More Australian torture

Successive Australian governments have systematically dehumanised and demonised asylum seekers as part of their war on refugees, and the results have been predictable: torture, murder, and ill-treatment. And now they're torturing refugees to cover up their crimes:

Two asylum seekers in detention on Manus Island say they were forced to retract their eyewitness accounts of violence at the centre in February after being beaten and threatened by Australian officials at the centre.

They include the room-mate of the murdered Reza Barati, who has identified a number of staff at the centre as involved in the killing.

[...]

The two asylum seekers allege they were subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” over a number of days last week before they say they agreed to retract their police statements.

They say they were taken to an area of the camp they had not seen before and fed bread and water for three days, sleeping on the muddy ground.

“We were crying and asking what is our fault?” one said in a Facebook post. “They said: 'Because you always object to all of our rules'."

They claim they were cable-tied to chairs and beaten about the body to avoid noticeable bruises and threatened with rape and murder if they did not retract their statements.

This is what happens if you have dehumanisation, secrecy, and a government-encouraged air of impunity. It's a natural consequence of everything Australia has done with its gulags. And now its made them a torture state like the US. I hope Howard, Rudd, Gillard and Abbott are proud of themselves.

Good riddance

Last week we learned that National MP Claudette Hauiti had been stealing from the taxpayer by rorting her expenses. Today, she decided to quit:

National list MP Claudette Hauiti has decided to withdraw from the election and politics altogether.

She has already been selected as National's candidate in the Kelston electorate, which is thought to be a safe Labour seat.

She told National MPs at their caucus meeting this morning.

Good riddance to a thief. If only more rorters would follow her example.

Sclerotic

The Standing Orders Committee has reported back on the triennial Review of Standing Orders. The big news: they think the trial of broadcasting select committee hearings ahs gone well, and want it made standard practice. It's a welcome boost to the transparency of the House. There's also a mild improvement around BORA reporting, in that reports of inconsistency from the Attorney-General will automatically be referred to select committee, so there will be some sort of formal response from the House.

As for the rest, its not good news. Picking a few topics:

• Question Time will not be held automatically when urgency is called, because "the holding of question time is a significant element of negotiations about the expected progress of business under urgency". So, the government holds the ability to hold it to account hostage in order to let it ram through laws without proper scrutiny.
  
• The Attorney-General won't be required to report on amendments to bills which are inconsistent with the BORA, despite a recognition that the absence of such reporting causes problems in Parliament's relationship with the courts because it could have "implications" for the collective responsibility of Ministers (meaning: it looks bad when a Minister is forced to say that their colleagues are pissing on our human rights).
  
• MPs think a specialist human rights committee would be some sort of ghetto.
  
• The crown financial veto will not be eliminated, because the committee thinks the executive shouldn't have to enact policies "foist upon it" by the legislature. Like, say, all the legislation passed by previous governments.
  
• The committee sees no benefit to electing the Speaker by secret ballot.
  
• Parliament will keep praying (and telling all non-theists that they are not really citizens) at the start of every day, but the next Speaker should consult the next Parliament about the wording of their entreaties to imaginary beings. The sustainability of this position in a country which is no longer christian is left as an exercise for the reader.
  
• The Clerk of the House's innovative ideas for e-petitions and greater public involvement will not be adopted.
  

In short, "our" Parliament has once again rejected keeping pace with our society and our democracy. I know they're a conservative institution, but this is beyond conservative and into the positively sclerotic. Once again, MPs have earned their reputation. And they have no-one to blame for it but themselves.

This'll be interesting

Speaking of Internet-Mana, not only is Kim Dotcom promising a pre-election bombshell, but he's getting Glenn Greenwald along to help:

Internet Party founder Kim Dotcom says he has enlisted heavy-hitting US journalist Glenn Greenwald, who blew open secrets about mass spying by the US Government, to help embarrass Prime Minister John Key immediately before the election.

Mr Greenwald will travel to New Zealand for an event at the Auckland Town Hall on September 15, when Dotcom says he will release information that is highly damaging for Mr Key and National.

The general election is five days later.

This is guaranteed to put some international attention on whatever is revealed. Hopefully it'll be big enough to justify it. Meanwhile, there's the obvious question: while John Key get his spies to deny Greenwald entry to New Zealand as a "threat or risk to security"? Five days before an election, it would be absolutely toxic, a confirmation of authoritarianism. But OTOH, this is the SIS we're talking about, whose stupidity knows no bounds...

Either way, it'll be interesting, and good to see the government squirm.

A circus of self-mutilation

The political weekend: the Greens announce serious, sensible, and popular policy, Internet-Mana packs out another public meeting, and Labour's self-mutilation continues:

However, Labour MPS are disgusted by Cunliffe's skiing holiday just two months before the election and will question his work ethic at a caucus meeting on Tuesday, a senior party insider said.

Labour is trailing National by 30 percentage points, polling just 24.9 per cent in the latest Stuff-Ipsos poll.

"A lot of MPs are really f..... off about it," the insider said.

"They are all working hard up and down the country, and f...... Cunliffe is on holiday. Guys like [Phil] Goff and [Annette] King and [David] Shearer, these guys really want it badly and they are working like their lives depend on it. And I think they are a little incredulous about what the guy is doing."

Yes, faced with an election they're trying to convince us they need to win or National will privatise your kidneys and sell your children to a charter school, Labour's "senior insiders" are sabotaging their own campaign and focusing on positioning themselves for the post-loss leadership struggle. Why would anyone vote for such a clown-show? More importantly, why would anyone volunteer for them? They're clearly not worth the time and effort.

Meanwhile, Labour hacks are talking about the need for everyone on the left to work "hard, seamlessly, together, and well" (meaning "STFU and stop criticising Labour"). But its clear which party isn't pulling its weight here. The Greens are on track to equal or better their 2011 performance. Internet-Mana is doing so well even John Armstrong has to notice. If the left loses this election, it will be because of Labour.

New Fisk

Why do television producers think a grey blob over a dead person’s face shows respect?

Fiji: Impunity for torture

In 2012, a group of prisoners escaped from Naboro prison in Fiji. When they were recaptured, they were savagely beaten by police, and one subsequently had a leg amputated. The entire thing was captured on video, and several of the perpetrators have already been identified (naturally, one is an international rugby player). So it should have been easy for the Fijian police to prosecute and bring these torturers to justice.

Instead, they've closed the case. Nine minutes of graphic torture, several identified torturers, and no-one will be held accountable.

Amnesty International is right: this is impunity, backed explicitly by the military regime. There is no law in Fiji, only the whim of a brutal dictator.

Speaking of that dictator, apparently he wants to visit New Zealand. Our government should tell him to fuck off, and that dictators are persona non grata. The only reason we should let him into New Zealand is so he can be arrested and tried for the crimes carried out by his regime.

Australia's new authoritarianism

Australia has had a run of bad luck in having its dirty deeds uncovered, first with Wikileaks, then the Snowden revelations that they've been spying on their own citizens (and offering to share the data with the Americans), on Indonesia, and for the rich. Plus of course the whole East Timor spying scandal. These revelations have caused international embarrassment and ruined relations with their closest neighbours.

But now the Australian government has a solution: jail any journalist who reports on their crimes:

Australian journalists could face prosecution and jail for reporting Snowden-style revelations about certain spy operations, in an “outrageous” expansion of the government’s national security powers, leading criminal lawyers have warned.

A bill presented to parliament on Wednesday by the attorney general, George Brandis, would expand the powers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), including creation of a new offence punishable by five years in jail for “any person” who disclosed information relating to “special intelligence operations”.

The person would be liable for a 10-year term if the disclosure would “endanger the health or safety of any person or prejudice the effective conduct of a special intelligence operation”.

Special intelligence operations are a new type of operation in which intelligence officers receive immunity from liability or prosecution where they may need to engage in conduct that would be otherwise unlawful.

(That latter definition BTW seems to give the government carte blanche to disregard its own laws on wiretapping and spying. They can just redefine it as a "special intelligence operation" and the spies are suddenly in a lawless zone where they can spy, steal, and even murder with impunity).

As with their raid on East Timor's lawyers, this is the action of a guilty government, one with a lot to hide which sees its own citizens as the enemy. This law cannot be allowed to pass.

Meanwhile, Chris Finlayson has recently been at the Five Eyes Attorney-Generals meeting, so how long will it be before we see such Orwellian legislation here?

Docs or its bullshit

Over the weekend we learned that police had been juking the stats, recoding burglaries as "incidents" to make themselves and their Minister look good. But its all fine now, supposedly - the police claim they've instituted a series of spot audits to ensure it can never happen again.

Except when they're asked for information about these supposed safeguards and whether they've uncovered any problems, they suddenly can't find anything...

A refusal by the police to release any details of their response to wrongly coded burglaries in South Auckland is being called a "snow-job".

A police investigation found that about 500 burglaries were wrongly reclassified as other offences or incidents between 2009 and 2012 in Counties Manukau.

Police and the acting Police Minister Judith Collins have said it was an isolated incident, and spot audits nationwide have been put in place to ensure the integrity of crime statistics.

There was no information to suggest it had happened elsewhere, police said.

But police have refused to reveal any details of the spot audits, and District Commander Superintendent John Tims could not answer when they started, or whether they had uncovered any irregularities.

Apparently its all very complex and would take too long to collate. Which sounds like poor excuses. At the least, you'd expect them to be able to point to the order for spot checks to be implemented, even if they don't have the results yet. The only reason they wouldn't be able to do that is if there is no policy and they're making it up to make themselves look good (sorry, "preserve public confidence in the police", because clumsy lies totally do that).

The police have totally forfeited our trust. If they want us to believe them, on this or any other issue, they need to front up with proof. Documents, or its bullshit!

New Fisk

Israel-Gaza conflict: Medical charity likens work to ‘patching up torture victims in an open-air prison’

An OIA horror story

DPF has an OIA horror story:

Andy Tookey filed an OIA with the Auckland District Health Board for a copy of a slide presentation by the Organ Donor Service to a taxpayer funded official meeting.

They refused the request on the grounds of privacy, even though no names were requested.

Tookey went to the Ombudsman who said it must be released.

They then declined on the basis it would be made public in six months time.

Again the Ombudsman indicated he would rule against them.

So what did the Organ Donor Service do?

They deleted the information.

(The information requested was a powerpoint presentation of the results of an ICU death audit. Which raises the question of what they were trying to hide...)

As the Ombudsman notes, this is a clear violation of the Public Records Act's requirement to create and retain proper records. Deleting the information is a criminal offence. Unfortunately the penalty - a $10,000 fine - is so derisory as to be no deterrent against public agencies. If the bureaucrats responsible were able to be held personally liable, perhaps it would be a different story.

The idea that an agency would simply defy the Ombudsman like this is also deeply troubling. They're a mana-based office, which hardly ever needs to pull out the big stick of formal recommendations. If departments are going to simply ignore their less formal findings, then they are clearly going to have to move to more formal mechanisms.

Climate change: Madness

The Australian government has finally repealed its carbon tax, leaving Australia with no policy at all to combat climate change. And the worst bit? The carbon tax was working:

Australia cut carbon dioxide emissions from its electricity sector by as much as 17 million tonnes because of the carbon price and would have curbed more had industry expected the price to be permanent, according to an Australian National University study.

[...]

The ANU report, which used official market data to the end of June, found the drop in power demand attributed to the carbon price was between 2.5 and 4.2 terawatt-hours per year, or about 1.3 to 2.3 per cent of the National Electricity Market serving about 80 per cent of Australia’s population.

Emissions-intensive brown and black coal-fired power generators cut output, with about 4 gigawatts of capacity taken offline. The emissions intensity of NEM supply dropped between 16 and 28 kilograms of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of supply, underscoring the role of carbon pricing rather than slumping demand in curbing pollution, the paper said.

However, investors’ doubts that the carbon tax would last – fostered in part by then opposition leader Tony Abbott’s “blood oath” to repeal it if the Coalition took office - meant high-emissions generators were mothballed rather than permanently closed.

Which means that with the tax gone, they'll be back to cranking out pollution, at least until solar kills them off. And meanwhile, Australia will continue to dry up and burn down, and Tony Abbott will blame it on the phase of the moon, or solar flares, or an invisible sky fairy, rather than accepting that he is making a worse future for Australians.

One state at a time

A US judge has ruled california's death penalty is unconstitutional:

A federal judge ruled California's death penalty unconstitutional Wednesday, writing that lengthy and unpredictable delays have resulted in an arbitrary and unfair capital punishment system.

The decision by US district court Judge Cormac Carney represents a legal victory for those who want to abolish the death penalty in California and follows a similar ruling that has suspended executions in the state for years.

[...]

"Inordinate and unpredictable delay has resulted in a death penalty system in which very few of the hundreds of individuals sentenced to death have been, or even will be, executed by the State," Carney wrote.

He continued, writing that "arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed."

No doubt there'll be an appeal - but in the meantime, California is officially death-penalty free.

Police just don't learn

Meanwhile, in case you're not angry enough over the IPCA's whitewash over GCSB spying, there's this: police in Stratford responded to a late-night assault complaint by raiding a local marae full of sleeping kids:

Maori elders have filed a complaint with the Independent Police Conduct Authority over the way in which two Stratford officers entered the Stratford marae around 2am on Saturday and woke 25 children sleeping there.

The police were looking for a suspect after a 61-year-old man was assaulted earlier in the same part of Stratford. The suspect was not found.

The children, aged from 4 to 17, were shaken and upset at the aggressive, rude treatment they received from the two officers, Whakaahurangi marae spokeswoman Lovey Read said.

[...]

"These kids were made to get up out of bed at 2.30am. They were lined up in the wharenui in their pyjamas and made to show their hands to the police to see if they had blood on their hands, so to speak, then some were photographed."

Because naturally, if someone's been assaulted, you search the local marae...

But its not just about police racism. In a series of posts over Twitter, lawyer Graeme Edgeler struggled to work out how it could be more illegal:

1. It's a personal search conducted without warrant, for an offence not serious enough to conduct a personal search without warrant. (2)

2. It's a consent search, conducted in circumstances where a consent search cannot be conducted. (3)

3. Consent to consent searches cannot be obtained from people under 14 (unless it's consent to search a car they're driving alone) (4)

4. Photographs were taken of suspects(?) in circumstances where photographs cannot be taken. (5)

5. Entry was effected without consent, in circumstances where warrantless entry powers are unavailable. (6)

6. (not enough information, but I'm going to guess this is true) Children/young people were questioned without following correct procedures.

I'll stop now, but I'm not 100% sure that, given a little more background, I couldn't write a statement of facts for aggravated burglary.

And indeed he could: " Unlawfully entry, while carrying a weapon, with the intention of committing an assault on a child. Aggravated Burglary".

But we know how this will go: the elders will complain to the IPCA, the IPCA will sit on it for two years, then they'll issue a whitewash excusing the police. Or possibly they'll criticise the police, who will refuse to accept the IPCA's findings and do nothing. Either way, victims will have been given the false hope of justice, while in practice being denied it. The sole effect of the system is to whitewash and excuse police wrongdoing, while denying people the opportunity to pursue more effective remedies (such as private prosecution or a BORA case).

Our police are rotten, and the system to oversee them is rotten. People should have no faith in either.

National hates dolphins II

Last month, we learned that National had allowed oil exploration in the marine mammal sanctuary which protects maui's dolphin. But it gets worse: it turns out that they've also opened a third of that sanctuary to seabed mining:

The Government has issued mineral mining permits in one third of the endangered Maui’s dolphin sanctuary, the Green Party has revealed today.

This follows revelations that permits have also been issued for oil exploration in the sanctuary.

There have been 254 Maui’s sightings within the areas where the mineral mining permits have been granted.

Maui's Dolphin is our most endangered species, and the rarest dolphin in the world. There are only 55 of them left. But rather than protecting them, National seems hellbent on driving them to extinction.

Above the law

The IPCA has finally released its report into the police's refusal to investigate the GCSB's illegal spying, and unsurprisingly foud that there's nothing to see here, move along. The reason? Basically, because the Solicitor-General and Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence are government stooges who don't want to rock the boat illiterates who can't read a statute book. The police's bullshit view that when the Crimes Act says its a crime to intentionally intercept a private communication by means of an interception device, "intent" means not just "intent to intercept" (as you might think), but also "intent to break the law" - that is, that ignorance is an excuse for officials, but not for peasants - came directly from the Solicitor-General, so they were entitled to rely on it. Which is fair enough, but I think what it tells us is that we should be looking for a new Solicitor-General, because Michael Heron is clearly not up to the task.

Likewise, their refusal to investigate another 56 unlawful interceptions was "reasonable" because it was based on the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence's view that metadata spying was "arguably legal" (if you ignore the then-clear prohibition against domestic interceptions, the definitions of "communication" and "intercept", and all parliamentary intent). Given this view, the police could not conclude that the interceptions were "unequivocally unlawful" - a far higher standard than they ever apply to any of us - and "criminal prosecution of individuals in an attempt to clarify an inherently uncertain law would have been unjustified" (something which again they have no trouble doing when the target is a peasant, not a government agency).

All in all, its the expected whitewash, which once again shows how the police apply different standards of justice to us than they do for themselves and their mates. This practice has been effectively endorsed by the IPCA, so they're now useless and we might as well disband them (or just rename them the "Official Police Coverup Authority" just so no-one is under any illusions about the business they're in).

The upshot: the spies are above the law. If we want justice for this, we need to change the government. We need a full, independent inquiry from people not tainted by associations with the establishment and deep state. And we need to defund and disestablish the GCSB. None of that will happen under National.

The UK strengthens its panopticon

Back in April, the European Court of Justice overturned the EU Data Retention Directive, a European law pushed through by the British government to require telecommunications companies and ISPs to store telecommunications metadata just in case police ever wanted it. The ECJ naturally found that blanket storage without particular suspicion was an invasion of privacy and declared the directive invalid.

The British government ignored the ruling and instructed phone companies and ISPs to keep retaining data. Then a coalition of privacy NGOs threatened to take them to court over it. As a result, they're now ramming through emergency legislation, which almost certainly violates EU law, to ensure they can keep doing it. But its not just about preserving the (illegal) status quo - they're also snatching new surveillance powers and asserting that non-UK companies must obey UK spy-warrants at the same time.

This rushed attack on privacy is being supported by all three major parties. In other words, the entire UK establishment supports total metadata surveillance of all citizens, 24/7, with no need for suspicion, "just in case". In case of what? One of the reasons they give for this is that it will help them catch paedophiles. Which is a bit rich, coming from an institution which has covered up for them for decades.

If all this seems eerily familiar, its because its exactly what happened here: the courts found the spies had behaved illegally, and hey, presto! there's emergency legislation, rammed through under urgency, granting them a pile of new powers. The world over, politicians support spies. And if we want to get rid of the spies, we need to vote out the scum who legislate for them.

Two policies

Today, the Greens announced a billion dollar innovation policy, with tax credits and increased R&D spending, and incentives to study computer science or hard sciences at university. Its part of a sustained critique about what's wrong with the New Zealand economy, and the policy prescriptions are backed by some unexpected sources. No matter what you think of it, its clear that its a hefty policy and a serious attempt to solve some of our problems.

Meanwhile, Labour was announcing that would ban cosmetics tested on animals...

Its a welcome policy - but its like they're not even fighting on the same battlefield. Its that paucity of vision thing again: the Greens want to fundamentally change our economy and our society to make them more sustainable, both environmentally and socially. Labour wants things pretty much the same as they are now, only with less pointless cruelty to animal. An improvement, sure, but unless you're one of the animals concerned, one so mild, minor and unexciting that its barely worth voting for.

As we saw last week when they talked about education, Labour does well when it talks about big policy. If it wants to reconnect with the "missing million", it needs to do that more often, and promise people something different, not just more of the same with Trevor Mallard getting a ministerial salary.

Dunne and the GCSB

Peter Dunne isn't happy with the GCSB:

In a speech in Wellington last night, the United Future leader accused the Government Communications Security Bureau's director Ian Fletcher of trying to make Government decisions.

Mr Dunne said the first pillar Mr Fletcher laid out recently - that the agency should be "effective at defending the Government's own critical information against sophisticated cyber espionage, and against disruption from any source" - was a reasonable assumption.

But he had problems with Mr Fletcher's comments that the GCSB should be "conducting sophisticated intelligence activities against any legitimate target, no matter how hard", and that it should also be "a potent and effective contributor to military capability".

"With respect, I say to the director those are not his calls to make," Mr Dunne said.

[...]

The GCSB's credibility had been damaged by last year's disclosure that it may have spied illegally on 88 New Zealanders and it was up to the Government to decide what is a "legitimate target" and how the agency may contribute to military capability, Mr Dunne said.

"And as they are Government decisions, they should be formally conveyed by the minister to at least the intelligence and security committee and arguably the whole parliament, and then the GCSB required to report upon them," he said.

Dunne is completely right about the proper separation of powers: the GCSB is supposed to work for us, and that means it should follow priorities set by statute and their Minister. However, arguably they are: sections 8A - 8C of the GCSB Act define the functions of the Bureau as Information assurance and cybersecurity, (foreign) Intelligence gathering and analysis, and Co-operation with other entities to facilitate their functions (including the Defence Force). Peter Dunne voted for that legislation - indeed, his vote was the one that allowed it to be passed. If, like me, he thinks that the GCSB shouldn't have any role beyond securng the government's computers, then perhaps he shouldn't have voted for it?

And cheap-shots aside: I look forward to Dunne supporting legislation to gut the GCSB and eliminate its intelligence and defence support functions. Those functions have no place in a democratic society, and the sooner we cut the spies down to size, the safer we'll all be.

Earning that reputation XIII

In the real world, employees who make dubious expenses claims are disciplined or sacked. But in Parliament, Parliamentary services covers it up for you:

Claudette Hauiti has surrendered her parliamentary charge card after using it to pay for a Christmas trip to Australia.

The trip and other unauthorised spending on the card - known as a purchasing or p-card - led to the list MP returning it to Parliamentary Service in March.

Prime Minister John Key said in 2010 that the Government had "led the charge" on transparency of MPs' spending.

But Parliamentary Service has refused to detail the mis-spending on Hauiti's card or supply a total.

It also took more than a week for the National party to return calls.

(Naturally, Hauiti went throught he usual phases of lying, then claiming it was all too complicated, then blaming her underlings, within the space of four paragraphs. I think we can conclude from that where the real problem lies).

This is a prime example of why we need more transparency around MP's expenses. As we've seen with Ministers, people who are watched pay attention to their spending, and ensure that it can be justified. We don't see MPs putting their porn and pissups on the taxpayer's tab anymore, because they know that if they do, it will be on the front page of the Herald in three months time. Systems matter.

MPs complain that the public see them as greedy, grasping pricks. Their continued and ongoing refusal to do anything about this is why. Its perfectly within their power to impose a solution, both institutionally, and privately (in that they can practice transparency over their own spending, to force other MPs to follow their example). But somehow, they never do. This ongoing failure is something we can and should and do hold them collectively responsible for.