Podcast online

BFM's podcast of my interview on New Zealand and Guantanamao on Wednesday is online here.

National Radio on Member's Bills

National Radio this morning had a piece on Member's Bills and the increased role they are playing in the House this term. According to Don Brash, National is aiming to have every MP have a bill in the ballot - and not just bills reflecting "some quirky personal interest", but ones pushing serious National Party policy. Meanwhile, Labour acknowledges that the tight numbers mean that they may not always be able to get their way, and that National could effectively legislate around them, despite not being in government.

It's going to be an interesting term, alright...

Anyway, I recommend listening in to the whole thing. There will also be a followup piece on Checkpoint tonight at about 6:40 or so, which you'll be able to listen to from here.

"An affront to justice"

When the British government introduced its system of "control orders" allowing terrorist suspects to be subject to house arrest, civil libertarians criticised them on the basis that they simply replicated all the most obnoxious features of the arbitrary detention regime they had replaced. The decisions would be made by a government Minister, rather than a judge, and on the basis of secret "evidence" which would not be scrutinised by any independent tribunal. This was fundamentally unfair, and incompatible with basic human rights standards dating back to Magna Carta

It seems the British judiciary agrees. A British judge conducting the first judicial review of a control order has called the entire system "an affront to justice" and ruled that it breaches human rights laws. The Independent has some particularly scathing quotes:

"The thin veneer of legality which is sought to be applied by section 3 of the Act cannot disguise the reality that controlees' rights under the Convention are being determined not by an independent court in compliance with Article 6.1 but by executive decision-making untrammelled by any prospective of effective judicial supervision," he added.

In a damning verdict on the Government's anti-terror policy Mr Justice Sullivan added: "The court would be failing in its duty under the Human Rights Act if it did not say, loud and clear that the procedure under the Act whereby the court merely reviews the lawfulness of the Secretary of State's decision to make the order upon the basis of the material available to him at that early stage are conspicuously unfair."

He said: "To say the Act does not give the respondent in this case 'a fair hearing' in the determination of his rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights would be an understatement."

Unfortunately, the law has been drafted so as to prevent the courts from overturning the Minister's decision, so despite all this, the control order remains in place. Which I think rather proves Justice Sullivan's point: control orders are an affront to justice, and a recipe for Ministerial abuse.

All the way to the Supreme Court

The case of Christopher Taunoa and Others v Attorney General, which sparked the whole row over prisoner compensation and gave us the Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Act, will be going all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court has granted leave [PDF] for both parties to appeal: the prisoners on the questions of whether they were treated in a cruel, inhuman or degrading manner or denied natural justice after they complained about their mistreatment (both in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990), and the crown on whether the amount of compensation awarded was appropriate. The case will not be affected by the Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Act, as it was before the courts before the legislation was passed.

No doubt this will cause another outpouring of wailing and gnashing of teeth from across the political spectrum, and further calls for prisoners to be denied any access to the courts. But these calls are themselves repugnant to justice. If we are to have a justice system, we must accept that justice cannot be denied to anyone, and that the law binds even the state and its servants. Otherwise, we don't have a justice system, but the depredations of an organised gang.

Nothing to do with us

The Iraqi Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, has denied that the death squads currently terrorising Iraq by disappearing, torturing, and killing people have anything to do with his Ministry. Instead, its all the fault of private security contractors.

Of course it is. That's why US troops keep catching Iraqi Police in the act of murder, and why they keep finding tortured and disappeared detainees in Interior Ministry facilities.

Jabr may really not know about the sickness that has infected his Ministry - but if so then he can only be described at grossly negligent. In a stable democracy, that would result in his resignation. In Iraq's evolving democracy, who knows?

Still no military solution

Two years ago, the Atlantic Monthly ran a "war game" to explore America's options in dealing with Iran. The depressing conclusion was that there was no military solution to Iran's nuclear ambitions. The idea that the US could use pre-emptive airstrikes to destroy Iran's nuclear programme was nothing but a fantasy - and a dangerous one at that, whose best outcome would be simply to delay acquisition of nuclear weapons, while dramatically increasing Iran's incentive to use them. Now, with the Bush Administration sabre-rattling and threatening to bomb (with nukes, even), Atlantic correspondent James Fallows has revisisted the scenario. And what he finds is even less encouraging:

That was the situation nearly two years ago. Everything that has changed since then increases the pressure on the United States to choose the “military option” of a pre-emptive strike—and makes that option more ruinously self-defeating.

[...]

The biggest change has been in what Soviet strategists used to call the “correlation of forces.” Every tool at Iran’s disposal is now more powerful, and every complication for the United States worse, than when our war-gamers determined that a pre-emptive strike could not succeed. Iran has used the passing time to disperse, diversify, conceal, and protect its nuclear centers. Instead of a dozen or so potential sites that would have to be destroyed, it now has at least twice that many. The Shiite dominance of Iraq’s new government and military has consolidated, and the ties between the Shiites of Iran and those of Iraq have grown more intense. Early this year, the Iraqi Shiite warlord Muqtada al-Sadr suggested that he would turn his Mahdi Army against Americans if they attacked Iran.

(Emphasis added)

And that's without even looking at their ability to remove their oil production from the market at a time of shortage and send oil prices through the roof. Bombing had a low chance of success and a high vulnerability to retaliation last year, and now those chances are even lower and that vulnerability even greater.

Unfortunately, Bush doesn't seem to understand this - and his constant threats of bombing are making things worse, not better:

By giving public warnings, the United States and Israel “create ‘excess demand’ for military action,” as our war-game leader Sam Gardiner recently put it, and constrain their own negotiating choices.

Or in English, by publicly threatening to bomb, there is a risk they will back themselves into a corner where they are forced to bomb simply to avoid looking "weak". This is the same sort of gross stupidity which led to World War One, and the results will be disastrous for us all.

Military action should not be an option in Iran. It will not work, and will only make things worse. The only way this problem will be solved is by negotiation, not bombing.

Cleaning up the Order Paper

Browsing the progress of legislation [PDF], I see that the government has finally taken some steps to clean up the order paper and dump old bills that were never going to be passed. The Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 2), Police Amendment Bill (No 2), and Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill - all of which were first introduced to the House between 1999 and 2001, and whose progress was then for various reasons stalled - have been discharged from the Order Paper. I guess they've finally admitted they're dead. John Carter's Kerikeri National Trust Bill (first introduced to the House in 1995) and the Conservation (Protection of Trout as a Non-commercial Species) Amendment Bill (introduced in 1998, and awaiting its committee stage and third reading since December of that year) are still around, though.

Now I'm wondering how long a bill can be stalled in parliament for. The ten years for Carter's bill is pretty impressive. I wonder if its ever been surpassed?

Must read

Billmon: Mutually Assured Dementia

Today they march, tomorrow they vote

(Image stolen from the New York Times)

That's a scene from Washington DC yesterday, where tens of thousands of people assembled to protest against a xenophobic law which would speed up deportations, make unlawfully entering the US or assisting an illegal immigrant a felony offence, and provide funds to build an Israeli-style "separation wall" on the Mexican border. And it was a scene repeated across the USA. Half a million marched in Dallas, and tens of thousands more in Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Atlanta... even Anchorage (in Alaska) saw protests. All told, over two million turned out - an unprecedented number. But more important perhaps than what they're protesting against is what they're protesting for: they want to be citizens, they want to belong. In the words of one protestor,

"We want to be legal," said Mr. Arita, a construction worker who has lived here for five years. "We want to live without hiding, without fear. We have to speak so that our voices are listened to and we are taken into account."

It's a powerful demand, and one which is already being compared to the demand for black civil rights in the 60's. There are almost 40 million Hispanic Americans - and 11 or 12 million (or around 4% of the total US population) of them are unregistered illegal immigrants with few rights and no say in how the country is run. They can mow America's lawns, clean its pools, work in its factories and meat-packing plants - but they can't vote, and will never be able to; being "illegal" means never being able to legalise your status. And that is simply intolerable in a modern democratic state.

Also powerful is their slogan: "today we march, tomorrow we vote". Illegal immigrants can't vote of course - but their legal friends, relatives, and even children can. Traditionally turnout has been low among American Hispanics (and that's low by American standards), but that may be about to change. And if it does, it will mean serious changes to American politics. I guess we'll have to wait till November to find out.

These marches are democracy in action. And we should all hope that the US responds to them as it (eventually) did to the campaign for black civil rights: with its better nature, rather than its worse one.

They're shooting them over there

Fourteen months ago, Nepal's King Gyanendra sacked his government and declared a state of emergency, suspending all basic human rights including the freedom of thought. Now, the Nepalese people have had enough. For the past six days, there have been mass protests across Nepal, backed by all political parties including the Maoist rebels. And the government's only answer is bullets. Two people were shot and wounded in Pokhara today, and another dozen in the capital Kathmandu. Three have been shot dead in as many days, hundreds wounded, and over a thousand jailed for daring to demand a return to democracy. But I don't really think this is going to do much to convince the Nepalese that their government is legitimate. At best all it can do is terrorise them into submission. Unfortunately, as far as governments are concerned, that's usually good enough.

What can we do? Unfortunately, not much. Nepal doesn't have an embassy in New Zealand to protest outside, or even an honorary consul to send messages to. As with Belarus, all we can do is wish the opposition luck and hope for the best.

Kendall-Smith on trial

Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith has gone on trial on five charges of disobeying a lawful order. His chief defence - that the orders were in fact unlawful - has been dismissed by a pre-trial hearing, so things look pretty bleak. If convicted, he may face jail, and given the publicity the case has attracted and the British government's seeming desire to clamp down on refuseniks, I expect them to throw the book at him. But I guess we'll find out in three days.

Messages of support for Kendall-Smith can be sent via his lawyer, Justin Hugheston-Roberts, at justin@roselaw.co.uk.

Pushing for action on climate change

In my last post on the Climate Change and Governance Conference, I quoted Business Council for Sustainable Development chairman Peter Neilson saying

When I was a Minister [back in the Rogernomics days - I/S], I would get backbench MPs coming to me because they had five handwritten letters from constituents saying that [a particular issue] was a crisis for them.

I think we should take Mr Neilson up on this, and start lobbying MPs. And to get things started, I've created another pledge on Pledgebank, saying

I will write to five Members of Parliament demanding credible action on climate change and a cross-party accord to provide policy certainty but only if 20 other New Zealanders will too.

You can sign it here. Contact details for MPs are here.

Twenty people doesn't sound like many, but its more than any pledge I've set up so far, and it will cover a fair number of MPs. I'm still feeling out how many people can be mobilised this way, and I want to set achievable pledges rather than aiming immediately for a large number of people and then being disappointed.

Update: Bumped so it isn't lost in the noise. There have been 4 signups so far over the weeknd; only 16 more to go.

8/4/2006: Bumped again. There are now 17 signups; only three more to go.

11/4/2006: Success!

Advancing the agenda

Tony Milne (formerly of I See Red) has an interesting speech up on Scoop on the subject of “Renewal” - The role of Young Labour in a third term Labour-led Government. Much of it is concerned with Young Labour and how it must be the driving force to renew Labour in office, providing it with new policies and broadening its support base. But there's also a fair bit on the broader progressive agenda and how to support this as well. Here, Tony has three key ideas:

1. Building a (progressive) mass movement: The long term trend in New Zealand and in many western democracies is one of declining party membership figures. This is often taken as a sign of growing disinterest in politics. But at the same time, there has been a massive increase in the membership of "issue" NGOs such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, and massive support for single-issue international campaigns (look at Make Poverty History, for example). And these are inherently political causes. So it's not politics people are turning away from - but parties. Unfortunately, Tony misses the chance to address the causes of this problem (parties being seen as undemocratic and isolated from the people they supposedly represent) in favour of pushing for a membership drive and building closer links with other progressive groups. From the other side of the fence, those progressive groups themselves should be looking for ways in which they can use Labour and other parties as vehicles, without being fatally compromised or coopted.
2. Leading the political debate on "the next generation of issues": This is framed mostly in terms of Young Labour leading the rest of their party - but that leadership could also come from outside. Labour (and every other party) will develop policies on these issues, and their agendas will shift in response to public pressure, perceived need, and whether they see a policy niche to exploit. We should be trying to pull those positions in our favoured direction.
3. Building an ideas infrastructure: This has been something I've been pushing for a while: over the last 30 years, the American Right has built an array of think tanks to spread and frame its ideas and influence policy. The American left's inability to keep up has left them at a significant electoral disadvantage. In New Zealand, the right already has a head start (Maxim, the Centre for Independent Studies, the Business Round Table and all their little single-issue spinoffs like the Road Transport Forum). If we want to avoid the same fate as the American left, we are going to have to match them. Unfortunately, Tony is talking to Young Labour, who don't have any money, and so the best he can suggest is supporting their "summer school" and an internal party debating group. While this is better than nothing, I'm not sure that talented amateurs are going to cut it in the long run.

There's also one key piece of advice which applies regardless of where you stand:

each of us, including me, often feels a strong sense of frustration at the speed of chance, and that our ideas whether policy , or structural, or campaign, aren’t being implemented.

There are two responses.

Moan a lot. Get despondent. Possibl[y] even give up and leave.

Or respond by talking and influencing those who are in a position to make a difference, and most importantly, be the change that you want to see.

If you see a problem, help fix it.

If you have an idea, just do it. Or find someone else who is passionat4e about it, and get them to take charge of doing it. Otherwise my message is simple, it won’t happen.

This is precisely what I've been trying to do here, though encouraging lobbying and submissions on legislation - and I'd encourage everybody else to do the same. Politics is a participate or perish game; nobody will stand up for your ideas but you, so if you want to have them taken into account, you need to voice them somehow. What I'll add is that things are so much easier with friends, and simply asking may strengthen your voice significantly.

Interview

My post on New Zealand and Guantanamo seems to have attracted some attention (probably due to its being frontpaged on Scoop for the last day or so). I've just recorded an interview with 95 bFM on the subject, and you'll be able to hear it on "The Wire" tomorrow. IIRC Scoop usually posts a timetable around 11am, so you'll know when to tune into their live feed.

I interview badly, and despite my efforts to prepare, I forget things. Most notably, that the European Parliament condemned Guantanamo and called for its closure. Bugger.

Update: The interview should be played about 13:15 tomorrow, and available as a podcast shortly afterwards.

A tie?

Italy went to the polls over the last two days, and I've spent too much time this morning watching the results trickle in. And the outcome? A tie. Berlusconi's "House of Freedoms" has narrowly held the Senate, but the left-wing Union coalition has the narrowest of leads in the Chamber of Deputies - 27000 votes from a turnout of 37.5 million. If this holds (and its likely to), then the top-up seats Berlusconi intended to benefit him will instead go to the Union. As for what this means for a government, I have no idea - but whichever way it goes, the government will be weak, and topple at the drop of a hat. Italy may be going back to the polls within a year.

Three bloody years

Three years ago yesterday, that statue of Saddam was toppled in Baghdad, marking the end of the invasion and the beginning of the occupation. What have those three years achieved? I could reel off the statistics - 34,000 confirmed civilian deaths by violence; an estimated 100,000 excess civilian deaths in the first 18 months, over and above the number killed by Saddam and dying of malnutrition and preventable disease under the cruelty of sanctions; 1300 dead due to "sectarian violence" last month alone, the per-capita equivalent of a September-11th-scale attack every single week - but I think the most telling point is this: on April 9th, 2003, Iraq was (nominally) a totalitarian dictatorship, where opponents of the government faced torture and death at the hands of a death squad. Today, it's still happening, only to different people, and by the agents of an elected government rather than an unelected one. What have all those people died for? So Shi'ites can apply the cordless drills to the kneecaps and elbows of Sunnis, rather than vice-versa?

The fact is that the invasion has changed nothing - and killed a hell of a lot of people to do it. And they're still dying. When I browse BBC, barely a day goes by without a story of another series of car bombs (killing 6 on Saturday, 79 on Friday) or more bodies found in a rubbish dump, hands bound behind their backs, shot execution style in the head, and bearing the scars of torture on their bodies. And meanwhile, politicians are falling over themselves to deny the stunningly obvious: that there's a low-level civil war going on, and that there has been for quite some time.

America has broken Iraq. It wasn't good to start with, but they've managed to make it worse. And Iraqis will be dying for their mistake for some time to come.

Success!

I'm pleased to report that my pledgebank pledge to get people to lobby MPs demanding credible action on climate change and a cross-party accord to provide policy certainty has been successful. Now to write some letters...

Le CPE est mort

Over the last month, millions of French students and young people have been protesting against the government's Contrat Premiere Embauche, an employment law which would have effectively stripped all employment rights for those under 26 (like our Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill, only with an age limit and the period of employer impunity would last for two years rather than 90 days). The French have yelled, they have sung, they have marched in the streets (and yes, occasionally rioted). And today, the French government backed down:

French President Jacques Chirac has announced that the new youth employment law that sparked weeks of sometimes violent protests will be scrapped.

He said it would be replaced by other measures to tackle youth unemployment.

Those measures are yet to be announced, but the "replacement" is simply a face-saving measure for the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin. For all practical purposes, this law is dead and buried, with a stake through its heart and a croissant stuffed in its mouth.

Its a stunning victory for the French, and a reminder to all of us that if you protest loud enough, the government can't ignore you. Hopefully Unite and the other unions will remember that when Mapp's bill comes back before Parliament (yeah, and hold those protests outside the Maori Party's electorate offices, just so they get the message).

Submit!

The Local Government and Environment Committee is seeking submissions on Jeanette Fitzsimons' Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill. 20 copies, by Thursday, 1 June 2006, to

Local Government and Environment Committee Secretariat
Parliament Buildings
Wellington

Or you can email SC-LGE@parliament.govt.nz.

A submission can be as simple as a letter saying "I support / oppose this bill" and stating your reasons why. There's a guide here if you need further help.

Some "Labour" government

For the past month, Correction Inmate Employment instructors belonging to the Corrections Association have been engaging in low-level industrial action in an attempt to get their pay increased for the first time in four years. Part of this struggle has involved the Corrections Association's President, Beven Hanlon, explaining his unions stance in the media. And so today, the Department of Corrections threatened to fire him for it. Which immediately begs the question: what the hell sort of a "Labour" government is this? And isn't this crossing the line into punishing an employee for union activity, in breach of the Employment Relations Act?