling a refugee on the basis of national security or serious criminal conviction - is included in the Inspector-General's security criteria. And on that matter, the Court declared that
Those applying article 33.2 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 under part 4A of the Immigration Act 1987 are to apply it in its own terms. In particular, to come within article 33.2, the person in question must be thought on reasonable grounds to pose a serious threat to the security of New Zealand; the threat must be based on objectively reasonable grounds and the threatened harm must be substantial.
Whatever questions you may have about how serious and substantial that harm must be, there should be absolutely no question that what is alleged in the SIS's summary of allegations doesn't even come close. There's no allegation of actual involvement in terrorism, only that he would continue to do what he's always done - peacefully advocate for the restoration of democracy to Algeria - and by doing so damage our international reputation. No matter which way you look at it, that simply doesn't cut it, and on these criteria the Security Risk Certificate would have to be withdrawn.
Also grounds for optimism are the Court's rulings on how the Minister must proceed in their decision as to whether to deport Zaoui if the Security Risk Certificate is upheld. Here the Court is quite clear: the Bill of Rights applies. And the government cannot simply pass the buck or do a Bush and say "well, we won't be torturing him"; they must apply those rights in a substantive sense and consider in full what is likely to happen to Zaoui if he is deported. The upshot of this is that
the Minister, in deciding whether to certify under s 72 of the Immigration Act 1987 that the continued presence of a person constitutes a threat to national security, and members of the Executive Council, in deciding whether to advise the Governor-General to order deportation under s 72, are not to so decide or advise if they are satisfied that there are substantial grounds for believing that, as a result of the deportation, the person would be in danger of being arbitrarily deprived of life or of being subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
(Emphasis added). Reading into this, it would also bar any deportation where there are substantial grounds for belief that Zaoui would in turn be deported to Algeria.
The Court also rules that the decision must be made in accordance with natural justice, and that the Immigration Act's prohibition on giving reasons for upholding a Security Risk Certificate does not forbid giving reasons for deportation (and that those reasons can be made available under the Official Information Act). In other words, the Minister cannot simply make the decision in their own mind with no comeback; there are significant limits (which may be able to be enforced by a court), and some degree of openness.
The real cause for concern however is the timing. The Inspector-General may not complete his review before the election, which raises the prospect of Zaoui's fate being decided by a New Zealand First Minister of Immigration. Even if it is completed swiftly, if the Security Risk Certificate is upheld, there is a significant danger that the decision as to whether to deport will be made on political grounds in an effort to pander to the redneck vote or court Winston as a coalition partner. If there is a danger of this happening, then I think we need to make it clear to the government that rednecks are not the only people who can impose a political cost.
An Uncertain Outcome
Listening to National Radio, the Supreme Court has ruled that the threat to New Zealand's security required to justify a Security Risk Certificate must be "substantial", but that it is not the role of the Inspector-General of Security Intelligence to consider Zaoui's human rights. They do however make it clear that the Minister of Immigration may not deport Zaoui if they have substantial grounds to believe that he would be killed or tortured, and set conditions on how the decision must be made. I'm now waiting for the actual judgement to show up on the Ministry of Justice site.
Update: The judgement is up. Now reading.
Candidate Survey: Eighteenth Response
From Mike Heine. Mike is ranked 38th on the ACT party list.
If you could ensure the passage of one act on one issue in the next Parliament, what would it be?Tax cuts for all workers, and a substantial flattening of the tax system.
What three other electoral candidates or sitting MPs do you think are most similar to you in their political views?
Muriel Newman - for her views on welfare reform and family values
Rodney Hide - constant crusader for lower taxes and against Government waste
Gerry Eckhoff - travelling with him during the 1999 election helped me appreciate just how important farming is, and no MP has been a better advocate for farmers than Gerry.MMP is about coalitions: What sitting MP who is NOT in your party do you think is most similar to you in their political views?
Don Brash - I seriously doubt he would have had to perform so many backflips had he joined ACT instead of National.
Do you support or oppose:
...raising the drinking age?
Lowering the age has made it easier for people as young as 12 and 13 to gain access to alcohol. In principle 18 year olds should have the right to drink, but a lot of them have yet to earn this privilege.
...legalising marijuana (or pharmaceuticals based on it) for medical use?
Am currently unsure on this issue.
...decriminalising or legalising marijuana for recreational use?
I am opposed to legalisation, I have seen the effect of marijuana on some of my friends and I believe making it legal sends the wrong message. Decriminalising it however is a sensible alternative - it would help free up police resources while still acting as a deterrent.
...allowing same-sex couples to adopt children?
Unsure... the traditional nuclear family is the best model for bringing up children, but of course there are exceptions, and no doubt there are same-sex couples that would do a good job. It is an issue that I will have to investigate more.
...amending the Marriage Act to allow same-sex couples to marry?
Opposed. Civil unions exist to give same-sex couples the legal rights of marriage (as created by the state) without infringing on what is a ceremony with strong Christian roots.
...allowing voluntary euthanasia or physician assisted suicide?
Unsure... I am leaning towards favouring, but only with strong safeguards, and only for people who are terminally ill.
...state funding of integrated schools?
I strongly support the Government giving all families the right to choose between state, private and integrated schools, preferably via a voucher system where the child, rather than the school, receives the funding.
...the retention of sedition as a crime in the Crimes Act?
Opposed.
...the retention of blasphemous libel as a crime in the Crimes Act?
Opposed.
...further restrictions on hate speech?
Strongly opposed. Political correctness is rampant enough without entrenching the censorship associated with this in law.
...the use of indefinite detention without trial for those subject to a security risk certificate?
Opposed.
...restoring the death penalty for serious crime?
Opposed. Aside from the possibility of killing someone who was innocent, you do not avenge one's death by also taking someone's life.
...Georgina Beyer's Human Rights (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill?
Opposed.
...Gordon Copeland's New Zealand Bill of Rights (Private Property Rights) Amendment Bill?
Support. I am strongly in favour of any law that protects property rights.
...entrenching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as supreme law?
Opposed.
...New Zealand's participation in the International Criminal Court?
Support.
...lowering MMP's threshold from the present 5%?
Support. Definitely no lower than 4% however. If this is lowered, we should also look at getting rid of the strange provision that allows parties below the threshold extra MPs if one of them wins an electorate seat. Unless someone can explain to me the logic behind this?
Finally,
With the benefit of hindsight, how should the government have handled the Ahmed Zaoui case?
If there was evidence that he was a terrorist or had terrorist links, there should have been a fair trial and it should have been done a long time ago.
As usual, Mike's opinions are his own, and do not necessarily represent those of ACT.
Monday, June 20, 2005
All eyes on Wellington
The Supreme Court will deliver its decision on the Ahmed Zaoui case tomorrow at 10am. Depending on their decision, the Inspector-General may be effectively forced to withdraw the Security Risk Certificate against Zaoui (and there's no question of that result if the Court of Appeal's ruling is upheld), or he may uphold it and punt the final decision on whether to deport Zaoui to the Minister of Immigration - a Minister whose decision is difficult to appeal and who may just be influenced by the need to court the redneck vote (and the redneck coalition partner) in election year.
I'll blog it properly once I've read the judgement.
Getting on the list
The Herald this morning reported that an Australian white-supremacist group are compiling a "hit list" of Australian and New Zealand "communists, anti-facists, anarchists, homosexuals, [and] multiculturalists". Our local racist thugs are of course assisting.
The best response so far is that of Civil Unions campaigner Jeremy Lambert, who asks "Where do I sign up?"
Sedition: inconsistent and unneccessary
As part of my ongoing research into the archaic crime of sedition, I've been looking at Fourth Labour Government's 1989 Crimes Bill. This was a thorough review of the Crimes Act 1961, which (among other things) would have eliminated the crimes of sedition and blasphemous libel. I recently submitted an Official Information Act request seeking advice the government had received on this, and received a 1986 paper from the then-Secretary of Justice to the then-Minister in response. The relevant sections are:
The offences relating to sedition are not continued. There appear to have been no convictions since 1914 [this is incorrect] and before that date the major seditions trials were in respect of Maori leaders e.g. Rua. The law is inconsistent with proposals in the Draft Bill of Rights. Where what might be thought of as seditious utterances occur, they may be dealt with by offences relating to public order should unrest be caused.
(Link and emphasis added). The emphasised section is the key. The sole justification for limiting speech is where it directly harms others (yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is the classic example), and this is captured in the "inciting violence, lawlessness and disorder" clause. But inciting a riot is already criminal, as is incitement in general; those who incite a crime (or even an attempt at a crime) can be prosecuted as parties to the offence. And where speech does not meet the tests of immediacy and incitement towards a specific crime - if for example it simply advocates violence or lawlessness in the abstract, or at some unspecified time in the future - then it should not be criminal at all.
On blasphemous libel, the paper had this to say:
[T]he offence of blasphemous libel is not included, the principal reason being (beside the fact there have been no convictions for this offence) that in a multicultural society a law protecting only the Christian religion may be seen as offensive by those of other faiths. Again, it is arguably inconsistent with proposals in the draft bill of rights.The origins of the offence at common law appear to have been a desire to protect public order rather than the Christian religion as such.
In 1985, the English Law Commission recommended (Law Com No 145) that the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel should be abolished without replacement. The Law Commission was satisfied that any replacement offence which might be devised would in practice be unacceptably wide in ambit.
The Crimes Bill ended up dying on the floor of the House in 1990, and was not carried over by the incoming National government. But isn't it time we did what was recommended so long ago and removed these archaic crimes from our statute book?
Musharraf visit: wrapup
President Musharraf flew out of Auckland last night - not that you'd know, since local coverage of his visit seems to have dried up completely since MFAT cancelled all his interviews.
Looking at the international coverage through Google News, Musharraf had more talks with Helen Clark on Saturday, discussing trade and cooperation on agriculture, education and healthcare. He visited a dairy-farm and GPS manufacturer NavMan, and addressed the Pakistan Association of New Zealand on Indo-Pakistani relations and his policy of "enlightened moderation". The two governments signed a couple of memorandums of understanding on trade and technical assistance, but nothing major. Overall, Musharraf got to play statesman and boost his reputation back home, and we got to shake hands with a torturer. If you're feeling used, it's because we have been - and our government actively collaborated in it.
Mukhtaran Bibi update
Via Tom Watson: Nicholas Kristof has another op-ed in the NYT [Reg Req] about Mukhtaran Bibi and her return from detention. She is (obviously) please to have been releaed, but still not free to travel. Though the Pakistani government, stung by international criticism, seems to be trying to manage that as well:
On Friday, Ms. Mukhtaran told me that one of the prime minister's aides had just called to offer to take her to the United States. It seems Mr. Musharraf wants to defuse the crisis by allowing Ms. Mukhtaran a tightly chaperoned tour of the U.S., controlled every step of her way."I said, 'No,' " she said. "I only want to go of my own free will."
If Pakistan is concerned about their image, they'd be better off following Kristof's advice: "just prosecute rapists with the same zeal with which you persecute rape victims"
More success for the "fair share" campaign
Sunday's Herald had a review of the gains made by the "fair share" campaign. Around 20,000 workers in 170 businesses have gained pay rises of 5% or more, including engineers, supermarket workers, watersiders and (finally) bus drivers. This is compared with an average of 2.5% last year.
But union-members aren't the only people who will benefit. In a tight labour market, employers have to compete for staff, and will thus have to match these wage-rises or see people pass them by. If you get a raise this year, you'll have the CTU and EPMU to thank for it. Maybe you should think about that...
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Racist but not necessarily illegal
The Sunday Star-Times today has a story about a Pakeha farmer who was refused a customary fishing permit last year by Ngai Tahu. The Human Rights Commission agrees that Ngai Tahu was being racist, but has decided not to escalate the case to the Human Rights Tribunal as it was complex and uncertain whether it would succeed.
I agree that a kaitiaki refusing to grant a permit to someone because they're not Maori is racist. But I'm not at all sure that it's illegal. And the key point here is in the farmer's complaint that
"[i]f I had said 'no, you're not allowed to come onto our farm and shoot ducks because you're Maori', that would have been the same thing."
Yes, it would be. But there's also no question whatsoever that the farmer would be perfectly within his rights to do so. If it's not in the "public sphere" - if it's not being done as a business with an expectation of both general public access to whoever pays and of lesser privacy and discretion because of this, for example - then someone is perfectly entitled to stick up a sign at the end of their driveway saying "No Maori allowed". Racist, despicable, rude, but perfectly legal.
The question is whether granting customary rights permits is a public or a private function. And I think it fairly clearly falls into the latter. Customary fishing rights are a property right, belonging to an iwi. They can't be sold or traded, and it is entirely up to that iwi who is allowed to exercise them. While some iwi are generous and will grant a permit to anyone who asks, Ngai Tahu are entirely within their rights to refuse a permit to anyone they feel like - even on the basis of race.
I don't like it, just as I wouldn't like the hypothetical farmer with his "no Maori allowed" sign. But if its in the private sphere, then I have to accept it, regardless.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Destiny NZ Candidates
Destiny NZ has revealed its candidates. They're standing in 42 seats, almost entirely in the North island, as well as all seven Maori seats. There seems to be a lot of educationalists and police officers among their candidates, and their favourite word seems to be "passionate". There's also a lot of tradespeople; they seem to be more of a "worker's party" than Labour.
Candidate surveys have been dispatched.
No tour!
A prominent member of Zimbabwe's opposition has urged New Zealand cricketers not to tour his country:
Professor Ncube, once tried for treason by Mugabe, said sportsmen could not simply ignore what was happening in his country."It is a moral choice. The grave suffering is managed by a group of individuals who are running a criminal state to enrich themselves and to continue to oppress others.
"They should make that moral choice that they will not do anything which might be remotely conceived as supporting the regime."
How much clearer can it be? The Black Caps should not be touring Zimbabwe. And while the government cannot ban them from doing so, it could make it a lot easier for them to refuse by imdemnifying them against the ICC.
Browsing around the Black Caps website, I also see that the Zimbabwean cricket team is scheduled to tour New Zealand in December and January. They've managed to keep that pretty quiet, haven't they?
Musharraf visit: a grilling
Agenda this morning commented at length on the cancellation of their interview with President Musharraf and issues surrounding his visit. They also reported on his speech to the Foreign Correspondent's Club in Auckland last night, during which it sems he received quite a grilling about human rights and the Mukhtaran Bibi case in particular. His response was to say that he had personally ordered Mukhtaran's travel ban and detention as he did not want her to tarnish Pakistan's image abroad. He also called human rights NGOs "westernized fringe elements" which are "as bad as the Islamic extremists". I think that makes it quite clear where he stands on human rights...
Meanwhile, according to Stuff, both Helen Clark and the Governor-General reportedly raised human and women's rights issues with Musharraf yesterday, so there's been some progress since the beginning of the week.
"Skewed"
According to the Dominion-Post this morning, there is "concern" over the increased number of retirees and beneficiaries serving on juries. Since the 1999 law change which allowed over-65-year-olds to be selected, their numbers have "skyrocketed" to 3000 a year. Meanwhile the number of beneficiaries has reportedly tripled to 700 a year. And according to Philip Morgan, a Hamilton-based QC, such "skewed numbers" are "reducing the pool of available common sense".
The first point is that the latter comment is nothing but snobbery on Morgan's part. There's no evidence whatsoever that the poor or the old are any less endowed with "common sense" or the ability to judge facts than anybody else. I'm sure it makes perfect sense to a lawyer on a high salary, but from here it looks like Morgan is indulging in the same sort of bigoted mythology which has caused aristocrats throughout the ages to pooh-pooh democracy on the grounds that the poor couldn't possibly know how to run a country.
The second point is that the numbers aren't "skewed" - or at least, not in the way Morgan thinks. Juries are drawn from the electoral roll, which gives a total pool of about 3 million eligible jurors. There are around half a million pensioners, so you'd expect around one juror in six to be over 65. Instead, we find the rate of participation is only half that - 3,000 out of around 36,000. It's a similar story with beneficiaries - there are around 300,000 "working-age" beneficiaries according to Don Brash, so if they were properly represented, one juror in ten should be on a benefit. Instead, it's less than one in fifty. Whichever way you look at it, these groups are woefully underrepresented in juries - not over-represented as Morgan claims.
Pensioners and beneficiaries are part of the commuity, and thus deserve to be representd in our justice system. The problem isn't that there are too many of them, but that there aren't enough. Perhaps Morgan should actually do the maths next time before opening his mouth..?
