Busy

Busy today, at VUW's 2008 post-election conference. I'll blog it over the weekend or on Monday, once I've trawled through my notes.

For Aotearoa

What's in a name? In the case of a country, an entire sense of national identity. At the moment, New Zealand is named after a Dutch - or, thanks to a bad translation somewhere along the way, Danish - province. Now, a campaign has started to give us a name that actually means something to us: Aotearoa (or "Aotearoa-New Zealand" for an interim period). The reasons they give are mostly jokey - its difficult to take the renaming of a country seriously - but there is one good one: it says something about who we really are. Not a fragment of Europe broken off and dumped somewhere in the south seas, but a Pacific nation, with our own indigenous culture and heritage. And that statement of national identity is why I think this proposal is worth taking a serious look at.

A service to democracy

For the past two days, Parliament has been sitting under urgency, debating bills that, when urgency was moved, had not even been drafted. Last night, they moved to rectify that, distributing some of the bills at midnight - but while MPs could see them, they were still kept secret from the public. Parliamentary Services will not publish a bill until it is formally introduced to the House.

Now, the Greens have rectified that, and scanned in copies of the bills for everyone to see. So, if you want to read, analyse, and vent on the Bail Amendment Bill, Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill, Energy (Fuels, Levies, and References) Biofuel Obligation Repeal Bill or Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill, now you can.

Truly ambitious

John Key talks a lot about how he is "ambitious for New Zealand". Last night, I listened to the opening speech of an MP who seems to be truly ambitious for this country: Dr Kennedy Graham. In his first speech before the House, he called for Parliament to adopt a truly ambitious goal and forever forswear war except in self-defence or the defence of others in accordance with the UN Charter:

Above all, it is time we abided strictly by the global constitution of our times, working within coalitions of the lawful rather than the unwilling. Sixty-three years ago, our forefathers created the United Nations to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war that, twice in their lifetime, had brought untold suffering to humankind. Under the UN Charter, ‘war’ has been rendered unlawful. Today, armed force may no longer be used by Member States save in the common interest. By adopting the Charter each Member State, including New Zealand, undertakes never to commit aggression.

It is time to ensure that we live up to our binding international obligations. It is time that the state responsibility New Zealand has assumed not to commit aggression is implemented in domestic legislation. Over the years we have translated international obligations into our own legislation – in 1946 to abide by economic sanctions of the Security Council, in 1987 to forswear nuclear weapons. In 2002, we made it a criminal offence for any New Zealander to commit genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity.

Now is the time to take the next step – to make it a crime in domestic law for any New Zealander, including its leaders, to commit aggression, as defined by the UN General Assembly in 1974. This requires simply the adoption, by this House, of legislation to that effect.

(Emphasis added).

The definition Graham refers to is UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (full text here). It defines "aggression" as

the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations

and includes a non-exhaustive list of examples. The crime of aggression is within the scope of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (its listed specifically in Article 5 (1) (d)), but is currently undefined. A conference of parties is supposed to meet to agree a definition in early 2010, and any definition would have to be added to our International Crimes and International Criminal Court Act 2000. But until then, or if the COP can't agree a definition (and I am cynical about their ability to do so), we should adopt the UN General Assembly's definition to create a crime in domestic law. It would be a tremendous statement of our principles, on the level of the nuclear ban in the 80's, as well as implementing something we agreed to do back in 1948. And I'm hoping we'll see a member's bill from Graham on the topic in the future.

The return of monarchical fiction

Sigh. I know people are pissed off at the 90-day fire at will bill, but can we say so without peddling the tired monarchical fiction that the Governor-General has the power to refuse assent to legislation?

As I've pointed out repeatedly, they don't. And simply because the right spouted this crap every time they didn't get their way is no reason for us to do so. While the process they are using stinks, if Parliament passes a law, its the law, and no monarch or stand-in can or should say otherwise.

The Fire at will bill

The Employment Relations Amendment Bill is now up at legislation.govt.nz.

The core of the bill is new sections 67A and B, which allow small employers ("by agreement" - meaning by economic coercion) to impose a trial period of up to 90 days on new staff, during which they will have no right to bring legal proceedings if dismissed. While existing rights to bring proceedings for racial discrimination and sexual harassment are purportedly preserved, the effect of new s67 B (2) will be to completely undermine them in practice. So, this is a racist's and sexist's charter.

Oh, and as a bonus: employers can now sack you or dock your pay if you join KiwiSaver. Merry Christmas! (The government apparently intends to address this with amendments to the KiwiSaver Act, but if so, they should repeal the anti-discrimination provisions when they make those changes, rather than repealing them now and leaving employers with a year or more in which to exploit their absence. The failure to do this can only be regarded as intentional, a deliberate attempt to create a nasty loophole).

Finally, there's this nasty little bit at the end of the explanatory note:

The Small Business Advisory Group has recommended greater employment flexibility, including more effective trial periods and less rigid requirements around fixed-term contracts, as a means for helping small business in the current economic environment. Extending this initiative to all employers would have a positive effect on labour market efficiency. Consideration could be given to evaluating the outcomes of this legislative change with a view to extending it to cover all employers in the future.

(Emphasis added)

This is the thin end of the wedge for introducing greater employment insecurity in this country. And we shouldn't put up with it.

Fire at will bill introduced

The government has just introduced the Fire At Will Bill to the House. Unfortunately, its not online yet, so I can't see how bad it is. But so far, Kate Wilkinson just maxed out my Orwell-meter by claiming that

This bill is not taking away rights.

It certainly is. Under existing law, employees must be treated fairly when being dismissed. Under National's bill, that will no longer be the case within the first 90 days of employment. Fairness, apparently, is not a fundamental kiwi value under National.

Feathering their own nests

This morning, National passed its tax cut package as the Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill. The bill cancels Labour's planned cuts to the bottom rate, socking the poor with an extra $730 million over five years. That money goes straight into the pockets of the rich.

Unmentioned in all of this is how much our MPs stand to gain. Under Labour's plan, MPs would receive a further $600 a year by April 1, 2010. under National's, they get a lot more. Here's the details from the Parliamentary Salaries and Allowances Determination 2008:

• John Key (Prime Minister): Paid $393,000, so gets $8,660.
• Bill English (Deputy Prime Minister): Paid $267,700, so gets $5,154.
• Gerry Brownlee, Nick Smith, and other Cabinet Ministers: Paid $243,700, so get $4,674.
• Rodney Hide, Pita Sharples, and other Ministers Outside Cabinet: Paid $204,300, so get $3,886 (which casts the Maori Party's vote against a low-income tax credit to offset National's effective hike to the bottom rate in a whole new light; there's a name for MPs who vote to enrich themselves while fucking over their base: "former MP").
• Other MPs: Paid $131,000, so get $2,420.

Oh, and John Key's figure doesn't include whatever he gets from his personal fortune of $50 million. Assuming he gets a mere 5% rate of return (and that he even pays his taxes, rather than hiding them with corporate shell games) that amounts to a cool $50,000 a year - more than 80% of New Zealanders even earn.

National aren't just rewarding their base - they're feathering their own nests. It's disgusting. It verges on corrupt. It is, at the least, a significant conflict of interest. And the two-thirds of New Zealanders who get basically nothing from this package deserve to know that.

Global Zero

Today a new international campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons was launched in Paris: Global Zero. The campaign brings together 100 leading world figures - politicians, business and civic leaders, and human rights advocates - all pledging to work towards the final elimination of our nuclear arsenals. They're aiming to build a grassroots movement to pressure governments - not that it will be hard; a poll of citizens in 21 countries found overwhelming support for total nuclear disarmament, even in nuclear-armed states. The only country where disarmament did not have an absolute majority was Pakistan, and even there supporters outnumbered opponents.

This is a cause New Zealand and New Zealanders should be supporting. You can show your own support by signing the declaration. But more than that, the New Zealand government should be lending its support to this cause. While NZ wasn't included in Global Zero's poll, this is a cause that we as a country believe in. Our newly-elected government should recognise that, and represent our beliefs on the global stage. After opposing the domestic nuclear ban for so long, National needs to build trust on this issue. This is an opportunity for them to do so.

All I want for christmas is fair work rights

Annoyed at National's plans to abuse urgency to strip new workers of employment rights by christmas? Why not let them know about it? The CTU has just set up a handy website to help you email the Prime Minister on the issue. Or, you can print out your letter and post it free to "John Key, Freepost Parliament, Wellington". Act today, and let John Key know that what you really want for christmas are fair work rights.

Climate change: briefed

The government has released the Briefing to the Incoming Minister for the Ministry for the Environment [PDF]. The briefing has a special attachment on the all-of-government climate change programme, which goes into detail on policy, but it also has some broad recommendations. Starting with this:

New Zealand must both adapt to changes in climate and contribute to a coordinated international response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. The Kyoto Protocol commits New Zealand to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels, on average, over the period 2008 to 2012 or to take responsibility for any emissions above this level if it cannot meet the target. Emissions are currently about 25 per cent above 1990 levels. The consensus scientific advice is that emissions reductions of between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 to 95 percent below by 2050, will be required of developed countries if dangerous climate change is to be avoided.

(Emphasis added).

This makes National's proposed target of do nothing until "50% by 2050" look pathetic. But MfE are right. As Jonathan Porritt points out in the Guardian today, the current negotiations at Poznan are taking place within the framework of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. But that report closed off its data in 2005, and in the past three years, the picture has got significantly worse, and we now seem to be on the verge of (if not well into) several nasty positive feedback scenarios (an ice-free Arctic, methane bubbling out of the Siberian permafrost and marine clathrate beds, the oceans' carbon buffer becoming saturated). In the face of this, our policy needs to get more ambitious, not less.

MfE goes on:

By demonstrating appropriate leadership through reducing our own emissions, New Zealand aims to influence major emitting countries in post-2012 negotiations.

So much for that plan. Thanks to Rodney Hide and industry special pleading, our influence just evaporated.

The climate change briefing recommends that the government resist pressure from industry to carve out exceptions to and exemptions from the ETS, and instead keep it simple (they are also concerned about the present balance unravelling under a tide of lobbying, which is well justified). It also recommends continuing to mirror international agreements in domestic policy settings (e.g. around forestry) in order to maintain open access to international markets, and taking a close look at "complementary measures" to back up the ETS where pricing alone doesn't work.

Unfortunately, all of this is completely the opposite of what the new government wants. We'll be lucky to merely maintain the status quo on climate change over the next three years, and we are more likely to actively go backwards.

Robbing from the poor to pay the rich

National has finally unveiled the fine print of its KiwiSaver plans, and it includes cancelling the $40 a year fees subsidy and removing the tax-free status of contributions above the new 2% maximum. The effect on the latter will be to increase taxes on people using KiwiSaver, by up to $400 a year. Where will the money go? Straight into tax cuts for the rich. So National's first act as government, the very first bill it passes, will be to rob from the poor to pay the rich. You don't get any more National than that.

What's in the urgency motion?

So, what's in the urgency motion? There's no Order Paper, but thanks to email, I have a rough list:

• Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill, all stages
• Two procedural motions to reinstate business and set up the ETS review committee
• 90 day bill all stages
• Bail bill all stages
• An education bill on national standards all stages
• A sentencing bill all stages
• Plus anything else they want.

According to the Herald, some of those bills which are to be passed through all stages haven't even been drafted yet. So, MPs will be debating bills they have not seen, and will not be able to give them proper scrutiny. Mistakes will be inevitable - which will no doubt mean more urgency later to fix them.

As I said earlier, this is no way to run a legislature, or a democracy. You have to go back to Douglas and Richardson to see this sort of abuse of the Parliamentary process. And if this is how National intends to run Parliament - as if the change to MMP had never happened, and this was still an FPP elected dictatorship - then I think it is incumbent on the opposition to take a page out of National's book, and make the House utterly unmanageable until the normal Parliamentary and democratic process is restored.

The blitzkrieg then and now

Jane Kelsey, The New Zealand Experiment, p. 43, describing the neo-liberal blitzkrieg under Douglas and Richardson:

The changes were implemented by both governments at a blistering pace. Parliamentary conventions were frequently ignored. The constant use of urgency powers enabled the technopols to force through controversial legislation, and avoid the inconvenience of scrutiny before or by a select committee. Under Labour, this almost became the norm. In the first half of 1989, for example, parliament sat under urgency for a third of the time. Often there were not enough, or sometimes even any, up-to-date copies of the measures available for those taking part in the debate...

New Zealand Herald, reporting on Parliament today: Parliament goes into urgency to pass bills:

The Government put Parliament into urgency tonight so it can pass bills dealing with taxation, employment relations, bail, sentencing and education before the Christmas recess.

From tomorrow it will sit from 9am to midnight until the bills have been put into law.

Some of them are still being drafted and did not have titles when Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee moved the urgency motion.

(Emphasis added in both cases).

And so National returns to type. Undemocratic, autocratic, ramming things through under urgency with no notice, consultation, or public scrutiny. Worse, they seem to have deliberately done it in a way calculated to hide their legislative programme from the public; the Order Paper has no actual business, only the details for the State Opening, and it will not be updated until urgency finishes. So, it was an attempt at springing a complete surprise on Parliament and the public.

This is no way to run a legislature - or a democracy.

Thoughts on the state opening

Watching the State Opening of Parliament today, with all its pomp and ceremony, I couldn't help but notice that while it is steeped in ancient tradition, that tradition is overwhelmingly monarchical and anti-democratic. In particular, it gets the relationship between Parliament and the Governor-General arse-backwards. Here's how.

The English Parliament, from which ours descends, was originally subservient to the monarch. The King (and it was always a king back then in the Middle Ages) would summon it when he wanted to impose a new tax, or (less frequently) to seek advice on a new law. A couple of centuries of leverage, a civil war, regicide, and a revolution gave us responsible government: the monarch's Ministers now needed the support of Parliament to govern. But they were still the monarch's Ministers, and it was still (officially, at least) the monarch's Parliament.

This was reflected in today's ceremonies. The Governor-General, standing in for the monarch, summoned Parliament to attend him. He gave a speech, laying out the priorities of "my government". To modern sensibilities, this is simply absurd. It is not the monarch's government - it's the people's. Our ceremonies and procedures should reflect that.

In this day and age, it is inappropriate for the Governor-General to be giving a speech from the throne. The elected Prime Minister should be doing it. And it should be done standing up in the House, where it can be immediately debated. Elected Prime Ministers should not be addressing the people from a throne like an absolute monarch.

These traditions are unlikely to change as long as we are a monarchy. Which is just another reason to get rid of it and shift to a republic: so we can get the relationship between people, Parliament, and figurehead right.

"Improving the lives of New Zealanders"

In the speech from the throne today, the government announced its commitment to "improving the lives of New Zealanders". It's first way of doing this? Abusing urgency to strip new workers of employment protection by Christmas.

Whose lives will this improve? Certainly not ordinary New Zealanders who work for a living. They'll be forced to tug their forelock to their bosses, suck up to them and not complain about anything, join a union, or sign up for KiwiSaver, work whatever hours and overtime are demanded (on whatever "notice" is given), and bugger what it says in the contract for the first three months - or else they'll be out. The flow-on effect will be reduced wages, working conditions and job security for everyone. Well, almost everyone. Employers - and particularly bad, abusive employers - will do well out of it.

The conclusion? To National, "New Zealanders" equals "employers". The rest of us - the vast majority of us - don't count.

Worse, they'll be doing this under urgency, with no select committee stage and no real chance for debate. As I've pointed out before, this is not the way things are done in our democracy. Serious policy (and this is serious policy) gets serious consideration and public consultation through a select committee. You have to go back to the FPP-era and the Douglas-Richardson blitzkrieg to find real policy bills being rammed through in this way. Unfortunately, National seems to be taking its cues on how to behave from that era. They're autocrats, and so they govern autocratically. It will be interesting to see how much tolerance the public has for this sort of abuse, and whether they will pay a price for it in three years time.

Reinstatement motion

Also inthe Order Paper: the reinstatement motion. From the look of it, the government is reinstating everything; it can then quietly dump any bits of government business it doesn't want to pursue in a couple of weeks when no-one is paying attention. It also likely means that there will be no ballot until March at the earliest, as it will take a few member's days for the backlog of bills to work their way through the system.

Climate change: the review

The Order Paper is out, and it includes the details of Nationals' special climate change review committee. The good news? We got an all party committee, and the terms of reference no longer include a review of the basic science. The bad news: the rest of the terms of reference are completely unchanged, there is no deadline, and the committee has been stacked from the beginning, with National and its support parties having 7 seats out of 11 on the committee (compared to only 56% of the House), and slots reserved for Rodney Hide and Peter Dunne, two of Parliament's most retrograde MPs on this issue (Ministers sitting on a select committee is also a little odd - but they're clearly there by special request).

So, National's strategy will be "it will cost too much", "we should switch to a carbon tax" (another two years down the drain) or "we should wait and see what happens at Copenhagen" (which is exactly the argument they used 12 years ago when they dumped our first attempt at a carbon tax). Delay and diversion rather than denial, but the effects will be the same: rising emissions, a free ride for our worst polluters, and untold damage to our "clean and green" image and international reputation.

Sworn in

Parliament has been sworn in (with Su'a William Sio swearing first in Samoan, then English), and Lockwood Smith has been elected Speaker and dragged to the chair. Tomorrow we have the official state opening and speech from the throne, then Parliament can finally get down to business. It will be very interesting to see what bills the government decides to reinstate, and what it puts up in its urgency motion.

Swearing in Samoan III

So far, I've focused on national identity (and the perceived "threat" to it) in my posts on why Su'a William Sio should be allowed to swear his oath of office in Samoan. But there is also a strong liberal argument in favour. The most basic principle of liberalism is the harm principle, expressed by John Stuart Mill as:

the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

So, how does someone being sworn in in Samoan harm people? How does it hurt me? The answer is that it doesn't, any more than people swearing on the Bible rather than affirming does. It doesn't even matter that I can't understand it - it's a ceremonial occasion, and everyone knows what they are saying anyway.

Neither (as alleged by some of DPF's sewer-dwellers) would it be some sort of "special right" for non-English speakers; instead it is the same right that Anglophone New Zealanders take for granted: the ability to conduct official business in the language of their choice. We recognise that right already to a large extent - a lot of government forms are translated into multiple languages to make them accessible to as many people as possible (see for example the range of information available for electoral enrolments). We should extend that principle to oaths and declarations as well.