Papers, please

At the moment the Trump regime in America is running a pogrom against non-white Americans, with ICE invading cities, disappearing people off the streets and dragging them from their homes to be dumped in concentration camps. And our local Trump-wannabes clearly want in on the action, with a proposed law to allow immigration officers to demand proof of identity from suspected overstayers:

Immigration officers will soon have the power to ask people suspected of overstaying their visa for proof of identification at their homes and/or workplaces.

The powers are part of a legislative proposal introduced by the Government in September last year.

The Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill was announced to strengthen the tools available for immigration officers to respond to serious immigration breaches.

This includes “expanding the ability for immigration officers to request identity-based information from an individual when there is good cause to suspect they may be in breach of their visa conditions or potentially liable for deportation.”

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford told RNZ the Bill would be introduced by the end of the month, with the intention of passing it into law by the end of the term.

Who's a "suspected overstayer"? I guess that's up to the racism of the immigration officer and whatever quotas for detention that might have been set. Meanwhile, it also means they can demand identification from anyone else in those locations as well. And if like many kiwis you don't bother carrying it - because this is a free and democratic society - then I guess its off to the gulag.

This bill is yet another piece of tyranny from our nasty, authoritarian regime. We should not accept it. As for immigration, remember, if they ask you anything, you don't know. You don't know where, you don't know how, and you don't know who. The state depends on cooperation to enforce its will. Refuse to collaborate, and make it hard for them.

A flagrant abuse of power

When the regime rammed through its law gutting pay equity and stealing $13 billion from the women of Aotearoa, it didn't bother with a select committee process. That might have let people have their say - and worse, seen the media report on what they were saying, which would have been bad for the regime. But a group of former MPs organised their own select committee process to do what parliament had refused to. Now, it has reported back, calling the process an abuse of power, a breach of human rights, and a violation of the rule of law:

The committee described the processes of planning for and enacting the legislation as a "flagrant and significant abuse of power".

It also found the law breached the Bill of Rights, the Human Rights Act, and the Regulatory Standard Act principles, as well as a number of international conventions that New Zealand was party to, including International Covenants on Civil and Political, and Economic and Social Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

[...]

Committee members also said it could find no evidence in available Cabinet documents or parliamentary debates to support scrapping the scheme.

There are a lot of recommendations, chief of which (of course) is limiting the use of urgency for laws restricting fundamental rights, as well as statutory consultation requirements and constitutional recognition of pay equity as a human right. All of which would be a good start. Both Labour and the Greens have pledged to repeal the Act and restore pay equity if elected; it would be good to see them also commit to constitutional reform to prevent such an abuse from ever happening again.

You can read the full report here.

An attack on democracy as well as the homeless?

Over the weekend the regime announced its long-expected policy of "move on" orders for homeless people. Having massively increased homelessness while slashing emergency housing, National's "solution" is get get the police to kick its victims round our cities, threatening them with fines or jail if they don't "move on". Which is pointless and cruel and far more expensive than actually housing them - but the regime clearly thinks there are more votes in performative cruelty than in actually solving problems.

Its a terrible policy, of course, which is going to further ruin lives and waste a lot of time and money doing so. But its not just the homeless under threat. The regime's proposed amendments to the Summary Offences Act allow orders for "disorderly, disruptive, threatening or intimidating behaviour" and "[o]bstructing or impeding someone entering a business". Which, given both common protest tactics and the prevailing interpretation of police that public protest is inherently "disorderly, disruptive, threatening or intimidating", seems like a clear threat to the public's right to protest. While the bill hasn't been published yet - the regime doesn't like to do that in advance, preferring to spring its legislation on people by surprise - unless it includes significant safeguards, we should regard it as an attack on our democratic rights as well as an attack on the homeless.

Submit!

The Environment Committee has called for submissions on the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill. Submissions should be made tot he link above, by 4.30pm on Wednesday, 11 March 2026.

(Yes, they're going with a middle-of-the-day deadline rather than the usual midnight one, in an effort to make it just that much harder for people to submit. Because that's the sort of "democracy" we are now).

There will no doubt be proper submission guides from various NGOs in due course, but the TL;DR is that the bill does exactly what it says on the label: destroys the Ministry for the Environment. While the regime is pitching this as a minor, technical change, part of folding it in to a new mega-ministry, the effect will be to silence the voice for the environment, reduce it to a budget line and an internal debate within an overwhelmingly development-focused agency, avoiding embarrassing notes in Cabinet papers with formal warnings of environmental impacts and consequences. And of course it will enable the shreds of that voice to then be quietly cut.

This is how the regime sees the environment: something which should be kept out of sight and out of mind, while the big boys pay to play with their bulldozers. I don't think kiwis feel this way. And if you don't, submit, and tell them so! Sure, the regime will ignore you and pass the bill anyway, because autocrats gonna stomp on your face. But speaking up still matters. National hates headlines like "100,000 oppose bill; government passes it anyway", they hate everyone seeing that everyone hates them, and that's why they try so hard to stop people submitting. And that's why we have to. Every voice raised against this bill imposes a political cost on the regime. It encourages the present-opposition to commit to restoring an independent MfE, and it encourages other voters to vote out the regime and get one which respects the environment.

An avalanche is made up of pebbles. Be a pebble, and help crush this government. Submit on the bill.

A victory for the environment

Trans-Tasman Resources has withdrawn its fast-track application to pillage the Taranaki seabed. Good riddance. As the fast-track panel pointed out, there was a credible risk of harm to protected species and uncertain environmental impacts, and TTR had done no work to clarify them, even when sent a clear message by the courts that they needed to. This was just a bunch of lazy foreigners wanting to pillage our natural resources, and relying on corruption to get their way. But it turns out that the panels the regime appointed were committed to doing their job.

Sadly, its unlikely to be the end of it:

Eggers says the company is now considering its options, but isn’t ruling out lodging a new application – especially if Shane Jones gets his way to amend the fast-track process to make ministers the ultimate decisionmakers.

So, if you fail under one decision-maker, withdraw, then reapply, and get another one (and ideally, one who has publicly indicated both their bias and that they can be bought). That's not a proper process by any measure, but its what this corrupt, dogshit vandal regime has given us. The next government needs to not only end it, but legislatively revoke any "consent" obtained by such a corrupt abuse of process.

(And meanwhile, we've had a reminder today of the hazards of such ministerial decision-making, with the Waimea Dam - rammed through by Labour with a Muldoonist special law to overturn a court decision - turning into a complete financial disaster, and the farmers who pushed it are now wanting a handout to bail them out. Because of course they are. Because it turns out Ministers aren't great decision-makers, and make decisions based on lobbying rather than evidence or business-cases. Which is what scammers like TTR rely on. And meanwhile, the public inevitably gets left to pick up the tab, either direct (in the case of the dam), or indirect (in the case of TTR's proposed environmental destruction)).

Brownlee is a partisan, misogynistic hypocrite

Yesterday parliament saw one of its worst incidents of racism, as Winston Peters questioned the right of Teanau Tuiono to ask questions because he is "someone who comes from Rarotonga". Tuiono is from Northland, like Peters, but even were he from Kent, like Winston's colleague Andy Foster, it doesn't matter: he's a New Zealand citizen and an elected MP, and that's the end of it.

This rightly caused outrage, but Brownlee claimed not to have heard it and promised to review the Hansard and get back to the House on it. Today he did, and made the obvious ruling that this sort of racism is unacceptable and will be treated as highly disorderly (which you'd hope would mean apology or ejection). But he refused to require Winston to apologise because "the moment has passed". People with a political memory longer than a goldfish may recall that he made a completely different ruling back in August, when he required Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick to apologise for something he had already punished her for the day before, and named her and banned her for a week when she refused. But there are obvious differences between the two cases: specifically, Winston is a member of the regime, and he is a cis-man.

In other words, Brownlee has one rule for the government, and one for the opposition; one for men, and one for women. He's nothing but a partisan, misogynistic hypocrite, and his continued presence in the chair brings the House into disrepute.

Good riddance

The regime has finally decided not to push for a referendum on a four-year term this election. Good. But the bill isn't dead, and apparently won't be withdrawn - it's still on the Order Paper, hanging around to be picked up and advanced in future, by whoever wins the election. And they're not stalling it because they've decided its a bad idea; rather, the three components of the regime simply don't quite agree, so it got set aside because it's not really anyone's priority.

...except apparently Chris Hipkins. Faced with a regime which is a poster boy for why we need more accountability, not less, and which is making people hate the entire political class in a way we haven't seen since the 1990's, he's willing to put himself out there and go on record as being in favour of a proposition which has repeatedly been defeated by two-thirds margins. Because he's just that keen on being less accountable to us plebs. And then you think about what he did with an absolutely majority when he had one - nothing - and how he talks about that time now as the government "trying to do too many things". So he wants an extra year so he can do even less? (But I guess its an extra year to collect his fat salary, putting him even further into the millionaire-class while pretending to represent ordinary people...)

This regime has been a potent reminder of why we need to keep our politicians on a short leash, whatever the colour of their tie. With a unitary state, a highly-centralised government structure, and no real institutional checks and balances, the only safeguard against an executive run amok is the chance to throw them out on their arses as often as possible. I'm glad we'll get to keep that right, for the moment. But it is disturbing that so many of the political class subscribe to the elitist, anti-democratic idea that they shouldn't have to face our judgement, that they should be less accountable to us. That's not good enough. They're not good enough. They've shown by their enthusiasm for dictatorship that they cannot be trusted, so we need to shorten the leash. It is time to cut the parliamentary term to two years, and bring them back under democratic control.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day - the first of the year. First up is a the Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust (Trust Variation) Bill, a private bill to expand the area where a community housing trust can operate. Worthy, but the fact that this requires an actual law in the first place is a bit broken. Next is the third reading of Carl Bates' Juries (Age of Excusal) Amendment Bill, followed by the second reading on Kieran McAnulty's Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Sales on Anzac Day Morning, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Christmas Day) Amendment Bill. If the House moves quickly, it should make a start on Kahurangi Carter's Copyright (Parody and Satire) Amendment Bill, which would insert fundamental fair use protections for taking the piss into copyright law. There are nine first readings on the Order paper at the moment, so there won't be a ballot unless things move a lot faster than expected.

100% pure vandalism

Aotearoa is in the middle of a giant environmental disaster, caused by climate change. So naturally, the regime thinks this is the perfect day to introduce a bill to disestablish the Ministry for the Environment. Because nothing says "we care about this problem" like shutting down the agency which warns us about such things and devises policy to avoid them.

While some staff will be merged with other agencies to form the regime's new development and infrastructure ministry, they will very much be sidelined, taking a back seat to the new agency's core functions of housing, transport, and local government. The rest will simply be sacked. Which means all that policy expertise will be lost to Aotearoa forever, and will take decades to rebuild. Which is the point. National wants to silence the institutional voice for the environment, so they don't have to admit in their cabinet papers that MfE told them it was a terrible idea with terrible consequences. So they're going to just rev up the bulldozer and crush it all, so nothing can stand in the way of them bulldozing everything else.

Again, this dogshit vandal regime has to go. The question is how much of Aotearoa they'll outright destroy before we can get rid of them.

An empty suit

Another weekend, another climate change disaster in Aotearoa. Flooding, people without power, roads blocked, people dead. And the Prime Minister is announcing a fucking foreign football game. And when asked about the disaster he says shit like "it's raining here too".

We used to have prime ministers who understood that their job, in times of national disaster, was to show up. Express the country's shock and anguish, provide reassurance that the government was going to help. But this regime is doing less than nothing to help, and is in fact doing everything it can to make things worse. And instead of reassurance, its just "make sure you have your personal survival kit ready" - in other words, you're on your own. He's not a leader; he's an empty suit. And rather than empathy, he just projects contempt for everyone else, us "bottom-feeders" who can't run away to Waiheke when disaster strikes.

This isn't the first time that Luxon has done this. His repeated absenteeism in times of national disaster makes it clear that he is fundamentally unfit for office. The sooner we vote this prick out, the better.

Rot at the top

"Our" Parliament is full of rich people, with inherent conflicts of interest around wealth, gifts, and property ownership. In an effort to mitigate this, Parliament established a register of pecuniary interests, requiring politicians to tell us what they owned and who had been bribing them. But despite clear rules, MPs keep "forgetting" to declare everything, and the house keeps refusing to sanction them for doing so - effectively permitting corruption to exist in our highest elected body. And now, it turns out that the person who is meant to enforce these rules, Speaker Gerry Brownlee, has been failing to declare his full interests for 20 years:

Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee has been incorrectly and incompletely declaring his property ownership to Parliament for 20 years.

This includes new amendments that also contain errors and omissions. The details are outlined in the table below.

As Speaker, Brownlee is the person responsible for enforcing Parliament’s rules, including the requirement for all MPs to correctly declare their business, property and other legal interests for trust and transparency reasons.

Late last year, after questions and a story from the Herald, Brownlee amended 16 of the 20 annual declarations he has made since Parliament’s Pecuniary Register was introduced in 2005.

Brownlee says there was no intent to deceive - he just owns so many houses that he forgot some of them. Similarly, he "forgot" property he had an interest in through a trust. And if you believe that, I have an electorate office in Ilam to sell you.

This is unacceptable - not just for a Speaker (who must have absolutely clean hands), but for an MP. If we are to accept that mere declaration - rather than divestment - is enough, then MPs can not under any circumstances be allowed to lie on them. Brownlee needs to go - not just from the Speaker's chair, but from Parliament. Until he does, we should regard it as a rotten, corrupt house, full of rotten, corrupt thieves.

Pure Muldoonism

Back in the early 1980's, Robert Muldoon was thinking big. He wanted a giant dam on the Clutha River, which would flood half a town. But the courts applied the law, and wouldn't grant water rights for it. So Muldoon passed special legislation to overturn the court's decision and grant the water rights directly for his pet project. It was an unpleasant example of the naked authoritarianism and contempt for the rule of law that pervades our executive, and the National Party in particular.

Fast-forward 40 years, and the regime is again thinking big, and again has a pet project: an LNG terminal in Taranaki to keep gas prices high! But not even their corrupt fast-track law is fast enough for them, because it will actually have to look at evidence (and might even find it wanting if the applicants do the usual half-arsed job). So of course, they're simply going to legislate "consents" into existence, bypassing any pretence of due process:

A proposed liquefied natural gas terminal will bypass even the fast-track process in order to be built in time for winter next year, documents show.

[...]

The Cabinet paper, released after the announcement, noted that "timing is very tight" to get the facility up and running in time for winter 2027.

"An LNG terminal will require regulatory consents and approvals if it is to be operational ahead of winter 2027, and the existing Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 processes are unlikely to be sufficient," Watts wrote.

"I propose developing an Enabling Liquefied Natural Gas Bill to provide the necessary consents, approvals, levy power and any modifications to existing legislation to enable the preferred LNG facility to be built and operational ahead of winter 2027."

Winter 2027 is an entirely arbitrary deadline, aimed more at getting things done before the election, in the hope that this will prevent the next government from cancelling their bullshit. But what ones Parliament legislates, another Parliament can change, so any legislated consents can simply be cancelled and the contractor told to go fuck themselves. Alternatively, a future government could change the target of the levy from electricity to gas users, thus ensuring that the gas industry pays for its own insurance policy. And if they don't want to, well, why the hell should we?

Meanwhile, Christina Hood highlights MBIE modelling, (p 24 here) which shows that the regime's policy is really not the best one:

Sure, LNG will reduce electricity prices by $11/MWh a year in 2028 (and $58/MWh in a dry year). But bringing supply and demand back into balance will reduce them by $59/MWH ($123/ MWh in a dry year), and even more if we develop additional gas storage. The savings from that are about $1.4 billion a year (vs $265 million for LNG). And it would be cheap: about $200 million, or about one year of National's bullshit electricity levy. So why didn't they look at that?

The answer is obvious: because reducing gas demand is not what the gas industry wants. Avoiding that, and keeping its addicts supplied with their dirty fuel, is the entire point of an LNG terminal! Likewise, the electricity industry does not want lower electricity prices, because that means lower profits. So, we get a stupid policy, designed purely to protect the status quo and keep prices high. This is what National calls a "laser focus on bringing down the cost of living".

We deserve better than this. The next government should cancel this bullshit, fund a massive switch of industrial energy from gas to renewables (and a massive boost in renewable electricity to fuel it), and let the gas industry die in the bed it made. And we'll all be better off that way.

The cost of National

Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index yesterday, showing that Aotearoa had dropped two places to fourth (behind Denmark, Finland, and Singapore). And as Matt Nippert points out, it would have been worse, were it not for rising corruption elsewhere. TINZ's Anne Tolley (a former national Minister) expresses all our disquiet when she says:

"We used to be first in the world and we've just seen a continual drop down the ladder - about 10 percent in four years," Transparency International New Zealand chairperson Anne Tolley said.

"It sort of feels like the wheels are coming off a bit and that's really dangerous for our democracy."

Hmmm. I wonder what has happened in the last four years? Could it have anything to do with a regime which has made policy decisions nakedly driven by industry lobbying, handed over billions of dollars to cronies, unlawfully appointed political cronies to public office, and is currently planning to campaign on being able to make even more corrupt decisions after the next election? (And that's not even getting into the whole LNG boondoggle).

This is the most corrupt government Aotearoa has had in over a century. And it is openly viewed as such. The miracle is that we haven't fallen further.

We need to change this. We need to regulate lobbyists, take public sector appointments out of the hands of ministers so they can't be used to reward cronies, tighten political donation laws, and restore and extend transparency over our government. And the first step to doing that is to kick this corrupt dogshit regime out of office in November.

Utter madness

That's the only way to describe the regime's announcement yesterday that it plans to go all-in on climate destruction and build an LNG import terminal for "energy security". How will it pay for this new source of emissions? By taxing our (overwhelmingly clean and renewable) electricity supply! So kiwis who use clean and green electricity will be paying to subsidise dirty gas imports. Madness!

The "justification" for this is (of course) "security of supply" and "eliminating price spikes". But the government didn't even consider spending the full $2.7 billion cost of the terminal on renewable electricity generation (endless cheap power apparently being "woke" or something), let alone on a GIDI-style scheme to get high-value industrial users off gas entirely (which would be cheap: $200 million to wipe out 10 - 20 PJ of demand). As for "price spikes", they're an issue only for major industrial users to stupid and shortsighted to hedge. But then, that's the underlying problem, isn't it? Major industrial users - of both gas and electricity - being stupid and shortsighted. And so we all pay to subsidise their poor business practices.

(And its a hell of a subsidy - taxing electricity to pay for gas halves the price of imported LNG, making it only twice as expensive as the current wholesale price. What we're effectively looking at here is a huge wealth transfer, from ordinary kiwis to a handful of mostly foreign-owned, highly-polluting companies. But I guess they pay bribes to Ministers and we merely have votes...)

We're also paying to pretend that gas has a future, to keep people hooked. But with solar and batteries looking to rapidly decarbonise the electricity system, and higher prices driving users off gas, that's pushing shit uphill. This is an industry with no future. And the sooner we accept that and plan for its orderly demise, the better off we'll all be.

But perhaps the biggest condemnation of the plan is from the gas industry itself. After all, if LNG was such a shit-hot idea, you'd expect them to be paying for it, right? So the fact that they refuse to risk any of their own money, and are instead demanding that we all pony up to build their dream, tells us that they don't really believe in it. They're just another loss-making industry sticking their hand out. But if they won't pay for it, there's no reason why we should. If the present regime signs a contract for this bullshit plan, the next government should simply repudiate it, just as the regime did for the IREX ferries. And we'll all be better off when they do.

Two defeats for the regime

There's been good news over the weekend, with two significant defeats for the regime's programme of environmental destruction. First, there's the draft decision of the Fast Track Panel to reject Trans-Tasman Resources' plans to mine the Taranaki seabed, on the grounds that there was a credible risk of harm to protected species and uncertain environmental impacts. The panel found that these significantly outweighed any economic benefit. It's only a draft decision, and TTR gets to comment on it, but it seems unlikely they will be able to overturn these findings unless they present significant and credible new evidence. Which means that one of the flagship projects of fast-track - a dirty mining project which has already been rejected by the Supreme Court - is dead. Good riddance.

Secondly, there's the news today that despite the regime bending over for the oil industry and repealing the offshore drilling ban, they're just not coming back, and will instead leave Aotearoa to small, bottom-feeder companies - which in turn may lack the resources to properly explore any permits they are granted, or to meet remaining cleanup obligations. Which means that National's desired levels of drilling seem unlikely to happen. Good riddance to that too.

Both the corrupt, Muldoonist fast-track program and the equally corrupt courting of the oil industry were absolutely central to National's policy programme. And neither seems to be working out the way they want. Which hopefully means they cause only limited damage before the election allows them to be repealed and the "consents" granted under them overturned.

Climate Change: The sin of cheapness

Tairāwhiti has a problem. Thanks to decades of forestry strip-mining the land, every major storm washes down sediment and slash from the hills, covering fields and smashing bridges. And as we saw last month, major storms are happening more often and getting worse...

Tairāwhiti also has a solution: a transition programme agreed with farmers, foresters, environmental groups and the wider community, which would see the hills replanted with native trees to prevent erosion. But to do it, they need government funding: $359 million over a decade - $36 million a year - which will be matched by $241 million from the community. And it should be a no-brainer, because the damage it averts is estimated at at least four times that much. In 2023 the damage from flooding was a billion dollars alone...

But of course, the government said "no". It turns out they have infinite money for landlords, for tax cuts to the rich, for -ve BCR roads in Auckland, or for war-toys - but nothing for actually protecting people from real risks, even when it is profitable to do so.

Its stupid. It's short-sighted. And its simple cheapness. The government just... doesn't want to pay. But if they won't, then its worth asking the question: if the government won't pay to protect people from real risks, why do we even fucking have it? What is it for? And if the answer to that is just "giving more money to rich people and Shame Jones' corrupt mates", then maybe its time we did away with this bunch and got a new one?

43,000 unemployed under National

The December labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen again to 5.4%. There are now 165,000 unemployed - 43,000 more than when National took office.

...which is what happens when you strangle public spending and crash the economy. Meanwhile National's Ministers enjoy their fat salaries of $304,300 a year (plus slush, plus housing, plus kiwisaver) while telling people to "economise on... the volume you eat". Maybe its time we ate the rich instead?

The same old problem

Another day, another IPCA report finding unlawful use of force by the police. This time, its a police officer who saw a woman give him a thumbs-down signal while driving, chased her nearly a kilometre to her home, violently assaulted her and tore her clothing under the pretext of "arresting" her, tried to break in, and pepper-sprayed her in the face when she surrendered. The IPCA found that none of that was legal - none of it. The purported "traffic stop" in response to the gesture was completely unjustified:

In our assessment, Officer A stopped her because he was annoyed by her gesturing to him in what was no doubt a rude and disparaging way. Therefore, in our view, the stop was unlawful.

...which means there was no basis for an arrest, and so no basis for use of force, so all if that was unlawful too.

This happened three years ago. In the interim, the victim pleaded guilty to failing to stop when signalled to do so, refusing to give an officer her details, and resisting arrest. The IPCA concludes that as the stop and arrest was unlawful, the conviction is unsafe, and recommends that the police use an available legal mechanism to ask for a rehearing of the sentence, then offer no evidence. Which is a way of letting them back away gracefully, without a formal judicial finding of wrongdoing on their part. But naturally, the police are having none of it. The Blue Gang always stands by their man - whether they're a child pornographer, a rapist, an evidence-planter, or just a petty bully in uniform.

And then the police wonder why the public don't trust them. This is why. Naked abuse of power shielded by official corruption. No accountability. A commitment to being unreformable. Its enough to make you think that abolition is the way forward. Certainly, we should be stripping powers and functions from them, and giving them to other agencies, without inherently abusive coercive powers, to reduce the harm police cause. To point out the obvious, the police can't do abusive bullying traffic stops under a pretence of legality if its absolutely not their job.

Meanwhile, the police simply saying "no" to the IPCA's recommendations makes it clear that we have a problem with accountability. The most obvious solution is to let the IPCA do directly what the police refuse to do, whether it is making applications for convictions to be set aside, or bringing employment proceedings or even prosecutions against police officers. The police won't hold themselves accountable, so someone else will have to do it for them.

How do we change OIA culture?

Former district court judge David Harvey has a column in the Herald today lamenting the state of the Official Information Act. Like others before him, he agrees that the law is fundamentally sound - its the public service that is the problem. Despite clear statutory language in favour of transparency, they are incentivised by ministers, chief executives, PR departments and deliberate underresourcing to delay, deny, and defend against OIA requests. And the Ombudsman is no help, because they are also structurally underresourced, and culturally focused on turning over complaints as quickly as possible to make their numbers look good, rather than actually investigating.

This isn't an abstract problem. As Harvey points out,

secrecy and obfuscation are not neutral administrative choices; they actively corrode democratic legitimacy.

And that is exactly what is happening. And you only have to look overseas to see where that leads.

What can be done? People have talked about training, but no-one is doing it - at least, not the sort of training that rams home to public servants that their duty is to the people, not the minister, and that they need to release information ASARP. And while criminal penalties for egregious abuses would help (and are entirely normal overseas), Ministers seem unlikely to pass laws which punish those protecting them, and the police seem unlikely to enforce them if they are passed.

The core problem here is that the fish rots from the head. Ministers want to be protected, and chief executives obey because they want to keep their jobs. So breaking the employment nexus by making chief executive contracts non-renewable while imposing clear positive transparency duties would be a start. We already do this for the Auditor-General precisely to prevent cosy relationships and strategic employment-seeking behaviour from corrupting their duties; doing it to the rest of the public service isn't so great a step.

Fundamentally, though, it comes down to ministerial leadership. Everything is downstream of that. When the OIA was passed, ministers decided they wanted it to work, made their expectations clear to the public service, and resourced them to do it. We clearly need a similar drive from ministers to clean out the culture of secrecy they have imposed, and restore transparency. As for how to get that, that seems to be our job, through the electoral process. Those running for office need to be asked about their attitude to the OIA, and what they will do to restore transparency. Those who support secrecy, or who do not keep their promises need to be electorally punished. Until that happens, ministers will keep fucking us over, and we will keep responding to them with the disdain that deserves, and public trust in them and their institutions will continue to decline.

Climate Change: Fossil government

If we are to avoid even more dangerous levels of climate change, we need to get off fossil fuels. The process is already happening - just look at the ongoing global switch to EVs and solar power, and the messy demise of the NZ gas industry - but we need it to happen faster, and we need our government to actually commit to it. There was an opportunity to do so at the recent climate change COP in Belém, Brazil last year, with a side-agreement on the Transition away from Fossil Fuels. MFAT looked at it, noted that it did not conflict with our policies, and recommended joining. But Shame Jones, the regime's most absurd fossil fuel advocate, vetoed the idea:

An assessment against government priorities found that signing up to the declaration would have a neutral or even positive effect.

While drafting the submission, officials noted there was "an open question about engaging Minister Jones for concurrence, consultation, or information".

The final submission was sent to Jones for consultation.

It was also sent to Trade Minister Todd McClay, but for information only - his input was not sought.

An email sent the next day said Jones had been consulted.

"Minister Jones does not want New Zealand to join the Declaration," a Ministry for Foreign Affairs official informed his colleagues.

So our entire climate change policy is now being driven by a corrupt fossil advocate committed to ignoring the problem for as long as he can (while people drown and burn and are buried by landslides). It's government of the fossils, by the fossils, and for the fossils. And if it stays in place for much longer, it will kill us all. Voting them out a necessary act of self-defence.