A win for democracy

For the past few elections, local authorities have been obsessed with online voting as a way to cut costs. They were planning a trial at next year's local body elections. But now its been cancelled:

The proposed trial of online voting in next year’s local body elections will not proceed after the working party comprised of nine councils made the reluctant decision to halt the trial. Although the working party had recently selected a provider that satisfied all of the security and delivery requirements, the cost burden for the councils involved ultimately forced the decision.

This is the second election in a row this has happened, but its still good riddance. Online voting is fundamentally insecure, and no election conducted online can be trusted. We need our democracy to be more reliable than Microsoft Windows, and that means keeping it offline, where it can't be fucked with by two-bit script kiddies, political parties, and foreign governments. The bad news is that rather than accepting this, the local government working party still wants to press one and try again in three year's time. It would be better if they simply buried the idea for good.

WINZ undermines KiwiSaver

The idea of KiwiSaver was to encourage new Zealanders to save for their retirement. But WINZ is undermining the scheme by demanding that people use their retirement savings rather than giving them benefits:

The number of people looking to dip into their KiwiSaver funds for hardship reasons is rising sharply.

One of the scheme's default providers Fisher Funds said how to access the funds because of financial problems is now the most common query received from savers, with some savers being told to withdraw funds by the Ministry of Social Development.

Fisher chief executive Bruce McLachlan said it is an unfortunate state of affairs.

"We do have very established [social welfare] mechanisms in New Zealand already... I would like to think that is dealing with the real hardship cases, rather than people getting access to KiwiSaver."

KiwiSaver savings are not treated as "cash assets" for the purposes of the accommodation supplement, or (it seems) for the purposes of receiving temporary additional support. So WINZ's response to someone going to them and asking for help is to demand they make themselves ineligible. Its both a terrible incentive, and simply illegal, and the Minister should be telling them to stop immediately.

Member's Day

Today is the last Member's Day of the year, but it looks like it will be taken up with local business. First off, the government is ramming through its Muldoonist Tasman District Council (Waimea Water Augmentation Scheme) Bill, designed to steal part of a conservation area to enrich farmers. As if that's not controversial enough, they then plan to do the same with the New Plymouth District Council (Waitara Lands) Bill to effectively impose a Treaty settlement against the wishes of local hapu (in other words, to breach the Treaty of Waitangi).

Finally, there's the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill, which would bypass the usual process for creating Maori wards and electing members and allow Ngāi Tahu to directly appoint two members to the Canterbury Regional Council. Which is both undemocratic - they should be elected, not appointed - and creates serious conflict of interest problems. We'd be horrified at the thought of Fonterra being allowed to appoint members to a council responsible for setting policy around water and pollution, but Ngāi Tahu's dairy investments and ongoing conversions put it in the same boat. I support guaranteed Maori representation on councils, but they should be democraticly elected and proportionate to population. This proposal does not meet either criteria, and it should either be amended so that it does, or rejected.

Climate Change: Forfeiting the profits of fraud

Since 2008, the New Zealand government has pursued a climate change policy based on fraud, using dodgy or outright fraudulent Russian and Ukranian "credits" to "offset" our ever increasing domestic emissions. And we've banked the "surplus" from that fraud, and are still using it to "offset" our (still increasing) emissions until 2020. But at COP24 in Katowice, Climate Change Minister James Shaw has apparently ruled out using these credits in future:

New Zealand's Climate Change Minister James Shaw has ruled out his nation using carryover credits to count against its Paris climate target, saying such a move would make it challenging for the world to meet the important goal of reducing emissions.

Mr Shaw made the comments to Australasian journalists in a conference call on Tuesday after meeting his Australian counterpart Melissa Price during the climate talks in Katowice, Poland.

[...]

Mr Shaw declined to detail his talks with Ms Price. He said, however, it was his government's view no nation should resort to a prior period "surplus" to count against Paris goals. New Zealand would not do so "if we have any units left over".

"Paris is a completely new legal construct," Mr Shaw said, adding it was "never intended" for Kyoto credits to be carried over.

"We would discourage any country from using [them]," he said.

Which sounds good. But the devil is in the details. Shaw could be ruling out using our fraudulent "surplus" entirely, or he could simply be ruling out using it to meet Paris commitments. The former would be good, the latter would effectively be continuing the scam and continuing to profit from it until Paris kicks in. On current projections, we're expecting to use more than 30 million tons of CP1 "credit" to meet our (self-imposed) CP2 obligations - almost half a year's emissions. OTOH, at the least Shaw is committing to erasing ~90 million tons of fake credits, and that is significant. If we are to meet our Paris target, we're actually going to have to reduce emissions, rather than rely on the profits of fraud.

If this is "terrorism", we should all be terrorists

Yesterday, December 10, was human rights day. And the UK celebrated it by convicting 15 human rights protesters of "terrorism":

In a prosecution that has been condemned by human rights groups, Alistair Tamlit and Benjamin Smoke and the other members of the so-called Stansted 15 were convicted on Monday of endangering the safety of the airport in March 2017.

The court had heard how they used lock-on devices to secure themselves around a Titan Airways Boeing 767 chartered by the Home Office, as the aircraft waited on the asphalt at the airport in Essex to remove undocumented immigrants to Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone.

After nearly three days of deliberations, following a nine-week trial, a jury at Chelmsford crown court found the defendants, all members of campaign group End Deportations, guilty of intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome. They were found guilty under the 1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act, a law passed in response to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

The refugees they saved had their cases reviewed, and most had their deportation orders overturned (because it turns out that the Home Office are bigots who either refuse to believe people are gay, or ignore real threats to their lives so they can meet an arbitrary deportation quota). But the jury weren't allowed to consider that, after the judge effectively directed them to convict.

And that's British "justice" for you: protesting for human rights is now "terrorism", with a penalty of life imprisonment. But if that's the case, we have a moral duty to be "terrorists", and defend human rights against an unjust, tyrannical government.

Accountability

Over the past months we've learned of a crisis in NZTA's oversight of vehicle warrants of fitness, with garages allowed to issue thousands of dodgy warrants to unsafe vehicles and the work of truck inspectors not checked. People have died as a result of this slackness. And now, NZTA's CEO has finally accepted responsibility and resigned:

New Zealand Transport Agency chief executive Fergus Gammie has resigned.

He announced his resignation today after months of mounting pressure over the agency's failure to enforce road safety regulations.

Good. While Gammie was only CEO since 2016, he was part of this problem and he needed to go. As chief executive, the failings of the agency are his responsibility, and he has to carry the can for it. But we should also consider the role of the politicians whose penny-pinching cuts ultimately caused this problem by starving NZTA of the resources necessary to do its job. Gerry Brownlee and Simon Bridges should be being held responsible for this as well. A man died because of their cuts and their ideology. But I suspect that that doesn't impinge on their consciences at all.

A convenient failure

How many children in state care have mental health issues or have attempted suicide? Conveniently, CYFS doesn't know:

A psychiatrist says it's a "failing of the system" that Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry for Children, does not know how many children in state care have mental health issues or have attempted suicide.

RNZ asked for the figures and was told the ministry did not collate that information, and that it would not provide the data as it would be too much work.

They do record the information on people's individual files, but they don't bother keeping aggregate statistics. Which seems like a basic failure of both their core duty to care for children, and of their legal duties under the Public Records Act. On the first, you can't manage what you don't measure, and refusing to compile statistics prevents them from seeing trends and big picture problems and solutions. On the second, every government agency has a legal duty to create and maintain full and accurate records of its affairs, in accordance with normal, prudent business practice. Any competent agency dealing with children in care would collect statistics on their mental health. CYFS' refusal to do so is thus a mark of incompetence, and also a criminal offence. But when are government agencies ever held to account for those?

Protest works

For the past month France has been brought to a standstill, as members of the yellow vest movement have protested against inequality, the cost of living, and president Emmanuel Macron. And today, a week after serious riots in Paris, Macron has made concessions:

Emmanuel Macron has bowed to pressure from the street to announce a catalogue of emergency measures aimed at pacifying the gilets jaunes after weeks of civil unrest in France.

In a long-awaited address on primetime television, the president tried to talk the protesters out of further action, promising a rise in the minimum wage and tax concessions.

In a mea culpa, Macron said he had heard and understood protesters’ anger and indignation, which he said was “deep and in many ways legitimate”.

[...]

To help struggling workers, he said the government had been ordered to introduce “concrete measures” from 1 January, including increasing the minimum wage by €100 (£90) a month. Overtime would be exempt from tax and social charges, and a planned tax on pensions under €2,000 a month would be cancelled. All employers “who can” were asked to give workers a tax-free bonus at the end of the year.

The question is whether he has offered enough. Macron pointedly refused to roll back his tax cuts for the rich, and that was one of the key issues people have been protesting over. But it will also be interesting to see if the yellow vests listen. They're a leaderless movement, which means both no leaders to sell them out, and no-one who can negotiate on their behalf, so it really is going to be a matter of whether the people protesting decide to keep going in the hope of getting something better. Or just taking revenge on the political system which ignores them.

Climate Change: Punching above our weight

New Zealanders are usually proud when New Zealand ranks highly at something when measured per capita. But one measurement of that nature which we shouldn't be proud of: we're one of the worst countries in the world for per-capita greenhouse gas emissions:

New Zealand accounts for a fraction of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, about 0.17 per cent in 2014.

But, on a per capita basis we have an out-sized carbon footprint, emitting 18 tonnes of greenhouse gasses per person, every year.

That makes New Zealand the 21st biggest per capita contributor to climate change in the world. Amongst the OECD (other rich nations which we benchmark ourselves against) we have the fifth highest per capita emissions.

The primary reason for this? Our outsized agricultural sector, which produces roughly half of our emissions (46% directly, plus a fair whack of transport and energy sector emissions for processing). But 95% of that is for export, so if it was scaled back to cater for only our domestic needs, our emissions would roughly halve - putting us somewhere in the middle of the EU pack.

we can also look at it as an internal distribution issue. Those agricultural emissions are produced by and for the benefit of the ~5% of kiwis who work in agriculture. And that tiny portion of the population emits as much as all the rest of us combined. At the moment, they don't pay a cent for that - we in the 95% carry the cost of their pollution. At the very least, they should pay their own way, rather than destroying the planet at our expense.

Climate Change: Fingers in their ears

Back in October the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we have to limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, and that we had only 12 years left to do so. The stark description of the disaster we are heading for has focused minds around the world and created a push for urgent action to avoid it. Unfortunately, the denier states simply don't want to hear it:

The US and Russia have thrown climate talks into disarray by allying with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to water down approval of a landmark report on the need to keep global warming below 1.5C.

After a heated two-and-a-half-hour debate on Saturday night, the backwards step by the four major oil producers shocked delegates at the UN climate conference in Katowice as ministers flew in for the final week of high-level discussions.

It has also raised fears among scientists that the US president, Donald Trump, is going from passively withdrawing from climate talks to actively undermining them alongside a coalition of climate deniers.

[...]

when it was submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on Saturday, the four oil allies – with Saudi Arabia as the most obdurate – rejected a motion to “welcome” the study. Instead, they said it should merely be “noted”, which would make it much easier for governments to ignore. The motion has not yet been able to pass as a result of the lack of consensus.

The diplomatic language game hides the reality that this is about preventing the conference from using the report as the basis for future action. It is about pretending the problem does not exist, and watering down the response, so these countries can keep on burning and polluting and destroying the world. But given the consequences, the actions of these states are now a threat to global security. And the answer must be a global campaign to boycott and blockade them.

The British establishment's propaganda problem

From 1948 to 1978, the UK Foreign Office ran a secret domestic propaganda operation, the Information Research Department, which targeted UK trade unions and left politics under the guide of "countering communism". Forty years after that operation was shut down, it looks like they're at it again:

A secret UK Government-funded infowars unit based in Scotland sent out social media posts attacking Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party.

On the surface, the cryptically named Institute for Statecraft is a small charity operating from an old Victorian mill in Fife.

But explosive leaked documents passed to the Sunday Mail reveal the organisation’s Integrity Initiative is funded with £2million of Foreign Office cash and run by military intelligence specialists.

The “think tank” is supposed to counter Russian online propaganda by forming “clusters” of friendly journalists and “key influencers” throughout Europe who use social media to hit back against disinformation.

But our investigation has found worrying evidence the shadowy programme’s official Twitter account has been used to attack Corbyn, the Labour Party and their officials.

Now there's a surprise. Because when the establishment funds propaganda ostensibly against a foreign target, it always seems to turn into propping up the establishment and the government-of-the-day at home.

Obviously, this is completely contrary to both public service neutrality and democratic values. The Foreign office needs to shut this operation down. But more than that, it needs to be open about what other propaganda it is funding, and shut that down too. Government officials simply should not be engaging in propaganda against the political opponents of the government-of-the-day.

A victory for transparency

This morning the government announced that it will be proactively releasing ministerial diaries from January next year:

Government ministers are trying to shake the image of shady politicians holding secret meetings by opening up their diaries.

The State Services Minister will announce today that for the first time all government ministers will publicly release details of their internal and external meetings from early next year.

[...]

The details released will include the date, start and finish time, a brief description, location, who the meeting was with and the ministerial portfolio involved.

It will all be published on the Beehive website within 15 business days of the end of each month.

There's some exceptions, including of course the hat game, so ministers can pretend they're meeting with people in a "personal" or "party" capacity rather than a ministerial one. I would hope that there's some external scrutiny on this, because there are strong incentives for politicians to lie to us to cover up their dodgier meetings. The presumption should be the same as for Ministers' information in general: that everything is official by default, and that not being a ministerial meeting is something that must be proved for each case.

One other gap is that the subject of the meeting is not automatically disclosed. Meeting topics are a significant target of OIA requests and parliamentary written questions, and the failure to disclose them will mean that those requests will have to continue (the way to force disclosure is for people to file regular, standardised OIA requests after each proactive disclosure seeking meeting topics, until they decide that it is just less work to include them in the first place).

But while there are holes, this is still a lot better than the status quo, and a victory for transparency. Now we just need to see if Ministers will follow the spirit of the thing, or try and circumvent it.

New Fisk

Spare me America's tears for Jamal Khashoggi – this excuse for Trump-bashing ignores the CIA's past crimes

Same old same old

A couple of years ago, in response to a report showing pervasive criminality within the fishing industry, the Ministry of Primary Industries finally started talking about doing something about it, via remotely-monitored cameras on fishing boats. After much foot-dragging that system is now in the trial phase. But despite detecting over 130 crimes, not a single fisher has been prosecuted:

Official figures show the trial of cameras on commercial boats has identified more than 130 compliance issues - but so far, no one has been prosecuted.

[...]

From what has been viewed, the offences have been stacking up.

Of the 133 cases of suspected non-compliance, six cases of fish coded as recreational catch when they were caught with commercial nets has been found.

Also not recorded were 44 cases of non-quota species being discarded, 14 cases of seafloor material being dredged up, four cases of seabird catches and 15 catches of undersized fish.

Although five compliance investigations were launched and two are still underway, no fishing company or individual has been prosecuted.

And these are serious crimes. Making a false catch statement is punishable by up to five years in jail; the rest is worth a $250,000 fine for each offence. But its the same problem we've seen again and again and again. MPI doesn't seem to have a problem detecting these offences. What it has is a total unwillingness to prosecute them. The agency has been completely captured by the criminals it is supposed to regulate. As for what should be done about it, MPI is completely unsalvageable. It should be split up and replaced with new, enforcement-focused agencies to actually enforce the law. And when establishing those agencies, the primary rule should be not to hire anyone who has ever worked for MPI. Their internal culture is corrupt and compromised, and no-one who works in them is fit in any way to serve in the public service.

Australia: racism beats "national security"

Today the Australian house of representatives is debating the government's super-important encryption backdoor legislation, which would require services like Signal to put a government backdoor in their software. Meanwhile, the Senate is debating an amendment which would require the government to approve medical transfers of refugees held in its Pacific concentration camps. Which given the level of mental illness in those gulags, will mean most of the victims being brought to Australia. The government doesn't want this to pass, firstly because they're racists, and secondly because it will mean a vote in the House which they will lose. And that won't just be humiliating for them - it may also mean an election.

The government has spent all week talking about how vital the encryption legislation is, and how it Must Be Passed By Christmas to deal with some nameless threat to the holidays (despite it not actually coming into force until next year). But when push comes to shove, it seems that knee-jerk authoritarianism has lost out to their desire to deny basic medical care to the people they've tortured: rather than risk having to listen to doctors, they've sent the house home early for christmas, sacrificing their encryption legislation in the process. I guess it just wasn't that important after all - or at least, not as important as being irredeemable racist arseholes, and being seen to be so by the Australian electorate.

Update: Except of course you can always rely on the chickenshittedness of the Australian Labor Party. The moment the house rose, they pulled their amendments to the encryption backdoor bill, allowing it to pass without challenge. So, Australia gets to be racist and a tyranny. 'Straya!

Passed

Last night Parliament passed the Employment Relations Amendment Act. The Act is disappointing, in that it only eliminates 90 day trials for large employers and restricts union access to workplaces. At the best, it returns the law to where it was before National's 2015 assaults on workers' rights. National is acting like that is the end of the world - in other words, that they presided over some left-wing hellzone for their first seven years of government - and that in itself is a reason to pass it. But I'd be lying if I said I was happy. A Labour government can and should do so much more than this on workers' rights. The realities of coalition and NZ First's reactionary nature meant that it could not, but that simply means that the law will be revisited if Labour is ever free of their shackles. Meanwhile, this has hopefully been a lesson to them about the value of potential coalition partners. In the past, they have chosen to partner with the reactionary NZ First party, and we can see where it has got them. If in the future they have such a choice again, then I hope they would do right by their supporters and choose a partner who won't kneecap them on this fundamental issue.

Climate Change: A threat to our security

If we don't stop it, climate change threatens to cause famine, migration, war, and death. and now NZDF has recognised the obvious: that all of this is a threat to New Zealand's security:

Climate change has been identified as one of the "most significant security threats of our time," according to a new report by the Ministry of Defence.

It said climate change was "already having adverse impacts both at home and in New Zealand's neighbourhood".

The assessment identified the particular security impacts which may arise as a result of climate change.

These included vulnerable populations losing their economic livelihoods, increased food and water scarcity, malnutrition, climate migration, health-related crises, competition for resources, land disputes and the potential for increased violence from mismanaged adaptation or migration.

The Stuff report on this has a lot more detail, but it basicly means NZDF is going to have to do a lot more disaster relief, both here and in the Pacific, as well as potential "stability operations" if climate change causes severe disruption to Pacific societies. And that's going to mean changes to how we equip them. Unstated is that the best way to deal with this security threat is to prevent climate change, by supporting strong global action to reduce emissions, and taking such action ourselves. But that bit isn't really defence policy...

Climate Change: Helping the market

The government today announced a $100 million green investment fund to help new Zealand transition to a green economy:

The Government has bankrolled a $100 million green investment fund which aims to invest with businesses to reduce emissions while also helping them make a profit.

Climate Minister James Shaw said an increasing number of investors were looking to fund clean, sustainable ventures. The Government's $100 million start-up capital injection will help achieve this, he said.

"New Zealand faces a big job in upgrading our economy and infrastructure. New Zealand Green Investment Finance will help deliver financial backing to help ensure that the upgrade is fit for purpose," Mr Shaw said.

This is something the Greens have been advocating for years, and its a good idea. Financial markets have trouble supporting clean energy projects due to short-term thinking or a lack of long-term data, and so there's an obvious case for government to step in and fill the gap. Australia, the UK, and various US states have such institutions, and they've been useful in pushing their economies in a greener direction. Hopefully the NZ one will do a similar job (and be funded in future years to do it properly).

NZ should sign the UN Global Compact on Migration

One of the foundations of New Zealand foreign policy has been support for international institutions and international law. Now, the National Party is opposing that foundation over the UN Global Compact on Migration, saying that "it's not for the UN to tell NZ what to do", and threatening to withdraw from it if the government signs it. So what does this evil UN compact do?

having read the final draft version, the answer seems to be "what we're doing anyway". The Global Compact is a non-binding agreement - an aspiration statement more than anything - written in pure business quack-speak rather than the legal language of UN treaties. It basicly says that orderly migration is good, and better when migrants are welcomed by the societies they move to. It sets out some broad principles which should govern it - including human rights and national sovereignty - along with a series of objectives and "actions to be considered" in achieving them. Most of these objectives and actions are completely unobjectionable, and things New Zealand does anyway. So there's stuff like making it easy for migrants to know whether they'd actually meet the legal requirements to move to your country (duh), opposing people smuggling, and reducing the scope for migrants to be exploited. Plus boring things like working towards portable social security, mutual recognition of skills, and making it easy for migrants to send money back to their families. Through this, there's a constant focus on human rights, gender, and the rights of children, but this echoes actually-binding treaties NZ is a party to, like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and Convention on the Rights of the Child.

So what's controversial? National says it "treats legal and illegal migration in the same way". This doesn't seem to be the case. The principles section makes it clear that states may distinguish between regular and irregular migration status, including in the implementation of their commitments. And this is made clear in the section on providing basic services to migrants:

We commit to ensure that all migrants, regardless of their migration status, can exercise their human rights through safe access to basic services. We further commit to strengthen migrant-inclusive service delivery systems, notwithstanding that nationals and regular migrants may be entitled to more comprehensive service provision, while ensuring that any differential treatment must be based on law, proportionate, pursue a legitimate aim, in accordance with international human rights law.

What is a "basic service" is undefined, but New Zealand is already a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which requires us to recognise the right of all persons, without discrimination, to social security, health, education, housing, and an adequate standard of living (developing countries get to decide the extent to which they implement these rights for non-nationals. Developed countries like NZ don't). So, to the extent that we see this as an obligation, its one we signed up for fifty years ago. As for what it actually means, I'd interpret it as ruling out UK-style "hostile environment" policies (under which illegal migrants - or people who have forgotten their papers - cannot even rent homes or open bank accounts, let alone get jobs, go to school, use the hospitals, or receive benefits, in an explicit attempt to starve them out). We can't leave illegal migrants to starve in the street, or punish their children, but under that provision it seems lawful to treat them in the same manner as tourists or make them subject to the same residency requirements for services as citizens - or at least, no more unlawful than it is at present.

Iain Lees-Galloway says there's some areas of concern, such as "having identity cards for migrants, and what could be viewed as regulation of free speech". The former is an objective to implement the right to a legal identity by ensuring that both nationals have proof of nationality and migrants are issued adequate documentation at all stages of migration. The specific actions make it clear that this is largely an obligation on source countries to make it easy for people to get passports, birth and marriage certificates etc, rather than some Orwellian requirement to give migrants ID cards to mark them out from the rest of the population. As for the free speech stuff, suggested actions include enacting or maintaining anti-hate crime legislation and to cease public funding for media outlets that systematically promote xenophobia, racism and intolerance. We already have obligations to do both under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, so its hard to see any problem here.

So what's the real problem with this compact? Simple: it says immigration detention should only be used as a measure of last resort and outlaws leaving migrants to drown at sea. Racist countries such as Australia and much of Southern Europe hate this. And their racist discourse has been picked up and used locally by the National Party. Its kindof disturbing that they have those sorts of friends, but that's National for you. And so now they've become a party which explicitly opposes a rules-based international order. Except for trade in dairy products, of course.

Après moi, le déluge

Consequences of National's austerity, part 287: the public service forgot how to deal with (and was not funded for) a change of government:

Public servants responsible for the transition between governments failed to support new ministers as no-one had planned for a full scale, new administration.

Officials were caught on the hop after last year's general election, having planned for change no greater than a Cabinet reshuffle - that caused problems like being unable to supply laptops and mobile phones and a lack of experienced staff for incoming ministers.

State Services Minister Chris Hipkins ordered the review after frustration about the level of staffing and administration support ministers received from Ministerial and Secretarial Support Services (MaSS) upon taking office.

The KPMG report, obtained by RNZ under the Official Information Act, found there was a shortage of skilled ministerial staff and IT support, which "affected some ministers' ability to get their offices up and running in a timely way".

There's a problem of institutional decay here - restructuring got rid of experienced staff who knew how to handle a change of government, meaning the organisation as a whole didn't really know what to do. But the core problem seems to be underfunding: National decided that the 2017 election would lead to no more than a reshuffle, and funded accordingly. I'm not sure whether that's just arrogance or not giving a fuck, but either way it is not acceptable. Like elections, changes of government are fundamental to a democracy, and its a core capability that needs to be retained. And the obvious answer is to fund and prepare for a full change of government each election, just in case. If it doesn't happen, then some of that money will be saved - but the institution will retain the skills, and that seems to be important here. Except, of course, to penny-pinching austerity-freaks who don't care what happens if they're not elected.