A vicious, corrupt and insane policy from a vicious, corrupt and insane regime

Albert Einstein reportedly said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And that's basically National's housing policy. Back in the 1990's, they sold state houses, raised rents, and handed out money to their landlord cronies via the accommodation supplement. The result was poverty, overcrowding, the resurgence of third-world diseases, and the creation of a permanent underclass. There was some relief from the Helen Clark-led labour government, which built state houses to replace some of what had been sold, and replaced market rents with income-related ones, but it didn't undo the damage. Then, in the 2010's, under the Key-led national government, Paula Bennet did it all over again. That time we got all the previous bad effects, plus a homelessness crisis, people living in cars, then WINZ putting them up in motels at enormous cost (and then trying saddle them with odious debt) to avoid the resulting bad headlines, and finally a bipartisan acknowledgement that it hadn't worked. The following Labour governments again managed to undo some (but nowhere near all) of the damage, started a building programme and so on. And now its 2026, the end of the first term of a national-led regime, and Chris Bishop is back, doing it all again, this time with the added insult of pretending state house tenants are "lotto winners":

"If you're in a state home and you compare how much income you have with someone in a private rental who's got exactly the same income as you, you're $110 a week better off," she said.

"These changes are about making the system fairer. At the moment, people in social housing effectively have won the lotto, they get so much more support than a family with just as lower income in a private rental. That's not fair, and our changes are about fixing it."

So her solution to that unfairness is to make things worse rather than make things better. To kick those on the bottom of the heap and steal from them in order to enrich her cronies. Because increased accommodation supplements don't help renters - they go directly to landlords, who immediately hike rents to capture the entire increase. So the only people who benefit from this policy is them. And the national MPs they kick back to with donations, of course. It is a vicious, corrupt policy from a vicious, corrupt government. And thinking it will lead to a different result from the previous times it has been imposed is pure insanity.

Drawn

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

• Local Government (Management of Local Authorities) Amendment Bill (Stuart Smith)
• Crown Minerals (Prohibition on Mining on Conservation Land) Amendment Bill (Lan Pham)
• New Zealand Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief Medal Bill (Tim Costley)
• Oranga Tamariki (Suitable Accommodation on Leaving Care) Amendment Bill (Marama Davidson)
• Residential Tenancies (Requiring Landlords to Provide Curtains) Amendment Bill (Helen White)
• Crimes (Impeding Major Bridges, Tunnels, and Roads) Amendment Bill (Catherine Wedd)

So parliament is going to be forced to go on record about pillaging the conservation estate, or protecting it, right before an election. Unfortunately we also have another national anti-protest law being pushed as a member's bill, fronted by the ever-tyrannical Catherine Wedd (who pushed the teen social media ban / give all your private info to foreign privacy-raiding megacorps bill). But hopefully that one will be nuked by the next government.

Member's Day: Parliament is a house of hate

Today is a Member's Day, and one which is going to see Parliament turned into a hate-platform. Because NZ First has delayed the second reading of its anti-"woke banking" bill (recommended to be dumped by select committee) in order to bring forward its anti-trans hate law. Which National and Act are going to vote for, because they clearly feel they have no hope of winning the election unless they whip up a tide of hate against Māori, immigrants, and trans-people.

Once upon a time National PM Jim Bolger refused to run on hate, because "he had to run the country in the morning". Luxon clearly feels differently - either he doesn't want to actually run the country, or he thinks he can just rely on the police and anti-protest laws and beating people in the streets to get his way. But I don't think that's the kind of government any of us want, and it is utterly shameful to see a New Zealand government going down that path. It is also utterly shameful to see such a platform enabled by Parliament, and it allowing this legislation to proceed brings the entire institution into further disrepute. If Parliament is a house of hate, then it cannot be said to represent Aotearoa.

As for the rest of the day's business, first up is Laura McClure's Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill, which will be followed by Catherine Wedd's Social Media (Age-Restricted Users) Bill. The government has said they're withdrawing that bill, but clearly its sponsor feels differently, and it will be interesting to see what happens. Following that is Rima Nakhle's Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill - a shitty little piece of racism from a shitty little racist. And then there's the main hatefest, probably around 8 p.m. Hopefully multiple people disrupt it, because fuck a "parliament" which does this sort of shit. If the House manages to complete that piece of business, then it will move on to Tim Costley's Better Regional Boundaries Bill, a moronic piece of legislation from someone who thinks all lines on a map should match, regardless of their purpose. If the House manages to move quickly it may make a start on Tom Rutherford's Concealment of Location of Victim Remains Bill. There will be a ballot tomorrow, probably for five bills.

"Full and final" goes both ways

Last week National introduced its plans to privatise the conservation estate and allow miners free reign to dig up our taonga places. One of the ways it does the latter is by gutting the Conservation Authority and local Conservation Boards, which act as independent advisors to DoC and the Minister on a number of crucial decisions. But having Fucked Around, they're now about to Find Out, with Ngāi Tahu signalling that any change will require a renegotiation of their Treaty settlement:

Ngāi Tahu kaiwhakahaere Justin Tipa said the amendment strips power from the iwi “by turning those boards and the Authority into advisors only and handing decision-making powers to the Minister.”

“Ngāi Tahu was guaranteed a voice on the New Zealand Conservation Authority and conservation boards which currently hold decision making powers.”

[...]

“The Bill includes proposed arrangements to uphold Treaty Settlements, but it puts iwi in the position of being forced to renegotiate important parts of their settlements to fit within a narrow framework.

“Under the new regime, where elements of a settlement do not fit neatly within that framework, the Crown would only be required to meet them ‘to the greatest extent possible’. In no world does that align with a ‘full and final’ settlement.”

They're not the only iwi affected. The bill amends 57 different Treaty settlements to reflect the regime's preferred new way of doing things - unilaterally and without consultation. Those settlements are literally the work on an entire generation of politicians and iwi leaders. And the overall change - to remove iwi voices and make settlements binding only "to the greatest extent possible" - is an overall weakening of them. It is impossible to see this as anything other than the regime trying to cheat on its agreements, something that is both a clear breach of the state's duty of partnership and consultation under te Tiriti, and which invites renegotiation.

But that's not the only problem. Every settlement made has been negotiated against the backdrop of a strengthening web of Treaty clauses which have variously spelled out the state's obligations and embodied the Treaty principles of partnership, consultation, and active protection. These Treaty clauses have meant that a lot of things which might otherwise have been formalised in settlements has been able to be taken as read. And those clauses have been crucial in protecting Māori rights, including rights under Treaty settlements. For example, the Treaty clause in the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012 was crucial in stopping seabed mining because it required decision makers to protect existing interests, which included customary interests.

The regime has already attacked these clauses and removed several (notably in the Oranga Tamariki Act, and Education and Training Act), and now they are coming for the rest. Which again seems to be cheating on the settlements, removing a key way for them to be enforced and protected. And that in turn invites renegotiation, including renegotiation on redress for losses. Because the redress you negotiate with a party which at least makes a show of working in good faith and wanting the settlement to endure is very different from what you demand from one which works in bad faith and gives every sign that it will cheat.

I've said before that Treaty settlements are only "full and final" by Māori goodwill, and whether they stick or not is a political question for each generation of Māori, no matter what the law says. In such a situation, the state would be wise not to call those settlements into question. If it wants them to have any chance of enduring, the state needs to uphold the settlements, including their wider context. Because "full and final" goes both ways, and if the government cheats, the settlements are neither.

Another anti-protest law

National has introduced its new anti-homeless law to Parliament, and it will receive a first reading next week (which puts them up against it if they want it to pass before the election). The law is a disgusting piece of social cleansing, drafted to enable the police to hide the consequences of National's failed economic policies. But its worse than that, because in addition to enabling social cleansing, it is also, like their anti-boy-racer law, an anti-protest law. The new "move-on" order powers apply not just to people begging or rough sleeping (which is bad enough), but also to anyone "behaving in a manner that is disorderly, intimidating, or threatening", "behaving in a manner that is disruptive" (being "disruptive", whatever the fuck that means, is not a criminal offence), "unreasonably obstructing, hindering, or preventing someone from entering or leaving a place where a lawful trade, business, or occupation is being conducted", or "breaching the peace".

As noted previously, the government and police have a habit of regarding protest as inherently disorderly and disruptive, if not as a "breach of the peace". And the application to the common protest tactic of blockading a building is obvious.

Fascinatingly, the bill's BORA vet finds that the anti-begging and anti-rough sleeping provisions are disproportionate limitations on the freedoms of expression and movement, but does not consider the obvious application to protests at all. Which both shows a distinct lack of imagination and is a complete dereliction of duty on the Attorney-General's part.

This law can be used to limit fundamental rights to protest. Given police attitudes, it will inevitably be used to do so. If that is not the intent, then it needs a Terrorism Suppression Act-style clause excluding its application to any protest, strike, or lockout. If the regime fails to add one, then we should regard the suppression of protest as their intent, and the destruction of our democracy as their ultimate goal. It is that simple.

The regime is out of time

The regime introduced its appalling Conservation Amendment Bill, which allows widescale privatisation of the conservation estate, last week, and rammed it through its first reading yesterday. Submissions aren't open yet, but the good news is that the bill got the normal six months select committee consideration - meaning that it isn't due back until after the election. So, if you want to stop it, if you want to protect our taonga places, then one way of doing it is to vote out the regime.

Which illustrates the wider problem for the regime: they're out of time. Normally bills get six months at select committee, and anything less than four requires a vote and (time-consuming) debate. National hates democracy, and hates debate, so they've been tending to go for the minimum four months in an effort to limit both. But the calendar no longer works for that tactic. A bill passed through its first reading today with the minimum four months select committee time will be due back on 13 September. Normally there's a three working day wait before the report can be considered, giving just three sitting days (13 hours of sitting time) before the House rises. Each remaining stage - second reading, committee of the whole, and third reading - must occur on a separate sitting day, so they might just be able to squeeze it in under normal procedures. After today, it simply can't be done constitutionally.

What about unconstitutionally? This regime loves to shit on our democracy, loves to abbreviate select committee stages, loves to ram stuff through under urgency to limit debate. The last sitting weeks before an election tend to be wall-to-wall urgency as governments try and clear the order paper of all the bills they didn't get round to (the end of year "wash-up"). But the window is closing on that too. After next week, a bill given a minimum four month select committee phase won't be back in time to make it into an urgency motion at the end of the final sitting week. They can shorten the select committee stage - spending time on debate now, but because of recesses and scrutiny week, their window for a three month committee phase effectively closes on budget day. And anything less than that is simply a bad joke. Obviously, they can use all-stages urgency to ram stuff through, but the price of that is to absolutely delegitimise the law passed (as well as the state which passes it), and invite immediate repeal by the next government.

So, basically, their time is up. Any policy they offer up now is a hostage to the election. And if we don't like it, we can and should vote for a different government which will throw it in the bin.

Luxon dogwhistles racism

Prime Minister Chris Luxon gave a pre-budget speech to the Auckland business community today, in which he promised even more austerity. But he also made a play for ACT and NZ First's racist, anti-immigration voters, with a warning to his listeners:

"And you should expect to see careful policy on immigration from National as we get closer to the election ... when it comes to immigration, when faced with a choice between social stability and your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time."

Which is bullshit, firstly because immigration is not a threat to "social stability"; and secondly because the greatest historic threat to social stability has been inequality, the greed of the rich. But on that front Luxon has their back. He's perfectly willing to destabilise Aotearoa's society to enrich his mates, promising austerity and asset sales while doing nothing to limit inequality or the runaway wealth of the few, preferring instead to rely on ever-more tyrannical anti-protest laws for protection. And of course when it comes to coalition parties pushing white supremacy, tearing up te Tiriti, and attempting to eradicate te reo from public life, he's all in.

But I don't think an unequal, racist tyranny, divided between a small clique of rich Auckland arseholes and a mass of renters forced to work minimum-wage jobs is the sort of society most kiwis want to live in. And hopefully we will tell Luxon that forcefully in November.

Climate Change: Putting polluters above the law

That's the only way to describe the regime's plans to outlaw civil climate suits against polluting companies:

The government announced on Tuesday it would amend climate laws to prevent companies from being sued over damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The change will prevent findings of liability in torts - a type of civil case where one person or entity claims another has caused them harm.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said it would apply to current and future cases - stopping a landmark case against Fonterra and five other major emitters in its tracks.

The actual policy is an ACT party member's bill, which has been hanging around on the ballot for a while. I guess they just got sick of waiting.

If this passes, polluters will be able to lobby the government to prevent action on climate change, pollute with abandon, destroy the global climate, inflicting harm on people all over the world - including in Aotearoa - and face no consequences whatsoever. The courts will be specifically forbidden from doing what the government refuses to do. And this, despite well-established legal principles around public nuisance and negligence.

If someone nearby starts a fire which burns your house down, there's a legal remedy. If they build a shitty dam, collect a pile of water, then deliberately or by negligence release it and flood your neighbourhood, there's a legal remedy. But the regime is saying that there will be no legal remedy for climate change. Someone can literally burn the world, and there will be nothing legal you are allowed to do about it.

This is a naked case of regime corruption, of them serving the interests of big donors and polluters. And its just another example of the need for the next government to pass an Omnibus Repeal Bill, to revoke everything this corrupt, tyrannical regime has done.

If the government wants to avoid private suits over climate change, the solution is simple: have a robust climate change regime which actually reduce emissions. If they don't, then they only have themselves to blame if people pursue other strategies to do the job for them.

More culture-war bullshit

That's the only way to describe the regime's announcement today that new citizens will be forced to pass a test on the "responsibilities and privileges" of citizenship, "covering topics like the Bill of Rights Act, voting rights and the structure of government." Which is a bit rich coming from a regime which has shat all over the BORA, restricted voting rights, and abolishes core government agencies and capabilities at a whim because they said something a Minister doesn't like (or applied the law to someone the Minister does).

Winston Peters says this is because "some of the people who have come here who don't salute our flag, don't honour the values of our country, don't respect the people living here", which again shows how out of touch that fossil is. Real kiwis don't "salute the flag" unless they're in a job which requires it. Anyone who does is some sort of weirdo. We're not Americans, and we don't want to be like them.

But Winston is right about one thing: there are people here who don't honour the values of our country or respect the people living here. They're in the Beehive, running the place, doing shit like this. And the sooner we vote them out on their arses, the better.

41,000 unemployed under National

The March labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has dropped slightly, to 5.3%. But there are still 163,000 people unemployed, 41,000 more than when National took office.

It ought to be clear by now that National's economy just isn't working. Yes, there are global crises. But everything they do - the austerity, the perpetual restructurings, the random cancellation of major projects because they were Labour's projects - just makes things worse. Its almost as if business dudes have no idea how government finance actually works, and don't really care, because they have a fat salary and a crony job waiting for them when they're de-elected. Meanwhile, everyone else gets to suffer for their mistakes.

If we want any of this to change, the message is clear: we need to de-elect the regime, and get a new government which will end austerity and stop fucking around and making us find out. Fortunately, we'll have a chance to do that in six months time.

The opposite of localism

At the 2023 election, National promised "localism", the devolution of power from central to local government. How's that working out? Today, they're demanding local authorities amalgamate or be punished:

The government has given councils an ultimatum: come up with amalgamation plans within three months or the government will do it for you.

Local Government Minister Simon Watts and RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop announced the move on Tuesday afternoon, giving a three-month deadline for reorganisation plans to be delivered.

It followed an announcement in November that groups of city and district mayors - with some government oversight - would be formed to come up with such plans.

But the ministers on Tuesday said if councils failed to make use of the new 'Head Start' approach, they would be forced into changes.

The three-month deadline leaves no chance for public consultation, which is fundamental to local body reorganisations. And of course there's no mention of examination by the Local Government Commission, or referenda to approve any changes. Instead, National seems to think it can do all this by central government fiat.

The amalgamations must be to become "unitary authorities". In other words, its about abolishing regional councils and turning their regulatory functions over to local authorities. So in Palmerston North, it would mean the same people who want to pump shit into the river would be in charge of deciding whether people should be allowed to pump shit into the river - an inherent conflict of interest. It would also mean abolishing our Māori wards (which two-thirds of us voted to retain just last year) - as well as those pesky Ngai Tahu seats that ECan refuses to get rid of. Meanwhile the fixed size of councils would effectively mean reduced representation for everyone, while allowing National to gerrymander disproportionate representation for its rurals. They might also take the opportunity to do away with STV, allowing all local government to be dominated by narrow pluralities via the undemocratic block-vote.

National's August deadline is a clear attempt to pre-empt the election and present the next government with a fait accompli. But councils could just refuse to play along. There's no law saying they have to do this, only Trumpian threats from two regime Ministers. And that seems a weak justification for spending a lot of time and money, especially when there may be a new government in November which will throw it all out the window. Its probably better to just wait and see, rather than waste time and local money on National's bullshit.

National's attempt to dictate the merger of councils, abolish regional government, and reduce local representation is the very opposite of localism. There is an established process for this. Councils can use it if they want to, after consulting their electorates. The fact that so many have chosen not to speaks for itself about what they want.

Climate Change: Make farmers pay

Last year, the corrupt National regime lowered our methane reduction target, while ruling out pricing agricultural emissions for as long as they were in government. We would rely on technology, they said, while talking up all the blue-sky research into ways of getting cows to burp less. But now the other shoe has dropped, with their own technology partnership demanding that farmers be subsidised to use their product:

At the annual Agriculture and Climate Change conference in Wellington last week, AgriZeroNZ chief executive Wayne McNee said some of the technologies had a commercial benefit because they also improved animal productivity.

However, many - including a methane-inhibiting capsule or 'bolus' being developed by New Zealand company Ruminant Biotech - did not.

"In the absence of productivity improvement, which is often quite hard to prove, there will need to be an incentive," he said.

[...]

"If there's a productivity improvement, great, that''ll be a key driver. If there's not, there'll need to be some sort of payment to the farmer to take the technology up."

Of course, we had an incentive: agriculture was scheduled to enter the ETS at the processor level from 2022, creating a clear price on emissions and financially incentivising processors to lower them (for example, by contractually demanding use of technology and changes in farming practices as a condition of getting your milk collected). But Labour chickened out, and National is corrupt, and so here we are, with goals, but no way of meeting them, and technology, but no way of getting anyone to use it unless the government pays money (which seems unlikely to happen under bipartisan austerity, and will come directly out of your schools and hospitals if it does). And so agricultural emissions continue to rise, the storms and floods and fires get worse and worse, while our biggest polluters evade any responsibility for their crime.

Pretty obviously, this isn't good enough. We can't reduce our emissions meaningfully while declaring 50% of them off limits. Quite apart from the fairness issue, the maths just doesn't work. Farmers have to do their bit, and that means reducing the herd or them using technology to reduce its emissions.

"Polluter pays" should be a bedrock of our environmental policy. Polluters need to take responsibility for stopping, cleaning up, or mitigating the impacts of their pollution - for meeting its full social costs. And if they can't or won't, they need to be regulated out of existence and/or jailed. The current situation, where a rural elite gets to destroy the world with abandon, directly and indirectly imposing costs on the rest of us, is neither fair nor sustainable. It needs to end. Farmers must pay. And if this government won't make them, well, in November we can elect a better one which will.

Public expenses should be public as a matter of course

The cover story of today's Substandard is the forced release of Palmerston North Mayor Grant Smith's credit card expenses. The actual expenses show nothing much - a bunch of work-related travel and hospitality spending, in accordance with policy. Smith travelled for work, attending meetings with Ministers and other significant, job-related events, and so of course his employers - the people of Palmerston North - paid for that, as any normal employer should. The release of the expenses is useful in exposing some of those policies - for example, around alcohol and hospitality - allowing us to update them to meet modern public expectations. But I don't see any real suggestion that Smith has done anything wrong, or spent outrageously or anything like that. There's no reports of huge drunken dinners or lonely late-night porn movies - unlike Shane Jones or Murray McCully.

The real story here is that Hayden Fitzgerald - a cooker and TPU stooge on city council - had to ask in the first place. Because official credit card spending is public money, and it should be proactively released at regular intervals as a matter of course - as happens with Ministers and public sector chief executives (example). Which makes it all the more outrageous when Smith complains about it:

Smith hit back, saying it had cost the council $10,000 to fulfill Fitzgerald's Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act request when his "sensitive expenditure" was already published every three months.

Firstly, the council only had to spend "$10,000" (a suspiciously round number, and unlikely to be true) because they tried to hide this information, rather than publishing it regularly like they should. Secondly, the claim that the existing reports (example on p113 - 116) are remotely useful is laughable. Like "reporting" on MPs' expenses, they are a category summary only, with no information on what, when, or why, and so allowing no analysis of whether particular spending was reasonable and necessary. That doesn't mean it wasn't - again, from the reporting, there's no real suggestion the spending was inappropriate - but if public bodies want to enjoy public trust, they need to earn it. And the way to do that is to be open and transparent. Which means that PNCC should respond to this by immediately moving to a proactive release model for all mayoral and councillor official expenditure.

Finally, I guess the other story here is that this request was made by Hayden Fitzgerald, a city councillor, rather than the Substandard themselves. Ministerial expenses have been public for 17 years, and I'd have thought that mayoral expenses would just be a regular part of the local government beat by now. You're really earning that nickname there, guys!