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?

Good riddance

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 But the bill isn't dead, and apparently won't be withdrawn - it's still on the Order Paper, hanging around to be picked up and advanced in future, by whoever wins the election.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

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

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

Fuck one-way "bipartisanship"

When National came into office, it went on vandalism spree, smashing everything and repealing policies simply because they had been passed by the previous government. Climate change policy was a prime target, with the regime repealing all effective policy and reneging on the bipartisan deal over the Zero Carbon Act, which saw targets and policies watered down in exchange for its supposedly ongoing support. Since then, they've repealed the offshore gas exploration ban - and now they're demanding that Labour commit to not reinstating it, in the name of "bipartisanship":

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has written to Labour leader Chris Hipkins asking him to commit to supporting offshore exploration for natural gas for at least the next 10 years.

In the letter, seen by RNZ, Luxon said if Labour reinstated a ban on offshore gas exploration, it might pose an insurmountable barrier for some investors.

"You have said previously that, if elected, Labour will not spend its time 'pausing, cancelling, and reviewing everything'. But bipartisanship must be more than a political slogan," Luxon wrote to Hipkins on Monday.

"Hence, I am writing to seek a commitment from the Labour Party to support offshore exploration for natural gas for at least the next ten years.

Hipkins has already said "fuck that", and rightly so. If National wants to make deals, they have to keep them. They haven't, so no deals can be made. Their one-sided version of "bipartisanship", where they get to do whatever they want, and everyone else has to simply accept it, is a mug's game.

A clear message

There's an election next year, and we're already seeing the usual posturing about who will work with who. Today it's Labour refusing to work with Te Pāti Māori in the wake of the latter's victory in the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection - a victory which showed that Māori voters don't want to be represented by Labour and don't want their representatives being constantly over-ruled by Pakeha primarily concerned with pandering to other Pakeha. Which probably sounds "tough" to Chris Hipkins and the Pakeha he is trying to pander to. But there's someone Hipkins seems to have forgotten in all his ruling out: the voters. Because on current polling, Te Pāti Māori is vital to forming a Labour-led government. And that looks like it will be the case unless Labour drags its own vote well into the upper part of the 35 - 40% range (and then assuming that it grows it from National, not at the expense of the Greens). Which seems... unlikely when the party is essentially offering voters nothing, other than that Ministers will wear a different coloured tie while delivering the same old austerity.

In fact, Hipkins' refusal sends voters a clear message: if you want real change, you need to vote for it. And that means voting for the Greens or Te Pāti Māori rather than Labour. If you want wealth taxes, better public services, climate action, a Tiriti-centric government, and the repeal of all National's racist legislation, don't vote Labour. Vote for one of the parties who actually advocates for those things instead. Vote for them to hold a democratic gun to Labour's head and force them to implement those policies - or surrender the power and positions and prestige and salaries which they crave so much.

Labour won't like this. But if they want the votes of people who want change and the support of the parties we elect - rather than taking both for granted - they need to earn them. They do this by offering us something, rather than arrogantly insisting on an obligation to support them, as if they were the only alternative to National. They're not, and they never have been - but they especially haven't been since 1996, when we got MMP. Which was almost 30 years ago. You'd think their brains would have caught up by now...

Hipkins can huff and puff and rule parties out all he likes. But at the end of the day he has to play the hand we deal him. That's our weapon. And we should use it.

Which side are you on, Labour?

Today will see an unprecedented moment in Parliament. A racist government whose leader opposes the "Maorification" of New Zealand is using its parliamentary majority to suspend opposition MPs from the House for being Māori, silencing them and the people they represent for up to 21 days. It is outrageous and anti-democratic; their own Speaker knows it is wrong, and they clearly do too. They're so ashamed of what they are doing - and scared of the public's reaction to it - that they have closed the public gallery, preventing anyone from watching their abuse of power.

This is a golden opportunity for the opposition Labour Party to stand up for our democracy and against this racist abuse of power. To show their voters which side they're on. To actually stand for something. So of course spineless jellyfish Chris Hipkins doesn't want to. Oh, he agrees the punishment is "too extreme", but he says Labour is "pretty unlikely" to filibuster the debate. So, he's going to take the leverage the Speaker handed him to force the government to compromise and adopt a more appropriate penalty, and he's going to do... nothing. Which is perhaps why the racist prime minister is now declaring there will be "no compromise" - because he knows Hipkins is weak and won't do anything other than whine and wring his hands.

But the Labour caucus isn't just Hipkins, and its MPs can speak even if its leader won't. And they should, if they want to continue in their gold-plated careers. Because their voters will be watching. And they will be judging. And silence, cowardice, and collaboration is unlikely to impress anyone.

Hipkins is still useless

The big problem with the last Labour government was that they were chickenshits who did nothing with the absolute majority we had given them. They governed as if they were scared of their own shadows, afraid of making decisions lest it upset someone - usually someone who would never have voted for them anyway. As a result, they pleased nobody, delivered nothing, and were abandoned by their voters at the 2023 election.

Sadly, that electoral lesson doesn't seem to have sunk in. Yesterday, the National government rolled over to climate denying farmers, announcing they would end any efforts to price agricultural emissions and make farmers do their share in the fight against climate change. As with so many of the government's other anti-environment policies, the perfect counter-policy is for the opposition to make it clear that National's policies will be immediately reversed. This isn't just a statement of party values - it ensures policy certainty, deters wasteful investment predicated on a free ride forever, and avoids stranded assets. The Greens clearly understand this. Labour, OTOH, clearly does not:

Labour leader Chis Hipkins wouldn't commit to restoring the climate change policies the coalition government is backtracking on.

It's Labour in a nutshell: no values, and no commitments. And they wonder why nobody gives a shit about them anymore.

Fucking useless

Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, being presumably too likely to assess them against the same standards as everyone else, or wonder where all the money is going). Rimmer would also allow his cronies to take over state schools - effectively privatising them. All of this is deeply contrary to everything the Labour Party has told us it stands for, and last time National did this, Labour immediately abolished their bullshit. So what was Chris Hipkins' response? To refuse to commit:

Hipkins wasn't sure what their fate would be should Labour be returned to power in the coming years.

"What we did last time is we integrated them into the state education system - some became integrated schools; some became designated character schools.

"It's too soon to say what we would do next time around because we don't yet know what the contracts are going to be, we don't yet know what the structure is going to be - but we do believe that schools should be part of the public education system," Hipkins said.

And this is why Labour only got 27% last election: because they have no spine, no principles. They're as useless as a proverbial useless thing. And why would anyone vote for that, when there are parties who clearly know what they stand for offering an alternative?

No credibility

At the 2017 election, the Labour Party under Jacinda Ardern ran on a policy of investigating the fairness of Aotearoa's tax system, with any changes delayed until after the 2020 election. When their Tax Working Group reported back in 2019 recommending a capital-gains tax, Ardern immediately ruled it out for as long as she was Prime Minister. And when she quit, and IRD's High Wealth Individuals Research Project produced a cast-iron case for taxing wealth, her chickenshit successor Chris Hipkins ruled that out too. But now, he's supposedly promising to look at it again:

The Opposition leader, who ruled out campaigning on capital gains and wealth taxes ahead of the 2023 election, in a speech at the weekend said both were back on the table, as was a land tax. The idea is to ease the tax burden on salary and wage earners, who are "shouldering a disproportionate share" compared to those whose money comes from their wealth.

"Under this government, those with multiple investment properties are getting huge tax breaks while those on salary and wages pay tax on every dollar they earn," Hipkins told supporters on Sunday.

But while it's good to see Hipkins has apparently changed his mind on this, given his and his party's past actions, there's a complete lack of credibility here. To put it bluntly: they have offered this before. And then, when handed an opportunity to do it on a plate - with an unthinkable majority government even - they have failed to deliver. So why should we believe them this time? Likewise, if they won't even admit a mistake, but just say "that was then and this is now", why should we think that their position won't suddenly reverse again the moment they're back in government and getting those higher salaries and big, wealth-building perks again? Especially when the spineless chickenshit who did that is still in charge?

If Labour wants us to believe them, they need to offer us a leader who clearly believes in their policies, rather than in nothing. Meanwhile, there are other parties offering fairer taxation policies, who have been consistent for decades on this issue, and who can be trusted. So if you actually want to tax wealth and capital gains, I'd suggest voting Green.

Still chickenshits

After a month of watching Israel bomb hospitals and murder children and threaten starvation, ethnic cleansing, and nuclear strikes in revenge for a terrorist attack, Chris Hipkins finally seems to have discovered his conscience:

Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, saying "the violence and the killing has to stop".

He has stressed that he has made the announcement as Labour leader, not caretaker Prime Minister.

But Hipkins said it had become "untenable" for him to remain silent.

"It runs against Labour Party values to see the horrific scenes we are witnessing without calling for a ceasefire," he said.

Its good to see - better late than never – and likely to be popular. But at the same time it was rather undercut by (incorrect) reports yesterday that the US had brokered the ceasefire Hipkins was calling for. Leading to the suspicion that rather than actually standing up for "Labour Party values", Hipkins was just being a spineless little yes-man, going with the international flow, as usual.

Once upon a time the Labour Party had leaders who didn't have to wait for a month to do the right thing. We wouldn't have had this craven bullshit under David Lange, or Helen Clark (or, for the Boomers, Norman Kirk). But those days are clearly long gone. And Labour wonders why no-one believes in them anymore? Its because these days, they don't seem to believe in anything other than their own careers. They're chickenshits all the way down.

Weak, irresolute, and deceitful

Back in July, then-Prime Minister Chris Hipkins put paid to any hope of a progressive Aotearoa, ruling out wealth, land, or capital gains taxes under any government he led. The decision arguably cost him the election, with voters in previously-safe labour electorates staying home because they had nothing to vote for. But of course now he's out of power, that decision has been reversed:

Asked about a potential wealth tax, Hipkins said the caucus had a brief conversation about tax.

"I have also been clear with the caucus - we lost and that means we start again, and that means everything comes back onto the table - and that includes a discussion around tax."

Hipkins said he was clear he was only setting Labour's tax policy for the next term of government, and any changes would only be after a mandate was sought, but Labour lost - so now everything was back on the table.

I guess its because he's no longer leading a government...

The problem, of course, is that in addition to being weak and lacking any conviction, Hipkins now gets to add "deceitful" to his list of vices. And no-one on either side of this debate will trust him on this. Those opposed to fairer taxation will simply see him as going back on his word, while those supporting it will be worried he'll go back on it again. As one of the latter, while I’m pleased to see Labour reverse its position, I don’t for an instant trust them to deliver. And it has unpleasant shades of Ardern conspicuously refusing to back cannabis decriminalisation, then saying she supported it after it had lost.

But this is Labour in a nutshell: lions in opposition, spineless worms in government. And so no policy they pronounce can be believed in. It might be different if the party actually stood for something, or if its policies were under the democratic control of its membership, but neither has been true for a long time. And so there's no reason for anybody who wants actual progress to waste their time with them.

Update: I went for that post title, and then I see his wriggling refusal to say whether Isrrael is breaching international law. Weak and irresolute indeed. Muldoon once called Rowling "a shiver looking for a spine to run up". I have no idea whether or not that was true of Rowling - but it certainly seems to be true of Hipkins.

The duopoly's contempt for voters

Over the weekend we learned that Chris Hipkins has Covid, and so would not be able to participate in The Press's leader's debate (which was scheduled for last night). Labour and national then proceeded to bicker over rescheduling and substitutes, with Chris Luxon desperately trying to avoid another appearance (since he came off so badly in the last one). The Press meanwhile read the room, said "screw this", and invited all party leaders for a proper debate, so that voters could see all the options, as well as how they got along. So naturally, the status quo duopoly refused to participate:

After postponing, The Press invited the leaders of every party tracking to return to Parliament to a debate next week.

Leaders of NZ First, the Greens, ACT and Te Pāti Māori have accepted.

They will face The Press and a crowd of more than 2000 people at the Christchurch Town Hall, on Tuesday, October 10. This will be the final power brokers debate before polling day.

Hipkins, who said he wanted to debate Luxon at The Press debate next week, declined to face the other parties.

[...]

In Christchurch on Tuesday, Luxon stood by his decision not to return for a rescheduled debate with Hipkins. Labour has published photos of Luxon dressed as a chicken, saying he’s trying to wriggle out of debates.

This is simply utter contempt for voters. Hipkins and Luxon supposedly want to be Prime Minister. But they won't front up to face the public - or their potential coalition partners. And the natural conclusion is because they fear being shown up by the far superior offerings (both policywise and of leadership) from the smaller parties. It is arrogant and undemocratic. And then they wonder why people call them a political elite...

And its particularly stupid from Hipkins, who now needs all the exposure he can get. And with Labour polling so low its practically a minor party itself, and looking to lose core MPs, you'd think he'd be trying to save them.

Hipkins surrenders

Last month, the Greens kicked off their election campaign, proposing a wealth tax on the ultra-rich. Its a good, sensible policy: the New Zealand state is decrepit and run-down, with everything falling apart and failing after decades of austerity. A wealth tax would give it the money it needs to be able to do the things we want it to do: schools, hospitals, a welfare system that ends poverty and ensures human dignity.

So, you'd expect Labour, the party of ordinary kiwis who rely on those public services, to support this, right? Of course not:

Labour will not propose a wealth tax or a capital gains tax at the election, Labour leader Chris Hipkins said overnight on Wednesday.

“I’m confirming today that under a Government I lead there will be no wealth or capital gains tax after the election. End of story.”

He said “now is simply not the time for a big shake-up of our tax system”.

And so Labour, "the party of the workers", has sided with the ultra-rich to fuck over normal people, as usual. But then, should we really expect anything different from a man paid $471,049 a year, who owns three houses? Bluntly, he's not one of us - he's one of them. Of course he stands for their interests rather than ours.

Obviously, we have MMP, so this is really a question of the balance of power between Labour and the Greens and Te Pāti Māori after the election. But Hipkins' announcement today means that that might not be an issue. He's basicly told voters to fuck off, he's not going to offer us anything - just the awful, unequal, rusting status quo. There's no hope for a better future under Labour. So why bother voting for them?

The clear message from this announcement is that if you want change, you need to vote for the Greens or Te Pati Māori. As for Labour, a party which offers its voters literally nothing deserves to lose.

Hipkins' Augustinian republicanism

England is in the middle of a giant monarchical wankfest at the moment. Given its utter irrelevance to modern Aotearoa, the media today asked Prime Minister Chris Hipkins whether he would be offering us a referendum on a republic. And when he said "no", they rightly took him to task on it.

Like every other recent Labour Prime Minister, Hipkins claims to be a republican. And like all the rest, he's completely unwilling to do anything about it. What he fails to understand is that when you say you support something (like action on climate change), people eventually expect you to deliver. And if you consistently refuse to, then people might just begin to doubt the sincerity of what you claim to believe in, and vote accordingly.

This isn't to say that we should be rushing into a referendum - we need a lot of public consultation on what we want to change, whether a "twink republic" is enough (or enough to be getting on with), or whether we want to make other changes too. But Hipkins is refusing to even start that process, refusing to even have the conversation. And that makes him, in practical terms, a monarchist, a supporter of the rotten, foreign, inbred status quo. If you want something better, something modern, something alighned with Aotearoa's values, then don't vote for him.

This smells

RNZ has continued its look at the role of lobbyists by taking a closer look at the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Andrew Kirton. He used to work for liquor companies, opposing (among other things) a container refund scheme which would have required them to take responsibility for their own waste. Then he went to work for Chris Hipkins, and surprise, surprise, that container-refund scheme was thrown on Chris's policy bonfire.

Which smells a bit stinky. Almost like he mixed up his "previous" role as a lobbyist (he quit literally the day before Hipkins hired him) with his new one as not-quite-a-public-servant. And for those quibbling about the latter, while the PM's chief of staff is not a public service role, its also clearly doing the public's business, and we are entitled to certain expectations of political hygiene there. For Ministers, the rule is that they are "expected to... behave in a way that upholds, and is seen to uphold, the highest ethical standards" [emphasis added]. A public perception that someone had mingled their public and private business in this manner would be intolerable in a Minister. We should not accept it from the PM's chief of staff either.

As the article notes, this is possible because unlike other democracies Aotearoa does not have a "cooling off period" to slow the revolving door between politics and lobbying. Pretty obviously, we need one. And it would be fascinating to know what the PM's chief of staff thinks of that, and what advice (if any) he has given the PM on the issue.

Climate Change: Labour abandons the carbon budget

Hipkins held his expected bonfire of the policies today, ditching the RNZ/TVNZ merger, punting hate speech legislation to the Law Commission (which basicly means it will never happen), and dumping the "bougie dole" social insurance scheme. But along the way, he also shitcanned a key part of the government's emissions reduction programme: the biofuels obligation.

How important is this? The 2021 cabinet paper Sustainable biofuels mandate: final policy design noted that (p22):

The mandate is expected to reduce emissions by around 10 MtCO2-e by 2035; contributing about 1.2 – 1.3 MtCO2-e for the first emissions budget, 3.3 to 3.6 MtCO2-e for the second, and 4.6 – 5.8 MtCO2-e for the third.

In context, the transport sector emissions target is ~16.5 MT/year for the first (4 year budget), ~15 MT/year for the second, and ~11 MT/year for the third. So the biofuels obligation was expected to contribute ~45% of our second budget cuts, and ~20% of our annual third budget cuts. This is a significant emissions impact, which will have to be made up. It was also basicly our only policy to deal with heavy transport emissions. And now Labour has thrown it out the window. It will be very interesting to see what the Climate Commission says about it.

When quizzed at the press conference, Hipkins had no idea how he was going to compensate for the extra emissions he has just allowed, and he refused to commit to meeting our future carbon budgets. Which is disappointing. But sadly consistent with their habit of announcing big targets, then chickening out from the actual action required to meet them. But it shows that Labour cannot be relied upon to take climate change seriously, or prioritise emissions cuts over the interests of whiny polluters. For that, we need the Greens.

Addicted to secrecy

Back in July, Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins said he was concerned about the growing number of secrecy clauses excluding information from the coverage of the Official Information Act, and promised "safeguards" to limit their use in future. meanwhile, the government he is part of has just introduced another one, in its Sustainable Biofuel Obligation Bill.

Like many such clauses, the underlying justification is commercial sensitivity - fuel importers would be required to provide information on their activities to the EPA, and that information is obviously commercially sensitive. And like those other clauses, it is also completely unnecessary, as those interests are already protected by the OIA. That information is not absolute, and is subject to the public interest override. But that's appropriate - there are cases when accountability and transparency are more important than the commercial sensitivity of private companies (when they lie, for example. Or when the EPA doesn't do its job in prosecuting those lies). By proposing this clause, Labour - and by extension, Hipkins, who will have approved it at Cabinet - are saying that they do not trust the Ombudsman or the courts to interpret and apply the law correctly. And they're saying they'd rather have wrongdoing kept secret, rather than exposed and policed. You can see why a government of paranoid control-freaks and political arse-coverers would want that. But its absolutely not in the public interest. Hipkins needs to keep his promise, and ditch this clause.

Labour's response to police racism: legalise it!

Last month, the the Privacy Commissioner and Independent Police Conduct Authority issued a joint report on their investigation into the police's practice of coercing "voluntary" photographs from young Māori on the street. The report uncovered illegality, systematic racism, and widespread ignorance among police officers of the limits on their behaviour, including some practices so obviously illegal that the Privacy Commissioner was forced to issue a Compliance Notice to stop them (sadly, the IPCA has no such powers). You'd expect the Minister of Police, Chris Hipkins, to be displeased with this, and he is - but not in the way you'd think. Rather than being angry at police for being stupid racist criminals who neither understand or care about their statutory limitations, he was angry that they were being criticised over it. As for his solution to this widespread misconduct, it was simple: legalise it:

Police Minister Chris Hipkins says Parliament may legislate so police can gather young people’s photographs and fingerprints, after a watchdog report deemed the practice illegal.

Hipkins, speaking at the Police Association annual conference in Wellington on Wednesday, said “the pendulum has swung too far” on the issue of privacy rights in light of the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) report.

"I'm absolutely open to change. I do think that intelligence gathering is a core function of police and some of the intelligence gathering that's happened, as of normal in the past, won't be possible any more if we leave the IPCA, Privacy Commissioner finding unchallenged,” he said.

“I am concerned that the report, if left unchallenged, will significantly constrain the police's ability to do their jobs ... I wouldn't take off the table the potential for Parliament to take further action to support the police to do their job.”

So I guess the police are now in the same category as the SIS and GCSB: Parliament will make rules for them, and assure us that this keeps them under control. But when they're found breaking those rules, they'll just retrospectively legalise their actions rather than hold them to account.

The kicker is that the law Hipkins is complaining about - effectively information privacy principle 1 - has been the law since 1993, and it was unanimously reconfirmed by Parliament in 2020. Hipkins voted for it. He also voted for the Policing Act 2008 provisions which ensured police could not retain fingerprints of people acquitted or not charged, and for the 2011 amendments which clarified the relationship between that clause and the youth justice system. In that case, he spoke in the debate, saying that

The police will not be keeping the photographs and fingerprints of young people who are found to have done nothing wrong. They will not be keeping them. That is really, really important.

Now he's proposing that police be allowed to keep photographs of people who haven't even been charged with anything, just for convenience. So I guess it wasn't important after all.

If it wasn't clear already from countless other laws, Labour is just another dirty authoritarian party, who occasionally pretend to support human rights to scam liberal votes. Don't be fooled by them. If you want the police kept under control, vote for politicians who are appropriately suspicious of them. And that means the Greens or Te Pati Māori.

Why police ignored the Ombudsman

Back in June, the Ombudsman found that the police were unlawfully delaying OIA requests to notify Ministers under the "no surprises policy". The police said they had changed their process. But then they immediately changed it back, raising questions about whether they had lied to the Ombudsman. So how did that happen?

I used the OIA to ask, and their response is here. They explain their new policy, that it was first implemented on 14 July, and then say that it was reversed because

In the ordinary business of transitioning into the new portfolio, the Minister’s office staff outlined their normal processes for following the standard “no surprises” protocol, followed across the public sector and set as an expectation in paragraph 3.22 of the Cabinet Manual. This was first notified to Police on 18 July 2022, during a phone conversation between one of the Minister’s private secretaries and myself...

...which seems to minimise things a little. Because the documentary record shows that the reversal - which happened a month after Hipkins became police minister, so wasn't "the ordinary business of transition" by any stretch of the imagination - happened because it received immediate pushback from one of Chris Hipkins's ministerial advisers:

[PS] tells me [MA] is not happy with this approach. I've resent Case Note to [PS] so she can provide it to [MA].

While there were some meetings, ultimately, the view of the ministerial adviser - a politically-appointed party hack, not a public servant - prevailed over that of the Ombudsman. Because information is power, and ministers and their hacks don't want to surrender the slightest shred of it, no matter what the law says.

(That ministerial adviser's boss, Chris Hipkins, is also the Minister for the Public Service, and is supposed to be leading them on open government. Which makes this another example of his poor leadership on transparency...)

That response also attempts to minimise the scale of the problem, claiming that "approximately 98 percent of Police OIA responses are sent out without being sighted by the Minister or his office". The police have confirmed by email that they are using the OIA statistics they report to TKM/PSC as a baseline, which are deliberately inflated with huge numbers of routine non-OIA statutory requests in order to mask the woeful performance of PNHQ. The police also say that this only affects "high organisational impact" (HOI) requests. 32% of all requests made to PNHQ in 2021 were marked in this way, and the number has consistently increased year after year. The net result is that police arse-covering and ministerial control-freakery is resulting in widespread, unlawful delays to the OIA process.

So will the Ombudsman do anything about this? Sadly, he seems to have swallowed the "only 2%" spin hook, line, and sinker. I guess the lesson here is that if you juke your stats enough, you can get away with anything.

A perfect example

Last year, a stranded kiwi criticised the MIQ system. Covid Minister Chris Hipkins responded by doxxing and defaming her. Now, he's been forced to apologise for that:

Minister Chris Hipkins has admitted he released incorrect and personal information about journalist Charlotte Bellis, after she criticised the managed isolation system.

[...]

Under mounting public pressure, Hipkins, who was Covid-19 minister at the time, cast doubt on Bellis’ story with a claim she had been offered consular assistance twice since early December 2021 but had not responded to the offers.

It’s understood Hipkins’ public apology was a request of Bellis’ lawyers. After Hipkins admitted fault privately to Bellis in March, her lawyers sought an apology instead of pursuing a legal settlement for defamation and a privacy breach.

Good, but obviously it would be better if Ministers weren't bullies, and didn't abuse their positions to obtain and release personal information about their critics. And obviously it would be better if the Prime Minister held her Ministers to account when they misbehaved liek this.

Its also worth noting that if Hipkins' department, Te Kawa Mataaho - Public Service Commission - had their way, he would have enjoyed legal impunity for this "proactive release". Which makes Hipkins, like Paula Bennett, a perfect example of why we should never allow that to happen.

Proactive release: The documents

Back in April, Stuff was leaked a consultation copy of a cabinet paper on changes to proactive release policy. The full paper - The next steps in the public release of official information - was eventually released, but in the interim I filed an OIA request seeking information on the paper and the consultations which informed its development. Given that proactive publication had featured heavily in past Open Government Partnership "consultations" (just look at how often it comes up in the 2018 ideas list), I was particularly interested in learning whether they had bothered to discuss it with OGP stakeholders, or their handpicked Expert Advisory Panel. I got the response back yesterday, with several hundred pages of emails. The summary:

• There was no consultation with OGP stakeholders. Which just strengthens the perception that the government's "engagement" and "co-design" over the OGP is a box-ticking exercise which goes nowhere, and that they think "open government" is something they do to us, rather than with us. It also makes it clear that the Public Service Act's statutory obligation to "foster a culture of open government" means precisely nothing in practice.
• We were meant to have proper statistics: when the full cabinet paper was released, I commented on how the reporting regime for proactively released cabinet papers was broken, reporting only on numbers released, without providing the number lodged as a point of comparison. However, the original draft - then titled Progressing our commitment to open government - included proper reporting:

  This data would be supplemented with information from the Cabinet Office on the number of papers lodged during the same reference period and reported by the Commission to the Minister for the Public Service. I would expect to release the information. Because of the time lag between the lodging, consideration of papers and their publication, the two sets of data would not be directly comparable but would give an indication of the proportion of papers being released, and trends in the numbers made publicly available.

  This provision was removed in late April, apparently at the behest of one of Hipkins' ministerial advisors (a political appointee, not a public servant), who was "not sure how useful" it was for Cabinet Office to provide a denominator against which performance could be assessed. The decision was made in the wake of an embarrassing series of written parliamentary questions which revealed that the government was failing to meet its existing proactive release obligations, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it...
• Hipkins pushed for real change, but shot himself in the foot: In July 2021 the paper was rewritten by Hipkins and David Choat, his ministerial adviser. The second draft included some changes - most notably, a proposal for a central portal for proactive release of Cabinet material:

  I also recommend the Cabinet Office be tasked with creating a single portal for the publication of all proactively released Cabinet papers. Where supporting material is released on department or agency websites, links should also be provided to that information.

  This idea has been floating round in NZ open government circles for years, and would be a game changer for transparency. In consultation, other agencies loved it, and I think the public would too. DPMC, OTOH, hated the idea. Their feedback is a masterpiece of bureaucratic obstructionism, going from "we don't need this anyway" through "if we do need it, its not our responsibility" through "if it is our responsibility, then we would need a lot of money", before settling on "if you want it, you can do it". But its clear that they are hostile to the idea of being involved in releasing information, saying "The role of the Cabinet Office is to support executive decision-making... it is not our role to disclose Cabinet material... it is also not the role of Cabinet Office to assess what should be released or to make redactions". [This is clearly legally wrong. Cabinet material is official information, which they hold, so it is absolutely their job to disclose it, to assess what should be released and make redactions if necessary].

  It would be easy to conclude from this that DPMC hates transparency, and they do (just look at their response to requests for cabinet agendas). But there's another reason for their hostility to the idea, and that is that they simply weren't consulted about it. This is clear from an email between TKM/PSC policy analysts a week before the draft went out, in which they disclaim all responsibility for that bit. Whoops. You might think though that a minister with responsibility for open government might be able to make decisions and direct public resources to implement them. But apparently, they can't.

• The government wanted to give impunity to Paula Bennett, again: Huge chunks of the early drafts are redacted as "confidential advice". But an unredacted header gives the subject as "Exploring changes to the OIA to facilitate proactive release", while an unredacted footnote shows that at least one of these changes relates to section 48 of the OIA: the immunity clause. This has been a long-standing fetish of the public service, and in recent years they've tried to divert every move to amend or reform the OIA to include extending s48 to cover proactive release (and their arses). The reason we shouldn't do it can be summed up in two words: Paula Bennett. Because immunity for proactive release means impunity for Ministerial doxxing, and that's something most kiwis would find absolutely unacceptable. Fortunately this attempt seems to have been killed at the final hurdle, and it was removed in rewrites in late April. But given the desire of bureaucrats to cover their arses regardless of consequences, no doubt it'll be back.
• The SIS views transparency as a security threat: Yes, really. In their feedback they express concerns about the "mosaic effect", "when multiple agencies release single pieces of information which, on their own, are innocuous, but when viewed together could amount to information that is harmful to New Zealand or its interests". A large amount is redacted, but according to a later summary they are concerned about ineligible people reading proactive releases. Which sounds like another good reason to get rid of the OIA's outdated eligibility clause, and align it with the more modern LGOIMA. It also makes you wonder what they think of FYI...

  Update: The SIS's email has now been released, unredacted, and is a naked attempt to weaponise OIA eligibility requirements to undermine proactive release.

Looking at this, there's both good policy gutted and bad policy dumped, with a side order of inter-agency squabbling. But the thing that strikes me most is that the government, which is supposed to be committed to consultation and co-creation via the OGP, constructed this entire policy in a vacuum, without asking anyone outside their closed circle about it. As mentioned above, this shows that they think open government is something they do to us rather than with or for us. But apart from the arrogance and insularity of this undemocratic attitude, in this case it also resulted in worse policy, because there was no external pressure to drive change and force reluctant agencies to get on board, or to stop them from making mistakes. And that's a tragedy for all of us.