Labour fails again

Kate Wilkinson's admission about her plans to lower wages by applying discriminatory youth rates to 24 year olds last night was a total gift for Labour, showing National's true, radical, batshit-insane-like-Roger-Douglas colours. So you'd expect them to have a strong response about it, right?

Wrong. Having trawled their website and Red Alert, there's nothing but dead silence and blowing tumbleweeds.

Thanks, Labour. No wonder National feels it can get away with running on an agenda of naked privatisation, wage cuts, and upwards wealth transfer: because you dicks are too fucking lazy to even voice your outrage on a core issue. Which raises the obvious question: if you won't fight for us, why should we fight for you?

Update: Jacinda Ardern has a press release up here. Meanwhile, two of Labour's senior figures have spent the afternoon slagging me off on Twitter. Stomping on disloyalty from people they incorrectly perceive as their vassals is apparently more important than contesting government policy in a key area in their book.

National to introduce "youth rates" for adults

In 2007, Sue Bradford abolished youth rates, ensuring that workers would be paid on their skills and experience - merit - rather than discriminated against solely for being young. Now National wants to bring this discrimination back. Worse, they want to extend it to 24-year olds:

The government looks set to propose the re-introduction of special lower pay rates for young workers. There are signs it may even extend the definition of a youth so that workers into their early 20s may be forced to accept lower pay rates.

[...]

National isn't ruling anything out.

When asked what her definition of a ‘youth’ was, Wilkinson said the bracket used was "15 to 24," but she had no view as long as they got jobs.

This is simply wrong. You wouldn't pay someone less because they're a woman, or gay, or Maori. So why the hell is it OK to pay someone less because they're young? It is discrimination, oure and simple. But National doesn't care about this; instead, they just want to see wages drop, so their corporate mates can make bigger profits. And they're quite happy to effectively legislate pay cuts for hundreds of thousands of workers to do it.

As for those who think youth rates affect youth unemployment, bullshit. It tracks overall unemployment, though at a higher level. That higher level is an indicatation of the pervasive discrimination against young people in the employment market - discrimination which will not be reduced by officially sanctioning it.

Correction: Corrected obvious braino.

Killing the kiwishare

When the government sold Telecom twenty years ago, they reassured us that free local calling would be protected under a "Kiwishare". Now National is repealing it, with an SOP to the Telecommunications (TSO, Broadband, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill removing the relevant provisions "reflect that the KSO will not be operative following the structural separation of Telecom". Note that there has been no public debate over this; National has done it out of the blue, by stealth. They're even refusing to front up in the House to explain the amendments.

This will allow Telecom's foreign owners to introduce American-style local call charging. And it has significant implications for access to information in this country. It should not be rammed through in this fashion,without consultation, without debate. The only reason for the government to do so is because they are afraid of that debate, and seek to limit the politicla price they will pay for an unpopular move with no benefits to New Zealanders.

This is how National operates: undemocratically. They're making a major change to the structure of telecommunications in New Zealand, one which affects every single one of us. They should at least be saying why. Instead, we have arrogant silence.

Speaking out of both sides of our mouth

Yesterday, I noted that the New Zealand government had endorsed the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression which found that disconnection from the internet is grossly disproportionate and a violation of international law. Today, Labour's foreign affairs spokesperson Maryan Street asked in parliament whether this meant that they would be repealing the disconnection provision. The government gave a surprising response, denying that we had endorsed the statement.

Except that we have. Here's the statement, and here's the preamble to it:

I have the honor of addressing the Human Rights Council on behalf of

Austria, Bosnia, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, fmr Yugoslav Rep of Macedonia, Maldives, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Peru, Poland, Senegal, South Africa, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United States, Uruguay

Our name did not get on that list by accident. New Zealand diplomats will have formally agreed to be on it, and formally agreed to the exact text of the statement being made in our name. And MFAT will have the documents to prove it (though our chances of extracting them via the OIA are about zero, given MFAT's dislike of democratic oversight).

Finlayson has now put those diplomats in a difficult position. Because of his wriggling to avoid domestic political embarrassment, their word can no longer be trusted. And, by extension, neither can ours. On the international stage, we are now speaking out of both sides of our mouth, not practicing what we preach. And quite apart from being dishonest, this undermines our entire mana-based foreign policy.

Getting ugly in Greece

Two years ago, the Icelandic people rebelled and threw out a government who had sold them out to the banks. Now, its happening in Greece. The Greek parliament was supposed to pass a new austerity package last night to satisfy the IMF - the usual mess of public service redundancies and pay cuts, selling everything that isn't nailed down, and imposing harsh and retrospective tax increases. It failed, and now it is teetering on the brink of collapse. The Prime Minister is trying to put together a government of national unity, but that's unlikely to work. When it fails, there will probably be new elections. Which will probably see the right-wing New Democrats - turfed out two years ago after trying a similar sellout - take power and try and impose the same program of radical austerity and mass privatisation. And it will probably suffer the same fate.

The core "problem", from the government's point of view, is that the Greek people will not accept these measures. Greece has always had general strikes and riots, but what they're seeing now is something different. The entire political establishment has discredited itself, and is being told to leave "by helicopter or by hearse". Its the sort of thing seen in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen - not what you'd expect in a western democracy, where politicians are supposed to listen to their electorates. But then the whole point is that Greek politicians aren't listening, or rather, listening only to the IMF and European Central Bank, not to their own voters. Its no wonder they're regarded as quislings and traitors.

This is going to have long-term consequences, and I'm not just talking about default (which worked quite well in Argentina, IIRC). When a political class discredits itself so thoroughly, people look for alternatives. And as we saw in the 1920's and 1930's, some of those alternatives can be pretty ugly. Greece has real live communists in its Parliament as well as some rather unpleasant neo-fascists. And the bankers are driving people right into their arms.

[More commentary on European Tribune]

The VSM bill is doomed

For the past few months, Labour has been carrying out a highly successful filibuster of Heather Roy's Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill, talking out local and private bills (which take precedence) to ensure it is never debated. And it looks like the filibuster will be successful. Here's the details from todays progress in the House:

The resumed committee stage of the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill was interrupted with 15 clauses still to be considered.

So, they spent about two hours debating three clauses of the bill. They're entitled to one hour per clause, so we are looking at between ten and fifteen sitting hours to finish the committee stage, plus two more hours for the third reading. At four effective sitting hours per day, this eats every Member's Day from now until September, when conveniently there are two more local bills due back from committee to take precedence on the Order Paper.

Alternatively, we can look at it another way: there are 16 hours of member's time between now and the election, less if the government uses urgency (and they will). Roy's bill needs at least five hours to pass. Unless you're Bill English and believe in special Treasury maths, its pretty obvious that Labour doesn't need to work very hard at delay to ensure that Roy's bill does not receive a third reading this term.

So what if it doesn't? Well, then it all depends on the results of the election. The bill won't go away - if Roy loses her seat, it can be picked up by another member, as happened to Matt Robson's liquor advertising bill in 2005. But Labour is hoping that the numbers will be less favourable for it after the election than they are now. It's a gamble - but its a lot better than certain defeat now.

An interesting question

How many of our state and integrated secondary schools are bigots?

We could find out - an OIA request to each asking whether they hold a school ball or formal, whether they have a policy on same-sex dates, and if so what that policy is - but given that there are hundreds of schools, it would take a prohibitive amount of time (especially given their likely lack of experience with the OIA, and thus the need to complain frequently to the Ombudsman). Which means that we have no idea how widespread this problem is, and what we need to do about it.

More maths denial

Yesterday Bill English denied the fundamentals of mathematics, when he claimed that the average wage did not increase when those at the top got richer and the poor got sacked. You'd think he would have found a better way to answer this tricky question overnight, but no; he was at it again today:

Hon Trevor Mallard: Does he understand that real average wages go up when high-income earners get massive tax cuts—$1,000 a week, in his case—and low-income workers lose their jobs?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, I do not understand that, because it is not true.

On the one hand, I'm not really surprised; English used to work for Treasury, and they're not exactly connected with reality. Or maybe its simply that for every mathematician who thinks that, English can provide another one to give us a counterview...

Labour backs transparency over lobbyists

Earlier this week, the Greens introduced a Member's Bill requiring public registration of political lobbyists. At the time, I predicted that the other parties would ignore the issue. I am glad to be proved wrong. Labour has come out in support of the bill:

"We agree that transparency around lobbying is appropriate. Ministers are responsible for decisions that can affect people's economic and personal interests to a very great extent. It should be possible to know who has lobbied them, when the lobbying has occurred, and on whose behalf it has been done".

"We will be asking for a copy of the bill so we can review its details and determine whether our 'in principle' support will be able to extend to supporting its detailed provisions", Charles Chauvel said.

So, the ball is now in National's court: do they support transparency, or corruption?

NZ government agrees disconnection violates international law

Back in April, the New Zealand government abused urgency to ram through a "three strikes" guilt by accusation IP regime which would see people disconnected from the internet for repeat violations. The law was indirectly criticised by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression, who declared that such regimes were grossly disproportionate and a violation of international law. And now, the New Zealand government has endorsed the Special Rapporteur's report:

Michael Geist notes that on Friday, Sweden made remarks at the UN Human Rights Council that endorsed many of the report's findings, including the criticism of "three strikes" rules. The statement was signed by 40 other nations, including the United States and Canada. The United Kingdom and France, two nations that have enacted "three strikes" regimes, did not sign the statement.

"All users should have greatest possible access to Internet-based content, applications and services," the statement said, adding that "cutting off users from access to the Internet is generally not a proportionate sanction." It also called network neutrality and Internet openness "important objectives."

Interestingly, the report is signed by New Zealand, which enacted legislation in April that sets up a special Copyright Tribunal for expediting file-sharing cases. The penalties available to the New Zealand government include Internet disconnections of up to six months.

So, does this mean that the government has realised it is wrong on disconnection? if so, it should introduce a repeal bill immediately. Alternatively, they could just be hypocritically trying to have it both ways, criticising these laws while still keeping them on the books here. But they'd never do that, would they?

Return of the Bride of the Zombie Member's Day in 3D!

Its Member's Day, and like a bad series of zombie movies, the saga of Heather Roy's Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill drags on and on. Its been successfully filibustered by Labour for the past few months by the simple expedient of talking out the local bills which come before it. But the filibuster might be coming to a natural end, with the Westpac New Zealand Bill due to receive its third reading. Which means that this week, or in a fortnight, the House is going to have to make some progress on Roy's bill.

I expect that progress to be slow - there are all sorts of tricks you can use to drag out a committee session, and Labour will use them all. But they can't do it forever. OTOH, they don't have to. Beyond today, there are only five scheduled member's days left in the sitting (and the last one, in early October, won't happen as Parliament will be in the pre-election washup). The bill will take a minimum of two of those days to pass. That sounds comfortable, but it doesn't take much slippage, either due to filibustering or government urgency (and the government will be using urgency in this period - they have a booze bill and justice system reforms they want to get in place before the election) to push it out beyond the election.

As for those complaining about this process, this is what Oppositions are meant to do: oppose. And they have done it skilfully and well. They may still fail, but I cannot fault them for representing their constituents effectively and trying.

Odious

One of the more odious beliefs of the right is their view, expressed everywhere in the sewer at the drop of a hat, that beneficiaries are not entitled to have political opinions, and that any one of them who expresses a political view should be investigated and persecuted for daring to do so. This isn't just a denial of freedom of speech and the right not to be discriminated against for your political opinions; its a throwback to the comfortable nineteenth century prejudice that government was the domain of the rich, or at least "decent people" with property and a job (who could of course be trusted to vote the "right" way). It is thus a denial of our basic moral equality and a rejection of fundamental democratic norms - the idea that everyone, rich or poor, employed or not, has a stake in our society and a say in its government.

So its especially disappointing to see The Standard spewing this shit, and attacking Cameron Slater for being a sickness beneficiary:

National knows that the public oppose its agenda of asset sales, lower wages, and service cuts. So they’re going to campaign dirty. They’re running this week’s muck-throwing via sickness beneficiary* Cameron Slater.

[...]

*for a sickness beneficiary, Slater’s pretty active, eh? Full-time blogging, breaking into websites, hunting, cycling (well, if you can call only being able to cover 20km in 50 minutes on a brand new racing bike ‘cycling’). Might be time for WINZ to take a closer look at this guy who’s living off the public teat.

There are many good reasons to attack Cameron Slater, but this is not one of them. No matter what you think of him (and personally, I try not to), he is entitled to express his political views without fear of persecution, regardless of his socioeconomic or health status. Those attacking him in this way might want to consider what they're opening the door to, and how they'd react if the political affiliations were reversed and the boot were on the other foot.

I thought this only happened in Alabama?

A Wellington school is refusing to allow a student to bring a same-sex date to the school ball. Unsurprisingly, its a Catholic school, and no doubt they'd claim that they are merely following their religious beliefs. But that's no excuse - because this is clearly unlawful. Sexual orientation is a prohibited ground of discrimination under the Human Rights Act; educational establishments are forbidden from denying or restricting access to any of their services or subjecting students to any detriment on any of those grounds. While there is an exemption allowing same sex or religious schools to discriminate on those grounds to maintain their character, it does not permit discrimination on other grounds. A Catholic school cannot engage in homophobic discrimination simply because it is Catholic, any more than they can kick someone out for being Maori. Or, in this case, ban people from bringing Maori dates to a school event.

The school in question is an integrated school, so your tax dollars are paying for this bigotry. That too is unlawful, and the Ministry of Education should be stepping in to stop it. If the school refuses, then its Board of Trustees should be dismissed and replaced by a commissioner. Schools cannot be permitted to flout the law and engage in discrimination in this manner.

In defence of public service neutrality

Over on KiwiPolitico, in the context of the threatened leak of Labour Party membership and donation data, Anita asks:

Why is it that our public servants, often people who take their jobs out of a genuine belief they can make things better, are so confined in their political activities?

The short answer to this is "so the public service can do their job properly". At its heart, the public service is about providing advice to the government of the day. In order for them to do that effectively, the government has to be able to trust them. Fairly obviously, that trust cannot exist if they are seen collectively as being staffed by "the other side". Likewise it cannot exist if a senior advisor is publicly or strongly affiliated with a political party. While things may be fine while said party is in power, their ability to do their job would be compromised should power change hands.

It is also a question of professionalism. Public servants are supposed to give free and frank advice, uncoloured by their personal political beliefs. That cannot happen if they are publicly affiliated with a party. It creates at least the perception of a conflict of interest, taints their advice, renders it useless.

In practice, how neutral you have to be depends on high up the ladder you are. The guidelines are laid out in a document called Understanding the code of conduct - Guidance for State servants, under the standard of impartiality. The short version is that if you work in service delivery, or a low-level role, its not a problem; you can belong to, donate to and campaign for a party (though you should still take care not to conflate your private and professional interests, and you should ensure your political statements are not identified with your department). If you're a senior public servant, a manager or someone who regularly provides advice to Ministers, you shouldn't. Even though political donations are normally private (absent totally incompetent IT security), senior public servants should probably avoid them.

The problem, of course, is "how senior"? The SSC will have one idea, Ministers will likely have another. And if the latter demand a witch-hunt against low-level public servants who have exercised their political rights in accordance with the code of conduct, it is the duty of the relevant Chief Executive and the SSC to stand up and say "No, Minister, you can't do that". As the guardians of public service ethics, they also have an obligation to protect public servants from the partisan hackery of Ministers and their political cronies. If they fail to do so, then they will have failed not only those public servants, but the public service as a whole.

New Fisk

I saw these brave doctors trying to save lives – these charges are a pack of lies

Another bloody nose for Berlusconi

Last month, Italian Prime Minister received a bloody nose from the Italian people, with the defeat of his candidate in regional elections in his home city of Milan. Today, he received another one, losing a series of abrogative referenda on his policies.

The media are focusing on the defeat of Berlusconi's plans to reintroduce nuclear power in Italy - but that wasn't the only question. He also lost on water privatisation, and (more significantly) on his attempts to pervert the legal system to insulate himself and his cronies from prosecution. The latter is extremely significant, and not just because it means Berlusconi and his Ministers will face trial on corruption charges. It also means that the Italian people have woken up, called bullshit and demanded higher standards from their government. Again, its a sign that Italy's democracy may not be as sick as it seems, and that there may be some hope after all.

Time for transparency on lobbying II

Last weekend, Dominion-Post columnist Tracy Watkins highlighted the lack of transparency around lobbying in this country, and called for change. We're now seeing the first concrete steps towards that, with the Greens' Sue Kedgley putting up a member's bill to require public registration of lobbyists.

The bill is here [PDF]. It is heavily based on the Canadian Lobbying Act 1985 and defines "lobbying activity" as seeking to influence or arrange meetings with MPs, Ministers or ministerial staff, for payment and on behalf of another. It does not cover ordinary citizens seeking to influence their representatives, and it does not cover requests for information or publicly available submissions. Lobbyists must be registered, and will be subjected to a Code of Conduct. Failure to register will attract a $10,000 fine for an individual, or a $20,000 fine for a company.

The interesting issue is the registration authority. The Greens have chosen the Auditor-General, but I'm not sure they're the right choice. They're right I think to choose an Officer of Parliament - someone responsible to the House rather than Ministers - but its a fair stretch from the Auditor-General's normal activities. It probably would have been better to create a new Oficer of Parliament - a Parliamentary Integrity Commissioner - and task them not just with lobbyists but also with the register of pecuniary interests. But this is a Member's Bill, so the shortcut is expected.

The question now is what the other parties think of the idea. I predict a deafening silence - unless the media stand up and ask them about it.

New Fisk

Swat the flies and tell the truth – live on al-Jazeera

Poor analogies

With the furore over Labour's leak, the usual poor analogies are going round. "Taking something from an unlocked home". "Taking a wallet from inside an unlocked car". Quite apart from the failure to grasp the nonexclusive nature of digital information - copying doesn't deprive the owner of possession - they're also completely inapplicable to this case, because what seems to have happened is that Labour left stuff lying around in a public directory on a public server for anyone to read. This isn't "taking something from an unlocked home"; its Labour standing around on a street corner handing out money to anyone who walks up and asks. And then changing their mind and demanding it back.

Which is why allegations of criminality here are utterly ridiculous. Publication on the web is prima facie intentional. Sure, it happens by accident, but the idea that something can become retrospectively criminal because someone else has changed their mind flies in the face of our entire legal tradition. Meanwhile, if something is up and public, then you have a hell of a time proving that it was accessed with criminal intent, rather than in good faith (and knowing that other people are being stupid is not a sign of criminal intent).

Labour made a stupid, careless mistake. They now get to live with the consequences. Including a reputation that they are a bunch of muppets who are careless with other people's privacy.

Labour's leak

Over the weekend, we learned something important: the Labour Party has unforgivably bad IT security. This is already being used to embarrass them, and there's the promise of more on the way - specifically information on their online donors.

Over at The Standard they're crying foul and "theft!" - exactly the opposite of their position on the Don Brash emails - but nothing of the sort seems to have occurred. Instead, Labour seems to have just left stuff lying around on the web for anyone to look at. The only breaches of law and ethics here are on the Labour Party's side; their donors and members have privacy and information security rights, which Labour has violated. If people give you information, you have a duty of care over it, and this is enshrined in law through Principle 5 of the Privacy Act. And anyone whose information was treated so carelessly has recourse to the Privacy Commissioner.

(There is apparently evidence that National accessed the data first, before turning it over to one of their pet bloggers to publicise while keeping their hands clean. Good tactics, but it only works if its secret. And none of that excuses Labour's unforgivable slackness and incompetence).

As for the leakee, what they should do depends on what they have discovered. There are obvious ethical questions about whether to publish the information. While there is a strong public interest in identifying large donors or dubious behaviour so as to hold the party and the powerful to account, there is no public interest in identifying ordinary citizens giving small amounts of money. Given the identity of the leakee, I expect those questions to be completely ignored.