Democracy, Parliament, and war

Sending soldiers to die is one of the biggest decisions a government could make. You'd expect, therefore, that there would be Parliamentary scrutiny of such decisions - especially when they have led to tragedy. But you'd be wrong. There no requirement for government to gain Parliamentary approval for the deployment of troops overseas (though Labour has a member's Bill for that), and there's no guarantee of post-deployment scrutiny either. There was an unpleasant example of that today after Question Time, when Speaker Lockwood Smith refused permission for an urgent debate on the deaths of kiwi soldiers in Afghanistan - not because it failed to meet the requirements of Standing orders, but because "the House has more appropriate ways of recognising such events, and today has already done so". In other words, the mawkish exercise in hypocrisy Parliament opened with today - desperately reciting the old lie in the hope that this waste of life would therefore be rendered meaningful - is used as an excuse to shut down real scrutiny and debate.

This isn't good enough. We deserve better. The soldiers John Key has sent to die deserve better. Democracy means holding the government to account for its actions. That may be inconvenient for accountability-phobic politicians, and painful for the rest of us, but it has to be done, and it is Parliament's duty to do it. By refusing permission for this debate, Lockwood Smith has done us all a disservice.

Earning that reputation XII

Parliament's Government Administration committee has decided to hear evidence on MP's pay and conditions in secret:

Select committee lists circulated last night listed the committee as open and said Speaker Lockwood Smith would be giving evidence.

But Smith, who as Speaker is in charge of MPs' pay and conditions, apparently requested secrecy for his evidence.

What was Smith afraid of? The obvious answer is "public criticism of what he had to say". So instead of facing up to the public and making his arguments openly and honestly, he has further debased the reputation of Parliament and called its integrity into question. MP's wonder why the public thinks so little of them? This is why. And we'll keep thinking it until one of them stands up and lodges a complaint of Breach of Privilege against the Speaker for bringing the House into disrepute.

(Smith's evidence will of course be released when the Committee submits its report. But in the meantime, the damage to Parliament's reputation has been done).

Good news on transparency

John Key has indicated that National will likely support Holly Walker's Lobbying Disclosure Bill to select committee. Good. This is an area where more transparency is needed, so we can see whether or not our government is subject to undue influence, and ultimately whether or not they are trustworthy. And while the bill may need to be tweaked, that can be done at select committee, after a national conversation about how much transparency we expect and who should be covered. National's support will make that conversation possible.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Lockwood Smith is once again showing us that he is no friend of transparency, by refusing to name the 16 lobbyists given privileged access to Parliament. Which naturally invites the question: what is he trying to hide? If the access was defensible, he would tell us. The fact that he doesn't speaks volumes.

Finally

Speaker of the House Lockwood Smith has approved permanent funding to allow deaf MP Mojo Mathers to do her job. Good. But I'm still left wondering what took him so long. Mojo was elected back in November, and the House first met in December. That's four months in which the Speaker sat on his hands and did nothing (despite being able to call a meeting of the interim Parliamentary Services Commission at any time). Even once the issue was raised publicly in an effort to shame him into action, it took almost a month for him to do anything.

But at least its now solved, and there will be permanent funding to allow MPs to work regardless of disability. And it looks like Parliament TV will be captioned in the near future. But I'm still left with the feeling that its all taken far too long. This has not been one of Smith's finest moments, and it has eroded both his own mana, and that of the House as a whole.

A call for change

Earlier in the month, we learned that Parliament was not enabling Green MP Mojo Mathers (who is profoundly deaf) to do her job properly. There was widespread public outrage at this, and it has crystallised in a formal petition to Parliament calling for live closed captioning of Question Time. The petition was submitted to the House at the beginning of Question Time today, with 5,379 signatures. Another 500 have signed it since it was submitted

Hopefully this will be enough to prompt change. Though it seems that the Speaker is still dragging his feet, refusing to bring forward a meeting of the Parliamentary Services Commission. The government is only getting around to appointing the additional members required by law, and doesn't seem to be in any hurry to do so, with the appointment motion well down the Order Paper (today its at number 14). Faced with a fundamental issue of discrimination, which is impeding an MP in the exercise of her constitutional duties, National is sitting on its hands. I wonder if that counts as Contempt of the House?

The nuclear option

So, what to do if Lockwood Smith continues to sit on his arse and refuse to allow an elected MP to perform their constitutional duties? This:

Clerk of the House of Representatives (Non-discrimination) Amendment Bill

The Parliament of New Zealand enacts as follows:

1. Title
This Act is the Clerk of the House of Representatives (Non-discrimination) Amendment Act 2012.

2. Commencement
This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it received the Royal Assent.

3. Purpose
The purpose of this Act is to amend the Clerk of the House of Representatives Act to ensure that all Members of Parliament are fully enabled to carry out their constitutional duties.

4. Principal Act Amended
This Act amends the Clerk of the House of Representatives Act 1988.

5. Section 3 Amended
Section 3 is amended by inserting the following paragraph after paragraph (a):

“(aa) to ensure that all Members of Parliament are enabled to carry out their constitutional duties, regardless of any disability:”

Arguably the Clerk already has to do this, as it is a duty required by law (specifically the Human Rights Act) under section 3(b). But if Smith continues to deny this, then I think MPs should seek leave to introduce and pass this bill and make it very clear that it is the Clerk's responsibility. Seeking leave to do so each and every time Smith takes the chair would be a good way of getting the message across.

Excuses

Lockwood Smith's excuse for his outrageous refusal to ensure that Mojo Mathers is enabled to perform her constitutional duties as an MP? "Its not within the appropriation", and he needs the permission of the Parliamentary Services Commission to approve it. Both of these excuses are pure bullshit.

The detailed appropriation for the Office of the Clerk - the body responsible for providing secretarial services to the House, Hansard, and in-House translation services - is here [PDF]. The relevant appropriation is "Secretariat Services for the House of Representatives", and its scope is defined as:

This appropriation is limited to the provision to the House of Representatives of professional advice and services designed to assist the House in the fulfilment of its constitutional functions, and enabling participation in, and understanding of, parliamentary proceedings.

(Emphasis added).

Making sure that a deaf MP can participate fully and fulfil her constitutional duties would seem to be covered by that. Maori MPs are - the official interpreter is funded out of that appropriation.

So what about the Parliamentary Services Commission? That's to advice the Speaker on the provision of services to Members (such as communications services, offices, that sort of thing) under the Parliamentary Services Act. But this isn't a private service to an MP, its a public service to our country, and required by law. But even if you accept that this is a private service, it still doesn't wash - because a) the Parliamentary Services Commission currently consists of only three people (the Leader of the House, Leader of the Opposition, and the Speaker himself); and b) they've known about this problem for three months. If Lockwood couldn't organise a meeting of only three people in that time to sort this out, then it is his priorities at fault, not "bureaucracy".

Finally, there's the obvious counterfactual: would this be happening if Mathers was a National MP? And I think we all know that the answer would be "no". If it was one of his colleagues, Smith would have prioritised handling it and ensured there was a solution in place to ensure participation on the first day (and issued a press release crowing about Parliament's new accessibility). But because she's a Green, its just not a priority. The fault is entirely Lockwood's, and he deserves every bit of stick he is getting for it.

Outrageous

Last year, we elected our first profoundly deaf MP, Mojo Mathers. Obviously, her disability poses some problems to participating in the House. Equally obviously, there are solutions which enable that participation, which the Greens have been ironing the bugs out of. And as a democratic institution, committed to respecting the democratic choices of the electorate and representing all New Zealanders, you'd expect the House to pay for them.

But apparently not:

Speaker Lockwood Smith has told deaf MP Mojo Mathers she must pay for the $30,000 technology to speak in Parliament out of her own budget.

[...]

She will give her maiden speech in the House tomorrow, which will be translated by sign-language interpreters.

But Smith has told the Green Party that Parliamentary Services will not pay for the electronic note-taking equipment which Mathers needs to take part in debates.

In other words, Mojo is not going to be allowed to represent her constituents effectively. Either she speaks in the House, or forgoes an office, PA, communications, or something else we expect our elected representatives to have to do an effective job.

This is pretty obviously unlawful discrimination under the Human Rights Act. Disability is a prohibited grounds of discrimination. While there are exceptions for employers, access to public places, and provision of goods and serves allowing discrimination where it would not be reasonable to accomodate disability requirements, in this case it bloody well is reasonable to expect an elected representative to be allowed to do her job, and in any case those exceptions do not apply. Mathers is not an employee. Speaking in Parliament is not a public place or a service provided to the public. With this decision, the Speaker is in breach of the law. And when Parliament is telling people that they must accomodate disability, that makes him a hypocrite of the highest order.

But its not just about unlawfulness and hypocrisy, but also about democracy. Parliament proclaims itself to be "our House". They've just shown clearly that they're not, that they are not there to represent everyone, but only those who can hear. The message to the public is clear: deaf people do not belong to our community, and should not be represented in Parliament. And that is not a message the New Zealand Parliament should be sending.

Our monarchical Speaker strikes again

On Wednesday, a man sitting in the gallery of Parliament attempted to throw himself over the railing and on to the floor of the chamber. The Herald's Audrey Young, sitting in the Press Gallery nearby, knowing news when she saw it, snapped a photo on her phone of the ensuing struggle as security guards and members of the public attempted to stop the man from going over the edge. The Herald, also knowing news when they saw it, published it. And as a result, Lockwood Smith has now banned them from reporting from Parliament for two weeks.

Publication of the photo was clearly in breach of Parliament's Standing Orders, which prohibit filming or photographing interruptions from the gallery. At the same time, it is obvious that the Speaker has not considered the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in his decision. As the voice of the legislature and an official performing a public function, he is bound by the BORA, and must therefore ensure that his decisions respect the public's freedom of speech and that his punishments are not disproportionate to the offence. Any departure from these principles must be "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society".

This decision is not demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society which respects the freedom of speech and allows the public to see what is happening in their legislature. But sadly, no court can overrule the Speaker here. The British Bill of Rights Act 1688, which asserts the supremacy of Parliament, prevents it. Which makes the Speaker effectively a king, possessed of unreviewable and uncontrollable power. We need to change this.

Secondly, this shows that our Parliament is still in some ways stuck in the mindset of the eighteenth century, regulating itself like an exclusive gentlemen's club with public scrutiny permitted by grace and favour, not as of right. This too has to change. It is not the Speaker's House - it is our House, and we have an absolute right to know and see what happens there.

A question

Isn't this

I, Hone Pani Tamati Waka Nene Harawira, swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, that I will be honest and forthright in my efforts to advance the rights of the people of Tai Tokerau, that I will do my utmost to help all Maori people become full empowered citizens of this land and that I will do whatever I can to reduce inequalities in this country, so that all may one day be proud to call Aotearoa home.

better and more reflective of modern New Zealand than this?

I, Hone Pani Tamati Waka Nene Harawira swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.

That's the point Hone Harawira was trying to make today. He was silenced, by an abuse of the Parliamentary process, by an old white man who disagrees.

That man, Lockwood Smith, is stifling dissent, strangling our future and trying to suppress any debate over who we are and what it means to be a kiwi in modern New Zealand. And that is undemocratic and not befitting his role as Speaker of the House.

Protest and Parliament

Some people have objected to my last two posts about Lockwood Smith's refusal to swear Hone Harawira in as an MP today. According to them, Smith was simply enforcing the law, and it is unfair to portray him as a white supremacist for doing so.

To put it politely, fuck them.

To point out the obvious, not everyone accepts our current constitutional provisions. Some people, such as Harawira, want a greater role for Maori and the Treaty. Others (including myself) are republicans, and do not see why we should swear allegiance to a foreign monarch. We are entitled to hold those views, and express them in public, and those rights do not suddenly end if someone is elected to Parliament. In fact, an MP elected with such views would be failing their voters if they did not use the opportunity presented by being sworn in to make a symbolic statement of dissent.

As previously noted, our Parliament has long had an accepted practice for dealing with this. MPs make their statement, then they do it again "properly". This respects the diversity of MP's views, while ensuring that the law is complied with. But suddenly, out of the blue, Smith has changed that practice, and is now requiring that MPs be sworn in in the legal form from the outset. No symbolic dissent is permissible. While cloaked in petty legalism, at its heart this is about cultural supremacy, and in particular the supremacy of Smith's dead white male monarchist culture over the new New Zealand culture which has been growing here for the last 40 years.

To claim that it is somehow "disrespecting Parliament" to symbolically refuse to take the affirmation in its proper form (and then do it) is an exact reversal of the truth. It is disrespecting Parliament, disrespecting our democracy, to forbid it. And it is disrespecting the people of New Zealand to try and erase our differences and enforce a monolithic culture upon those who represent us.

These are real disagreements, and they are to be solved by argument, the way we do things in a democracy. Symbolic protests such as Harawira's are part of that process. They highlight the absurdity of the current situation, and hopefully provoke us to think about why "our" representatives are promising to obey an old lady 19,000km away rather than the people who elected them. Or why our public oaths of office and our constitution still do not reflect our founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi. Outlawing such protests, and seeking to erase them, will not make those questions go away. All it does is bring our Parliament, and its Speaker, into disrepute.

Lockwood Smith's new ceremonial robes

Ejected

Hone Harawira was meant to be sworn in as an MP today, following his victory in the Te Tai Tokerau byelection. Instead, he was prevented from doing so by the Speaker, and ejected from the House. As a result, the people of Te Tai Tokerau have been deprived of their representation.

This is simply bullshit. There has long been an accepted practice around this: MPs get to make their statement (swearing allegiance to the Treaty, or to the people of New Zealand, or whatever), then they jump through the legal hoop and redo their affirmation in the proper form. If you review the footage of MPs being sworn in after the last three elections you'll see a fair number of MPs doing this. Contrary to the Speaker's assertion, that is not "breaking the law". The affirmation is given. And what matters is that it is given, not what is said beforehand.

Lockwood Smith has behaved like an arse in this matter. He deserved the disorder that ensued. Our Parliament does not deserve this sort of white supremacist bullshit from its Speaker; he should apologise and swear Harawira in immediately.

Fraud is fraud II

While Lockwood Smith is spouting bullshit to protect his own perks, he is at least doing one thing right: He'll shop Pansy Wong to the police if she is found to have abused her travel perks:

Speaker Lockwood Smith said he will not hesitate to refer Pansy Wong to the police if a Parliamentary Service investigation into her travel perks comes up with serious misuse.

Dr Smith said he did not wish to discuss Ms Wong's case specifically but promised the investigation would be thorough.

"You'll be aware there was a case of a former member I put in the hands of the police and I will do that if I find serious issues."

Good. The sort of abuse we're talking about is fraud, and it should be prosecuted and punished as such. We cannot have a situation where there is one law for politicians, and another for everyone else.

Myth busted

Yesterday I highlighted Lockwood Smith's reliance on the myth of unfunded electorate offices as "justification" for his travel perks. It turns out that in Smith's case that myth is even more tenuous justification than I though. Here's what the first edition of McGee's Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand has to say (p. 59):

From the 1 December 1984 all members (including Ministers) were entitled to assistance from the then Legislative Department for the operation of an electorate office. This included a part-time secretary and a contribution towards rental, office establishment and running costs. Members in adjacent electorate offices were allowed to share offices and where this was done they were entitled to a full-time secretary.

[Thanks to the Parliamentary Library for pointing me at this; I hadn't noticed it in my quick browse the other day]

So, Lockwood Smith's "justification" for a lifetime of subsidised air travel - an approximately half million dollar benefit at today's prices - is that for the four and a half months between his election in July 1984 and the funding of electorate support on 1 December of that year, he had to lick his own stamps. And he wonders why people see him as grasping and greedy...

The public wins on transparency

On Friday, Speaker of the House Lockwood Smith slammed the door on transparency, limiting disclosure of MP's international travel expenses. The decision was condemned by party leaders, and the public, and as a result he has been forced to back down and release all the information. He's petulantly blaming "confusion created by the decision of some party leaders to release individual party figures", but the blunt fact is that he was wrong, and we (and our representatives) called him on it.

Hopefully Smith has learned his lesson from this, and will embrace the cause of transparency. Otherwise he will continue to drag Parliament into disrepute and contribute to the poor reputation of our politicians.

A free speech zone for MPs?

One of the innovations of the Bush presidency was the "free speech zone" - caged areas miles from anywhere, aimed at corralling protests and keeping them out of sight and out of mind of government officials. Now Lockwood Smith seems to want to introduce one at Parliament for MPs:

[Smith] says he expects MPs to advise his office of their intentions, if they plan protest action, so that agreement can be reached about where, and how, any protest might occur.

Dr Smith says a protest may be staged in a clearly delineated area, in order to separate it from other activities, and should not impede the rights of others.

Maybe Smith hasn't read section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act, which says:

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.

Or Brooker v. Police, which after noting that "the purpose of protest is to make someone listen to something they do not want to hear", went on to rule that the public must tolerate and respect the right to protest, even if it is loud, annoying, undignified or untidy. Reasonable citizens in a democratic society understand that putting up with such things is part and parcel of democracy.

That law and that ruling unquestionably apply to Smith. He's a person performing a public function not to mention the chief representative of the legislative branch. Parliamentary privilege does not mean he can behave like a dictator within the Parliamentary precinct - something which the Speaker has been forced to recognise.

Parliament is the heart of our democracy. It is therefore a place to protest, loudly and with vigour. And the Speaker, the government, and international visitors just have to learn to put up with that.

No mercy for Lockwood

Last month, Speaker of the House Lockwood Smith threatened the parliamentary press gallery, saying that kick them out of their offices and instead treat them as lobbyists if they kept publishing stories about crooked politicians rorting the system. Today, the gallery got their revenge, highlighting his all-expenses-paid trip to India with his partner. You give it out, you get it back...

But while it may be satisfying, the story is actually a beat-up. Smith's travel is entirely legitimate. He's going there for a Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers of the Commonwealth, a bi-annual get together which fosters stronger relations and information exchange among Commonwealth parliaments. The gallery will no doubt sneer at this - but I think such gatherings are worthwhile; we learn about parliamentary practice from other countries, and they learn from us. Yes, he gets to take his partner with him - but given the pressures on MP's families caused by them having to work in Wellington while representing their electorates, I don't have a problem with that. And if the gallery do, they should actually make that argument, rather than trying to smear all travel by MPs as a rort.

Smith undermines accountability again

Today in the House Speaker Lockwood Smith once again docked the opposition a supplementary question as punishment for misbehaviour.

I've blogged about this "punishment" before, and the same criticisms apply: this undermines the accountability of the government to Parliament, and hence to the people of New Zealand. In the process, it also undermines the legitimacy of both institutions.

Smith has other means available to punish misbehaving MPs (he could for example throw the bastards out for the day). He should use them, rather than robbing the people of New Zealand of a vital means of accountability.

My heart bleeds

Speaker Lockwood Smith is concerned that public outrage over MP's perks is stressing them and their families. My heart bleeds for them, really. Why, it must be so stressful having the public demanding accountability for how our money as spent. But if its stressful for MPs, you have to wonder how the public service, who are subject to far pettier levels of scrutiny (down to whether the biscuits are plain or chocolate) copes.

"But that's different!" say MPs. No, its not. Travel perks are paid for with public money. We have a right then to know whether that money is well spent, or whether it should be spent at all. If a government department was providing these sorts of perks to its staff, we would rightly be outraged at the total waste of money (and Rodney Hide would be first to weigh in). The same principles surely applies to MPs. And if they think the money is not wasted, that the taxpayer somehow derives some benefit by subsidising Hide's $10,000 holiday in Hawaii, then the onus is on them to speak up and explain how. But their silence is deafening - and very, very telling.

Smith also argues that the average benefit of travel has been factored into (and effectively deducted from) MP's salaries by the Remuneration Commission. Maybe back in 2003 - but they've been silent on the issue for the last six years. And given that the perk-for-pay deal was effectively cut in the 70's, and no only one MP from that era is still sitting in the House, I think that that argument is effectively dead.

Finally, Smith says he feels responsible for the stress caused over this issue, as he made the decision to release details on MPs expenses. The subtext: he should have maintained the cosy conspiracy of silence around perks and expenses instead. Way to go with earning that reputation, Dr Smith.

Correction: Roger Douglas was first elected in 1969, and is accurately described as a relic of that era. He may also be a zombie.