Mini-Muldoonism

Back in 1982, National Party Prime Minister Robert Muldoon wanted to build a big dam. But the courts said no: granting water rights to the dam was against the law. So Muldoon passed special legislation, the Clutha Development (Clyde Dam) Empowering Act 1982, in order to get his way and build his pet project.

Fast forward 36 years, and only the scale has changed:

Nelson MP Dr Nick Smith says he has secured the support of all 56 National MPs for a local bill that aims to secure land access for the proposed Waimea dam.

"My ambition is to secure the full support of all parties and MPs, and I will be working on this in the coming weeks in preparation for the first reading and vote, due in August," Smith said.

The local bill, which was notified by Tasman District Council this week, seeks to gain an inundation easement over 9.6 hectares of conservation land in the Mount Richmond State Forest Park, near Nelson. The easement is needed for the creation of the reservoir for the proposed dam in the Lee Valley. The bill would also secure a right to construct the dam on Crown riverbed.

Its a smaller dam, but the same issue: the law says National's friends can't do what they want - in this case, ruin part of a protected conservation park to line the pockets of local farmers. So rather than respect the law, National's solution is a special carve-out for its mates. The idea that conservation areas are for conservation seems to be beyond them, and it should make everyone worry about what they will do to our conservation areas and national parks next time they're in government.

The good news is that like most of the others, this dam project is financially marginal and will be cancelled if prices escalate. At which point its worth noting that its one of three dams the government is still funding. Cancelling that funding would seem to be an excellent way of ensuring this land stays protected.

Ripped off

Over the years, the high country tenure review process has privatised hundreds of thousands of hectares of government land. Like all privatisations, the process is corrupt, with farmers getting land for a pittance (or in some cases, being paid by the government to take it) - and then immediately selling it on for nearly a thousand times what they paid for it. The latest abuse? A farmer pocketing nearly $20 million from this corrupt process:

A sprawling lake-front farm in Central Otago has sold for $17.5m - not long after taxpayers paid more than $2m to get rid of it.

It is the latest in a string of farms once owned by the Crown that have been privatised then on-sold for substantial profit.

An academic says it is a "spectacular example" of the extraordinary capital gains made by on-selling valuable lake-front land the Crown privatised. The Government department responsible, however, said its original deal was a fair representation of the land's value, and it had secured access to an important walking trail for the public.

Its just the latest in a long line of privatisations which have enriched farmers while destroying the environment and driving unsustainable dairy intensification in places like the MacKenzie Country. And even if you think that perpetual leases should be privatised, the scale of the rip-off should make you furious. To point out the obvious, those hundreds of millions of dollars farmers have made from this process is money the government could have made instead, if it had valued the land properly (e.g. by taking potential future subdivision and development rights into account, as happens in the urban property market). The enrichment of a small clique of South Island farmers came at the direct expense of our schools and hospitals, and you're paying higher taxes to enable it.

But its also terrible for the environment (again: intensive dairying in the MacKenzie Country). It needs to stop, both for equity and environmental reasons. Apparently there's a review under way, but given the Environment Court ruling, a moratorium while that happens seems to be a good idea.

The cost of a free and democratic society

So, a pair of foreign racists want to visit New Zealand, and naturally some people want to have them banned to prevent them from speaking:

Pressure is mounting on Immigration New Zealand to deny entry to a controversial Canadian pair set to give a talk in Auckland next month.

Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux are best known for their far-right alternative views on everything from feminism, gender and immigration to Islam.

Earlier this year, Ms Southern was banned by from entering the UK on the grounds of her involvement "in the distribution of racist material in Luton", according to the BBC.

The Islamic community voiced their opposition to the visit last month.

New Zealand Federation of Islam Associations president Hazim Arafeh said it had written letters to the Immigration Minister, Minister for Ethnic Communities and the Human Rights Commission asking for Lauren Southern to be denied entry.

"[She] abuses her right of freedom of speech. She's just going to give a talk in which she's just going to insult all of us," Mr Arafeh said.

Unfortunately, being insulted is just something people have to put up with in a free and democratic society, and our Supreme Court is on record (in Brooker v Police) as saying so. We have a right to freedom of speech in New Zealand, which covers not just the right of these racists to speak, but also the right of their racist audience to listen. Restricting that right pre-emptively requires a very high test: basicly an announced intention on the part of the speaker to incite a riot. If that test isn't met, there's no justifiable reason to prevent them from speaking. And as I've said in other cases, the answer to speech you don't like is more speech, not less. If they're giving a speech, then protest outside, and make it damn clear to everyone that kiwis don't agree with their racism and Islamophobia.

New Fisk

With Serbia and Kosovo both vying for EU membership, the question remains: who won the war?

Immigration's explicit racism

Back in April, we learned that Immigration was doing Precrime, targeting people for deportation on the basis of race, gender, and prejudice. Immigration of course denied and tried to downplay it. But it turns out they were using explicit racial profiling:

Immigration New Zealand has scrapped data and predictive modelling work it did to prioritise deportations.

The Privacy Commissioner and Human Rights Commission said they would work with the agency it if it developed technology or a similar initiative to the data-modelling in the future.

Documents obtained under the Official Information Act show Immigration New Zealand (INZ) set up a pilot scheme which targeted Indian students for compliance action, while the other dealt with all nationalities and visa types.

[...]

Other documents showed Immigration New Zealand's Northern area compliance team used a points matrix at its weekly meeting to prioritise cases for action, using Indians as one of its criteria for deporting offenders.

Targeting people for deportation because they were Indian is simply Trump-style racial profiling. It is absolutely wrong, and I am glad to see it stop. But will it really stop? Because the core of the problem here is that immigration officers appear to be racists, and ending formal racism may simply see them acting informally instead. An easier solution would seem to be to fire the racists who designed and fed this system, as their values are clearly incompatible with those of the government they are meant to represent.

More corruption

A couple of weeks ago we learned that MPI had referred itself to the SSC over issues raised by an OIA request into its dealings with Thompson & Clark. That's bad enough, but its suddenly got more serious: they've called in the Serious Fraud Office:

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has referred evidence of potential serious staff misconduct to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the ministry says.

MPI said in a statement it has also referred the matter to the State Services Commission (SSC) and it is part of the SSC's inquiry into the use of external security consultants including Thompson & Clark.

However, MPI said the conduct of concern did not involve the contracting of Thompson & Clark by MPI.

It said information currently pointed to matters occurring prior to October 2013, and the staff involved no longer work for MPI.

I guess whoever was behaving unprofessionally around TCIL was also behaving dubiously in other areas. Hopefully the SFO will get to the bottom of it and prosecute any criminal behaviour. Meanwhile, it really makes you wonder how much corruption in government departments simply slides under the radar, because nobody bothers to look.

WINZ's war on the poor

Surprise, surprise! It turns out that 80% of complaints to WINZ are unsubstantiated:

Figures released to Checkpoint with John Campbell under the Official Information Act show 8968 allegations were made in the 2016/17 financial year, resulting in 5992 investigations.

However, an overpayment that needed to be paid back was only identified in 20 percent of cases - or 1829 of them - meaning 4163 people were needlessly subjected to an investigation.

"So many resources are being put into people with a gripe about anything, dobbing in these vulnerable people, and subjecting them to the misery of an MSD benefit fraud investigation," lawyer Frances Joychild QC said.

Joychild provides examples of allegations made by abusive ex-partners, or in retaliation for exposing sexual abuse. But WINZ doesn't care about the motive for complaints - instead, they're just looking for excuses to cut benefits. But it speaks volumes that two thirds of their investigations turn up nothing. And you really have to wonder about how many million dollars they're wasting on this vindictive war on the poor.

Cows ruin another swimming spot

Earlier in the year, contamination forced a popular Napier swimming spot to close. The reason? Cowshit:

Cow faeces have been identified as a contamination source for Napier's Pandora Pond over the summer.

On Wednesday, Hawke's Bay Regional Council's environment and services committee was presented with a report on the contamination, which resulted in locals falling violently ill.

Between February 12-19 this year the pond exceeded national water quality guidelines of 280 enterococci (bacteria) per 100 millilitres of water three times.

[...]

Regional council coastal quality scientist Anna Madarasz-Smith told the committee that faecal source tracking of the high February levels returned an "unknown" contamination source.

Tracking identified the high March reading as being from cow faeces on an incoming tide. This "may indicate" a distant source, Madarasz-Smith said.

However, the higher result at that site, compared with another upstream site, indicated it was "more likely than not" that the contamination originated from the Thames/Tyne St catchment area.

The culprit seems to be a local meatworks. Another example of how the farming industry poisons our waterways. Hopefully they'll be taking a very close look at its waste outflow and its resource consents, and tightening up both. Its simply not acceptable for our rivers, lakes and streams to make people sick, and the council needs to clean it up.

A public duty

The Christchurch City Council is ignoring an Ombudsman's ruling to release information under LGOIMA:

The Ombudsman is calling on the country's top law officer, the Attorney-General, to launch enforcement proceedings against the Christchurch City Council over its continued refusal to release the cost of a touch wall in its new library.

Despite the instructions of the Ombudsman more than a month ago, the council is still to make the cost public.

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier said he was disappointed the council had failed to release the cost within the timeframe required under the law.

[...]

He said he has written asking that the Attorney-General, David Parker, consider issuing enforcement proceedings against the council.

The Council's behaviour is of course illegal. Once the Ombudsman issues a final opinion, they have 21 days in which to pass a veto resolution. After that, there is a public duty on every member, officer and employee of the Council to obey it. The problem is that while there's a public duty, there's no enforcement provision or offence clause. And this case seems to be another example of why we need one.

Meanwhile, there are problems with transparency in the Auckland Council, Christchurch City Council, and central government. What's the common factor in all of these bodies? Labour party hacks in charge. Despite talking up transparency in opposition, Labour are no friends of it when in power, and even willing to behave illegally to thwart it. Remember that next time you vote.

A colossal waste of money

That's the only way to describe the government's expected purchase of US sub-hunting aircraft:

The Government is expected to announce it is buying a new fleet of Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft next week.

Cabinet will make its final decision on the purchase of up to four of the planes, estimated to cost up to $2 billion, to replace the ageing P-3 Orions on Monday. The announcement will follow the release of the strategic defence policy statement on Friday.

Defence Minister Ron Mark has strongly signalled the Government will go ahead with the purchase of the P-8s, which would give New Zealand increased reconnaissance capabilities, especially when it comes to hunting submarines.

New Zealand unquestionably needs maritime surveillance aircraft - we use them for maritime search & rescue, fisheries patrols, and damage assessment after tropical cyclones. But we don't need high-tech sub-hunters, for the simple reason that we are not threatened by submarines. Seriously, where are these mythical submarines they are expected to find? And if this fantasised threat is expected to exist not now, but a decade or two in the future, then that suggests that we get the hugely expensive sub-hunting electronics (which makes up a huge chunk of the inflated cost of these aircraft) in that decade or two, not now.

Basicly, high-end military equipment in the absence of any real threat is a vanity purchase. All it does is allow generals to feel like they're keeping up with the Aussies, while enabling them to get involved in more American wars. There are far better things we could be spending that money on, like schools, hospitals, and state houses, which will make far of a difference to the safety of New Zealanders than expensive, pointless sub-hunting electronics ever will. We should ditch this contract and buy something cheaper which actually serves our needs.

The GCSB spied on the Pacific

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and security has released her report on GCSB spying in the South Pacific. The short version: the GCSB spied (and almost certainly still spies) on our Pacific neighbours, this spying may have illegally captured the private communications of New Zealand citizens, but as they do not appear to have been retained, there's no finding. Its a deeply unsatisfactory report, in that GCSB appears to have been doing something illegal and escaped consequences for it (again), and it spends a lot of space talking about how the law has changed and the protections GCSB has in place, but the fact remains: if they are still spying on the Pacific, then they will still be intercepting the communications of kiwis living or holidaying there. They have legal cover now for such "incidentally obtained intelligence", but that shouldn't be any comfort. We're meant to be a free and democratic society, and free and democratic societies don't spy on their citizens without particularised suspicion and individual judicial authorisation. And yet, the GCSB's methods at least sometimes involve indiscriminate mass surveillance. And all the equivocation in the world over "collection", "selection" and "retention" can't hide that.

Plus of course, there's the discomfort of an official acknowledgement that our government was (and probably still is) spying on our closest neighbours, all of whom we consider to be friendly states. I wonder how that will go down at the Pacific Forum?

Meanwhile, there's an interesting admission in the report: pre-2013, the GCSB considered metadata interception and getting its Five Eyes partners to provide intelligence on kiwis to be entirely legal and not requiring authorisation. So, the entire critique of the GCSB was accurate. Post-2013 both of these activities required legal authorisation, but that might not be any comfort - because when the law changed, the number of access authorisations issued went through the roof, suggesting that Ministers simply signed off on the spying GCSB was doing anyway. And of course, no-one at GCSB was held accountable for its previous, highly dubious and self-serving interpretation of the law.

Still the obvious question

Another week, another IPCA report finding excessive and unjustified use of force by police:

An officer who "leg swept" an alleged Ashburton drunk driver during an arrest used excessive force, the Independent Police Conduct Authority has found.

IPCA chairman Judge Colin Doherty said kicking the handcuffed man's feet out from under him was neither justified nor in self defence.

[...]

The officer told the authority he feared for his safety so he leg-swept the handcuffed man off his feet, causing him to land face first on the ground.

On the way down, the man hit his face on a wall heater, making his face bleed heavily.

"The officer did not act in accordance with the law and police policy when dealing with Mr X in that the force he used against Mr X in the charge room was not in self-defence and was unjustified," Doherty said.

The authority said a delay in seeking medical attention for the man was also unacceptable.

If you or I did this, we'd be prosecuted for assault. This police officer at least faced an employment investigation, after which they were reinstated (assaulting prisoners apparently not being considered serious by police). But the police have not prosecuted him, and nor do they seem likely to.

If the law is to mean anything, it must apply to police as well as citizens. If it doesn't, we're quite entitled to regard police as simply a self-serving gang with fancier uniforms.

Calling out Australia over child imprisonment

For the past few years, Australia has had a policy of deporting as many kiwis as it can, and detaining them indefinitely if they try and appeal against deportation. Its a disgusting policy, but its gets worse: because now they're imprisoning kiwi children as well:

Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters has challenged the Australian Government to meet the obligations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child over the detention of a 17-year-old New Zealander under its deportation policy.

The 17-year-old has been held in a Melbourne immigration detention centre for the past three months and is the first youth detained under hardline migration rules.

A decision on his visa status is expected soon.

UNCROC forbids separating children from their parents (unless it is in the best interests of the child), and imprisoning them with adults. Australia's actions are clearly in breach. Unfortunately, as Australia is not a party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure, all we can do is publicly shame them over their non-compliance. And while we're at it, we should point out that their actions in imprisoning childen on Nauru and Manus Island are in breach of the convention as well.

Meanwhile, in case you needed a reminder: don't buy Australian.

Sanity prevails

WINZ, in an effort to throw more people off benefits, has been arguing that loans were "income" and that if you borrowed money, your benefit could be reduced or cut. Now, the High Court has ruled that they were wrong:

A solo mother of two has won her seven-year fight against the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), which unlawfully tried to argue bank loans and credit cards constituted income.

[...]

But in a High Court appeal released today, Justice Paul Davison ruled MSD was wrong to classify those sources of money as income.

"The bank loans did not truly add to Ms F's resources as she was required to repay the funds she received," Justice Davison wrote.

"Bank borrowings by use of a credit card have the same essential characteristics as a bank loan, in that credit card expenditure is to be repaid. Credit card spending is therefore a loan, and is not properly treated as income."

Good. But it raises an obvious question: how many benefits did WINZ cut over this fictitious "income", and will they be repaying the money? Because that is what justice demands in this case: that WINZ apologise to everyone it has victimised under this spurious and unlawful practice, and repay every dollar that they were deprived of.

The bigger crime?

When the police appointed Wally Haumaha as Deputy Commissioner, there was a public outcry over his dirty past comments about police rape. But the National party aren't concerned about that. Instead, they've found a bigger scandal: that he was once a potential NZ First candidate:

National leader Simon Bridges says the inquiry the Government is setting up into the appointment of the deputy police commissioner is unsatisfactory and Tracey Martin should not oversee it.

Bridges said it should be broad enough to include whether proper disclosures were made to the Cabinet about Wally Haumaha's former association with New Zealand First.

Martin, the Minister of Internal Affairs, was a senior New Zealand First official and it was inappropriate that she be involved, he said.

"I think this is incredibly serious," said Bridges.

Really? Really? They have a situation with the police appointing a rape-apologist, and National are concerned about which party they didn't run for over a decade ago? I think there's a problem with perspective here. Not to mention values.

Meanwhile, in reality, police officers run for election all the time, and are subject to the same provisions as other state servants: if they're candidates, they get placed on a leave of absence, if they're successful they automatically resign, and if they are unsuccessful they go back to work. The law forbids discriminating against candidates for their political views, and their rights as a state servant "shall not be affected by his or her candidature". Trying to deny them a promotion ten years later on the basis of an aborted political candidacy seems to violate that.

I think Haumaha should be sacked. But he should be sacked for being a rape apologist, not for exercising his democratic rights. If there is a serious question whether he has acted politically in his role, then that's a question for his employer under the police code of conduct. But at the moment, it looks like national is desperately flailing around to find anything to comment on besides the elephant in the room.

The EU is dead

Remember the European dream? An ever closer union founded on respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights? Its dead: it is now official EU policy that refugees should be left to drown:

The European Union has condemned rescue boats picking up drowning refugees in the Mediterranean, in a dramatic hardening of the bloc’s border policy that brings it in line with the continent’s anti-immigration populists.

After a summit in Brussels EU leaders backed the approach of Italy’s new populist government to the boats, suggesting the vessels should stay away and could be breaking the law by picking up those in distress.

A communiqué issued by the European Council warns the vessels’ operators that they should defer to the Libyan coastguard, which NGOs say amounts to “deliberately condemning vulnerable people to be trapped in Libya, or die at sea”.

And even before it was announced, Italy was lying to rescue boats to kill refugees, at a cost of hundreds of lives. And if they make it ashore, the EU is now talking about Australian-style concentration camps: refugee gulags in a continent with a dirty history of sticking the Other in camps and exterminating them.

If you ever thought that the European project was worth believing in, its not any more. Their craven politicians gave in to racists and actual fascists rather than standing up for the values they were supposed to protect. The EU is now the sort of union decent countries should quit, rather than continue to belong to.

National's ripoff road

Stuff has a piece on the prospect of National's Transmission Gully project ending up as a toll road, i.e. one which real people don't get to use. But in addition to the pointlessness of spending government money to promote social apartheid in transport, there's also a buried lead in there: that thanks to National funding it through a PPP, that road is going to cost more than three times as much as it should:

Paying to use the Transmission Gully motorway is creeping closer to reality after the Transport Minister was warned the $852 million road north of Wellington could make driving too attractive.

A briefing document from the New Zealand Transport Agency to Transport Minister Phil Twyford, released to Stuff under the Official Information Act, recommended he green-light investigation of a Transmission Gully toll to "shape demand" for the new four-lane expressway, which will connect northern Wellington to the Kāpiti Coast when it opens in 2020.

[...]

The previous National Government inked a deal with a business consortium in 2014 to have the motorway built by the private sector. Once it is opens to traffic, the agency will begin paying it off, along with interest, maintenance and operating costs, in annual instalments of $125m over 25 years.

Doing the maths, that means we're paying $3.125 billion for a road which will cost only $852 million to build - 3.6 times as much. What are we getting for that extra money? National got to claim they weren't borrowing as much. That's right - National signed a deal to give a private company billions of dollars of public money for no purpose other than to make them look good.

And this is why we should never use PPPs. They are dishonest and wasteful and result in us paying far more than we need to. It is always cheaper for the government to simply borrow the money itself to pay for a major infrastructure project. But that would mean being honest with the public about what they're spending - and it seems that National at least will spend billions of other people's money to avoid that.

NZDF attempts to stop free speech

Shortly after Nicky Hager's book Hit and Run was released in March 2017, graffiti went up around Wellington accusing NZDF of war crimes and lying. And predictably, the SAS mafia running NZDF hit the roof and panicked over how to have it removed:

A series of emails released under the Official Information Act show staff swung into action after the slogans appeared overnight, in mid-March. One wrote: "They are prominent and are reported as being on there [sic] main gateways into the city centre."

Senior staff in the Office of Defence Force Chief, Lieutenant General Tim Keating, were directing moves to have the protests removed quickly. The email chain stretches over three days as staff tried to work out what to do. The chain shows them debating the nature of the signs and whether they constitute graffiti or handmade billboards.

Chris Hoey, Keating's director of co-ordination, wanted to lay a complaint with police. He requested staff photographers to be sent out to take photos of the "known sites" in Wellington "to support that complaint". Staff provided photos taken on their way to work instead.

But the military police advised they could only lay a vandalism complaint if the graffiti was on Defence Force property. An unnamed officer added: "I do not believe there is a complaint regarding the actual words."

Keating's chief of staff, Commodore Ross Smith, was also copied in the emails and on the second day of the graffiti blitz wrote: "It looks like the campaign has stepped up a notch ... Is there anything we can do?". Hoey forwarded it on adding: "Can we get rid of this one quickly?"

Only one staffer raises concerns, writing: "Dumb question, have we thought about the headline 'NZDF attempts to stop free speech' so is removal or attempted removal the organisation instruction?"

Hoey wrote back: "Yes it is".

For a bunch of people we trust with guns, they seem to be awfully thin-skinned. And for a bunch of people who supposedly "defend our freedoms", they seem to have no idea what those freedoms actually are. They seem to think that it is (or should be) a criminal offence to criticise them, and that its their function as people running the military to silence dissent and public criticism of their institution. Which is an awfully dangerous attitude for the military of a free and democratic country to have.

The good news is that Keating has now retired. Hopefully the new Chief of Defence Force will be establishing an organisational culture which shows greater respect for democratic norms.

Australia persecutes a whistleblower

Back in 2013, a former ASIS agent blew the whistle on how the Australian government had illegally bugged the leaders of East Timor in order to listen in on their negotiating position over oil and gas rights in the Timor Sea. When the issue was raised in the International Court of Justice, the Australian government raided the homes of both the whsitleblower and East Timor's Australian lawyer. And now, they're prosecuting both of them for revealing information about ASIO:

A Canberra lawyer whose client exposed a secret Australian spying operation in East Timor has described the prosecution against them both as an attack on freedom of speech.

On Thursday, using parliamentary privilege, independent MP Andrew Wilkie revealed the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions recently filed criminal charges against Bernard Collaery and his client, a former spy known only as "Witness K".

Witness K had raised concerns about a covert Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) operation he ran to bug East Timor's cabinet in 2004 during negotiations about an oil and gas treaty.

Mr Collaery, who once served as ACT attorney-general, described the move as a personal attack on him and his client, who cannot be named, and said it was a sad day for Australia.

So, they prosecuting a whistleblower for blowing the whistle on illegal and immoral behaviour, and a lawyer for representing their client, under a clause of the law which makes it illegal to reveal any information about government spying. It is simply persecution. And it highlights the danger of our own similar law, which has no public interest defence or protection for those who reveal illegal, but classified, activities here.

It gets worse. Because Australia has just passed an "espionage" law which would criminalise protests and which considers embarrassing the government or diminishing its international standing (e.g. by exposing poor policies) to be damage to "national security". Our nearest neighbour is turning into a nasty little authoritarian hellhole. I guess we've just got to hope that Australians wake up and stop it, before it is too late.

The Minister for Open Government strikes again!

How committed to transparency is Clare Curran, our "Minister for Open Government"? The Public Media Advisory Group, which she appointed under her other hat as Broadcasting Minister, decided that it would not keep minutes of its meetings after hearing that it would be subject to the OIA:

A Ministerial Advisory group met once, noted its meeting minutes were subject to the Official Information Act (OIA), then stopped taking minutes in further meetings.

Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister Clare Curran set up the Ministerial Advisory Group in February to investigate establishing a Public Media Funding Commission.

Documents released to Opposition MP Melissa Lee under the OIA show the group decided to "not keep minutes for its further meetings" after meeting for the first time on 27 February.

The minutes for that February meeting show early on in the meeting, "The MAG (Ministerial Advisory Group) noted it is subject to the Official Information Act."

After that meeting, there are no more minutes recorded.

MAG members also signed a "confidentiality deed", presumably in an attempt to contract themselves out of the OIA.

Of course, this is illegal. The MAG is a public agency, and as such is required to create and maintain full and accurate records of its affairs, in accordance with normal, prudent business practice. Failing to do this is a crime, though the penalty is a paltry $5,000 fine. But is also tremendously stupid, in that if the meeting doesn't keep minutes, it won't know what it has done in the past. Finally, its legally ineffective: the OIA applies to information, not just documents. If the information exists only in people's heads, then they are required to write it down for requesters. As for what to do about it, the answer is simple: the law should be enforced, and the group should be sacked and prosecuted for violating it. It is not acceptable for a government agency to deliberately refuse to create records in an effort to thwart the OIA regime, and they need to be held to account.