A hegemony-ending war?

Well, that was a day, wasn't it? After threatening that "a whole civilisation will die tonight" if he didn't get what he wanted, the orange shitgibbon has decided that actually its time for a ceasefire. The terms of which - a continuation of Iranian nuclear enrichment, and Iran and Oman getting to toll the Strait of Hormuz in lieu of reparations - are effectively an admission of US defeat. The US says it will be "negotiating" over the next two weeks to try and change that, with the threat of restarting bombing, but its clear to everyone else that that won't get them what they want, and that it would be much better to simply walk away, and let the uneasy ceasefire eventually become effectively permanent.

And hopefully the rest of the world will spend the next two weeks persuading America to do that. Because America has made it clear that they are the enemy of the world, and we simply cannot take their shit any more. The way they export instability with their perpetual interference in other countries, the way they start wars and fuck up the entire world on the whim of their demented mad king. And while its tempting to see this as a problem of their current leadership, he is just the symptom of a society which believes itself exceptional and so entitled to do this to us.

Our global system is now too interconnected and too brittle to withstand such constant sabotage. And that means that America needs to be constrained, diplomatically and economically.

The good news is that this disaster of a war looks to be the beginning of the end for American hegemony. They've alienated the allies they depend on for their power, and shown that hosting their bases creates insecurity, not stability. If America is allowed to station forces in your country, they will use those forces to start a war with your neighbours, without asking or warning you, then leave you to burn when the inevitable retaliation comes. If they are allowed to use your airspace for military purposes, they will do so to commit or enable war crimes. All while sitting safe in their fascist "homeland", which of course is sacrosanct and is never allowed to be attacked. That's not a recipe for good relationships. Countries hosting US bases should be seriously reconsidering whether they want to keep doing so, and hopefully kicking America out. Meanwhile, they've also demonstrated the limits of their military power. Like their friend Russia, they are in fact incapable of defeating a middle power. While they can bomb for a month, smash stuff up, kill people, destroy infrastructure, and commit war crimes from the air, all that does is piss people off (Who knew?) And even that power is now constrained, because they've burned most of their arsenal on murdering Iranian schoolchildren and enabling Israel to do the same.

So, while this probably isn't the last American imperialist war, I think its all downhill for them from here. The world is already looking to China, simply because they manage to appear normal, and aren't constantly bombing people. If they can keep that up, and resist the urge to exploit America's weakness to steal from their neighbours, then the hegemonic position occupied by America will simply fall into their lap as the status quo coalition aligns behind them. I'd rather have no hegemon (because fuck hegemons and fuck empires), but a peaceful, non-predatory one is better than the American monster.

Justice for Afghanistan?

Ben Roberts-Smith is a war criminal. While serving in the Australian SAS in Afghanistan, he murdered four unarmed Afghan civilians and committed other war crimes. He kicked an elderly handcuffed man over a cliff. He machine-gunned a prisoner with a prosthetic leg, then stole the leg as a trophy and used it in drinking games. He ordered soldiers under his command to murder unarmed civilians. He assaulted prisoners in his care, and ordered other assaults. These are not allegations; they are findings of fact by an Australian judge (though under a civil burden of proof, and sadly not in a criminal trial).

That judge said that Roberts-Smith had "disgraced his country" by his conduct. The Australian government gave him a Victoria Cross for it. But now, he is finally being prosecuted for it:

Ben Roberts-Smith has been arrested in relation to multiple counts of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians and prisoners in what looms as the most significant war crimes prosecution in Australian history.

Roberts-Smith is expected to be charged on Tuesday with five counts of war crime - murder following a joint investigation between the Office of Special Investigator and the Australian Federal Police. The maximum penalty for the offence of war crime - murder is life imprisonment.

Good. And hopefully the same will happen to the rest of Australia's war criminals. Because the Brereton Report found 39 murders, not just four, with 25 war criminals responsible. And they all need to be held to account.

Parliament is now a hate-platform

A ballot for two member's bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn:

• Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill (Rima Nakhle)
• Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill (Jenny Marcroft)

The first bill is just more tiresome racism. The second is a hate crime. Its drawing from the ballot (and indeed, its acceptance into the ballot at all) makes it clear that "our" parliament is now simply a hate-platform, Stormfront-in-Thorndon, spewing divisiveness and hate into the public sphere for the benefit of a tiny fringe of fundy bigots and weirdos. Just this week the House supported rules against exactly that, extending a sessional order which deplatforms hateful petitions from parliament's website. But apparently hateful member's bills which seek to erase the identity of some kiwis and reduce their rights are OK. That has obvious implications for the already tottering legitimacy of Parliament as an institution, and for the legitimacy of the laws it makes.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day. First up is the committee stage of the Carter Trust Amendment Bill, which is the usual cleaning up the mess after some rich person got a private law once. After that is the third reading of Kieran McAnulty's Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Sales on Anzac Day Morning, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Christmas Day) Amendment Bill, which repeals some archaic religious trading restrictions, while weirdly leaving others in place. It will be a conscience vote, but there was a significant majority for it at second reading. If it passes and is signed today or tomorrow will come into force just in time for the easter holiday. After that is the first reading of Kahurangi Carter's Copyright (Parody and Satire) Amendment Bill, which fixes a significant problem with our copyright law, and then the House should make a start on Tim van de Molen's Military Decorations and Distinctive Badges (Modernisation) Amendment Bill, which is just army wank with a pronoun fix (the latter of which could have been done at any time by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel). And if that happens, there should be a ballot for one bill tomorrow.

Good riddance?

It sounds like the regime is having second thoughts about its stupid plan for an LNG terminal:

The Government’s plan to build a liquefied natural gas import terminal in Taranaki to reduce electricity prices is in doubt.

A decision on the type of terminal and who will build it is due mid-year, but ministers are considering using that decision to rethink the project, potentially delaying it – or axing it.

Multiple Beehive sources say skyrocketing liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices, driven by the war in the Middle East, have changed the economics behind the idea.

[...]

However, the final decision, multiple ministers privately admit, may be to walk away from the project entirely, given the high prices.

Good riddance. It was always a stupid plan, more expensive than simply reducing gas demand, while leaving us dependant on imported fuel which could simply disappear in a crisis. And that's exactly what happened! There is a crisis, the LNG has disappeared, and its likely to stay gone for a long time (and longer the more National's "ally" Donald Trump fucks around). Those risks were always there of course, but they've happened quickly enough for the government to actually change its mind at least.

So what's the alternative? A mix of demand reduction - investing in electrifying industry to get it off gas - and building renewables to increase supply. That's perfectly do-able, and for only a fraction of the cost of National's $2.7 billion boondoggle. Of course, its not what the gas industry wants, so the question is whether the regime will be sensible, or continue to listen to its donors, even when everyone can see that what they want is total stupidity.

Using austerity to attack democracy

A couple of weeks ago, when the Financial Times reported that the UK regime was planning to attack their Freedom of Information Act because too many people were using it, I wondered how long it would be before National tried the same. Not long, as it turns out

The Government has asked officials to examine the costs associated with responding to Official Information Act requests, in a move some fear could lead to reduced transparency.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has confirmed any changes could lead to less information being released to the public in some cases, arguing the system has become unsustainable as “every different little element of communication has been included”.

[...]

In a statement to Newsroom, Goldsmith confirmed he had asked the ministry to gather more information on the effects of a sharp increase in OIA requests, which had risen 394 percent since 2016.

“We are interested to know what revisions could be made to make the Act more efficient and practical.”

...which he then confirms means more secrecy. Because that's what "efficient" and "practical" means to these arseholes.

OIA numbers have absolutely risen over the last decade, for a lot of reasons. There have been changes in who and what gets counted, reflecting both government restructuring and evolving OIA practice, and there have been changes in awareness and accessibility and in democratic engagement. But that's really just the background increase. Because when you dig into the numbers, you see huge increases in service delivery agencies, agencies like Corrections and ACC and MSD, who make decisions over people's lives. And it seems that part of the story is that government has become more adversarial - denying people their rights in prison, cutting ACC and benefits to save money - and people are using the tools they have to push back and enforce their rights.

(There are other things going on as well. Over 85% of Custom's OIA workload in 2024 seems to be "travel movement requests" by insurance and finance companies wanting to check if someone has left the country. There are likely other similar stories for other agencies when we start digging...)

Goldsmith has apparently tasked some consultants to dig into this. If they do their job properly, that will help us understand where the increased load has come from, and how badly successive governments have under-resourced agencies to handle this basic democratic requirement. But consultants say what they are paid to say, and they may simply have been paid to do a hatchet job to make a case for removing our rights. The regime could avoid such suspicions by proactively publishing the brief and all their advice on the issue so far. But until they do, we should assume the worst. This regime surrendered any claim to a presumption of good faith long ago.

The OIA is a key constitutional measure, a pillar of our democracy. We can't participate in democratic decision-making or hold the government to account for its decisions without the transparency it enables. Yes, it costs money - but so do elections, and like elections, we should gladly pay that price as the cost of living in a democratic society. A regime which sees it merely as a cost to be cut and controlled is both missing the point, and fundamentally opposed to democracy. We need to vote that regime out while we still can.

Maybe the regime isn't united on tyranny?

When the regime introduced four tyrannical bills last week, I joked that the reason for the theme was that it was one of the few things the coalition could agree on. But it turns out that maybe they don't? RNZ's Phil Pennington has a piece on the Policing Amendment Bill today, focusing on the surveillance aspect rather than the protest-suppression clauses. Which it turns out were opposed by both the Ministry of Justice and the Privacy Commissioner as overly broad and lacking safeguards. Opposition parties are jumping on that and wanting changes, which is good. But the problem for the regime is that ACT also agrees:

ACT's Todd Stephenson gave qualified backing to [the bill].

"This bill does clarify and expands the police's power to collect, record and use information, including images, sounds, for lawful policing purposes," he said in the debate.

But with a kicker.

"Our support is conditional on ensuring that there is strong privacy protections and safeguards against mass surveillance powers."

So maybe the regime isn't as united on tyranny as they appear...?

My own thoughts on the bill are here. Unless safeguards are added, it will give the police power to shut down any protest, and to engage in mass or targetted surveillance without any need for a warrant - overturning both fundamental constitutional principles and long-settled law. These are not things we should accept.

If you'd like to have your say on the bill, you can submit on it here. Submissions are due by 1.59pm, Wednesday, 22 April 2026.

The alternative to pay equity legislation

Last year, the regime rammed through the Equal Pay Amendment Act under urgency, gutting pay equity laws, dumping all claims, and stealing $13 billion from new Zealand women.

Today, they got a taste of the alternative. Because before that law was passed, the College of Midwives started a class action on behalf of its members, alleging breach of a prior settlement, breach of good faith, and unlawful discrimination on the basis of gender. Today, the High Court issued its decision, finding for the midwives on those points, awarded (token) BORA damages, and required that they be restored to the position they would have been in had the breaches not occurred. Which means:

Held, fair and reasonable take home pay, as at 1 July 2020, for a notional LMC midwife working 1.0 FTE was $170,340. Figure to be adjusted for successive years based on Labour Cost Index.

Held, LMC midwives must be paid the fair and reasonable service price, backdated from 1 July 2020.

And "adjusted using the LCI, fair and reasonable take home pay was $200,275.59 in July 2023, and $206,946.03 in July 2024."

In June 2025 the take-home pay for an LMC midwife was $132,000. And that's after a substantial pay equity bump in 2023. In 2020, it was about $99,000. In other words, the court has ruled they've been underpaid by $70K a year for the last five years. Multiply that by 1500 claimants, and its half a billion dollars in midwives pockets.

The question is whether the regime will accept the ruling of the court, whether they'll appeal in a desperate effort to delay payment until its someone else's problem, or pass "fuck you" legislation to overturn the ruling. And with this coalition, the latter can't be ruled out. The sooner we have a new government, the better.

Naked corruption

Its election year, so the big parties are already collecting big donations from rich people wanting corrupt favours. But the disclosure threshold for those donations is set at an appallingly high $20,000. Meanwhile, National is nakedly selling access to Ministers for $8,000, and to the prime Minister for $10,000:

The National Party is offering the public a chance to sit next to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon over dinner at a cost of $10,000.

It’s led to criticism from one academic, labelling the event “cash for access”, but the party says it’s a form of fundraising used by many parties.

The “Mainland Dinner” will be hosted by party president Sylvia Wood at Christchurch’s Town Hall next month.

Tables for the dinner start at $5000, which the party calls the “silver” tier.

The “gold” tier will get you a table with either a Cabinet minister or Wood at a cost of $8000.

The most expensive table, the “platinum” tier and where Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will be seated, is priced at $10,000.

This is simply naked corruption. But its all below the disclosure threshold, so there's no requirement to declare it, or for the purchasers of policy to be identified to the public.

The media would be doing Aotearoa a favour by infiltrating someone into this dinner, photographing everyone sitting next to a Minister, and then doorstopping them and asking them what they wanted for their money. And if that deters future corrupt donations, good.

Not a government in waiting

The fundamental job of the opposition in a Westminster system is to show us the alternative, both in people and in policies. When the government makes some policy announcement, the opposition is meant to tell us what they would do instead, and how it serves our needs better. But when the government said it would be responding to the American fossil fuel crisis, Labour's Chris Hipkins literally couldn't be bothered:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins isn’t providing an alternative plan of action to help struggling New Zealanders facing pain at the pump and the threat of rising prices elsewhere.

Asked repeatedly what alternatives Labour could suggest, Hipkins said the onus to present ideas was on the current Government.

And it is. But there's also an onus on him to show us what he would do if he was in charge. And not just because its a democratic obligation - its also a way to win votes, to convince people you would do the job better! The Greens understand this: they were ready with a pile of Green policy and an offer of votes to pass it over the objections of National's coalition partners in the unlikely event that national wanted to (they did not). And hopefully they'll reap the reward from that. But Labour just can't be bothered trying to convince us. Its unclear if this is due to arrogance, a belief that they're just entitled to govern and so don't need to convince us plebs, or just because there is genuinely nothing they would do differently from National. But either stinks, and shows that they're not a government in waiting.

As for Hipkins, we're paying him $298,000 a year plus slush, and he's not doing the job! So why are we paying him then?

The right solution for the wrong problem

The regime has been taking a bit of stick about its "policy" of 10,000 new EV chargers, which seemed to have no tracking and no actual means of achieving it. So they've finally been forced to announce something: $50 million in loans to Meridian and ChargeNet to build a quarter of the chargers they'd promised. As a policy it doesn't stink, and has the virtue (to National) of being cheap (a loan from the government is just creating a pair of matching asset and debt entries in the government books, and costs nothing). It might even see some chargers built, which would be good. But its also a solution to the wrong problem.

National's "10,000 new chargers" policy is from 2023, which was a different era as far as EVs are concerned. And its rooted in thinking which is even older, when EVs were short-range luxury vehicles for urban elites. That wasn't really true in 2023, and its certainly not true now; when new EVs have comparable range to fossil vehicles, "range anxiety", the problem the new EVs policy was supposed to solve, simple ceases to be an issue. Sure, we want a comprehensive nationwide network so that vehicles can always get to a charger if they need one. But with most people charging at home, its not the big problem it once was.

So what is the problem? The same as it was before: price (though this is less of an issue now than it was in 2023, because EVs are cheaper as well as better). We had a perfectly good policy targetted at that problem, in the form of the clean car discount, which was self-funding (or meant to be) by charging dirty vehicles to fund clean ones. And that was a good idea, reflecting the significant positive externalities for EVs (and negative ones for fossil vehicles) in the form of emissions, air pollution, public health, and energy security.

But National scrapped that policy. And "10,000 new chargers" was meant to be just rhetorical cover for doing so. "Sure, we're refusing to act on the biggest barrier, but we'll totally act on the imaginary one our outdated preconceptions have invented, and we'll pretend that's the same". But it wasn't the same, and then they didn't do shit about it for two years anyway. Now they've finally been forced to do something, but all it does is expose the massive inadequacy of their policy and the paucity of their thinking. And looking down the barrel of an American fossil fuel crisis, that is something we should absolutely hold them to account for.

Corrupt, criminal secrecy

Fishing is a criminal industry. Fishers routinely lie about catch sizes, illegally dump bycatch, and cover up the murder of protected species. After a long campaign by NGOs in the 2010s, the Ardern government was finally dragged (kicking and screaming, against the wishes of two corrupt fisheries ministers) into putting cameras on boats to ensure criminal behaviour could be monitored and deterred. The fishing industry felt that this was unjust, and immediately began lobbying and bribing to have the footage declared a state secret, so it could never be used by NGOs to hold them to account. And they've got what they wanted. The new Fisheries Amendment Bill, introduced today, includes one of the most draconian secrecy clauses I have ever seen, with protections exceeding those given to classified security information.

First up, all fisheries camera recordings are declared exempt from the Official Information Act. But that's not enough for the fishing industry. There is also a clause that they cannot be disclosed outside the ministry, except to certain agencies or for certain purposes. Any other disclosure, or disclosure by anyone it has been lawfully passed on to, is a criminal offence, with a penalty of a $50,000 fine. And naturally, there's no whistleblower exemption (so if a recording exposes serious wrongdoing, and the ministry refuses to act on it, reporting it to appropriate whistleblower authorities is a crime. Which is one way of the criminal industry preventing anyone bypassing its captive regulator...)

This information isn't a threat to national security. It doesn't endanger the maintenance of the law, or any any person's safety. Its not even commercially sensitive. If it was any of these things, the law wouldn't be necessary. Instead, its potential exposure - and the potential for the exposure of their crimes, and for oversight of MPI to ensure they enforce the law properly - hurts the poor widdle fee-fees of the fishing industry. And that, to this regime, is "an important public purpose", proportionate to the consequent destruction of our BORA-affirmed right to free expression (which includes the right to receive information), and the least infringement on that right, and so a measure which can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

That is simply bullshit. Protecting a corrupt criminal industry and its captive regulator from public scrutiny is not an important public purpose. It is the very opposite of a public purpose. But its what happens when you put a man who has taken tens of thousands of dollars from that industry in the position of regulator.

This bill is simply an affront to democracy. It is an abuse of our human rights, an insult to transparency, and the product of corruption. It should not be allowed to pass.

More tyranny

The regime introduced a bunch of bills today: an Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill to introduce a "papers, please" regime for anyone MBIE (which also means the police) suspects they may be liable for deportation or in breach of their visa conditions; a Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill to enable them to torture prisoners with solitary confinement more easily and stop them from writing books about it; a Fisheries Amendment Bill to make the Quota Management System a matter of ministerial fiat and introduce a secrecy regime for boat camera footage; and a Policing Amendment Bill, to allow the police to arbitrarily close public places and spy on people without warrants. There's a couple of themes across these bills. The first is overturning court decisions, including some that have affirmed quite significant protections for human rights. The second is replacing statutory protections with executive discretion, which means executive arbitrariness and corruption. And the third, linking the two, is tyranny. Because that's what we call an arbitrary executive which does not respect human rights: tyrants.

The Fisheries Bill secrecy clause deserves its own post, so I'm going to talk about the policing bill here. And it is awful.

One part of this is the creation of a new regime allowing any police officer to close access to any "accessible area" - meaning "an area of land that is accessible to the public, or a section of the public, by motor vehicle", and apparently including private property. So anywhere that is a road, or connected to a road. They're probably thinking of car-parks, but of course the definition also applies to your backyard, and even your house if you have an indoor garage. These closures can be done for a variety of reasons, some of which are good (for example, if there is a danger to the public, like a gas leak or incipient landslide, or a serious offence has been committed and there is a need to secure the crime scene). But most of it is of course aimed at one of the regime's perennial targets: boy-racers. So they can close roads to everyone if an "antisocial road use offence" is being committed or might be committed; if people are operating (or are expected to be) motor vehicles in an antisocial way; or if people are creating (or are expected to create) excessive noise with a motor vehicle, or if there is (or is imminent) "public disorder". If they close an area, its an infringement offence not to leave immediately.

The regime will be looking at this and thinking "anti boy-racer law". But the public disorder and noise clauses also make it an anti-protest law, because the police have a history of regarding public protest as inherently disorderly, and noise (say, from a vehicle-mounted PA system leading a protest march) which upsets those in power as "excessive". Naturally, there's no protection against this - no Terrorism Suppression Act-style clause saying "for the avoidance of doubt, protests, strikes, lockouts, and industrial action are not 'disorderly', and their noise is not 'excessive'". The drafting is so shoddy they haven't even excluded dwelling-places or marae from the definition of "accessible area". And given the regime's anti-protest noises, this should be regarded as deliberate until proven otherwise.

That all stinks, but its not the worst of it. The other part of the bill "reaffirms" the rules about the police collecting intelligence and recording people in public places. I put "reaffirms" in quotes because it does nothing of the sort. The courts and the Privacy Commissioner, in a long series of judgements (Tamiefuna v R, but also Hamed v R), have said what the law is, and that the police have been systematically breaking it. The regime's response is to dramatically broaden the law, and legalise the police's unlawful behaviour.

The new amendments start with a list of "purposes for which Police may collect information", which is a good start. It then says that the police can record anything they can see or hear in or from a public place, or anything they can see or hear on private property if they are lawfully there. No warrants required. To see how much of an intrusion this is, we have only to look at the police's illegal photographing and databasing of young Māori, or the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamed v R, which found that the police could not just covertly film and record people on private (but generally publicly accessible) property under "implied licence" without a warrant. That ruling led to a temporary law change, which was later incorporated into the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, which set limits on the police's ability to spy from public places without a warrant. The amendment bill would void that long established law.

If this passes, the police will be able to park outside your house with a camera and spy on you in your yard or through your windows, and record anything visible (to what wavelength?) or audible (with how much amplification?), without needing any type of warrant. They won't even need to be physically present, because the "by any means" allows remote cameras and microphones. Or they can use a drone, with thermal cameras and high-gain directional microphones and just spy on you 24/7, without any warrant, oversight, or reporting. Those are unquestionably "searches" in terms of the BORA (clearly being interference with a reasonable expectation of privacy) - but they'll be lawful. And of course they can hassle people on the street, photograph them, database them, and record their conversations without any suspicion of a crime.

This is obviously very convenient for police. But it is not the sort of thing done in a free and democratic society. We need to stop it. We need to topple the tyrants at the election.

A government without a plan

Today the regime held an emergency, covid-style one o'clock press conference to announce its response to the US-caused global fuel crisis, at which they announced... nothing. Oh, they're monitoring the situation, and might consider cost of living assistance at some unspecified time in the future, if Rimmer lets them, but for now its strictly do nothing. Which is what you get in a crisis when you elect a bunch of anti-government weirdos who believe that government can only be a problem, and never a solution.

Meanwhile, there's a rising tide of commentary calling the regime's 2023 decision to shitcan the clean car discount, and subsequent decisions to weaken the clean-car standard, shortsighted. This would indeed be the week to be driving an EV, but thanks to this regime's fossil ideology, there are less of them on the roads than we would have had if they'd left it alone. And as we're all learning, electrified transport (and electrified everything else) isn't just about the climate - its also about the cost of living, energy security, and social resilience. National's shit decision-making has locked our country into a high-cost dependency on unstable foreign regimes.

So what should we be doing? Greater Auckland has a list of both short-term and longer-term measures. And while the focus is understandably going to be on getting us through the immediate shortages, now would be a great time for Labour to rise to the occasion, and stand up and tell us how they're going to crash-electrify all the things so that we don't have to deal with this issue again (the Greens of course already have, years ago). But I guess that would require them to have an actual position on something, and that seems beyond them at the moment.

Good Riddance

Methanex is one of Aotearoa's largest polluters. It burns 45% of our total natural gas supply to produce low value methanol and millions of tons of carbon dioxide. In the process, it also receives millions of dollars in pollution subsidies - roughly $40 million worth last year. But now, finally, its going bust:

Methanex has written down the value of its New Zealand operations to zero reflecting the challenge it’s facing to keep its Taranaki methanol plant operating.

In its recently released 2025 annual report, the Canadian-owned company said future earnings from the Motunui plant were not enough to justify its value on the books, leading to a non‑cash write‑down of about US$71 million (NZ$120 million).

The company’s annual report said the “recoverable amount of nil” was due to declining natural gas supply in New Zealand and uncertainty over whether contracted gas volumes would be delivered or future gas exploration would be successful.

Methanex still had agreements with gas suppliers, some extending until 2029, but the company said it could not be sure these contracts would deliver the volumes needed.

Meanwhile, a report from the Gas Industry Co says that Methanex is expected to close early next year due to the inability to source gas. Good riddance. Its not like these foreign parasites pay taxes. Instead they just gouge us for subsidies and export them as dividends. So the sooner they shut down and fuck off, the better. We'll all be better off when they do.

There is a name for this

The Auditor-General has tabled their report on former MP Paul Eagle's spending while chief executive of the Chatham islands Council, and its not good, exposing serious management and integrity issues at the Council. Including this:

Auditor-General Grant Taylor and Assistant Auditor-General Melanie Webb said a project to refurbish the home which housed the council's chief executive was not well managed, and changes Eagle requested "increased the costs beyond what was necessary".

Quotes and contracts for the work on the property were found to have been created or edited by Eagle, as well as procurement memorandums created by him in 2025 had been backdated to the previous year.

[...]

"The information that the chief executive provided was misleading. Specifically, it created an incorrect picture about when certain events occurred (for example, when a contract was signed) or whether they had happened at all.

They decline to give a position on the legality of Eagle's actions, but there are a number of names for it: corruption. Fraud. More specifically, forgery, altering documents with intent to deceive, and using altered documents with intent to deceive. These are serious crimes, and Eagle needs to be prosecuted for them. When a person in power abuses their position to enrich or advantage themselves, then that is corruption, and they need to be held to account.

An ever-worsening fiasco

Back in 2021, the then-Labour government signed contracts for two new Cook Strait ferries. Costing $551 million for the ferries, it would have come with improved, future-proofed port facilities, making it a generational investment in core infrastructure. The first of them was meant to arrive last month. But it didn't, because National cancelled them out of spite the moment they got elected, at a cost of $671 million.

So now instead of two new, improved ferries operating from improved ports, we have no rail link across Cook Strait, two old rust buckets which are breaking down all the time, and National's planned replacements aren't scheduled to arrive until 2029. And they're already over-budget:

The Cook Strait Ferry Replacement Programme is already $167 million over budget, newly released documents reveal.

The current cost estimate has hit $1.867 billion, already exceeding the $1.7b Crown-tagged contingency approved by Cabinet in March 2025.

The Government is relying on council-owned ports to plug the gap, but the amounts are unknown or not yet approved by ratepayers.

However, as The Post revealed last month binding commercial deals with the port companies are yet to be finalised.

So, they might not have the required port infrastructure, because National is too busy complaining about woke to do the job properly. Assuming they don't just cancel the whole thing again so they can give even more money to landlords.

This fiasco just gets worse and worse. The regime has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of public money, and destroyed a critical transport link. If you or I did that, it'd be terrorism. But smashing shit and leaving others to pick up the pieces is just how National "governs" now. The sooner we're rid of these muppets, the better.

Payment for services rendered

Back in 2021, in the wake of the Tamarind disaster, the then-Labour government passed the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021, ensuring that the oil and gas industry was responsible for its own cleanup costs. The industry of course hated that, so when the new regime was elected in 2023, they started lobbying hard for its repeal. The regime obediently brought a bill to Parliament to reduce the liability, and got it to the verge of enactment, but it didn't go far enough for the gas industry. After further lobbying, they forced the regime to recall the bill to committee and amend it to lower liability even further, allowing the gas industry to walk away from its mess and leave us with the costs again. And that law eventually passed in July last year.

The gas industry was pleased. So pleased that Greymouth Petroleum, one of the chief lobbyists for the change, has just given $100,000 to each coalition party though one of its subsidiaries, GMP Environmental. Why did they launder the donation in this way? I guess because seeing a gas company giving huge amounts of money to politicians would make it just a little too obvious what was going on. But its no great effort to use the companies register and follow ownership up the chain to see who is really paying - or to consider the legislative history to see what they're paying for.

And that's what this regime means: naked corruption. Bribery. Law for sale.

Its not enough to throw them out of office. We need to ban large donations, get money out of politics forever, and break the power of the rich over our political parties. Otherwise, no matter who we vote for, we'll get the laws the billionaires want. And that's not democracy, but plutocracy.

National's energy security plan looks even stupider

A month ago, the regime announced its big plan for keeping New Zealand addicted to fossil fuels "energy security": a giant LNG terminal, importing expensive foreign high-emissions fuel, to be paid for by people who don't use it, and bulldozed through with a special law. It was always a stupid plan, more expensive than simply reducing gas demand, while leaving us dependant on imported fuel which could simply disappear in a crisis. And the events of the last week, which have seen the strait of Hormuz closed to shipping and international supplies of LNG cut off (causing a bidding war and price increases) show just how stupid it is. If National had their way, then in future crises we would face having LNG supplies - and therefore electricity prices - massively increase in price overnight. They would effectively link our domestic electricity prices to the stability of the Persian Gulf. And that is not anyone's definition of "security".

What would real energy security look like? reducing exposure to dirty foreign fossil fuels. Which in this case means a massive increase in renewable electricity generation, combined with a crash program to electrify gas-dependent industry. Obviously, that would be terrible for the gas industry, who wrote National's plan. And it would be terrible for the government's finances, because power cartel dividends mean they profit from our artificially high prices. But it would be good for the environment, and good for us. We would have significantly lower power bills as a result. And that is exactly why national, the party of gouging cartels, won't do it.

IN other words, if we want this, we need to kick them out. The sooner we do it, the better.

"Papers, please" for the internet

Yesterday the Education and Workforce Committee released its report into online harm to young people, recommending (among other things) a ban on social media for young people. Which, in practice, means "age-verification", mandatory identification and registration of social media users, and banning VPNs to prevent evasion. Basically "papers, please" tp use the internet. There are all sorts of reasons why this is a terrible idea - not least because the companies doing it are poor custodians of our personal information, if not trojan horses doing shady shit for fascists - but I'll focus on the simple one: there are already countries where people are forced to register and be identifiable to the state to use social media, and which ban VPNs to prevent evasion. They're tyrannies like Russia and Iran. And while "making sure the state can tell who says what" is not the ostensible purpose of the policy, its a very obvious side-effect, one which needs to be seriously considered. And when you look back at its history - press licensing, government observation of public meetings - its tyranny all the way down. But apparently tyranny is the bipartiasn position of our two status quo political parties now...

Meanwhile, we have an example from right next door in Australia that none of this works, and that it drives kids to use even more dangerous technologies (ChatGPT, FFS, which sycophantically reinforces user delusions, driving them to psychosis and suicide, or Roblox, which is so notorious as a site for predators that child safety on it has its own wikipedia article). And we also have examples from the UK, where the regulatory burden of complying with moderation requirements of their Online Safety Act has forced the shutdown of small internet forums. This has a very real impact on the freedom of expression of adults, but apparently, none of that matters: any amount of collateral damage is acceptable to our parliament of tyrants.

I was lucky enough to grow up in Aotearoa when it was still free. When the state couldn't say "papers, please" to you on the street, or on the internet. Our two major political parties now seem to be colluding to eliminate that freedom. Neither of them deserve your vote. And if they pass this law, like other tyrannies, their state deserves neither your support or your loyalty.

(There are other suggestions in the report which are worth pursuing, such as adopting the EU Digital Services Act model of making platforms responsible for online harm, regulating algorithims so they can't shovel shit onto our feeds, banning non-consensual deepfake pornography, and aligning online and offline advertising restrictions. Sadly, those are the bits parliament is likely to chuck out, in favour of the stupid, simple and intrusive age ban / identification requirement, because our MPs prefer easy headlines to doing the actual work of designing good regulation...)