The quid pro quo

This morning's Independent Financial Review reports that Don Brash was offered a significant diplomatic post in exchange for going quietly. "Significant" in this case means London or Washington, and Brash reportedly prefers the latter. So if National is elected, we can have Don making more promises to the Americans about how we'll get rid of our anti-nuclear policy. Quite a quid pro quo, neh?

The interesting question here is "who talked"? Did John Key use the same back channels he used to sink Brash to publicise the deal, allowing him to wiggle out of it and avoid the public odium of a transparently political appointment? Or did Brash's habit of bumbling strike again? Either way, now that it's been made public, it should be sunk. Jim Bolger had the foreign policy experience of being Prime Minister to back him up. Jonathan Hunt can at least hold a good party. But Brash was always a lightweight on foreign policy, and all he ever did was stick his foot in his mouth. That's not something we can afford in the case of a top diplomat.

Questions they won't ask you in an Australian citizenship test

John Howard wants to impose "citizenship tests" on new migrants to Australia, quizzing them on English-language and Australian history and values before granting them citizenship. This sort of exercise has a long history, dating back to the "White Australia" policy which held sway up until 1973, and it is primarily aimed at excluding the "wrong sort" (meaning "wrong colour") of immigrants. At the same time, its also aimed at propagating Australia's national myths, a false and sanitised version of its history. So here's a few questions they probably won't be asking.

• Who discovered Australia?
• Where was the first Australian settlement?
• What proportion of Australia was originally owned by its indigenous peoples?
• How many Aborigines did European colonists kill between 1770 and 1900?
• What happened to the Aborigines of Tasmania?
• When were Australian aborigines granted Australian citizenship?
• When did Australian aborigines get the vote?
• When was the last legal "abo hunt"?
• What was the purpose of the policy of forcibly removing aboriginal children from their parents and giving them to white families?
• How many aboriginal children were removed from their parents in this way?
• When did the policy of forcibly splitting up aboriginal families officially end?
• When is the "Day of Mourning"?
• What is the common-law doctrine of "aboriginal title"?
• What was Mabo v Queensland about?
• Should land taken from aborigines be returned to its original owners?
• Do Aborigines have an equal right to protection under the law as other Australians?
• Do Aborigines have an equal right to education, healthcare and government services as other Australians?
• Is it appropriate for the Australian government to spend only half as much per capita on healthcare and education for Aborigines as it does on other Australians?
• How many Aborigines die in Australian jails each year?
• Should the Australian government do anything about this?

And finally,

• Should the Australian government say "sorry" for its treatment of its indigneous people?

Unfortunately, John Howard's answer to the latter is a firm "no".

Something to go to in Wellington

Andrew Brettell is a video dude who creates award-winning video projections for New Zealand theatre (most recently for the plays Democracy and Dr Buller’s Birds). This weekend, he's "haunting" the historic Futuna Chapel in Karori with video projections of ghosts and stories from its past as an awareness-raiser for the Friends of Futuna Charitable Trust.

When: Friday December 15th - Sunday December 17th, 10am - 10pm
Where: Futuna Chapel, 62 Friend Street, Karori
How much: Free!

There's also a talk at 20:30 each evening from Nick Blake on the architecture of the chapel.

I'm in Wellington this weekend for a civil union picnic (new institutions means new ways of celebrating), so I might just go along.

Regrets, he's had a few

Don Brash gave his valedictory speech today, and in it he admitted to a few regrets about his time in Parliament. Sadly, crawling into bed with the Exclusive Brethren or systematically lying to the new Zealand public were not among them. Instead, he's sad that

"I never made it into government. I didn't change a single law."

Brash may regret that, but I for one don't. And I'm very glad to see the back of him. Hopefully with his departure National will finally admit that the New Zealand public do not want to restart the Revolution, and move on from the 90's.

Du Fresne on blogs

Karl du Fresne (the Dominion-Post's resident curmudgeon) takes aim at bloggers this morning, labelling the blogosphere as

barely literate rants written by angry, selfabsorbed no-hopers with too much time on their hands. They are often toxic, petty, juvenile and malicious.

Which is all too often an entirely correct description. Unfortunately, it's also an entirely correct description of du Fresne's regular column in the Dom-Post. The primary difference seems to be that he gets paid for it.

A closer look: the New Zealand Energy Strategy

I spent most of yesterday digesting the draft New Zealand Energy Strategy [PDF]. On a closer reading, my initial reaction may have been a little harsh. Overall, the strategy is excellent, but the lack of a firm policy for putting a price on emissions is more than a little disappointing.

The goal of the energy strategy is "a reliable and resilient system delivering New Zealand sustainable, low emissions energy". It aims to achieve this by laying out broad policy the government will follow in the energy sector. Obviously, its success or failure depends on whether that policy is implemented and funded by future governments.

The accompanying action plan is divided into seven sections:

• Low-carbon transport: A key goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, while allowing an increase in demand. This seems contradictory, but it can be done by both higher efficiency vehicles and switching fuel types, to diesel and (most importantly) biofuels. There's also an emphasis on increased public transport funding, but it comes far behind fuel switching in terms of emissions reductions; instead its more of an investment in the future and ensuring that cities such as Auckland have the basic infrastructure expected of them.
• Security of supply: This is mostly about ensuring that there is adequate dry-year backup and tinkering with the market structure. The good news is that investment in new generation is more than keeping pace with demand growth; the better news is that two-thirds of all new generation (and pretty much everything after 2007) is renewable. Interestingly, the table of new projects does not include the coal-fired Marsden B plant - does the government know something we don't?
• Low emissions power and heat: otherwise known as "tackling climate change". There's a clear vision here for a move to a more sustainable energy system, with greater use of renewables and reduced use of fossil fuels (at least until carbon capture and storage is invented, however far away that might be). And there's no question that vision is achievable - we have more than enough potential for cheap renewables to see us through to 2030 (and much longer, if we can make a swift move to wave power), and wind and geothermal are already cheaper than coal and gas - something which will only be reinforced by the internalisation of carbon costs. But there's no concrete policy to make this happen; instead, the government lays out some principles to guide policy development (which basically amount to "policy should move us gradually towards a carbon market without putting electricity prices through the roof"), but punts the entire question to another round of consultation. This is more than a little frustrating. As I've noted previously, we have been circling around these issues for the last ten years. There are no new options in the accompanying Transitional Measures discussion paper [PDF]; every single one of them has been considered before (and often more than once). The problem is not in deciding what the best policy is - we know the answer to that question (short answer: carbon taxes or emissions trading, either works perfectly well, and if they're not politically achievable, regulations, renewable obligations and feed-in tariffs work well enough) - the problem is biting the bullet and actually implementing one. CP1 starts in a little over twelve months; this is not something we have time to piss about on.

  That said, it looks as if the government is moving to a narrow cap and trade regime for the electricity sector over CP1, and it seems to favour auctions over grandparenting. But there's no mention of sinking caps or other measures which would ensure a gradual shift towards carbon neutrality (in electricity generation) over the long-term. It's a glaring failure of vision at the heart of the policy, and one they should correct before finalising it.

• Energy efficiency: This is being handled through the development of a replacement National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy (the previous version of which promised too much and delivered too little, partly due to systematic government underfunding, and partly due to EECA following the government's lead in circling endlessly around known problems rather than actually doing anything about them). But there's also talk of further information and promotion campaigns. The big change, however, is a significant reduction in the discount rate used for energy efficiency projects, which will result in more getting government funding.
• Sustainable technology: Basically a research roadmap, laying out what avenues we should be pursuing domestically, what we should be keeping a close eye on overseas (CCS), and what we should ignore (nuclear). The headline policy is $8 million over four years for research into marine energy, which has significant potential in New Zealand. That should be enough to map the resource and run some trial projects; hopefully it will be enough to ensure early uptake as the technology matures. And if the government retains a projects mechanism (one option they are considering to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) we may be able to use it to kick-start wave power in the same way that it has already kick-started wind.
• Affordability: Not much here, given that we have a market-based system where prices are set by market forces rather than centrally by the government. The key measure here is targeting energy efficiency programmes at low-income households, achieving both energy savings and reducing the impact of increases in electricity prices.

So overall a solid document, if frustrating on the climate change front. And while National is (predictably) criticising it as more hot air, its worth noting that their "plan" for the energy sector is to leave everything for the market to work out - which isn't much of a plan at all.

You can submit on this thing, and I suggest that everyone who wants to see a greener future does. I will be stressing the need for steady increases in the biofuels obligation, and a "sinking cap" on electricity sector greenhouse gas emissions. Submissions are due by 30th March.

Hardcopies of the Energy Strategy can be requested here.

New Fisk

Revolution in the air as Lebanon's rift widens

First thoughts on the New Zealand Energy Strategy

The government has released its draft New Zealand Energy Strategy, Powering Our Future – Towards a Sustainable Low Emissions Energy System [PDF]. It will take a while to fully digest, but an initial skim suggests that its not the silver bullet for climate change that was expected. It has some welcome suggestions around biofuels and the promotion of wave power, but no specific measures to reduce electricity sector emissions. Rather, it "lays out a pathway" for carbon costs to be fully internalised, at a rate no faster than our competitors. As the Sustainable Energy Forum notes, this is a cloudy vision indeed, and it seems likely to result in another decade of foot-dragging on climate change, with emissions continuing to rise as generators dump their costs on wider society.

I'll post more on this when I've given it a thorough going over. But at first glance, it doesn't really measure up.

Fiji: crushing dissent

The Fijian military has started crasking down on opposition, with those who speak out for democracy being taken to the military barracks by armed soldiers:

"When we hear or it is reported that some individual is attempting to make some statement that we see as inciting or could create problems, we will call the individuals in and speak to them," said Maj Neumi Leweni, a military spokesman.

He said those who refused to go voluntarily would be "persuaded by other means".

FijiLive reports that some taken in by soldiers have been threatened, abused, and "told to do press-ups and made to round around a rugby field". Others, particularly human rights advocates, have received threatening phone calls, apparently from soldiers. Meanwhile, soldiers have broken into the "democracy shrine" in Suva and demolished its placards. I guess they didn't like the message it was sending.

Pinochet escapes justice

Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet is dead. I can't say I'm unhappy about it. He was a torturer and a murderer, responsible for the disappearance, torture and murder of over 3,000 Chileans - including the father of Chile's current President. The only thing that annoys me is that he died before he could be convicted for his crimes.

Update: Forme British PM Margaret Thatcher is "greatly saddened". I guess that tells us everything we need to know about her.

Winning hearts and minds II

While the British are wining hearts and minds in Afghanistan, they're also trying hard to do it at home, with Prime Minister Tony Blair telling Muslims

"Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. Conform to it; or don't come here."

As usual, the irony of the statement seemed completely lost on him.

But apart from the irony and hypocrisy on display here - Like Don Brash, Blair is quite happy to tolerate the intolerant, provided they are white or Christian - this sends a clear message to British Muslims: that they are not and can never be truly British. When combined with a program of sackings and discrimination, it's a great way to win hearts and minds...

Winning hearts and minds I

The British appear to be learning some bad lessons from the Americans. A British convoy in Kandahar was hit by a suicide bomber last weekend, and British troops responded by firing indiscriminately into the crowd, killing two and wounding five. These, remember, are the people they are supposed to be in Afghanistan to protect; now they're being gunned by trigger-happy goons who don't seem to be too picky about distinguishing between civilians and combatants, or who just see all Afghans as subhuman enemies.

But it's worse than a crime - it's also a mistake. Fighting terrorism is fundamentally about winning hearts and minds, persuading people that the occupiers are their friends and that they should report suspicious behaviour and not provide support for insurgents. The trigger-happy response of those soldiers has just ensured that the friends and family of those they shot at will be that much more inclined to look the other way next time someone wants to take a shot at the British, if not actively support the Taleban or other guerrilla groups. If they're trying to lose the "war on terror" and ensure that Afghanistan becomes another Iraq, then this is the way to go about it.

Why Iraq is a disaster

Why has Iraq turned into a disaster? There's all sorts of reasons - my favourite being that it was a bad idea to go there in the first place - but one thing that isn't helping is the insular mindset of President Bush and his contemptuous disdain for accurate intelligence reports. Salon's Sidney Blumenthal gives the example of the CIA's Baghdad station chief who briefed the President on the growth of the insurgency and predicted that the US would suffer more than 2,000 dead (currently the total is 2,918). The reaction was predicatable: the man was called a "defeatist" and reassigned. But it gets worse. Much worse:

[O]n Dec. 17, 2004, Col. Derek Harvey, the Defense Intelligence Agency's senior intelligence officer for Iraq, was ushered into the Oval Office. Harvey, who had "conversed repeatedly with insurgents, and had developed the belief that the U.S. intelligence effort there was deeply flawed," according to Thomas Ricks in "Fiasco," briefed the president about the insurgency: "It's robust, it's well led, it's diverse. Absent some sort of reconciliation it's going to go on, and that risks a civil war. They have the means to fight this for a long time, and they have a different sense of time than we do, and are willing to fight. They have better intelligence than we do." Harvey also explained that foreign fighters, jihadists and al-Qaida were marginal elements. Ricks reported that after the briefing, Bush in his speeches still "would refer to setbacks only in vague terms."

But there is more to the story. A former high-ranking intelligence officer and close associate of Harvey's told me that during Harvey's briefing the president interrupted, turning to his aides to inquire, "Is this guy a Democrat?" Harvey's warnings, of course, were as thoroughly ignored as those of the CIA station chief.

(Emphasis added)

So, in Bush's eyes, anyone bringing bad news is a "defeatist", a Democrat, or worse. With a leader like this, its no wonder they're losing.

The problem with anti-terrorism laws

Aussie anti-war activist accused of terrorism

That's right - being a bog-standard student activist makes you a terrorist in the eyes of some, though fortunately not the Australian police.

"Provocation"

Our ugly "provocation" defence has claimed another victim, with a man who beat his wife to death with a cricket bat in the belief that she was going to leave him for another being convicted of manslaughter rather than murder. The message the jury has sent is absolutely clear: that it is acceptable to kill your wife if the bitch was thinking of sleeping with someone else.

The phrasing is deliberate: it makes crystal clear the bigoted and backward attitudes protected by this law. The killer thought his partner was a posession, and he reacted to evidence she might not be with murderous rage.

In such circumstances, anger is understandable. But violence is inexcusable. Applying "provocation" in such cases essentially blames the victim for her own death, when the problem is clearly the killer's utter lack of self-control. Such people should not be rewarded in our legal system by having the seriousness of their crime diminished. Instead, it is time to ecrasez l'infame and repeal this atrocity, before it provides an excuse to any more murderers.

The fate of the Jedi

A couple of people were wondering what happened to the Jedi in the census religion stats. A story in the Dominion-Post has the answer:

And for those of you who were wondering what happened when you wrote down "Jedi", the cheeky reply was lumped into the "response outside scope" category.

However, census general manager Nancy McBeth told The Dominion Post there were more than 20,200 followers of the force - down from 54,000 in 2001.

No news on the Cthulhu cult, however.

Even less impressed

Six months ago, the government launched a review of the Immigration Act. I was not impressed with the proposals in the discussion document, and I am even less impressed with the government's decisions. Pretty much everything you need to know about it can be surmised from New Zealand First's reaction of calling it "a step in the right direction". While there is some good news, the control-freaks at Immigration got almost everything on their wishlist. And this will make our immigration system more vicious, more unfair, and more arbitrary, with less oversight, less accountability, and substantially greater potential for injustice.

First, the good news, such as it is: Firstly, the Convention Against Torture and ICCPR will be fully integrated into Immigration law (alongside the Refugee Convention), with explicit recognition of the ban on refoulement and deportation to torture or execution. However, the government will retain the option of deportation to a "safe" country when faced with having to protect someone they regard as "undesirable" - in other words, of wiping their hands of the obligations we have agreed to accept and dumping our problems on other countries. Clearly, the government is as committed to our fundamental human rights obligations as it is to our obligation to prosecute war criminals - i.e. not at all. Secondly, there will be no health exclusion in legislation. However, it will still remain in policy, and we will still turn away people on the grounds that they might be a "burden" on the health system, regardless of their merits or needs. Eve van Grafhorst must be turning in her grave. Thirdly, applicants must still be given reasons for decisions, and access to and a chance to respond to "potentially prejudicial information", as is required by the principles of natural justice. However, this is completely undermined by a decision to allow the use of classified information in immigration and deportation proceedings. While there are "safeguards", including non-classified summaries "if possible" and the use of "special advocates" to respond to classified evidence, these are not sufficient to ensure that classified "evidence" is properly tested, or that basic standards of justice and fairness are met - a fact which has caused British lawyers to refuse to serve as special advocates as they are forbidden from effectively representing their clients. This is one of the basic injustices of the Ahmed Zaoui case, and the government is now planning to inflict it upon even more people. Clearly, they've learned absolutely nothing from the whole saga.

And that's the good news, remember. The bad news is truly horrifying. Deportation thresholds will be lowered, and "permanent" residency retrospectively revocable on receipt of new information. Time-limits for appeals have been tightened, with a consequent undermining of justice and loss of accountability for decision making. The Chief Executive of the Department of Immigration - an unaccountable bureaucrat - will get a blank cheque to define search and entry powers through Order In Council - meaning that immigration officers could gain the power to kick in doors to look for suspected overstayers, without those powers being debated transparently in Parliament by representatives who can be held accountable through the electoral system. Detention periods will be increased, and judicial oversight decreased, solely for reasons of administrative convenience. Detention of refugee claimants will be permitted, and indefinite detention will be allowed where people refuse to cooperate in being deported back to torture and death (as in the case of Thomas Yadegary). Oh, and Immigration will get to run its own jails. No wonder New Zealand First is happy.

As a final note, the government wants to give the Department of Immigration the power to fingerprint New Zealand citizens at the border. So at some stage in the future, we could end up being fingerprinted (and having our fingerprints put on file, and shared with other agencies) not on being charged with a crime, but simply to re-enter our own country. This is simply grossly intrusive, and a violation of people's privacy. We don't allow the police to go around randomly fingerprinting people, and we shouldn't allow Immigration to do it either. International travel is not a crime, and kiwis taking overseas holidays should not be treated as criminals - no matter how convenient it is for the Immigration Service.

New Fisk

The Roman Empire is falling - so it turns to Iran and Syria

Walking the talk

The Green Party has been pushing for the government to seriously address climate change for years. Now they're also walking the talk, paying out of their own pockets to offset the greenhouse gas emissions of their Parliamentary air travel. It's not total carbon neutrality - that's in the hands of Parliamentary Services anyway - but it is a start.

The question now is whether the government will follow suit. Reducing government emissions would be a strong symbolic move on the climate change front (not to mention having an actual impact). Will the government commit to a similar move, or will they continue to proclaim the need for action without taking any themselves?

Recommending (slow) withdrawal

The Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel chaired by Bush Senior consigliere James Baker and former Democrat Congressman Lee Hamilton has reported back. Their key finding is that the current US strategy of "staying the course" is not working, and that unless the US changes tack, Iraq will slide into chaos (that's funny; I thought it was there already). To prevent this, they recommend a switch from combat operations to supporting Iraqi troops - "Iraqification", in other words - and a withdrawal of most US combat forces by early 2008.

President Bush has said that he will take the report's advice "very seriously", but given that they are effectively asking him to admit that he made a mistake, I regard that as unlikely. Likewise, I don't expect the Bush administration to make more than token efforts to engage with Iraq's neighbours to find a solution. Besides which, contrary to the report's assessment, Iran does benefit from an unstable Iraq - or rather, they benefit from having America tied up and bleeding there. And as Simon Jenkins notes, they're happy to see the "Great Satan" drive himself to hell in a handcart.

So, in short, I don't expect this to result in any great policy change from the Bush Administration. The faith-based Presidency's solution to being in a hole is to keep on digging in an effort to prove their willpower, and it’s unlikely they'll start paying attention to reality any time soon.