A victory for clean rivers

The Environment Court yesterday delivered its verdict on the Horizons Regional Council One Plan, upholding and strenghening requirements for nutrient management plans. Good. The Manawatu is one of the most polluted rivers in New Zealand, which smells of burnt sheep and faeces. And the reason for that is farmers, who overuse fertiliser, overstock their land, and funnel all their waste into the river. The nutrient plans will stop that, by requiring farmers to gain resource consent for their diffuse discharge. Naturally, they're going feral over it, threatening to close down or go overseas. To which the response is again "good". If dirty farmers go out of business, they will be replaced by clean ones. And that can only be beneficial to our environment and our economy.

But this doesn't just help the Manawatu; the precedent will allow other regional councils to impose similar requirements to clean up their waterways. They question now is whether they will take up the opportunity, or continue to support lazy farming standards and pollution.

McCully lied about MFAT cuts

Earlier this year, the government tried to slash MFAT's budget, closing embassies and cutting staff pay and conditions. After serious opposition (including a series of embarrassing leaks) from outraged diplomats, Murray McCully announced that it was all his Chief Executive's idea, that he had not approved the cuts, and that he wanted them to stop.

Naturally, he lied:

MFAT’s Four Year Budget Plan, belatedly released by Murray McCully, reveals just why the Minister was so reluctant to have it published, says Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson Phil Goff.

“This document proves that Mr McCully knew and had approved the botched restructuring plan a month before he publically distanced himself from it,” Phil Goff said.

“The Budget Plan was prepared in late 2011 as usual and finalised by February 2012. No Budget Plan goes forward without the detailed knowledge and explicit approval of the Minister.

“The Plan makes reference to the alternative approaches to representation, outsourcing of services, changes in pay and allowances for staff, job cuts and substantial spending cuts.

“Yet a month later in a letter to his Chief Executive Officer, John Allen, dated 22 March, which he deliberately released, Murray McCully was distancing himself from the plan we now know he approved.

As Goff points out, this is cowardly behaviour from McCully. But I guess he didn't get where he is in politics today by taking responsibility for his mistakes. No, instead he blames his subordinates - who are forbidden by public services ethics to speak out in their own defence - then tries to bury the info in the hope that no-one will notice. National ethics in action!

Extending Canterbury's dictatorship?

The government has called a press conference for tomorrow to announce the future of Environment Canterbury - and word is that they will be extending Canterbury's dictatorship:

Government-appointed commissioners have been in charge of the council since councillors were sacked early in 2010 by then environment minister Nick Smith and local government minister Rodney Hide.

Legislation passed at the time included a commitment that regional councillors would be elected again in October 2013 at the latest.

The Press understands that tomorrow's announcement could include that elections will not take place next year.

That might mean the commissioners will have their terms extended.

I guess National's farmer-cronies haven't stolen all the water yet.

As Eugenie Sage points out, this is a matter of basic democracy. The present dictatorship is taxation without representation. Worse, it is government without a voice. And that is simply wrong. It is wrong in Fiji, and it is wrong in Canterbury. It is time National restored democracy in Canterbury, and gave Cantabrians back control over their own resources and rates.

Climate change: Positive feedback

By now everyone should have heard about this year's record low for Arctic sea-ice cover. The bad news is that its got even worse, dropping below 4 million square kilometers today - and there's still a week to go. And this isn't just an abstract thing - it is likely to have a severe effect on the global climate:

Loss of Arctic ice is effectively doubling mankind's contribution to global warming, ice scientist Professor Peter Wadhams has told BBC Newsnight.

White ice reflects more sunlight than open water, acting like a parasol.

Melting of white Arctic ice, currently at its lowest level in recent history, is causing more absorption.

Prof Wadhams calculates that this increased absorption of the sun's rays is "the equivalent of about 20 years of additional CO2 being added by man".

The precise magnitude of that effect will be up for some quibbling - but the direction certainly isn't. We're entering the age of positive feedback, where climate change pushes more climate change which pushes more climate change. Under that ice is billions of tons of methane, which dribbles out faster as the Arctic warms. Which means even more climate change... if we don't stop this, we could be living in a very warm future - and it may already be too late.

Jordan gets it

Thinking about the difference in interest between the debates on marriage equality and the minimum wage, Jordan Carter has a "eureka!" moment: people have stopped caring about economic issues because politicians have systematically depoliticised them:

For the past thirty years, decisions by our Parliament have been marginal to the economic progress of the nation - and deliberately so. Government has withdrawn itself in so many ways from economic life. In pursuit of an ideology now proved false in the only testing ground that counts (the real world), the state got out of the way.

The public ideology of and debates around economic policy have been about the primacy of the market, and subordination of politics. The market, a cold abstraction nobody could see or argue with, would make the calls. It was our job as people to do what its highly paid messengers and managers would say.

Think about that.

Is it any wonder that most people don't think political action can make a difference on so-called "bread and butter" issues - when for so many years they've been told just that?

(Unmentioned: the politicians depoliticising these issues by not challenging market dogma? They've been Labour politicians. This is Labour's failure here, pure and simple)

Apparently, he'd never made this connection before. Clearly, he hadn't read this post, or this one or this one, which make a similar point: as Labour has given up offering economic change, their voters have given up on Labour.

The good news is that there are some signs of change: Labour is talking about taking a more interventionist role in the economy, and about serious moves to improve worker's rights and increase job security. OTOH, they're also promising to raise the retirement age - so clearly the attitude that they must grovel to the markets still prevails.

Charter schools are bad schools II

When the government announced its charter schools policy last month, one of the key points was the use of unregistered, untrained staff. Now it turns out that that decision was against strong advice from the Ministry of Education:

The Ministry of Education released official documents yesterday that recommended all teachers be registered in the schools to give the students the greatest learning opportunities.

[...]

Before the announcement was made, the Education Ministry's documents warned the overall potential for a negative impact on students' education from teachers who did not meet the minimum standards for the profession was high.

"Teacher registration is one the most influential levers in raising teacher quality across the profession in both state and private schools. Allowing charter schools to stand outside this work will significantly damage the credibility of the Crown."

This is the bureaucratic equivalent of saying "this idea is a stinking pile of shit", and a competent Minister of Education would take it seriously. Hekia Parata didn't, and instead allowed the ACT vision of unqualified staff - which would somehow assure higher quality teaching - in order to keep her coalition partner happy. That's her prerogative as an elected representative - but if she wants to stay as an elected representative, she should probably start making better decisions.

Quebec's unfair election

Quebec went to the polls today in provincial elections, and threw out its corrupt, authoritarian "liberal" government in favour of the Parti Quebecois. In the process, they also elected the province's first female Premier - another step on the road to equality. At the same time, though, the elections were conducted under an outdated, unfair voting system, and the results were far from democratic - as can be seen from the table below:

Party	% Vote	Seats	% Seats
Parti québécois	32.03	55	44.0
Quebec Liberal Party	31.01	49	39.2
Coalition avenir Québec	27.16	19	15.2
Québec solidaire	6.03	2	1.6
Others	3.77	0	0.0

So 1% of the vote results in a difference of 5% of the seats - and government. Quebec needs a fair, proportional electoral system - and the sooner, the better.

So much for "good faith"

In its response to the Waitangi Tribunal's report on water and asset sales, the government has repeatedly claimed that it will act in good faith in its negotiations with iwi. The reality, however, is a little different:

Prime Minister John key says the Government will not attend a hui called by the Maori King over water rights because it rejects calls for a national water settlement.

Key also made it clear none of his MPs should attend the hui because that would cause confusion about them representing the Crown.

[...]

"The Government does not believe there should be a national hui; does not believe there should be a national settlement and it probably would not recognise all of the rights and interests that some Maori groups believe they have," Key said.

Refusing to meet with the other party is not good faith. Saying that they should not meet to discuss their collective negotiating position is not good faith. Ruling out a national settlement from the outset is not good faith. And saying that you will not recognise some rights and interests before negotiations have even begun is not good faith. All of this undercuts the negotiations, and makes it seem like they are simply a sham. And that is simply not how a proper Treaty partner should behave.

The expected distraction

The wheels seem to have really come off the government's asset sales programme, with the announced six-month delay now expected to last well into next year. National needs a distraction! Cue Paula Bennett standing up to announce that she will stop the benefits of any beneficiary with an outstanding arrest warrant, both smearing beneficiaries as criminals, and getting a double-score with National's sadism bloc for being simultaneously "tough on crime" and "tough on poor people".

Unfortunately, details on this are sketchy - but from those revealed, it looks dubious. A power to stop benefits "in exceptional circumstances where someone poses a danger to the public" cannot possibly apply on a blanket basis to anyone with an outstanding warrant. An outstanding warrant does not equate to "danger to the public" (you can have an arrest warrant issued for unpaid fines or failure to turn up in court), and doing something without exception clearly does not meet the "in exceptional circumstances" test. But challenging that costs serious money, so Bennett will probably get away with it (assuming of course that she's quoting the law correctly).

As with her promise to cut the benefits of those who fail a drug test, the big question - what will happen to these people? - remains unanswered. And its one we deserve an answer to. If you cut people off from financial support, they have immediate needs and very few ways of meeting them. If the government's policy is essentially to force people into crime, then it is not only wrong - it is going to cost us far more than it saves.

CERA's response to the Christchurch housing crisis: Nothing

Earlier in the year, the media reported a severe housing crisis in Christchurch. The earthquake had destroyed and damaged homes, and the resulting shortage - and outright profiteering from landlords expecting an influx of construction workers - had pushed up rents. As a result, people were squatting or sleeping in cars. So what was CERA doing about it? Someone used FYI, the public OIA request site, to ask for their advice. After some dicking around over semantics - CERA apparently refusing a request because it referred to a "crisis", which was not on their list of acceptable words - they finally got a response. And reading through it, it turns out that the answer is "nothing".

oh, they spend a lot of time - and a lot of briefing papers - to say it. But as explained in the briefing on Rebuild Workforce and Displaced Resident Accommodation [PDF], the core of their response is to

• Provide information on the emerging opportunities for workforce and displaced resident housing
• Connect parties with common interests
• Support utilisation of existing 'spare' capacity through boarding arrangements
• Encourage rental property investors and managers to take a more flexible approach to tenant selection and management practices through the rebuild
• Encourage practices that will minimise the peak in housing demand.

Information, support, and encouragement is bureaucratese for "squat". It means sitting back and leaving it to the market - which is manifestly failing and leaving people in need. And they make this explicit:

Messages to be delivered through such engagement would also reaffirm that the Government does not intend to crowd out private sector initiative through the direct provision of housing

In other words, faced with a national disaster, the government's policy is not to ensure that everyone in need has a roof over their heads, but instead to abandon them to the profiteers. Its a fine example of National's policy priorities, its privileging of wealth over need. And the consequences of that policy can be seen in Christchurch's winter 'flu epidemic.

This falls well below what we expect of government, especially in the wake of a disaster. If the market fails like this, it is government's job to step in and fix it, not stand idly by. CERA should be acquiring land, building houses, and making sure that everyone has a roof over their heads. If the private sector is profiteering off disaster victims, they should be crowded out. Failing to do these things is simply wrong, and the government should be held accountable for its inaction at the next election.

The cost of child poverty

According to recent data from the Children's Commissioner, 25% of kiwi kids live in poverty. That poverty rate costs us as a society: in crime, in lost economic potential, and in increased health and future welfare costs. How much? Nearly $9 billion a year:

Independent researcher John Pearce, who spent two years studying child poverty in New Zealand, said around 200,000 of our children grow up in poverty. This can mean in poor and often crowded housing, lacking sufficient food, and having inadequate health care. Most importantly, growing up in poverty can affect children’s early learning, and long term educational outcomes.

Mr Pearce said, “No one disputes child poverty is an important and difficult problem, but so far no one has added up the national economic cost of our current policies on child poverty.”

Mr Pearce estimated what child poverty costs the country each year in four key areas: poor education and its impact on productivity ($2.2 billion), health ($3-$4.5 billion), crime ($2.2 billion) and social welfare ($1.4 billion). Combined, these figures put the cost of child poverty at around $8-$10 billion annually, approximately 4.5 percent of our GDP.

Meanwhile, John Key thinks its "dopey" to spend money to reduce those costs. I don't think so. What's "dopey" is to keep on paying them. Reducing child poverty isn't a cost, its an investment. And it speaks volumes that National isn't willing to make that investment in this country and its people, preferring instead to hand out money to their rich mates.

Why the police make such bad OIA decisions

In my years of doing OIA requests, I've learned one basic lesson: the police are awful at them. Quite apart from a mindset which seems utterly opposed to transparency, oversight and accountability, they seem to lack a basic grasp of what the law actually says. And now we know why: because their guidance on how to process requests is so bad. Someone used FYI, the public OIA request site, to request the police's policy on handling OIA requests. This resulted in the disclosure of two compilations from the police intranet: Guidelines for processing information requests and Disclosing official and personal information. Both glom together all types of information request: OIA, Privacy Act, interdepartmental requests, Ministerials, pre-trial disclosure and general media inquiries - meaning that its easy to confuse types of request and nothing gets the attention it deserves. But specifically with regards to the OIA, the police guidance:

• says that requests can not be made anonymously;
• says extensions can be granted simply because a request will take longer than 20 working days;
• fails to separate conclusive, non-conclusive, and administrative withholding grounds;
• gives no guidance on the factors required for each withholding ground;
• fails to note that the countervailing public interest in disclosure must be considered for non-conclusive grounds

I'll leave it for experts on the Privacy Act to find the errors in handling requests under that legislation.

Interestingly, the police's recent habit of demanding sensitive personal information (addresses and passport numbers) from electronic requesters does not appear anywhere in the policy - and in fact seems to be contrary to it. The policy explicitly states that "every endeavour should still be made to comply with [a] request" from an ineligible person. Which really makes you wonder why they bother (the answer, of course, is to intimidate and discourage requests).

By any measure, this policy provides inadequate guidance, and therefore simply creates more work for police in the form of Ombudsman complaints. They should update it, and soon. After all, those who uphold the law need to be seen to be complying with it, no matter how inconvenient it is for them.

National lied to us over Westpac corruption

Last year, in the wake of pointed questions from the Greens about Ministers accepting corporate hospitality from Westpac, John Key promised that he would tender out the government banking contract Westpac had held for the past 23 years.

He lied:

The Government has not tendered its lucrative master banking contract more than a year after Prime Minister John Key said opening it up to competition for the first time in 23 years would be ''healthy''.

Westpac acts as the Government's banker and holds the accounts of all government departments, but not Crown entities or state-owned enterprises. It is thought to be the largest banking contract in New Zealand and was last tendered in 1989.

In 2010, Finance Minister Bill English indicated he would run a procurement process for government banking to ensure the Crown was getting value for money.

Meanwhile, Westpac is still bribing Ministers with corporate hospitality, and gave a top job to former Minister Simon Power. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence, right?

The government's excuse is that tendering it out may not be value for money - but we don't just run tenders to get the best deal for the taxpayer; we run them to prevent corruption. Sadly, that's exactly what appears to be going on here. Free rugby games. Big dinners. Jobs for the boys. And oh look, here's billions of dollars a year in cashflow for you to take your percentage of. It looks terrible, and it smells worse. Ending that image is more than justification for a tender process.

We're better than that

Journalist Tracey Barnett has done a short video about the government's proposed Immigration Amendment Bill, which allows the detention of refugees and the processing of their claims to be arbitrarily suspended.

If you'd like to do something positive about this, you can contact your local National MP and let them know that you want a humane refugee policy, rather than a second-hand Australian one.

Getting out

Today's other good news: we're getting out of Afghanistan by April next year. Obviously I'd prefer sooner (they should be able to do it by christmas), but having a relatively near date is better than none.

Hopefully no-one else will die before then. If they do, then the blame will rest squarely on John Key's shoulders for not ordering a faster withdrawal.

Delayed

The government has delayed its plans to sell Mighty River Power, to allow time for negotiations with affected iwi. Good. As the Waitangi Tribunal made clear, iwi have strong interests in water, amounting to full ownership, and those interests will be irreversibly harmed by privatisation. This makes negotiations a requirement if the government is to be seen to uphold the Treaty.

While the new sale date is March next year, that's very much dependent on negotiations going well. Water is a complex issue, and the time has clearly come to sort it out properly, but I'm not sure it can be done in six months. Which will mean another delay announced in February or so, unless the government wants to face a court injunction.

Meanwhile, the referendum campaign will have met its target by then, so even if negotiations go well the government will be trying to sell stuff while also having to organise a referendum against it. Which is not going to be a good look.

In the ballot L: The final batch

Another batch of Member's Bills currently in the ballot. Previous batches are indexed here:

Coroners Amendment Bill (Lianne Dalziel): would require the Minister of Justice to formally respond to Coroner's recommendations within 90 days. Coroners frequently (and are required to) make recommendations aimed at reducing the incidence of similar deaths, and there's been some disquiet recently that they are simply ignored (OTOH, some of those recommendations are also batshit crazy and utterly ignore the Bill of Rights Act, which makes them of dubious utility and legality). The Chief Coroner seems to want to act as a legislator, and have these recommendations implemented immediately. Obviously, that sits very poorly with our constitutional system in which Parliament is sovereign. Requiring a formal response from a Minister on whether the government accepts the findings and what, if anything, they plan to do about them is a much better (and more constitutional) response.

Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill (Hone Harawira): Amends the Education Act 1989 to require all decile 1 and 2 schools to provide free breakfasts and lunches to all enrolled students. The Child Poverty Action Group has been pushing this for years and last week the Children's Commissioner's Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty weighed in in support. its a good idea which deserves to be passed. Sadly, I expect Nationa will threaten to financially veto it if it is drawn.

Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill (Jackie Blue): Amends the Marriage Act to remove the current provision allowing 16 and 17 year-olds to marry with permission of their parents and replace it with a requirement for permission from the Family Court. The concern is to prevent forced marriages, such as this one. However, you'd expect that concern to be addressed via a government bill. Relegating it to a member's bill shows that this fundamental human rights issue is a low priority for this government.

Finally, a word on the future of "In the Ballot". When I started doing this series in 2006, the ballot and member's bills were private and/or secret. You knew when a bill had been drawn (because it was introduced to the House), but not what it was up against, unless you had a source in Parliament (thankyou, Long-Nosed Potaroo and others). If you wanted to know what a bill actually did, you had to ask the relevant MP - and they were not always willing to provide a copy. Obviously, things have changed since then: there's now a greater interest in member's bills, ballots are public and live-tweeted, and member's bills are posted on the Parliamentary website. This series, with its brief summaries, is now pretty much redundant, so after 50 episodes and ~150 bills, I'm calling it a day. I'll still be paying attention to the ballot and analysing member's bills, but it will be more in-depth analysis of individual bills, rather than a summary of three random ones. while it makes for easy bloggage, there's no need for me to tell people what they can learn for themselves simply by reading the web.

No justice for CIA torture

When Obama was running for election in 2008, he promised that those responsible for CIA torture would be held to account. Now, his Justice Department has just whitewashed the entire affair:

The US justice department has ended its investigation into the CIA's interrogation programme for terror detainees, without bringing charges.

The probe, which studied two deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, ends a series of reviews into the treatment of 101 detainees in US custody since 9/11.

Attorney General Eric Holder said there was not enough evidence to "sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt".

A prominent civil rights group said the result was a "scandal".

And it is. The CIA have been allowed to get away with torture and murder here. In the cases in question, they froze one man to death, and beat and asphyxiated another. It was unquestionably criminal under US and international law, even allowing for the self-serving resurrection of the "Befehl ist Befehl" defence they rejected at Nuremburg. And they know who did it (hell, I've even named the murderer of one of those prisoners right here on this blog). This is not a failure of evidence; it is a refusal to confront it, a failure of political will, a failure of justice.

Still, there's always international law. And the scary thing is that by authorising this impunity, Obama and his Cabinet have just put themselves on the hook as well as co-conspirators.

New Fisk

Syria's road from jihad to prison
Another week in the violent, murderous and divided world of Syria
In Maaloula, the past has relevance to Syria's tragic present

Slumlord MPs

Just last week, John Key was calling for New Zealand's landlords to up their game, and threatening to regulate if they didn't insulate their damp, cold, musty houses. But it turns out that his MPs are part of the problem. The Herald did some digging into National MPs who declared that they owned rental properties, and found that, yes, they were renting out cold, damp, uninsulated homes:

Tenants of three Government MPs live in cold, damp homes where the insulation is inadequate or non-existent.

Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman, who lives in a $1.74 million waterfront house on Auckland's Northcote Point, is owner or trustee of two small rental properties.

In one, in Summer St, Ponsonby, one of the tenants said the house was cold in winter and she thought it had made her sick. An insulation inspector said it had some ceiling insulation but nothing underfloor.

In another, in Dominion St, Takapuna, pregnant mum Rebekah Brittin said she was worried for the health of her three-year-old son and her baby, due in summer.

The Herald also cites Cam Calder and Jian Yang as renting out uninsulated properties - the latter has asked his tenants to get a Community Services Card so he can get a subsidised insulation upgrade. I guess that $140,000 a year backbencher's salary just doesn't go far enough...

Coleman meanwhile is desperately trying to pretend that he has nothing to do with his slum rentals, and has even told the Herald he's selling one. Hopefully they'll check back to see if that's real, or like Phil Goff's promise to sell the Wellington apartment he was renting to Labour backbenchers: simply an attempt to sterilise the issue.

As for the policy of requiring landlords to insulate, it shows what we're up against. As with tax cuts for the rich, MP's personally profit from poor standards, and have a conflict of interest on any attempt to improve them. Sadly, in internal party policy debates which precede legislation being brought to the House, the conflict is likely to go undeclared and unrecognised.