Good riddance

When aged care workers won a court case and a huge legal settlement for equal pay, the then-National government responded by introducing legislation to stop anyone from doing that ever again. Now, the new government has scrapped that shit:

The government is throwing out pay equity legislation introduced by National, saying it makes it harder for people to make a claim for fair wages.

Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter said the legislation was deliberately designed to put barriers in the way of women who wanted to make a pay equity claim, and would be replaced.

[...]

The government will start work on new legislation to adhere to principles agreed by the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity - a group made up of business, union and government representatives.

Ms Genter is confident improving the legislation will be straightforward.

"We already have the agreed principles from the joint working group and I don't think it will be too difficult to go back, to take those barriers out of the bill, replace them with something that truly reflects those agreed principles, and is going to make it easier for women to have a process and a pathway to equal pay."

Good. National's bill responded to inequality by entrenching it (for the profit of its sexist business cronies, of course). Now they're gone, hopefully we'll see some real progress towards closing the gender pay gap and ensuring that there is equal pay for work of equal value.

Will Catalonia be allowed a free vote?

Catalonia declared independence over the weekend, and Spain responded by immediately suspending their regional autonomy, dissolving their government, and calling elections. Surprisingly, the Catalan political establishment seems to be going along with elections called for them by what is now supposedly a foreign country, but I guess they thought they couldn't resist, and some of them clearly like the idea of another de facto independence referendum. So the question is whether the election will be free and fair, or whether the Spanish occupation will fix the outcome.

Sadly, the signs aren't good. Key independence leaders are facing sedition and rebellion charges, with the clear intention of keeping them in jail and preventing them from standing for election. The Spanish establishment has talked openly about banning pro-independence parties. And to cap it all off, they've also said that if such parties win, they'll simply suspend autonomy again - effectively ignoring the result.

At its heart, the Catalan independence struggle is about democracy: the right of a people to determine their own rulers. Free and fair elections are at the core of that. And if Spain won't respect those, then it is no longer a civilised nation.

National's final score: 21,000 unemployed

The labour market statistics are out, and with the change of government, we can finally see National's final score. Unemployment is now at 4.6%, exactly where it was when they came into power. But nine years of population growth means that there are 21,000 more unemployed people. So much for making New Zealand a better place. Instead, they did nothing and let people rot for nine years, inflicting tremendous suffering, and then only ended up back where they started by pure luck. Its a perfect example of how National's "better economic management" actively harms people while achieving nothing.

I expect better things from the new government. And hopefully once they've made some policy changes, we'll see that unemployment rate get back down to the levels it was under Helen Clark.

The end of "three strikes"

Another day, another sign that the new government is going to shake things up, with Justice Minister Andrew Little promising to end National's "three strikes" law:

The three strikes law is "silly", doesn't work, and will be dismantled next year, Justice Minister Andrew Little says.

"It's been on the statute books for eight years now," Little told the Herald. "Our serious offending rate is rising, our prison population is rising. Throwing people into prison for longer and longer just isn't working."

However, repealing it was not in the Government's 100-day plan.

"It will be some time next year, I imagine. It's a silly law anyway, but I want to make sure when we do get rid of it, we can say, 'Here is our plan to reduce serious offending rates'."

Good. This law is manifestly unjust and imposes perverse and disproportionate sentences - just as it did in California. It has no place whatsoever in our justice system. The question is whether its victims, those who have suffered unjust sentences due to it, will be compensated. If they are, then we should send the bill to National and ACT.

Happy Halloween!

Its Halloween! Which means its pumpkin, cosplay, and free chocolate time!

The beginning of the end?

In a sane country, today's indictments of Trump aides on tax evasion, money laundering and perjury charges would be the beginning of the end for the Trump presidency. The usual process of plea bargaining and providing information for reduced sentences, combined with the high likelihood that one of the three has already been wearing a wire for the past few months, should see further prosecutions of those closer and closer to Trump. Eventually, he'll either be directly implicated, he'll do something stupid and force impeachment, or he'll resign under the sheer political pressure of having appointed so many crooks. Either way, you wouldn't expect him to be running in 2020.

Except that the US isn't a sane country. Impeachment requires Republican members of Congress to fear losing their seats, but the Republican base doesn't give a shit about political hygiene. And resignation requires shame - something which has long been absent from US political culture. Even if Trump is directly implicated and brought to trial, he'll paint the entire thing as an establishment conspiracy and brazen it out. And US political culture is so sick that he may very well get away with it.

In other words, we're about to find out whether US democracy is salvageable. I hope that it is, but sadly no-one ever went broke thinking the worst of the American people.

PNG tells Australia where to go

Papua New Guinea appears to have decided that it no longer wants to host refugee concentration camps for Australia:

Refugees held on Manus Island who do not want to resettle in Papua New Guinea will not be forced to, and Australia must find them somewhere else to go, the PNG government has warned.

In a reflection of PNG’s growing frustration with Australia’s offshore processing policy the country’s minister for immigration and border protection, Petrus Thomas, issued an unprecedentedly forceful statement late on Sunday, telling Australia it held legal, financial and moral responsibility for the refugees held on Manus.

The statement was released publicly, but is clearly aimed at officials in Canberra, as the two governments negotiate this week on managing the refugee population beyond the slated closure of the Manus detention centre on Tuesday.

Pretty much no-one on Manus Island wants to resettle in Papua New Guinea, mostly because it is simply not a safe environment for them. Refugees who have attempted to become part of the local community have been assaulted. So this is basicly saying that Australia needs to take everyone and find them a new home. And given their decision on the illegality of the concentration camps, I doubt the PNG courts are going to permit forcible rendition to Nauru, so that's got to be a new home that they agree to go to. Which is exactly what Australia doesn't want to do.

Pretty obviously New Zealand could help here. And we should be talking to the PNG government about what we can do to prevent further suffering and human rights abuse by Australia.

Iceland rolls its corrupt government

Icelanders went to the polls for the second time in a year over the weekend, and robbed their corrupt government of its majority:

Iceland’s ruling centre-right parties have lost their majority after a tight election that could usher in only the second left-of-centre government in the country’s history as an independent nation.

With all votes counted after the Nordic island’s second snap poll in a year, the conservative Independence party of the scandal-plagued outgoing prime minister, Bjarni Benediktsson, was on course to remain parliament’s largest.

But it lost five of of its 21 seats in the 63-member Althing, potentially paving the way for its main opponent, the Left-Green Movement headed by Katrín Jakobsdóttir, to form a left-leaning coalition with three or more other parties.

All the governing parties lost seats, and one of them, Bright Future, was eliminated entirely, being reduced to just 1.2% of the vote. Despie that, 25% of Icelanders till voted for a party whose leader corruptly used government information to profit from bank nationalisation. That's appalling.

Political fragmentation means that any government is going to require the cooperation of at least four parties, and maybe even more than that. But its doable, and hopefully Iceland will have a new, non-corrupt government soon.

Police discretion

The police have "re-investigated" former National MP's alleged unlawful recording of his staff members, and confirmed their decision not to lay charges. So far, so unsurprising. But this bit is surprising:

While we recognise the strong interest in this matter, the foundation of any decision to seek warrants or to prosecute is always the evidence available to us.

Speculation, hearsay and third party information does not in itself constitute such evidence.

The legal barrier for issuing a warrant is "reasonable grounds to suspect" that an offence has been committed. In most cases that barrier is met by someone telling the police something - AKA "hearsay and third party information" - or by the police speculating that someone who did something similar will have done this thing too. That's exactly how they got the warrant to search Nicky Hager's house in a desperate effort to uncover his sources and punish him for publishing Dirty Politics. But apparently the rules are different when a politician is involved. So what are we to conclude? Either Barclay is getting special treatment from police on account of his status, or they've just admitted that the vast bulk of their ordinary work fails to meet basic standards. Either way, its not good, and it doesn't provide us with any reason to believe that the law will be upheld fairly for all in future.

New Fisk

By killing Isis fighters instead of bringing them to justice, we become as guilty as our enemies

Consequences

Quietly, just after the election, the government has released a pile of Ministerial Policy Statements under the Intelligence and Security Act 2017. As required by the Act, these set rules on various issues, such as conducting surveillance in a public place or creating false identities. One of the MPS's is on co-operating with overseas public authorities (AKA foreign spy agencies). And it has some pretty interesting implications in light of the UK government's announced policy of extrajudicial killing.

Firstly, NZ spy agencies now have a legal duty to act "in accordance with New Zealand law and all human rights obligations recognised by New Zealand law". This includes rights not to be deprived of life and not to be subjected to torture or cruel treatment under New Zealand law as well as various international instruments. The MPS makes it clear that this obligation applies explicitly to "the sharing of intelligence, analysis and threat reporting with foreign partners". Spy agencies need to exercise due diligence and actively monitor to ensure that intelligence sharing or cooperation does not breach NZ law or make spy agencies complicit in human rights abuses, and must

decline or stop cooperating with the overseas public authority where a real or substantial risk of breach of human rights obligations (such as the prohibition of torture) is identified.

The UK government has just announced explicitly that it intends to breach the human rights of its citizens suspected of involvement in ISIS by murdering them. They have carried out such murders in the past, and clearly intend to do so in the future. This seems to have some pretty obvious consequences under the MPS: New Zealand spy agencies such as the GCSB can no longer share information with the UK on any UK citizen suspected of involvement with ISIS. Providing information on involvement will put them on a British kill-list and result in them being targeted for murder. Providing actual location details or intelligence which could result in their being located would allow such a murder to be carried out. Breaching this could result in individual GCSB staff being held criminally liable as parties to murder, in the same way that those who knowingly and willingly conspire with a murderer to locate their target would be.

In short, if they haven't already, New Zealand spies will need to cease cooperation with the UK in key parts of the "war on terror", until it disavows its policy of murder. The problem is that the secrecy around spies means that we don't know whether they have, or whether they've round-filed the MPS or are deliberately turning a blind eye to the UK's crimes in the name of maintaining their relationship with the Five Eyes. And where fundamental human rights are concerned, I just don't think that's good enough.

British government supports extrajudicial killing

The UK government officially opposes the death penalty and regards the right to a fair trial as fundamental. The right not to be killed by the state and to be tried if accused of a crime is affirmed in domestic law. They are party to numerous international agreements in both those areas, including the ICCPR and the European Convention on Human Rights. And yet, a Minister in their government is openly calling for the extrajudicial killing of UK citizens:

The only way of dealing with most of the British Islamic State fighters in Syria is to kill them, a British government minister has said.

Rory Stewart, an international development minister, said converts to the terror group believed in an “extremely hateful doctrine” and fighters could expect to be killed given the threat they posed to British security.

[...]

Stewart was asked about the comments on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics. The minister said there were “very difficult moral issues”, adding: “These are people who have essentially moved away from any kind of allegiance towards the British government.

“They are absolutely dedicated, as members of the Islamic State, towards the creation of a caliphate. They believe in an extremely hateful doctrine which involves killing themselves, killing others and trying to use violence and brutality to create an eighth-century or seventh-century state.

“So I’m afraid we have to be serious about the fact these people are a serious danger to us, and unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.”

Note that he's not talking about them dying in combat during war - he's talking about targeted assassinations. Extrajudicial killing. Murder. On the basis of their political views. The UK is now officially a state which murders its dissidents overseas, no different from Russia or North Korea.

This is not acceptable. Nor is it lawful. Those who authorise, plan or participate in such killings are guilty of murder, and they should be prosecuted as such. And if the UK courts won't do it, the international courts should.

The obvious solution

Australia is planning to cut off food, water and electricity supplies to its Manus Island concentration camp next week, and (despite PNG government assurances) has brought in a notoriously brutal police unit to clear the camp by force and force the detainees into other camps. While their detention has been ruled illegal, the refugees do not want to move because the new camps are unsafe - refugees have been assaulted and even killed by locals, and there have been explicit threats if they move. Australia's response to this has simply been to shrug their shoulders and deny responsibility. Having kidnapped these people, rendered them to Papua New Guinea, and detained them illeglaly for years in appalling conditions, they're now pretending that they have no responsibility for what happens afterwards.

This is simply bullshit, and there's an obvious solution: PNG should return the refugees to Australia, where they belong in the first place. If they won't (or can't, because they're basicly an Australian vassal), then there's another alternative: us. New Zealand has offered to take these refugees, and our offer is still open. Australia opposes this, because we eventually give refugees citizenship, which means they could then in theory visit or even move to Australia (as if anyone would want to go to the society which rejected, abused and tortured them). But Australia can't have it both ways and deny responsibility while also claiming the right to determine these people's fates. And to be honest, we shouldn't be talking to them about it anyway. Instead, we should be making our offer directly to the government of Papua New Guinea.

Here's hoping

Back in May, National, ACT and United Future got together to vote down Jan Logie's Equal Pay Amendment Bill. The bill would have provided greater information and transparency around gender and pay, allowing discrimination to be uncovered and corrected. But now that the balance of power in Parliament has changed, it might be back:

A defeated private member's bill that would force the private sector to open up its books and reveal more about gender pay differences may be resurrected as a Government bill, in an effort to narrow the gender pay gap.

The Women's portfolio, to be held by Green MP Julie Anne Genter, was one of many allocations that were released today by Prime Minister-designate Jacinda Ardern. Genter said one of her top priorities was to close the gender pay gap, "both in the public and private sector".

Asked about bringing back the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, which was voted down in May this year by the narrowest of margins, she said: "That is a Green Party bill and certainly one of many things that I''ll be investigating in the role, and trying to win support for with the new Government."

Good. Because we have a real pay equity problem in New Zealand, and we need to fix it. Clearly, current policies aren't working so new ones are needed. And removing the secrecy which hides employer sexism would be a damn good start.

This is just wrong

Its a known fact that WINZ benefits are deliberately not enough to live on, which forces beneficiaries into debt to survive. But it turns out that if you borrow money for food, WINZ considers it to be income and you guilty of fraud. And currently they're pursuing a solo mother through the courts for $120,000 she doesn't have, because they underpaid her in the first place:

In a case being heard in the High Court, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is arguing that a sole mother who took out loans to pay for her home repairs and to support her children - because she could not otherwise afford to on the benefit - should have to repay more than $120,000 in so-called ‘over payments’.

This Friday, October 27 is the last day of the hearing. Ms X. has name suppression and is represented by Frances JoyChild QC.

No form Ms X. ever filled out for her benefit asked her to list loans as a form of income. The cost of the nearly eight years of reviews and appeal is huge, both financially and in terms of her health.

This is wrong. Just fucking wrong. WINZ has already been told that by its own Appeals Authority (which pointed out both the absurdity and the unfairness of considering loans to be income while never asking about them), but they've persisted in persecuting this woman. It really gives the impression that their purpose is to grind people's faces into the dirt, rather than provide proper social support so people can live in dignity.

The government committed to reforming the welfare system and changing its punitive culture under the labour-Green confidence and supply agreement. Hopefully they'll start by putting a shit like this - and sacking everybody who has wasted public money on this immoral outrage.

Correction: The Social Security Appeal Authority had ruled some of the loans were not "income" (and noted that WINZ's forms are inadequate and do not ask about loans), but upheld that others are. Details here.

Justice for Teina Pora

In 1994, then 17 year-old gang associate Teina Pora was stitched up for rape and murder on the basis of a false, coerced confession. In 1996 DNA evidence showed he was innocent, but it took until 2015 for him to finally be freed. In 2016, the government awarded him $2.5 million in compensation for the 21 years he had wrongly spent behind bars - but, being arseholes, they shortchanged him of $500,000 by refusing to adjust it for inflation. When Pora went to court on that point and won, National's arseholes promised to appeal to stop an innocent man from getting the compensation he was entitled to. But now, we've had an election. And the new Minister of Justice is not an arsehole:

Incoming Justice Minister Andrew Little has confirmed he will order Teina Pora's $2.5 million compensation to be increased to match inflation.

The outgoing government had reserved the right to appeal against the inflation decision but Mr Little, who will be sworn in with the rest of the government today, confirmed to Morning Report that appeal would not go ahead.

"The High Court was pretty clear that when Cabinet considered it last time they hadn't considered adjusting by inflation as a matter of fairness. The High Court has now said that the government must do that, so we will do that."

Good. Pora deserves full compensation from the government for what they did to him, and now he will finally get it. But it shouldn't have needed a change of government to get there.

Even better, the new government has promised a UK-style Criminal Cases Review Commission to investigate and make recommendations on potential miscarriages of justice. While such a system won't be perfect, it will be an important backstop to the courts, and should reduce the chances of people suffering like Pora in the future. But again, that's an idea which has been banging around Parliament for over a decade (then-National backbencher Richard Worth had a members bill on it in 2006, but it was never drawn). Who knows how many people have been wrongly convicted while politicians have pissed around, refusing to provide proper justice so they can be "tough on crime"?

A suspicious delay

Update: As Graeme Edgeler points out, the delay was expected:

Justice Cull released a minute in July explaining the delay pic.twitter.com/9UDuIpZHwe

— Graeme Edgeler (@GraemeEdgeler) October 25, 2017

So, the judicial process was not perverted for the benefit of a political party. Good to know.

The High Court has finally ruled in the case of Eight Mile Style v New Zealand National Party, finding that National ripped off Eminem in its 2014 campaign ads and awarding damages of $600,000 plus interest. Which raises again the question of the judgement's timing. As the Herald pointed out back in September, the judgement was expected to be delivered in mid-August, right at the start of the election campaign. Instead, its taken an extra two and a half months, being delivered just days after the election result has been definitively established by the formation of a government. Obviously, if it had been delivered during the campaign, or even coalition negotiations, it would have been highly damaging to the National Party. So the question naturally arises whether it was delayed to avoid that.

The judicial process being perverted for the political advantage of the government of the day is not acceptable, and calls the neutrality of the courts into question. And if this isn't what happened, the judge needs to front up and explain the delay. Otherwise, its their own fault if people draw the natural conclusion.

LGOIMA, personal email, and journalists

There's an interesting Ombudsman's ruling out today covering both attempts by officials to circumvent the law by using private email accounts, and requests for communications with journalists. Here's the summary on the first part:

A requester sought access to a Hawke’s Bay Regional Councillor’s email and telephone communications with specified third parties between 8 and 25 August 2016. When the request was refused, the requester made a complaint to the Ombudsman under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA).

Most of the communications in question were conducted and stored on the Councillor’s private email account. In the course of the Ombudsman’s investigation, parties suggested that information stored in a personal email account was not official information and therefore was not subject to the LGOIMA. The Ombudsman did not accept this argument.

The question of LGOIMA’s application turned on whether the Councillor had sent or received the communications while acting in his official capacity as a Councillor. The LGOIMA could not be circumvented by conducting or storing those communications on private email accounts or personal devices.

All of which is uncontroversial. The interesting part is the willingness of the Ombudsman to use s19(1) of the Ombudsmen Act to compel production of the relevant material so it could be properly assessed. Its a clear message to politicians: keep your official information on official services, or face having your personal accounts trawled through to find it.

The second part of the ruling is also interesting: one of the "specified third parties" was a journalist. And on that front, the Ombudsman ruled that those communications were subject to an obligation of confidence and could therefore be withheld. Journalistic source protection (which is recognised as important in the Evidence Act) protects officials who provide information to journalists, and LGOIMA (and by extension, the OIA) can't be used to break it. Its an important recognition of the democratic role of the media, and yet it raises potentially troubling questions about accountability for "official" leaks and dirty politics. OTOH, the latter is likely to involve a high public interest in release (there being a higher interest in accountability for smears). And on the gripping hand, if you ask a politician for their communications with a journalist, and they refuse release due to confidentiality, that's effectively a confession, and (unless there are strong reasons to think otherwise), its perfectly reasonable to conclude that they are the source. The only way for politicians to avoid such public inferences is to disclose.

Climate change: A lot of trees

Labour and New Zealand First signed their coalition agreement today, and one item caught my eye: "Planting 100 million trees per year in a Billion Trees Planting Programme." That is a lot of trees. Its also potentially a huge step towards meeting our climate change targets.

At the moment New Zealand plants about 40,000 hectares of trees a year, mostly as replanting of existing plantations. 100 million trees is about 100,000 hectares (assuming a stocking rate of 1,000 trees per hectare; actual numbers vary from 600 to 1,400). As that graph shows, its going to mean a huge increase in the propagation industry, to a level even higher than the mid-90's peak. Its in theory doable, but difficult, and may take a number of years to ramp up.

As for the payoff, once established, a hectare of pine aborbs 25 tons of CO₂ a year, every year, for 40 or 50 years. A years planting will soak up 2.5 million tons of CO₂ every year. And the government plans to do that for a decade. Which is going to make a huge difference to our emissions profile in the long term.

And we're going to need it. Because all those trees planted in the mid-90's are starting to be cut down. Which means we're going to face a huge peak in our emissions over the next decade. A mass tree-planting programme will smooth that peak, and help stabilise things, buying us a bit of time. But fundamentally, if we are to solve this, we need to cut emissions (including the sacred cow of agricultural emissions), rather than just planting trees.

The same old racist National Party

Over the weekend the media tried to talk up coalition divisions over the proposed Kermadec ocean sanctuary. The Greens supposedly wanted it, but NZ First had killed it over the lack of iwi consultation, but it was still on if iwi agreed. Looking at these stories, its pretty clear that there's not much "disagreement" at all: the Greens and NZ First both agree that they need to reach agreement with iwi before the sanctuary can happen. Despite this, National thinks it is the perfect issue to try and divide them on with a member's bill:

While some media have reported the plan is already a casualty of Labour's coalition agreement with New Zealand First, outgoing environment minister Nick Smith said National would consider introducing a member's bill to get the sanctuary over the line.

The Green Party is adamant the sanctuary should be established, and, because National holds 56 seats in Parliament, only the Greens' support is needed to pass the legislation.

Dr Smith said the Greens would have to support the bill if it was drawn from the ballot, or risk alienating their support base.

Hardly. Because in addition to supporting the environment, the Green Party and its members overwhelmingly support the Treaty of Waitangi and the settlement process. Legislating unilaterally to effectively overturn a Treaty settlement isn't compatible with that, and I think Green supporters would be quite comfortable with their MPs voting down such a bill if it didn't contain appropriate and approved clauses protecting iwi rights.

What this does show us is that this is the same old National Party which advocated for unilateral theft of the foreshore and seabed in 2003, which voted for Don Brash as leader, and ran on a platform of outright racial hatred in 2005. A party which thinks that Maori don't matter, that their views can be ignored, that they have no rights. And that the government can break its word to them whenever it is convenient or advantageous.

I'm glad that that racist party was constrained by the Maori Party when it was in government. And I'm glad they're out of government now.