Cronyism in Christchurch

Yesterday the government announced that it would be spending $284 million on subsidising a privately-owned convention centre in Christchurch. The lucky beneficiaries of the government's largesse?

“Today we’re pleased to reveal that Plenary Conventions New Zealand, a consortium of proven international infrastructure firm Plenary Group, and experienced local firms Ngai Tahu Property and Carter Group, has been selected as the preferred development consortium for this very large project.

Carter group? Yes, those Carters:

The Carter Group, it turns out, belongs to Philip Carter. Philip Carter is the brother of Parliament's Speaker and National Party MP, David Carter. The NBR estimates he is worth $120 million.

Yes, National just gave an enormous government contract to an MP's brother. Now, he may have been the best bidder, but up-front it looks like cronyism, if not outright corruption. Shouldn't the media be asking some very pointy questions about this?

[Hat-tip: Polity]

Demographics and fucking John Key

While all the old farts are clutching their pearls at the thought that a young person might ever be angry at the government and express that directly (which really makes you wonder what they were doing when they were young), the Electoral Commission released an interesting graph on enrolment demographics:



The vertical scale is dodgy, but it doesn't change the obvious take-home: if young people actually enrolled to vote, they'd be a demographic as politically powerful and unignorable as pensioners.

Chanting "Fuck John Key" is great. But if you want to do something effective, enrol and vote. The best way to hurt these pricks is to vote them out on their arses.

(And as for former student protester Chris Hipkins, he's nothing but a dirty old hypocrite, and another fine example of how Labour is a party of the status quo)

Fiji: Protesting the dictatorship

Fijian dictator Voreqe Bainimarama will be visiting New Zealand this weekend to campaign at expatriate voters. But he won't be getting away with it unopposed:

"There's a risk of ridicule in coming here. There's going to be protests. He's not used to that. He's going to have people heckling him in his speech."

A protest is planned to coincide with Mr Bainimarama's talk at Manukau's Vodafone Events Centre on Saturday - and posters advertising the protest label the leader a "dictator".

Because New Zealand is a free country, where you can speak your mind. Unlike Fiji.

If you're in Auckland, please go along and show Bainimarama that kiwis don't approve of dictatorship.

Fiji: Intimidation

Fiji's dictatorship is spying on opposition election candidates:

An aspiring independent election candidate in Fiji, Roshika Deo, says police intimidation and surveillance are affecting her campaign.

She says police are monitoring her whereabouts, attending and filming her community meetings, talking to attendees afterwards and hassling her volunteers.

Ms Deo says this puts potential supporters off coming to her meetings and talking freely.

[...]

Ms Deo says she has questioned police about the surveillance and they tell her it is under orders from Suva.

Fiji's elections are not free and fair, and we should treat them as the charade they are.

More corruption in Australia

Another day, another corrupt Australian MP:

A state MP who has stood aside from the parliamentary Liberal Party during a corruption inquiry has admitted he pocketed a $10,000 "bribe" from one property developer and used it to pay his tax, as well as taking an envelope stuffed with cash from a second developer.

Andrew Cornwell, the member for Charlestown in the Hunter Valley, told the Independent Commission Against Corruption that Hunter Valley property developer Hilton Grugeon gave his wife $10,000 as "payment" for a painting that Mr Cornwell gave him at Christmas in 2010.

Counsel assisting the commission, Geoffrey Watson, SC, said it was "far too much" for the gift.

Mr Cornwell agreed that it was a way of "bribing" him.

"I was in the receipt of patronage," Mr Cornwell said.

Its unclear what favours those property developers got in exchange, but it sounds like that's going to emerge soon. Which means they'll hopefully end up in jail too.

Meanwhile, this just goes on and on and on. Something is seriously wrong with Australia's political culture, and it makes me very glad I don't live there.

Do the Conservatives support the death penalty?

The Sensible Sentencing Trust's Garth McVicar is standing for the Conservative Party. I guess they're a natural fit for a vicious bigot who thinks same-sex marriage causes crime. But then there's this from NewstalkZB's Felix Marwick:

McVicar describes himself as a reluctant candidate. Says it's the only way he can get changes other parties refuse to make

Like perhaps the death penalty? Because in addition to being a bigot, McVicar backs judicial murder.

I think journalists should be asking Colin Craig where his party stands on capital punishment...

Correlated contents

Yesterday, Andrew Geddis had an interesting article about the Canadian police's "Mr Big" tactic (which involves establish a prolonged criminal relationship with a suspect and involving them in simulated criminal activity in an effort to eventually coerce a confession), which was recently effectively outlawed by that country's Supreme Court (technically, they ruled that no evidence from it can be presented in court). The most interesting bit was his final comments on its possible use in New Zealand, highlighting the possibility of suppression orders and then saying "And that is all that I may say on the subject". Obvious subtext: the NZ police are using this unfair tactic, but all details have been suppressed by the courts.

Also yesterday: the police refused an OIA request for information on

the use of coercion, psychological persuasion and/or manipulation by undercover officers to entice someone to commit a criminal offence.

as telling us whether the police solicit crime would "prejudice the maintenance of the law, including the prevention, investigation, and detection of offences".

Given the explosive nature of the allegation, and the impact of such activity on public confidence in the police, if they weren't doing it, they would deny it. Therefore, the conclusion we should draw from this is that the police are coercing and manipulating people into committing crimes, which they can then arrest them for.

(This of course assumes that the police are sensible and concerned about our trust in them, rather than reflexively secretive authoritarians who believe we have no right to know or question them. But there are consequences to such fuckwittery, and the destruction of public trust is one of them. If they are in fact not doing this, then all they have to do is issue a statement...)

The Greens on transport

The Greens announced their transport policy today: a massive re-prioritization from roads to public transport:

The Green Party's policy would prioritise getting people out of their vehicles and onto public transport by building better networks, increasing the amount of services and making it more affordable.

The party pledged to invest $10.4 billion in public transport projects and rail throughout the country over the next decade, promising more trains and buses at peak hours and decongesting the country's roads.

It would focus on implementing the Congestion Free Network plan in Auckland by 2020 through seven key projects costing $2.2 billion.

There's more details here. Auckland features heavily, as you'd expect - they're our biggest city with our biggest transport problems. But they'll be talking about Wellington and Christchurch in coming weeks, and the latter in particular has scope to reshape its public transport network in the wake of the earthquake.

There's a strong element of planning for the future here: peak oil and climate change mean the days of cheap cars (and therefore of massive motorways) are numbered. But it also reflects the changes we're seeing now. Road usage is already dropping, while Aucklanders are crying out for a better rail system so they can escape gridlock. The Greens will address these problems, and shift our transport infrastructure to deal with our needs. National, OTOH, simply seems to want to build more roads for its trucking-industry cronies.

Be careful what you ask for...

Back in 2005, the government rewrote the law governing charities, producing the Charities Act 2005. One of the changes in the law was a crackdown on charities with "political" purposes. where previously political advocacy in pursuit of charitable goals was acceptable, now it was not. As a result, groups like the National Council of Women and Greenpeace were deregistered.

Greenpeace has just won an appeal in the Supreme Court over some of the issues which led to its deregistration. The key finding:

The Supreme Court by majority (comprising Elias CJ, McGrath and Glazebrook JJ) allowed the appeal against the Court of Appeal’s determination that a political purpose cannot be a charitable purpose.

The majority held that a political purpose exclusion should no longer be applied in New Zealand. They concluded that a blanket exclusion of political purposes is unnecessary and distracts from the underlying inquiry whether a purpose is of public benefit within the sense the law recognises as charitable.

They rejected the conclusion of the Court of Appeal that s 5(3) of the Charities Act enacts a political purpose exclusion with an exemption if political activities are no more than “ancillary”. Rather, s 5(3) provides an exemption for noncharitable activities if ancillary.

Some of this was kindof moot; the Court of Appeal had already ruled that promoting nuclear disarmament is "of public benefit" and not political (which is a laughable proposition; people disagree over it, therefore it is political). But now they'll get to widen their stated aims to include peace and general disarmament as well.

While I'm pleased for Greenpeace, this does open a can of worms, in that determining whether a "political purpose" is "beneficial to the community" inherently involves a value judgement. So, whose values will the Department of Internal Affairs and the Charities Board promote? Sadly, I think we can all guess. Promoting tax cuts for the rich will be found to be charitable; promoting higher taxes to reduce inequality and pay for better public services will not be. And while charities can appeal, the wealthy will have the funds to support their "charities", while the poor will not.

Fundamentally, the real problem is that we are still relying on a law from 1601 for our definition of "charity". Its long past time we got rid of it, and came up with something fit for the 21st century.

Afraid to face the public

Its election time, our triennial chance to force our "representatives" to front up to us so we can question them and tell them what we really think of them. Unless you happen to be "represented" by the Prime Minister:

Politicians who want to share the stage with John Key at his only multi-candidate electorate event have been warned they shouldn't even mention his name.

Candidates vying for the safe National seat of Helensville include Laila Harre, leader of the Internet Party, who is taking on Key because ''the prime minister has some explaining to do'', and she wants a head-to-head debate.

But when Key lines up at the Kumeu Baptist Church northwest of Auckland on Monday, there will be no chance for her to do so.

So instead of democracy and public accountability, we have a charade: questions submitted in writing so they can be screened, candidates and members of the public forbidden to react on pain of ejection. And all to protect the Prime Minister from challenge or any show of opposition. While Key claims his office didn't set the rules, the event organiser is very clear they were set so tightly so he would show up.

John Key is afraid to face the public in his own electorate. He's afraid to hear from us, and afraid that one of us might say something that damages his carefully manicured image. And that speaks volumes about how fragile that image, and his ego, is.

As for the solution, fuck the rules. The meeting is already a farce; turning it into one live on camera will simply reinforce the fact.

32,000 out of work under National

The latest Household Labour Force Survey was released today, showing a drop in unemployment. But while its an improvement, there are still 32,000 more people out of work than there were when National took office. And Treasury doesn't expect unemployment to return to pre-National levels until 2018, another entire election cycle away.

This is the government's biggest failure: they have abandoned people to the market. They protected the big end of town from the financial crisis with bailouts and pork, but left ordinary kiwis to suffer. If we want that approach to change, we need to change the government.

Online voting in a nutshell

(By @phirate)

Contrast this with paper voting: I get to do it in private, my ballot doesn't BSOD, hackers don't change my vote for shits and giggles, Talent2 doesn't stuff it up, the ballot box doesn't get DDOSed, and the GCSB doesn't know who I vote for. Why on earth would you want to introduce all those vulnerabilities into the system? You'd either have to be utterly clueless, or hoping to exploit them somehow.

Our democracy is too important to do over the internet. Lets keep it analog.

Spying for Israel

The latest NSA leak: the NSA and GCHQ spy for Israel:

The surveillance-sharing relationship with Israel has expanded to include the NSA’s British and Canadian counterparts, GCHQ and CSEC, both of which actively participate in feeding the Israelis selected communications data they have collected. Several documents from early 2009, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza called “Cast Lead” that left more than 1,000 people dead, detail some of this cooperation.

One top secret 2009 GCHQ project named “YESTERNIGHT” involved “Ruffle,” the British agency’s code name for ISNU. According to the document, the project involved a “trilateral (GCHQ, NSA and Third Party RUFFLE) targeting exchange agreement covering respective COMSAT accesses.” One of the “specific intelligence topics” shared between the parties was “Palestinians”, although the GCHQ document states that “due to the sensitivities” of Israeli involvement, that particular program does not include direct targeting of Palestinians and Israelis themselves. Another GCHQ document from February, 2009, describes “a quadrilateral meeting for RUFFLE, NSA, CSEC and GCHQ.”

The British agency noted in early 2009 that it had been spying on emails and telephone numbers specifically requested by ISNU, “and they have thanked us many times over.”

If they're doing this spying now, then that makes them complicit in the war crimes Israel is currently committing in Gaza.

And then there's the obvious question: is the GCSB also spying for Israel? If they were, I don't think most kiwis would approve...

Australia's gulags are a crime against humanity

The Guardian has an in-depth interview today with Dr Peter Young, a psychiatrist who until recently was responsible for treating refugees imprisoned in Australia's gulags. He has some very unpleasant things to say about what the camps do to people:

The chief psychiatrist responsible for the care of asylum seekers in detention for the past three years has accused the immigration department of deliberately inflicting harm on vulnerable people, harm that cannot be remedied by medical care.

“We have here an environment that is inherently toxic,” Dr Peter Young told Guardian Australia. “It has characteristics which over time reliably cause harm to people’s mental health. We have very clear evidence that that’s the case.”

There is a long list of detailed criticisms, but fundamentally it all comes back to this: the camps are designed to inflict suffering in an effort to deter refugees and make them "choose" to return "home" to face torture and oppression. They reliably produce mental illness and drive people to suicide. And none of this can be effectively treated because people are still in the environment that is producing it.

Young calls this torture. He's right. It meets every step of the CAT definition:

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

This suffering is severe. It is intentionally inflicted by public officials. It is inflicted for punishment, intimidation, and coercion. It is not incidental to lawful sanctions, but the whole point of the exercise. It is torture. And therefore a crime in international law.

Australia is a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Torture, when "committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population", is considered a crime against humanity under the statute. Australia's policy targets civilians and is certainly systematic. Australian Ministers and officials - and former Ministers and officials - may therefore one day find themselves facing trial in The Hague for their crimes.

But its not just international justice they should be afraid of. New Zealand claims universal jurisdiction for torture. Any Australian Minister or official who sets foot here is exposing themselves to prosecution. All it takes is for our government to grow a backbone, and stand up for what it purports to believe in...

Tolley lies about gangs and human rights

Its election year, so naturally the government is launching a crackdown on that favourite law and order ogre, gangs. More police funding, more police powers, more searches, and special laws which appear to completely duplicate the Arms Act, only with the vote-getting "gang" in the title. And then there's this bit:

Police Minister Anne Tolley hasn't yet had advice on the human rights implications of stricter targeting of gang-related criminals, but she maintains it's a necessity.

Which is as laughable as her claim that this is nothing to do with the election and the timing is just a coincidence. Since its enactment in 1990, the BORA has been put at the heart of the policy-making process. Policy is scrutinised at every level for human rights implications, because public servants at least take the BORA seriously (if only to prevent or limit later disasters in court). Its a formal requirement that any paper going to Cabinet has a section on human rights implications, identifying any prima facie inconsistencies and the justifications for them or steps taken to limit them. Tolley says these measures have been signed off by Cabinet, so either she's lying that there was no scrutiny, or she hasn't been doing her job properly as a Cabinet minister. Which is it?

But apart from that, this flippant attitude from the Minister is more weight to the argument that the BORA needs to be enforceable by the courts. The law currently has politicians as the ultimate guardians of our human rights, and is predicated on the idea that they will give laws proper scrutiny and pass infringing measures only after due consideration. But here we have a Minister who apparently does not give a shit, who claims that human rights haven't even been considered. If she wants to have that job taken off her and given to the courts, I can't think of a better way of convincing people.

New Fisk

Isis brings its war to Lebanon - and it could be a key part of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s masterplan

Rewarding dictatorship

So, having publicly opposed the Fijian coup, the New Zealand government will be allowing Fijian dictator Voreqe Bainimarama to visit this weekend:

The Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama will be in New Zealand this weekend to raise funds for his political party and meet members of Fiji's expatriate community.

It will be the leader's first trip to New Zealand since he seized power in the 2006 coup.

Sally Round reports.

"It's understood security officials from Fiji are in the country to check out the South Auckland venue for what is being billed as a FijiFirst Festival featuring entertainment, food stalls and the chance to meet the former military commander. Rear Admiral Bainimarama has been campaigning for the September polls under the banner of his newly registered party, FijiFirst.

And no doubt, the SIS will be assisting them to round up or intimidate opponents of the regime.

This is not something we should be allowing. Bainimarama has cancelled elections before, and it may happen again if he thinks he isn't going to win. Or he may simply fix them. Either way, we should not be removing travel sanctions against him and his regime until we have seen free and fair elections. Until then, the only reason we should be allowing him into the country is so we can arrest him and put him on trial for the torture committed by his regime.

Climate change: A picture of a rort

Today the government released its statutorily required annual report on the ETS, showing that polluters reported emitting 97,131,843.1 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent in 2013. The problem? The corrected figure for last year is 88,288,617.6 tonnes. So, according to the ETS, we increased our emissions by 10% in a single year. So much for the government's claim that emissions are dropping.

Of course, that assumes that we can trust the figures. But I'm not sure that we can. Last year's reported emissions were corrected from 108.8 million tonnes down to 88 due to "amendments to emissions returns or the late submission of emissions returns" - a difference of almost 25%. With that much variation, its hard to tell what our emissions are actually doing. And it really makes you wonder about the degree of over reporting that is occurring in an effort to claim pollution subsidies.

The other bad news: of the 45.5 million units surrendered by polluters, less than 0.5% were New Zealand units. Instead, polluters are getting NZUs as pollution subsidies, and then either flicking them off offshore, or sitting on them hoping they accrete in value, while "paying" for their pollution with Russian hot air. This doesn't do anything to actually reduce emissions, but it does allow the finance shysters to book a profit from arbitrage. The government has since closed this loophole, banning dodgy foreign credits; sadly they won't be moving to recover the windfall profits polluters have made from this fraud, or cancel the overhang of banked NZUs which will allow them to keep profiting in the future.

Giving away New Zealand

Another day, another massive overseas land sale of dubious benefit to New Zealand. Meanwhile, we've also learned that "our" government has been giving away parts of the conservation estate to foreigners:

3 News has discovered that Shanghai Pengxin, the controversial Chinese buyer of the massive Lochinver Station, was recently given conservation land by the Government, including parts of the Rakaia riverbed.

[...]

3 News has discovered in the Synlait sale the Government signed off conservation land to the Chinese company, including five hectares of the conservation estate known as "stewardship land" and seven hectares of the Rakaia riverbed.

Privatising government land is bad enough. Privatising the conservation estate, including a river (because that's what privatising a riverbed means) ought to be a crime. "Our" government is selling out New Zealand. We need to replace them with one which won't.

New Fisk

First World War Centenary: My father threw away his poppy in disgust