ECan turns a blind eye to water theft

Back in 2010, the National government overthrew to democratically elected Canterbury Regional Council and appointed dictators to give the region's water away to farmers. And since then, that's exactly what they've been doing, by undermining Water Conservation Orders, overallocating catchments and allowing increased pollution. But even that isn't enough: there are still rules on the books about how much water farmers are allowed to take. ECan's solution is simple: ignore them, even in cases of blatant water theft:

Forest & Bird has lifted the lid on what it claims to be a massive water theft in Canterbury.

The conservation group has released data obtained under the Official Information Act showing those with consents to take water have taken hundreds of millions of litres more than they were entitled to.

The information reveals water was illegally taken from creeks that eventually ran dry, including during low-flow restrictions when rivers were at their most parched.

Environment Canterbury (ECan) did not prosecute any of 376 cases of serious breaches, despite many offenders being caught "red-handed", Forest & Bird says.

One case includes an irrigator who was found to have illegally taken 31 million litres of water from the Manuka Creek over 42 days. Forty of those days were during low-flow restrictions. The offender received an abatement notice.

376 cases and no prosecutions? There's no doubt about it: ECan is simply refusing to enforce the law. And sadly, with dictators having an inbuilt majority in the new transitional regime, there's no hope of a policy change after the October elections, no matter how much voters want it.

Good luck with that

Today we learned that National's 90-day trial periods for workers weren't working, having produced no discernible change to employment. So you'd expect the Labour Party to be even more strongly for repealing them. But no - as Stuff's Hamish Rutherford points out, Labour plans to do no such thing:

An early morning trip to Upper Hutt in July 2015 revealed Labour's uncomfortable realisation: the 90-day trials are immensely popular among businesses.

The party's union backing may be fiercely opposed to the trials, but Labour leader Andrew Little conceded to a business audience that, with immaterial changes, the trials would be maintained.

[...]

Little pledged to maintain the trials, albeit with a requirement for employers to give feedback, an about-face on his promise during the election (before he was leader) to abolish them.

The reason for this? So Labour can toady to business of course. Sellouts and chickenshits, the lot of them.

But apart from the insanity of seeking the good opinion of groups which inherently hate you, this simply isn't a sustainable policy. To point out the obvious, Labour won't be alone in Parliament, and another party (e.g. the Greens) could put up an abolition bill of their own. What will Labour do then? Whip their reluctant backbench into voting it down, in the face of intense pressure from their own supporters? Or try and get prospective support partners to agree pre-emptively not to put such a bill in the ballot?

The answer to both scenarios is "good luck with that". And they show the inherent problems of being a party which stands for nothing and which puts power and a desire for donations ahead of principle.

Doing something about the financial veto

Yesterday the government abused the crown's financial veto power to forbid a vote on Sue Moroney's Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave and Work Contact Hours) Amendment Bill. So what are we going to do about it?

Stage one I think is to ask Bill English to withdraw the financial veto certificate. I've started a petition over Action Station on this; you can sign it here. Better do it before Wednesday, however, because the bill will be debated (but not voted on) then.

Stage two is to attack the veto provision itself. As I've pointed out before, it is archaic and unconstitutional, a relic of (spit) English feudalism. It was reviewed at the 2014 triennial Review of Standing Orders, where the Standing Orders Committee supported it basicly on the basis that it wasn't used very often. That, of course, was before the government had used it to shitcan a popular bill with majority support from across the House (including from its own coalition partners). But we can force them to review it again by petitioning Parliament.

As for the chances of success, the government doesn't have an inbuilt majority on the Standing Orders Committee. So, if the other parties hate the veto as much as they say they do now (rather than wanting to use it when they're in government), then we can get rid of it permanently. And at the least, such a petition will force them to declare where they stand - and allow us to vote accordingly.

90 day trials don't work

When National forced 90-day employment trials on us, it was on the promise that it would increase employment. Making people easier to sack, so they said, would encourage businesses to take risks in hiring.

Naturally, they lied:

The controversial trial period allowing workers to be easily sacked within their first 90 days on the job has failed to boost employment, research has found.

Treasury-funded research conducted by Motu found no statistically significant increasing in hiring by employers following the introduction of the 90-day trial periods in 2009.

Motu Fellow Isabelle Sin said the research used "data from every firm and every person in New Zealand" to assess the law changes' effect.

"The main effect of the policy was a decrease in dismissal costs for firms, while many employees faced increased uncertainty about their job security for three months after being hired," Sin said.

And that's unsurprising, really. Businesses hire people when it is profitable to do so, not because they can. And whether it is profitable to do so depends far more on the underlying economics of the business - whether they can move more widgets or whatever - than on whether they can fire people more easily. So all the law does is enable abuse by bad employers while increasing uncertainty among their employees. Its about encouraging servility and keeping wages down, not increasing employment.

We can add this to the long list of NeoLiberal policies which fail empirical testing. Tax cuts don't increase economic growth. Benefit sanctions don't incentivise work. Charter schools don't improve education outcomes. But those failures aren't just academic - they produce real human suffering and social consequences which need to be rectified. The expense of which is then used as "justification" for even more such destructive policies by the right.

New Fisk

Why our nuclear deal with Iran is turning to dust

Fucking hell

Waking up to the news that a UK MP had been murdered outside their constituency clinic was profoundly shocking. Learning later that the attacker - who cried "Britain First" during the murder - had not just a long history of mental illness, but an equally long association with far-right politics sadly wasn't. The UK has had an undercurrent of violent racism for a long, long time, and while they've mostly focused on terrorising those of the "wrong" skin colour or political persuasion, it was only a matter of time before they entered the big leagues. A referendum campaign implicitly premised on "immigration" - British for "racism" - provides exactly the sort of context for that sort of shift, for letting people think its OK to start murdering their political opponents.

The obvious question is what impact it will have on the referendum campaign. But to be honest, I don't really care. When your choice is between two groups of racist xenophobes (one of which also destroyed Greece), it is hard to give a shit.

The real worry is what it might do to the UK (and NZ) practice of constituency clinics. MPs making themselves available to their electorates to help them with their problems and hear their concerns is a fundamental link between elected representatives and their voters - and one of the few things the UK's threadbare democracy does well. If MP's withdraw from this, or hide form their voters behind a wall of security and bodyguards, it turns them very visibly into a distant, insulated, isolated elite. And in a political system as unrepresentative as the UK's, that is unlikely to end well for its democracy.

End the veto!

Today's abuse of the financial veto to prevent the passage of a law Parliament supported and the government did not have the numbers to defeat tells us one thing: we need to end this practice. The financial veto - and its companion monarchical veto in Standing Order 313 - is an affront to our democracy. It allows the arbitrary whim of the few to prevail over the expressed will of our elected Parliament. Not as a "check and balance", but as a political weapon to suppress Parliament.

That is not how our democracy is supposed to work. As Kenneth Keith put it, "the queen reigns, but the government rules, so long as it has the support of the House of Representatives". Parliament is supreme. It passes the laws, it votes the money, and if the government wants to change either of those things, Parliament has to vote for it.

Normally it does, of course, because the government is the government because it has a majority. But MMP means it doesn't have one on everything. And in such cases, our constitutional principles are clear: Parliament's will should prevail.

The financial veto is an affront to that principle. And all democratic political parties should commit to its removal.

Cowardly, undemocratic, and unconstitutional

So, after months of threats, National has finally vetoed Sue Moroney's Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave and Work Contact Hours) Amendment Bill. It claims that it did this because of costs. But in reality, it did this for one reason and one reason only: because it did not have the votes to vote the bill down.

As I've posted previously, the ability of the executive to override the will of the legislature in this way is a relic of English feudalism, which simply does not sit with our modern, MMP constitution. It is undemocratic and unconstitutional. In modern New Zealand it is Parliament which is supreme, and the veto denies this.

This violence to our democracy is also unnecessary. If the government thinks the bill is a financial matter, it could simply declare it to be a matter of supply and stand or fall on the result. Their refusal to do this is simply cowardly. But perhaps, having worked so hard to alienate its coalition partners, National is no longer sure of their support.

More defence waste

Last week we learned that National wanted to spend $20 billion on new toys for the defence force. One of the immediate criticisms - apart from the spending being inherently wasteful and aimed at producing a defence force fit to serve American, rather than New Zealand, interests - was NZDF's poor record on procurement, which sees costs escalate and escalate and escalate. And today we have a fine example of that, in the form of another $100 million cost increase on an upgrade to the navy's frigates.

The government remains committed to the upgrade of the Navy's two frigates, despite a $100 million increase in the cost of the project.

The weapons and communications systems on HMNZS Te Mana and HMNZS Te Kaha will be upgraded in Canada.

The cost was originally expected to be up to $374m, but has risen to $472m, and the upgrade will now be completed in March 2019, 13 months late.

The frigates will get upgraded missile defence, communications and radar detection, torpedo decoys and an overall combat management system.

...in other words, the usual pointless crap aimed at being a vessel useful for fighting other people's wars, rather than the things we actually want our navy to do.

And then there's the kicker: that extra $100 million on the navy's gold-plated upgrade of its pointless vanity vessels? That, right there, is the cost of the third, ice-strengthened offshore patrol vessel they want (even at the inflated price they paid for the originals). You know, the ship that does the things we want our navy to do - fisheries patrol, aid delivery, search and rescue - rather than wandering off to the Middle East to "show the flag" to our "allies".

The conclusion is clear: we should scrap the frigates. Anything useful they do can be done by smaller, cheaper vessels at a fraction of the cost. And by taking military options off the table, we prevent our government from dragging us into other people's conflicts.

New Fisk

Is the backlash faced by French-Lebanese author for speaking to Israeli media justified?

This will be interesting

So, Earl and Lani Hagaman have filed defamation proceedings against Andrew Little for correlating the contents of their donations to the National Party and their gaining a government contract to manage a hotel in Niue. This will be interesting. Both because it will hopefully give us a precedent protecting such political speech (because really, if you can't publicly connect such facts, what can you do?), but also for what else it might expose.

To point out the obvious, Little now gets discovery. And valid targets of that discovery include all records of any donation to the National Party or associated entities by the Hagamans (and any institution they control), and all records of any communications between them and the National Party or National MPs (including, say, over this). After all, if they're saying that their donation record had nothing to do with the contract, and its all just a terrible-looking coincidence, then clearly Little gets to go looking for evidence to the contrary. And if he finds anything at all, the consequences of that could be rather more dire than simply winning his suit.

Unconvincing lies

In parliament today, Paula Bennett was questioned pretty intensively about her clumsy smear of Te Puea Marae chairman Hurimoana Dennis. Her answers were less than convincing:

• Bennett claimed to be ignorant of the smear until asked about it by journalists on Tuesday afternoon. But her face in that interview tells a completely different story: she's lying, and wasn't expecting to be asked about it. Incidentally, this was an answer to a primary question, so any evidence that she knew gets her for contempt of Parliament.
  
• Bennett briefed her political staff about the investigation of Dennis. She refused to say why she did that, but there's no reason at all unless it was for the purposes of smearing him.
  
• The staffer who did the actual leak offered to resign. Bennett refused to accept their resignation as she was assured that "it was not the intention for it to be a smear campaign against Mr Dennis or the marae". Which invites the obvious question: if it wasn't supposed to be a smear, why was it revealed?
  
• Bennett, who has a past history of utter disregard for privacy of her critics, is suddenly very protective of the privacy of her staff, refusing to confirm or deny that the leaker was the person who accompanied her to a meeting with Dennis. By doing so, she made it clear that there will be no accountability whatsoever for this action.
  

These are unconvincing lies, and the overwhelming message is that Bennett ordered it, or at least tacitly approved it. And that is well below the standards we expect from government Ministers (or decent human beings). Lianne Dalziel was sacked for this sort of bullying, as was Judith Collins. And Paula Bennett must pay the same price.

We need to do something about wrongful convictions

The media reported yesterday that Teina Pora will receive at least $2 million in compensation after being falsely convicted of a crime he did not commit and wrongly spending 21 years behind bars. Pora is just the latest in a long line of people falsely convicted and imprisoned by our police. And while most people will be making the entirely valid point that $2 million can never be enough to compensate him for what the police have stolen from him, I have a different message. Namely, that this happens far too often, and we need to do something about it.

There are a few obvious things we can do. Preventing police from relying on uncorroborated "confessions" at trial would prevent them from stitching up people as they did Pora. We need judicial reform as well so that they are better able to review potential miscarriages of justice, rather than (as at present) being helpless because time-limits have expired or police misconduct or exculpatory evidence has only come to light at the "wrong" stage of the appeals process. The courts are supposed to be able to correct mistakes, and their inability (some would say refusal) to do so in these cases undermines both justice and the credibility of the justice system as a whole.

But beyond that, we also need an agency with the specific task of investigating, reviewing, and making recommendations on potential miscarriages of justice, to fix the problems when the courts can't. The UK has a Criminal Cases Review Commission for exactly this purpose, and the absence of such a body in New Zealand has been glaring. Back in 2006 National backbencher Richard Worth (remember him?) had a member's bill which would have established such a body; it should be resurrected as government policy.

Finally, it is wrong that the wrongly convicted should have to go begging to Cabinet for ex gratia compensation, or (as is the case with David Bain) try and prove their actual innocence in order to receive it. Whether they committed the crime or not, they have been wrongly jailed and robbed of years, sometimes decades of their life unlawfully. Compensation for that should be automatic, not a matter of feudal grace and favour, and taken directly from the police budget. That way, we would also have a direct financial measure of the cost of these mistakes, and a direct financial incentive for police to make fewer of them.

Sack Bennett now!

For the past few weeks, Te Puea Marae has been doing the work the government has refused to do in helping the homeless. There's strong public support for this work, and even the government has been forced to contribute. But its also very obviously embarrassing for the government to have such a visible symbol that the public believe in a decent society and want homes for all. So, after doing a quick photo op for the papers there this morning, Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett had her press secretary leak information that the marae's chair was under police investigation.

This is fucking low, even by Bennett's standards: someone is doing good, but their doing good makes her look bad by comparison, so she abuses information given to her in confidence to smear them. And there's no question that she did it: press secretaries don't do this sort of thing without instruction, and Bennett has past form for exactly this type of dirty bullying. That sort of behaviour is simply unacceptable for a Minister (or, indeed, a human being), and she should be sacked for it.

Also worth noting: Paula Bennett is one of the Ministers responsible for the government's Social Investment Unit, which will be the primary customer of Stats NZ's "big brother' Integrated Data Infrastructure. So the person responsible for the agency which collects and trawls through our most intimate secrets is also the Minister with the worst record for abusing that sort of information. And that just doesn't seem safe at all.

Who ordered that?

The government announced a new regulatory regime for rocket launches today, to provide a regulatory framework for Rocket Labs expected launches. Its what you'd expect - launches and payloads must be licenced, there's a security regime based on the Civil Aviation Act to keep people from wandering onto launch sites etc - and you'd expect it to be fairly uncontroversial. But digging into it, there are a few odd bits. Firstly, launches will be reviewed by the SIS and GCSB, who can veto them. That's expected - the security agencies have an interest in space, and presumably they don't want some nefarious country to launch anything from New Zealand we would object to. But the interesting bit is the appeal regime: if a launch is vetoed, all you can do is complain to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. And even if they find against the spies and issue a formal finding, the spy agencies don't have to act on it, but "may" withdraw their objection. So its absolutely toothless. Interestingly, the entire section on "dealing with national security issues in court proceedings" has been censored from the relevant Cabinet paper, but we know that their inability to win in a court where they are actually required to present testable evidence is a sore point for the spies; hence the restriction of appeals to their pet, secret "watchdog".

But the other odd point is the Minister's ability to declare a "debris recovery area" for locations of space accidents. There's a legitimate purpose for this - space debris is often dangerous, and you don't want people grabbing it and selling it on Trademe. But the law also criminalises taking any photograph or image of anything in such an area, on pain of six month's imprisonment. So, they don't just prohibit photgraphing fallen space debris, but also photographing the landscape, your lunch, or even yourself.

This is an absolutely unprecedented power and an obvious prima facie violation of the BORA's affirmation of freedom of expression. The government does not criminailise photography in general in places even to protect national security (e.g. it is not in general illegal to take photographs on an NZDF base or SIS or GCSB facilities), and there's absolutely no power to prohibit publication. If you can get hold of photos of the GCSB's sensitive satellite interception technology, you are absolutely free to publish them (and the most the government can do is ask you where you got them). The closest provision I can find to it is a power in the International Terrorism (Emergency Powers) Act 1987 which permits the Prime Minister to prohibit publication or broadcasting of certain matters relating to international terrorist emergency - a power which predates the BORA and is tightly restricted both in content and in timeframe. Only photos of emergency personnel and images and descriptions of sensitive equipment or techniques can be prohibited,and the prohibition only lasts for a year. It must be notified in the Gazette, and as far as I can tell, the power has never been used.

So who ordered a broad, untargeted, unprecedented restriction of New Zealander's freedom of speech rights? The Americans, of course:

The draft [Technology Safeguards Agreement with the US] places obligations on New Zealand to ensure that, in the event of a launch failure or accident, measures are taken to protect US technology. These measures include designating a "debris recovery site" controlled jointly by US participants... and ensuring that components or debris are not studied or photographed in any way, except as required by the laws and regulations of New Zealand.

That Cabinet paper then goes on to assert that:

The proposals in this paper are consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 and the Human Rights Act 1993.

Which is simply bullshit. Restricting the freedom of expression of New Zealanders to protect the commercial and national security interests of a foreign power cannot possibly be justified under the BORA. It is highly questionable as a public purpose, and its absolutely disproportionate as a measure to protect that purpose. While the US may desire absolute secrecy over its Super-Sekret Rocket TechnologyTM, that's nothing to do with us. Insofar as there is a legitimate New Zealand national security interest in prohibiting the photography of space debris, that is already properly covered by the Crimes Act.

"Other priorities"

When National passed the Key-Kitteridge spy bill back in 2013, they promised safeguards. One in particular was that the GCSB would be statutorily obligated to formulate a privacy policy, against which its activities could then be audited. The law required them to do this "as soon as is reasonably practicable".

That requirement has been law been law for nearly three years. And yet today the GCSb has revealed (in a response to a request made through FYI, the public OIA request site) that

Unfortunately, due to other priorities, the policy has not been finalised and is still being drafted.

"Other priorities". That's right - the GCSB has "other priorities" than obeying the law.

This simply isn't good enough. The 2013 GCSB bill was predicated on a broad bargain with the New Zealand public: greater powers in exchange for increased oversight. But it seems that GCSB is reneging on their end of that bargain (and explicitly violating the law to do it). While there's obvious wiggle room, I don't think any reasonable person would consider thirty months to be "as soon as is reasonably practicable".

As for what we can do about it, we can't complain to the Inspector-General or the Privacy Commissioner, because they're both part of this policy formulation process and thus not neutral arbitrators. And Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee is worse than useless, as it meets in secret and is institutionalised against exercising proper oversight. There seems to be no institutional mechanism to actually enforce this provision at all. Which means any solution has to be political: if GCSB won't act within the limits we set for it, then we must insist that it be disbanded.

Palmerston North hires thugs to harrass beggars

Beggars on the streets are one of the most visible symbols of our society's failure, their increasing numbers an indictment of the current government. But the rich and powerful just Don't Want To Know, and so we've seen various local authorities try and "control" the problem and drive the destitute out of sight and out of mind. In Wellington, there was the "alternative giving" campaign, which turned out to be an expensive failure. And in Palmerston North, the council is planning to spend almost $20,000 to pay security guards to stand next to beggars all day:

The SafeCity Host programme involves security guards, known as hosts, patrolling the central city on Friday and Saturday evenings to assist in keeping the area safe.

A Safety Advisory Board working group has recommended a plan that would involve uniformed hosts standing next to beggars during the day, and discouraging people from giving them any money.

They would hand out brochures suggesting "worthy charitable organisations" people could give to instead.

(So, its basicly Jono Naylor's rugby-player initimidation plan, but with a different provider...)

Its the wagging finger of the nanny state made flesh and given a uniform: "don't give money to beggars! Force them to talk to WINZ or starve rather than cluttering the streets! Give money to approved, Worthy charities instead!". But its also very obviously legally dubious. The stated purpose of the policy is to prevent beggars from harassing people. But having someone stand next to you everywhere you go and interrupt any attempt by anyone to interact with you with a public warning? That seems to be the very definition of harassment. To point out the obvious, if I made a practice of standing next to any of the councillors who voted for this, with the purpose of reminding everyone they talked to about their voting record, they'd pretty quickly get a court order against me under the Harrassment Act 1997. The only thing that is protecting the council and its hired thugs from similar action is the low social capital of their chosen victims.

Last night, the council voted to implement this plan by a 6-5 margin. The guilty councillors were Annette Nixon, Susan Baty, Lew Findlay, Ross Linklater, Leonie Hapeta and Billy Meehan, with Vaughan Dennison abstaining. There's a local body election in a few months, so remember that list. I won't be giving any of these people a preference, and you shouldn't either.

Meanwhile, if you see a beggar with a security guard standing over them, give them money. And look the hired goon straight in the eye when you do it. Don't let the Palmerston North City Council intimidate you out of being a decent person.

The least they think they can get away with

To great fanfare, National has raised the annual refugee quota to a thousand places from 2018. But while its the first increase in 30 years and an improvement on the current situation, its nowhere near what is needed, and in fact the least they think they can get away with. To point out the obvious: this "increase" hasn't even kept pace with population growth since the quota was originally set in 1987, and while they complain about resourcing and the need to ensure that refugees receive proper support on arrival (which is a real concern), this is treated as a hard and permanent cap, rather than a temporary limit. A government which wanted to take credible action would have recognised the temporary limits on our ability to properly assist refugees, while setting a pathway to increasing our capacity. National hasn't done that, because they see this purely as a PR issue, not as a moral necessity: "how do we stop voters thinking we're heartless wankers" rather than "we need to do our bit to solve this pressing global crisis". But then, that's how they respond to everything: climate change, housing, child poverty - their "policy" is about mollifying voters, being able to say "we're doing something", while eliding the fact that they're actually doing sweet fuck all.

More wind

The GFC and uncertainty over the future of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter seemed to have stalled energy projects in New Zealand. But it looks like Trustpower is starting up its project train again, and is seeking consent for a new 130 MW wind farm in South Taranaki:

Trustpower's proposed Waverley Wind Farm will inject $40 million into the Taranaki economy while being built, and $3.3 million a year after that, says New Zealand Institute of Economic Research senior economist Peter Clough.

His analysis forms part of Trustpower's application to build the 48-turbine wind farm on 980ha of coastal land between Waverley and Patea.

Trustpower applied to South Taranaki District Council for consent to build, operate and maintain the wind farm last month. The consent has been publicly notified and the deadline for submissions is June 16.

Its unclear when it will be built, and all the electricity companies are sitting on large portfolios of wind farm consents. The trick is going to be making sure that we build those, rather than polluting gas, when the market finally sorts itself out.

National rorts us on travel

As a functioning democracy, New Zealand provides its Ministers with various perks, such as free travel, an accomodation allowance, and so on. We do this to enable them to do their jobs: announcing policy, communicating with interest groups, seeing what things look like on the ground. Instead, National uses it for electioneering:

Newly disclosed information on the use of the Government's VIP limousine fleet suggest the Government was involved in extensive use of taxpayer funded transport during last year's Northland by-election campaign.

Ministerial cars are supposed to be used for ministerial purposes - election campaigning sits well outside that definition.

GPS records, which also show the cars were breaking open road speed limits, reveal Crown cars were used in Northland on 25 separate occasions throughout February and March in the eight weeks leading up to the by-election.

On one occasion in early February, four separate Crown cars were being used in the electorate on the same day.

[Unmentioned: how often crown limos are use din Northland when there's not a by-election on. But you can be pretty sure that it is much, much lower].

This is a straight-out rort of government resources for political purposes, an abuse of power. And it has to stop. If Ministers want to campaign in support of their colleagues, that's great - but they can do it on their own dime, rather than on the taxpayer's.

Update: Felix Marwick provides the extra stats in his accompanying opinion piece: ten visits in the four months after the by-election. So, "Ministerial business" in Northland increased by 500% when there was a by-election on. And if you believe that that's legitimate, rather than just a front to steal public resources for campaigning, I have a round building in Wellington to sell you...