His place is in Parliament

Its 100 days to the election, so NZ First is going all-in on gutter racism to whip up its base of racist zombies. First, we had Winston Peters telling Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan to "go back to your own country", and now we have Shame Jones saying he should "know his place". Both of which are just fucking boggling. Xu-Nan has lived here since he was eight, and is a New Zealand citizen. Aotearoa is his country. He belongs here just as much as any other kiwi. As for Winston's suggestion that he opposes democracy because of his ethnicity, I think he's shown a far greater commitment to it than the urgency-abusing, vote-suppressing, racist zombie currently serving as foreign minister. Not least because he's part of an actually democratic party, where power is held by the members, rather than one which is an autocracy where all decisions are made by a withered corpse smothered in hair gel.

As for "knowing his place", the implicit assumption here is that there is a natural hierarchy in Aotearoa in which some people are or ought to be in charge, and others should be subservient and not question them. And I think when you put it that nakedly, most New Zealanders would have a very simple response to that proposition: fuck that. And fuck the parties who advocate it. Lawrence Xu-Nan is a kiwi who was elected to Parliament by Green voters. His place is in the House.

Good riddance

Shame Jones' corrupt Fisheries Amendment Bill is dead:

Controversial fisheries reform led by New Zealand First minister Shane Jones is being abandoned until after the election.

Jones, appearing before a select committee in his role as Oceans and Fisheries Minister, told MPs his “much-beloved bill could use some more panel-beating” and as such, would not be progressed in this term of government. The Fisheries Amendment Bill had caused division within the coalition, particularly with National which faced a backlash from recreational fishers over changes to minimum legal-size limits for commercial fishing operators.

Plus of course there's the quota changes, which let fishers over-fish; the restriction of judicial review, so we'll never be able to force the Minister to follow the law; and of course the absurd secrecy for camera-footage, which existed solely to protect criminal fishers from public scrutiny. The entire bill was bought and paid for by fishing industry donations, the public could see that, and they responded with utter revulsion.

And now its "delayed", which basically means dead. But if we want it to be gone for good, we need to throw the corrupt regime which advanced it out of office.

Corrupt, criminal secrecy

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

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

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

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

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

Climate Change: Fossil government

If we are to avoid even more dangerous levels of climate change, we need to get off fossil fuels. The process is already happening - just look at the ongoing global switch to EVs and solar power, and the messy demise of the NZ gas industry - but we need it to happen faster, and we need our government to actually commit to it. There was an opportunity to do so at the recent climate change COP in Belém, Brazil last year, with a side-agreement on the Transition away from Fossil Fuels. MFAT looked at it, noted that it did not conflict with our policies, and recommended joining. But Shame Jones, the regime's most absurd fossil fuel advocate, vetoed the idea:

An assessment against government priorities found that signing up to the declaration would have a neutral or even positive effect.

While drafting the submission, officials noted there was "an open question about engaging Minister Jones for concurrence, consultation, or information".

The final submission was sent to Jones for consultation.

It was also sent to Trade Minister Todd McClay, but for information only - his input was not sought.

An email sent the next day said Jones had been consulted.

"Minister Jones does not want New Zealand to join the Declaration," a Ministry for Foreign Affairs official informed his colleagues.

So our entire climate change policy is now being driven by a corrupt fossil advocate committed to ignoring the problem for as long as he can (while people drown and burn and are buried by landslides). It's government of the fossils, by the fossils, and for the fossils. And if it stays in place for much longer, it will kill us all. Voting them out a necessary act of self-defence.

No deals with the US

So, Shame Jones is officially trying to sell our country to Donald Trump, by negotiating a secret critical minerals deal behind everyone's back. My immediate reaction - along with a lot of other people's - is "fuck that"! And there are all sorts of good reasons why we should not be pursuing any deals with the US - and the Trump regime in particular - at present.

Firstly, there's the US's present status as a rogue nation. Aotearoa depends on a rules-based international order, but as Canadian prime minister Mark Carney pointed out, the United States has destroyed that order. We should not be rewarding them for doing so. Instead, following Carney's suggestion, we should be working with other like-minded countries to reconfigure the international order around the US. Which means no deals.

Secondly, there's Trump himself. It ought to be obvious to any observer by now that Trump does not regard any "deal" as binding on him, instead viewing them as a form of criminal interview, testing whether his chosen victim will resist escalation or comply. Just look at his various "deals" with Canada: he broke NAFTA to force them to negotiate the USMCA, then broke that by imposing tariffs, then broke the settlement he reached on that with more tariffs, and on and on it goes (Trump is currently threatening tariffs against Canada for making a trade deal with China, and is going to ground half the US domestic air passenger fleet by attacking the Canadian aircraft industry). So there is simply no point to making any "deal" with him, and instead we ought to be refusing to on principle, simply because his word can't be trusted.

And then of course there's the fascism... should we really be supplying critical minerals to a fascist state who will use them to wage war on the world (and on China, our largest trading partner) and oppress its own people?

We should have no fucking part of any of this. Even if you thought the US was once our ally, that situation has clearly changed. The US is now a nakedly predatory power, openly threatening its allies while working with imperialist Russia to enable aggression. I don't think any New Zealander wants that sort of world. And while Trump won't last forever, the underlying dynamics in the US political system which have brought them to this don't seem like they'll change any time soon. We shouldn't be making deals with them under these circumstances. Instead, we should cut them out of our lives as much as possible, and work with like-minded nations to build a new world system which does not depend on them. A regime which meets this situation by seekign deals with the US are simply quislings and traitors.

A rubberstamp for Shane Jones' bulldozer

Last month, the Environment Committee caused outrage by allowing only ten days for public submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill. At the time, I pointed out how this was an abuse of the parliamentary process, a ratfucking of our democracy which did not give submitters sufficient time to make the "high-quality" submissions elitist Ministers supposedly want, and which would undermine the legitimacy of parliament and the state.

The committee has now reported back on the bill, approving it despite 95% of submissions being opposed. They've recommended no changes, because they simply didn't give themselves time to do so, and because it has emerged that the bill is still being written: the regime plans to introduce substantial amendments at the committee stage, without even a pretence of public consultation or democratic process.

This isn't "consideration" or "scrutiny" of legislation - it's a rubberstamp for executive autocracy. And it's not "government by consent" - it's simply a naked exercise of power, to bulldoze through corrupt legislation and ensure that Shame Jones gets his payoffs. Which probably makes Jones and Bishop feel big and hard and powerful, but there's a cost to bulldozing through democracy like this. And now that the regime has bulldozed through the democratic limits to pass their law, opponents of both it and any specific projects rubberstamped may not feel constrained by thse limits in their methods of opposition. Which isn't great for our democracy or our society. But I guess the regime simply regards that as a problem for next quarter...

Companies who buy "consents" under this law should not expect either the next government or the public to treat them as legitimate. And the next government should legislatively nullify every single one of them under urgency. Because a bulldozer works both ways, and having driven it through our parliamentary process, Jones and co can hardly cry foul when someone else seizes control, kicks him off, and reverses it back over him and his mates.

Secrecy to protect criminals

Fishing is a criminal industry, with fishers routinely violating quotas, under-reporting bycatch, and engaging in fraud to profit from pillaging the ocean. To stop this criminality, the government has finally been dragged into putting cameras on fishing boats, so they can monitor what is caught and ensure fishers obey the law. But fisheries minister Shame Jones is a bought-and-paid-for tool of the fishing industry, so he's decided that the resulting footage will be exempted from the Official Information Act:

An overhaul of fisheries rules will allow greater catch limits when fish are abundant and stop on-board camera footage being made public.

[...]

The move to exclude footage from the OIA was supported by Seafood New Zealand.

Chief executive Lisa Futschek said while it supported cameras on fishing vessels, they were a tool for "verification, not vilification".

"We accept that the regulator should have access to footage to ensure that we are doing what we say we do, but to enable members of the general public to see this footage is unfair," she said.

Which is exactly what burglars would say about security cameras, or police child-pornographers would say about their computer-use being audited. As for "vilification", if the fishing industry doesn't want to be vilified, they should not behave like villains. Simple.

As for the policy, there's a strong legal argument against it - OIA exemptions violate the BORA-affirmed right to freedom of expression, so must be demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society. But "protecting fishers poor little fee-fees" isn't an "important public purpose", and that's before we even get to questions of proportionality. But beyond that, the reason we have cameras is because MPI (and its predecessor Fisheries NZ) were completely captured by the industry they were supposed to be regulating, and was ignoring its serious crimes, until their enforcement reports were leaked and OIA'd, creating public pressure for them to do their job properly. The lesson here is that transparency is vital to keep the regulator honest and prevent capture. All secrecy does is protect criminals. But then, that's precisely why the fishing industry and their $10,000 mouthpiece Jones support it.

Another attack on the rule of law

Over the past few years New Zealand fisheries ministers have been repeatedly found to have acted illegally in their quota decisions, ignoring the Fisheries Act's environmental and information principles and setting quota at unlawfully high levels to pander to the fishing industry. But current fisheries minister Shame Jones has a solution: ban court cases:

But a “frustrated” Jones is signalling a dramatic response: he’s considering changing the law to limit such court action altogether.

In an interview with The Post, Jones said he had asked officials to review the Fisheries Act to determine whether it had become “weaponised” by environmental groups.

[...]

“The frequency of this litigious activity has caused me to explore with the officials as to whether or not the law is fit for purpose,” he said.

“We cannot have a situation where we’re outsourcing to litigants and the judiciary the statutory role of resource management on behalf of the citizens of New Zealand.”

But of course that wouldn't be happening if ministers were obeying the law in the first place. The problem here is not the courts - it is consistently unlawful behaviour by ministers, who seem to regard the whims of their fishing industry donors as being more important than the law.

More generally, interpreting the law and ensuring that the government actually follows it are key duties of the courts. When you remove that, you don't have legal government in any real sense. Instead you have the arbitrary whims of a dictator. That may suit Jones very well - he's made no secret of his authoritarian and autocratic inclinations. But I don't think it suits kiwis at all. But if Jones goes ahead and pushes this through in his narrowing time window before the election, it will simply be another piece of bad law to be nuked in the next government's Omnibus Repeal Bill.

Trying to attract a stranded asset

Shane Jones is an outdated fossil of a minister. Born in 1959, his model of how our economy and society should look is stuck sometime in the late 70's: a dirty, fossil-fuel powered, racist, sexist, homophobic shitstain of a country which most of us never experienced, and most of those who did are glad we moved on from and desperately want to forget. But he's energy minister now, and that means being able to inflict his peculiar pathologies on the nation, including promoting the gas industry. And not content with moving to return us to the 70's by repealing the offshore drilling ban and making the government liable for oil companies' cleanup bills, he's currently touting for business in Singapore, offering new concessions in a desperate effort to attract foreign gas companies to come her and drill:

In a speech to the energy industry in Singapore this week, Shane Jones signalled a major change to New Zealand’s oil and gas exploration rules.

It appears the Government plans to remove restrictions that previously limited oil and gas exploration to defined block offer areas and instead allow oil and gas companies to apply for exploration permits across all of New Zealand’s territory.

Reading the speech, Jones doesn't just want drilling off Taranaki - he wants it in "the East Coast basin, Canterbury basin, and the Great South Basin" as well. Which would be a disaster for Aotearoa. But the good news for us - and the problem for Jones - is that no matter how far he lowers his pants to attract the oil industry, only a moron will take him up on it.

Part of this is what Jones calls "political risk" - the risk that the next government will simply ban drilling again and legislatively revoke all the permits without compensation. And part of it is because there's probably no gas to find (companies have been looking for years, and we haven't had any new offshore fields discovered since the early 2000s). But the fundamental reason is simply economics: even if they discovered a huge new field tomorrow, it would take a decade and a billion dollars to develop. And there simply won't be a market for gas in Aotearoa in a decade to repay the investment.

Gas was already dead - being driven out of the electricity market by wind and solar, and out of the industrial sector by the ETS and the push to reduce emissions. The writedown of supplies last week (if real, and not an industry scam to panic the government) is going to be the nail in the coffin. Methanex, the cornerstone user of the entire industry, won't stick around without supply, and will likely shut down permanently in a year or two (its already more profitable for them to simply onsell its gas to others). And the remaining big industrial users will see price hikes and supply shortages in their future and run for the exits. So, by the time a hypothetical new gas field came online in 2035 or so, it would be a stranded asset, with no-one to buy the gas. Anyone who wants to do it is ether a fool or a scammer.

Unfortunately, Jones seems unable to understand this. Which means we'll have to put up with more of his desperate efforts to "attract business" until we finally rid ourselves of him and his outdated worldview in 2026.

The orcs are back

Last time National was in government they tried to pillage the conservation estate and open our national parks for mining. But we told them to go fuck themselves, and they slithered off. Unfortunately, Minister for Corruption Shane Jones, who shamelessly takes "donations" from mining companies, didn't get the message:

New Zealanders need to “get over ourselves” and identify which areas of the land administered by the Department of Conservation (DOC) can be used for economic purposes, including mining, Resources Minister Shane Jones says.

[...]

Jones said he would be making a “major speech” about the mining industry and related economic matters in Waihi next Friday.

He would be saying: "We have an inordinately large DOC estate, much of which is overrun with weasels and rats and stoats and noxious weeds,” Jones told Newstalk ZB on Friday.

"Weasels and rats and stoats and noxious weeds" sounds more like a description of the current cabinet.

Kiwis of all political persuasions value the conservation estate, and understand that it is for conserving, not exploiting. If National doesn't want its own "blue green" supporters to abandon them again, it needs to tell Jones to shut the fuck up, and rule out any mining on the conservation estate (including any recategorisation of conservation land to enable it). As for the other parties, the best way to kill this idea dead is to deter investment, by making it crystal clear that any mining or exploration permits granted will be legislatively revoked, with no compensation, and that any investment made will be lost. Its worked well against the oil and gas industry; now the opposition needs to apply the same tactics to defend our natural taonga.

Subsidising ecocide

Aotearoa has long been an opponent of fossil fuel subsidies. In 2010 we joined the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform. In 2015 we reviewed our policies to eliminate subsidies following advice from APEC. In 2021 we "lead the call" for subsidy reform at the WTO. And at COP29 just last month we joined the International Institute for Sustainable Development coalition against fossil fuel subsidies. So naturally, Shame Jones wants to overturn all that and is considering directly subsidising gas exploration:

The oil and gas lobby has asked the government to underwrite the risk of fossil fuel exploration, with the taxpayer potentially taking "some or all" of the risk if new gas supplies fail to eventuate.

Resources Minister Shane Jones says he is considering options to support gas exploration, but "no decisions have been made either way".

However, Shane Jones' response to RNZ's query about the industry's request suggested the government had not ruled out some form of intervention.

I don't even know where to start with this. It's stupid. It's immoral. Its effectively subsidising ecocide. It is simply not something any government should be doing. But Jones' mind is stuck in the past, when oil and gas were the future (rather than the threat to it), and he can't see past the idea of winning the fossil fuel lottery (and those big industry donations).

OTOH, MFAT's page on fossil fuel subsidy reform provides an argument that even this government might listen to: trade. Both the UK and EU FTA's include provisions against fossil fuel subsidies, and we have literally just signed the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability with a group of other small nations which bans them - including (very explicitly) the exact policy Jones is considering.

National may want to publicly set fire to our reputation on the world stage, void key trade deals, and ensure we can never sign another one (because what fool would sign any deal with a country which is so obviously two-faced and breaks its word the moment it is given). But I don't think the rest of us would think that that's a good idea. As a small peaceful country, our foreign policy is of necessity mana-based. Jones would destroy that. We shouldn't let him.

Climate Change: The end of coal in the UK

It's official: coal has been eliminated from the UK's electricity system:

Britain’s only remaining coal power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire will generate electricity for the last time on Monday after powering the UK for 57 years.

The power plant will come to the end of its life in line with the government’s world-leading policy to phase out coal power which was first signalled almost a decade ago.

The closure marks the end of Britain’s 142-year history of coal power use which began when the world’s first coal-fired power station, the Holborn Viaduct power station, began generating electricity in 1882.

Good. Coal has been a significant source of greenhouse gases, and its elimination from global energy systems is vital if we are to get climate change under control. So its a huge positive step from a historical polluter.

Sadly, here in Aotearoa, Shane Jones is trying to push us back onto coal, taking us in entirely the wrong direction in service to his fossil fuel masters. So much for trying to do our bit. Tim Winton is right: our leaders are collaborators with the fossil fuel industry. And if they don't like that word, or the public anger that comes with it, then maybe they should stop collaborating in our destruction.

Naked corruption

There's been all sorts of corruption swirling around the government's Muldoonist fast-track law, with various donors invited to apply. And now we have another case, with a donor demanding specific amendments to help it in a legal dispute:

A NZ First donor wants Fast Track legislation to free up permanently protected land for quarrying.

J Swap, a company involved in quarrying, wants land protected under QEII covenants to be available to quarry. It donated $11,000 to NZ First in December, after the coalition was formed.

It also gave $5000 to NZ First's Shane Jones in August 2023 and $3000 to National's David MacLeod in September 2023.

One of J Swap's related companies is currently involved in a long-running court case trying to pry open (permanently protected) QEII covenanted land for a quarry. They've lost every round. But if the select committee chair they donated to approves their amendments, then three Ministers, including one they donated to, can solve that problem for them. Of course, interfering with QEII covenants would be a massive government over-reach - its private property, and you'd think ACT would have something to say about that. But this company apparently thinks its possible, if you pay NZ First enough money.

This entire incident shows the problem with fast-track in a nutshell. Its just a nexus for corruption, in law-making, and in decision-making. We should throw it in the garbage bin. And if we don't, well, we're clearly going to need a specialist Anti-Corruption Commission to sort out the resulting mess.

This is what corruption looks like

When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:

On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones had on the West Coast on February 16. It only came to light because it was mentioned by Barry Bragg, deputy chair of coal mining company Stevenson Group, in a letter released by ministerial officials under the Official Information Act.

[...]

On Monday, Jones told Newsroom his dinner with Bragg wasn’t included in his regularly disclosed ministerial diary because “it was very much a last-minute thing”.

But after more questions were asked, Jones is correcting the record. Not only was the dinner organised in advance, it had two other participants.

There's no suggestion any money changed hands. It's "merely" secret lobbying, which Jones "accidentally" failed to declare in his published diary. I think we can draw our own conclusions about that. Meanwhile, it blows any suggestion that he could be an impartial and unbiased decision-maker over any fast-track application from these polluters out of the water. And the fact that Jones is too stupid or greedy to see this shows that he is simply unfit to be a Minister.

Ministers are not above the law

Today in our National-led authoritarian nightmare: Shane Jones thinks Ministers should be above the law:

New Zealand First MP Shane Jones is accusing the Waitangi Tribunal of over-stepping its mandate by subpoenaing a minister for its urgent hearing on the Oranga Tamariki claim.

The tribunal is looking into the proposal to scrap Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act which requires the chief executive to demonstrate a practical commitment to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In a rare move, the Waitangi Tribunal has summonsed a sitting minister to explain why she wants to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act.

[...]

Jones says the tribunal should focus on the effects of policy rather than the construction of policy.

“The Waitangi Tribunal has no business running its operations as some sort of star chamber delivering pre-emptory summons for ministers to rock up and be cross-examined or grilled in some kind of wannabe American star chamber pulp fiction gig,” he says.

[The Tribunal has in fact asked for an affidavit, rather than cross-examination, and a formal summons is a last resort in the fact of noncooperation]

The problem here is that the reason for a policy is an important part of determining whether it is justified, and its motivation may be relevant to an assessment of its effects. Orthodox Bill of Rights Act analysis, for example, starts with asking "does this serve an important public purpose", while a policy which has racist effects is so much worse if it is motivated by racism than if those effects are due to an oversight. And where Ministers are proposing, but have not yet implemented, action, the answers on motivation can really only come from them.

In terms of "mandates", the Waitangi Tribunal is legally a Commission of Inquiry, with all the powers of a court. Ministers give evidence to both when it is relevant for them to do so (for example, a pile of Ministers gave evidence to the inquiry onto the Christchurch shootings; their evidence was then suppressed for thirty years to protect "national security"; the Cabinet Manual section on "Litigation involving Ministers" includes a note that courts routinely expect affidavits from Ministers in Judicial Review proceedings). If the Minister is worried about being asked about Cabinet discussions, they can always seek a direction that these not be disclosed (the protection of collective and individual ministerial responsibility is a withholding ground under the Official Information Act, and can thus be protected under section 70 of the Evidence Act).

In fact, the only constitutional problem here is that Jones is criticising a court, in clear violation of both constitutional norms and the Cabinet Manual. Unfortunately the Prime Minster is neither willing nor able to enforce either against his coalition partners.

In this inquiry, the onus is on the government to explain its proposed policy and how it does not breach Te Tiriti. And if Chhour does not wish to provide a reason for the policy, the Tribunal is fully justified in assuming that there is none (or at least, none the government wishes to publicly admit to), and drawing the appropriate conclusion.

Climate Change: Criminal ecocide

We are in the middle of a climate crisis. Last year was (again) the hottest year on record. NOAA has just announced another global coral bleaching event. Floods are threatening UK food security. So naturally, Shane Jones wants to make it easier to mine coal:

Resources Minister Shane Jones has announced changes to coal mine consenting he says reduce barriers to extraction and bring it into line with other types of mining.

The government's first Resource Management Amendment Bill, to be introduced next month, will make changes to the Resource Management Act, freshwater environmental standards, and the National Policy Statements for Freshwater Management and Biodiversity.

It will remove additional controls for coal mining introduced by Labour that were set to end the consenting pathway for existing thermal coal mines from 31 December 2030.

This is the action of a glue-sniffing sociopath. We need to be ending coal, not enabling it. Instead, Jones seems to want to let the coal industry grub a few more dollars by setting fire to the planet.

This criminal act of ecocide cannot be allowed to stand. The next government needs to make it a priority to revoke fossil fuel mining permits and consents, with no compensation, and shut down this murderous industry for good.

National's total reversal on marine protection

In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed to consult iwi, in violation of the 1992 Treaty settlement on fisheries, resulting in a threatened court case and ACT - ACT! - pulling its support. The bill then sat on the order paper for the next nine years while first National, then Labour, tried to do what should have been done in the first place, and negotiated with iwi. For six of those years, when Labour was in power, National would ask about the bill regularly, suggesting strongly that they still supported it.

...and now, they've killed it:

The Government has given up trying to establish the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, with Cabinet scrapping the bill proposing the marine reserve.

It’s almost a decade since former Prime Minister John Key first announced plans for a 620,000sq km sanctuary at the United Nations in New York in 2015.

Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones said in a statement Cabinet had decided to pull the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill from Parliament’s order paper, stopping further progress on establishing the sanctuary.

He argued the current marine reserve around the Kermadec Islands, which extended 12 nautical miles, was “ample” to preserve the environment and marine life.

Worse, yesterday Jones mentioned "manganese nodules in the Kermadecs" in response to a question on seabed mining - so it seems that National has gone from wanting the EEZ around the Kermadecs to be effectively the marine equivalent of a national park, to wanting to mine it - a total reversal.

The lesson here: we can't rely on National to respect Te Tiriti, and we can't rely on them to protect the environment either. If we want people to work in good faith towards those outcomes, we need to vote for someone else.

A giant Henry VIII clause

National introduced its corrupt Muldoonist resource-consent fast-track legislation to the House on Thursday, and rammed it through its first reading. Having read the bill, it is every bid as bad as signalled, taking selected resource consent decisions away from independent panels and putting them directly in the hands of Ministers. Its the sort of thing we haven't seen since Muldoon, and with good reason: it throws any pretence of merits-based assessment out the window, replacing it with a contest to see who can bribe or lobby the Minister the most to get their pet project through. Which is not how decisions in this country are meant to work.

So who benefits from this corrupt steamroller process? Who needs it? Who is it for? We can start with who doesn't need it: renewable energy projects. Because with very few exceptions, they find it very easy to get resource consent, give or take a few conditions about noise setbacks and monitoring (and solar projects don't even need that). Ditto roads: they get resource consent very easily as well. And normal housing projects. Or indeed, any normal project whatsoever. The RMA is really about mitigating adverse effects, which means restricting or imposing conditions on projects which do that. A project has to be truly terrible or just outright illegal to have an application actually declined.

And that's who this process is for: projects which cannot get resource consent under the current system. Coal mines in reserves. Polluting fish farms in pristine natural environments. Water schemes which would flood conservation land. Waste dumps which make people sick. Offshore mining schemes found to be illegal by the Supreme Court.

A common theme linking these projects is that they blatantly violate the law. They are terrible projects, with significant, unmitigable effects on key environmental values. But rather than fix them so they comply with our environmental standards, the companies pushing them have decided to lobby Ministers instead. And rather than respecting the law, or using a democratic process to change it, National's solution is to give Ministers the power to overturn it on a case-by-case basis for their donors and cronies. And that's the real horror here: once you unpack it, the entire law is just one giant Henry VIII clause, allowing Shane Jones to effectively rewrite and overturn statute on a whim, for the benefit of whoever gave him the most money.

That is not democratic. It is not consistent with the rule of law, or with our values as a country. Instead, it is corrupt, authoritarian, and arbitrary. But I guess that's what the National Party stands for now.

Climate Change: More arson

The planet is currently burning down around us. So naturally, Shane Jones has decided to grant another fossil fuel exploration permit to make it worse:

Only a single onshore petroleum exploration permit has been granted through the Block Offer 2020 competitive tender process.

Greymouth Gas Turangi had been granted a permit for an area covering about 70 square kilometres, north-west of Stratford in Taranaki, the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) said in a statement.

The permit was for a period of 10 years commencing 1 April 2024 and was subject to work programme conditions.

And today in Parliament he was gloating about his plans to restore offshore drilling, adding oil spills on top of emissions.

This flies in the face of the International Energy Agency's 2021 advice that there can be no new fossil fuel development. And in the face of that advice and the current crisis, it is simply arson.

As for what to do about it, the next government needs to pass legislation to sunset fossil fuels, revoking all permits and consents and prohibiting new development. There's an outline of the required legislation here; I look forward to some party adopting it as a member's bill.

Bought and paid for

Candidate donation returns for the 2023 election are out, and surprise, surprise - Shane Jones has been taking money from the industries he is now responsible for regulating:

Newly released donation information for 2023 election candidates show the Fisheries Minister received $5000 from West Food Seafood (Westfleet Seafoods Limited).

Earlier this month, Westfleet chief executive and shareholder Craig Boote was one of the industry leaders lobbying Jones to review policy around cameras, catch limits, bottom trawling and immigration waivers at an exclusive wine and oysters function.

[...]

Fisheries wasn’t the only industry to contribute to Jones’ more than $95,500 in candidate donations.

He received $3000 from Northland Forest, $5000 from J Swap – a logistics firm dealing with construction, transport and forestry – as well as $15,000 from high-profile property developer Andrew Krukziener.

[..]

Meanwhile, Jones received $20,000 from Vladimir Barbalich – a Wellington property developer and former financial backer and board member of fringe anti-mandate party Democracy NZ.

And as Minister for Fisheries, Economic Development, and Resources, he'll now be making the rules for the people who oh so generously gave him money (including devising an entirely new corrupt Muldoonist resource consent scheme which will place decisions in the hands of Ministers). But apparently he won't be influenced by it, because $20,000 is just a trivial amount of money to him.

Yeah, right. And if you believe that, I have some fish to sell you.

This sort of corruption undermines trust in government, and calls every decision Ministers make into question. And that alone should be reason to ban it. If we want government decisions to be made on the merits, and no be influenced by bribes, we need to get money out of politics entirely. And if that means politicians can't enrich themselves on the side, and have to be content with their very generous salaries, boo fucking hoo.

(Meanwhile, we also have a foreign-owned mining company blatantly interfering in our politics by buying themselves an independent to kneecap a candidate they didn't like. So I guess we can chalk that up as another fail by the SIS. Or is it only "foreign interference" if its from China?)