Climate Change: This government is a failure

Remember when Jacinda Ardern called climate change "my generation's nuclear free moment"? Writing in The Spinoff, Greenpeace's Gen Toop reveals the dirty truth: that her government has failed to do anything about our largest climate polluter, the dairy industry:

After three years in power, Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw have both failed to bring in a single regulation to tackle the monstrous amount of climate pollution from industrial dairying. Despite all that climate rhetoric from this government, they have been scarcely different to previous governments when it comes to dealing with the giant cow in the room.

[...]

The only thing we’ve got is an unenforceable and weak agricultural emissions target in the Zero Carbon Act. But no plan for how to reach that target and no penalties for failing to do so.

We also got a somewhat surreal moment when the co-leader of the Green Party proudly announced that under his ministership the agriculture industry would continue to be fully excluded from the nation’s Emissions Trading Scheme for another two to five years.

That means that there are no rules and no price signals that would encourage the agricultural industry to reduce climate pollution.

And so their emissions continue to increase. Meanwhile, the rest of us are expected to decrease ours. Its not just terrible climate policy - its terribly unequal as well, protecting the (pollution-backed) wealth of ten thousand farming families at the expense of five million New Zealanders.

This isn't acceptable. The rest of us pay for every atom of carbon we emit. Agriculture must do the same. And if this means marginal farms go out of business and stop polluting, that's a success, not a failure.

If police think this is lawful and ethical, why did they try to hide it?

RNZ has a major scoop this morning: the New Zealand Police are trying to set up a live facial recognition system:

Police have been quietly setting up a $9 million facial recognition system that can take a live feed from CCTV cameras and identify people from it.

This would push New Zealand into new territory for tracking citizens.

It will be run by a non-police contractor - US firm Dataworks Plus - and collect 15,000 facial images a year, with that expected to expand up to 10-fold.

[...]

Both said they did not tell the public as these are mere upgrades, and neither did a Privacy Impact Assessment - though Internal Affairs told the Privacy Commissioner about NeoFace, while the police did not.

That last bit is a giant red flag. The Privacy Commisisoner has said explicitly that any use of facial recognition needs a high level of scrutiny, which for a government agency, effectively means their approval. Police deliberately avoided doing that. From the article, they also explicitly lied in earlier OIA responses, saying that the system was only about analysing static images in their database, while redacting information showing that it was intended to work with live video feeds. Why did they do this? The natural conclusion is that despite all their claims to be lawful and ethical, they know that this project is not. So instead they spent $9 million of public money on it, in secret, while lying to us about what they were doing. And that shows us that we have an unethical agency, completely out of control, which has complete contempt for the people it is supposed to serve.

Unmentioned in the article: this sort of use of facial recognition has recently been ruled unlawful in the UK, precisely because the police force using it ignored their privacy obligations and their obligations to not discriminate on the basis of race. And on this point, the New Zealand Police appear to be making exactly the same mistake:

The tender that Dataworks won for police here, does not mention "Māori" or "public" or "privacy" - in relation to specific safeguards on the public's privacy - a single time in scores of pages.

Which I guess is the usual level of care the police show for their legal obligations. As far as they're concerned, laws apply to other people, not to them.

Unsurprising

In utterly unsurprising news, research has shown that if you give one group of people twice as much money as another, they're better off:

People on the 12-week Covid income relief payment are faring better than those on the benefit, new survey data shows.

The University of Auckland, Child Poverty Action Group, Auckland Action Against Poverty and FIRST Union are collaborating on the survey to compare the experiences of people receiving different types of income support.

The Covid income relief payment provides $490 a week for people who have lost full-time work because of the pandemic, whereas some people on the jobseeker benefit get just $250.

It also seems that the government's miserly $25 a week increase to core benefits has had little effect, because it is so utterly inadequate to meet the problem (the problem being that benefit levels were set by taking a starvation level budget, cutting it by 25%, then letting it be eroded by inflation for 30 years). The clear conclusion is that benefit levels need to increase massively - as recommended by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. But will Labour MPs on $180,000 a year pay attention to this evidence when they have already ignored so much? Or is "kindness" something they want to talk about, but never actually practice?

The Greens are supposed to be better than this

The Greens have ignored their own policies to funnel public money to a private school in Taranaki:

The Green Party has been caught bending its own party policy after a private school in Taranaki was given $11.7 million to fund an expansion programme.

The money comes from the Government’s $3 billion shovel-ready projects fund, and was announced in a press release from Greens co-leader James Shaw who said the grant to Green School New Zealand would help the school expand its roll from 120 students to 250, creating 200 jobs.

“Securing over 200 jobs will help direct more money into the parts of the economy where most people earn their livelihood. These are the parts of the economy that are sustained when public investment is directed at getting people into work and earning money that they then spend in their local communities,” Shaw said.

“The support we are providing will help Green School to meet growing demand from parents all over New Zealand, and the rest of the world, wanting to enrol their children. This will mean more families can take the opportunity to put down roots in Taranaki and contribute to the future growth of the region,” he said.

The Greens' education policy says that "Public funding for private schools should be phased out and transferred to public schools." This is a private school, providing exclusive education for the rich. Having "green" in the name and an ecological focus doesn't change that. This school should not be funded. Instead, the money should be used where it can do the most good: on public education. There are schools in Taranaki which are overcrowded, leaking and rotting, and they need this money far more than new-build, fancy education pods at a private school whose international market has basicly just disappeared completely.

Meanwhile, its I guess another example of how being in government has changed the Greens, how power has corrupted them. And that's not something we should welcome.

If you want clean water, don't vote National

This term, Labour has attempted to clean up our kales and rivers. Of course, they chickenshitted it, setting a fertiliser limit which is far too high, and delaying setting bottom lines for nitrogen and phosphorus for another year (and today, backing down on regulating winter grazing). But even that is too much for National:

National leader Judith Collins has told voters the Government’s freshwater regulations would be “gone by lunchtime” if she is elected in September.

She made the commitment not in a press release to announcement but in a live Q+A session on her Facebook page, in which she also accused the Government of “destroying the country”.

The message is clear: National is happy for our lakes and rivers to be sewers, and for farmers to poison Canterbury. So if you want clean rivers and safe, drinkable water, don't vote for National.

Another criminal industry

Another day, another whine from an industry dependent on cheap foreign labour. This time its farm contractors, who are arguing that unless they get to bring in potentially infected foreigners, the crops will rot in the fields. But some of their "arguments" seem to be more admissions of criminal intent:

Other knock-on effects included health and safety issues, a shortage of animal feed for next winter, mental health concerns and even possible environmental problems.

Using less than competent people to operate the machinery along with the probable fatigue that would come with working long hours because of understaffing, was dangerous. Contractors were experiencing significant stress and anxiety because of the problem, he said.

So basicly they're threatening to use untrained staff, and work them for such long hours that accidents become more likely. Both are straight out violations of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and in particular an employers primary duty of care (e.g. to ensure safe systems of work, provision of training, and safe conditions of work). Violating that duty is punishable by a fine of $500,000 - or $1.5 million if it exposes people to risk of death or serious injury (as accidents with agricultural machinery do). In other words, they are saying that their industry are criminals, and that WorkSafe should commence an immediate, sector-wide investigation to identify unsafe conduct and practices so that they can be improved.

As for the "danger" that food will go unharvested, New Zealand exports over 90% of its agricultural produce. The only "danger" here is to the bottom lines of greedy farmers, and it is long past time they were forced to clean up their act, hire kiwis, and adopt safe labour practices.

The Make It 16 case

The Make It 16 campaign is in court this week, arguing that the voting age is unjustifiably discriminatory and breaches the Bill of Rights Act. I think that is pushing shit uphill - the BORA hard-codes the age-limit (just as it hard codes 16 years as the age over which discrimination is de facto unjustifiable), so they're effectively asking the court to find the BORA inconsistent with itself. But in some ways the point isn't to win, but to make the argument, in one of the most public forums available. And if the court says "yes, its shit, but we can't", then that's a victory because it places implicit pressure on the government to fix it. Not that fixing it is easy: the Electoral Act clauses governing the voting age are entrenched, meaning that reform requires either a 75% majority in Parliament, or a referendum. But I think the government has a moral obligation to make the effort.

The arguments in favour of lowering the voting age are compelling. There is simply no moral argument for excluding people old enough to express their interests from voting, and you cannot call yourself a democrat if you think there is. There are also significant turnout benefits, with a better chance of building a lifelong habit of voting if you start younger. And for those who think that young people are too frivolous, irresponsible or uneducated to vote, maybe they should be looking at Boomers...

Another reason to increase sick leave

The pandemic has shown the utter inadequacy of our current sick leave provisions, with workers not having enough leave to cope with any real illness and facing significant economic pressure to work while sick and thereby spread disease (not helped by cheapskate employers wanting to Keep Staff Costs Low). And yet, faced with an obvious threat to public health, the government has refused to contemplate increasing it. Part of their excuse is a leave subsidy scheme for businesses, which should in theory cover the costs of pandemic-related leave. The problem? Major employers are refusing to use it:

Some companies are not applying for the Government sick leave subsidy, and instead forcing workers to use their own leave for Covid-19 related requirements, First Union says.

First Union secretary for transport, logistics and manufacturing, Jared Abbott said Fletcher Building, supermarket companies Foodstuffs and Countdown and Lion had told staff that they must use their sick leave or annual leave if they could not work while waiting for a Covid-19 test result.

The union was worried people with little or no available leave would put off being tested because they could not afford the time off work, Abbott said.

And as the article explains, this means their workers are stuck with the same old inadequate provision and economic pressure to infect their co-workers and customers. Meaning that these employers are a direct threat to public health. And since the current voluntary subsidy isn't getting them to do the right thing, the government really has no other alternative: legislate for an immediate increase in sick leave.

(And while its at it, it should insert a provision in the Holidays Act enabling increases by Ministerial direction whenever an epidemic notice is in effect. Because that seems to have been an obvious gap in the Epidemic Preparedness Act scheme).

Coal kills

We know that coal-fired electricity is killing the planet. But its also killing people. How many? Between 400 and 1,300 Australians every year:

Terrible as they were, the bushfire smoke clouds were temporary (although they will probably become a regular affliction as climate change worsens). Pollution from burning carbon-based fuels, which affects the air we breathe every day, has a much greater cumulative effect. This is the central theme of a study published today (25 August) by Greenpeace Australia. The study, entitled, 'Lethal Power: How Burning Coal is Killing People in Australia', was written by Aidan Farrow, Andreas Anhäuser and Lauri Myllyvirta.

'Lethal Power' estimates that pollution from coal-burning power stations is responsible for somewhere between 400 and 1,300 premature deaths in Australia each year, as well as around 15,000 asthma attacks and 400 cases of low birth weight in babies. The upper end of the estimate for premature deaths is equal to the loss of life from road crashes and far greater than from homicide, not to mention widely publicised dangers like terrorism and shark attacks.

This is a staggering death toll - between one and three times that of the Australian bushfires. And that's every single year. Maybe Australia should stop killing its own people, and get off this toxic fuel?

(Meanwhile, coal power is fortunately rare in New Zealand. But now I'm wondering how many people in Huntly Genesis Energy stochasticly murders).

This is corrupt and should be prosecuted

Newsroom has a major scoop this morning about a corrupt scheme to milk MSD of emergency housing money by subletting houses from landlords without their knowledge. To add insult to injury, some of the houses were uninhabitable, lacking ovens, smoke alarms, or other basic requirements - and it ended up pulling houses out of the normal rental market, making homes in South Auckland even harder to find. And when it ended, the property managers kicked everybody out overnight, creating an even bigger problem.

The full details are in the article, but Harcourts Otahuhu seems to have been a nexus for the scheme. And the bit that really caught my attention is this:

Another curious thing she found was other properties on Harcourts Otahuhu's rent roll had been rented out to Zainulabidin (Zain) Syed. [a motel owner already exploiting MSD]

[...]

Parker alleged there was an arrangement between Harcourts Otahuhu, Syed and other investors to find and buy houses, or simply move MSD clients into properties on the firm's books.

Tenancy agreements attached to many of the houses Syed and others rented off Harcourts Otahuhu contained subclauses preventing subletting.

She alleged many of the landlords weren't informed their houses had been sublet to social housing tenants.

Obviously, that's a breach of tenancy law. But its also potentially a crime. If Harcourts Otahuhu received anything for this (e.g. higher commissions from higher rents), then that's a pecuniary interest which they had to disclose to the landlords, with failure to do so punishable by seven years imprisonment. If Harcourts corruptly agreed to accept this or any other payment, that's another seven years. And if Syed offered such inducements or suggested that landlords not be told or not be given the full amount, he's in the gun as well. At the very least, its deceptive conduct under the REINZ property management code of practice, and should lead to Harcourts Otahuhu's licence being pulled.

But will any of this happen? I guess that would require the government to stand up for public probity and for basic standards of honesty in the rental market. And to be honest, I'm not holding my breath for that.

And most obviously: none of this would have happened if the government had sufficient state housing in the first place, or just handled emergency provision themselves rather than trying to subcontract an essential service. Because when you contract out at inflated rates, you create space and incentives for exactly this sort of corruption to grow. Public provision prevents that, and gives us a more honest society. And we're all better off from that (except for corrupt property managers, of course).

Europe's freedom of information treaty

Back in 2009, the Council of Europe negotiated the Tromsø Convention, or more formally, the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents. It is the first binding international treaty to recognise a general right of access to official documents held by public authorities (the Aarhus Convention only applies to environmental information). And now, eleven years after it was negotiated and signed, it is finally entering into force on 1 December 2020.

The Convention binds its parties to minimum principles on freedom of information. Parties must guarantee everyone to official documents held by public authorities on request. It lays out what is acceptable as a withholding ground, and requires all withholding grounds to be balanced against the public interest. It also requires parties to treat requesters equally, permit anonymous requests, and limits charges to actual costs of reproduction and delivery (so no charging for decision-making time). All of this is backed by public reporting and monitoring by a group of specialists.

How does this compare to our Official Information Act? Firstly, it is narrower, applying only to "documents" (defined as "information recorded in any form", so including digital materials and audio recordings) rather than "information" (which includes things which are unrecorded - such as oral briefings and memories in the heads of public servants). Our list of withholding grounds is broadly compatible, with only 9(2)(k) (to prevent improper gain or advantage) not obviously covered. However, the general public interest test would mean significant changes to the ways we handle requests currently subject to withholding under s6. The reason its worth looking at is because the Convention is technically open to non-European parties by invitation, and formal, regular, international scrutiny of our official information regime is likely to be beneficial, in exactly the same way that it is for human rights. Now that it is entering into force, I think it would be worth the government seeing if they could obtain such an invitation, in order to subject themselves to this scrutiny.

Update: clarified the difference between "documents" and "information".

This is fine

Monsoons Cause Havoc in India as Climate Change Alters Rainfall Patterns, Voice of America, 14 August 2020:

Searching through the rubble of a tea plantation that collapsed after heavy rains lashed India's southern Kerala state last week, rescuers counted 55 casualties. The resulting landslide buried homes of several workers in the hillside's debris – several children were among the victims.

It was the latest monsoon-related disaster that has taken at least 150 lives in India, where environmentalists say climate change has altered the pattern of the monsoon season – it now brings short, intense bursts of rain instead of the steady showers that historically rejuvenated soil from June to September.

In the north and east of the country, an estimated 8 million grappled with a trail of destruction as swollen rivers inundated vast swaths of farmland and villages, destroying thatched homes and crops in two of India's poorest states, Assam and Bihar.

In just a week, wildfires burn 1 million acres in California, AP, 23 August 2020:

Weary firefighters in California raced Saturday to slow the spread of wildfires that burned nearly one million acres statewide in a week and destroyed hundreds of homes ahead an expected weather change that could bring more lightning strikes like the ones that sparked many of the blazes.

[...]

Two clusters of wildfires in the San Francisco Bay Area grew to become the second- and third-largest wildfires in recent state history by size. Light winds and cooler and more humid nighttime weather helped fire crews make progress on those fires and a third group of fires south of San Francisco ahead of the forecast of warm, dry weather, erratic wind gusts and lightning, state fire officials said.

Twin hurricanes threaten the Caribbean and US Gulf Coast, RNZ, 24 August 2020:

Coastal residents in low-lying areas of Louisiana and Cuba were evacuating on Sunday, while roads turned to rivers in Haiti's capital city, as twin hurricanes threatened the Caribbean and US Gulf Coast.

Marco, which strengthened to a hurricane on Sunday and is forecast to hit the Louisiana coast on Monday, will be followed by Tropical Storm Laura, now over the Dominican Republic and expected to travel across Hispaniola and Cuba and strengthen to a hurricane before striking the Gulf Coast on Thursday.

[...]

Back-to-back hurricanes arriving at the US coast within days "could result in a prolonged period of hazardous weather," National Hurricane Center forecaster Stacy Stewart warned on Sunday.

(The last is worse than reported, because they're currently on track to hit exactly the same patch of coast, just days apart).

Again, the planet is on fire, and our pollution is the cause. We need to stop it. Until we do, we are going to see more of these sorts of disasters.

Another abusive prorogation in Canada

Something from a few days ago: Canada is showing us exactly how not to do Westminster democracy, with another abuse of prorogation powers to suspend Parliament and kill a corruption investigation:

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is facing accusations that his decision to prorogue parliament is little more than an attempt to cover up an ethics scandal – and walk away from his duties during a pivotal moment in the pandemic.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trudeau asked Julie Payette, governor general, to prematurely end the current parliamentary session. He vowed to resume on 23 September with a speech from the throne, followed by a confidence vote.

The move to “reset” the government because of Covid comes amid committee investigations into the WE charity affair, in which Trudeau and former finance minister Bill Morneau face accusations of an improper financial relationship with the international development organization. Both men have apologized for not recusing themselves amid apparent conflicts of interest.

Prorogation will suspend all government business, including the investigation.

This isn't the first time this sort of abuse has happened. Back in 2008 then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued parliament to prevent the opposition from voting out his minority government, then did it again a year later to impede an investigation into Canada's collaboration with foreign torturers. Trudeau of course promised to end such abuses. But as usual, he lied.

So how do you stop it? We simply don't do this sort of thing in New Zealand. And partly that's because we've just got out of the habit, and moved away from this monarchical business of the monarch summoning Parliament every year in favour of the House controlling its own calendar, and away from monarchist ceremony (in the form of an archaic "speech from the throne") every time the government wants to make a major policy announcement in favour of the Prime Minister simply making a Ministerial statement or calling a press conference and telling us (or maybe, a mini-budget). Similarly, we don't need it - as Trudeau claims is the case in Canada - in order to hold a confidence vote: there are several scheduled throughout the year as part of the regular budget process, and the government can hold one whenever it wants. We don't even need it now to bring back Parliament during an adjournment in an emergency: the Speaker can do that themselves. The only time the Governor-General ever summons Parliament now is after elections, or in the never-happened-yet case of an emergency after it has been dissolved, and both of those are governed by statute - that is, by Parliament. Canada could learn from this, and adopt similar arrangements. And their constitution would probably be a lot healthier for it.

This should be a no-brainer

The Greens are calling for sick-leave to be doubled to ten days:

The Green Party is calling for paid sick leave to increase from five to ten days, to ensure people can stay home when unwell to keep all of us safe.

Green Party Workplace Relations Spokesperson Jan Logie said today:

“We all have an incredibly important role to play in keeping COVID-19 out of our communities, and that includes staying home when unwell.

[...]

“The Ministry of Health has rightfully set very firm guidelines for people to stay home if they’re sick. However, the Government must ensure people are able to do so without worrying about paying the bills.

This should be a complete no-brainer, a basic workplace safety issue whose necessity has been highlighted by the pandemic (and it doesn't help that we're at the bottom end of the international league tables for this, with Australians getting twice as much sick leave as kiwis). But when the CTU raised it back in June, Jacinda Ardern was quick to squash it. which invites the question: why does the Labour Party oppose basic worker's rights? And if they do, isn't their name false advertising?

"Justified but unlawful"

That is the finding of the High Court on the first nine days of New Zealand's lockdown, when we were all "ordered" to stay in our bubbles by the Prime Minister on television. Which is fairly unsurprising. We've known since Fitzgerald v Muldoon that you can't legislate by press release, and that the Prime Minister saying something doesn't give it legal effect. In this case, the order was eventually given legal effect, in the form of formal orders issued under the Health Act (the legality of which the court has upheld: it turns out that the Health Act quarantine power really does apply to everyone in the country all at once). But for those first few days, until those orders were issued, the lockdown order was unlawful and had no legal effect, which meant that it also breached our freedoms of association and movement (because justified limitations must be prescribed by law). At the same time, it was also a justified and proportionate health response, and this was recognised when the legality of the subsequent orders was upheld. So basicly the government's problem here is failing to do its paperwork properly. Which is understandable given the speed at which things were happening, but does actually matter when you're a government.

What does this mean in practice? Anyone prosecuted in those first few days for breaching lockdown has an easy appeal. Apparently that is unlikely to affect many people, but it still matters. There's no issue of potential liability for business closures because, unlike the instruction to stay at home except for essential travel, they actually had an order legally closing all premises. But the chief effect is to remind the government that we are not a monarchy, and that the Prime Minister cannot purportedly order us around from a podium like a King. When they want us to do something, they actually need to pass a law or use some other effective legal instrument. And hopefully in future they'll remember that.

Reviewing colonialism

Auckland Council is finally reviewing the future of its colonial statues:

A review of colonial-era monuments is underway to determine whether they should be removed, given their link to racial inequality in New Zealand’s past. The move comes after three monuments were vandalised in June, including a statue of former prime minister Sir George Grey in Albert Park which lost its finger and nose. Auckland Council will engage with local iwi before deciding on whether to keep the statues later in the year.

Hopefully the review will see them removed and replaced with monuments that celebrate the New Zealand we have become, rather than the one we were. Its not like we're short of options: The Spinoff has lists of both Māori and Pakeha who we could be celebrating. And if not, well, I guess people will just have to keep chipping away at it.

No Member's Day

When Parliament unexpectedly resumed, I was expecting today to be a Member's Day. The last one was on the 29th of July, and as every second Wednesday is given to Member's bills, the regular Parliamentary calendar would have seen today given to Member's business. Unfortunately, it is not to be: the Business Committee determination governing the unexpected sitting says that there will be "no further members’ days in this sitting period." As for what they're doing instead, that's unclear. Yesterday, the House sat for Ministerial statements and Question Time, plus a Covid-19 order authorisation motion, then rose at 16:00 despite there being bills on the Order Paper. If the government isn't going to use this bonus time, should backbenchers have the opportunity to? Or are they all going to collect their $180K salaries for doing nothing for the next few weeks?

OIA charging: Who charges for OIA requests in 2020?

Back in 2016, in response to a new OIA charging policy from the Reserve Bank and a push by then-Ombudsman Beverley Wakem for more agencies to charge, I conducted a survey of OIA charging practice. This confirmed the anecdata that in core government agencies charging for OIA requests was so rare as to be virtually non-existent (peripheral agencies and local government are a different story), and many agencies have implicit policies against charging. One of the purposes of the survey was to establish a baseline for further work, so we could see if this changed.

I've just completed another survey asking identical questions of each public service department seeking information on the number of requests they received, the number of times the demanded charges, the number of times they paid, and the amount collected. Responses were due back on Friday, and are collected here. The short version:

• Out of more than 9,752 requests made to 30 responding agencies, only 4 attracted charges, a rate of 0.04%. This is slightly lower than the 2016 result of 0.05% (excluding Customs, which has since stopped charging). Note "More than": one agency provided information on the number of charges, but not on the number of requests.
• One agency - MBIE - refused to provide information on the number of requests received, on the basis that different statistics would be released next month by the SSC. Appallingly, they took the full 20 working days to do so, which seems inconsistent with the OIA's "as soon as reasonably practicable" standard.
• Two agencies - MBIE and Treasury - claimed that they had no idea how often they charged, and that they would have to look through every OIA request to find out. Interestingly, both were able to tell me four years ago. Treasury accepted that this is something they should be tracking, and they are investigating doing so.
• One agency - the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development - did not respond at all, despite the request being sent to the main contact address listed on their website. A followup sent to their specific OIA address has produced a rapid promise to respond as quickly as possible, so it seems they have an internal administrative problem with passing on requests.
• 25% (versus 30% in 2016) of agencies responded more or less immediately, within 5 working days of the request.
• 40% (versus 30% in 2016) of agencies took over 15 working days to respond to a simple request for statistics which should be immediately available if they were tracking their requests properly. Both of these numbers are worse than last time, and raise questions about both these agency's commitment to the OIA's "as soon as reasonably practicable" standard, and about the performance trend of the government overall.

What can we conclude from this? The level of charging for OIA requests rightly remains practically non-existent, and Wakem's push to increase the rate of charging has failed. Agencies continue to recognise that charges are a barrier, and are rightly reluctant to impose them. That is a Good Thing, but what we don't know is the rate of requests declined for requiring "substantial collation and research" when a charge could instead have been requested. So in order to really assess the outcome, we need better, outcomes-based OIA statistics from SSC. Which would incidentally allow us to investigate a number of other issues - for example, the rate of extensions, and whether requests are being refused in order to meet timeliness targets.

Secondly, while its a sample of only 32 requests, the time histogram is troubling, and lends support to Mark Hanna's work suggesting that a number of agencies are treating the 20 working day maximum as a target, and ignoring the "as soon as reasonably practicable" standard. This is something that desperately needs to improve, and I'd like to see a work programme from the Ombudsman, SSC and Ministry of Justice to do so.

Delayed

Its official: the 2020 election has been delayed until October 17. Which, given the difficulties of campaigning in Auckland at the moment, seems fair and reasonable. The change has taken place entirely within existing laws and constitutional conventions, and apparently after consultation with other parties (who didn't necessarily agree, but their views were sought). The downside is that, being closer to the US election, there's more chance of our vote being affected by American cray (which will be even more intense than usual). And of course while we hope to have the current Covid cluster under control by then, another one could spring up. In which case the amendments to the Electoral Act for voting during disasters will spring into action, and we'll get to see how they work.

Parliament will now resume on Tuesday, though it has a pretty light Order Paper. Most of its business will likely be accountability - I expect an urgent debate on the current outbreak - and any necessary Covid legislation. We'll also get another Member's Day, which should see Ginny Andersen's miscarriage leave bill advance. But having done the usual end-of-term rush to clear away business, there's now less for them to do unless another crisis happens. A bunch of retired MPs will now have to come back to work as well, which they will no doubt hate. But at least with current border restrictions, they are unlikely to have fled the country.

On the plus side, another month worth of 17 year olds will now get to vote. If you know anyone in this category, get them to enrol here.

Killing oil exploration

If we are to avoid dangerous levels of climate change and making the Earth uninhabitable, we cannot burn even a fraction of the fossil fuels we have discovered, and there's just no point looking for new oil we can't burn. And now, finally, the oil industry seems to be getting that message:

As the coronavirus ravages economies and cripples demand, European oil majors have made some uncomfortable admissions in recent months: oil and gas worth billions of dollars might never be pumped out of the ground.

With the crisis also hastening a global shift to cleaner energy, fossil fuels will likely be cheaper than expected in the coming decades, while emitting the carbon they contain will get more expensive. These two simple assumptions mean that tapping some fields no longer makes economic sense. BP Plc said on Aug. 4 that it would no longer do any exploration in new countries.

The oil industry was already grappling with the energy transition, copious supply and signs of peak demand as Covid-19 began to spread. The pandemic will likely bring forward that peak and discourage exploration, according to Rystad Energy AS. The consultant expects about 10% of the world’s recoverable oil resources—some 125 billion barrels—to become obsolete.

In this context, it looks like the move to ban offshore exploration in New Zealand was prescient and cost-free, something the industry was going to do itself in just a few short years. And hopefully this trend will also help kill onshore exploration in New Zealand as well, and let us move on with sunsetting this toxic and destructive industry in favour of clean alternatives.