Something is rotten in Mangere

I spent some time last night this morning reading the Ingram Report [PDF] into the allegations against Taito Phillip Field. The government is naturally focussing on the news that the original allegation - that Field had had a desperate Thai man do construction work on his house in Samoa in exchange for immigration assistance - turns out not to be supported by the evidence. Instead, Field had arranged to help the man by getting him out of the country so he could reapply legally for a permit, and he had then been employed without Field's initial knowledge by his family in Samoa. So, it really was all due to an abundance of kindness on Field's part. But even here, Field hardly comes out covered in glory; there were significant lapses of judgement in not stopping the work the moment he learned of it, and in not informing Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor (who Field had been lobbying on the man's behalf) of their new relationship. While not hanging offences, I think we should expect more responsible behaviour from Ministers, and this alone should mean that Field never again holds a Ministerial warrant.

More concerning are the other allegations, that Field had had large groups of Thai immigrants work on refurbishing his properties in return for immigration assistance. While the investigation was hampered by the refusal of many of those involved to speak with Ingram, he concludes that it may have occurred in the case of the house in Samoa, and definitely occurred in New Zealand. In at least two cases, a Thai man who had previously been assisted in gaining a work permit and permanent residency, appears to have painted houses for Field, and been significantly underpaid. The report speaks for itself here:

Despite the evidence to the contrary presented by Mr Field and others... I find a strong inference to be drawn that it was Mr Field who arranged, through the agency of Ms Thaivichit, for the painting exercise to be conducted by Mr Chaikhunpol. On the basis of [independent expert evidence], I find that Mr Chaikhunpol was significantly underpaid for the work. There is the further inference that it was out of a sense of gratitude or some sense of obligation in relation to the assistance which Mr Field had provided in Mr Chaikhunpol's immigration application that Mr Chaikhunpol undertook the painting of [address] in August 2005 at a price substantially below market rates.

(Emphasis added)

The above is pretty much duplicated word for word in relation to a second property, and Field seems to have benefited from the arrangement to the tune of several thousand dollars. While a legal case might not be able to be made for corruption - it depends on whether assisting someone in their dealings with a government department is considered to be an act done in the capacity of a Member of Parliament - there is no question that we expect far higher standards of propriety than this. Ministers and MPs must not simply avoid such quid pro quos, they must avoid even the appearance of them. Field has failed that test, and on that basis alone should resign from Parliament. In the meantime, I would hope that the police will undertake a proper investigation and get to the bottom of this matter. Unfortunately, I expect that they will treat questions of official corruption with the same seriousness they treat questions of electoral overspending - namely, none at all.

Clones and individuality

A study to be published in the journal Social Science and Medicine has concluded that human clones would have a sense of individuality. Which is so stunningly obvious that you wonder why they bothered to write a paper on it at all. Apart from the fact of being genetically identical to their donor, a human clone is an ordinary human being. And ordinary human beings tend to see themselves as individuals. Unless you're the sort of person who radically doubts other people's consciousness, and sees everyone around them as an unconscious zombie, there's really no reason to think that clones would be any different.

Unfortunately, far too many people's ideas about cloning seem to be set by bad 70's Science Fiction than the reality. There are reasons not to clone people at the moment - basically, we haven't figured out how to do it properly yet - but worries over individuality aren't one of them.

Selwyn sentenced

Tim Selwyn has been sentenced to two months in prison for sedition and for his role in an axe attack on the Prime Minister's electorate office. He was sentenced to a further 15 months on unrelated fraud charges.

I've already said that the sedition prosecution and verdict (as opposed to the willful damage one) was shameful and an outrage against freedom of speech, and I stand by it. Selwyn should have been - and was - prosecuted for sticking the axe through the window. But he should never have been prosecuted for the pamphlets. While they called for "like-minded New Zealanders to take similar action of their own", this falls far short of the "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre" standard which should prevail in a democratic society. They also fell far short of actual incitement, and it is telling that the police chose to resurrect the archiac crime of sedition, with its broad language criminalising not just incitement, but also encouragement of "violence, lawlessness, or disorder", rather than the crime they were indirectly accusing Selwyn of: inciting criminal damage.

The worry now is that the police will use this law to crack down on "non-mainstream" political speech, exactly as they have done in the past. The only way to prevent that is by repealing the law. Hopefully we'll see some progress on that front soon.

Updated: Somehow, I managed to leave the bottom off this when I posted it.

The usual whitewash

The Crown Prosecution Service's decision into the Stockwell shooting has been released, and as expected, its the usual whitewash. No police officer will be charged over Jean Charles de Menezes's death - not the officers who slowly and systematically shot him eight times in the head at close range, or their comrades who botched the surveillance and then tried to falsify evidence to hide the fact. Instead, police department will be prosecuted under the Health and Safety at Work Act (the equivalent of OSH regulations) for "failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare" of Mr Menezes. Meanwhile, the Independent Police Complaints Commission's report into the shooting - on which the CPS decision is based, and which reportedly is highly critical of the police - remains secret. Thus does the British establishment protect its own.

This is simply insulting. A dead man is crying out for justice, and instead the British government is covering its own arse. Fortunately, the de Mezenes family aren't taking this lying down. Their next step will be to push for an inquest, and the full publication of the IPCC report. After that, they may either seek a judicial review of the CPS's decision, or even bring a private prosecution against the officers involved. If the government and authorities won't hold people accountable, then they'll just have to do it themselves...

New Fisk

Divided by war, united by fear

Cutting the strings

The Prime Minister used her press conference today to announce some slight changes to the Letters Patent, the little-known constitutional documents which establish the office of Governor-General and affirm cabinet government in New Zealand. Most of the changes relate to the use of the title "honourable" - the Governor-General will now be entitled to use it as of right, and decisions on awarding it will now be made in Wellington rather than London - but there are also a couple of slightly more significant ones. Firstly, the order of succession for the Administrator of the Government (the person who steps in as Governor-General when the Governor-General is out of the country or dead) is generalised to be the most senior officer of the judiciary. Secondly, the Governor-General no longer has to ask someone in London for permission to leave their own country. It's a minor change, but perfectly in keeping with the slow and progressive cutting of the apron strings we've seen for the last two decades.

There was also some minor snark at the end about whether there would still be "Right Honourables"; the Clark government has steadfastly refused to request that anyone be appointed to Privy Council, either as a judge or senior politician. And quite rightly too - the Privy Council is a British institution, not a New Zealand one, and given the legal and factual independence of New Zealand, it is simply inappropriate for us to be asking to have people appointed to a governing body and highest court of somebody else's country.

Inflation at 4%

And its due in large part to the enormous security premium we are now paying on petrol due to instability in the Middle East.

I blame George Bush...

"Procedural issues"

That's the explanation for the withdrawal of the government's Criminal Proceeds and Instruments Bill, according to spokesperson for the Minister of Justice I talked with today. No elaboration, no hint of which party might be raising those issues, and no answer on when or if the bill might be reintroduced to the House. Meanwhile, it seems that these "procedural issues" have arisen rather suddenly. The government included $8.8 million over four years to implement the bill in May's Budget, while around the same time, Associate Justice Minister Clayton Cosgrove was trumpeting the bill as an "important tool to combat those who are corrupt" which will "permit confiscation orders without the need for a criminal conviction" (which is precisely the problem). So, what's changed this then? While I don't want to see the bill revived, I'd like to at least know who sunk it, so I know who to thank.

All the way to Number 10

The British "cash for peerages" scandal now looks set to reach all the way to Downing Street, with the news that Tony Blair secretly met with key witnesses in the middle of the police investigation, and that Blair's bagman Lord Levy had advised potential peers not to declare and to remove references to large loans made to the Labour party from their nomination forms. Meanwhile, The Observer reports that police have uncovered a paper trail that goes to the 'heart of Downing Street', and that discontent is rising in the Labour ranks. Hopefully, this will finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and sees Blair ousted - but Blair is pathologically incapable of admitting that he is ever wrong, and seems to be trying to brazen it out as usual. But I wonder whether those tactics will work on the police...?

Climate Change: the latest inventory

The Climate Change Office quietly released its latest inventory report on Friday. It's been in preparation since April, and is based on 2004 figures. The headline data can be seen in the graph below (stolen from p. 21 of the report):

Emissions dropped slightly last year, but are still well above the 1990 baseline. And the drop itself seems to be mainly due to seasonal fluctuations in electricity generation, rather than any long-term change. In other words, no worse - but no real progress either.

The next interesting data will be the projected balance of units, which is due out in the next month or so. From what David Parker was saying to the Local Government and Environment Committee last month [PDF], the balance is "volatile", and depends a lot on what assumptions are made about the forestry sector (assumptions the government has consistently been very bad at making; even in the 90's they were simply taking last years plantings and projecting it out to 2020, with no allowance made for the ups and downs of the international forestry market). But they also depend on oil prices, and there's just a slight hint there that the estimates they make there will begin to reflect reality far more strongly than they have in the past. This will probably make the figures look better, but serious policy will still be needed, and the government just isn't providing it at the moment.

New Fisk

What I am watching in Lebanon each day is an outrage

The American dolchstosslegende

Last month's edition of Harper's had an interesting piece on the history of the "stab in the back" myth in America:

Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.

Read the whole thing - and then read the wikipedia article on the parallel phenomena in Weimer Germany (the original dolchstosslegende). There, the myth of the "stab in the back" was a significant propaganda tool in the rise of the Nazis and the demonisation of socialists, liberals, and Jews. Then look back at the US and the way right-wing voices there are openly preaching the elimination of liberals, while voices critical of the Bush administration find themselves receiving white powder in the mail. It's a worrying trend, and they haven't even officially lost the war yet.

New Fisk

From my home, I saw what the 'war on terror' meant

Asset forfeiture: Discharged

Last year, the government introduced the Criminal Proceeds and Instruments Bill. The bill would have created a new asset forfeiture regime, allowing the assets of "criminals" to be seized without the need for any offence to be proved (or indeed, for them even to be charged). But despite all this bold talk about how they were going to boost revenue by seizing the houses, cars and bank accounts of "crims" (and other random people the police decided to target), the bill hasn't made any further progress; it hung around on the Order Paper for over a year, waiting for its first reading.

Not anymore. There's no sign of it on the latest Order Paper, and it appears to have been discharged. I'm not sure whether this is because the government couldn't find the numbers to pass it, or because they just got sick of seeing it going nowhere, but either way, it's gone.

Needless to say, I am pleased. The bill was a recipe for injustice which inevitably would have seen innocent people lose their life savings solely on suspicion, while allowing kingpins to buy their way out of jail. It would have introduced Ahmed Zaoui standards of evidence into our criminal justice system - and that is something we can do without.

(More posts on asset forfeiture can be found here).

Bob Geldof is right; we are pathetic

Bob Geldof has called the government's official development assistance "pathetic". And he's right; we are. A comparison of 2005 official development assistance spending [PDF; sortable version here] shows that we rank second lowest in the world in absolute terms, and 18th out of 22 OECD countries by percentage of GNI. While the former is understandable, most of the other countries being richer than us, the latter is not. As Bob Geldof said, this surely does not represent the spirit of the electorate.

As for Winston's response - claiming that Geldof has his facts wrong - that is even more pathetic. Geldof was entirely right: we spend a miniscule amount on aid, and far less than we have promised. Notoriously, the government won't even set a timetable to achieve that promise, and with the miniscule increase in the last budget, has effectively reneged on its own somewhat pathetic target of increasing aid to 0.35% of GDP by 2010. As for remittances and peacekeeping, these are not aid - and to argue otherwise corrupts the very idea (what next? The US counting the destruction of Iraq as "aid"? Or maybe the tanks and guns they give to Israel to murder Palestinian children?)

The one good point is that New Zealand's aid is, in fact, aid - rather than a disguised corporate welfare programme for New Zealand businesses, and that we have kept our promises to the world's poor on access to our markets. But that's not enough. We've promised 0.7% by 2015, and we should keep that promise.

As for what we can do about it, the Point Seven campaign's advice is good: write to your MP, and tell them you want to see New Zealand keep its promises. Stuff has also asked for feedback on Geldof's comments, so filling out the form here would also help. Previous comment from Labour party activists has been that the government needs to see a strong show of support from the public in order to commit to a substantial increase, and this is an opportunity to provide one.

Belarus: Kozulin jailed

Belarusian opposition candidate Alexander Kozulin has been jailed for five and a half years. His crime? Leading a demonstration demanding free and fair (rather than fixed) elections.

When a government can only maintain power by jailing its opposition, you know that its support is weak. OTOH, tyranny can hold on for a long time this way. I guess we just have to hope that the Belarusian people get sick of their dictator and run him out of town on a rail, as the rest of Eastern Europe did a decade ago...

New Fisk

Beirut waits as Syrian masters send Hezbollah allies into battle

Climate change: a U-turn on methane

I've been reading the Local Government and Environment Committee's report on the estimates for Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency [PDF], which includes a long transcript of the evidence given by Climate Change Minister David Parker. During this evidence, National MP Eric Roy asks

[W]hat is your response to those who would say that animal emissions are neutral, because they are consuming plant material that is taking in its carbon from the atmosphere anyway?

Roy's question is simply ignorant; "animal emissions" are methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times worse than the atmospheric carbon dioxide they are effectively eating, so there's nothing "neutral" about them. But Parker's answer is also revealing:

I think there are arguments to be made that, in future international negotiations, New Zealand should be trying to argue that different rules should apply to different sorts of emissions. It seems a logical negotiating position to take that if there are practical technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, you ought to expect greater reductions of carbon dioxide emissions than you would in respect of methane emissions, if there are no technological fixes. That is a position that New Zealand is adopting in international negotiations.

(Emphasis added)

Why is this interesting? Because it is a complete U-turn on our previous position. New Zealand emits a lot of methane (our per-capita methane emissions are nine times the global average), and as Parker notes, we don't see many ways of reducing it short of killing cows and throwing them in a ditch (though strangely, the Europeans have managed to make a 25% cut without such measures). So back in the 90's, when Kyoto was being negotiated, we argued very strongly that all greenhouse gases should be aggregated together, and reduction targets set accordingly, rather than each country having a target for CO₂, a target for methane, a target for nitrous oxide etc. Parker is now suggesting a complete reversal of this position, and the setting of seperate targets for methane and CO₂. Does he really think the countries we are negotiating with won't notice - or that they'll accept such transparent special pleading from a country which has repeatedly backed away from taking serious steps to meet its obligations?

Evading oversight

Parliament is in recess at the moment (which explains why its been relatively quiet around here), but some select committees have been meeting to review the Estimates of Appropriation in the recent budget. A pile of reports on these was released in the last couple of days (list here), and I've been tipped to some rather interesting criticism in the review of Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade and Vote Official Development Assistance [PDF]. Near the end of the report, there is a note on "supply of information to select committees". Here's what it says:

Some members noted that papers released to the committee in relation to questions filed as part of the estimates process were supplied stamped “Released under the Official Information Act”, carrying deletions citing various sections of the Act as grounds for withholding. This shows a serious misunderstanding of the constitutional obligations of departments of State to Parliament and its select committees. Material sought by select committees as part of the estimates examination is not sought under the Official Information Act. Such material is supplied as part of the department’s obligation to satisfy the committee on the appropriateness of the Estimates for the year. Any sensitive material which the department wishes to withhold should be identified to the committee and the reasons for the requested confidentiality provided. It is then up to the committee to determine whether to pursue the request, to modify the request, or to seek the information on terms that will meet the department’s concerns. We are concerned that such a substantial and senior agency of state such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade does not understand its obligations to Parliament.

(Emphasis added)

That's a rather mild way of pointing out a serious constitutional issue. Our system of government works on the basis that government departments are accountable to Parliament, which is in turn accountable to the public. Withholding information from a select committee breaks this chain of accountability, and makes it impossible for the public's elected representatives to exercise proper oversight over how the public's money is being spent. MFAT needs to be held to account for this attempt to evade oversight, by the Privileges Committee if necessary.

And while we're on the subject, the report notes that our Official Development Assistance is still only 0.27% of GNI (well short of the 0.7% UN target), and that MFAT expects it to increase to a mere 0.35% of GNI by 2010. We've promised to increase it to 0.7% as part of the UN Millenium Development Goals - but they're not showing much commitment. Instead, like many of the promises made to the poor recently, this one seems like it will simply be quietly forgotten...

Labour has failed the poor

I've spent some time today reading the Ministry of Social Development's New Zealand Living Standards 2004 report. The results of the survey were compared to a version done in 2000, and the comparison was unfavourable, to say the least. You've probably already read the highlights in the paper, but I think they bear repeating, just so their full impact can be felt. Firstly, here's how the overview report [PDF] characterised the economic changes between the two surveys:

Between 2000 and 2004, New Zealand showed a pattern of broad-based growth. Real Gross Domestic product grew at an average 3.7% per year. Unemployment fell from 6.1% in June 2000 to 4.0% in June 2004, the lowest rate in 17 years... Overall, the number of income-tested beneficiaries fell by 44,000 (12%). The number of Unemployment Beneficiaries halved...

Median incomes rose 6.6% over the period and income poverty [defined relative to 1998 median equivalent family income - I/S] fell from 22% to 19% of the population between June 2001 and June 2004...

Given all this good news, you would have expected New Zealanders' living standards to have improved, and for there to be fewer people living in poverty. However, the 2004 survey [PDF] found that the opposite had occurred. Over this period:

• the average living standard of all New Zealanders fell slightly;
• the proportion living in conditions categorised as "severe hardship" rose from 5% to 8%;
• the proportion of children in "severe hardship" rose from 7.9% to 14.1%;
• the proportion of Maori in "severe hardship" rose from 7.5% to 16.9%;
• the proportion of Pacific Peoples in "severe hardship" rose from 15.2% to 27.3%;
• the proportion of those on low incomes (in the bottom third of the income distribution) in "severe hardship" increased from 10.1% to 16.9%; and
• the proportion of those on income-tested benefits in "severe hardship" increased from 16.7% to 26.1%.

And all of this happened under a Labour government.

To head off the usual complaints about poverty statistics from the right, this is not a relative poverty measure. The Economic Living Standard Index (ELSI) used here asks people basic questions about whether they can afford food, clothing, medicine, or "social participation" - things like whether they have warm bedding or can heat their houses, whether they've put off buying food or medicine because they can't afford it, or whether they can afford to give their kids birthday presents or have their family round for a meal every so often. It is regarded as an extremely robust tool for the measurement of absolute deprivation. While there is some self-rating involved, this does not seem to have distorted the results in any way; neither was there any discernable effect from "consumerism" or changing expectations about access to consumption (though given the goods involved, this was unlikely). In short, this is a real decline in living standards, manifested as a real increase in the number of people who are cold, sick, and hungry.

The government has attempted to spin this by arguing that the survey data predates the introduction of the Working For Families package, and that this will have resulted in a measurable improvement. And they're almost certainly right about this to some extent - greater access to childcare and the accommodation supplement will make a difference. But the vast bulk of Working For Families is focused on the working poor and the middle classes, not those on benefits. Labour's "solution" to the hardship faced by beneficiaries is for them to get a job - something which, to their credit, they've made a lot more worthwhile by improving the minimum wage and enabling unions to fight for pay increases. But while this works for those on the unemployment benefit (at least if you ignore the fact that we have a monetary policy which commits us to a certain level of unemployment), it does nothing to help those on the sickness and invalids benefits, who by definition cannot work. These people - and thanks to the stresses of modern society, there are an increasing number of them - are being effectively left behind, and suffering a decline in living standards as a result.

(The same could be said of beneficiaries more generally. While Labour has shared the fruits of growth far more broadly than National did in the 90's, those on benefits have been effectively excluded, and there has been a significant erosion in benefit levels relative to minimum-wage jobs. And the difference is even worse when you consider the enormous increase in housing costs.)

The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that Labour has failed the poor. While it has delivered a lot to a great many people, it has failed in its most basic duty to work to improve the lot of those at the bottom of our society. I have no doubt that National would have been worse (hell, National wouldn't even be collecting these statistics), but this is still an indictment of Labour's term in office, and one it will take a long time to live down.