Unreformable

Lords reform has failed in the UK. And moves to finally get equal-sized electorates (meaning equal-value votes) have failed along with it. The message is clear: Britain's archaic, unfair, and unrepresentative political system is now pretty much unreformable by democratic means. A combination of conservative dinosaurs who oppose all change and corrupt politicians who put electoral self-interest ahead of democratic principle prevents it.

This isn't just a tragedy which undermines the UK Parliament's legitimacy - it is downright dangerous. When change can no longer be pursued democratically, people will seek it by other means. And that, historically, has not been pretty.

More criminal bankers

Today's criminal banker story: Standard Chartered Bank is alleged to have schemed with Iran to launder money and evade financial sanctions for nearly a decade:

The New York State Department of Financial Services said that the bank hid 60,000 secret transactions for "Iranian financial institutions" that were subject to US economic sanctions. It labelled UK-based Standard Chartered a "rogue institution".

This goes well beyond merely looking the other way on dubious transactions, to actively falsifying information to hide them. And its not just a few bad apples: this was written up as official policy by senior management. They're estimated to have laundered around US$250 billion over the last decade, collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for doing so. And why wouldn't they? After all, its not like they'll ever be held to account. While the bank may be fined, or even shut down, that price will be paid by its shareholders, not its management. The people responsible will simply trigger their golden parachutes and depart to continue their criminal career in another financial institution.

When corporations engage in illegal behaviour on this scale, it tells us that the incentives around corporate malfeasance are all wrong. If we want to stop this sort of criminal behaviour, we need to focus penalties where they belong: on criminals, not innocent bystanders.

An improvement

Earlier in the year, a select committee reported back on the government's Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. The bill would create an environmental management framework for New Zealand's EEZ, replacing the ad-hoc system we currently have under the Continental Shelf Act 1964, allowing things like undersea mining and offshore oil drilling to be regulated.

Except of course that this is a National government, to whom "environmental protection" is a dirty word. So, in keeping with their Orcish impulses, their legislation did not protect the environment, instead offering their phantom of "balance" between environment and economic development - the same language they used to justify their efforts to dig up our National Parks. The public cried foul - and now it seems that the government has finally listened, with major amendments to the purpose clause and a significantly strengthened penalty regime.

This is a major backdown, and it goes some way to addressing concerns about the bill. At the same time, its not enough. As the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's submission on the bill makes clear, the government is trying to undermine the internationally accepted precautionary principle, as well as environmental protection in general. And this is not something we should let them get away with. This is major legislation, which is going to set the environmental tone for decades to come, and its important we get it right. Otherwise, we're simply setting ourselves up for disasters like Deepwater Horizon, which our environment cannot afford.

New Fisk

Hijab defection drives wedge into fractured party

Kiwis support marriage equality

TVNZ released its latest ONE News Colmar Brunton Poll on Sunday, showing that 63% of kiwis support marriage equality. But its a more interesting picture when you delve into the demographics [PDF]. They show a strong divisions by age, by gender, and by beliefs. Women are more likely to support equality than men, and the young and godless are much more likely to support it than the old or god-bothered. But even then, support amongst the over-55s and those who identify themselves as religious is still 50-50. Even in small towns and rural areas there is strong majority support. The only group strongly opposed is men (for which I blame rugby meathead culture).

In short, the public wants this. The question is whether the politicians will listen.

Correction: I'd misread the results for men due to the colour-coding; men are in favour as well. So there's no group strongly opposed at all.

The value of proactive release

The government released its quarterly dump of Ministerial expenses on Thursday. I've spent the last hour or so going through the credit card statements, and I'm impressed. The picture that emerges is one of Ministers spending money reasonably and appropriately. There's a few amusing bits - Steven Joyce's lonely snickers bar habit (is he not satisfied?) - but very little really outrageous. Compare this with the pattern of a few years ago when these releases started, and it seems that Ministerial abuse of expenses has decreased significantly. Which both shows the value of such proactive releases, and builds trust in government.

The exception, of course, continues to be Murray McCully. He seems incapable of checking into a hotel room without several substantial charges marked "beverage" appearing on the bill (note: this is not drinks with dinner, it is drinks alone). Now, he may have a $50 a night coffee habit. But it reads like he's spending a lot of time in hotel bars drinking our money. Then of course there's the big dinner habit - this time round, an NZ$1200 dinner for 7 in Bali, including NZ$600 for four bottles of wine (and its Australian wine, at that). He hasn't beaten his NZ$233 record for a single bottle, but the average price of those is still well beyond what is reasonable, even given his role.

Proactive release of expenses relies on Ministers having a sense of shame to improve behaviour. But McCully doesn't. He's an uncorrectable recidivist, and its time we dispensed with his services.

Time for a Nuclear Weapons Convention

Today is Hiroshima Day, on which we remember the US's destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima in the world's first atomic attack. The bombing was an atrocity and a crime against humanity. So its particularly appropriate that today the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee is recommending [PDF] that the New Zealand government actively support moves for a Nuclear weapons convention outlawing the development, production, testing, stockpiling, use, or threat of use of nuclear weapons.

The recommendation is the result of a petition of Edwina Hughes of Peace Movement Aotearoa, calling on the government to take a leadership role in fast-track negotiations, as it had done on cluster bombs. This would build on our long history of opposing nuclear weapons and supporting disarmament generally.

Unsurprisingly, MFAT - which has generally opposed all that good work out of a desire to toady to the USA - opposed this petition. Having listened to their evidence, the Committee disagreed:

On balance we believe that the time is right for the New Zealand Government to support a nuclear weapons convention. We see New Zealand’s geopolitical role as one of pushing the boundaries towards peaceful resolutions. It has been traditionally ahead of the pack in matters of disarmament, and this is a good opportunity to take an active role regarding the abolition of nuclear weapons, as it did regarding cluster munitions. New Zealand has had a significant impact in this area and we look for this to continue.

While New Zealand is involved with the New Agenda group, their talks are at an impasse. This presents an opportunity to align ourselves with like-minded countries such as Costa Rica and Malaysia. While the ministry says our energies are best spent on measures to achieve small practical steps, we believe a more forthright and proactive approach to the issue is appropriate. The President of the United States recently provided momentum by articulating a vision of a world without nuclear weapons, and we believe now is an opportune time to push for all countries to abandon such weapons.

While we acknowledge the difficulty, complexity, and cost of negotiating a convention, we believe New Zealand should move beyond a position of general support to the forefront of negotiations towards a nuclear weapons convention.

This is good to see. Change doesn't happen by no-one speaking out. Someone has to stand up and argue for it. And on this issue, we should be that person. Its part of who we are as a country. The question now is whether the government will listen.

Not worth it

Over the weekend, we were told that another two kiwi soldiers had died in Afghanistan. The total New Zealand body-count is now seven, five of them in combat.

The politicians are all spouting the usual crap: bravery, honour their sacrifice, dangerous job, sympathy for the families, and this is being reflected in the media coverage. Meanwhile, this tide of political sympathy means our media are failing to ask the question they should be asking: were these deaths "worth it"? And sadly, the answer to that is a resounding "no".

These soldiers did not die to defend New Zealand. They died in the name of better relations with the United States. Its just a modern version of blood for butter, with a different hegemon to toady to.

They did not die for the freedom of Afghans. They died defending a corrupt, theocratic regime, little different from the one the Americans overthrew in 2001. They died so that rape victims can be forced to marry their rapists and people can be jailed for translating the Koran. They died defending torturers.

They did not die "making a difference". While the Provincial Reconstruction Team has been doing some limited aid work in Bamiyan province, that will all be washed away when we leave - to the extent that the people who work with us expect to be killed and have applied for asylum in New Zealand.

None of this is worth the death of a single New Zealand soldier. And the politicians who pretend that it is need to be held to account for their lies.

New Fisk

Syria's ancient treasures pulverised
Assad's merciless assault risks wiping out both his country's future – and its past

Dunne on alcohol pricing

Last month, Peter Dunne gave an interview on TVNZ's "Q and A", in which he attacked the concept of minimum alcohol pricing, saying

I don't support a minimum pricing regime as currently proposed... putting my hat on as Associate Health Minister for a moment, a lot of the material that I've seen from other jurisdictions raises more doubts than support for the issue of minimum alcohol pricing

Someone was curious about this, and used FYI, the public OIA website, to request this advice. Dunne responded with a collection of briefing papers. So what does this advice say? That

International reviews have concluded that increasing the price of alcohol is one of the most effective strategies to reduce the consumption of alcohol and, therefore, alcohol-related harm.

The message is consistent across all the advice released. It does not just endorse minimum-pricing, it explicitly recommends its introduction, via a regulation allowing the Minister of Justice to set such prices at a later date (the delay being so they can hash out the final introduction details in light of moves in the UK). There is no doubt in any of the advice about the efficacy of the move, and no evidence at all from other jurisdictions raising such doubts.

Dunne mentions several other sources he recalls reading on the issue: the law Commission's report on Alcohol and our lives, ALAC's submission on the Law Commission's issues paper, the National Committee for Addiction Treatment's submission on the Alcohol Reform Bill, and the Drug Foundation's factsheet on alcohol pricing. All of these explicitly support a minimum price.

The conclusion from this: either Peter Dunne doesn't actually read the advice he was given on alcohol pricing, or he lied about it to please his booze-industry backers. Either way, I am not impressed.

OIA Review: More appalling conclusions

I've been reading more of the Law Commission's review of the Official Information Act [PDF], this time on resourcing and charging. The first is about how agencies cope with large and time consuming requests. As expected, government agencies go through their usual laundry-list of complaints: "fishing expeditions" (AKA "people wanting to know stuff"), multiple-agency requests (AKA "people wanting to know who knows stuff"), and repeated requests (AKA "people wanting to know stuff responding to hyper-legalistic games from Ministers"). They believe it is deeply unfair that an unnamed agency has to handle as many as 129 requests in a year - that's one every three days - and that recourse to existing administrative refusal grounds is deterred by the threat of adverse publicity (AKA "being accountable to the public for your OIA decisions").

Naturally, the Law Commission swallows all of this shit whole:

The importance of freedom of information is beyond question. But the expenditure of public money on this scale must be questioned.

They then approvingly quote the Cabinet Office that answering large requests

places undue emphasis on the principle of the progressive availability of information without an equivalent focus on the rider that this is 'thereby to enhance respect for the law and to promote the good government of New Zealand.'

..."good government" apparently being all about secrecy and cost-saving, rather than transparency and accountability.

As for the Law Commission's solutions to this "problem", they propose strengthening administrative withholding provisions, in particular by expanding the "substantial collation and research" clause to include time spent reading and redacting - that is, withholding - information. So excessive secrecy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; agencies will be able to refuse requests basically because it will be too much work for them to be secret - work that could be reduced or avoided if they were less secretive.

The other solution the Law Commission proposes is charging. At present, agencies almost never charge for information, due to either a commitment to transparency, it being too much work, or a desire to avoid adverse publicity. In the past eight years of requests, I've been asked for money only a handful of times, almost always by local authorities seeking to deter requests. While it never explicitly says so, the Law Commission pretty clearly wants to change that, and see wider use of charging. In particular, they want agencies to be able to charge requesters for the entire process - meaning they can charge for their own secretive practices - and they want to end the de facto exemption for political party research units. The discussion of the latter shows no understanding of the democratic role this fulfils, or how it helps agencies be properly accountable to Parliament (and through Parliament, the people of New Zealand). Instead, its all about limiting costs, deterring requests, and making life easy for bureaucrats.

Again, these are appalling conclusions, whose primary effect would be to roll back transparency, and hence accountability. The Law Commission should be deeply ashamed that it has reached them.

An economist admits fault

A bank of England economist has blamed economists for the financial crisis. His reasoning?

“I think one of the great errors we as economists made was that we started believing the assumptions of economics, and saying things that made no intellectual sense. We started to believe that what were assumptions were actually a description of reality, and therefore that the models were a description of reality, and therefore were dependable for policy analysis.

“With hindsight, that was a pretty significant error.”

(Emphasis added).

Non-economists have known for a long time that the basic, underlying assumptions of economics - omniscience, rationality, total self-interest - are bunk. The question now is whether this crisis will cause the profession to wake up to that fact, or whether they'll cling to their discredited ideology like millennial Christians after a predicted end of the world fails to occur. Either way, the message is pretty clear: we should stop listening to them until they start talking sense.

The desired effect

Last year, we learned that Treasury had been behaving like bankers, accepting lavish gifts and corporate hospitality from the people they were meant to be representing us against. The public scandal forced Treasury to accept proactive disclosure of such bribes, and to place strict limits on the acceptance of hospitality. Now, that regime is having the desired effect:

Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf turned down several invitations to schmooze with private sector high-flyers in the first six months of the year, limiting the risk he will be accused of corporate cronyism.

Makhlouf accepted dinner invitations from the Department of Prime and Cabinet and the Governor-General in the six months ended June 30, but shied away from other offers, according to his latest expense claims.

He declined offers of theatre tickets from Craigs Investment Partners, which is one of the firms involved in the government's mixed-ownership model programme, and Deutsche Bank, and said no to drinks with the board of Bank of New Zealand, and didn't attend a farewell for KPMG's Andrew Dinsdale.

[...]

Mahklouf also turned down dinner with officials from the Ministry of Science and Innovation and a dinner date with the Lord Mayor of London Alderman David Wootton.

This is a positive outcome. Our public servants must not only be non-corrupt, they must be seen to be so. Accepting corporate hospitality undermines that perception, which is why the SSC forbids it. If Treasury staff want to behave like bankers, they can bloody well piss off and work for a bank.

OIA Survey: First results

For the past two years, I've done an annual survey of Ministers and government departments, requesting their raw OIA tracking logs and using them to compute performance statistics. I'm doing it again this year, and the first results have been trickling in.

Unlike previous years, I've decided to put the data straight on the web via Google docs. You can read it here. Its still very much a work in progress - I've only done half the Ministers so far, and no departments; it will be gradually updated over the next few weeks as I process the data and the final results trickle in.

However, there's already some useful results. Both Chris Finlayson and Gerry Brownlee are being true to form - one good, the other abysmal. And David Carter has emerged as a contender for "New Zealand's least transparent Minister", handling only 46.2% of requests within statutory limits.

(An explanation of terms: a request is excluded if it has been cancelled or the data on it is incomplete. It is "outstanding" if it was not answered at the time of the survey: 1 July 2012 (this is just the churn in the system, and a picture of overhead). It is late if it is not answered within the statutory time limit (20 working days plus extensions). It is "late and incomplete" is it was not answered by the time of the survey, and was overdue. Mean and median times are computed from completed requests, and do not account for "late & incomplete" ones).

Obviously, timeliness is just one way of measuring OIA compliance, and a pretty basic one at that. Ideally, we'd be able to look at quality of decision-making as well: whether Ministers and Departments withheld any information, and whether the withholding grounds were correctly applied. But information on that isn't so easily available (it would require looking at actual responses, which could raise privacy issues), and interpreting it raises judgement issues as well. So, I've gone with what is easily measured, with an acknowledgement that this is not the whole picture. If people want a better picture, then we'll need a government body to do ongoing monitoring.

A timely reminder

Currently, the government is rushing to sell off Mighty River Power and other state assets to its cronies. Meanwhile, the Herald has a timely reminder of what happened last time the government engaged in asset sales:

"And there it was: the greatest coup of my business career, the chance to make serious money," crows Alan Gibbs as he pulls off the sale of the century, taking state-owned enterprise Telecom off the government's hands in 1990. Three years later he and business partner Trevor Farmer get their big payday when they stump up about $200 million for 112 million Telecom shares. They immediately sell 67.5 million shares for $256 million, making a cool $56 million profit. Plus, having bought at $1.81 and sold at $3.80 per share, the balance of their shares is worth about $170 million. An asset sale deal close to heaven.

Its a perfect example of the corruption inherent in the process, which sees insiders and cronies enrich themselves at the expense of the public.

Don't let it happen again.

A stupid threat

Having been told to wait by the Waitangi Tribunal, the government is now threatening to go ahead with its asset sales anyway:

"We have today asked the Tribunal to provide its recommendations and reasoning by 24 August," English said.

That would allow the Government proceed with the share float in the first week of September.

[...]

But he suggested the float would go ahead in the first week of September regardless of whether the tribunal reported back early.

"We would do this on the basis of all the information available to us at that time."

Its a stupid threat, and an overt display of bad faith. And if they actually try and follow through with it, it will result in a High Court injunction quicker than you can say "New Zealand Māori Council v. Attorney-General (1987)". But I guess that's what you get when privileged white guys don't get your own way: a lot of threats and pouting and foot-stamping.

The Treaty process is more important than National's PR-based political timetable. If National cannot understand that, then they are simply not fit to govern this country.

So much for that argument

Yesterday, Pacific Fibre cancelled its plans for a second international fibre-optic cable, after failing to raise enough capital. The business pages are full of the implications of Telecom's continued monopoly on international bandwidth, but meanwhile they have missed something important: this is a stunning repudiation of the government's asset sales plans.

One "justification" for asset sales is that the sharemarket is small and kiwis need something to invest in (which when you think about it is a pretty strong criticism of the talents of our local business class). Well, kiwis just had that opportunity, and they didn't take it. So if the market won't front up $400 million for a piece of infrastructure, why does the government think they will shell out over ten times that?

The answer, of course, is risk. Pacific Fibre would have had to build something. State assets are already there, and already producing monopoly rents. "Investing" in them is simply parasitical ticket-clipping, nothing more. But that, sadly, is all our local business community seems capable of.

The government should not be supporting this lazy, incompetent business culture by providing them with further companies to ruin. If they want a strong, deep capital market, then they can build it. That is, after all, what capitalism is supposed to do. If it can't, then I think the problem lies with business, not with the government.

Charter schools are bad schools

The government has announced the framework for its new charter - sorry, "partnership" - schools. The core details?

• No requirement to teach the national curriculum
• No requirement to hire trained staff
• No requirement to pay those staff the negotiated collective rate

The upshot: deunionised schools, employing poorly-paid, unregistered "teachers" to teach quack like creationism, all funded with taxpayer's money, of course. The students of such schools will get a second-rate eduction of little relevance to the modern world, while their "sponsors" make off with fat, taxpayer-guaranteed profits.

And naturally, these schools are being trialled in poor areas first. John Key and his fellow Cabinet cronies would never dream of sending their precious kids to such institutions. But then, this isn't about giving kids a good education; its about giving public money to National's cronies, while locking in the advantages of those at the top.

Nanaia Mahuta hits it on the head:

"You wouldn't let an untrained doctor treat your child, or let anyone design your house. So why do John Banks and Hekia Parata think it is okay to have untrained teachers in front of children in our school's classrooms?"

Its a fascinating question, and I'd love to see the answer to it.

Submit!

The Government Administration Committee has called for submissions on Holly Walker's Lobbying Disclosure Bill. Submissions can be made online at the link above, and are due by Friday, 5 October 2012.

This is an important bill with significant potential to clean up our political system and limit corruption. Its vital that we show the politicians that we want clean and open politics, rather than the current practice where policy is heavily influenced by secretive, unaccountable lobbyists.

Entirely predictable

Back in the 90's, National cut the public service to the bone and sacked thousands of public servants. But because the work still needed to be done, the result was departments hiring the people they'd just sacked to do the same jobs they used to do at inflated consultant rates.

Fast-forward 15 years. National is back in power, and is cutting the public service to the bone. And so departments are... hiring the people they've just sacked to do the same jobs they used to do at inflated consultant rates.

Its an entirely predictable outcome, and one which renders any "savings" made purely nominal. Sure, they've got a staff member off the books, helping Tony Ryall make his "cap". But the cost of that is paying the same person two or three times as much to do the same job, while also eroding public service capability and professionalism.

Wouldn't it have been better simply to keep them on?