MMP was not designed for major party weakness

Back in 2012, in its Review of MMP, the Electoral Commission identified a significant flaw in the system: the number of electorate seats was increasing, while the total number of seats was capped, meaning fewer list seats. If the ratio got too bad - somewhere around 75 electorates to 45 list seats, something expected to happen around 2026 - this would lead to an increasing chance of disproportionate outcomes. To prevent this and preserve proportionality, the Electoral Commission recommended fixing the ratio of electorate to list seats at 60:40.

That didn't happen, of course, as the major parties bickered and refused to implement the Electoral Commission's recommendations for partisan political reasons. Meanwhile, changes in population distribution delayed the predicted armageddon: we currently have 72 electorates, the ratio the Commission recommended, and it will shrink to 71 at the election. But we still face the problem, from the other direction. Why? Because everyone hates Chris.

Most electorates are won by the major parties. Effectively, give or take the Māori seats and a general seat here or there, the electorates are reserved for the major parties. National and Labour won 60 of the 65 general electorates last election, though only one of the seven Māori seats. Worse, electorate results are massively disproportional. While Aotearoa is a multi-party system, our electorate results between the two major parties still roughly follow the cube-rule, which sees small differences in electorate vote share magnified to huge differences in seat share. So last election, Labour won 31% of the electorate vote and 17 seats, while National won 43% of the electorate vote and 43 seats. This election the polls are closer, but an e.g. 37:33 electorate vote split is likely to mean a 1.4:1 split in the share of electorates (so 35 seats to 25, assuming major party electorate share is retained), and even 36:34 leads to 1.2:1 (so 32 seats to 28). None of which mattered when the "major" parties were big and collectively winning 75% of the vote. But when everyone hates Chris, and the major parties are polling 57% between them, it is going to cause problems.

We're aware of the "danger" of National not getting any list seats because its vote share is so low. But its not just National, because both "major" parties are polling in the shitter. A 28% party is only entitled to 34 seats in Parliament. it takes only a slight preference in the electorate races to get more than that, and if a major party expands its lead over its rival while the overall purple vote remains static, the problem gets worse. A 30% party is entitled to 36 seats, but a 38:32 electorate vote split will probably see it win 38.

Basically: major party weakness is a recipe for disproportionality. And disproportionality isn't just undemocratic: if it matters, if it keeps or puts people in power, then it is a recipe for government and state illegitimacy.

How can we fix this? The problem is due to electorates, but we probably can't eliminate them and move to a pure list system. Electorate service is one of the things Aotearoa's MPs have traditionally done well, and retaining it is worthwhile. So we're left with the Electoral Commission's solution: fixing the ratio of electorate to list seats and expanding the size of parliament to fit. The Commission's suggested 60:40 ratio is already problematic, so we need to go lower - to 50:50, or even 40:60 to allow room for growth. On the latter point, expanding Parliament to its optimum size of ~175 MPs while retaining current electorates gives us close to 40:60, while giving all the other advantages of a larger parliament. And it should protect us from electorate shitfuckery for a long time to come.

National is murdering our health system

A tale in three headlines:

Nursing workforce growth has stalled despite Government claims vacancies are falling, The Post, 28 July 2026:

The number of nurses employed by Health New Zealand has barely changed in two years, despite the Government pointing to falling vacancy rates and an active recruitment drive to address workforce shortages.

Analysis of Health NZ workforce data by health economists Bill Rosenberg and Jacqueline Cumming shows nursing numbers increased rapidly through 2023 and early 2024 but have since plateaued.

[...]

Nursing FTEs increased by more than 3000 between March 2023 and March 2024, but have grown by just 54 positions in the two years since, Health NZ’s quarterly workforce reports show.

Government tells nursing schools to stop training so many nurses, Stuff, 14 october 2026:

The Government has told nursing schools to train fewer nurses next year.

The edict came from the Tertiary Education Commission, to the surprise of many nursing professors and lecturers last week. And it arrived at a time when nursing levels have become a charged election issue, with nurses at hospitals raising alarm about “crisis” level staffing and growing concern about aged care too.

In a letter to nursing schools last week, the Tertiary Education Commission instructed them to revert nursing student numbers back to 2025 levels for the 2027 year. That would mean fewer people would be training to be nurses, according to academics Stuff spoke to.

Starship hospital delays child cancer treatments for up to a week amid nursing shortage, Govt confirms, New Zealand Herald, 15 October 2026:

A “horrified” nurse says Starship children’s hospital has suspended chemotherapy treatment and bone marrow transplants for cancer patients as it grapples with a staffing crisis.

[...]

The nurse told the Herald that management informed staff of the development last week. Hospital bosses were “terrified” the information would be made public “because of how bad it will look”.

The nurse said she and other staff were “horrified and appalled” at the postponements, which had the potential to adversely affect patient outcomes.

Refusing to hire people to cut costs. Refusing to train them to avoid stories about graduates unemployed because of the hiring freeze. And now, we get the consequences: staff shortages causing service collapse.

Its pretty clear now that the collapse of Aotearoa's health system isn't a passive thing which "just happened"; it is a deliberate act of murder by the regime. And like all austerity, it will have a bodycount. The Starship hospital collapse is likely to make that bodycount explicit.

Which invites the obvious question: when are we going to start prosecuting politicians for the social murder they commit?

Showing us their priorities

When almost-Police Commission Jevon McSkimming was convicted of possession of child sexual abuse material and the IPCA found a concerted cover-up among senior police, the government's response was full of thunder. Police Minister Mark Mitchell called it "utterly disgraceful", and promised they were "acting decisively to install the strongest statutory oversight mechanism available to it – an Inspector-General of Police."

You'd have expected that would result in quick action, but instead it resulted in... nothing. Six months later there was no timeline for when the change would be implemented. Legislation was only just introduced last month, right before parliament rose, but wasn't given a first reading or sent to select committee. And today the Herald reported why: because after promising decisive action, the regime simply hadn't bothered to fund it:

The introduction of a new police watchdog, aimed at building back trust after the Jevon McSkimming scandal, has been pushed back with the law-and-order portion of Budget 2026 “heavily over-subscribed”.

Officials had sought an “urgent invitation for priority funding” in this year’s Budget to help set up the Inspector-General of Police – which went unfunded.

That's right: when we are getting near-daily headlines about corruption and criminality within the police, when senior cops are being convicted of serious crimes, when police conspire to cover all this up and hide it behind a cloak of "employment matters", the regime doesn't think this is a priority. The police appear to be rotten to the core, a sewer of bullies and rapists and child abuse fans, and Mark Mitchell thinks it isn't worth spending any money to stop that.

"Show me your budget, and I'll show you your priorities" indeed.

TOP betrays its supporters

TOP - now the Opportunity Party - was founded for one purpose: to promote a radical shift in Aotearoa's tax system, from taxing income to taxing land. The right hate the idea, saying it will lower house prices (boo hoo) and drive farmers out of business (showing they were shit at business to begin with). Chris Luxon had ruled out any coalition with the party because they promoted it. And in the face of this pressure, TOP has surrendered and complied in advance - first leaving tax reform off its list of coalition bottom lines, and now saying they're willing to agree to abandon it for a term in order to keep the door open with National:

Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong says agreeing to no progress on tax reform in the next term would be “worth considering” if there were other significant policy wins from negotiations as part of a potential National-led coalition.

Wong is also not ruling out publicly accepting those terms ahead of negotiations if National leader Christopher Luxon continues to insist he won’t talk to Opportunity after the election.

It comes as the party, which prides itself on being able to work with Labour or National, could hold the power after the November 7 election with two of three polls this week putting Opportunity in the kingmaker position.

Which raises two obvious questions. The first is what is the point of TOP, if they're willing to abandon their core policy, the reason for their existence, so completely? I am not a TOP supporter, but I take their policy position seriously, and expected them to fight hard for it in any coalition. And while I didn't expect them to win - 6% only gets you so much leverage, unless you're ACT - I expected them to get some progress: an inquiry to produce a clear statement of tradeoffs and an implementation pathway, which could then be used to build further public support and beat future governments with. Or a smaller shift, a tax-switch from income to land, to build the infrastructure and demonstrate viability. Offering to rule even that out means the party is effectively abandoning its core policy. So why bother witht hem at all?

The second is why are they so desperate to do a deal with National? Because pretty obviously, if (as the polls show) they are in the "kingmaker" position, and get to decide who the government is, they can just say "This is what we exist for as a party. You've ruled us out, but we'll get what we want from Labour". And since any Labour coalition will mean working with the Greens, who also want tax reform (albeit direct taxation of wealth, rather than only land), they'll have powerful allies to force concessions. Instead, they've publicly set fire to their ostensible principles, while reinforcing every narrative about them simply being a trojan horse for the right, intended to remove or siphon left votes.

Effectively, TOP is betraying its own supporters here. The onus is on those supporters to punish them. If not, well, I guess what you vote for: insincere, deceitful opportunists who will lie to your face about what they supposedly stand for, them ignore every promise they made in order to prop up a cruel, corrupt, tyrannical regime.

Election-rigging violates the BORA

Last year the regime attempted to rig the election, overturning 77 years of settled law to cut off enrolment two weeks before the vote, in a desperate effort to stop 100,000 mostly young, mostly opposition supporting people from voting. It was naked American-style election-rigging, of a sort not seen before in Aotearoa, and even at the time the Attorney-General said that it violated the bill of Rights Act, because it overturned longstanding expectations around enrolment. And now, the regime has formally admitted that in court. But they don't think the court should do anything about it, because Parliament already knows it has violated the law:

Courts do not need to declare recent electoral changes breach the Bill of Rights Act (BORA), because any future government would already know, according to the Crown.

But Christopher Carrol - who is seeking a declaration of inconsistency in the High Court regarding the government's controversial 13-day voter enrolment deadline - says given the concession from the Crown the Bill of Rights Act had been breached, there was a need for the court to both acknowledge and respond in some manner.

Justice David Boldt, presiding over the case, said he would not be silent on the "seriousness" of the breach: "The only question is whether that needs to be a declaration, or whether something… a bit lower voltage will do the trick."

But parliamentary knowledge isn't the problem - its parliament's refusal to act on that knowledge. And that's where a formal declaration of inconsistency is valuable, because it sets in motion a formal process where the government is notified and has to publicly respond, while creating clear pressure for it to remedy the breach.

Which is also why I find the judge's statement that he "likely would not reach a decision ahead of the election" to be completely unsatisfactory. To see this, just imagine a situation where the regime narrowly holds power because its self-admitted illegal "law" worked as expected, and 50 to 100 thousand kiwis were denied the right to vote. In such a situation, a declaration of inconsistency will effectively be a statement that the election was rigged and the resulting "government" is illegitimate. That will be hugely inflammatory (and rightly so!), and the judge may be deterred from making it, no matter what the law requires.

This is why we must know early. The actions a free and democratic society must take in advance of a potentially rigged election are hugely different from those it must take afterwards. While a declaration of inconsistency will not in and of itself change the law, it will allow us to change our behaviour, and vote accordingly. And that is something we deserve to be able to do.

(In the meantime: don't let the regime steal your vote. Enrol to vote or check your enrolment status here.)

A clear choice on transport

There were a couple of campaign announcements today, showing that Aotearoa has a clear choice on transport this election. From national, we have - of course - m0ar roads! Even in the South Island this time, though of course they're spending the big bucks up north, where nobody actually wants the things. Meanwhile from the Greens we have a promise to make the trains run on time - or indeed, run at all - with new intercity routes, light rail or busways in major cities (whichever the Infrastructure Commission recommends), and more regional buses to connect it all. And while its focused on passenger transport, the infrastructure renewal required will help freight too, helping to get trucks off the roads. Its a pretty compelling vision of the future, even if it draws on the past, and one which would massively improve life in our cities and regions far more than a handful of truck mega-highways would.

Labour, meanwhile, is left out of the conversation. All they have is a collection of stronger consumer rights and some policies for marginally cheaper petrol. Its hardly rising to the occasion, and the latter seems to be desperately missing the point. But I guess that's what you're left with when you don't actually want to spend any money, and want to suggest that everything will really be just the same, only with different people in charge. And then they wonder why they're polling so badly...

Labour on democracy and trust in government

Labour released its democracy and trust in government policy today, and it looks like a good start. They're promising:

• A lobbying register and code of conduct, and stand-down periods for Ministers;
• Limiting urgency and requiring post-enactment referral to select committee of any bill which skips the select committee phase;
• Lowering the voting age for local body elections and abolishing the landlord vote;
• Mentioned in the full speech, reform of the OIA to codify proactive release and include penalties for ministers who conspire to hide things

Which is all good, but note what's not included: caps on political donations or public funding to get money out of politics; stopping the revolving door for senior public servants as well as Ministers; a lower voting age for general elections. I'm also suspicious of any effort to "reform" the OIA which is government- rather than civil society-led, because their interests are not aligned with ours and they will write the law to suit themselves and enable more secrecy.

Lowering the (general) voting age will be because it is hard, but they're unwilling to say "we will put a bill before the House and make National pay the price if they vote it down". As for donation capping, Labour has never really wanted money out of politics, because they're stupid enough to think they'll get a share of it when they're in power. This election's statistics should disabuse them of that notion: the uber-rich are using their money as a weapon to undermine our democracy, and a genuinely democratic party would wage war on that bullshit. You can draw your own conclusions about what Labour's refusal to do so says about them.

On the other hand, with a donation cap a bottom line for TOP, Labour is going to have to attack the rich if they want to be in government. So they'd better start getting used to the idea.

Climate Change: Actions have consequences

In 2022, the government of Aotearoa made a historic free trade agreement with the European Union. In addition to the usual clauses about tarriffs, quotas, trade barriers, and so on, it included clauses in which the parties committed not to undermine the Paris climate agreement or weaken their environmental protections, and the power to apply sanctions if those provisions were breached. Since then, the National-led regime has repealed all effective climate policy, broken the linkage between our domestic goals and our Paris targets, refused to follow the spirit of the Paris agreement in setting new targets, and openly talked of refusing to meet our commitments when they come due. In other words, they've Fucked Around. And now they're about to Find Out, with a Dutch group launching a formal complaint that Aotearoa has broken the FTA:

A Dutch environmental group claims New Zealand has broken its climate change promises in the free trade agreement with the EU and is lodging the first complaint of its kind through the European Commission.

The group, Both ENDS, is using the complaints mechanism known as Single Entry Point and said this first climate test could be precedent setting.

The most extreme consequences could be losing access to the lucrative European market, but the group is seeking compliance rather than the suspension of trade benefits.

It claims New Zealand failed to uphold its legal commitments in the EU-NZ FTA not to weaken environmental protections in order to "encourage trade or investment," and to effectively implement the Paris Agreement.

But the Trade Minister is firing back, saying its "not for overseas countries, organisations or lobby groups to tell New Zealand how to meet its obligations".

But actually it is, since we agreed to that in the FTA. But I guess we can't expect this regime to understand the treaties it is party to, since it wilfully misunderstands te Tiriti, the treaty which legitimises it and permits it to exist.

As for what's at stake, McClay was crowing just a few months ago about how the FTA had led to $3 billion of extra trade with the EU. All of that of course is contingent on New Zealand keeping its word, and it will go away if we don't. The solution of course is for National to keep its word: to uphold the Paris Agreement, meet our emissions targets, and not roll back environmental policy to advantage business. If they don't want to do that, then we should get a new government which will.

Bottom lines

Another poll was released last night, confirming the same story as previous polls: everyone hates Chris, and TOP gets to choose the next government if it makes it over the threshold. And today the party has laid out its bottom lines, giving some indication of how it will make that choice. It wants lobbying regulation, a ban on bottom trawling, a ten-year funding plan to fix the health system, a full commitment to the Paris agreement and protection of He Pou a Rangi's independence, and a Commerce Commission crackdown on supermarkets.

Its a pretty moderate list for a party which hopes to enter parliament for the first time, though the absence of even a study of their big bang land tax / UBI tax switch is a bit unusual. But it bodes well for the left, because there's nothing on that list that Labour and the Greens would disagree with, and much of it is already in their policy platforms. Its another sign that, in terms of policy, the parties are natural allies.

Meanwhile, its very bad news for the right bloc. The right parties collectively oppose lobbying regulation, support the pillage of nature, and oppose health spending (because they'd rather have tax cuts for the rich). Both ACT and NZ First explicitly want to withdraw from Paris, and ACT wants to disestablish he Pou a Rangi (National merely wants to nobble it). And ACT thinks regulating supermarkets is "unethical" (they're fine with price gouging duopolies screwing us over). In other words, any arrangement will be a mess of vetoes and counter-vetoes, and seething resentment over that. Which is not a recipe for a deal, or for a stable government afterward. But then, if TOP's board would rather keep the regime in power, that's what will happen, and all their policy positions will be revealed as just so much hot air...

Which is one of the reasons I'm not voting for Opportunity. That, and the fact that everything they offer is already being offered by the Greens, often better, and with more certainty that that is where they actually stand. But I'll be happy to see them as part of a left coalition, and they should be a useful hammer to beat Labour with and pull them to the left.

Taxing the rich is popular

The election is just six weeks away, and the parties of the rich are frantically trying to scare us about tax. If a left-coalition forms after the election, then Labour will impose a capital gains tax! Or they'll be forced to accept the Greens' proposed wealth-tax on the uber-rich! Shock! Horror! Won't someone think of people worth tens of millions of dollars with multiple houses?

Meanwhile, while they're trying to frighten us, it turns out that the public actually supports these taxes. And they support a wealth tax more than they support Labour's least-they-could-possibly-do, protect the rich CGT:

[Image stolen from Ipsos Issues Monitor, via RNZ]

Note that this is asking about the specific policy proposals of the various parties, rather than vague propositions. So 64% of those polled explicitly support the Greens' proposed wealth tax. I guess they recognise what the problem is - the rich - and won't accept half-measures. Which includes TOP's land tax, because it explicitly excludes financial capital, while also taxing the urban rich at lower rates than the rest of us (and fuck that).

Labour and the Greens should be taking heart from this. Despite all National's scaremongering, people recognise very well that the only people negatively affected by taxing the rich will be... the rich. Which is why they and their paid stooges are screaming so loudly. As for the rest of us, it means a better life. Taxing the rich is a popular policy, and the left parties should push on it as hard as they can.

Good riddance to LNG

Back in February, in an effort to keep gas prices (and gas retailer profits) high, National announced a mad plan for an LNG import terminal, to be fast-tracked by a special law, with contracts signed before the election. It was a stupid plan, locking us into high-cost, highly vulnerable, highly polluting energy for decades, right when we are on the verge of eradicating it from our local energy mix. Fortunately, it now looks like its just not going to happen, with both of National's coalition partners vetoing the idea:

The Government’s hopes of signing a contract for an LNG terminal before the election appear in tatters after NZ First leader Winston Peters revealed Cabinet “decided not make a decision today” and the ACT Party voiced objections.

ACT leader David Seymour said the Government should leave the decision on whether to underwrite an LNG import terminal until after the election. Signing a contract before then would be “irresponsible”, he said.

NZ First deputy leader Shane Jones, who has referred to potential misgivings over a quick decision on LNG, hinted that was also NZ First’s view, but said he would leave it to Peters to make any announcement.

And hopefully that will be the end of it. When even corrupt, fossil-mad NZ First and ecocidal arsonists ACT can recognise its a stupid idea (in addition to every other party along the political spectrum bar National), then its a strong suggestion that it really is stupid. And hopefully after the election we'll have a new government which will end this stupid plan for good, and the gas industry can die a quiet death.

Submit!

Last week the regime introduced three anti-Tiriti bills under urgency, then rammed them through their first reading in a rare Saturday afternoon sitting to avoid public scrutiny. Those bills were sent to the Justice Committee, which has now called for submissions on them. There is no formal submissions deadline, but they encourage submissions by 1 December 2026 so they can be ready to be handled by the next Parliament. Submissions can be made on the form linked above, or by post (free!) to:

Justice Committee Secretariat
Justice Committee
Parliament Buildings
Wellington

The committee is handling all three bills as a group due to their closely related subject matter. If you're looking for things to say (beyond that they are a racist pile of shit and a horrific breach of Te Tiriti which will cause a generational delegitimisation of Parliament and the New Zealand state), they have been denounced by both the Waitangi Tribunal and Human Rights Commission. In terms of the committee's proposed new mandate to focus on producing "high-quality legislation", I suggest that is impossible. The only way to ensure high-quality legislation is not to pass them.

And if parliament complains again about getting "too many" submissions, I'd suggest that if Parliament keeps trolling the public like this, they can hardly complain when the public responds in kind. If they want fewer submissions, and less heat in their committees, maybe they should stop doing that, and just be less shit.

The Landlord Party

When National introduced its landlord tax-break, Labour's Barbara Edmonds called it a waste of money which would blow the government's books. Then-CTU economist and now Labour candidate Craig Renney was even harsher, pointing out how it would subsidise a handful of mega-landlords by over a million dollars each, funnelling public money into the pockets of the few. But now both of them are going to have to eat those words and pretend they never said them, as Chris Hipkins has decided that actually he wants to subsidise landlords after all:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has ruled out any changes to interest deductibility settings for landlords, if elected.

The coalition government in 2024 reinstated landlords' ability to claim tax deductions for interest on residential investment properties.

Opposition parties decried the government prioritising "tax cuts for landlords" which cost around $2.8 billion over four years.

But Hipkins on Monday confirmed Labour would not change the policy, because it was committed to a capital gains tax instead.

Which is just another demonstration of Labour's cowardice, its pandering to the rich, and its unwillingness to actually change anything (at least, nothing that upsets anyone important; they'll gladly throw the rest of us under the first bus which comes along). Its also an example of their complete hypocrisy: this was a terrible policy just two years ago, now its suddenly great. Actual policy merit doesn't seem to come into it - just whatever reckons Chris has this week in his desperate effort not to offend his mates in the koru lounge.

Who does this policy appeal to? People on $309,000 plus slush who just got us to buy them another house. Who gets fucked by it? Everybody who wants public services. The problem for Labour is that there aren't a lot of people in the first category, and a fuck of a lot more in the second. Once upon a time the party knew that. Once upon a time it didn't need to even do the calculation, because it knew what it stood for. But it doesn't now, and as a result its pandering to the rich while trying to call itself a "labour" party. Maybe it should rebrand itself as "Landlord" instead.

Fundamentally, voters can't trust a party with no values. And if Labour drives even more voters leftwards or makes them give up voting entirely with this, then it can hardly whinge about the consequences.

Ignoring the elephant in the House

The Standing Orders Committee has finally reported back on the Review of Standing Orders 2026, proposing amendments to parliament's rules for the next term. In a term dominated by the constant abuse of urgency and related anti-democratic efforts to restrict public participation, people really only had one question about this review: what would it do to curb these abuses? The committee's response? Nothing. And fuck us for asking.

I'm serious. What people wanted was checks and balances to limit the use of urgency - a supermajority, a requirement that there be an actual state of national emergency to justify interference with the normal democratic process, or something similar. Some rules so that the government of the day couldn't just say "fuck you, urgency!" and ram through hugely controversial legislation overnight without scrutiny, or steamroll it over exhausted MPs at the end of a week of midnight sittings. The committee refused to consider any of that. The furtherest they will go is a default rule that a bill go to select committee after first reading, unless the member responsible moves that it go immediately to second reading, in which case there's a requirement that they "inform the House with some particularity of the reason why the omission of select committee consideration is warranted." And there's a similar requirement where select committee consideration periods are shortened.

Such a requirement already applies to urgency itself, and the record abuse of urgency this term is absolute proof of its ineffectiveness. But that's the sort of shit you get from a legislature which began as a rubberstamp for a hereditary tyranny. Unfortunately for them, some of us would like them to grow out of that and be something more.

Parliamentary apologists will no doubt point at the rest of the chapter on legislative procedures, the proposed new Legislative Scrutiny Committee and rules to allow various sorts of technical bills and revisions of the statute book to go much faster. But this is just missing the point. Because urgency overwhelmingly isn't used for those sorts of bills (if it was, it would be far less controversial). Instead, urgency is used to introduce hugely controversial legislation in secret; to ram it through quickly to prevent opposition; to shove it through its final stages again to limit the window when it is in the news. It is not used because there is any sort of "crisis" or (non-self-inflicted) time-limit - it is being used as a political management strategy by an anti-democratic regime.

Parliament claims to be the centre of our democracy. It cannot credibly make that claim so long as it retains this tyranny at its heart. Its refusal to deal with this problem further erodes its legitimacy and social licence and strengthens the perception that it is an undemocratic, out-of-touch institution, now actively ignoring the people it claims to represent.

But urgency isn't the committee's only area of failure. They've also dismissed calls to limit the use of discriminatory and unparliamentary language, saying that that's up to the Speaker. The constant racism from the regime benches, the questioning of MPs' citizenship or right to be there by racist Ministers, that's all OK apparently. Certainly nothing the House should take a stand on. As opposed to overdeclarations of pecuniary interests by MPs wanting to set a good example by being transparent, which must be stomped on lest anyone be forced to follow suit or be publicly shamed if they do not. Similarly, they view the record number of submissions this term (due to troll legislation and an increasingly active and engaged public) as a problem, rather than a positive development (the engagement, not the trolling), and so propose ways of dismissing or ignoring submissions which - in the eyes of the political class - are not focused on producing "high-quality legislation". Which also means that when the regime says "people will get to have their say at select committee" - something it does whenever it has refused to consult before legislating - it will be a lie. The regime might not care about that - they're anti-democratic scum - but you'd think that an institution which purports to be representative and to provide the people with a voice might. But it seems parliament doesn't care about that either. Instead, they're interested in insulating the political class as much as possible from what people think.

Parliament has failed here. And by failing so publicly and arrogantly, they have reduced their legitimacy, their social licence, their mana. The public deserved much more than a "fuck you" in response to our concerns about the erosion of democracy. And Parliament will have only itself to blame if we start saying "fuck you" right back at them.

Using austerity to attack democracy III

Back in June I posted about the regime's efforts to use "high costs" to limit the public's right to freedom of information, via a consultant's report which claimed that handling OIA requests costs $185 million a year. The numbers were bogus, of course - based on an Australian estimate, which is four time higher than the actual measured cost of handling requests at police - but of course Ministry of Justice's fancy consultants haven't corrected that in their followup report. Instead, they've doubled down, claiming that the true costs are two to three times higher than their initial estimate. Like I said, you hire consultants to deliver the answers you want, and TBL has just handed Goldsmith a huge number - half a billion dollars! - with which to attack our democracy.

Ministry of Justice's proposed response to this is all about weakening the OIA: limiting the definition of "official information" and the agencies covered; expanding withholding grounds; increasing charges; more refusals for "substantial collation and research"; giving agencies the ability to declare requesters (rather than specific requests) "vexatious”. Plus of course their regular demands like impunity for government doxxing. Most of which misses the point. Because while the consultants report does talk about repeated and complex requests as one cost driver, the overwhelming thrust is that the reason the OIA costs so much is that public sector agencies are just a bit shit. Some examples:

• Most agencies are terrible at information management, meaning they can't find anything and have to talk to subject matter experts, which takes a lot of time and distracts them from doing other things;
• Staff training is "highly variable" and documentation of OIA policies is often poor, meaning everything takes longer and costs more than it needs to, and wheels are constantly reinvented;
• Workflow management is mostly manual, which means poor coordination and tracking (unmentioned: requests falling through the cracks or being delayed because someone is sick or has gone on holiday);
• Risk-aversion, review, and executive-level sign off adds more expense and delay. The report frames this as wanting to avoid the time and expense of complaints to the Ombudsman (which agencies should be wanting to avoid, by making clearly lawful decisions), but a huge amount of it is just political arse-covering.

Tackling that stuff, through systematised training, common workflow and tracking software, and improvement of information management would go a long way towards lowering overall costs. But that would all cost money up front. And unfortunately the regime seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with planned cuts at the National Archives likely to lead to worse information management across the public sector.

There are some other useful suggestions - increased proactive release, assessing OIA withholding grounds when documents are created (allowing staff to assess risk early and not use as much SME time), standard legislated pathways for release of common types of information, greater resourcing. But you know that this government at least is going to ignore those suggestions. Instead, they'll be focusing on Ministry of Justice's proposals to limit the OIA rather than actually improve things. Still, at least the really radical ideas, like requiring RealMe to make a request, or ongoing tracking and surveillance of requesters (sorry, "systemic requester profiling") so they can be refused, didn't make it into the advice to the Minister. Meaning they'll probably be popped in at the committee stage of any resulting legislation in order to avoid consultation and scrutiny.

There will supposedly be "consultation" on any changes - brief, and after Cabinet has made its decisions, of course. But the entire process will be managed by Ministry of Justice. This is inappropriate. The OIA is constitutional legislation. It was drafted by a full government inquiry (the Danks Committee). Reviews have typically been conducted by neutral, independent bodies - the Law Commission in 1997 and 2012, and the Ombudsman in 2015 and 2019. By contrast, a Ministry is both institutionally captured, and the servant of the government of the day - a body totally inappropriate to be considering changes of this scope to constitutional law. If the government wants to fuck around with the fundamentals of transparency - the definition of "official information", the scope of the Act, withholding and refusal grounds - or tilt the playing field towards charging and providing less information - then that is something which needs an independent eye. The regime's indicated "reforms" and proposed pathway is a recipe for deceased social licence and trust in government - the very opposite of what transparency legislation is meant to do.

More tyrannical over-reach from Parliament

Two weeks ago The Post's Tom Hunt published a story about the select committee inquiry into FENZ, which apparently found that the FENZ board is dysfunctional and should be replaced. There is a related followup today, about its disastrous firetruck purchase, which was (weirdly) done without an open tender. Both stories relied upon material leaked from the Governance and Administration Committee's inquiry into FENZ (which released its report today).

Parliament's Standing Orders claim that select committee reports are confidential until publication, and that breaching this confidentiality is a breach of privilege. The committee's deputy chair, Tim Costley, complained to the Speaker about this, and Gerry Brownlee has obligingly referred it to Parliament's kangaroo court:

Speaker Gerry Brownlee has referred a report in The Post to the Privileges Committee.

The high-powered Parliamentary committee has the power to censure members of the public and could bar The Post’s political team from entering Parliament.

The story in question referred to a leaked select committee report about Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ). It was not written by a member of The Post’s Parliamentary press gallery team.

The latter is important. In similar cases in the past, the journalists responsible have been members of the press gallery, and so the Privileges Committee has referred them to the gallery, which has suspended or demoted them for breaching their (parliament-imposed) rule that members must obey Parliament's standing orders. But no such lever is available here. So Parliament is claiming a right to punish random journalists for reporting on matters of clear public interest, simply because the reporting was "too soon" for the politicians' taste. Which is simply tyrannical bullshit. Even more so when you remember that the Privileges Committee is a partisan kangaroo court, whose procedures and biases would be laughed out of court were it ever able to be subjected to proper judicial oversight.

Tyranny from the Speaker and parliamentary institutions has been an unpleasant theme this term. We've had threats to use the Privileges Committee to imprison without charge or trial (which fortunately resulted in the purported power to imprison being removed); an outright Parliamentary lynching of Te Pāti Māori MPs for too effectively representing their constituents; and an utterly lawless Speaker applying the rules in a nakedly biased, partisan, and sexist manner. This is just the latest in a long line of abuse. But where previously the abuse has been confined to MPs, or members of the wider parliamentary community, here they're targeting someone with no connection to the institution at all, before a partisan kangaroo court.

This tyranny cannot be tolerated. Our over-mighty parliament needs to be brought under control, because it is currently a threat to our democracy. As for the solution, a good start would be repealing the 350 year old law which gives them their impunity, and bringing them under the oversight of some neutral adults - the courts.

The Overton window shifts...

Just ten days ago the Greens promised to smash the supermarket duopoly, forcibly breaking up Foodstuffs and (foreign-owned) Woolworths and nationalising part of each to form a state-owned KiwiMart. It may have been a bit tricky to implement (because Foodstuffs is an owner-cooperative), but it clearly caught public imagination. Because today National has been forced to announce that they, too, support smashing the supermarket duopoly, though only after a review, and only by forcibly splitting it up:

National has made a supermarket break-up a key part of its election pitch, proposing to sever Pak'nSave from New World in a bid to drive down grocery prices.

The shake-up would be contingent on a six-month review by the Commerce Commission into whether the split would actually leave shoppers better off.

If the watchdog gave it the green light, National said it would legislate to force through the separation.

The policy is heavily caveated - how many propertarian weirdos and supermarket execs has National appointed to the Commerce Commission? - and clearly subject to a veto by ACT (which they have reliably delivered), so its arguably an insincere PR exercise aimed at providing the appearance of support for change without any substance. But even that is a huge victory. The fact that the party of protecting established economic interests has been forced to publicly support the breakup of one of the most established economic interests in the country shows how far the public mood has shifted, and how desperate National are to avoid being on the wrong side of that shift.

So what about Labour? They've been silent about our cartel problem, and their response to National has been to get pissy about it. Which makes me suspect National has "stolen" their carefully caveated, multiple-outs, aimed at preserving the status quo policy, meaning they'll have to go back to the focus groups and get another one because they have no values or principles to guide them and they can't just agree with National. (They have announced an anti-price-gouging law, but that is only part of a solution, addressing the symptoms while ignoring the cartels in the room). Hopefully Labour's eventual policy - if they manage to get one before the election - will be stronger. But it would not surprise me if they failed to take advantage of the huge opportunity this represents, because it would mean change, and that apparently is what Labour now exists to prevent.

As for the Greens, getting National to support decartelization is a huge victory for them, and a huge victory for their theory of political change (use policy announcements to change the conversation and the political landscape, forcing policy to shift closer to Green outcomes as a result). They've shifted the Overton window such that the status quo of cartels is no longer politically acceptable. The other parties (especially Labour) now have to respond to that.

This isn't accountability

Less than a year ago nearly-Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming was convicted of possession of child sexual abuse material. In the aftermath of the prosecution, the police began auditing police computer use to see who else among them might be a child pornographer. That review has now found 21 police officers looking at things which are illegal or breach police policy. But we're not allowed to know what, if anything, the police did about it:

The review identified 21 employees who had used the police network or police-issued mobile devices to conduct searches containing terms that could indicate access to pornography or other concerning material, the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) said on Tuesday.

Four cases were considered serious enough to require separate investigations, which remain ongoing under IPCA oversight.

Investigations into the other 17 employees have now concluded.

[...]

The IPCA did not disclose how many employees were dismissed or detail the sanctions imposed, but said it agreed with the outcome reached in each of the 17 cases.

Knowing what happened, so we can judge whether it is sufficient or inadequate, is the absolute basic of accountability. But when it comes to the police, we are denied that. The police won't tell anyone, calling it a "confidential employment process". Neither will the IPCA. And if you try and OIA the details, the police will refuse, and the Ombudsman will back them, and say that the IPCA's report fulfils the public interest in accountability. Which is simply bullshit. We have no idea what happened here. All we know is that a bunch of boys in blue say everything is OK, and a bunch of ex-boys in blue say "yeah mate, you can trust them".

I've previously called the IPCA a fraud on the New Zealand public. I see no reason here to change that conclusion. They're not providing accountability here; instead they're just colluding in a cover up for an institution which is rotten to the core.

A regime of trolls

Its 53 days until the election, and Parliament is in its last sitting block desperately trying to pass the last of the regime's agenda before it rises. So naturally, the regime has chosen this moment to troll the country with its latest racist pile of shit:

A contentious bill to repeal references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in laws has been introduced to Parliament today.

The highly anticipated policy, baked into New Zealand First’s coalition agreement with National, proposes reviewing references to the Treaty of Waitangi in 19 pieces of legislation.

Parliament will begin its last sitting block before the election tomorrow.

It is expected to use urgency and extended sitting with bills likely to be debated into the weekend. It is unclear when this bill will be debated.

Except its three separate bills - one to delete references, one to amend them, and one to standardise (weaken) them. Which means if they want to send them to first reading its three hours of debate rather than just one. And all so a gaggle of racist parties can troll the people of Aotearoa and show off how racist they are.

But I'm not sure the regime will want to send them to first reading - because that in turn means sending them to select committee, which means submissions, which will coincide with the election. National's previous act of trolling, its racist Treaty Principles Bill, energised the left. It activated thousands of previously uninterested people to engage with the parliamentary process, resulting in the largest number of submissions ever received on a bill. It also saw the second-largest petition in Aotearoa's history, and one of the largest protests in our history. By trolling us like this, National is inviting a similar response. And if it wants a similar protest, right at the start of the advance voting period, with a clear message to vote the racists out, then it can have it.

...which makes these bills even more of an exercise in bad faith, introduced simply to upset and annoy, but with no real intent of advancing them. Which is basically this regime in a nutshell: trolls. They're a regime of trolls. And the sooner we are rid of them, the better.

Labour on climate change: Not quite the adult in the room

National has abolished all effective climate change policy, and is gaslighting us on the impact of that on emissions targets. National's partners are ouright arsonists and climate change deniers. So where does Labour stand? While they haven't released a full climate policy yet - better start soon? - they did make a small announcement this week, signalling a rapid ETS review to (among other things) look at how to disentangle forestry from the ETS. Good. He Pou a Rangi has been warning about this for years, and a review was in fact scheduled after the last election. National cancelled it. Since then the warnings have only strengthened, and National has kept kicking the can down the road, refusing to be an adult and fix the broken system, because that would upset established interests. The fact that they'll be able to criticise Labour for being the adult in the room is probably seen by them as a bonus - an example of how policy is driven by trolling, rather than any semblance of "responsible government".

Labour's announcement is unclear about whether the review will also consider industrial allocation - another huge distortion of the ETS, which similarly threatens to break it - but hopefully it will. Polluters have already had 18 years of subsidies, and if we want the system to actually be effective, it is long past time they ended.

Unfortunately, Labour is still refusing to be an adult over agricultural emissions, saying that pricing dirty cows was not going to be a default, and that instead

We think that we can work with farmers to do that without putting a price on methane emissions.

Which invites the obvious question: how? Because farmers have never engaged in good faith on this, and every time they pretend to, they simply stab Aotearoa in the back.

Labour is, like National, wanking on about "new technology" which reduces farm emissions. But unless they have actual, concrete policy to make farmers adopt it, that technology might as well not exist, and is simply a rhetorical distraction from the horde of dirty, farting cows which are destroying the climate and not paying their way. Pricing emissions was the way of forcing adoption, either directly at the farm level, or indirectly by getting processors like Fonterra to pass it down the chain. If Labour aren't going to do that, then they will have to use direct regulation instead. And if they refuse to do either, they are simply stupid little children, and not remotely serious about our biggest policy challenge.

And on the gripping hand, both Labour's likely coalition partners want to price agricultural emissions, and its a far more significant issue for them than Labour, so Labour's preferences on this are largely irrelevant. A cynic would say they've only adopted this position so they can "reluctantly" be "forced" into doing the right thing by the Greens and/or Opportunity - a dishonest and cowardly tactic from a dishonest and cowardly party...

There's a lot more questions, of course: what are they actually going to do about the Paris liability (something else National has kicked the can down the road on so they can criticise Labour)? What will they do about EVs? Coal? National's bullshit LNG terminal and the gas industry in general? Will they restore the clean car rebate and the GIDI scheme? Will they listen to He Pou a Rangi and strengthen targets? Hopefully there'll be answers to all of this before the election. But given their position on agriculture, I'm not sure they've going to be entirely adult about it.