Empty hand-wringing

This morning, we learned that house prices have risen nearly 20% in the past year, locking more people out of the housing market and further entrenching the growing class divide between those with wealthy parents and those without. And of course, Jacinda Ardern is deeply concerned:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she wants to ensure first home buyers can get into the market after it was revealed this morning that house prices have increased nearly 20 percent.

House prices have increased 19.8 percent year-on-year with the median now at $725,000.

Ardern this afternoon said figures show an increase in first-time buyers in the market since 2017, but that investors in the market had remained the same.

"Obviously we want to ensure our first home buyers can get into the market that is something that is top of mind for us..."

If only there were some policy levers she could pull that would discourage hoarders and speculators from flooding the property market and crowding out actual people. Oh wait, that's right - they've all ready been taken off the table by... Jacinda Ardern.

Ardern caused this problem. And we deserve more from her on it than empty hand-wringing and sympathetic noises. The problem is that she's deeply invested in it: her Auckland home - worth $1.7 million in mid-2017 - is now likely worth over $2 million, and producing more than a backbench MP's salary in tax-free capital gains every year. Which looks like one hell of a conflict of interest, and perhaps explains her lack of interest in finding any solution.

Climate Change: The first test

Last year, Parliament passed the Zero Carbon Act, a framework which effectively outsourced climate change policy to an independent commission, in a shame-based model designed to ensure the government did what was recommended. The Commission will be making recommendations on New Zealand's Paris target, the methane target, and the first budget cycle in February. And Climate Change Minister James Shaw thinks they're going to be pretty tough:

Speaking at the EDS Climate Change and Business conference in Auckland, Shaw said that, based on what he knew of the science, it seemed likely the commission would recommend changing the target, which currently gives the country a total allowance of 600 million tonnes of greenhouse gases between now and 2030.

[...]

As well as advising the Government on its 2030 Paris target, the climate change commission will recommend a series of domestic emissions budgets.

Shaw said he anticipated the commission’s reports would be “pretty shocking to a lot of people. The constraints will be extraordinary, when you think about what is required to stay inside 1.5C.”

For its third big recommendation, the commission will suggest a firmer 2050 target for methane.

All of this is good, but the question is, will the government listen? Shaw says he is "absolutely committed" to following the Commission's advice. But is Labour? On the one hand, they may be eager for an excuse to increase their ambition on climate change, especially after lowballing it in their election campaign. But OTOH, real action is going to mean disrupting their precious status quo, and threaten the re-election chances of their new backbenchers in rural seats. And while their cooperation agreement with the Greens commits them to "achieving the purpose and goals of the Zero Carbon Act", as we saw last term these promises are effectively meaningless, and the Greens have no way of enforcing them without leverage in the House.

Which means that the Commission's recommendations are going to be the first real test of Labour-Green cooperation. Hopefully Labour will do the right thing. But if they don't, then the "cooperation agreement" will be a dead letter not six months after it was signed, and the Greens will need to decide whether to continue with a farce.

A failure to assist

Stuff today has a piece on The anatomy of an OIA fail, on their efforts to get immunisation rates by suburb. It is not a pretty story:

"We're concerned about the usefulness of such a project and not keen to proceed,’’ Health Ministry senior adviser Bonnie Jones emailed a colleague.

Extracting the information I’d asked for was possible, the colleague responded, but would require "a fair bit of work".

So they refused my request, as too time-consuming to collate. When another Stuff journalist, Talia Shadwell, asked, the communications simply went dead. Michelle Duff was later told the information didn't even exist.

But when New Zealand Herald data editor Chris Knox asked, one week after Duff, the information magically became available. Even then, some data was withheld despite top ministry staff admitting there was no legal basis to do so.

All of this is illegal. The first is just a blatant case of an agency - or a particular manager- deciding they don't want to give out information for PR reasons, and concocting a reason to refuse. The latter cases are a clear and willing refusal to obey the duty to assist: it was clear in each case what the requesters were asking for, but again the agency - or particular managers - decided they didn't want to, so pretended they didn't understand. And even when the information was released, it had deletions for no lawful purpose.

None is this is legal or acceptable. So why do government agencies keep doing it? Because there are no penalties. The Act contains no legal penalties for non-compliance - not even having to pay for the Ombudsman's investigation - while no staff member ever faces employment consequences for illegal secrecy. That needs to change. The Ombudsman has recommended criminal penalties for willing refusals (something which would empower staff to stand up to Ministers and senior managers). But there also needs to be employment consequences. After all, these people are not doing their jobs properly. And at the very least, that seems like the sort of thing worthy of a formal warning, retraining, and (if repeated), sacking.

Labour's "kindness" extends only to the rich

Yesterday, over fifty charitable and community groups released an open letter calling for the government to raise benefits before christmas, arguing that it would decrease poverty, reduce health costs, and lead to better outcomes for children. The "government of kindness"'s response? Yeah, nah:

Speaking at her post-cabinet press conference (skip to 27 mins in the video) yesterday, Jacinda Ardern said that she had considered it, but said “this is not going to be an issue that gets resolved within one week or one month or indeed one term”...

[...]

From Ardern’s perspective, making such changes would be “substantial”, and “would have a knock on effect on budgets into the future.” She agreed with the premise of a question around improving the lives of beneficiaries also having positive flow-on effects on matters like improved health outcomes, but reiterated that it was a change that couldn’t be made at this time, on top of existing boosts in support.

Meanwhile, Labour has ruled out a wealth tax, a capital gains tax, or any increase in taxation beyond their derisory re-imposition of a (low) top tax rate on people who earn more than backbench Labour MP's. The message is clear: their "kindness" extends only to rich people, who will be exempted from paying their fair share of the costs of the pandemic (or society in general). As for poor kids, they can keep on starving. Which once again invites the question: what is Labour for, exactly, if they're not going to ever deliver anything?

ACT is right: We should keep the one seat rule

Shortly after being elected, Labour announced plans to implement the Electoral Commission's proposals to make electoral system less representative, by abolishing the one-seat rule. Yesterday, ACT's David Seymour issued a press release opposing this, pointing out the value of the rule: it makes Parliament more representative. And that doesn't just benefit ACT voters:

“Labour is unlikely to benefit from the full representation rule, and so it wants it gone. Multiple parties have benefited in recent elections: the Māori Party (2014, 2020), ACT (2008) and New Zealand First (1999). In each case the party won a seat and got its full representation from the Party Vote.

Seymour's list is incomplete: the Progressive Coalition (2002), United Future (2005) also gained full representation under this rule (as did ACT in 2005). And it made our Parliament a better, more representative place as a result.

Of course, ACT's opposition is driven by self-interest: they're a small party and they've benefited from the rule. But so is Labour's desire to eliminate it: they're a big party, and want to strangle any chance of political competitors rising up to challenge them (and in particular, nobble parties which oppose them). So we should look at it from first principles. What do we want from our electoral system? It's in the name: Proportional representation. The full representation rule helps ensure that. And that's why we need to keep it. As for the idea that lowering the threshold to 4% will compensate, firstly, the Electoral Commission's 2012 review is clear that it does not, and that average disproportionality would increase; and secondly, the 1986 Royal Commission recommended it with a 4% threshold. So Labour's proposal represents a rollback from what we were promised nearly 40 years ago.

(According to the Electoral Commission report, the 1986 Royal Commission also thought the one-seat rule was necessary for Māori representation. And its value on that front has been proven in this election. Which may be what saves it: Labour's Māori caucus are unlikely to want to have to explain to their voters why they have made it harder for them to get full representation, or be roadkill for a Māori Party whose only path to full representation would lie in rolling right over them).

The one-seat rule does lead to unfairness. It is unfair that the Māori Party gets full representation while the NZ First, TOP, and New Conservative parties, all of whom got more votes, do not. But that is not the fault of the one-seat rule, but of the threshold. And the way to remove that unfairness is to eliminate it entirely, and let voters, not politicians, choose who we are represented by.

Let them rot

Another farmer is complaining about leaving crops to rot because they can't get cheap foreign workers to pick them. So why can't he get kiwi workers? Just look at the conditions:

With their focus on the short work period, the RSE staff worked the two-to-three month picking season with seven-day working weeks and working days that begin at dawn and finish on dark.

Hiring local staff meant juggling domestic and lifestyle responsibilities, and often social issues stemming from areas where regular work hadn't existed for decades. The working days were shorter which meant fewer courgettes got picked.

Heap said the productivity differences between RSE workers and local workers was enormous. He needed at least two New Zealanders to do the work of one RSE worker, and the churn of local workers was huge.

Basicly, these are Victorian working conditions, the sort of shit Samuel Parnell threw people off a wharf to end. As for "domestic responsibilities", he's basicly saying that workers having lives and families is a problem for him. Clearly, what he wants is a compliant, disposable peasantry, one he can ship in when he needs work done then ship out or just abandon when he doesn't, and he's surprised we're refusing to endanger ourselves by letting him do that in a pandemic. But what surprises me is that we let him do it in the first place. It ought to be a baseline in our society that workers are well-paid, well-treated, and able to have lives outside of work. And if denying those basic rights is the price of cheap courgettes, I say "let them rot".

Places to go, people to be

Nothing from me today, as I'm off to Wellington for a weekend of larp. Normal bloggage will resume Monday or Tuesday.

America's sick "democracy"

Like everyone else, I spent yesterday glued to the internets, doomscrolling the disaster of the US election. As I write, the outcome is still undetermined - while it looks like Biden will win, margins in key states are close, and the US's decrepit (and in some cases, intentionally sabotaged) election administration means a slow count (which, predictably, Trump is now trying to disrupt). And yet, from the popular vote, the result is clear: Biden leads by over three million votes. In any normal democracy, that would settle it without question. The only reason this is in any doubt is because of the racist gerrymander of the electoral college.

The flaws in American "democracy" are naked: gerrymandering, voter suppression, partisan electoral administration and the electoral college. These flaws undermine the legitimacy of the entire system. Unfortunately, it looks like the Democrats failed to win the Senate, so they are not going to be able to fix them - or anything else. On past Republican behaviour, Biden is going to face at least two years of obstruction, maybe more. And that's without even thinking about the Supreme Court (which a Democratic Senate could have fixed temporarily). The question is, how long can this structurally dysfunctional and illegitimate system totter on for, before enough people grow sick enough of it to demand real change?

25,000 unemployed under Labour

The labour market statistics have been released, and unemployment has spiked to 151,000 - 25,000 more than when the government took office. There is an obvious reason for this, of course - the pandemic. And we're nowhere near the unemployment peak according to the modelling. The government's job is to keep that peak as low as possible, and as short as possible - to flatten that curve too. And unlike National, who during the GFC just left it all to the market, Labour will actually have some interest in doing that.

A headache for the government

For decades, the government has elided its Treaty obligations over water by claiming that no-one owns it (except, in practice, farmers). But last year, the Waitangi Tribunal ruled that water is a taonga, and it belongs to Māori, and invited iwi to bring a test case to prove it in court. The New Zealand Maori Council have already taken up that suggestion. And now, Ngāi Tahu is seeking to establish their rights over most of the South Island's water:

South Island iwi Ngāi Tahu is taking the Crown to court, seeking “rangatiratanga” over all freshwater in its takiwā (area).

The case would seek to establish “shared authority” with the Crown over policy and practice.

Te Rūnanga o Ngā Tahu kaiwhakehaere (chairwoman) Lisa Tumahai said the case against the Crown, lodged in the High Court in Christchurch on Monday, came after generations of being excluded from kaitiakitanga (guardianship) of waterways.

“For too long, governments have talked about addressing these issues but have made piecemeal progress,” said Tumahai. “That is not enough. Now is the time to act.”

Ngāi Tahu is quite clear that they are not interested in conventional property rights. Instead, they are seeking the regulatory power to protect their waterways. But even that is likely to be explosive. Canterbury is the most irrigated area in New Zealand, and ground zero for most of Aotearoa's water problems. And the greedy farmers who profit from sucking the rivers dry and filling them with shit (while poisoning the groundwater with toxic nitrates) are likely to go apeshit at the thought of getting a single drop less. So its going to be a real headache for the government, who are eventually going to have to sort this out with a settlement or legislation. And then there's the prospect of National and/or ACT running a racist hate campaign over it...

Another funny thing to die in a ditch over

Jacinda Ardern has ruled out spending her carefully hoarded political capital on supporting a wealth tax, drug reform, or even real action on climate change (which was "my generation's nuclear-free moment" just three years ago). So what is she willing to spend it on? A four year Parliamentary term: making herself and her successors less accountable to us.

Its an unpopular proposition - unlike wealth taxes or action on climate change - the two previous referenda on the issue have been defeated by almost 70% opposition each time, and any future referendum is likely to have the same result. So of course, she has been talking up the possibility of politicians conspiring to do it via a supermajority, rather than taking it to the people. Fortunately, National has now shitcanned that idea, so if she wants it to happen, she will have to ask us, and risk the humiliation of defeat. Hopefully that prospect will deter it, as it has deterred her predecessors. If not, well, it seems like a pretty funny thing for a Labour politician to want to die in a ditch over.

A threat to our security

Back in June and July, RNZ broke the story that the SIS had collaborated with foreign intelligence agencies to burgle the embassies of friendly nations in the 1980's. The burglaries violated international (and arguably New Zealand) law. And now at least one of them is looking at taking legal action over it:

Iran is threatening legal action against New Zealand after learning the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), in a joint operation with the CIA, broke into its Wellington embassy to plant bugs in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

India has also hit back at an SIS operation that occurred during the same era, demanding New Zealand's foreign ministry investigate an SIS break-in where code books were photographed and passed on to Britain's MI6.

From the article, it is clear that these raids - carried out at the behest of foreign powers - have damaged our relations with these countries. Which is ironic, given that the usual definitions of "national security" include concerns about international relations. I guess it turns out that the SIS was the real threat to our national security all along.

Something I hope to be wrong on

So, the Greens went ahead and approved the deal with Labour. As I said earlier, I think its a mistake, which binds Green Ministers to implement Labour policy while effectively gagging them from criticising it. And on climate change - the only policy that matters - that's not a mistake the planet can afford to make.

Hopefully I'm wrong. Hopefully Labour will show some actual ambition and improve its policies. But based on their underwhelming election policies and the text of the "cooperation agreement", James Shaw's main job for the next three years will be selling climate change inaction. He'll be a quisling for the status quo, a collaborator in human extinction. And by extension, so will the Green Party. There will be no Parliamentary voice calling for the urgent, radical change we need to save the planet. Labour will have silenced them. Which means we need to look to extra-Parliamentary voices, like Extinction Rebellion, and 350, and Greenpeace if we want someone to stand up for a future.

Why am I so pessimistic? Because I actually read Labour's climate change policies, which are basicly PR bullshit which completely ignore our core problems of agricultural emissions and fossil transport. I believe Labour will try to implement the policies it campaigned on - a view backed by the fact that that is all the cooperation agreement commits to - and that Jacinda Ardern would not lie to the New Zealand public on this. I also think Labour's new rural backbench are going to want to keep their seats, so they'll have even more reasons than usual to keep pandering to farmers, our biggest greenhouse polluters.

Again, I hope to be wrong, and I guess we'll find out in May, when the Climate Change Commission presents its first three budgets and its first emissions reduction plan. As Minister, Shaw will be able to back the Commission and push for ambitious reductions, and Labour could accept the advice of its independent Commission as it effectively promised to do when it passed the Act. But Labour could just say "no" and gut those recommendations in favour of its weak, status quo policy - in which case the Zero Carbon Act will be a dead letter and the Green Party won't be able to say anything about it.

Green party members are obviously a lot more optimistic about labour's policies and intentions than I am. All I can say is that I hope they're right.

A gag order, not a partnership

The Green Party are currently voting on whether to accept the "cooperation agreement" Labour has offered them. So what's in it? Fortunately it leaked, and the core part is that the Greens promise not to oppose on confidence and supply (which is meaningless), and get two Ministers outside Cabinet, including the climate change portfolio. But there's no specific policy concessions, and instead there's just a vague agreement to work towards "common goals" such as:

Achieving the purpose and goals of the Zero Carbon Act through decarbonising public transport, decarbonising the public sector, increasing the uptake of zero-emission vehicles, introducing clean car standards, and supporting the use of renewable energy for industrial heat.

Meanwhile, the Greens are bound by no surprises and good faith on their public statements and parliamentary activities (and of course their Ministers are bound by Cabinet collective responsibility). Looking at this, its not a partnership - its a gag order, designed purely to silence the Greens on their most important subject (and Labour's greatest area of vulnerability).

In theory, being climate change minister isn't entirely valueless: they're the interface with the Climate Change Commission with responsibility for approving budgets and plans. Except that in reality, all of those approvals are subject to Cabinet confirmation, so there's no actual power there. The Act is meant to work by shame: the Commission is independent, and its recommendations public, so a government which doesn't do as instructed immediately needs to justify itself to the public. The question is, would that process work better with a Green Minister bound and gagged inside the tent to ask Labour nicely to do the right thing, or an angry and vocal Green Party willing to roast them alive if they don't. And the very way I've phrased that makes it clear what I think the answer is. The Greens should reject this deal, and instead commit to holding Labour to account on climate change. If labour wants an actual partnership, then they can always offer one further down the line.

Bugger

Preliminary referendum results are out, showing that cannabis legalisation was defeated, 46.1% to 53.1%. There's a gap of almost 170,000 votes, and its highly unlikely that the specials will be that disproportionate (OTOH, they're probably a different electoral population, swinging younger and more liberal on this issue, but that's probably too big a gap to make up). The government has already indicated that it will "respect the result" of the referendum and that "recreational cannabis use will remain illegal in New Zealand", so we'll see the olds' pointless "war on drugs" and empowering of gangs continue for another three years at least.

(Oh, and Ardern has finally revealed that she voted "yes". So she wants to be on the right side of her voters, but at the same time was too chickenshit to come out and say it when it might have made a difference. Labour's lack of moral courage and its unwillingness to stand for anything or actually lead and convince us to follow strikes again!)

On the plus side, Death With Dignity passed in a landslide, so that will automatically become legal in November next year.

We need more state houses

How bad is the housing crisis? This bad:

For the first time over 20,000 households are on the Government’s waitlist for public housing.

By the end of August 20,385 eligible households were on the waitlist for state or social housing, with over 18,000 ranked as “priority A” – the most needy.

This compared to 19,438 the month before and 13,167 in August 2019. The waitlist has more than trebled since 2017.

And from that trend, its only going to get worse.

The government has promised to build 18,000 new houses by 2024. Which means they are committing to not solve this problem (and to not solve it slowly, so that people will be left homeless for years and years). And on an essential like housing, that is simply not acceptable.

As for why they are committing to not solving this, part of the answer is almost certainly Labour's continuing commitment to austerity: having ruled out a wealth tax, capital gains tax, or any meaningful tax increase, they "have no money", and of course couldn't possibly borrow at negative interest rates to fund vital infrastructure. But part of it is also likely to be a desire not to "disrupt" the market. Because if everyone who needed a home had one, there wouldn't be massive competition for too few houses, rents and house prices would drop, and rich people would lose some of their paper wealth. To which most people would say "boo fucking hoo", but as is clear from their tax policy, rich people are who Labour represent now.

A contempt of Parliament?

Back in July, Professor Anne-Marie Brady warned Parliament about foreign interference in New Zealand elections. Now, her employer is attempting to punish her for it:

Canterbury University China expert Professor Anne-Marie Brady has been gagged by her employer while a review into her research proceeds.

The review conducted by two academics and two members of the university’s council began in August after Brady’s paper – Holding a Pen in One Hand and Gripping a Gun in the Other – sparked complaints from two New Zealand universities and several individual academics.

The paper outlined how universities, academics and businesses could be inadvertently helping the Chinese Community Party by collaborating with Chinese agencies in hi-tech research.

[...]

Brady, whose research into the Chinese Government’s efforts to influence Western democracies has won her international recognition, presented the paper as a supplementary submission to Parliament’s justice select committee earlier this year.

[Emphasis added]

If this paper had simply been published in a journal, this would just be an example of academics and universities dependent on Chinese funding trying to ruin the career of someone critical of their foreign patron. That's shitty enough, but the fact that the paper was presented as a submission to Parliament - and the review is explicitly about that submission - makes this far more serious. McGee is crystal clear about this: attempting to punish a parliamentary contribution in any way constitutes contempt of the House. The classic example is TVNZ, which told its chief executive that their evidence to a select committee was "misconduct"; they were fined and forced to apologise. If the University of Canterbury continues with its "review", they may find themselves in a similar situation.

The Labour Party is still rorting us

Back in September, we learned that the Labour Party was rorting its Parliamentary expenses to steal from the public again, renting office space at a below-market rate from a union for $1500 a year, then subletting it to Parliamentary Services as an electorate office at a (significantly higher) below-market rate of $6000 a year, and pocketing the difference. Today, the Electoral Commission has cleared up one aspect of this, ruling that the subletting arrangement is a donation to the party which must be declared in future:

The Electoral Commission has ordered the Labour Party to declare the cheap rent it pays for its office in Petone as a donation.

The commission looked into the matter after a Stuff investigation found Labour had been paying well below market rent for the Wellington building in a deal stretching back as far as 1993.

Recently the party was paying as little as $1500 a year, well below the market rate for office space in Petone. A shop at 264 Jackson Street, just up the road from Hutt South MP Ginny Andersen’s office, is currently for lease at $18,200 a year.

Electoral Commission rules, published in the commission’s candidate’s handbook, say that goods and services received at a discounted rate are treated as donations.

But they've given up on any effort to force Labour to declare the donation for previous years, because its just "too hard" (apparently, they can't just pick an average figure and go with that). So the law once again means nothing, and political parties can break it with impunity, as usual. And meanwhile, the fundamental problem - Labour's outright theft of public money - goes unresolved. When will Parliamentary Services put a stop to it? Or are they happy for parties to steal from the public, rather than being reimbursed for their actual, reasonable, and necessary expenses?

Building a norm against nuclear weapons

Back in 2017, the UN General Assembly approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and New Zealand was one of the first countries to sign. Now, a 50th ratification is finally going to bring it into force:

Campaigners have hailed a "new chapter" after a key step by the United Nations towards banning nuclear arms.

Honduras has become the 50th country to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons so it will now come into force in 90 days' time.

New Zealand and many Pacific nations including Samoa, Fiji, Niue, Tuvalu, Cook Islands and Kiribati are among the signatories.

Some media outlets (in nuclear-armed states) are calling the Treaty "symbolic", but that's missing the point. Sure, nuclear-armed states and their NATO vassals have refused to sign. But the rest of the world has, and as with a landmine ban, the cluster bomb ban, and the chemical weapons ban, that will be enough to establish a norm that the possession (let alone use) of nuclear weapons is a violation of international law, effectively defining the great powers and their lackeys as rogue states, and companies which support their nuclear weapons as criminal enterprises. The latter are the real weak point, because these multinationals are going to be forced to choose between supporting nuclear weapons programmes, or doing business with the rest of the world. But it should also increase the pressure on governments to disarm - which is an obligation they've already signed up for under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Change wins in Chile

This time last year, Chile was in rebellion against its government. Protests against a train fare increase turned into protests against inequality, and then, when the right-wing government deployed the military to crush them, into protests against the government and the dictator-imposed constitution. And the protestors won: half the cabinet was sacked, and the government was forced to concede a referendum on constitutional reform.

Yesterday, Chileans voted in that referendum. And they chose change:

Chile has voted overwhelmingly in favor of rewriting the country’s constitution to replace guiding principles imposed four decades ago under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

Jubilant pro-reform supporters took to the streets of the capital Santiago and other cities to celebrate on Sunday night after exit polls showed that 78.24% of people had voted to approve a rewrite, while 21.76% rejected the change.

Voters also elected for the new constitution to be entirely drafted by a popularly elected body – meaning no active lawmakers can be involved in the process.

Of course, they still need to elect the constitutional assembly, and then actually write a new draft, and there's a lot of ways that process could go wrong, a lot of chances for the rich to put their thumb on the scales and prevent this democratic demand from being realised. But if they do that too obviously, Chile will be right back where it was last year, only with less chance for a peaceful solution.