Submit!

The Intelligence and Security Committee has called for submissions on the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. Normally, there would be a handy online form on Parliament's website I could point you to. But because ISC is a statutory rather than Parliamentary committee, and because they're pathologically secretive and not really interested in engaging with the public, information on how to submit is buried deep in a block of text on the bill's information page:

Submissions can be emailed to GCSB.Bill@parliament.govt.nz. If you wish to appear before the committee, state this clearly and provide a name, daytime phone number, and email address. Submissions will generally be made public. The committee is required to report to the House on this bill by 26 July 2013.

No, they don't provide a postal address - so if you want to send hardcopy, you're shit out of luck.

The bill allows a massive expansion of GCSB powers and permits widespread spying on New Zealanders. As its mockery of a Regulatory Impact Statement shows, these powers are poorly justified. Please submit in opposition to this bill.

Bad faith

That's the only way to describe National's actions over the MMP review. Having promised a review, and got 5,000 of us to engage with it, they are now claiming that "there is absolutely no consensus, or even a majority, across Parliament". The latter in particular is an outright lie - the Greens have offered National their 14 votes to enact the changes, and Labour are going to try and enact the most important changes themselves. Either one of those parties provides National with a majority, and together they would have 105 out of 120 seats in the House - an 87.5% supermajority. The only reason there is no majority is because National doesn't want to pass this. But rather than owning up to that fact, they are trying to pretend that it is everybody else's fault. It's Aaron Gilmore writ large, and just as distasteful.

I do not like the changes the Electoral Commission has proposed, and I think they would lead to a less representative Parliament. But I also intensely dislike the sort of political dishonesty we are seeing from National. Behaviour like this is one reason so few people bother to engage with the political process: because when they do, its gets ignored, or thrown back in the face. We deserve better from our MPs.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day - but sadly a far less interesting one than we've had recently. Having passed Marriage Equality, the House is now turning its attention to the urgent business of banning gang patches from government premises. Its a piece of petty viciousness from a vicious and petty MP representing a vicious and petty government. But that's the modern National Party for you: publicly kicking people in an effort to gain popularity.

Next up is the Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill, which makes TradeMe deals legally binding. A worthy bill, but hardly inspiring. After that we have Damien O'Connor's attempt to shut the Fonterra share trading gate after the cow has bolted, which is similarly uninspiring. Finally, if the House moves quickly it will be able to make a star ton the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill, a stand-up fight over worker's rights. It will fail, of course, but merely putting it up gives fair warning to business that they should expect this sort of legislation when Labour is next in government.

There should be a ballot for one or two bills tomorrow; hopefully we'll get some more interesting ones drawn then.

The MMP Review is dead

Today in Question Time, Green MP Holly Walker asked Justice Minister Judith Collins whether she intended to implement the recommendations of the MMP review in time for the 2014 election. The Minister's answer? "No".

As someone who thinks that the Electoral Commission's recommendations are worse than what we have at present, I'm not exactly broken up about this.

MMP needs to be tweaked, but those tweaks must enhance representation, not diminish it. The changes proposed by the Electoral Commission on their own assessment give us a less representative Parliament than we have at present, and thus it is better that they are dumped. National is acting out of pure venality, but I think its a better result for our democracy than if they'd implemented everything. But it is kindof spitting in the face on everyone who contributed to the review. And having done this, National is inviting future governments to make changes without consensus, which could be even worse.

It also raises the question of what our political parties could reach consensus on, and why at least those changes are not going to be implemented. And if the answer is "none", then it suggests that consensus is simply too high a bar, and that the government set up the review to fail all along.

Government funded quack

Scientology is a quack cult, invented by a third-rate science-fiction author as a tax-dodge. So why is our government paying for their quack to be spread in schools?

A controversial Church of Scientology drug-awareness programme has received government funding to spread its unorthodox views through schools and community groups.

In the past six months, drug-free ambassadors linked to the church have circulated 130,000 drug education booklets around New Zealand, paid for in part by the Department of Internal Affairs' Community Organisations Grant Scheme.

The ambassadors claim at least 18 community groups – including their "partners" the Maori Wardens – plus at least seven high schools, endorse and use the materials.

Advice offered in the pamphlets is based on research by Scientology's controversial founder, LRon Hubbard, who did not believe in medical drugs or psychiatry but instead in purging oneself of painful experiences to gain immortality.

Ross Bell, executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, warned that the group's information was flawed pseudo-science and could prove harmful to youth.

This material has been discredited time and time again, and it is used as a recruitment process. The programs they endorse have killed people, and were shut down in Quebec as a risk to health. This is not something our government should be funding.

It will be interesting to see whether Internal Affairs did any assessment before handing over the cash. If not, then someone needs to lose their job.

The corruption of high-country tenure review

The government privatises a state-owned asset for $265,000. Four years later, a small part of it gets flicked on for $10 million. A tale from some corrupt African nation, or from post-Soviet Russia? No, its from New Zealand, an example of high-country tenure review:

Alpha Burn Station on the southern shores of Lake Wanaka and on the road to the Treble Cone skifield is one of more than 100 high-country farms that have been through tenure review in the past 20 years.

Brower says that in 2002, the Crown sold 3365 of the 4579-hectare station to leaseholders Don and Vicki McRae for $267,500, the equivalent of $79.50 per ha.

The Crown then bought pastoral leasehold rights for grazing and conservation of the remaining 1214ha - higher-altitude land - for $202,500, or $166.83 per ha.

She says the McRaes then subdivided the newly freeholded land and sold just 193ha of it to Damper Bay Estates in October 2006 for $10.1 million, according to Quotable Value data.

"That's 658 times what they paid. Translated into urban terms, this is like selling a section for $100,000 then seeing it sold on for $65.8m four years later."

Brower said the 658 times multiplier was, however, "quite reasonable" compared with some other deals.

Less than half of the leasehold land the Crown had sold for $6.9m had since sold for $135.7m.

"These subdividers have on-sold land for a price per hectare ranging from 1.8 to 27,096 times the price they paid. The median multiplier was 992.

[Emphasis added. Yes, that's right, the median gain is a thousand times the initial outlay]

This process has been going on for fifteen years, ever since the passage of the Crown Pastoral Land Act in 1998; its been pushed by both parties, driven by the goal of providing "clear ownership" (as if government ownership was somehow unclear). But massive systematic undervaluing by LINZ has allowed farmers to reap windfall gains, with unearned superprofits flowing into the private pockets of the few.

This process is simply organised corruption. It has to stop. And those unearned superprofits need to be reclaimed for the people of New Zealand. Anything less is allowing farmers to get away with their pillage and plunder.

Good riddance

It seems that Christine Rankin has finally left the Families Commission. Good Riddance. From her original crony-appointment, to her fronting a pro-child-beating referendum campaign to her public involvement in the Conservative Party while serving as a board member, she has been a disaster in the position, and we are well rid of her.

National acts on child poverty?

Stuff reports that child poverty will be a surprise focus in Thursday's Budget, with possible moves on food in schools and on family tax credits (they also seem to be extending income-related rents to the social housing sector, having spent years denouncing them as "communism", though that comes as part of a wider divestment strategy which will see the government dump more of the job on charities, which isn't so good).

Good. As the Children's Commissioner's Expert Advisory Group showed, child poverty costs us between $6 and $8 billion per year. Spending money on reducing it is a saving, not a cost; an investment in our future, not waste. And if National has finally acknowledged that and is going to do something (however small), then they deserve some credit for it.

A bureaucratic lynching

The Sunday Star-Times reported yesterday on the extraordinary case of Craig Lebamoff, a Fulbright scholar whose sabbatical with New Zealand customs to write a thesis on border security went very sour:

In an extraordinary series of allegations, he says he was threatened with an investigation by the Security Intelligence Service, locked out of his office at NZ Customs, had his computer hard drive and research materials seized while colleagues reported his rubbish bins being searched - he believes by the SIS.

Lebamoff was at one stage so concerned by the reaction of New Zealand authorities to his border security report he says he feared being stopped as he tried to leave the country.

In an even more bizarre twist, he says he was warned off by the director of New Zealand's Intelligence Co-ordination Group, Roy Ferguson, who is based in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC).

[...]


Lebamoff says after being summoned to the meeting at a building in Wellington's Pipitea St he was given a lecture on the importance of the New Zealand-US relationship.

"He [Ferguson] said he didn't want to damage that; there were things in my report that could potentially damage that. I had no idea what he was talking about. He gave me no specifics."

So what had Lebamoff done wrong? The official excuse is that he has used secret information. But that doesn't wash when everything he wrote was double-checked by customs to ensure it relied solely on publicly-available sources. Instead, it seems that he had criticised some of his host agencies, and worse, reached the natural conclusion that the chief threat to New Zealand's border security wasn't terrorism, but biosecurity. And for this, he's been hounded out of the country and his report has been suppressed. Meanwhile, the government has cut biosecurity funding, while pumping money into the spy agencies and granting them new powers.

This is a perfect example of why we cannot trust our spies: they're not interested in the real threats to New Zealand; instead they're obsessed with American fantasies. And they're quite happy to abuse their powers to crush anyone who challenges their budgets and their prestige.

Follow the money

On Friday the government announced its plan for the housing crisis: enabling Auckland developers to build even more unaffordable palazzos. The plan has been panned as a weak compromise with no requirement for affordable housing. Why not? Follow the money. As John Minto points out, government MPs are deep into the property market, and therefore have a strong financial interest in maintaining a shortage:

Parliament’s 2013 Register of Pecuniary Interests shows half National MPs own three or more properties. Many have a harem of four or five and one has no fewer than 20. Together National MPs own over 170 properties.

“Other political parties have a luke-warm love in comparison” comments Minto.

170 houses between 59 MPs is almost three each - and the last those MPs will want is to see the value of their major assets drop. So the sorts of policies which would solve the housing crisis - a capital gains tax, or a government building program - are off the table, replaced by weak measures like enabling the private sector to fail for a while longer. Its a perfect example of how the interests of the vast majority of New Zealanders are overridden by those of a tiny wealthy elite who are massively over-represented in Parliament.

A troubling question

Should the New Zealand government help cover up genocide?

Of course not. But that's what they will be doing in just two years time. 2015 is the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, in which Turkey exterminated an estimated 1.5 million Armenians. 2015 is also the 100th anniversary of the doomed Gallipoli campaign, in which almost 3,000 New Zealand soldiers died for Britain's idiocy. And as the latest article by Robert Fisk makes clear, the Turkish government, which is still in denial about its historic crimes, intends to use the latter to mask the former:

The Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, spoke at Gallipoli two years ago and gave a perfectly frank account of how Turkey planned to define the Armenian genocide on its hundredth anniversary. “We are going to make the year of 1915 known the whole world over,” he said, “not as an anniversary of a genocide as some people claimed and slandered (sic), but we shall make it known as a glorious resistance of a nation – in other wour [sic] defence of Gallipoli.”

The New Zealand government is planning a big celebration to mark the centenary - but by doing so they'll be directly helping the Turks to cover up genocide and drown out the voices of their victims. If that's the Turkish plan, we should boycott the ceremony. Alternatively, we should make clear our intention to speak out about those other dead, and their need for justice.

New Fisk

The Armenian hero whom Turkey would prefer to forget

Government of whores

So, the government has unveiled its deal with Sky City. National will give them enormous regulatory concessions, including 230 new pokie machines, an extension of their casino licence, and cashless gambling, and in exchange they'll get a flash new convention centre to run their election-night parties in. To add insult to injury, Sky City's profits are guaranteed, with a compensation clause in the event that any future government wishes to tighten gambling regulation.

This is simply corrupt. It is policy for sale, with the price paid by the weakest members of our society. SkyCity will be laughing all the way to the bank, and we'll be left cleaning up their gambling-addict mess for decades to come.

Well, fuck that. The Greens have said they will repeal any compensation deal, leaving Parliament free to regulate gambling again. As for Labour, its birds whistling and tumbleweeds all the way:

However, the leader of the party's potential coalitiion partner, Labour's David Shearer, could not say whether his party would attempt to back out of the deal if it won the next election.

However, they would be combing over the fine print.

And this is why people don't give a shit about Labour anymore. They stand for nothing, they offer nothing. They're just a party of self-aggrandising chickenshits in suits. When it comes to a choice between protecting the poor, and protecting the regulatory-subsidised profit the rich extract from them, they'll be "responsible" and choose the latter. And then they'll arrogantly call us "apathetic" when we refuse to soil ourselves by voting for them...

Ripped off

Mighty River Power shares were listed on the stock exchange today, and immediately rose in value. At closing, they appear to have been worth $2.62 - 12 cents up on the government's price.

The 2.5% will be happy with this - their wealth has increased by $82 million in an afternoon. But the rest of us shouldn't be. That $82 million is $82 million we've been ripped off by. Its $82 million we won't be able to spend on schools and hospitals because the government deliberately underpriced the shares it was selling to its donors and cronies.

meanwhile, I'm wondering just how many National MPs will be declaring MRP shares on their pecuniary interest declarations next year...

A conflict of interest

One of the core requirements on New Zealand public servants is political neutrality. Public servants must be impartial in enacting the policies of the government of the day and not bring their politics into their work. As the guidance on this notes, this is as much about perception and the sensitivities of politicians to dealing with "the enemy" as it is about professionalism:

If we hold a prominent decision-making position in our organisation and take part in high-profile activities that are not directly related to our job, we risk a public perception that we are not able to work in a disinterested, public spirited and politically neutral way. There may be disbelief that we can separate our personal and professional lives. Public trust in our impartiality can be affected. The confidence that the Government or future Ministers have in our organisation can be undermined in the same way. A consequence is that we must always consider the way our actions may be perceived by reasonable observers, and accept that our official responsibilities may place some constraints on the way we exercise our personal freedoms.

For junior public servants, this doesn't matter much. Its a different story with senior ones, however; the need to maintain the confidence of present and future governments effectively rules out any political involvement at all:

We must maintain in our non-working lives the level of political neutrality that is appropriate for the responsibilities we have. Those of us in very senior positions may be required to have a very low level of involvement, perhaps with our interest being discernible only by a visit to a polling station on election day.

The requirement of political neutrality applies to most Crown Entities. So imagine my surprise to learn that Families Commissioner Christine Rankin firstly has been a board member of the Conservative party for the last six months, and secondly that she's just been made its CEO. While Rankin's position is now temporary (her term has expired and is being renewed on a monthly basis), and I have been informed that she will not be reappointed in the next appointment round, these positions are highly inappropriate for a board member of a Crown Entity. They represent a fundamental conflict of interest for someone in her position, and call her - and by extension the Commission's - ability to impartially serve the government of the day into question. She should resign immediately, and be sacked if she does not.

Investigating the tax cheats?

Potentially some good news: the UK HMRC is supposedly investigating its tax cheats:

More than 100 of Britain's richest people have been caught hiding billions of pounds in secretive offshore havens, sparking an unprecedented global tax evasion investigation.

George Osborne, the chancellor, warned the alleged tax evaders, and a further 200 accountants and advisers accused of helping them cheat the taxman: "The message is simple: if you evade tax, we're coming after you."

HM Revenue & Customs warned those involved, who were named in offshore data first offered to the authorities by a whistleblower in 2009, that they will face "criminal prosecution or significant penalties" if they do not voluntarily disclose their tax irregularities, as the UK steps up its efforts to clamp down on avoidance ahead of the G8 summit in June.

But while they're making the right noises, there are two reasons to be suspicious of their enthusiasm. Firstly, they received this data back in 2010, and it looks like they sat on it until the International Confederation of Investigative Journalists made it an issue. Secondly, their usual way of "dealing" with tax cheats is to cut them a secret deal which lets them keep most of what they've stolen. And that's just not acceptable. Tax cheating is a crime, and its perpetrators steal from us all. They need to be named, shamed, prosecuted and jailed, not given a sweetheart deal.

Meanwhile, I'm still wondering: has the New Zealand IRD received any of this data? Does it incriminate New Zealanders? If so, I want to see public action, not a quiet cover-up which lets the criminals get away with it.

Appalling discrimination

GayNZ reports on an appalling case of discrimination in Whangarei:

An engaged lesbian couple say they are shocked and humiliated after being denied a pre-booked room at a Whangarei lodge, where one of the owners said allowing them to share a bed would offend her religious beliefs.

In a case Green MP Kevin Hague describes as ‘appalling’, couple Jane and Paula had to travel another 50 kilometres to find somewhere else to stay.

While the bigots - the Pilgrim Planet Lodge in Whangarei - hid behind religion, freedom of religion is not freedom to discriminate. There is no exemption for religious belief from the legal requirement to provide goods and services without discrimination in the Human Rights Act. Hopefully their victims will complain to the Human Rights Commission so the bigots can be properly educated about the error of their ways.

Unacceptable

2012 political party donation returns were released yesterday, and while I glanced over them, I didn't think there was anything unusual: the Greens were funded by MP's tithes, Labour got a large bequest, and National was funded by property developers and a foreign corporation laundering its donations through an NZ front. It took DPF's sharp eyes to notice the problem: Labour had hidden a $430,000 donation for a year:

Donations over $15,000 only have to be disclosed annually, but donations over $30,000 must be disclosed within 10 working days of receipt.

Labour’s return shows they received $430,259.33 from the estate of Brian Dalley (ironically a professional property investor who made his riches from capital gains) between April and July 2012. They were required to disclose this to the Electoral Commission within 10 working days, but the Commissions say they were only notified on 9 May 2013. Their disclosure is 12 months late.

The penalty for failing to comply with s210C without reasonable excuse is a $40,000 fine. Labour needs to tell us why they were so slack about complying with their legal obligations. And if their reason isn't good enough, they need to be prosecuted. The integrity of our electoral system depends on it.

Update: According to NewstalkZB's Felix Marwick, the Electoral Commission has accepted Labour's excuse of "confusion as to whether a bequest counts as a donation" and there will be no referral to police. So the law means nothing again. What is the point of electoral law if it is never enforced?

Fallow on austerity

Writing the the Herald, Brian Fallow questions the government's push for austerity:

As we await another miserly Budget from Bill English we are entitled to wonder whether the Government is overdoing the fiscal discipline.

Has its aversion to debt changed from prudent caution into a kind of irrational phobia?

We have entered a phase where fiscal policy (the net effect of taxation and government spending) is contractionary.

It is reducing demand in the economy and acting as a drag on growth, at a time when unemployment is stubbornly high - around 3 percentage points or 60,000 people worse than in the years before the recession.

And this is why the economy is failing and economic statistics continuously fall below Treasury projections: because the government is strangling the economy. Its public justification for doing so - fear of higher interest rates - is a myth; there are no "bond vigilantes" punishing governments who borrow when interest rates are low. But they persist in inflicting their zombie economics on us, because anything else would involve admitting they were wrong.

The problem is that as long as there is austerity, there will be no growth and no jobs. If we want those things, we need to change fiscal policy, which means changing the government.

Palmerston North supermarkets and youth rates

Youth rates came into force last week, and Foodstuffs, one arm of New Zealand's supermarket duopoly, wants to use them. I support equal work for equal pay regardless of age, so I emailed both the Foodstuffs supermarkets I shop at to tell them I wouldn't be shopping there anymore. The responses are quite different. First, here's Melody's New World:

At this stage we are not changing our rates to youth rates and our pay scheme is not dictated by Foodstuffs... When it comes to our staff we value all 220 of our team here at Melody’s and they are given extra pay rises and incentives when deserving. We believe pay rises are earned by merit and work ethics, there is no relevance to age.

OK, so its not quite New World Thorndon's "never have, never will", "Our owner says he will continue to offer the adult wage rates as he has always done", but its still pretty positive. Pending further information, they're safe to shop at.

Meanwhile, here's Pak n'Save Palmerston North:

Thank you for your email. Foodstuffs is keeping an open mind to all programmes which allow us to employ New Zealanders and develop their careers. We haven't committed to using the new starting out wage,and we are always open to initiatives which might encourage employers to give young people a chance to get their foot in the door.

Translation: they support youth rates - and so they won't be getting any more of my money until they reverse that position.

Foodstuffs has friendly online contact forms, and I encourage everyone to use them to contact their local supermarkets and inquire about their youth rates policy. And if you are boycotting someone, tell them. Your voice makes a difference. And not just in the abstract. In Palmerston North, there are 8 supermarkets, serving 80,000 people, or about 3,850 households per supermarket. Supermarket margins are thin, and you probably need only 1% of that market - fewer than 40 households - to make a noticable difference to their bottom line. That's not a lot. So tell them, just so they know what the problem is and that they can change it by recanting on youth rates.