An inhuman decision

Israel's Supreme Court has upheld Israel's controversial Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, which denies Palestinians any chance of gaining Israeli residency or citizenship. This is a simply inhuman decision. The purpose (and effect) of the law has been to force Israeli citizens who marry Palestinians to either leave the country or live apart - even where they have been happily living in Israel for a decade or more. It has seperated husbands from their wives, and parents from their children. And while the justification is supposedly "security", as this Amnesty International report shows, the true reason seems to be demographic - that is, concerned with managing the racial makeup of the inhabitants of Israel. And I'd have thought that Israelis, of all people, would know what that sort of thinking leads to...

Reviving lese majeste

So, the Finance and Expenditure Committee looks likely to drag former TVNZ chairman Craig Boyce over the coals over his emails. This is deeply disturbing, to say the least. It is one thing to take a strong position on the accountability of chief executives to Parliament, and to crack down on attempts to manipulate evidence to Select Committees and evade Parliamentary oversight. But according to this morning's Herald, the committee is going to apply a blowtorch because Boyce called them names. Such an "investigation", even of government employees, simply has no place in a free and democratic society.

Back in the pre-Enlightenment days, before our governments learned to fear us, Kings would throw people in jail for disrespecting them or offending against their dignity. The "crime" was called lese majeste, and in Britain at least one of the mechanisms for punishing such "crimes" was the Star Chamber. The fact that it is an elected Parliament doing it, rather than an inbred git with pretentions of grandeur doesn't make it any more acceptable. This "crime" is bullshit, and if the Bill of Rights' affirmation of freedom of expression means anything, surely it means the right to call MP's "bastards".

The Committee is treading on dangerous ground here, and it needs to pull back before it revives lese majeste. It is inappropriate in this day and age to punish people for their attitude towards politicians. It is inappropriate even to inquire into it. And any politician who thinks differently isn't just a bastard - they are a danger to every single one of us.

Blair's most urgent policy task

What is Tony Blair's most urgent policy task? Contrary to what you might think, it is not fixing Britain's NHS, or ending child poverty. No, it's gutting the Human Rights Act.

The UK's Human Rights Act is the equivalent of New Zealand's Bill of Rights Act. It implements the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights in British law, requiring courts to, where possible, interpret and apply the law so as to be consistent with those rights. The chief aim - and chief effect - of this legislation has been to prevent the British government from violating the human rights of those under its jurisdiction; the application of the HRA has (to list a few recent examples) freed suspected terrorists from indefinite detention, and forbidden the use of evidence extracted by torture, and looks set to bar the deportation of suspected terrorists to states which torture, even where the government has a "memorandum of understanding" that they will not be tortured (on the basis that they really aren't worth the paper they're written on). These rulings have incensed the increasingly authoritarian Blair government, and so now Blair is demanding that the law be gutted. According to the Observer, he wants to amend the law to require the courts to pay attention to "the rights of the community to basic security", and to allow the government to overrule the courts when they disagree with the rulings. And he describes this as one of his "most urgent policy tasks". So, the UK now has a Prime Minister who wants to remove fundamental rights and undermine the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. Again, you really have to wonder who the real threat to the British way of life is - terrorists, or Tony Blair.

One irony here is that it was Blair's government which passed the HRA in the first place, back when it cared about human rights rather than trying to stomp all over them. A second is that Blair's plan won't work. Gutting the HRA may mean the government wins in British courts - but people can always appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, who will apply the ECHR as written (rather than as Blair would like it to be written) - meaning that in cases such as arbitrary detention or deportation to torture, the British government will still lose. Someone seems to be aware of this, and a Downing Street source is quoted as saying that

A further possibility would be for Britain to consider withdrawing from specific clauses of the European rights convention if they led to court rulings which placed 'community safety' at risk.

But this is simply madness. The relevant articles - those protecting the right to life and the prohibition on torture, and banning punishment without law - are non-derogable, even in times of national emergency. The only way to withdraw from them is to withdraw from the ECHR itself, which would mean withdrawing from the EU (adherence to the ECHR being a condition of EU membership). And its not just the ECHR they'd have to withdraw from; the relevant rights are also protected in the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, where they are similarly non-derogable. Is the UK going to withdraw from those as well?

If taken to its logical conclusion, Blair's desire to free himself from inconvenient human rights legislation would turn the UK into an international pariah. But even his plans to amend the HRA are bad enough. As the Observer points out in its accompanying editorial, the HRA protects citizens from abuse by the state. Blair's desire to amend the law to remove this protection is tantamount to an admission that his government wants to abuse people. And that is not something his citizens should tolerate.

New Fisk

The long shadow of the United States

Hamilton rejects STV

Hamilton voters have voted 60-40 to reject STV and retain the bloc-vote in electing local councillors. It's a disappointing decision - STV is a superior system and gives a far fairer result - but hardly surprising given the problems processing STV results in the 2004 local-body elections. Electionz and Datamail's incompetance has poisoned people against the better system, and as a result we'll be seeing unrepresentative local councils for a long time to come.

[Hat-tip: DPF]

The politics of elimination

There's a perfect illustration of the problem with the 5% threshold in today's Herald: according to National Party environment spokesperson Nick Smith, what stopped National from gaining power last time wasn't the fact that not enough people voted for them - it was that too many people voted for the Greens. If National could have attracted just one in twenty Green voters, then the Greens would have been driven below the 5% threshold, and (all other things being equal) National would be in power.

I absolutely loathe this "feature" of our MMP system - but I loathe more those politicians who seek to game it to eliminate small parties from Parliament. This is a deliberate policy aimed at disenfranchising people and rendering their votes meaningless. Unfortunately, we're going to have to put up with it until the threshold is where it ought to be: at the level required to gain a single seat.

That aside, Smith is using this point to argue that National needs to compete more strongly for the Green vote, and proposing policy changes to try and capture those votes. This is something we should welcome. It is a Good Thing when parties actually compete for votes, and competition from National will force Labour and the Greens to respond in kind. But if National wants to capture some Green voters - or have a chance at gaining Green support after the next election - might I suggest they tackle the really big issue: climate change. Otherwise, they're simply tinkering around the edges, and literally fiddling while the planet burns...

Update: Smith's speech, "A Bluegreen Vision for NZ", is here.

Fitzmas is coming?

Rumour in Washington is that Bush's brain, Karl Rove, will shortly be indicted in the Valerie Plame leak case on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. I'm looking forward to it. More importantly, I'm looking forward to him trying to squirm his way out of prison time by rolling on his co-conspirators. Which means hopefully Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald can follow the trail all the way to the top...

Focused. Targeted. Very carefully done.

Back when it was first revealed that the Bush Administration was engaged in engaging in widespread domestic wiretapping in clear violation of US law, Republicans told us that it was a limited program which targeted only international calls from or to known or suspected Al Qaeda terrorists. General Michael Hayden - then head of the NSA, and the man Bush has nominated to head the CIA - said

This is focused. It's targeted. It's very carefully done.

Which is obviously why they have been building a database of every phone call made in the United States:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

So much for focused and targeted...

Just to put this in perspective, it is as if they had assigned every single person in the US their own personal thuggish-looking man in a trenchcoat and hat, to follow them where-ever they went and take notes on whoever they talked to. The nice young lady in the supermarket, the pizza delivery boy, co-workers, friends, family, partners, and of course those relationships people would rather keep secret (like, for example, who's been talking to certain journalists). The invasion of privacy is as astounding as the potential for abuse - and if this isn't illegal, then clearly the US Congress has not been doing its job properly.

Once upon a time, the American right was opposed to things like this. Once upon a time, they were concerned about personal liberty and the danger of an over-powerful government. Once upon a time, they could at least be respected for this, even if you loathed every other policy they had. Not any more. I'm not sure whether its because its their guy wearing the jackboots, or because they really are so frightened that they will willingly turn America into a totalitarian surveillance state to protect them from Muslims and Democrats, but either way, it is sad to see them decline so far.

Remembering Andijan

Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of the Andijan massacre, in which Uzbek soldiers murdered an estimated 700 protestors. Things began on May 10th, 2005, with a protest against the trial of 23 businessmen accused of being "Islamic extremists". The protests grew the next day, then on the night of May 12th a mob stormed the prison and a military garrison, seizing weapons and freeing the prisoners. Government troops sealed off the city, then on May 13th moved in to suppress the demonstrations. They did this by surrounding the town square, then firing indiscriminately into the crowd with automatic weapons.

In the wake of the massacre, the Uzbek government launched a crackdown on journalists, human rights activists, and political opponents. Independent media was censored or shut down, and international media driven from the country. Witnesses to the massacre were accused of "terrorism" and subjected to secret trials. Over 230 people have now been convicted in such trials, and it has been the massacre's victims, rather than its perpetrators, who have been punished. Internationally, the world's condemnation of the massacre does not seem to have been backed by firm action; in December the Uzbek Interior Minister Zokirjon Almatov was permitted to visit Germany for medical treatment, despite being subjected to a travel ban. Germany also continues to make use of the Termez air force base in Uzbekistan to support its operations in Afghanistan. The United States has not taken any action whatsoever, after initial mild criticism saw it summarily evicted from the country. This can only be described as a gross failure by the international community.

Of course, we can hardly talk; the New Zealand government hasn't uttered a word of criticism, let alone called for sanctions or prosecutions by the ICC. So much for being "a strong voice for human rights"...

The dead of Andijan are crying out for justice - and we have failed them. A year on, we should take the opportunity to correct that, by imposing sanctions on the Uzbek regime and making it clear that either they hold the perpetrators of this massacre to account - or we will.

[Hat tip: Matt Nippert]

Plugged

From the look of this, it seems the State Services Commission has identified the person responsible for leaking the broadband cabinet paper, and has begun proceedings to fire them. That seems to be a satisfactory conclusion. What matters in cases like this is how the government responds - and I don't see anything there which would call their competance into question.

Constitutions

For those of you interested in constitutional matters, over at European Tribune, DoDo has a graphical guide to constitutional systems. It's focused on European constitutions, and collapses all the finickity details such as multiple houses and such, but its still fairly clear about how power flows around. Currently, we are in the situation pictured in the second diagram, Parliamentary democracy in a constitutional monarchy. One of the key questions in the republican debate is whether to switch to the system of diagrams three or four - a Parliamentary or popularly elected figurehead President. The chief difference is that we are generally not keen on Presidential veto powers in New Zealand, preferring the position to be almost entirely ceremonial. Irish-style powers of referral to the courts or referendum before assent might fit with our system, but IMHO the public would take a lot of convincing before allowing a head of state who was anything more than a figurehead - particularly if they were not elected.

Climate change: Peter Dunne's line in the sand

Yesterday, the International Energy Agency released its five yearly review of New Zealand's energy policies, in which they expressed disappointment at the scrapping of the carbon tax and the current "regulatory uncertainty" around climate change. The call was taken up by ECO, who called for the carbon tax to be reinstated in order to restore a credible greenhouse policy. But now Peter Dunne has put his foot down, declaring angrily that

Nothing has changed since December, and United Future would consider any move to revive it as a breach of its confidence and supply agreement with the Labour ?led government

(Emphasis added)

So, that's that then. Greenhouse policy is to be held hostage by a party of fundamentalist wackos committed to allowing businesses to dump their costs on the rest of us. As a result, we will end up having to buy a substantial amount of carbon credits on the international market. But somehow, I don't think Peter Dunne will be quite so happy to take responsibility when that happens...

A victory for the Chagosians

Between 1965 and 1971, the British government committed a vile act of ethnic cleansing. Their ally, the USA, wanted to build a military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, the island and its surrounding archipelago were inhabited - something the US saw as a security risk. So, the British government forcibly depopulated the entire archipelago, imprisoning its people before dumping them penniless on a pier in Mauritius (a story told in the excellent John Pilger documentary, Stealing a Nation).

In 2000, the Chagosians won a battle in the British High Court to declare their expulsion illegal and allow their return. The British government responded with a pair of Orders In Council overturning the judgement and retroactively legalising the ban. In December, the Chagosians challenged the Orders in court and have now won again, with a pair of High Court judges declaring their expulsion "irrational", "unlawful", and "repugnant". It's great news - but tempered by the worry that the government will simply issue further Orders In Council to get its way. There's also the problem of a US veto over who gets to live in the archipelago, signed away by the UK as part of the lease agreement. But this is still a tremendous step forward for the Chagosians, and acknowledges their moral right to continue to live in the territory where they were born.

One way of fixing it II

Last month I blogged about the reported decline in petrol consumption as consumers reacted to high prices. One of my worries was that anecdote from oil companies isn't the most reliable source of information - but according to this morning's Herald, the trend is real, and is significantly affecting government petrol tax revenue:

Although the effect was delayed, consumers are now reacting more strongly than Treasury tax forecasters expected. Petrol tax revenue was 2.9 per cent less than predicted in the nine months to the end of March, and road user charges, mainly from diesel vehicles, were 4.3 per cent below forecast.

The story also reports that petrol deliveries to service stations are down almost 4 percent, but paradoxically diesel deliveries are up by an equal amount. I'm not sure who pays road user charges and who (if anyone) is exempt, so I'm not sure why the latter isn't reflected in the revenue figures.

So what are people doing? Buying smaller cars, driving smarter - and using public transport. I guess we just have to hope that the government reacts to the latter by ensuring that our public transport infrastructure can cope with the increased load. The good point is that given the length of time kiwis keep their cars, the shift to smaller vehicles will have an effect for years to come.

As mentioned in the earlier post, we'll have to wait a couple of years to see if this is reflected in CO₂ emissions - there's about a two or three year lag in calculating the greenhouse gas inventory. But this is a good sign, and shows that we have some hope of getting our transport emissions under control...

Immigration Act Review III: Detention

This is the third post in a series on the government's Immigration Act Review Discussion paper [PDF]. The review aims to completely rewrite the Act so as to "modernise" and "simplify" it - however, in practice, this "modernisation" and "simplification" seems to involve treating people unfairly while making it as difficult as possible for them to challenge their treatment.

The first post in this series dealt with Chapter 5: Decision-making, while the second covered Chapter 6: Exclusion and Expulsion. This post will cover Chapter 12: Detention.

Currently, the law allows the police to arrest and detain people where they have been served with a removal order or are to be deported, or where they have arrived and been refused entry or their eligibility for a permit cannot be determined (typically this covers cases where people, usually refugee claimants, arrive on false documentation). The conditions and duration of detention vary depending on the exact reason, but it is typically short; those arrested pending deportation or removal can be detained for only 48 or 72 hours respectively, after which immigration officials must persuade a judge to grant a Warrant of Commitment allowing continued detention for some period of time, typically a week (or up to 28 days in the case of someone refused a permit). Given the multiple different procedures and rules for detention, and the desire to standardise on one system for expulsion, there's clearly scope for procedural streamlining here - but Immigration wants to go further than that. They want to detain people for longer, with far less oversight by the courts, they want a general power to detain those in the country illegally against which no order has been served, or anyone claiming refugee status from within New Zealand rather than at the airport, and they want to detain those people themselves, rather than having to rely on the police or the Department of Corrections. In keeping with the general tenor of the review, most of these proposals ignore the human rights of potential detainees in favour of the administrative convenience for officials.

For example, the review proposes to increase the maximum period of detention without a warrant to 96 hours, or four days. Their reason is that the current period (48 or 72 hours) is too short to arrange a deportation - and much space is spent on the time-consuming administrative procedures involved. No thought is given to improving the efficiency of those procedures (there are a few obvious shortcuts which can be made) - and even less to the principle, fundamental in a free society, that any detention requires the strongest justification. Instead, they are proposing being able to throw people in jail for longer just because it is convenient for them.

It's a similar story with Warrants of Commitment. Immigration wants to increase the review period from 7 to 28 days, thus significantly decreasing oversight of the necessity of detention. Again, this is justified on administrative grounds - its just so much hassle having to go before a judge and make a case that you need to keep someone in jail. But these are short-term detainees, and the current timeframe provides a very definite deadline to work towards. Any increase in that timeframe would reduce the pressure on immigration officials to work quickly, and raise the spectre of American-style immigration detention, where people are jailed for months or years (without the usual constitutional protections) while waiting for their paperwork to be done so they can finally be deported. I do not think that we should be giving officials an incentive to be lazy where people are being kept in jail. And on a more fundamental level, I do not think we should be sacrificing the Magna Carta principle that detention must be justified simply to reduce the paperwork.

The review proposes increasing the maximum length of detention while waiting for deportation from three to six months. The justification is that it can sometimes take longer than three months to obtain travel documents. Interestingly, the review notes that both Australia and the UK reduce this problem by having arrangements with other countries allowing illegal migrants to be returned without documentation - but there is no proposal that New Zealand seek similar agreements. Immigration would rather jail people.

One of the scariest proposals is to allow the detention of anyone claiming refugee status from within New Zealand without proper documentation. This opens the doorway to Australian-style mass-detention of illegal immigrants - and ironically, at a time when Australia seems finally to be abandoning that "solution". Since when did we become Australians? And since when did seeking refugee status become a crime? This is nothing more than an attempt to deter claims, in violation of the spirit of the Refugee Convention.

Finally there's the question of who does the detaining. Here the Immigration Department wants to supplement its ability to declare places of immigration detention with the actual power to act as jailers. To some extent, they have such powers already - s140A of the Immigration Act allows the use of reasonable force to prevent those held in declared facilities from harming others, damaging property, or escaping custody - but these apply only after the issuing of a Warrant of Commitment. Initial detention still requires the use of police or prisons - which has attracted some criticism due to immigration detainees being held with criminals (a general problem for remand prisoners in our overcrowded prison system). Rather than working with police and the Department of Corrections to establish proper protocols for the treatment of immigration detainees and ensure that they are treated accordingly, Immigration's preferred solution is to cut those organisations (the ones that actually know how to run detention facilities and when the use of force is appropriate) out of the loop entirely. Instead, facilities (likely short-term holding rooms at airports) will be established and run by the Department of Immigration, and staffed by Immigration Officers. These Immigration Officers will supposedly be trained for the job, but given the low demand for such detention, it is unlikely that they will be full-time specialists - which will mean problems in ensuring that prisoners are treated properly, particularly in the event of violence. There is also the issue of oversight - the Department of Corrections has well-established (if flawed) oversight provisions to ensure that prisoners are treated lawfully and humanely, as well as established avenues of complaint. The review makes no mention of establishing similar oversight and complaint mechanisms for immigration detention. Combined, these two factors spell trouble. Ad-hoc detention by improperly trained staff who lack experience in running a detention facility and handling potentially uncooperative prisoners is simply a recipe for disaster.

Next: Chapter 10 - Compliance and Enforcement

Update: Inserted links.

HLFS out

The latest Household Labour Force Survey has been released, and it shows that the economy is still banging along, despite the Reserve Bank's best efforts to strangle it. Employment, hours worked, and the labour force participation rate continued to grow, with record levels in all. On the down side, there was a slight uptick in unemployment, but not one we should be overly concerned about yet.

Predictably, the government is crowing about these results, and they have at least some reason to. People generally want to work, and increasing employment is one of the most basic solutions to social problems (at least, if the jobs are good - and interestingly, the growth this quarter has all been in full-time rather than part-time jobs), so high employment is something they'd welcome. And OTOH, as I've said before, from a preference-satisfaction viewpoint a high labour force participation rate isn't necessarily good news, in that it may represent people working who would really rather be doing something else. The goal of government in the labour market shouldn't be to kick people into work they don't want, but rather to ensure that everybody who wants a job can get one.

This is a particular concern with the government's long-term "economic transformation" agenda. According to Jordan Carter, this involves trying to raise labour force participation to "a Scandinavian rate of close to 80%". But people are far more than just work-units to be driven to the employment market to produce higher economic statistics for governments to gloat over; they have lives and other preferences as well, which will be significantly impacted by this goal. Shouldn't we at least be being asked first...?

Guantanamo: another voice in the chorus

The UK's Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, has added his voice to the chorus calling for the closure of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, saying that its existence is unacceptable:

It is time, in my view, that it should close. Not only would it, in my personal opinion, be right to close Guantanamo as a matter of principle, I believe it would also help to remove what has become a symbol to many - right or wrong- of injustice. The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol.

(Emphasis added)

The latter is a point well made, and highlights the contradiction between America's stated values and its actual practices. But Lord Goldsmith's real reason for opposition isn't about American values, but about universal ones - and in particular the universal and inalienable right to a fair trial. Goldsmith criticises US military tribunals as lacking procedural safeguards and not conforming to international standards of justice. Unfortunately, he fails to address the most glaring point: that most of those detained in Gauntanamo won't receive even an unfair trial. Instead, they will simply be imprisoned for years, without any chance to contest the basis of their detention and without the US government ever having to present any justification.

This sort of arbitrary detention without trial is an oozing sore on the conscience of the world, and one that must be expunged. And the only way we can do it is by closing Guantanamo and giving every one of its inmates a fair trial in an open court under ordinary law. Guantanamo delenda est! Guantanamo must be closed.

Submit!

The Health Committee has called for submissions on the Human Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill. Two copies, by Friday, 14 July 2006, to

John Thomson
Health Committee Secretariat
Parliament Buildings
Wellington

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

This is a good bill and it deserves public support. If you're not sure how, there's a handy guide here.

And in other news, there is still no closing date or advertised call for submissions for either the Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill. You'd almost think the politicians wanted the whole thing to quietly go away...

New Fisk

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one

Drawn

Kate Wilkinson's Resource Management (Security for Costs) Amendment Bill has been drawn from the ballot. It's not online quite yet (and I don't have a copy) - but from the title and National's RMA policy it is about allowing the Environment Court to demand security for costs from objectors. The net result of this will be to limit access to the RMA process only to the rich. So much for "one law for all"...