National supports travel rorts

Today at the beginning of Question Time, Green co-leader Metiria Turei sought leave to move a motion without notice calling on the Speaker to establish an independent review of MP's expenses and allowances.

National objected.

I guess we know where they stand on perks then: they support them. And they'll keep gouging for as long as possible.

Inconsistent

Yesterday the government introduced its Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill, which would restrict the right to trial by jury and force defendants to admit to elements of their crime, to Parliament. Today, Attorney-General Chris Finlayson declared it to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act [PDF]. But not the bits you'd expect him to. Instead he focuses on minor issues around in absentia trials and retrials of acquitted defendants. On the core issue of the right to jury trial, he says it is "necessarily inconsistent", but doesn't seem to regard this as an actual problem, while he seems to have no problem with forcing defendants to identify issues in dispute i.e. admit some elements of a crime pre-trial.

On both issues, he relies heavily on UK law and jurisprudence that these limits are justified. This is a mistake. The UK is not a country anyone should hold up as a model for human rights. The fact that they restrict jury trial rights and allow retrials in high-publicity cases is simply further proof of this. The UK is what happens when an authoritarian, centralising government pursues a knee-jerk law and order agenda. It should not be used as justification for our government to do the same.

No freedom of religion in Pakistan

Asia Bibi is a Pakistani Christian. Last June she got into a fight with some women in her village. In retaliation, they accused her of desecrating the Koran. As a result, she has now been sentenced to death for blasphemy.

She's not the only one. Pakistan's blasphemy laws are routinely used against non-Muslims as a tool of religious oppression. According to Human Rights Watch, that is exactly how they are intended to be used:

"The laws are discriminatory and intended as such and are used for precisely that purpose. So, the issue is not of their misuse but of the laws being on the statute books at all. Vague all-encompassing wording allows the laws to be used as an instrument of political and social coercion, legal discrimination and persecution."

Even where cases result in acquittal, defendants and judges have been murdered for their "offence" against religious values. While the government is reportedly considering reform, they have been sitting on the issue for years, too afraid of the fanatics to act to protect people from discrimination. As a result, there is no real freedom of religion in Pakistan.

But its not just Pakistan's problem. New Zealand still has a blasphemy law on the books, which outlaws any offence to Christians (and specifically Anglicans). And while the government doesn't use it anymore, religious fanatics occasionally do in an effort to punish speech they deem "disrespectful" of their imaginary friends.

Pakistan shows where such legislation leads, and what its purpose is. Such laws have no place in a modern, secular, liberal society. Our blasphemy law must be repealed.

A useful resource

I love using legislation.govt.nz, but I keep running into a problem: sometimes I need to look at an older Act which has been repealed. And these just aren't in the database. KnowledgeBasket has some, but it doesn't include anything repealed before 1987 or so. Which means there is a vast gap in our online law.

Parliament has just filled that gap, putting the entire corpus of historical Acts back to 1841 online. You can access them here. So if you want to see what the Electoral Act 1893 (which gave women the vote) or the War Regulations Continuance Act 1920 (which extended wartime sedition laws into peacetime) or the Clutha Development (Clyde Dam) Empowering Act 1982 (which granted permission for the Clyde Dam by legislative fiat) looks like, now you can.

Ending the rort II

Politics moves fast these days, doesn't it? On Friday, Pansy Wong was sacked as a Minister for abusing her MP's international travel rebate. And today, it looks like those rebates will be abolished, at least for sitting MPs. Good. As I've said before, there is no justification for them. International travel for Parliamentary purposes (e.g. conferences, inter-Parliamentary exchanges, and the odd fact-finding mission) is already fully-funded by the Speaker's Office. while cheap holidays in Hawaii might be very nice for MPs, it serves no Parliamentary purpose. It should have been abolished long ago.

As Tracy Watkins points out in the Dominion-Post this morning, the question now is how much MPs get in exchange - and that is set to get very ugly. Earlier this year the Parliamentary Services Commission - a collection of senior MPs - recommended a blanket 10% salary increase if the perk was removed. Which is almost three times its cost in 2008-2009, and four times its cost in 2009-2010. The public won't stand for that; hell, we won't stand for anything which smacks of paying MPs to stop stealing from us. The good news is that some of them seem to have finally got the message. John Key suggests any pay rise as "compensation" should be "modest", and he is happy if they get nothing. So am I. MPs have been rorting us for years, writing the rules so they can steal from us. We shouldn't have to pay them to stop it.

The other battleground, unaddressed by Watkin, is over senior and former MPs. Key proposes retaining the perk for them. But as Russell Brown points out this morning, this means that if Pansy Wong resigns today, then we get to pay for 75% of her international travel for the rest of her life. I don't think the public will stand for that either.

The legend of the perk, which senior and former MPs like to fall back on to justify their rorting, is that it was granted in lieu of a pay rise at some time in the distant past. When was that pay rise forgone? 1972. If that's the case, then there is exactly one sitting MP who can claim any sort of moral right to it: Roger Douglas. But really, our MPs have never been badly paid, and Parliamentary salaries have more than kept pace with inflation since (in fact, they rose at twice the rate of inflation in the 80's and 90's, while many other people's pay packets were standing still). Any justification there was has long since disappeared. As for former members, I think 40 years of rorting the taxpayer is enough. We should end this perk now, for everyone - no ifs, no buts, no exceptions. If former MPs want to visit their grandkids in the UK, they can pay for it themselves, rather than enjoying a lifetime of subsidised travel at our expense.

Ending the rort

So, how do we end MPs travel rort? Its actually very simple. The entire system is established by a Speaker's Direction [PDF], so all Smith has to do is amend it or issue a new one with the offending sections removed. He can do it with a flick of his pen. As for why he doesn't, well, one can't help but notice that as an MP first elected before 1999, Lockwood Smith is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the perk, and will receive it for the rest of his life. There's just a teensy bit of self-interest here...

In the longer term, the Parliamentary Service (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Act 2009 defines "funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes" as including:

the provision of benefits or privileges of a specified kind for former members of Parliament and members of their families in accordance with an appropriation by Parliament of money for that purpose.

This needs to be changed to have a strict three-month limit (required to allow final payments to former MPs and the limited travel entitlement to allow their final relocation). If any MP is interested in taking a principled stand, then a bill to do it is here. If you want to highlight the issue, then asking for leave to introduce it every day would be a good start.

Key wants to retain the rort

This afternoon, John Key announced that he would be writing to the Speaker to ask that MP's international travel perk be abolished. This is good, but at the same time I can't help but notice that he's not going all the way. Firstly, he would retain the perk for MPs first elected before 1999 - meaning that both Bill English (the man who rorted us for half a million to live in his own home in Wellington) and Pansy Wong would get to keep abusing it. Secondly, he would retain it for former MPs as well.

The "justification" in both cases is that the perk formed part of older MPs' remuneration package, and so cannot be renegotiated after the fact. Firstly, as I have already pointed out, that's just bullshit - MPs have always been extremely well paid. Secondly, its always been a rort - there has never been any justification for the perk, and it serves no Parliamentary purpose. It should never have been given out; the reason it was is of course because MPs get to set their own perks through the Parliamentary Services Commission, and have always been happy to vote themselves more at taxpayers expense. There is no injustice in ending this rort; the injustice is that these parasites have been allowed to steal from us for so long.

If we want to end the perk, we should do just that, not enact some pissy little half-measure. MPs have been stealing from us for long enough. Its long past time it stopped.

Against justice "reform"

This afternoon the government announced its plans to "reform" (in the 80's sense) the justice system. Ostensibly, this is aimed at making trials more efficient. In practice, it means a serious assault on the human rights of people accused of a crime.

The two most serious changes are a move to restrict the right to trial by jury and a requirement that the defence identify "issues in dispute". I've dealt with the former here, and I have not changed my mind on it. Anyone who thinks that three years' imprisonment is a "minor" penalty is smoking crack. Anyone who advocates that the right to trial by jury be restricted is clearly incapable of imagining that they might one day end up on the wrong side of a courtroom. And while the government can claim that

A fair trial is just as likely to occur before a judge alone as before a jury.

The fundamental problem is that people will not believe it. And that's obvious the moment you think about what happens on a jury. For a miscarriage of justice to occur in a jury trial, 12 (well, 11 with a majority verdict) people would have to be completely wrong. For it to occur in a non-jury trial, it needs only one: the judge. And if I'm ever in a courtroom, that's why I'll be wanting a jury: because it means there are that many more eyes on the case, looking for the holes. Juries are the ultimate bullshit detectors, and the ultimate check on state power, as the Waihopai Three's acquittal showed. And that is why the government wants to get rid of them.

The requirement that the defence identify issues in dispute OTOH is a gross violation of the right to silence. It forces the defence to effectively give evidence against themselves, in that areas not disputed are effectively admitted. It is also a recipe for lazy prosecution and potentially unsafe verdicts. Remember, in this country the prosecution has to prove every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Focusing only on "issues in dispute" will inevitably mean the crown fails to do that.

The Bill of Rights Act is very clear: no-one shall be compelled to be a witness or to confess guilt. That's exactly what Simon Power is proposing they be forced to do. It will be more "efficient" of course. So would forgoing trials entirely and assigning verdicts at random. But the court process is not supposed to be about efficiency and saving money - it is supposed to be about justice. And what we are seeing here is an erosion of justice so that National can give away more tax cuts to its rich mates.

But then, this is a party who can't even design a liquor control bill without turning us into a police state. So I guess we shouldn't really expect anything better from them.

Measuring happiness

This year The Social Report added a new "life satisfaction" metric. This is part of an international trend to start measuring life satisfaction or happiness, born of the recognition that economists' simplistic equation of GDP with happiness or utility was largely false once the economy provided for people's basic needs.

The UK is the latest country to follow this trend:

The UK government is poised to start measuring people's psychological and environmental wellbeing, bidding to be among the first countries to officially monitor happiness.

Despite "nervousness" in Downing Street at the prospect of testing the national mood amid deep cuts and last week's riot in Westminster, the Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce measures to implement David Cameron's long-stated ambition of gauging "general wellbeing".

It will be interesting to see what the results are, especially given the Conservatives' program of cuts. At the same time, its easy to be cynical - Cameron wants satisfaction measured quarterly rather than annually, meaning he will effectively be getting the Office of National Statistics to do a big chunk of his political polling for him (in that sharp decreases in satisfaction probably spell bad news for the government in a democracy). And on the gripping hand, if it results in a government which pays attention to satisfaction, rather than just growth, and goes out of its way to avoid making people unhappy, then that is a Good Thing, in that it will be giving people the government they want. Which means we should be asking why our government doing the same? We'll only be measuring life satisfaction every three years or so. Surely, if its a meaningful indicator, we should be measuring it more often than that?

The same-sex marriage battle in Australia

There's a couple of interesting stories today about the same-sex marriage battle in Australia. First, a piece in Green-Left Weekly about the revolt of the Labor grassroots on the issue. The Australian Labor Party formally opposes same-sex marriage, preferring to pander to conservatives - but 74% of their voters support it. By any measure, the party is wildly out of step with its voters. And as a result, we're seeing an increasing number of MPs, faction leaders and powerbrokers coming out in support of marriage equality to protect their own political futures.

Secondly, there's a couple of articles in the Sydney-Morning Herald about the political geography of same-sex marriage. From the summary:

Roy Morgan Research survey data shows areas with the most positive attitudes towards gays include inner-city electorates such as the Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese's Grayndler in Sydney's inner-west and affluent Liberal seats in Sydney, such as Wentworth and North Sydney, as well as Melbourne's Kooyong and Higgins.

Seats with the most negative attitudes include Liberal and Nationals country strongholds and some working-class Labor seats in big cities' outer suburbs.

Which is what you'd expect. But the study also shows that marginal seats are highly concentrated in areas with between 25 and 34 percent bigots. And its these people the ALP leadership are trying to pander to in taking a conservative approach. Rather than standing up for progressive principles, they are instead adopting a "small target" strategy and not giving people a reason to vote against them - with gays as the victims. Its an utterly despicable strategy, and if the ALP continues with it, they deserve to be rejected by their own base.

Credit where credit is due

I've blogged a bit over the last year about how our MPs earn their poor reputation through their self-serving behaviour and sense of entitlement. But I think its also important to highlight where they do the opposite, and take positive steps towards a more accountable and transparent Parliamentary culture. And we're seeing just such steps around MP's international travel perk thanks to Pansy Wong.

Lets be clear: the international travel discount for MPs is a completely unnecessary perk. It serves no Parliamentary purpose. It does not enable MPs to do their jobs (if they need to travel overseas for Parliamentary purposes, they can get free travel for it). All it does is give them cheap foreign holidays on the taxpayer. It is not compensation for low wages - MPs start at $131,000 (plus a $15,000 expense allowance, which puts them in the top 5% of the income distribution. It is a rort, pure and simple.

The good thing is that we are seeing party leaders and backbench MPs stepping forward to say so and call for change. Phil Goff. Rodney Hide. Metiria Turei. Even Peter Dunne. Among backbenchers we have Tau Henare, Heather Roy and Chris Hipkins. The odd man out is John Key, who is (as usual) waiting to do some polling before he makes a commitment (though said polling is amongst his Cabinet Ministers; I'm sure he knows what the public thinks on the issue).

They are right to do so. This perk is a pure rort, with absolutely no justification. And as Metiria Turei points out, it undermines public trust in Parliament. Getting rid of it would be a step in the right direction, a move to restore that trust. The question is whether the Speaker of the House will accept that, or continue to cling to the culture of privilege and entitlement of the past.

New Fisk

Canberra, Ankara and other 'fake' capitals

When will this end?

Julianne Shead was a farm-worker. In June 2009 she went on parental leave after becoming pregnant. So her boss fired her.

Her former employer has just had to pay $13,750 (including $8250 in lost wages and $5500 for hurt and humiliation) for that, but you really have to ask: how long is this going to go on? It's been illegal now for thirty years. And yet employers still keep doing it. How long will it take to get the message into their thick skulls that this sort of discrimination is simply not acceptable?

New Fisk

How Lebanon can't escape the shadow of Hariri's murder

We should not tolerate fraudsters in our Parliament

At a press conference a few minutes ago, Pansy Wong's press secretary apparently said she would resign from parliament. It was a slip-up - she's only resigning as a Minister - but its a shame. Because resigning from Parliament is exactly what she should have done.

Let's be clear about this: Wong abused her Parliamentary travel perk to the tune of thousands of dollars (and that's just the incident we know about). And that is fraud, or more technically, using a document for pecuniary advantage. We should not tolerate this. We should not tolerate fraudsters sitting in our Parliament.

Now doubt she'll pay the money back. But so (eventually) do the benefit fraudsters who get dragged through the court every week. That doesn't stop them from facing justice for their crime. We cannot have one rule for politicians and another for the poor. If the investigation currently underway by the Speaker's Office confirms Wong's admission of abuse, then she must be prosecuted.

Update: Ah yes, here we are: the Speaker's office solemnly confirms that Wong will repay the money "in the event that there has been misuse of this entitlement". No mention though of whether they would refer misuse to the police. That's simply not good enough. The Speaker's office should be promoting high standards in the use of public money. And that means prosecutions for serious abuse.

An Orwellian solution

Back in the early 2000's, Israel had a problem. Its policy of assassinating high-ranking Palestinians was drawing international condemnation. So they engaged a team of spin-doctors, and started calling them "targeted killings" instead.

It seems the New Zealand Police have adopted the same tactics to "deal" with the problem of the increased death toll from police chases. The police's policy of aggressively pursuing anyone who flees, on the basis that "they must have something to hide" (despite the empirical evidence showing that this is hardly ever the case) has cost 15 lives so far this year. But rather than accept the recommendations of the Independent Police Conduct Authority to change the policy and pursue only when the actual risk to public safety outweighs the risks of a high-speed pursuit, they have decided instead to simply stop referring to them as chases.

Meanwhile, a police chase in Lower Hutt last night has put another person in critical condition in hospital. The police are still risking our lives with lawless and dangerous behaviour. Its time they were stopped. Its time the IPCA started laying charges against officers who make poor pursuit decisions.

Sacked

So, it turns out that Pansy Wong used her Parliamentary travel allowance for her little business trip to China - a trip in which she failed to properly seperate her public and private roles. This is expressly against the Speaker's Directions [PDF], which state explicitly that

no rebate is payable in respect of any travel undertaken by the member for private business purposes

And so as a result Wong looks likely to be dumped as a Minister.

So much for Bill English's claim that this was just muckraking. Wong corruptly abused her Parliamentary entitlements to enrich herself. And there's a name for that: fraud. But no doubt, she'll just pay the money back, and everyone will forget about it. Meanwhile, if any one of us abused the system to falsely claim a benefit worth thousands of dollars, they'd be being prosecuted. But I guess justice only applies to "little people"...

The Pacific Solution is illegal

In 2001, in the wake of the Tampa Affair, the racist Australian government hit on a simple solution to its refugee "problem": they excised all their offshore islands from Australia's "migration zone", denying anyone who arrived in them illegally the right to apply for permanent refugee status or to have decisions about them reviewed by the courts.

Today, Australia's High Court unanimously ruled that that was unlawful. The entire process is a violation of natural justice and basic principles of judicial oversight. The fact that it applied only to those who arrived by boat - a method which produces bad publicity for the government - rather than the much larger number who arrive quietly by plane simply underlines this.

Its great news, and a victory for the rule of law in Australia, not to mention for common decency. The question is whether Australia's politicians will accept it, or whether they will continue to indecently pander to racists.

There's some interesting background on the case by David Marr in the Sydney Morning Herald here.

Dirty lakes

The government has a simple plan for economic growth: more cows. But what's the environmental cost? A report released this week - apparently suppressed until after the World Dairy Summit in Auckland had wrapped up - gave us a hint: dirty lakes:

Some of the country's filthiest lakes have been revealed – with a report suggesting that as many as a third may be unhealthy.

Environment Minister Nick Smith has used the report to sound a warning that New Zealand's clean, green brand is at risk and says it is unacceptable that more lakes are deteriorating in water quality than are improving.

The Niwa report provides only a snapshot of the country's waterways as it surveys just 112 of New Zealand's 4000 lakes, with only 68 reliably monitored since 2005.

But the authors believe the sample is enough to suggest things are getting worse in many lakes.

Their report shows that 19 lakes deteriorated over the survey period while eight showed improvement.

The problem was worst in Canterbury, where many of the 19 lakes that were deteriorating were found. But water quality was worst in low and intensively farmed areas such as Waikato and Manawatu.

Our lakes and rivers can barely cope with the amount of piss and shit our cows are pumping out as it is. And the government wants to more than double it. That's profitable for dairy farmers - but those profits will come straight out of the pockets of other New Zealanders, who will have to either pay to clean farmer's shit out of our waterways, or stop using them. National's "growth" is just an environmental wealth transfer, from us to its supporters.

Drawn

A ballot for a member's bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn:

• Register of Pecuniary Interests of Judges Bill (David Clendon)

Given the recent debate about Justice Wilson, its a very timely bill, which will hopefully pass.

For some reason Labour only put one bill in today - Darren Hughes' bill to lower the drink-drive limit. Apparently they thought that increasing its odds from 1 in 40 to 1 in 25 was worth it, even at the cost of sacrificing all othe chances to advance policy. I disagree. Quite apart from wanting to see some of those other bills come out, when National is putting up bills with ominous titles like "Habeus Corpus Amendment Bill" (Habeas Corpus is the courts right to review why people are held in jail) or "Summary Proceedings (Warrant for Detention Conditions) Amendment Bill", then that's not something Labour should be doing.

Update: Red Alert has a full list of today's bills here.