Climate change: Backing away from net-zero

When Labour ran for election in 2017, it was very clear about climate change. It promised to

set a target of net zero for greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with legally binding emissions reduction targets, and carbon budgets to keep New Zealand on track to this goal.

Jacinda Ardern backed this up by saying that climate change was "my generation's nuclear free moment" - something she was absolutely right about. In the 1980's, nuclear weapons threatened global destruction. Now its our own shit. Climate change is the most important problem facing humanity, which threatens to cause global devastation - not in one single destructive spasm, like a nuclear war, but in a long, slow catastrophe of famine, war, and death.

So I was appalled this morning to read the government's Our Climate Your Say discussion document [PDF], which seems to be backing away from that promise. How? By offering targets affecting only some gases:

We explore three target options that could replace our current target of 50 per cent reduction below 1990 levels by 2050:

• net zero carbon dioxide: reducing net carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2050
  
• net zero long-lived gases and stabilised short-lived gases: reduce emissions of long-lived gases to net zero by 2050, while also stabilising emissions of short-lived gases
  
• net zero emissions: net zero emissions across all greenhouse gases
  

Its obviously a response to the latest tactic from farmers - to argue that methane doesn't matter because its short-lived. Which has some truth behind it, but pretty obviously if you just keep pumping it out, then it effectively becomes a permanent stock in the atmosphere, with a permanent effect on the climate. And as methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that effect is worse than for carbon dioxide. The suggestion that we restrict our goal to "net zero carbon dioxide" is a betrayal of labour's promise and Ardern's rhetoric. Its also very obviously just another way to keep giving farmers - our major greenhouse gas polluters - a continued free ride, and to make the rest of us continue to subsidise their polluting industry. Something I am frankly getting fucking sick of. The rest of New Zealand should not have to bear the burden of supporting this destructive, dirty industry while it continues to destroy our climate and destroy our water. Instead, they should clean up their act, rather than sticking their hands out again and again for subsidies, then for assistance when the consequences of their subsidised pollution (droughts and floods) come back to bite them. As for the consultation document, to borrow a slogan, "net zero emissions means net zero emissions". We should not let them cheat us, or the world, by backing away from their promise. In the face of a deteriorating global climate, we have to do our bit.

When agencies lie

In New Zealand, we expect our government to be straight with us and tell the truth if asked. And as a result, we accept their answers as truthful. Unfortunately, government officials frequently exploit our credulity to shut down criticism. This appears to be what happened when NZTA blatantly lied to the public about unsafe Chinese steel in highway projects:

A major steel failure on a Waikato highway has come to light two years after the Transport Agency publicly denied there was any problem.

Documents that the agency has been forced to release to RNZ by the Ombudsman have revealed the extra problems on the Huntly section of the new Waikato Expressway.

They also show the agency had no requirement for independent steel testing at the Transmission Gully highway being built near quake-prone Wellington, and a general lack of oversight of steel buying for the country's major highway projects.

[...]

The newly-released emails between agency managers and Huntly's contractors show that shortly before the Fulton Hogan-HEB joint venture discovered the bridge pile casings were substandard, they'd also had 600 huge steel rods fail.

[...]

The agency did not mention these failed rods when RNZ asked it nine days later if the bridge casings were the only problem; instead, the agency told RNZ "there have been no similar problems identified with steel used in other state highway projects".

[Emphasis added]

That answer is strictly true - there were no problems with other projects - but hideously misleading, in that it elided the additional problems discovered on the Waikato Expressway. And of course, the reason there were no problems identified with other projects was because they simply weren't looking for them. It was thus a calculated attempt to mislead the public to protect NZTA officials from the natural result of their own incompetence. Those officials then conspired to block further OIA requests which would have uncovered their deceit.

It is unclear from the story whether they have suffered any employment consequences for this, but they need to. The officials responsible for this need to be fired.. We simply can not tolerate deceitful government in this country. It is corrosive of public trust, corrosive of legitimacy, and ultimately, corrosive of our democracy.

(Not) Privilege and contempt

See update below

Back in February, dirty old racist Bob Jones wrote a column so racist that the National Business Review - hardly a bastion of liberalism - pulled it from their website. In response, Renae Maihi organised a petition to Parliament calling for Jones to be stripped of his knighthood. Now, Jones has sued her for defamation over it:

Sir Bob Jones has filed defamation papers against a filmmaker behind a petition to have his knighthood revoked after a controversial newspaper column.

More than 68,000 people signed the petition, which was delivered to Parliament in March, in response to Jones' February 2 column in the National Business Review calling for a Māori "Gratitude Day" instead of Waitangi Day.

Filmmaker Renae Maihi started the petition and presented it to Labour MP Kiritapu Allan with the support of Waikato University Professor Pou Temara, an expert in te reo and tikanga.

The petition read: "In signing this petition we urge you, our Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Jacinda Ardern, to take his knighthood away from him. It is in your power. Set a precedent for the country and a message that this will not be tolerated and hate speech of this type is not welcome here."

Jones is obviously being a bullying arsehole here. But his case also seems to be doomed. The reason? A petition to Parliament is very clearly a "proceeding in Parliament" under the Parliamentary Privilege Act 2014, and therefore no case can be brought about it. And as telling people about the petition to get them to sign it is an act done for the purpose of transacting that business, that's covered too.

But that's not Jones' only problem with Parliamentary Privilege. Because pretty obviously what he is trying to do here is punish someone for petitioning the House about him, and incidentally discourage others from doing so. And that seems to be contempt of Parliament, in the same way and for the same reasons that punishing or threatening a select committee witness is. Hopefully someone will be informing the Privileges Committee of this...

Meanwhile, this simply confirms that Jones is not the sort of person kiwis should ever have given a knighthood to. I'm in favour of abolishing all feudal "honours", but starting with his would be richly deserved.

Update: So, it turns out that while the petition was presented at Parliament, it wasn't a petition to Parliament, which means Parliamentary Privilege and associated protections do not apply. The lesson in this is clear: protect yourself from bullying arseholes like Bob Jones, and always petition the House rather than the PM.

A victory for equality in the EU

Western Europe has led the way on marriage equality, with same-sex marriage laws being passed in virtually all former NATO states. But eastern Europe has lagged behind, and some states such as Poland are virulently homophobic. But today, thanks to a European Court of Justice decision, things got a little better:

EU countries that have not legalised gay marriage must respect the residency rights of same-sex spouses who want to live together in their territory, the European court of justice has ruled, in a move hailed as a victory for human dignity.

The ECJ said member states must recognise the rights of all married couples to free movement, no matter their gender or sexual orientation.

The ruling came in response to a case in which Romanian authorities were accused of discriminating against Adrian Coman, who wanted to be able to live in his home country with his American husband, Claibourn Robert Hamilton, with whom he had been living for four years in the US before they married in Brussels in 2010.

Romanian authorities refused to grant Hamilton a right of residence on the grounds that he could not be classified in Romania as the spouse of an EU citizen. The men had appealed to Romania’s constitutional court, which referred the case to Luxembourg.

Effectively, the EU's bigot-bloc will now have to recognise same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions, at least in immigration decisions. And that in turn is likely to feed in to other government discrimination as well. It's not an ECHR decision declaring bans on same-sex marriage to be discriminatory and unlawful, but its still progress.

A tiny start

When the government's Chief Science Adviser revealed that the meth-testing industry was a scam, and that thousands of people had been evicted from their homes under false pretences, Housing New Zealand's initial reaction was to stonewall and pretend it was nothing to do with them. Now, they've taken a tiny first step towards admitting responsibility:

Housing New Zealand chief executive Andrew McKenzie has apologised to state housing tenants whose lives were disrupted by evictions based on bogus methamphetamine levels.

He also said Housing New Zealand's (HNZ's) blacklist of tenants banned from going into state houses has been wiped clean, and tenants who incurred costs should be paid back.

"We really regret the way this has played out and we certainly apologise to all those people who had their lives disputed as we've shifted them out of their homes," McKenzie told Radio New Zealand today.

Which sounds good, but note what he's not doing: promising that those debts will be wiped, and promising to compensate victims for the additional costs (and hurt and humiliation) Housing New Zealand's evictions imposed on them. People were literally left homeless, many were forced into debt to WINZ for emergency housing, one was forced to destroy all her possessions. And Housing New Zealand owes them a little more than minimising talk of "disruption" and that they're not going to pursue them for bogus and odious "debt".

What it does owe them is Andrew McKenzie's head on a spike. Because he presided over all of this, he implemented the harsh and oppressive policy of evictions, and he needs to be held accountable for that. A mere sacking doesn't even begin to compare to making someone intentionally homeless - but it would be a tiny start.

The offshore exploration ban advice

The documents on the government's supposed ban on new offshore oil exploration have been released. A few thoughts:

• The issue of the decision bypassing Cabinet (which prompted this from me this morning) may have been oversold a little. The initial briefing on the issue notes that "officials have previously recommended that prior to any decision, an oral item is tabled with Cabinet". The Minister followed this procedure (Minute). The problem of course is that deciding not to offer any offshore space is a major policy change, which you'd think would trigger the Cabinet Manual's consultation requirements. But even when that change becomes apparent, officials do not recommend a full Cabinet process. So, the Minister was in that respect doing exactly what she was advised to by the people who ought to know.
  
• Officials warned that the ban could have a chilling effect on the sector. Good. That's the point: to make it clear to the fossil fuel industry that their days are numbered and that they had better start planning to be much smaller in twenty years time.
  
• One of the main effects of the ban is to screw the seismic survey firms, by massively devaluing their data. What's the value of information that will never lead to a drilling permit? Nothing. So the large and controversial surveys National promoted over the last five years are basicly wasted. This should have its own chilling effect on future exploration activity.
  
• MBIE tries to claim that ending exploration will have a negligible effect on domestic carbon emissions. At the same time, they raise the threat of Methanex shutting down its production due to "uncertainty" - something that appears to be in train anyway given the current state of gas reserves. Methanex produces ~2.4 million tons of methanol - a bulk commodity which MBIE calls a "high technology, high value export" along with milk powder - and that in turn produces approximately 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide, or about 2% of our total national emissions. So, its shutdown would result in significant and immediate emissions reductions. Incidentally, thanks to a sweetheart deal from National, we pay for those emissions, so ending it is a double benefit: we end pollution, and we stop paying for it. I'd call that a win.
  
• MBIE also worries a lot about "carbon leakage" as a result of the above. This of course is predicated on China doing nothing to limit its emissions, a proposition which is looking increasingly ludicrous.
  
• MBIE's initial paper bears a strange resemblance to talking points sent to them by New Zealand Oil & Gas, a polluter company. Funny that. I guess MPI isn't the only regulatory agency captured by those it is supposed to regulate.
  
• But in addition to capture, there's another issue: if the government's program to gradually down-size and strangle the oil industry is successful, then the government bodies which regulate it, including MBIE and NZPAM, will face a similar downsizing. After all, you don't need a regulator when there's nothing to regulate. So those MBIE officials arguing against decarbonisation are effectively arguing to keep their own jobs, and their advice should be viewed accordingly.
  

One country at a time

Burkina Faso has abolished the death penalty:

Burkina Faso's parliament has abolished the death penalty by adopting a new penal code that strikes it as a possible sentence.

Justice Minister Rene Bagoro said on Thursday that the revised document paves the way for "more credible, equitable, accessible and effective justice in the application of criminal law".

The death penalty was kept in the version of the criminal code adopted in 1996, but Burkina Faso has not imposed capital punishment recently.

At a rate of one or two countries a year, it will take fifty years to eliminate the death penalty. But this is how we change things: one country at a time.

Government by press conference

Back in April, the government announced that they were banning future offshore oil exploration. Like many, I welcomed this decision - we need to decarbonise, and slowly shutting down the oil industry is a necessary step to that. But the process they followed to do it all seems a bit Mickey Mouse:

The Cabinet has made no decision on ending oil exploration, documents being released today will show, with April's announcement made on the basis of a political agreement between the coalition parties.

[...]

"There was no Cabinet decision," a spokesman for Energy Minister Megan Woods said.

"The decision not to offer future offshore oil and gas exploration permits was made between the three coalition parties, and the Minister [Woods] was simply notifying Cabinet of that decision as well as noting that future cabinet decisions would be required to implement that decision."

The spokesman added that there was no requirement for the Cabinet to make a decision, but a Cabinet paper would be developed on implementing the decision.

Which is technically true - it is entirely up to the Minister which areas they choose to offer for public tender and which tenders they accept. At the same time, this is both a significant and controversial decision, and the Cabinet Manual is clear that such issues must go to Cabinet and be consulted with other relevant departments. The government would no doubt argue that their coalition process met the consultation requirements and that everyone was happy with the decision, and they'd probably be right - the purpose of Cabinet consultation is to ensure that everyone is kept in the loop and knows what decisions they are collectively responsible for, and that's certainly been done. And yet, fundamentally, this is not how decisions are supposed to be made in our system of government. And it raises the question of exactly why the government chose to sidestep Cabinet in this manner. And if it was to avoid their obligations under the Public Records Act and Official Information Act, then that is looking very dubious indeed.

But it also raises the question of whether the decision has any legal meaning. Sure, the Minister has chosen not to offer offshore areas in this year's block offer, but that's not the only way permits are assigned. Anyone can apply for a permit, anywhere (they can even do it online), and nothing is stopping oil companies from doing that to offshore areas not offered. And if they did, the Minister would have to assess it according to the statutory criteria, and would not be able to decline it simply on the basis of the government's announcement. There is a process by which the government can legally ban exploration for certain minerals in certain areas, but a quick check of Gazette notices shows that the government has not done this. And that's what's most appalling of all: we have a "decision", but it appears not to actually have been implemented in any way. It exists in PR and public consciousness, but not apparently in law. And the latter is a betrayal of the government's voters who supported it. I don't think its too much to expect that when the government says it will do something, it actually fucking does it, rather than simply pretending to. The government needs to follow up this decision with an actual legal implementation, and as quickly as possible, before the petroleum industry simply bypasses it.

Some justice for torture

Between 2003 and 2006, Romania and Lithuania hosted CIA "black sites", secret extrajudicial prisons where alleged terrorists were rendered and tortured by America. Today, the European Court of Human Rights declared unequivocally that those prisons were illegal, and ordered their host governments to pay damages to two of their victims:

European judges have ruled that Lithuania and Romania violated the rights of two terror suspects by allowing the CIA to torture them in secret prisons within their borders.

The terror suspects — both said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda — were captured following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and they are now being held by the US at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in Cuba.

At the time of the torture of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the CIA was operating secret prisons in several locations, including within Lithuania and Romania.

Lithuania and Romania have both been ordered by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to pay €100,000 (£88,000; $117,000) in damages to the two men. The court was unable to gain access to speak with the two men at Guantanamo.

Which is good, so far as it goes. But firstly, an EU government should not need the ECHR to know that hosting a secret CIA torture centre is illegal. And secondly, the officials and politicians who approved that hosting have not been prosecuted or held to account in any way. Which means there is no incentive for them or their successors not to do it again in future. And of course the US torturers and the officials who enabled them are all still walking free as well.

If we want to end torture, we need to prosecute these people. Until we've done that, there's no real justice.

New Fisk

Assad's new housing law is a veiled attempt to displace tens of thousands of Syrians – but even that won't help him win the war

What's Catalan for "revenge"?

Last week, a Spanish court jailed senior figures of the ruling People's Party for a widespread corruption scheme. And today, there's the inevitable sequel: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy looks likely to lose a confidence vote in the Spanish Parliament:

Mariano Rajoy’s controversial and scandal-mired tenure as Spanish prime minister seemed all but certain to be entering its final hours on Thursday afternoon when a small Basque party threw its weight behind a no-confidence motion tabled after Rajoy’s party was found to have profited from a huge corruption racket.

After hours of suspense, the Basque Nationalist party (PNV) revealed it had decided to back the motion proposed by the opposition socialist party, PSOE, delivering the handful of votes required to oust Rajoy of the People’s party (PP) and replace him with the PSOE leader, Pedro Sánchez.

The PNV’s five votes – together with the support of groupings including the anti-austerity Podemos party, the two Catalan pro-independence parties and another Basque party – gave the PSOE 180 votes in Spain’s 350-seat congress, four more than were needed.

Good riddance - corrupt governments should be rolled. And there's a delightful justice in the Basques and Catalans being key to that. While the support of the Catalan parties was gained with a promise of dialogue on independence, even if it changes nothing rolling Rajoy would still be worthwhile purely as an act of political revenge against the Prime Minister who pushed for the beatings of 1 October and the subsequent imposition of colonial rule.

Struck out

The new government is planning to repeal the "three strikes" law. Good. The law was a largely symbolic effort to pander to the "tough on crime" brigade, red meat for the arsehole vote. And every time it actually came into play, the sentencing it required was found to be manifestly unjust by judges. Which pretty much describes the entire law: manifestly unjust. While it didn't affect many people, I will be glad to see it go, because a manifestly unjust society is not one I want to live in.

Labour's other proposal is for greater use of home detention to counter the moral and fiscal failure of National's mass-incarceration regime. Again, that's good. Prison doesn't help anyone, and frequently results in people being denied the help they need. Using home detention for the vast majority of non-violent offenders will help ensure they are integrated in their communities and reduce re-offending, while also avoiding both the cruelty and the massive cost of Judith Collins' prison-fetish. While there will undoubtedly be people who abscond from it, just as there are escapes from prison, they'll inevitably be caught and then sentenced to a higher-security regime. And we should accept that as the cost of having a corrections regime, rather than trying to design one which protects the Minister from bad headlines at the cost of actively harming the public.

No right to privacy in Australia

Like most civilised countries, Australia has a Privacy Act purportedly protecting people's privacy. Except it turns out that in cases of serious abuse, its not worth the paper it is written on:

The government acted “reasonably” when it released a Centrelink recipient’s personal information to counter her public criticism of the robodebt program, the privacy commissioner has found.

The acting privacy and information commissioner, Angelene Falk, released the findings of a long-running investigation into the government’s release last year of personal information about the blogger Andie Fox.

Fox had written a piece for Fairfax Media critical of Centrelink’s controversial debt recovery program. She had detailed her own experience of attempting to resolve a debt, which she likened to throwing herself into a “vortex of humiliating and frustrating bureaucratic procedures”.

In response, the federal government released details of her interactions with Centrelink and her claims history to another Fairfax Media journalist, who subsequently published an article countering Fox’s claims.

The office of the former human services minister Alan Tudge also sent an internal document marked “for official use only” to journalists, which disclosed additional details of Fox’s relationship and tax history.

[...]

Late on Tuesday it found in the government’s favour. The ruling said the department was permitted to disclose personal information for a secondary purpose if the individual “would reasonably expect it to do so”.

Or, to put it another way: Australians should expect the government to weaponise personal information they have been forced to provide if they ever criticise government policy. And no matter what way you look at it, that is simply unreasonable, and counter to the very interests privacy legislation is supposed to protect.

New Fisk

In the Middle East, Putin has a lot to thank Trump for right now

Pervasive criminality III

Another day, another leaked MPI report into criminal behaviour in the fishing industry. This time its systematic under-reporting in the Southern Blue Whiting fishery:

A leaked Government report has revealed under-reporting and massive waste in another high-value New Zealand fishery.

The MPI compliance report targeted 13 trawlers in the Southern Blue Whiting fishery, which brings in around $26 million a year for New Zealand.

It found almost 3000 tonnes went unreported due to poor practice when cutting fish.

[...]

Up to 2678 tonnes was misreported as a result - that's almost 10 percent of all fish landed by the vessels being monitored.

And 10% under-reporting means they're effectively catching 10% more fish than they should be, with flow-on effects for the sustainability of the fishery. But the culprits weren't prosecuted, and the quota wasn't reduced to take actual industry practice into account. Instead, the report ended up with all the other ones: filed and ignored. Because MPI is totally captured by the fishing industry, and not actually interested in regulating it properly.

Greenpeace is right: we need a full and independent review of MPI's oversight and the effects of its capture on sustainability. But more importantly, we need a government agency willing to enforce the law. It is clear that MPI's internal culture prevents any chance of that. So if we want fishers regulated properly, we will need a new agency, and it will need to start from scratch and never hire anyone tainted by MPI's institutional corruption.

There is no corruption in New Zealand

We like to think of ourselves as a non-corrupt nation. The sorts of self-enriching abuses of public power that we read about happening in places like China or Africa or Australia just don't happen here. Except they do:

A former Automobile Association worker has admitted taking bribes in exchange for drivers' licenses.

[...]

According to court documents, Brar kept more than $56,000 worth of bribes.

The 25-year-old worked for the Automobile Association with the title "customer service consultant" in the Meadowlands branch in east Auckland.

He processed paperwork and took money from people who wanted to sit their practical driver's licence test.

And he wasn't the only one - there was an entire ring of them, taking bribes to allow unsafe drivers on our roads.

The good news is that we caught these ones. But how many other corrupt officials are going undetected, because of our complacent attitude?

The EU trumps democracy in Italy

Back in March Italians went to the polls to elect a new government, and delivered an indecisive result with no clear winner. After months of wrangling and failed talks, it looked like an alliance of the populist Five Star Movement and the racist League would finally be able to form a government. But it was effectively vetoed at the last minute by Italy's President, when he refused to appoint someone who had voiced doubts about the EU as finance minister.

No matter which way you look at it, this is grossly undemocratic. The two parties ran on an anti-EU platform. They won a majority, both of the popular vote and in parliament. No matter what you think of their policies, this gives them an unquestioned right to form a government of their choosing. That right has clearly been violated. Worse, by doing this, the president has sent a clear message that he believes that the European Union trumps democracy and that he is just a local satrap for Brussels (a message strengthened by the support he is receiving from major EU governments). You don't need to support or like M5S or the League to think that that is an extremely dubious position.

The president has now appointed an interim prime minister - a former IMF budget-slasher, no less - who has no support and will fall at the first confidence vote. New elections are inevitable. And the president has just ensured that they will be fought on the question of Italy's membership of the EU and the EU's toxic effect on the democracy of its member states (not to mention constitutional reform to prevent the president from ever pulling a stunt like this again). If he was trying to protect Italy's place in the EU, he couldn't have picked a worse way to go about it.

Only guilty states do this

Two weeks ago, the Israeli Defence Force massacred over 50 Palestinians and wounded 1,200 more when they slowly and methodically shot people protesting against their border fence. Like other Israeli war crimes, the shootings were filmed, providing both potential evidence against the criminals and bad PR for the IDF. But Israeli nationalists have a solution to this: ban anyone from filming their heroic military!

Israel’s parliament is to consider a law banning the photographing or filming of soldiers, in what critics claim is a “dangerous” attempt to undermine scrutiny of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Under the proposed legislation, entitled the “Prohibition against photocopying and documenting IDF Soldiers”, those found photographing troops “with the intention of undermining the spirit” of the army can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

“Anyone who filmed, photographed, and/or recorded soldiers in the course of their duties, with the intention of undermining the spirit of IDF soldiers and residents of Israel, shall be liable to five years imprisonment,” says the bill, proposed by Robert Ilatov, a member of the Knesset and the chairman of the right-wing nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party.

“Anyone intending to harm state security will be sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.”

So, propaganda photos and videos will be fine. But showing the IDF doing its actual job of terrorising and murdering Palestinians so as to keep them under subjugation and steal their land will result in a jail sentence. And the intent of the law is clearly to hide the evidence of those crimes.

Only guilty states do this. But its been clear for quite some time that that is exactly what Israel is: a criminal state, built on and sustained by systematic human rights abuses. The one positive thing in this is that they seem to still at least have a sense of shame about them.

Abortion wins in Ireland

Over the weekend, Irish voters went to the polls in a referendum on their country's constitutional ban on abortion - and overturned it by a massive margin. While all the vote does is remove the constitutional prohibition, it is being interpreted correctly as a vote for change, and the Irish government is promising to pass a sane abortion law which doesn't kill women by the end of the year. Which will leave Northern Ireland as the only place in the British isles where abortion is still illegal.

This has put pressure on the UK government to Do Something about its backward colony, for example by legislating to allow for their own referendum. But that would be constitutionally improper. Northern Ireland is a devolved region, with its own government (though not at the moment) and laws. It is as inappropriate for Westminster to legislate for them as it would be for them to legislate for Scotland. They can only do so with consent. Unfortunately, due to the sectarian nature of Northern Irish politics, which sees bigot unionist parties holding a veto on government (which is why they don't have one ATM), that consent is unlikely to be granted. The only way to fix this problem is for Northern Irish voters to vote out the bigots and vote for people who will change the law. In other words, they have to solve this problem themselves.

Its also raised questions about why New Zealand is dragging its feet on removing abortion from the Crimes Act. Despite a clear promise from Labour, the issue has been parked with the Law Commission in an effort to gain political cover for change. Except that anti-abortionists won't care what the Law Commission says in its report, and will MPs will face a torrent of hate regardless. Which means the entire exercise is pointless - they might as well have simply cut out the middle man and introduced the law they wanted themselves.

NZDF has a culture of deceit

Six months ago, we learned that a toxic firefighting foam used by NZDF may have contaminated water supplies near its bases. Over that time, there's been a few stories suggesting that NZDF may not have been honest with us about the problem. But now, according to Radio New Zealand, it appears that they have been lying systematically to the New Zealand public:

Documents about the nationwide firefighting foam contamination investigation show the Defence Force told the public one thing, but said something different in internal reports.

• Defence told the public the foam that it is still using, does not contain a banned chemical.
  
• But it told its own consultants that it did contain this chemical, called PFOA or perfluorooctanoic acid.
  
• It told the public its investigation was only about "historical" contamination that occurred before 2002.
  
• But it told its consultants to look at historical and "current" contamination.
  

The documents released to RNZ under the Official Information Act include internal reports on contamination investigations in Auckland and Manawatū.

The details in that report are stunning, and show calculated deceit in NZDF's public communications, clearly intended to minimise their exposure. Which all seems familiar. In the Hit & Run saga NZDF has been caught lying multiple times, even deceiving their Minister. This is an institution which appers to have an entrenched culture of deceit. And while Ministers may excuse it when soldiers are deployed and lives are on the line, this is not that sort of case. Instead, it is purely about reputation and legal liability. And where that's the case, I think the expectation of the New Zealand public is that government agencies behave honestly, rather than trying to bullshit and weasel us.

NZDF needs to come clean with us about what they've done, how much of our water they've poisoned, and whether they're still doing it. And they need to admit responsibility and compensate their victims. Finally, those who have been lying to us about this need to be fired, because they clearly lack the integrity required to work for a government agency.