Empty, entitled, arrogant, and exploitative

Another day, another piece about the problems of Labour's "small target" strategy. Today its The Spinoff's Joel MacManus, who argues that Chris Hipkins is batting for a draw. Stripped of the sporting metaphor, the basic argument is that Hipkins has "been so focused on negating the case against Labour that he never built a cohesive argument for Labour." His popularity has declined since he was defeated in 2023 because he's been too afraid to say why he should be in charge. And rather than fighting to win the election, Labour is relying on its prospective coalition partners to win it for them - which is going to create problems:

With Labour batting for the draw, the responsibility of playing for the win (and proposing an actual alternative policy suite) has fallen to its potential coalition partners. Opportunity has been picking up disaffected National voters in recent polling, the Greens are rallying progressives, and Te Pāti Māori’s overhang strategy is tilting the maths in the left bloc’s favour. Labour is just…. there.

[...]

If the left bloc manages to form a government after this election, it will be because Hipkins played a heroically disciplined innings. Labour could snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat. But that may be all it is – a draw. When you take the reins of government without any plan for what you’ll do, is that really a victory at all?

So, basically what happened in the UK with Keir Starmer.

But the UK had FPP and we have MMP, which means any future Labour-led government will be a coalition. McManus (like Daalder before him) points out that Labour "could end up in the same trap as National, with minor coalition parties setting the agenda because they’re the only ones who have one." Labour of course will try and deny this, and are already purporting to veto their partners policies. Which, from a party which is bringing no policies of its own to a coalition, which refuses to fight for victory, and is effectively demanding other parties win the election for them and put them in power, shows a certain level of entitlement and arrogance.

In fact, once you start looking at it like that, it leads to some unpleasant conclusions. Labour is demanding that its potential coalition partners do all the hard work in the election. Claiming the right to set and veto policy is effectively claiming all the profit from that work, while denying the people who did it the fruits of their labour. Which is exactly the sort of exploitative relationship the "labour" party was founded to destroy.

Whining at an open door

Ten weeks till the election, and Labour is in full pre-election cringe mode. They're so afraid of being seen to stand for something, let alone something that Rimmer might consider "left-wing", that they're ruling out policies in advance. Paying for our roads. Paying for local government. Restoring fees-free tertiary education. Shanking Netflix. Notably, they've ruled out all their potential coalition partners' tax plans - the Greens' wealth tax, TOP's land tax, and Te Pāti Māori's stamp duty on house speculators - which raises the question of how they expect to form a government while offering their coalition partners nothing. And meanwhile, while they're doing all of this cringing and cowering from the word "tax", it turns out that the public will happily support higher taxes for better public services:

A survey of 1600 people has found two-thirds of New Zealanders are willing to pay more tax for better healthcare - particularly when it comes to cancer.

The survey, funded by the Cancer Society and published as a nine-paper series in the New Zealand Medical Journal, also found consensus across voters for all major parties about the need for tougher regulation on tobacco and unhealthy foods, and more urgent action on skin cancer prevention, cancer screening and treatment.

A collaboration between University of Otago cancer researchers and the Cancer Society, called Te Rōpu Rangahau ō te Kāhui Matepukupuku, undertook the study.

This is not exactly a new finding. And it suggests a very obvious political slogan of "tax the rich to pay for the health system". But Labour has so afraid of being accused of "taxing and spending" (as opposed to National spending without taxing) that they refuse to take the opportunity which is staring them in the face. They're simply standing in front of an open door leading to government, refusing to take it, while whining about how they can't get inside. And then they wonder why they're stuck on 30%. I'd suggest that part of the reason is that and Labour is not giving people any reason to vote for them. More brutally, no-one likes a chickenshit. And as Marc Daalder points out, their "small target" strategy effectively leaves the entire political field free for other parties willing to make promises and take risks. Labour has only itself to blame if its cowardice results in it being overtaken by parties actually willing to offer something.

So when is he resigning?

Today, the Privileges Committee found that MBIE chief executive Nic Blakeley and former Deputy Secretary of Immigration Alison McDonald deliberately misled Parliament, by knowingly withholding information from a select committee conducting a review of ImmigrationNZ. Which invites the obvious question: when is Blakeley resigning?

As the committee noted in its report,

officials appearing before select committees have an absolute obligation to tell the truth. Being truthful, responsible, and acting in good faith is the very essence of public service. To fail to meet these obligations is an insult to the entire public service.

Public servants lying to Parliament fundamentally undermines Parliament's ability to perform its function of scrutinising the executive and holding it to account for its expenditure of public funds. It is fundamentally incompatible with both the values of the public service, and our constitutional system of government. It is simply untenable for a public servant who has been found to have deliberately misled Parliament to remain in their position. So, again: when is he resigning? And if he's not going to, when will the Public Service Commissioner fire him? Or are we going to be treated to another public spectacle of elite impunity, which will further degrade both our democracy and our public service?

Update: So, Blakeley offered his resignation, both to the Public Service Commissioner when the matter first arose, and today to the Minister. Both refused. I guess if they allowed him to do the proper thing, then people might expect them to do the same in the future, and they can't be having that. So instead, we get impunity.

Bankrupting local government

Local government in Aotearoa is in a crisis. For decades, Boomers have voted to Keep Rates Low, running the infrastructure paid for by previous generations into the ground, while refusing to invest in more (or even repairing what they have). The bill for that is coming due in all sorts of ways - shit on the streets in Wellington, a lethal campylobacter crisis in Hastings, no money to maintain council housing. So rates are going to have to go up. But Boomers still don't want to pay. So National's solution is simply to outlaw rates increases.

I'm struggling to describe the stupidity of this. Rates pay for things. Things we actually need. And those things get more expensive with time, thanks to inflation and population growth. Meanwhile, central government keeps loading costs on councils, with demands for roads, fast-track projects with no infrastructure support, and the never-ending cycle of vetoing and over-riding planning documents, wasting millions of dollars in planning and consultation costs. And now the regime plans to effectively forbid local councils from keeping up with that. Which means declining council services - roads, rubbish, sewage, social housing, parks, libraries - and of course nothing new unless something is cut. It is a recipe for stagnation and decline, central government sabotaging local government, preventing it from meeting its statutory obligations to its people.

As for the "why", apart from the obvious one of pandering to greedy, freeloading Boomers, there's another equally obvious underlying agenda: privatisation. Local councils still own stuff - ports, airports, electricity lines companies, buildings, land. Strangling them financially by diktat will force them to sell that stuff to National's donors and cronies, finally achieving the mass-looting they've been slavering for since the 1990's. And if everything has to be destroyed so the billionaires can steal what is ours, well, that's a price their collaborators in the National Party are willing to pay.

This is not a good policy for New Zealand. It is being sold on short-sighted greed, and being used to deliver public assets into private hands. We need to stop it. And the way to do that is to vote the regime out in November.

No-one wants National's internet tyranny

Yesterday the National Party introduced its bill to ban young people from social media to Parliament. While ostensibly about "protecting children", the bill in fact establishes a "papers, please" regime to use the internet, exactly like that used in tyrannies like Russia and Iran. Users will have to prove their identity to access our most common communications platform, effectively ending anonymous speech and deterring political communication, while in the process giving all our personal information to foreign privacy-raping fascists.

(Yes, I know the bill says its illegal for companies to retain identity verification information for longer than required. And if you think that means anything, against either companies whose business model is destroying privacy, or our own government, I have a bridge across Cook Strait to sell you).

The good news is that no-one is buying it. National's policy - developed by public servants at public expense - has already been disowned by its own coalition partners, who are also upset at the way it has been announced and introduced despite their opposition. The Greens have said "fuck no!". And even notoriously-chickenshit Labour has said its in no hurry to announce its position. And its not hard to see why: because in addition to the privacy nightmare highlighted above, the simple fact is that these bans don't work. Just look over the Tasman, where 80% of under-16s are still using social media despite being officially banned from it. And that's also perfectly understandable: because this is how we live our lives now. People of all ages organise their work, their education, their social lives over social media. And trying to ban them from that, from hanging out with their friends, herding cats for their local sports or cultural group, or organising politically to change the government and the world, is a recipe for widespread non-compliance and entrenched contempt for the law.

This is not to understate the harm caused from and on social media. But trying to blindfold and gag kids, while making the rest of us live in a tyrannical surveillance nightmare, is not a solution.

What might be solutions? Much of the harm is caused by social media platforms themselves, invading privacy and pushing harmful content. So outlaw those things, and make those platforms responsible! Platforms currently enjoy "third party" protection for the harmful content they push, on the basis that they're just a neutral carrier. But if they're running an algorithm which puts stuff on people's timelines, they're making editorial choices, and they can and should be held accountable for them. Or, to put it in English, if Elon Musk's Nazi site pushes the Christchurch murder video onto people's feeds, then it should be held legally responsible for that and fined into oblivion. Likewise, we can impose a duty of care on social media platforms - and Labour has a member's bill for this. Either would have a lower impact on the human rights of New Zealanders than National's internet tyranny, while being far more effective at protecting all of us. But national clearly isn't interested in "effective"; they're interested in posturing before an election. And Aotearoa deserves better than that from its supposed government.

Oh FFS! I just got this posted, and then I see Labour has decided to support National's bill to select committee, solely so National can't spend the runup to the election bashing them on this. "A shiver looking for a spine to run down" indeed.

You can't run on hope unless you actually offer some

Eleven weeks till the election, and we're now seeing daily stories about the complete collapse of the health system. Decades of austerity and underfunding and a Ministerial hiring freeze aimed at making short-term "savings" have left our hospitals unable to cope, and the usual winter flu season (something normally manageable with vaccination and a public health campaign) has pushed it over the edge. In Palmerston North, multiple key departments have simply collapsed due to lack of staff, while the emergency department - focus of all National's metrics - has wait times of up to 27 hours. In North Shore, patients are left to lie in their own piss and treated in corridors because there is no-one to care for them and no space anyway.

This is what government looks like under National: nothing works, because they simply refuse to pay for it. Why have a health system or emergency accommodation, when the Luxons can have an eighth house and another holiday in Hawaii?

Meanwhile, today Labour unveiled their election slogan: "Better Starts Now", an implicit message of hope. So obviously they'll be fixing all this, right?

Well, no. Because they've also doubled down on their commitment to austerity, promising to keep National's fiscal straitjacket which means government can't do anything, and ruling out their potential coalition partners' alternative policies. Because Hipkins and Edmonds apparently also think that the Luxons getting that eighth house and another holiday in Hawaii is more important than the rest of us having a functional health system and social safety net. The Labour Party which once promised cradle to grave protection is now politically indistinguishable from the party which destroyed that system and which wants to abandon us to the market.

And then they wonder why they're bumping around 30%. Here's a hint: because they don't offer anything. Here's another: because they lie about that. Sure, National will fuck up our lives and wreck the country even more. And with its commitment to austerity, Labour has effectively promised to do exactly the same - except they're going to tell us all that its "better" and we should all be grateful to them or else we'd be having our lives fucked up by National. And then they wonder why people spit at them and vote for parties which actually offer some real change.

Labour doesn't offer hope. They just offer more of the same, with a different bunch of managers collecting the big salaries. They're so unimaginatively status quo their leader even has the same name as the incumbent. But swapping one Chris for another isn't enough for me. I want change. And fortunately the Green Party is offering exactly that.

No way to run a country

Twenty years ago I joined a protest march over the Manawatū River. Fonterra and local farmers were using the river as a sewer, making it one of the most polluted in the western world, and people were sick of it. The march was a success: the state of the river became a serious issue in subsequent local body elections, and Horizons, the regional council was forced to act. They began a series of public consultations on cleaning up the river, and in 2010 they introduced the One Plan, which set limits for pollution, particularly nitrogen.

Basically, farmers wouldn't be allowed to shit in the river anymore, and they hated it. So they engaged in their usual tactic of predatory delay, dragging the plan through the courts on any excuse in an effort to prevent its implementation. But their appeals backfired, with the Environment Court strengthening the plan and the High Court upholding that. Even then, Horizons tried to rubberstamp pollution, until the courts stopped that as well, and made them actually enforce the law. But the Council's reliance on a tool called Overseer to calculate nitrogen loads caused further litigation, which eventually resulted in a change to the plan.

Which brings us to "Plan Change 2". It updates the nitrogen limits in the One Plan to account for Overseer's software change, and sets out pathways by which farmers who currently exceed them can get temporary consents. Like the One Plan itself, its the result of a careful process of consultation and consensus-building, and has been approved by the Environment Court. It should be becoming active any time soon. But it won't - because the regime has decide to simply overturn it by legislative fiat to protect its donors and cronies and let them keep on shitting in the river. Twenty years of democratic action and tens of millions of dollars in planning costs and legal fees gone, because one man - Andrew Hoggard - never liked the outcome, and decided to abuse his ministerial position to put his thumb on the scale, outside the normal process.

It's not just the One Plan - Hoggard will also be over-ruling Waikato Regional Council's similarly long-consulted rules to protect the Waikato, outraging Tainui (who view it as undermining their Treaty settlement). Its not just rivers - they're also stomping all over local councils who, after consulting their communities in accordance with the law, decided to use the RMA to regulate inshore fishing to mitigate its destructive effects. And it continues a trend displayed on climate change, transport, Māori representation, of the Beehive arbitrarily overturning court decisions and/or well-consulted local government decisions to impose their own views from above, without consultation or evidence, usually at the behest of some deep-pocketed industry lobby and tens of thousands of dollars in "donations". That's just how this regime operates. Its an affront to democracy, the rule of law, and local decision-making. Instead, we have arrogance, dictatorship and corruption.

This is no way to run a country. Local decision-making should mean exactly that. We can't have our lives micromanaged by Wellington, intruding into our lives and vetoing our decisions at the behest of lobbyists or their own weirdo freak ideology.

We need to overthrow this regime. Vote it out in November, prosecute those responsible for their corrupt practices and ban them from office, and reform the system so that it cannot happen again.

An easy policy

Up until the 2023 election Aotearoa had an effective school lunch program. Kids got fed on locally-produced food, improving educational and employment outcomes. But National hated that, so they wrecked the system and replaced it with Seymour's Slop - mass-produced by the lowest-bidder (a massive foreign multinational with a shady record of course), which has burned, poisoned, or otherwise endangered students. The regime calls the programme a "success", but its only success has been in saving money by not feeding kids properly. In reality its a disaster.

Sacking the current providers, restoring funding, and going back to what we had before ought to be an easy policy for the next government. And the Greens have actually promised to do it:

The Green Party wants to bring back the school lunch programme to what it was, and then expand it to more schools.

The party says if it is part of the next government, it will also permanently fund the Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme (which was renamed Healthy School Lunches in October).

This is great to see. But it also raises the obvious question: where's Labour? Shouldn't they be promising this? Or are they too tied up in trying to appear "responsible" (NeoLiberal) and not spend money on anything other than their fellow rich people? And on the gripping hand, who cares? They can do this, or they can be in opposition. Their choice.

An urgent move to not fix anything

National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track legislation has a problem: in addition to being corrupt and Muldoonist, it allows developers to buy approval for projects where there isn't the infrastructure to support them. For example, the recently approved Delmore development in Ōrewa, which will require wastewater to be trucked out for the forseeable future, because there's no sewage connection there. Normally councils deal with this sort of problem by charging developers a development contribution to pay for the required infrastructure - something the right absolutely hates. But fast track bypasses all that, with the result that fast-tracked developments are artificially cheap, effectively subsidised by other residents. Which in turn means other areas get starved of their infrastructure or face higher rates to pay for the costs of ministers' special projects.

To their credit, National recognises this inability to make fast track projects pay for their infrastructure is a problem. They consider it so urgent a problem that they plan to fix it with completely out-of-the-blue committee stage amendments to an unrelated local government bill. But - and here's the kicker - they won't actually fix it. According to the Beehive press release,

The amendments will not apply to fast-track developments that have already been approved or where a substantive application has already been lodged with the EPA.

So, its "urgent" enough to "justify" doing further violence to our democratic system - but not urgent enough to actually fix. I guess they wouldn't want their pet developers to feel ripped-off, that they hadn't got their money's worth from their "donations". So we get performative bullshit instead.

Meanwhile, I remember when National thought development contributions held up development and discouraged growth. I'm glad to see they've finally realised that they actually pay for necessary things rather than just being made up by councils to spite the Mighty Lords of Real Estate. I wonder when they'll realise that about taxes?

National channels Orban

Last year, at the behest of its Five Eyes "allies", the regime passed a tyrannical anti-"foreign interference" law, criminalising "improper conduct" on behalf of a "foreign power". The law effectively allows the regime to criminalise anyone based on its own fantasies and misconceptions, and would have outlawed virtually every major protest movement in Aotearoa's history. It is a horrific assault on our democracy. And the National Party thinks it didn't go far enough.

National's Tim van de Molen has introduced a new Foreign Influence Transparency Bill to the ballot. The TL;DR is that it requires "foreign agents" to register. Sounds pretty mild, right? Except that when you unpack it, its even more horrific than than the "foreign interference" law.

Who needs to register? Anyone conducting any "political influence activity that they are directed to undertake by a foreign principal". Unpacking this:

• A "foreign principal" is a foreign government, a foreign political organisation, a foreign public enterprise, or an entity acting on their behalf. This is not the same definition as used in the "foreign interference" clauses of the Crimes Act - it is both broader and narrower, excluding some "foreign public officials" and all government-supporting companies, but including "foreign political organisations", which encompass not just governing political parties and their agencies (which are in the foreign interference law), but also

  any political party, political movement, or other organisation operating in a country or territory outside New Zealand that has as one of its primary purposes the participation in, or influence of, political processes or public office in that country or territory

  In other words, any formal or informal political group, and any NGO engaged in "politics". Which basically means everything: any non-NZ environmental, human rights, consumer rights or privacy NGO. It also covers international political groupings such as the Global Greens, Socialist International, International Democracy Union, and foreign think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, and the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation. The Atlas network is absolutely covered.
• "Directed" means requests as well as instructions. It likely covers the sharing of common tactics and strategies.
• "political influence activity" is where it really gets weird, covering not just formal lobbying, but also "communicating to the new Zealand public" about any election, bill, policy, or exercise of power; as well as "organising, coordinating, or funding any campaign, network, or activity" to mobilise individuals to lobby or protest or attend meetings, as well as collecting information to tailor activities. In the Crimes Act, there's specific protection for engaging in protest, advocacy, or dissent. Here, those things are specifically covered.

So basically any democratic activity which can be imagined to be connected to a "foreign principal" requires registration. All NZ political parties will be required to register, because they are members of international networks. So will most major NGOs. Because this is the modern world, with easy travel and the internet, and we talk to each other, share problems and tactics and what-worked-in-our-country and maybe-you-could-try-this, and that's apparently suddenly suspicious and foreign and practically seditious.

People engaged in these activities would be required to register. Failing to register or providing false or misleading information is an offence punishable by two years in jail (which is... pretty severe for an administrative offence – the same penalty for fixing an election!) There are open-ended administrative search powers, not subject to judicial oversight, to allow the registrar to investigate suspected offences. Finally, the government can designate “specified foreign powers” as posing an “enhanced risk” on very broad criteria, though this doesn’t seem to have any actual effect. Finally, every election candidate must be vetted against the register to see if they are on it, and the government must publish a gazette notice identifying them, the foreign principal, and the registrable activity. In other words, legally required state propaganda against candidates the regime doesn’t like.

Meanwhile, look at who is not covered:

• Billionaires: they're not governments, so they can do as much lobbying, electoral manipulation, and influence-buying as they want.
• Foreign corporations: These routinely engage in "political influence activity" in Aotearoa - witness the "grassroots" campaigns by dairy owners against tobacco regulation, or in favour of Pharmac buying the latest expensive new drug, or just the regular lobbying by the oil and gas or money laundering industries. This is all aimed at changing law or influencing the exercise of government power. But apparently its all OK because its "just business". But actual grassroots organisations - Amnesty, Greenpeace - are not.
• Diplomatic activity: foreign governments and groups like the Five Eyes (and all its spinoffs) get to lobby us to change our intellectual property laws, our privacy laws, outlaw encryption, criminalise protest, or indeed pass laws like this. But they get to be exempt from them.

While this is a member’s bill, being put in the ballot means it has the backing of the National caucus. They are all on board with this.

If this all seems awfully familiar, its because its a basic part of the "illiberal democracy" pioneered by Victor Orban in Hungary, and indeed of Russian tyranny. Call your enemies "foreign agents". Demand they register. Use the registrar to force searches and gather intelligence. Then jail them or shut them down. And while van de Molen points to similar laws passed by "like-minded liberal democracies" such as the UK and Australia, I would instead classify them as democratic backsliders hellbent on reintroducing tyranny.

These are not countries we want to be like. If this bill is drawn, it must be rejected.

Why I'm not voting for Opportunity

This morning one of my bleeps took one for the team and asked to be convinced not to vote for Opportunity. Like me, they're a long-time Green voter. Like me, they see Opportunity as having some attractive policies on land taxes, the environment, and Te Tiriti. And with the party now consistently polling over 5%, but not so high that we can be sure they'll make it, is it worth left voters to lend their votes to get them over the line?

It was a really useful discussion, and you should read the whole thing. If you're that interested, you should probably read Josh Drummond's take on it from last month as well. Meanwhile, here's my thoughts.

I have a lot of problems with TOP. Their origins as the vehicle for rich prick Gareth Morgan's political ideas around taxation and UBI. Their past arsehole behaviour under both Morgan and later leaders. Their undemocratic and completely top-down party structure. Their dodgy techbro funders. I also have some problems with their political philosophy - a naive-to-arrogant technocratic rationalism which fails to consider or simply does not think it is important that other people might not see their conclusions as "obvious", or might even disagree with them, and so struggles to deal with that fact. I'm somewhat sympathetic here, because you need idealists in any productive political coalition, to drive things forward - but TOP's demonstrated inability to cope when their ideas met opposition in the past (see: TOP 2017 and the Gareth Morgan / Sean Plunket shitshow) is not a good sign, and suggests a party culture problem as well.

But fundamentally, it comes down to one simple fact: I do not know these people. Not in a personal sense - I don't hang around with politicians - but in the sense that without a demonstrated track record, I do not know if they are serious about their policies, and I do not know what their values are.

As a contrast, I know the Greens. They've been in Parliament for 30 years, and around for over 50 (if you count Values, and they do). They've been demonstrating their policies and values for long enough that one any issue I can reasonably predict which way they'll go. I know what they stand for, and I know what I am voting for when I vote for them. What would I be voting for if I voted for TOP? Their candidate lineup is pretty good, a collection of public servants, environmentalists, many of whom would fit in very well in Labour or the Greens, plus some startup bros (Eww). Many of them would be an asset to parliament. Against that, they're complete political naifs, and there are a bunch of failure modes here, both in coalition talks and later, which are waiting to eat them. The collapse of NZ First in 1998 and the problems with United Future in its 2002 term are instructive here.

And then there's the big one: coalition options. Or, as we say in Aotearoa, "who are they going to go with?" TOP leader Qiulae Wong says "anyone", and if you're on the left and want to see the regime toppled, its policies repealed, and the earth salted, that is absolutely an issue. Why would I give my vote to someone who might keep the racist, tyrannical, election rigging pricks in power? Why would I risk that, when I can give it to a party who absolutely won't? So that's an absolute deal-breaker for me (and if you don't want the regime toppled, why are you reading this blog?)

So that's why I won't be voting TOP. If they get in, I'll be pleased, because there's clear potential for them to be a valuable part of the left coalition in future. But ATM they're just too uncertain, too big a risk, too untrustworthy to get my vote.

One Country at a time...

The Lebanese parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty:

Lebanon's parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty, a move that would make it the first country in the Middle East to formally end capital punishment.

A majority of MPs in the 128-seat parliament backed the measure on Tuesday, while Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc voted against it.

The legislation will now go to the cabinet before being passed to President Joseph Aoun for signing. The government has already expressed its support for the measure.

This would make Lebanon the first country in the Middle East to abolish the death penalty. Hopefully more will follow (Israel had abolished the death penalty for civilian crimes, but has just passed a law requiring the mandatory execution of Palestinians convicted of "terrorism" by kangaroo courts - so they're officially a murder state now as well as a genocide one).

Chris wins!

So, after a three hour emergency caucus meeting, Chris Luxon has emerged to claim that he has the National Party's full support and that his caucus is united. Which is obviously why he had to have a three hour meeting about it. Which means National will be going into the election with a historically unpopular Prime Minister - unless they change their mind about it next week.

Meanwhile Chris (the other one) will be overjoyed that the political landscape won't be shaken up after all, and he can continue trying to sleepwalk to victory. It would be nice if he actually put some effort in and tried to win, but he seems to have taken the journalists' "oppositions don't win elections; governments lose them" to heart, and interpreted it as meaning he has no agency whatsoever. Which I guess is consistent with his belief that politicians have no agency over the public either, and can't change hearts and minds - but its awfully disappointing tot he rest of us. And it invites serious questions about why we pay him so much - $309,000 plus rorts and slush - to basically do nothing.

As for Chris and Chris, I guess they'll be hoping for a National loss. Otherwise, they probably don't have a place in the post-election Cabinet. Oh dear. How sad.

Shaking it up?

Its 88 days until the election, and I had been planning to post about how the electoral landscape is becoming a little clearer. While the polls are statistically tied (still, with this regime, what the fuck are you doing Chris?), Opportunity is increasingly polling above the threshold, meaning they'll be in Parliament and no coalition seems possible without them. Meanwhile Luxon ruling them out basicly means he won't be in government, while Hipkins finally ruling out NZ First removes the big fear on the left: that Labour will once again choose a far-right coalition partner who will proceed to veto its policies, rather than the party which shares them and wants them to go further. It also crystallises the blocs, giving a clear choice between the current dysfunctional National-NZ First-ACT regime, or a Labour-Green-Opportunity-maybe-with-Te-Pāti-Māori, which seems perfectly workable precisely because of that shared agenda.

...And then Luxon goes and decides to put his leadership on the line (again), in a desperate effort to retain control of his clearly panicking caucus, a quarter of whom look likely to not have a job after the election on current polling. I have no idea which way it will go - I'm not any sort of insider, let alone a tory one - but obviously if Luxon is rolled its going to shake things up a bit, and put a bunch of stuff back on the table that Luxon had taken off it. It also means potential coalition instability, because the first thing a new National leader is going to want to do is put their coalition partners in their place, and they are likely to object to that, and maybe even pull the plug. There's a theory that if that happens Labour will step in and clean up the mess, providing confidence to retain the current election timetable at the price of gutting National's legislative program. That would be a sign of weakness and not being ready to fight, so of course I can see it happening because that pretty much describes Labour at the moment. A real opposition would of course be saying "bring it on" and "if you can't keep the government running, that's your problem", and "there are no votes for us [and there are not] in bailing you out", but its been a while since Labour was anything of the sort. And OTOH, that assumes National doesn't want an early election, which they're ready (or at least funded) for while Labour isn't...

Tomorrow might just be more nothing, another round of pointless National squabbling which results in nothing. And that would be the best outcome, because Luxon is such a loser that even Hipkins might be able to beat him (or rather, be carried to victory by his coalition partners). But if something actually happens, then the election is going to change in a big way, and Labour will actually have to do some fucking work if they want to win it. And honestly, I'm not sure they have it in them.

A state-assisted corruption scheme

Politicians defend their practice of taking huge bribes from the rich in the form of election "donations" by saying that its all out in the open: we can see who is buying them, we can see what they do in exchange and make sure that there is no "undue" influence (as opposed to the "due" influence they have paid for?), and so there is no problem. This is obviously false, and the current regime's actions and the flood of money they have received from fast track applicants, polluters, honours recipients, and other parties with a direct financial interest in their decisions shows that. But even if it were true, there's still a problem: because New Zealand law still allows parties to receive vast amounts of money in total secrecy, so we do not in fact get to see who is buying them after all.

The mechanism is called "donations protected from disclosure", and it has seen nearly half a million dollars funnelled to right-wing parties this election cycle (weirdly, no left-wing party has ever received a cent). It was initially introduced as an ugly compromise in Labour's Electoral Finance Act, to cover their failure to fully eliminate secret donations. And while National repealed the EFA, it kept that part of the law because it was useful to them. The theory is that the donations are made in total secrecy, so there can be no influence - and if you believe that, I have a bridge over Cook Strait to sell you. What it is in practice is the government laundering money for large donors who wish to exercise their influence in secret, or do not wish to suffer the reputational damage of their political views. It is, in effect, a state money laundering scheme to hide corruption.

There are two fundamental principles underlying election finance law: the rich must be prevented from buying government, and any funding that is permitted must be totally transparent. This government money laundry violates both. It allows secret influence, and worse, makes it a crime to expose it. That should not be permitted. This corrupt law must be repealed.

Climate Change: The end of the ETS is in sight

How do you have an emissions trading scheme when there are no permits to emit?

That's a question Aotearoa is eventually going to have to confront as we move towards carbon neutrality. And, thanks to exclusions from the ETS and huge pollution subsidies, that end is beginning to come into sight.

The regime announced its new ETS unit limits and price control settings yesterday. They largely follow those recommended by He Pou a Rangi, with a big exception: He Pou a Rangi had recommended an increased allocation of 3 million tons in 2031, to account for the end of surplus reduction. The regime has cut this to 1.1 million tons, for "stability". Which is great from one point of view: its 2 million tons that won't be emitted! But He Pou a Rangi is already warning that surplus reduction has maybe been too aggressive, and might lead to a unit shortage from 2030 (and maybe as early as 2028). Which means price spikes, demand destruction by the market, deindustrialisation, and arbitrary ad-hoc interventions by the government to try and "fix" things.

He Pou a Rangi has been warning about this for years, and telling the government that it needs to rebalance the ETS by bringing in agriculture, decoupling forestry, and reducing industrial allocation (which will be higher than auction units in 2028, and three times higher in 2031). But that means decisions which will necessarily upset big polluters and their lobbyists, who view their current free ride as an absolute right. It would be work! And instead of doing that work, the regime has chosen to punt, make it someone else's problem, and make it worse, so that the next government will have to fight those polluters (and National can them collect donations from them). Which is a perfect example of how National is simply not serious about climate change.

Meanwhile, if nothing changes, on the current trend the ETS auction volume will be zero in 2033. There'll be subsidies and free rides and trees, but no actual auctions - and no government control over unit volumes or emissions. Which defeats the entire purpose of the scheme.

Something has to change, and the next government is going to have to deal with it. An "emissions trading scheme" where the only way to get permits is to be a regime crony with a pollution subsidy, and where there is no overall control over emissions, is neither viable or credible.

National (still) hates democracy

The National party in Aotearoa has always hated democracy. In the late 70's and early 80's they retained power in the face of majority opposition only by virtue of an unfair electoral system. When popular discontent at that led to a push for MMP, they opposed it. When the people won and imposed it on the traitorous political class who had given us Rogernomics and Ruthanasia, they tried to overturn it. And now, not content with using voter suppression in an effort to rig the next election, they're trying to rig all future ones by going back to the old, unfair system, which reliably delivered absolute power on minority support:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he would hold an MMP referendum if re-elected - but his coalition partner Winston Peters has ruled such a referendum out.

Luxon made the comments on Newstalk ZB.

He had been discussing a long-mooted referendum on whether to bring in a four-year parliamentary term and then started to discuss whether it was appropriate to see if the public was “still supportive of MMP.”

Asked if he would undertake such a referendum if re-elected, Luxon said “Yeah, I think I would.”

Fuck that. We are currently at a historic weak-point for the legacy parties - the latest Roy Morgan poll showed their collective support at less than 60% - and I'd suggest that that alone makes this idea an absolute non-starter. Any regime "elected" under such a system would lack any legitimacy and simply have no mandate to govern.

The good news is that its a non-starter, because Winston says "no". And as any future National government is absolutely reliant on that racist zombie for a majority, that means there's simply no parliamentary majority to pass the legislation required for a referendum, let alone a change. It simply won't happen (and no, Labour isn't going to agree to it either).

Which also makes it a perfect example of how National's "promises" are irrelevant. They can huff, and they can puff, but ultimately they need a majority to act, which means the agreement of multiple coalition partners. And for a lot of what they "promise" that agreement will not for forthcoming. They're simply a party of hot air.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's day, though likely to be a boring one. First up there's the second readings of a couple of private bills: the Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust (Trust Variation) Bill and the Trust Horizon (Trust Variation) Bill. These private tweaks to the law are unlikely to be contentious, so I expect them to whizz through. Following that there's the remainder of the first reading of Stuart Smith's Local Government (Management of Local Authorities) Amendment Bill, an attempt to rein in local authority chief executives and put elected members back in charge which will at least go to committee. Then its the committee stage of Shane Reti's Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill, which is supported by every party but ACT (who think parents should be free to drown their children). If the House moves quickly it will make a start on the second reading of Laura McClure's Employment Relations (Termination of Employment by Agreement) Amendment Bill, which is another ACT attempt to strip basic employment rights from workers and impose a US-style fire-at-will culture. There will be no ballot tomorrow.

This may be the last actual member's day in the term. While looking at the sitting calendar suggests two more (August 26 and September 16), the first is likely to be pushed back or eaten by urgency for the regime's anti-environment bills, and the last sitting block is likely to be eaten entirely by urgency for the end-of-term "wash-up" (in which parliament tries to pass all the normal, uncontentious, keep-the-law-up-to-date legislation its been ignoring in favour of National's culture-war bullshit). Which, allowing for post-election commencement debates, means we might not see another one until February.

49,000 unemployed under National

The June labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen again to 5.6%. There are now 171,000 unemployed, 49,000 more than when National took office.

The next - and hopefully final for this regime - set of unemployment statistics should drop right around election time. But we're basically looking at a regime which has deliberately increased unemployment by 40%, by slashing public service jobs and demanding the reserve bank focus strictly on inflation (meaning that it throws people out of work whenever rich people's money starts to evaporate). And that is an absolutely toxic legacy which should see them de-elected by an angry electorate. If we fail to do so, we have no-one but ourselves to blame when they fuck us over even more.

NZ First's Nazi problem

Over the weekend The Post had a piece about Nazis finding a home in NZ First. The initial article exposed two "Remigration NZ" activists, one of whom is a former member of Action Zealandia. For those who don't know, Action Zealandia are Nazis linked to a spate of crimes, while Remigration NZ demands that migrants or the descendents of migrants "go back to where they came from" (white people, of course, are not migrants in their ideology, but somehow belong everywhere). With Winston demanding the same thing, its pretty clear that their ideas are finding fertile ground in the party.

Today's followup exposes a senior member of the party's youth-wing as an outright Nazi:

Nicholas Newport, 23, was named as a member of the executive of Young New Zealand First in late 2024, and last month spoke at the party’s national convention.

Under a former name, Nicholas Wells, he appeared at two protests involving far-right activists and was linked to accounts expressing support for the National Socialist Network (NSN), an Australian neo-Nazi organisation that later rebranded as White Australia. The Australian Government designated White Australia a prohibited hate group in May.

The accounts repeatedly posted “Hail Hitler”, used slurs against non-white and gay people and made derogatory comments about women. One invoked a claim commonly circulated by Holocaust deniers. Another described its user as a Nazi.

Winston has responded with bluster, claiming it is all a media smear. But its all verifiable. And you have to wonder why Winston is going into bat for a Nazi, when most political parties when confronted with something like this would at least attempt to plead ignorance, drop the person like a hot rock, and try and cauterise the wound. And the natural conclusion is that he at the least thinks there's nothing wrong with Newport's views, or explicitly agrees with them.

Hopefully the media will now start asking other NZ First MPs and candidates how they feel about Nazis in their party, whether they agree with their views, and (if necessary) whether they are Nazis themselves. And we're definitely going to need proper due-diligence on any NZ First candidates for Nazi links.

Meanwhile, the real question is how voters feel about voting for a Nazi party...