Another failed privatisation effort

This year the government outsourced food at Southern DHB to international tax-cheats Compass. But the food was awful - so awful it endangered the safety of hospital staff. Other DHBs were understandaby reluctant to join the outsourcing deal. And now, the government has been forced to renegotiate it:

The 15-year hospital food service contract with the Compass Group had to be renegotiated because so few DHBs had joined, it has emerged.

Just six of 20 DHBs signed up, and others need to join in order to realise anticipated cost savings.

Official advice released by Dr Jonathan Coleman shows that officials told him earlier this year the deal was being renegotiated.

''Health Partnerships is working with Compass to renegotiate the contract to take a more holistic view of benefits, and derive improved value''.

Its unclear how much money this misguided "cost-saving" measure has lost so far, but its clearly significant. Sadly, the government has retained it rather than just sacking Compass and getting DHBs to do it themselves again. Which shows you that the real point of the policy wasn't cost-savings, but funnelling public money into the private pockets of multinational tax-cheats.

Make Question Time permanent

The House is sitting today, but unusually there's no Question Time. The reason? The government called urgency yesterday to ram through some highly dubious changes to the Public Works act, meaning that Question Time doesn't happen. The normal practice in these circumstances is for the government to seek leave for it to be held, but instead of doing that, they tried to hold it hostage to force the opposition to stop speaking out against its bill. Naturally, the opposition refused. The net result: today's questions will not be asked, and Ministers will not be accountable to the public today.

This is not acceptable. Question Time is the primary day to day accountability mechanism in our democracy, and it is important that it not be able to be held hostage by the government like this. Fortunately, the fix is easy: a simple tweak to Standing Orders to ensure that it happens regardless of urgency. The question is whether National will agree to that, or whether they support government unaccountability.

Why are we paying Nick Smith a Ministerial salary?

Nick Smith is our current Housing Minister. For that, we pay him $281,881 a year. But while he now admits we have a housing crisis, he is refusing to do anything about it:

Auckland house prices hitting the magic million-dollar mark won't force the Government to make any sudden moves, says Housing Minister Nick Smith.

[...]

"The million-dollar thing yes, the seven-figure sum generates a lot of media activity. But in terms of, does it chance the core things that the Government needs to do?

"Look, New Zealand's doing great. Unemployment's low and dropping. We're a safe, stable country. Our population's growing faster than it ever has. My simple message this morning is the Government just needs to keep to plan and grow that housing stock."

So, we have a crisis, but no problem, and no need to do anything (at least, not until Smith's National Party friends have cashed out of their Auckland investment properties).

Nick Smith should earn his outrageous pay packet. And if he doesn't want to, then he should quit and make space for someone who will.

Open Government: The PSA's view

The consultation on New Zealand's Open Government Partnership second national action plan has wrapped up, and everything is back in the secretive hands of SSC. In the meantime, the PSA has published their suggested commitments (which had already been submitted online). They include

• adopting the Law Commission's recommendation to extend the OIA to cover Parliament and create an "Official Information Authority" to provide training and advice;
  
• publishing a citizen's budget to improve fiscal transparency;
  
• providing better guidance for state servants and Ministers around free and frank advice;
  
• confirming the right of state servants to participate as private individuals in political activities;
  
• protecting government contractors from retaliation for speaking out on public issues;
  
• extending both the OIA and the good employer provisions of the State Sector Act to cover contractors and contracted-out services.
  

Some of this stuff is only tenuously connected with open government, but there's also some solid ideas in there. It remains to be seen whether SSC will pass any of them on to Ministers as options for reform, or just round file everything in favour of their pre-determined agenda.

The copyright mafia eats itself

Today in copyright mafia ridiculousness: the copyright mafia tries to ban itself!

Film studio Warner Brothers has asked Google to remove its own website from search results, saying it violates copyright laws.

It also asked the search giant to remove links to legitimate movie streaming websites run by Amazon and Sky, as well as the film database IMDB.

The request was submitted on behalf of Warner Brothers by Vobile, a company that files hundreds of thousands of takedown requests every month.

Which is exactly what happens when you base copyright takedowns on software matches and never bother to look at them. Sadly, Google refused the takedown request; they should have accepted it, simply to remind Warners and other copyright trolls that they need to actually look at these things before sending them.

Housemageddon

Its official: the average Auckland house price has hit $1 million:

The average value of an Auckland home has passed the $1 million mark for the first time.

Quotable Value's monthly house price index for for August shows the average in Auckland is now $1,013,632 - up from July's figure of $992,000.

The Auckland market grew 15.9 percent in the last year, and 6.1 percent over the past three months, QV spokeswoman Andrea Rush said.

Values there are now 85.5 percent higher than the previous peak of 2007. When adjusted for inflation values rose 15.4 percent over the past year and are 57.5 percent above the 2007 peak.

Landed Boomers will be popping champagne, but in the long term it spells disaster. Auckland is now a city where ordinary people can no longer afford to live, which means that people will leave and businesses will follow them. There's already some evidence of younger Aucklanders fleeing the city in favour of places where they can have a normal life. There's also the crazy situation that "Auckland house" is now one of the country's highest-paid occupations, paying almost as much as being an MP (which means those MPs who own Auckland investment properties must be creaming it). Which is going to make for some interesting careers advice...

The government has responded by announcing an extra $25 million for social housing in Auckland - or about enough to buy 25 houses. Compared to the scale of the problem its a pathetic effort. But once again the aim is to simply generate a headline rather than to actually do anything meaningful. Unfortunately, families can't live in government press releases, but I guess National no longer considers that to be its problem.

Bugger

Kevin Hague is leaving Parliament for a CEO spot at Forest & Bird. Bugger - he was an effective MP, and would have made a great Minister of Health. But like other Green MP's before him, he'd done his time, and it is better to move on when you can still do something else useful than cling on grimly in the desperate hope of power like some do.

An economic failure as well as a moral one

The growth of homelessness in New Zealand is one of the great moral failures of the National government, symbolising a government focused on cuts and abandoning people to the market. But according to evidence presented to the multiparty inquiry into homelessness, its not just a moral failure, but an economic one as well:

Each person living on the street in New Zealand cost the Government around $65,000 a year, an inquiry into homelessness has heard.

Getting them off the streets and into secure housing could cost as little as $15,000, a University of Otago housing research organisation said.

[...]

[He Kainga Oranga]'s "best estimate" was that it cost the Government $65,000 "to keep somebody homeless". These costs were mostly incurred in mental health services and the police costs of addressing both offending by and against homeless people.

Pierse said other countries which had invested in the Housing First approach had found a net economic gain in getting people off the streets.

As with child poverty, the long-term costs of leaving this problem to fester are far, far higher than the short-term costs of simply solving it. So why doesn't the government invest to solve it? Because the long-term is somebody else's term, not theirs. National isn't interested in making decisions with benefits twenty, ten, or even five years down the track. Like the businesses they so obligingly serve, they're interested in the short term, next quarter, maybe at the most next year. They'd rather see people living in cars than spend money, because the benefits of spending that money are far, far beyond their planning horizon. This short-sightedness inflicts huge long-term damage on our society, and costs us all money.

We need a government which will actually address this problem, rather than endlessly giving money away to the rich in tax cuts. And we won't get that under National.

A two-tier police force

If you get burgled, you're lucky if the police do anything more than give you a form for the insurance company. But its a different story if you're a National MP...

A burglary victim is questioning why a break-in at the mobile electorate office of National MP Jami-Lee Ross was given higher priority than her own.

National MP Jami-Lee Ross's mobile electorate office was burgled twice in a week - with police responding to the first burglary "immediately", and apprehending a suspect within days.

But an Auckland mother of two who lives just 900m away had a very different experience when her burglars targeted her home.

[...]

Police failed to show up more than 24 hours later, by which time rain had washed away any chance of finding fingerprints.

I guess Jami-Lee Ross isn't just ordinary people like you or I. Instead, he's Someone Important (and in particular, someone who gets to vote on the police's budget every year) - and therefore someone to be toadied to, crimes against him zealously investigated and crimes by him zealously ignored. But I don't think most New Zealanders would agree with the idea of a two-tier police force, one paid for by all but protecting only the elite. Ross should have waited his turn in the queue like everyone else. And if he didn't like that, maybe he should fund the police to investigate crime at its actual level, rather than relying on privilege to get special treatment from an underfunded agency.

Good news for the republic

After lingering just short of a majority for years, 60% of kiwis now support a republic:

New Zealanders appear to have experienced a groundswell of republicanism as a new poll shows nearly sixty per cent want a Kiwi head of state.

The poll shows 59 per cent of New Zealanders wanted to change the centuries-old system of Government, compared to 34 per cent who favoured the next British Monarch becoming King of New Zealand.

Undecided voters remained unchanged on seven per cent over the last three polls.

But while this shows that we'd win a referendum for a republic if it was held tomorrow, realisticly we're a long way from that point. While there's public support, its mostly abstract, without a huge desire for immediate change. And while the conventional wisdom is that that will change when the current incumbent dies, I don't really see it as making the problem seem more urgent (instead it will simply increase support for change). The upshot: if we want this to happen, we need political parties to commit to it, rather than just waiting around for the "inevitable" republic which never comes.

Key: Sack the people and employ another

The government is under pressure on immigration over serious concerns about its effects on house prices and wages. John Key's response? Immigration is necessary because kiwis are all lazy drug addicts:

Speaking on Morning Report today, John Key admitted that high immigration was putting strains on the country's infrastructure, but the government would continue to bring in large numbers to fill jobs.

He said this was partly because many employers could not get New Zealanders to work due to problems with drugs or work ethic.

[...]

"But go and ask the employers, and they will say some [New Zealand workers] won't pass a drug test, some of these people won't turn up for work, some of these people will claim they have health issues later on. So it's not to say there aren't great people who transition from Work and Income to work, they do, but it's equally true that they're also living in the wrong place, or they just can't muster what is required to actually work."

So, Key basicly wants to sack the people and employ another. Which is exactly the attitude you'd expect from a sociopathic international banker, but hardly likely to endear him to voters.

Because it needs repeating, I'll say it again: if New Zealand employers can't find people to do their shit jobs, the market solution is to offer more money. Bringing in migrant labour so they don't have to do that is simply a subsidy to shit employers, and one we should end.

How it works in Nauru

Another sign that Nauru is becoming a dictatorship: a man who filed an electoral petition against the Prime Minister has had his pension suddenly cut off:

A Nauru man has had his only source of income, his pension, cut off by the government.

No reason has been given but Dale Cecil is convinced it is because he has brought an election petition against President Baron Waqa in the Boe constituency.

Mr Cecil accuses Mr Waqa of bribery, treating and breaking advertising laws on election day.

He said at the same time as he registered his electoral petition his pension was stopped.

Mr Cecil said it is no longer an uncommon event to be blacklisted if you oppose the government.

This is an outright abuse of power, and almost certainly illegal. Sadly, it has become common on Nauru. There have been other incidents of pensions being cut, or people sacked, for opposing the government. But I guess that's what happens when you provide politicians with vast amounts of rortable Australian gulag money: they'll do anything to keep it.

Australia's gulag-guard quits

Wilson Security currently holds the contract for security services in Australia's Pacific concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island. But in the wake of leaked documents showing that they lied to Parliament and defrauded the Australian taxpayer, they've decided not to renew the contract:

Wilson Security says it will not renew its contract to run Australia's offshore detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

In a statement, the Australian company said it would provide services until its contract expires in October 2017.

The decision follows the announcement by the service provider, Broadspectrum, earlier this year that it, too, would abandon the processing centres.

So, it looks like Australia is going to need new gulag guards. Or, it could close the camps and treat these refugees like human beings, rather than systematically torturing them in pursuit of the racist vote.

So much for 100% pure

How bad is our water under National? This bad:

A poisonous Canterbury lake overrun with a toxic, deadly slime has not recovered, and is still subject to a public health warning eight months after it was issued.

With a dry summer ahead, it's not looking good for Lake Forsyth.

The lake near Christchurch has been plagued by cyanobacteria, a toxic alga.

A public health warning has been in place since January, the longest period for such a warning at the lake in recent memory.

Sheep, cattle, and at least one dog have died in the lake's water over the years. Swallowing one teaspoon of cyanobacteria could kill a dog or a child.

While this is being painted as only a temporary thing, with Canterbury drying up due to climate change and greedy farmers sucking out what water remains while spewing shit into the rivers, its only a matter of time before it becomes permanent. Unless the government acts, of course. But given that its their mates making money by exacerbating this problem, that seems unlikely.

Kiwis deserve better than this. We deserve clean water, and lakes and streams we can swim in and drink. And we won't get that under National.

New Fisk

Alan Kurdi symbolised an army of dead children. We ignore them at our peril

Lowering expectations

New Zealanders expect certain things from our government and our society. A fair go. A clean environment. That our kids will be better off than we were. But according to John Key, that last bit is no longer true - instead of being able to own a home as their parents did, he thinks they should be content living in a high-rise shoebox:

Young Aucklanders need to look to apartments as a first home option as they do in big Australian cities, Prime Minister John Key says.

[...]

Key said if the same couples in their late 20s were living in Sydney or Melbourne their expectations could well be different.

"I tell you where their first house is - it's an apartment... that is the reality of a first home for a young couple in Australia and many other parts of the world.

"We are going through quite a big change as a society, I think in these fast growing areas where it is quite likely that people will start in apartments, it's more than likely they will move out to a house with a little bit of land as they have children, and they will very likely move into an apartment as they retire.

This is National's ultimate strategy for dealing with its mismanagement of the housing crisis: not to try and solve it, but to lower expectations. Kiwis just can't expect to live in a house anymore like their parents did! The market (meaning the greedy landed Boomers who are hoarding all the houses) won't support that. Instead, they'll just have to accept lower living standards, despite multiple generations working their butts off.

And that's what National's lowered expectations are actually for: lower living standards. You can't expect a home anymore. Nor can you expect a decent job or clean water. National's mates have stolen those things from us, and we should just accept it.

Yeah, fuck that. Rather than accepting National's future of lowered expectations (while its friends roll in the money they stole), we have another option: get angry about it. Vote those pricks out of office and get a government which promises something better.

Policy malpractice from MfE

A plastic bag levy is an effective and efficient means of reducing litter and a minor form of environmental pollution. They've been tested overseas, and proven to be remarkably effective. But for some reason, the Ministry for the Environment hates the idea:

Local councils support it, retailers support it and the Green Party simply will not stop talking about it.

Yet a plastic bag levy does not appear to be on the National Government's radar, after the Ministry for the Environment advised against the scheme.

[...]

"1.6 billion plastic bags are used in New Zealand every year, and many of them end up in our oceans."

Roche travelled the length of the country campaigning for a phase-out scheme last year, with support from conservation advocacy group Our Seas Our Future.

"The Ministry's argument was that New Zealand is a small country and we don't contribute a lot to the marine waste, so why should we do anything."

I get that we have bigger policy fish to dry - for example, clean water and climate change (which MfE are also failing woefully on). But that shouldn't preclude acting to solve this problem. And to approach it from the position that New Zealand is a small country and therefore it doesn't matter what we do is simply policy malpractice from MfE which calls their competence into question.

It also raises doubts about MfE's political neutrality. We know their Minister, Nick Smith, hates the idea (just like he hates clean rivers, normal temperatures, and unbuilt-on land) - but the ministry wasn't advising him, but a Parliamentary select committee. And when they're doing that, they need to keep in mind who they're ultimately working for: not the Minister, but the people of New Zealand.

More torture in Fiji

Last year, Rajneel Singh was tortured by Fijian police after reporting plans to destabilise the Government found on a compute rin his internet cafe. And now they've done it again:

A Fiji businessman was left for dead after being attacked in his home on Tuesday allegedly by security forces.

Rajneel Singh had earlier blown the whistle on an assassination attempt against senior members of the Fiji government.

Mr Singh's lawyer Aman Ravindra-Singh confirmed Mr Singh was attacked in his home on Tuesday afternoon.

A video also emerged on social media showing the attack and his lawyer has confirmed it is genuine.

[...]

In the latest incident Mr Ravindra-Singh says two men in police attire arrived at Mr Singh's home while his family were out.

He said Mr Singh was beaten, a plastic bag was tied over his head, his hands and legs tied and he was left to choke.

"This was an attempted murder on Mr Singh," said Mr Ravindra-Singh.

Meanwhile, the government has restored relations with Fiji. Shame that John Key's new best friend is a torturer. We really shouldn't be talking to a regime which encourages or permits this.

More cronyism

Another day, another crony appointment for National - this time for disgraced and retiring MP Maurice Williamson:

Controversial National MP Maurice Williamson is the latest in a growing trend of MPs being awarded sought-after diplomatics postings upon retirement from politics.

Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully has named Williamson New Zealand's next Consul-General in Los Angeles, replacing Leon Grice.

He was one of a number of new diplomatic appointments around the globe, announced on Wednesday.

It comes just a month after Williamson announced he would be retiring from politics at the next election.

Which makes the payoff pretty obvious: Williamson retires, and he gets another few years sucking from the public teat, with an expanded expense account to boot. Its simply a corrupt abuse of office from a government which seems to regard our public service - because diplomats are public servants - simply as a way to reward and favour cronies. And insofar as the position of Consul-General is actually important, that corruption comes at the cost of undermining our government's diplomatic capacity (if OTOH, its not important, and is just a sinecure for washed-up former MPs, then that sounds like a strong case to disestablish the position entirely).

The amusing news is that Winston Peters is threatening to sack all of National's crony diplomatic appointments if he ever gets into power. While I'm not going to pretend he's doing this out of any principle - he pretty nakedly wants such an appointment for himself, but there's a National crony in the way - the prospect of a clean out is refreshing. And maybe we'll even be able to remove Ministers' powers to appoint ambassadors, and have those jobs done by professional diplomats appointed on merit, rather than former MPs who want a publicly-funded holiday...

Another "achievement" for National

National has given us another milestone: the most unaffordable houses in the civilised world:

New Zealand's housing unaffordability has reached another international high, in relation to how much we earn.

The International Monetary Fund's quarterly global housing watch report shows that New Zealand outpaced 30 other of the world's richest countries when house prices were compared with income during the first quarter of this year.

New Zealand hit nearly 130 points, topping an index which uses the year 2010 as its middle point.

It eclipsed Austria and Sweden, and Australia, which came 11th.

This is terrible news, which spells problems for our future. But don't expect National to do anything about it anytime soon. A clique of landed Auckland Boomers - including many National MPs - are doing very well out of this, and National isn't going to want to stop the party before they can dump the bag on some sucker. And while this means younger voters will increasingly see them as the fuckers whose policies locked them out of home ownership, like climate change, renewable energy and biodiversity, National has decided that that's a problem for a future government, not them.