In the ballot XIV

Another batch of Member's Bills currently in the ballot. Previous batches are indexed here:

Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill (Darien Fenton): Not technically in the ballot anymore, as it has been drawn - but its not on Knowledge Basket yet either, and there's been little fanfare about it being drawn. The bill would amend (and rename) the Minimum Wage Act 1983 to create a minimum rate of remuneration for contracts for services, such as those being increasingly used to evade employment law at the bottom end of the labour market, or governing the work of people like circular deliverers, or tradesmen such as tilers or painters. it would also extend the jurisdiction of the Employment Relations Authority to allow the minimum to be enforced.

It is unclear how Taito Phillip Field feels about this bill.

Regulatory Responsibility Bill (Rodney Hide): This bill would require all laws and regulations to comply with a set of principles of "responsible regulatory management". The principles themselves are heavily based in Libertarian ideology, and require that (for example) Acts and regulations preserve "freedom of contract and the right to property" and "preserve and respect causes of action at common law that have provided long-standing protection against harm caused by strangers". They would also bar any changes to existing structures of legal rights unless it would serve an "essential public interest" (defined in narrow economic terms), and require full compensation (including a share of any future benefits) for any "impairment" of rights. It is, in other words, Gordon Copeland's New Zealand Bill of Rights (Private Property Rights) Amendment Bill on steroids, and while it is not legally enforceable (unlike Copeland's bill), the practical effect would be to make it very difficult for the government to regulate or legislate to, for example, limit pollution or redress existing inequalities unless it could be shown to be financially profitable to do so.

Airport Authorities (Sale to the Crown) Amendment Bill (Darren Hughes): Darren Hughes represents Otaki, and one of the concerns in his electorate is Paraparaumu Airport. This was flogged off for a song by the National government in 1995, in violation of its duties under the Treaty of Waitangi and the Public Works Act, and much of it has now been onsold for windfall profits by a succession of buyers, to the anger of the local community (who are seeing their airport disappear) and former owners and local Maori. The bill would aim to prevent this sort of thing happening in the future, by amending the Airport Authorities Act 1966 to provide for the Crown to have first right of purchase on any airport land when it came up for sale, thus giving the government the option of purchase to keep an airport running. It would also require airport companies to consult with the Ministry of Transport over their duties under the Public Works Act, which should ensure that land taken under the Act is returned to its original owners rather than being onsold.

As usual, I'll have more bills as they trickle in.

New Fisk

Smoke signals from the battle of Bint Jbeil send a warning to Israel

(This seems to include his previous piece as well)

Things to go to in Wellington

The Wellington Palestine Group is holding a public meeting on Monday to discss Israel's bombing of Gaza and Lebanon:

When: Monday, 31st July, 19:30 - 20:30
Where: Crossways Community Centre , Mt Victoria

They are also holding a protest next Friday (August 4th), starting from the Cenotaph on Lambton Quay at 12:30. If you're in Wellington, and angry about what is going on in the Middle East, then this is a good opportunity to show it.

Drawn

The usual ballot for Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn:

• Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill (Darien Fenton)
• Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill (Nick Smith)

Unfortunately, I haven't covered either of them; I've been hassling Darien Fenton without response for months, while Smith's bill is a new one (though possibly related to Colin King's Resource Management (Overdue Consents) Amendment Bill). There were also two other news bills: the Country of Origin Food Labelling Bill, from Sue Kedgley, and the Health and Safety in Employment (ILO Convention 155) Amendment Bill from Sue Moroney. Both bills seem self-explanatory from their titles (ILO Convention 155 governes safety in the workplace, and can be found here), but as usual I'll try and get the full details for an In the ballot post.

Labour's bills seem to be slowly trickling out now (they've had a new one in each of the last few ballots), while National is still a long way from its goal of having one for every MP. And there's still nothing from the Maori Party...

New Fisk

Israeli missiles had clearly pierced the very centre of the red cross on the roof of each ambulance

Last time I went through Otaki or Waikanae, there was a large billboard for the Red Cross, saying that the symbol meant "don't shoot" in a hundred or so languages. I guess they now need to add a note down the bottom: "except Hebrew".

Busy

Bloggage will be light for the next couple of days, as I'm fairly busy. I will however be covering Thursday's Members Bill ballot sometime tomorrow evening.

Responding to his electorate

So, US Democrats are outraged at Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's opposition to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, asking "which side is he on in the war on terror?" The answer is his peoples'; al-Maliki is accurately representing the views of his electorate, who like the Lebanese have firsthand experience of what it is like to be pulverised by American-made bombs and artillery shells and collectively punished by an occupying army for the actions of a few among them (see Fallujah). Those US Senators are responding to their electorates too, but the stakes are rather higher for al-Maliki. If Harry Reid or Dick Durbin annoy their voters, then given the benefits of incumbency in the US political system, the worst they'll have to do is raise some more cash to buy some more attack spots whenever they're next up for re-election. Wheras al-Maliki could literally find himself strung up as a collaborator.

Of course, the US didn't spend billions of dollars and 2,500 American lives to have an Iraqi leader who represents his electorate - and one of the Senators is even explicit about it:

"Part of the reason that America was sold on Iraq was to have a staunch ally in the region -- a democratic ally that would back our policies," Schumer said.

Well, it looks like the Iraqis don't want to be the US's clients and faithfully spout the party line whenever America wants them to. So what is the US going to do about it? Bomb them?

Twenty minutes into the future...

Max Headroom was one of the few TV shows to successfully take cyberpunk onto the small screen. Sure, it was low budget, the graphics were cheesy, and it now looks distinctly dated, but the plots they came up with in their setting "twenty minutes into the future" were classic cyberpunk tales of technological and social dystopia, which also commented on the soulless media world of 1987. One of them which I particularly remember involved television networks paying terrorists to blow things up so they'd have something to report on - the media creating the story.

(Yes, I know. The epsiode was about an Evil Rival TV Network who went beyond paying terrorists to blow things up to create news, to paying them to fake blowing things up to create news. Media ethics were somewhat twisted twenty minutes into the future...)

What's disturbing is that it seems to almost be happening. Three men were today acquitted by a British jury of a plot to buy "red mercury" (a mythical material which seems not to really exist) supposedly for the purpose of building a "dirty bomb". The twist? The entire deal was set up as a fake news sting by News of the World "reporter" Mazher Mahmood, the "fake sheikh", who then tipped the police to it. He got his headlines, complete with front page story about how "dangerous terrorists" had been busted by his "newspaper" - and his dupes got to spend two years in jail awaiting trial. Breakthru-TV would be proud...

Dissolution in the Cooks

The Cook Islands will be going to the polls sometime in the next three months after the government called a snap-election. But what's interesting is the dubious circumstances in which this happened, and what it suggests about constitutional structures. Last week, the Cook Islands government lost a by-election to the opposition Cook Islands Party - and with it, its majority. The Cook Islands Parliament was supposed to meet today for a vote of no confidence in the government, to be followed by a confidence vote for a new one. But rather than take its electoral medicine, the government had the Queen's Representative dissolve Parliament and call new elections. As a result, it was not just able to sidestep the confidence motion and cling to power for a further 90 days as a caretaker regime; it was also able to effectively nullify the results of the by-election it had just held by immediately ordering another one. Clearly, if the voters get it "wrong", they'll have to vote again until they get it "right"!

This is a ridiculous situation, which clearly illustrates the defects in the Cooks' constitutional structure - and also in ours. Like the Cook Islands, we have an appointed head of state with the power to dissolve Parliament and call elections, who is bound to exercise that power on the advice of the Prime Minister (in fact, according to the Cabinet Manual, it is the PMs sole prerogative to do so). The problem is that this power can clearly be abused, as it is being in the Cooks. Where a government loses confidence mid-term, the Opposition should at least have a chance to form a replacement - but instead the country is rushing to the polls.

The difference between the Cooks and New Zealand is that here, our Governor-General has signalled that, when confidence is lost, the power to call elections is covered by the "caretaker convention", and requires the support of the majority of the House. The problem is that this has only been signalled in a Viceregal speech - we have no hard and fast law on it, and a future Governor-General could easily change their mind.

The solution to this is codification - to pass a law stipulating exactly what happens when confidence is lost (or at least covering the obvious bases). Otherwise, we might one day find ourselves in the situation the Cooks is in now - heading to the polls in an unnecessary election because those in power have decided the voters got it wrong.

Not just about Treaty clauses

When Labour chose to rely on New Zealand First for confidence and supply, it knew it would have to swallow some dead rats. One of those rats is on the menu tomorrow, in the form of Doug Woolerton's Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill - and Labour's Maori MPs are already gagging. And who can blame them? The bill is an attack on Maori, which seeks to strip all references to the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation (including, ironically, several formal apologies in Treaty Settlement bills, the repeal of which could cast those settlements into doubt). But its worse than that, because the bill wouldn't just repeal the various "Treaty clauses". It would also repeal the jurisdiction of the Waitangi Tribunal to consider some claims, and to compensate some successful claimants.

The guts of the bill is section 4(1), which repeals a long list of enactments. Exactly what they do can be seen in the relevant bills digest. But right at the end, by which time everyone would have stopped paying attention, is this little bit:

(za) section 6(1)(d), section 8(1), and section 8HB of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975.

What do those clauses do? Section 6 of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 establishes the basic jurisdiction of the Waitangi Tribunal to hear claims. Section 6 (1) (d) includes in this jurisdiction

any act done or omitted at any time on or after the 6th day of February 1840, or proposed to be done or omitted, by or on behalf of the Crown

This may be bad drafting - the clause is encapsulated by conditions which include a reference to the "principles of the Treaty", and repealing it alone would not prevent the Tribunal from considering past ordinances and regulations, or proposed policies or practices - but "act[s] done or omitted" is somewhat broader than that, and in the context of the other changes, the repeal is somewhat suspicious. Repealing the encapsulating clause would effectively strip the Waitangi Tribunal of all jurisdiction.

Section 8 allows the Tribunal to consider legislation referred to it by resolution of the House, or by a government Minister, to determine whether it is "contrary to the principles of the Treaty". To my knowledge it has never been used (the government will not refer legislation itself), but is in principle the same as the requirement of the Attorney-General to advise on consistency with the BORA.

Section 8HB allows the Tribunal to recommend the return of crown forestry land subject to a well-founded Treaty claim. Repealing it would effectively mean that some claimants might not be able to be compensated by the return of their land, unless it is vested in an SOE.

These aren't "Treaty clauses" by any stretch of the imagination. While they contain the phrase "principles of the Treaty of Waitangi", they don't govern the broad interpretation of legislation. Instead, they actually do things - and things that actually matter. Either NZ First has been doing some very sloppy drafting, or they are attempting to put one over on Parliament. And given the absence of this clause from the version of the bill which was put to the House in June last year, I'd suspect the latter.

And worst of all, Labour is going to vote for this. They have no choice, but it still stinks to high heaven. Regardless of whether it passes or fails, the Maori Party will crucify them for it - and Labour will deserve every bit of vituperation they get over it.

The death of Doha?

Negotiations on the WTO's Doha round have collapsed in acrimony after the US refused to give ground on farm subsidies, and almost certainly will not be completed this year. Which, given that Bush's blanket authority to negotiate trade deals expires soon, may mean that it will not be completed until sometime in 2009, if at all; given the parochial interests of the US Senate, no WTO deal would survive ratification, and countries would be foolish to adjust policy based on toothless promises from a President who cannot back up his decisions. This means that the Doha round is now all but dead - or if not dead, "somewhere between intensive care and the crematorium" (to quote the Indian representative).

This is bad news for New Zealand, and not exactly good news for the world's poor, but I'm not entirely upset by it either. While a rules-based, multilateral trading regime which allows poorer nations free access to rich nations' markets is absolutely vital to lifting the poor out of poverty, such a regime must be fair - and what the US was proposing wasn't. Instead, they were demanding that every dollar less they spent on pork for their farmers was matched by a dollar's worth of new access to developing country markets (and the dollars they were proposing to "sacrifice" weren't the important ones either). In other words, it was the same old scam of demanding a one-sided deal in which the rich get access to poorer nations' economies, while effectively giving up nothing in return. And faced with that sort of bullshit, I think the poor should simply walk away, just as they have done in the past. This time, though, it was the US that walked, rather than give an inch to the consensus the poorer nations had built.

The tragedy here is that the US has scuttled a deal that, while it did not promise anything near what it should have, poorer nations were at least broadly happy with and willing to build on. On the plus side, at least things didn't get any worse, and now we have an opportunity to start from scratch to build a truly fair trade deal, one that works for the poor, rather than just the rich.

Titillation rather than substance

Lawyer Rob Moodie is back in the news, this time for alleging that the judiciary is dominated by a corrupt old boy network. But rather than focusing on his allegations, the good old Dominion Post instead went to town on the way he was protesting against it: by cross-dressing in court. It's a perfect case of titillation rather than substance - and somewhere, in the process, the actual story seems to have been lost.

Here's a hint to the Dom-Posts editors: guys sometimes cross-dress. It may not be common, it may be unintentionally funny, but in this day and age, I'd hardly think of it as "news"...

Update: Moodie's dress sense has now made the Washington Post - still with the same focus on titillation. I guess nothing gets the headlines like a guy in drag...

Something to go to in Wellington

The Council for International Development's pointseven campaign is hosting a debate on New Zealand's level of foreign aid and whether we need to commit to a timetable to achieve our promise of giving 0.7% of GDP in aid. Speakers include former NZAID Minister Marion Hobbs, National's John Hayes (a former MFAT official), former Progressive MP Matt Robson (who established NZAID as a seperate agency), and political commentator Matthew Hooten.

When: Thursday 24th August, 6pm.
Where: Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus, Victoria University (that's the building right over from the train station).
How much: Free.

Should be interesting.

Update: Added note about Matt Robson. I know he's been a strong advocate for more aid, but I couldn't remember exactly what he was a Minister of, other than Corrections.

New Fisk

A war crime?

Fisk on National Radio

Robert Fisk was interviewed on Nine To Noon this morning. You can listen to the audio here.

Stick them in a ghetto where we won't have to see them

One of the consistent strands of the National Party over the last two decades (and arguably longer) is that they advocate for taking from those who need, in order to give to those who have. It was apparent in their programme of vicious cuts to public services in order to fund tax cuts in the 90's, as well as their extravagent promises of tax cuts at the last election. And its apparent in the latest piece of education policy announced by Bill English over the weekend:

Education spokesman Bill English says National would wind back the policy of mainstreaming children with severe disabilities and of inclusion of students with behavioural problems.

He told the party's annual conference in Christchurch over the weekend that disruptive behaviour in classes made it difficult for teachers and was the biggest obstacle to children's learning.

And their solution to this "problem" is to stick those students in an educational ghetto, where they won't disrupt the learning of National voters' precious middle-class darlings. The educational chances of those in greatest need will be sacrificed for the benefit of a those who need it least.

Its even more obscene when you consider that, according to the Principal's Federation - people in a position to know, unlike Bill English - mainstreaming is "working reasonably well". But why pay attention to facts, when you can appeal to prejudice to attack some of the most vulnerable people in society?

Authorised and routine

Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last year, the US government has adopted a consistent line on the torture and abuse of prisoners in its care. Such treatment is an aberration, they say, the product of a few sadists and "bad apples" who will be punished for their crimes.

Unfortunately, it just isn't true. The rot goes deeper than that.

Over the past year, Human Rights Watch has interviewed soldiers who witnessed and in some cases participated in the torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq. And one thing is absolutely consistent from their stories: these activities were authorised and routine, carried out with the full knowledge and support of at least the local chain of command. According to the report's summary:

In all three locations, soldiers witnessed seriously abusive treatment and interrogation of detainees, including beatings, psychological torture of varying kinds, and other physical torture and mistreatment. At Camp Nama, for instance, detainees were regularly stripped naked, subjected to sleep deprivation and extreme cold, placed in painful stress positions, and beaten. At FOB Tiger, they were held without food or water for over 24 hours at a time, in temperatures sometimes exceeding 135 degrees Fahrenheit, and then taken into interrogations where they were beaten and subjected to threats. At Mosul, detainees were regularly subject to extreme sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme cold, forced exercises, and were threatened with military guard dogs.

In all three locations, the abuses appear to have been part of a regularized process of detainee abuse—“standard operating procedure,” in the words of some of the soldiers.

As usual, its worse when you read the actual details. The creepiest bit is Camp Nama, where in what seems to be a deliberate attempt to prevent soldiers from identifying one another to a future prosecution, there were no ranks, uniforms, or surnames; everyone from the CO down was on a first-name basis. For the military, this is unusual, to say the least.

More evidence that the abuse was condoned is seen in the treatment of those who complained about what was going on. They were discouraged, ignored, and ultimately threatened if they pressed the issue.

HRW is recommending an independent commission to investigate detainee abuse, as well as independent prosecutors to ensure that those responsible are held accountable, all the way up the chain of command. But the chances of that happening under the reign of the President for torture are pretty remote.

New Fisk

A gripping diary of one week in the life and death of Beirut
Once again, truth is the first casualty of war

Climate Change: Approaching the tipping point in the Amazon

Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers warned of a number of "tipping points" in the global climate system which could dramatically accelerate climate change. One of these was the Amazon rain forest. While we think of the Amazon as one of the wettest places on Earth, isotope studies have shown that it effectively creates its own rain. Moisture blown over from the Atlantic Ocean is constantly absorbed and effectively transported west by transpiration (and then ultimately flows east again in the rivers). Any disruption in this cycle - either in the amount of moisture input, or in the level of transpiration - could therefore have dramatic effects, and models have predicted that the Amazon could disappear and turn into a desert if we see the sorts of temperature rises and climate shifts we are expecting if CO₂ emissions continue unchecked. And this in turn would release vast amounts of carbon from rotting trees and warmer soils.

The models Flannery talked about predicted that this could start happening around 2040, and be complete by 2100. But it might be happening sooner than we think - and the culprit is drought. A story in today's Independent (and syndicated to the Herald) reports that the Amazon is highly sensitive to drought, and could suddenly transform to a desert if severe drought persists for two successive years. Here's the interesting bit:

When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 - by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain - he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes.

The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty.

In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived.

But in year three, they started dying.

Beginning with the tallest the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun.

By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming.

Instead they began accelerating the climate change.

How much acceleration? According to the article, the Amazon is estimated to contain 90 billion tons of CO₂ - and that if this was released, it would increase the rate of global warming by 50 per cent.

And now for the worse news: the Amazon looks set to be entering its second consecutive year of severe drought.

What's worrying is that, of the identified tipping points - Greenland melting, the Gulf Stream shutting down, the Amazon drying up, West Antarctica breaking lose, and Siberia emitting its vast amount of stored methane - we're getting strong warning signs from all of them. And any of them will speed up the process even further, making it far more likely that the others will happen.

But what's really worrying is that, while we know that these tipping points exist and that positive feedback is a real possibility, we don't know exactly where the thresholds are - and given the inertia in the climate system, we may already have passed them.

Donations in disguise

Most of the attention in the British "cash for peerages" scandal has focused on the effective purchase of seats in the House of Lords in exchange for large loans - something which is illegal under the UK's Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. But there's another aspect as well: the violation of electoral funding laws. The UK's Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 requires political parties to declare not only political donations, but also any loan not made on commercial terms. And it is now turning out that the "loans" made by those seeking titles seem to fall into this category. The Labour Party has not paid a cent of interest on these loans, despite a nominal interest bill of 436,000 pounds. Meanwhile, it has paid 505,000 pounds of interest on loans Labour officials describe as "commercial, pay-back stuff". The strong implication is that these loans are simply donations in disguise, to be written off at a later date or simply never called due, and that Blair's Labour Party conspired to evade the law - a crime with a penalty of up to a year in jail. So much for "whiter than white" and cleaning up government...