A desperate delay

So, that was a bit of a damp squib. Everyone having geared up for an epic filibuster battle which would upset the government's legislative program for at least the day, National has now abused its parliamentary majority to adjourn the debate on its outrageous and anti-democratic punishment of Te Pāti Māori MPs until June. Officially this is to allow those MPs to participate in the budget debate, but Chris Bishop said the quiet part out loud: it's to "allow this week to focus on the Budget", rather than on a tyrannical government abusing parliamentary processes to effectively lynch its primary opposition. In other words, to ensure the government gets to control the headlines, rather than having to deal with the "distraction" of its own abuses.

The government is clearly hoping that public anger over this will dissipate. I am hoping it won't. And hopefully that anger will be shown to government MPs where-ever they go. This is a government which seriously suggested arbitrarily imprisoning its political opponents, merely for the opposing them. As Chris Hipkins noted in his speech, this regime is departing significantly from the democratic norms of Aotearoa. It is acting like a tinpot dictatorship. It is directly attacking our democracy. And that is not something the people of Aotearoa should tolerate or forgive.

(And yes, I'm glad to have been wrong about Hipkins on this; he moved that the penalty be reduced to a 24 hour suspension, in line with past practice, and seemed to be willing to fight for that).

National's move to ram through an adjournment caught everyone by surprise, including Brownlee. It was yet another abuse of parliamentary procedure to prevent debate and stifle opposition. Which is the central feature of this government: urgency and abuse of process all round. They are the worst, most abusive government we have had since Muldoon. And we should kick their arses out at the first opportunity.

Brownlee stands up for democracy

Yesterday, parliament's white privilege committee recommended that three Te Pāti Māori MPs be suspended for up to three weeks for opposing the racist Treaty Principles Bill with a haka. The penalty is outrageous and antidemocratic - and surprisingly, even National's Speaker agrees. At the beginning of question time today, he denounced the recommendation as unprecedented and unfair, made the point that it could be amended, and effectively invited the opposition to filibuster and hold the Budget hostage to force the government to do so:

[T]he committee's recommendation was adopted by a narrow majority. That is an important point when the effect of the recommendation would be to deprive members of a minority party of their ability to sit and vote in this House for several days.

As the committee's report states, the Speaker has a duty to protect the rights of members of all sides of the House. In particular, there's a longstanding convention for Speakers to safeguard the fair treatment of the minority. I intend to honour that convention by ensuring the House does not take a decision next week without due consideration. In my view, these severe recommended penalties placed before the House for consideration mean it would be unreasonable to accept a closure motion until all perspectives and views had been very fully expressed.

[...]

As with many other situations when proposals are made to this House, it is not an all-or-nothing decision. I also note Standing Order 129, which provides that when an amendment has been moved, a member who spoke before the amendment was moved may speak again.

Just to spell that out: privileges committee reports trump all other business, and if everyone gets a 10-minute speaking slot, that's up to 1240 minutes - 20.6 hours - if everyone speaks once for their full time (550 minutes / 9 hours if only the opposition speaks, and 210 minutes / 3.5 hours if just the Greens and Te Pāti Māori do). And if an amendment is moved, everyone gets to speak again. There are 6.5 hours in a normal sitting day (less an hour for question time), and there are only two of them before the government wants to present its budget (and it wants to do some legislating before then, and hold a member's day). So if the government doesn't agree to vote for a more appropriate penalty (say, one day), this debate will drag on, eat their carefully-planned legislative calendar, eat Member's Day, and ultimately prevent their budget from being presented on schedule, disrupting their big PR setpiece.

So, I guess National gets to choose: do they want vicious racist vengeance and to undermine the legitimacy of their parliament? Or do they want to have the budget as normal?

Outrageous and antidemocratic

That is the only way to describe the Privileges Committee's recommendation to suspend the leadership of Te Pāti Māori for 21 sitting days for their haka protest against the racist Treaty Principles Bill (the haka's leader, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, gets only 7 days). Outrageous because this is the harshest penalty ever handed out by parliament; a clear case of the government abusing its majority to silence and exile the opposition - exactly like a corrupt tinpot dictatorship. And anti-democratic because in the process, they're depriving 210,000 Māori voters of their democratic representation, at the precise time the government will be introducing racist legislation to further undermine their rights, in the form of Rimmer's radical racist libertarian Regulatory Standards Bill.

I was expecting Te Pāti Māori to be convicted by National's kangaroo court, and I was expecting it to be both a badge of honour for its victims, and a source of shame for Parliament. But I was not expecting this level of punishment. It not only brings the entire house into disrepute; it undermines Parliament's very legitimacy. Because, very obviously, if Parliament ejects and suspends and gags its Māori members for vigorously defending, in a culturally appropriate way, the interests of their constituents, then it loses any claim to either represent or be owed allegiance by those constituents. And equally obviously, if a government can use its majority to do this to Māori, it can do it to everyone.

While a New Zealand government using the privileges committee and its House majority to suspend and silence all opposition was previously only a theoretical possibility, now it is real. And we must therefore defend ourselves, and our democracy, from that threat. And that means not just evicting this repulsive, racist, anti-democratic regime; it also means nobbling Parliament and ensuring it can never do this again. Parliament needs to actually be forced to follow the fundamental human rights it has promised to obey. As for how, repealing the 350 year old law which gives them their impunity and making them subject to the courts would be a good start. Politicians have shown they cannot be trusted, and will abuse whatever power they are given. Time to put some neutral adults in charge of them instead.

The Māori Party's hidden donations

Something I missed on Friday: the Māori Party has been referred to police over failure to disclose donations over $30,000. Looking at the updated return of large donations, this is about $320,000 donated to them by three donors - John Tamihere, the National Urban Māori Authority, and Aotearoa Te Kahu Limited Partnership - between June and August 2020, right in the leadup to last year's election when there is the highest interest in public disclosure.

Failing to file a s210C return on time (or within 15 working days of the deadline) without reasonable excuse is a corrupt practice, punishable by two years imprisonment and/or a $100,000 fine (sadly, the donations aren't forfeit). In the past the police (as opposed to the SFO) have generally refused to enforce the law (its not "real" crime, you see, unlike someone smoking a joint or walking while brown). But given the party involved and the police's culture of racism and subservience to power, maybe we might finally see the law enforced this time, though for entirely the wrong reasons.

I want the law enforced - donations fraud is a serious crime against our democracy, which undermines faith in our political system. But I want it enforced against everyone, powerful and powerless alike, and for the right reasons. The police's culture and past practice contaminates their actions in this case, and its just another argument of taking prosecution of electoral offences off them and giving it directly to the Electoral Commission.

Out-greening the Greens

Over the weekend the Māori Party released their climate change policy. The headline promises? Immediately end new onshore oil and gas exploration permits, withdraw all existing permits within five years, and decommission the sites by 2030. In other words, end oil and gas in New Zealand in just a few years. Which leaves the Greens' promise of merely sunsetting coal in 2030, and gas in 2035 in the dust.

But is it doable? That's an interesting question. Wikipedia has a nice and relatively up-to-date summary of energy in New Zealand, and we extract about 200PJ of natural gas a year. But we use half of it as chemical feedstock (for methanol, but also urea fertiliser), and only about 80PJ of it gets directly used for heating (60PJ in industry, and the rest in small businesses and homes), with the remaining 20PJ being burned for electricity. Ending gas means replacing all of that with renewable generation. On a headline level it would mean increasing our electricity generation by two thirds, and all in the North Island. But its a little bit easier than that because replacing gas for heating means heat pumps, which are about three times as efficient as gas. Still: decarbonising our energy supply is going to mean a huge increase in electricity generation, on the order of 45%. In addition, we'd need to replace every industrial gas boiler in the country with an electrical one. While we could almost certainly do that in five years, it would mean the sort of crash-building / upgrade programme you only see in wartime.

And on the gripping hand: at current consumption, and assuming no further exploited discoveries, we have only ten years of gas left. So, we're going to have to do all that anyway. Throwing Methanex out of the country boosts that to twenty years, but the writing for gas is on the wall, and industrial operators need to be planning to switch to electricity anyway if they want to stay in business. The Greens timeline for a 15-year phaseout is right in the middle of that 10 - 20 year lifespan, so its a zero-cost "get people to do what they were going to have to do anyway" policy, basicly a baseline of minimum effort.

The question then is one of timelines. How fast can we do this? What will it take? What can we do to push it faster? The Māori Party's policy is valuable because it gets us to actually think about what we need to do, rather than having change happen in the indefinite future. Decarbonisation means big changes. And whether we're trying to make those changes in five years or fifteen, its best if we start now rather than later. Because the latter invites us to put it off and put it off and then suddenly its all too hard and nothing changes at all.

As for concrete, definite ways of pushing this change: both parties talk about support for upgrades, but the big change we need to make (and need to make for electrified transport too) is to massively increase our renewable electricity supply. We know that the electricity companies aren't going to do it, because they want high prices. And that market failure is a perfect case for the government to step in. As for how, establishing a new SOE with the sole purpose of building as much renewable electricity generation as quickly as possible and crashing prices is the obvious mechanism. And to get them started, they could compulsory acquire the constented windfarm projects the electricity companies are currently sitting on, and actually build them before those consents expire. Or do we want to leave saving the world to a market which sees more profit in letting it burn?

A corrupt practice

A Māori Party candidate is being investigated for bribing voters:

The Electoral Commission is investigating a Māori Party candidate's campaign for allegedly offering online cash credits to potential supporters.

The investigation involves complaints that Botany candidate Wetex Kang's campaign sent messages offering credits to people on Chinese social media message app WeChat.

The Electoral Commission said it had received complaints about the use of "hong bao dollars" on WeChat as part of Mr Kang's campaign.

Bribing voters is a corrupt electoral practice, with a penalty of two years imprisonment and a $40,000 fine. Those convicted are also automatically barred from voting and standing for office in the next election. This is such a basic part of our electoral law (and any fair democratic system) that you really have to wonder how a political candidate possibly thought it was acceptable.

Not that anything will happen, of course. Because while the public and the Electoral Commission take electoral crime seriously, the police don't. They're too busy harassing harmless drug users, spying on protesters, and sucking up to Ministers than to protect our democracy.

People should be paid for their work

The Māori Party's latest immigration policy: slavery for migrants:

An internship visa that would require migrants with special skills to train young people in the regions is to be announced by the Maori Party today.

The package is part of the party's new policy on immigration, which until now has been solely a bid to have a crash course on Te Tiriti o Waitangi - the Treaty - added to the requirements for citizenship.

The Community Internship Scheme would see migrants work for two years as builders, doctors, beekeepers, plumbers or in other skilled work, depending on their qualifications or the needs of regions. The regions targeted would be identified as "Economic Hotspots" - areas experiencing an economic, population or income decline.

The internship would be unpaid

But don't worry: the local community would feed and house their migrant slaves, so they won't starve or freeze to death.

As with WINZ's provision of force labour to The Warehouse, this is not something we should permit in New Zealand. People should be paid for their work. If the Māori Party wants to offer proper, paid jobs in the regions to encourage people to migrate there, that's one thing. But removing their right to pay and restricting their freedom of movement under a coerced "contract" is simply slavery.

A day of backdowns

It appears to be a day of government backdowns, with the government agreeing to exempt sexual violence support agencies from its creepy demands for client data and from its pointlessly antagonistic efforts to remove the "whanau-first" clause from child protection law. Which is good news on the face of it, but not as good as it seems when you look closely.

On data collection, sexual violence agencies clearly have a very strong case for privacy. But its not just them at risk from the government's policy. As this article in the ODT highlights, the same concerns arise in a wide range of social agencies. People who use mental health, addiction support, parental support, suicide prevention, and family violence services all have very real and legitimate fears about what the government might do with their data and who might look at it. And if they believe e.g. WINZ will get their data and use it to cut benefits or steal children, then they won't interact with the service. MSD probably regards that as a success: lower demand means better PR and spending less money. But if people are afraid to seek help, that is a serious failure.

On child protection, the Māori Party had credibly threatened to withdraw its support from the government over this, so a backdown was inevitable. But while the media is reporting that the status quo will prevail and Maori children will be placed with their extended family where possible, Anne Tolley seems to be contradicting that on Twitter:

To be clear - we're not going back to the drawing board. Through the select committee process some of the wording of the Bill 1/2

— Anne Tolley (@AnneTolleyMP) March 15, 2017

may change but its intent won't. We will not be reinserting the whanau first principle. Safety will always come first 2/2

— Anne Tolley (@AnneTolleyMP) March 15, 2017

Which really doesn't suggest that the government is dealing with the Māori Party in good faith on this. In which case they'll likely find their bill voted down, and their budget along with it.

National's arrogance bites it in the arse

Back in March, National introduced legislation to establish an Ocean Sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning mining and fishing within the entire Kermadec's EEZ. The legislation has an obvious impact on iwi fishing rights and the Sealord settlement. Unfortunately, in typically arrogant fashion, National refused to consult with iwi first. Now, that lack of consultation is coming back to bite it in the arse - not just with court action, but a potential coalition collapse:

A battle between iwi and the Government over the proposed Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary is set for court after attempts to find a compromise failed.

The failure to reach an agreement on the matter prompted Maori Fisheries Commission (Te Ohu Kaimoana) chair Jamie Tuuta to send a strong warning to the Government today, saying the Kermadecs issue was "this Government's foreshore and seabed".

Te Ohu said the breach of iwi fishing rights was so serious that the the Maori Party should now consider severing its ties with the National-led Government.

The Maori Party's executive is holding a meeting this evening to discuss its relationship with National.

It didn't have to be this way, and a compromise could have been found which respected existing Treaty settlements while enabling the Ocean sanctuary (this probably would have involved not just the co-management on offer, but also buying out the settlement quota. Which isn't a great precedent, but we want these settlements to stick). National's arrogance has prevented that from happening. Worse, they've poisoned the ground for future marine sanctuaries as well, and turned a group who should support kaitiakitanga into bitter opponents of it - while putting the entire Treaty settlement process in danger.

I can't see the Maori Party supporting the bill, and with ACT pulling its support they now don't have the numbers unless they rely on the opposition. Who are likely to be wary of risking a Treaty settlement. Which means the entire thing now looks unlikely to pass, thanks to National's arrogance.

Heckuva job, you're doing there, National. Way to go with fucking up our most important national relationship.

(And just to reiterate: I want to see a Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary (in fact, I want there to be other ocean sanctuaries too). But I want the government to obey the Treaty, keep its word, and treat its Treaty partners with respect too. These aren't incompatible goals, and I would expect a competent government committed to the Treaty to work hard to keep them aligned).

Helen Clark, the UN, and politicians' priorities

Yesterday the Maori Party announced that they opposed former Prime Minister Helen Clark's bid to become United Nationas Secretary General due to the foreshore and seabed, the Tuhoe raids, and her opposition to the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The reaction of the establishment parties was instantaneous: Labour said it was "political hysteria", while Winston Peters called it "treachery". Really? Given what they stand for, the Maori Party's position is perfectly reasonable and well-founded. Helen Clark hurt Maori in many ways, and she still hasn't apologised for it. And its perfectly fine to be upset by that. In a mature democracy, we don't all have to get along, and there should certainly be no expectation that we should all support the same things (the mere existence of a democratic system of government and politics is proof that we don't).

Meanwhile, you really have to wonder about the priority establishment politicians assign to one of their own getting a prestigious post-political career. Sure, Helen Clark becoming UN Secretary General or Tim Groser become Director of the WTO is good for them. But why should we care about it? National pride is puerile, and an expectation that they will somehow use the office to benefit New Zealand is corrupt. Sure, she'd be good at the job, but thinking that she'd be better than all the other candidates is just parochial (and probably makes some assumptions about what the UN wants which might not be true). The size of her expense account doesn't matter to us. Basicly, there's no good reason for any of us to give a shit about it (or more of a shit beyond a vague positive "good for her").

And yet, establishment politicians do care and are seemingly highly invested in these personal employment campaigns. Why? Is it because they all hope for a (well-paid) international career after Parliament and club together to support one of their own? Or is it because one of them in one of those jobs creates opportunities for patronage and more jobs for the boys (both Charles Chauvel and Chris Carter landed at UNDP). Either way, its got nothing to do with us, and to the extent that they're investing public resources promoting the private interests of former politicians, is an abuse of office.

Cronyism in action

So, the government has just announced that they will be establishing more charter schools - because clearly one failure resulting in a private company running off with millions of dollars of government funding isn't enough. They've also announced a new "independent" entity to support them, run by ACT crony Jenny Gibbs and Maori Party crony Tariana Turia. So, pork all round for the support parties then.

Entirely coincidentally, the Maori Party announced their opposition to Labour's bill to abolish charter schools. Which looks simply corrupt, as if they're just protecting one of their own. Its a perfect example of how National's crony politics has eaten away at our democracy and trust in politics. If they weren't appointing cronies, the Maori Party's support could be taken as principled. But because their people personally profit from this policy, their support for it can only be regarded as corrupt.

National's RMA "reforms"

This morning the government announced that it had cut a deal with the Maori Party to introduce (and presumably pass) a bill for RMA "reform". The complete bill is here, and I've been going over it. The good news is that National's plans to gut environmental protection by removing environmental values (and adding a development clause) to the Act's "matters of national importance" is dead. They're adding risks from natural hazards, which is uncontentious, but nothing else. The bad news? They're trying to get it in via the back door by requiring local authorities to ensure they have sufficient "development capacity" through land zoning and infrastructure. Meanwhile, much of their explicitly anti-democratic agenda to reduce public participation and allow the Minister to overrule local communities and dictate plans from Wellington remains unchanged.

They're also using the bill to completely rewrite the EEZ Act to allow the Minister to "call in" applications and appoint stacked boards to produce the desired outcome - exactly as warned by Greenpeace a fortnight ago. So, I guess we'll see those seabed miners back for another go at strip-mining the seafloor, this time with Paula Rebstock collecting a huge government salary to rubberstamp the applications. I'm extremely surprised the Maori Party accepted this, given their professed environmental values, and some pointy questions need to be asked there. Because given their recent complaints about being short of money, the natural suspicion is that another deal has been done...

Humiliation

That's the only way to describe National's defeat in Northland over the weekend. You have to go back 30 years to 1985 to find another by-election where a government's candidate was defeated - and then it was a narrow victory. Winston's victory is a comfortable one. Turning a safe National seat into a safe (if Labour doesn't stand) opposition one is something I haven't seen before, and a testament to Steven Joyce's campaigning skills.

As for what it means, Peter Dunne and the Maori Party just became the effective checks on government policy they were in the last Parliamentary term. In concrete terms, that means that National's plans to oust local decision-making from the RMA and have Ministers micromanage everything (coincidentally turning them into a nexus for corruption and patronage - sorry, campaign donations) is dead again, because those two parties won't vote for it. And I think the same can be said for their plans to grant the SIS and GCSB wider powers after their strapped chicken "review" this year: the Maori Party won't vote for spies who spy on them, and they've burned Peter Dunne once already on this issue and he won't be fooled again. Which means they'll need to rely on Labour or NZ First for votes, both of whom are likewise suspicious / see some votes in refusing to give the government a blank cheque. They're still going to be able to pass a lot, but just six months into the term their policy agenda is in tatters. And meanwhile, the opposition will be able to pass legislation over their heads if it unites. There are three examples in the past month where they found issues they could all agree on: feeding the kids, paid parental leave, and warm and healthy homes. I expect we'll see bills for all of those reintroduced to the ballot the moment Standing Orders allow.

And meanwhile, someone should be asking Dunne and Flavell what they think of National's "mixed model" for Canterbury. Because that will require legislation, which means one or other of them has to support it. If they don't, Canterbury gets its democracy back by default in 2016 when the current law expires.

National is not going to cope well with this. They're the party of arrogant entitled people used to getting their own way. And now they're not going to. I expect much pouting and foot stomping. And I'll enjoy every minute of it.

Sensationalising the status quo

Pity the political reporter. Committed to horse-race style reporting, having to comment on polls whose poll-to-poll shifts are almost entirely statistical noise, desperate for an angle. And so we had Patrick Gower on 3 News last night desperately talking up how "complicated' National's post-election coalition arrangements would be:

John Key's path to re-election has become even more complicated.

Tonight's 3 News-Reid Research political poll still has National in the lead, but the Maori Party could be in control.

[...]

But Mr Key's still got plenty of problems - even with ACT and United Future he would not have a majority.

Based on the poll, National would either need New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to get a majority or have to rely on the Maori Party to pass every law.

The problem? This "complicated" situation is the status quo. National effectively lost its majority when they sacked Peter Dunne from Cabinet and lost his support in June last year. Since then, they've been reliant on the Maori Party to pass legislation. Even now they've reinstated Dunne, changes in his policy and the meltdown of ACT have meant they've effectively got to go through the Maori Party to get anything done. Or was one of our top political reporters so busy looking at the horse race that they missed the change in the bigger picture?

The Māori Party and slave-fishing

In the early C19th, when William Wilberforce was camapigning to abolish slavery in Britain's colonial posessions, he met with strong opposition from the British establishment. Few of his opponents were bold enough to say that they actually approved of slavery. Instead, abolition would be "impractical". It would be bad for business and bad for the empire. The abuses which the abolitionists had highlighted were exaggerated and not widespread (there's a great example of this in the Earl of Belmore's speech on the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 here).

The Maori Party's contribution on the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, which abolishes slave-fishing in the New Zealand fishing industry, fits perfectly with this long tradition:

We know that the changes may mean that some iwi will no longer be able to operate. Big companies are better able to absorb the costs of changes, but those iwi and other operators who fish low-yield catch, cannot. There is a real risk that it will threaten their business, no matter how small they are. We believe that the Māori fisheries settlement must be durable. The Crown must act in good faith to ensure that we as Māori have a fair opportunity to catch up with our industry counterparts.

[...]

Iwi leaders told us, as they did also to the Ministers and anyone else who bothered to listen, that the alleged breaches of human rights issues—the widespread abuse that was being discussed—was never proven in an inquiry. It was their absolute belief that the legislation that evolved was an approach that was sort of like a sledgehammer to a peanut. They always knew that there could have been a far more effective approach to resolving issues than what was eventually developed.

In the end, they supported the bill. But its clear that they didn't want to, and wanted to keep slavery on charter vessels for a few more years for the profit of their big iwi backers. And that is simply an appalling position to take.

(Still, it could have been worse. When the UK abolished slavery, it compensated slave-owners for the deprivation of their "property" - compensation Britain's elite former slave-holders are still benefiting from today. At least we didn't see our Parliament approving a similar deal of compensating people we should be prosecuting for obeying the law they should have obeyed all along).

So much for the copper tax

Since the Commerce Commission ruled against the government's plan to subsidise Chorus' profits by letting them charge extortionate and unwarranted broadband prices, the government has been sabre-rattling and threatening to legislate. But the minor parties have just blown that plan out of the water:

New Zealand First, the Maori Party and United Future are all vowing to oppose any legislation which would overrule the Commerce Commission on broadband pricing.

In what appears to be a series of coordinated releases this afternoon, all three parties have said they would respect the regulators determination, which would see the price of wholesale broadband drop from December 2014.

NZ First IT spokesperson Tracey Martin said in a statement that the party supported the commission's final recommendation on pricing, and opposed ''any deal that puts the interests of a publicly listed company ahead of New Zealand families and businesses''.

"We will vote against any legislation that seeks to overrule the Commerce Commission's final pricing recommendation or that tries to delay its implementation from 1 December 2014," she said.

Which means that there's simply no majority for legislation. Cheaper broadband is here to stay. As for the government cronies in Chorus, they'll have to actually work for their money, rather than just engaging in lazy rent-seeking.

But apart from enjoying the government's discomfort, its an interesting development, because it suggests the minor parties have finally learned to count. Without Peter Dunne, National no longer has an easy majority - they have to work for every vote. And on some things - e.g. RMA "reform" - they are no longer going to be able to get their way. The question now is whether they throw their toys and call an election to avoid such democratic "instability", or whether they simply make Peter Dunne a Minister again so he goes back to being a reliable footstool.

MMP saves the Environment

National hates the Resource Management Act. Since being elected in 2008, they've been on a crusade against it, passing five bills "reforming" the law - an average of one a year. And at every stage they have reduced public input, weakened environmental protection, and moved decision-making further away from local communities and into the hands of a distant "Environmental Protection Authority" answerable to the Minister and developers, not voters.

Their latest "reforms" - finalised by Environment Minister Amy Adams at the National party conference last month - would continue this trend, making development a "matter of national importance" and allowing Ministers to micromanage local plans to advantage crony developers, removing democracy and providing a blank cheque for mining, drilling, and urban sprawl. But that's too far for National's coalition partners, who have pulled the plug:

United Future and the Maori Party have teamed up to block the Government's major reforms of the Resource Management Act.

The two parties said this morning they could not support the latest changes to the Act and had written to Environment Minister Amy Adams with their concerns.

Government needed either United Future or the Maori Party's support to get the legislation over the line.

This is great news for the environment - and bad news for National. It shows that their coalition partners are getting thoroughly sick of their new, radical turn, and will no longer support it. Which does not bode well for them in 2014, either electorally or in subsequent coalition talks.

Now, if only Dunne and Turia will show the same opposition to National's plans to remove our right to oppose offshore drilling...

A thought

Isn't it refreshing to see a political leader resign for their political failings? All too often we just get a wall of denial, and a refusal to recognise that allowing a perception of failure is, in a political leader, a failing. The result is an absence of accountability and people grimly hanging on long after their use-by date.

Pita Sharples could have done that for the sake of his mortgage. Instead, he has acknowledged the reality of his failure and accepted responsibility for it. It would be nice if certain other politicians would do the same.

Some "reforms"

Yesterday the Maori Party's Te Ururoa Flavell explained his contentment with National gutting his Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill by saying that they would be announcing some reforms today. So what are these "reforms"? A tiny increase in the amount pokies must return to the community:

Gambling trusts will have to return more pokie machine proceeds to the community under law changes announced by Government today.

[...]

At present, gambling societies or trusts which redistributed pokie proceeds had to return a minimum of 37 per cent of this money to sports groups and other community organisations.

Mr Tremain said he had proposed that this threshold increase, initially to 40 per cent and later to between 43 and 45 per cent.

An extra 3%? Whoop-di-shit. Flavell's bill called for 80%, not 40, and for those profits to go directly to the communities they were gouged from, rather than being spent on sports clubs on the other side of town (or the other end of the country). And even that minimal gain has a nasty clawback: longer licences for operators.

This isn't "reform" - its a sick joke. And the Maori Party's support of it is even sicker.

Sell-outs

Yesterday when the Commerce Committee gutted Te Ururoa Flavell's Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill, I wondered what the Maori Party would do about it. The answer is the same thing they do every time National shits all over them and their constituents: nothing:

Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell has accepted a major rewriting of his Gambling Harm Reduction Bill in order to secure National Party support for it, prompting the Green Party and Labour to pull their support and call for him to withdraw the bill altogether.

Mr Flavell's bill was reported back to select committee yesterday with all of its main provisions either removed or weakened.

Mr Flavell said he had not yet seen the report but did not expect to withdraw the bill.

And then they wonder why people see them as sell-outs. This is why: putting the good relationship with National - and Pita Sharple's mortgage - before principles and their people.