A non-denial denial

The Greens confronted the government about their shameful position at the Vienna climate change talks in Parliament yesterday, asking whether they could

confirm that New Zealand’s delegation to the United Nations climate change talks in Vienna tried to block non-binding emission reduction targets of 25 to 40 percent for industrialised countries; if so, was this delegation acting on his instructions or instructions from a member of the Cabinet?

(Corrected gender to match what was actually read out)

In response, the Minister denied the claims, accused NGOs of getting it wrong, and then said this:

I can confirm that the representatives of the New Zealand Government explicitly noted that we are willing to take on binding targets.

But note what's missing here: any mention of the level of those targets. While supposedly denying that the government had opposed the 25% - 40% reduction target, Parker was in fact issuing a "non-denial denial", which carefully circumvented the facts at issue and denied only by implication. Which as Green co-leader Russel Norman points out, is as much as an admission of guilt. If they'd actually supported the target, Parker would have simply said so, and that would have been the end of the matter.

So, to reiterate: the government are two-faced, lying, ratfink bastards. And if we want real progress on climate change, the only way to get it is to ensure that the next government is utterly beholden to the Greens.

Economics and torture

Over on the Visible Hand in Economics, they are confirming the reputation of economists as deranged sociopaths and seriously asking why we don't torture people rather than imprisoning them:

Is this a case where economists are as guilty as anyone of shying away from an efficient solution because of the moral biases involved? Or is there a real reason why torture is shunned by our society while, simultaneously, calls for harsher prison sentences grow ever stronger?

The reason we don't is the same as the reason we don't allow people to rape children no matter how much they are willing to pay for the privilege: because it is wrong. Which is a roundabout way of saying that there are things beyond economics, and "real reasons" for decision-making other than narrow economic ones.

As for "moral biases", economics would do well to remove the beam from its own eye, and recognise that it is in fact a rather vulgur monetarist implementation of utilitarianism and hence loaded with moral preconceptions (some quite questionable), rather than the morally-neutral, unbiased science they like to paint it as.

A small miracle

Oh my god - the National Party has actually released policy! It's just a discussion document [PDF] on the aged-care sector, hardly the most vital or exciting of subjects, but its rather more than they've risked previously.

As for the policy itself, most of it is general statements of motherhood and apple pie. The care of the elderly is a core health service. Caregivers should be highly trained. We should use technology to improve access and assistance for those at home. But two points stand out. Firstly, while demanding that caregivers be highly trained, National is opposed to them being paid for those skills, and opposes collective bargaining in the sector. So, while ostensibly about improving care for the elderly, their real focus is cost-cutting, union-bashing, and increasing the corporate profits. And secondly, their "solution" to the need for more residential care facilities in the long-term is public-private partnerships - a policy which has been a disaster overseas, and which is aimed more at lining the pockets of their corporate cronies than at ensuring the best care for the elderly.

So, forestry, privatisation, and now elder-care. Does National have a policy which isn't about looting the state to repay its donors?

Election Funding: Hearings

The Herald reports (in passing) that the Justice & Electoral Committee will start hearing oral submissions on the Electoral Finance Bill tomorrow. This was expected, given the high number of submissions and the need to get the bill reported back (and passed) before Christmas. But it is a reminder to get those submissions in. You have until Friday.

Members Day

Today is a Members' Day, and the government has once again delayed its local legislation to allow swift passage for Sue Bradford's Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill. Absent some major upset, the bill will pass its third reading today, so as of 1 April next year young people will only have to work for three months or 200 hours (whichever is shorter) before being eligible for the full adult minimum wage. It's not full equality, but a definite step forward, and a stunning victory for Sue Bradford. Not many MPs get a member's bill through when they're not in government (the anti-smacking bill has been the only one so far this term), so to get two through in one term is quite an achievement. And with her Corrections (Mothers With Babies) Amendment Bill still in the pipeline, she might yet be able to make it three.

The House should also be able to make a start on the second reading of Sue Kedgley's Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill, which also seems set to pass in amended form. There's no chance of a ballot, though, and with local bills and legislation due back from committee, we might not realistically see one until October.

Auckland politics hits the blogosphere

City Vision now has a campaign blog: City Vision Talk.

Trading carbon on the web

Meridian energy has begun trading carbon credits over TradeMe. The credits are from the Te Apiti wind farm, and CDM Gold Standard certified, which means they're as solid as you can get from the voluntary market (the only thing better is actual CDM credit). It's a good move to help push the voluntary market in New Zealand, but its also helping to set the price of such credits in New Zealand - and on that front its quite interesting. As of 20:00 tonight, the bidding on the three auctions (of 20, 20, and 1,000 tons) was at $1,000, $1,500, and $3,500 respectively. So the price is somewhere between NZ$35 NZ$3.50 and NZ$75 per ton. By comparisom, the cost of buying credits directly through CarbonZero (who aren't CDM gold certified because they deal in forests, but again are as solid as you can get and meet Kyoto requirments) is NZ$33.75 per ton. I guess some of the bidders don't know that though.

The other interesting point is that the prices we're seeing here are two to five times the prices used by the government in assessing the cost of its inaction under the Kyoto Protocol (Treasury uses a lowball price of around $14/ton). The government is relying on cheap international credit, rather than domestic emissions reductions, for that, but its telling that so far they apparently haven't bought any. If they actually know of any source of CDM or Kyoto credits at that price, then they should probably get cracking and buy it before the price increases.

Update: And at 9:00 the next morning the price is now between $75 and $100 $80 per ton. What crack are these people on?

Update 2: Mean culpa, mea culpa, ego can non tribuo (?). Or, in English, I can't bloody divide, and am out by a factor of ten on the business package (they're actually getting quite a good deal). I blame lack of coffee.

Still bitter

Mike Moore is at it again, this time hooking into Jim Anderton for having the temerity to point out that his last "contribution" was nothing but hypocritical random abuse from a bitter ex-leader. In doing so, Moore rather proves Anderton's point; his column reads more like the outpourings of a troll from Kiwiblog's comments section. Which suggests the obvious solution: maybe Moore should take up blogging? Because on his curent output, he'd fit right in down in the sewer.

There's also a supreme irony in seeing newspapers which complain about "barely literate" bloggers publishing this crap. So much for being "gatekeepers" with quality control...

Looting the state

Parliament is back this week, and the opposition is continuing its attacks on the government's management of the public health system. This is a bit rich coming from a party which drastically cut health services when it was last in power, to the extent that we had third world diseases rampant in Auckland and the gap between Maori and Pakeha life expectancies grew by two years. But apart from that, we're also entitled to ask what National would do about it. Unfortunately, their answer isn't very pleasant.

Firstly, National campaigned last election on a 90's style platform of cutting public access to health care in order to fund tax cuts for the rich. They've also opposed proper pay for health professionals, meaning that they want to see more doctors and nurses crossing the Tasman in search of higher wages, and more staff shortages in our hospitals. Oh, and they support making more use of private hospitals by contracting out - a move which is inherently more expensive than performing operations in-house, as it has to also pay for the provider's profit over and above the costs, and which is aimed primarily at funnelling public money into the private pockets of National's wealthy donors and cronies.

More recently, John Key has been talking about using public private partnerships to fund new infrastructure, including hospitals. For those who don't know, a "public private partnership" (PPP) is the new style of privatisation. Rather than selling an asset, the government contracts out its management to a private company. Alternatively, private companies construct new assets (such as hospitals) and lease them back to the government. In both cases, the fees are exorbitant, and the government typically bears all of the risks if the contractor screws up. The system is widely used in the UK, where it is known as the Private Finance Initiative, and as George Monbiot points out in the Guardian today, it has been a complete disaster. Here's an example of how it has worked in the NHS:

The problem was that much of what the NHS wanted to do was not attractive to private financiers. In Coventry, for example, it had been planning to refurbish its two hospitals at a cost of £30m. But its analysts realised that business would not be interested. The scheme was too small, and there was no scope for the financial innovation that could produce serious profits. As a confidential report by the local health authority showed in 1998, the health service redesigned its scheme to make it more attractive to private capital. Instead of refurbishing the two existing hospitals, it would ask private business to knock them down and build a new one - the University hospital. This would cost not £30m but £174m. The health experts who wrote the confidential report predicted that in order to find this money, the hospital trust would have to cut both beds and services. They have just been proved right.

Did I say £174m? I beg your pardon. By January 2002 the price had risen to £290m. A month later it reached £311m. By the end of that year it had grown to £330m. In 2003 it was estimated at £370m. In March 2007, the Birmingham Post reported that the final cost was £410m. This year the hospital trust must find £56m, covering repayments and service fees, to hand to the private consortium. The annual cost will rise in line with the retail price index for 30 years.

As a result, the hospital has had to slash staff and services, close wards, sack 100 people (with another 200 - 300 on the way), and impose user charges. And all in order to meet the guaranteed payment for their new hospital, which they didn't need to build in the first place. The people of Coventry now have one hospital which is at the bottom of the national league tables, where previously they had two good ones. But the financiers have gotten rich, which is apparently all that matters.

I think its clear from the above that National doesn't have a solution to the problems with our health system. Instead, as with so much else they do, their policy is really all about looting the state and transferring wealth from the poor to the rich - just as it was in the 90's. And on the issue of health, I think the public of New Zealand deserve something better than that.

Character assassination

Since releasing Ali Panah yesterday, Minister of Immigration David Cunliffe has embarked on a systematic campaign of character assassination, hinting darkly whenever interviewed that there is something bad in Panah's past but then retreating under cover of the Immigration Act and saying that he is legally forbidden from discussing the details of a particular case. However, while Cunliffe is so bound, the media aren't, and details of Panah's appeals before the RSAA have been openly discussed in the Herald, on Radio New Zealand, and in a piece in Salient yesterday. The long and the short of it is that the RSAA believed that Panah's conversion in South Korea was not genuine, and that (as a result of this finding) his subsequent religious activity in New Zealand were "calculated for the sole purpose of advancing his refugee claim".

This may help the Minister feel morally superior, but it's quite irrelevant. Even if we accept the RSAA's original findings (and I'm not sure that we should), what matters in assessing the danger Ali Panah faces if returned to Iran is not his religious beliefs then, but his religious beliefs now. And on this, the evidence is quite clear: Panah is a committed Christian. His friends think so, his church thinks so, the Archbishop of New Zealand thinks so. He talks about his god, goes to church (which is more than most New Zealand Christians ever do), and tries to convert people. If this evidence was described to us about any other person, we'd have no trouble saying that "yes, they're a Christian". But because Panah is a refugee claimant, he must be just "making it up". There's a word for that attitude, and it is "racism".

Key and Cameron

In her blog today, the Herald's Audrey Young links to Andrew Rawnsley's piece in the Guardian about the trials of UK Conservative leader David Cameron. Elected as a "modernising conservative", Cameron initially gained some success in the polls by seekign to take the Tories away from the bitter legacy of Thatcher and back towards the political centre (and incidentally, to the left of New labour under Blair). But after facing setbacks in the polls since Blair's departure, he has swung sharply to the right and focused on the usual Tory fixations of tax cuts, crime, and immigration. While this has drawn applause from the tabloids and the unreconstructed conservatives in his party, it also seems to be a recipe for electoral disaster. As Rawnsley points out, the Tories have fought three elections on those issues - and lost all three. With Cameron following the same path, that could become four.

Young's contribution is to point out that Key has in many ways modelled himself on Cameron, and has pursued the same path of dragging his party towards the centre rather from its previous extreme right-wing agenda under Don Brash. The difference is that this strategy is working in New Zealand.

My question though is whether it will continue to. The polls are likely to narrow as the election approaches, and this may see Key facing the same pressure from his right as Cameron has. It will be interesting to see then whether he sticks to the centre ground, or swerves hard right in an effort to appease his "base". The pressure on Key to do the latter is likely to be intense, firstly because National's major donors are the same free market radicals who bankrolled Labour and then National in the 80's and 90's and want to restart the Revolution, and secondly because his front bench is still stacked with the toxic legacy of the 90's. Bill English, Tony Ryall, Murray McCully, Lockwood Smith, Nick Smith and Maurice Williamson all held key positions in the Bolger and Shipley governments which ruined our society. None have resiled from the policies they pursued then or apologised for the damage they caused, and all appear to be unrconstructed Douglasites. While some may have got the message that their policies of tax cuts for the rich funded by privatisation and cuts to health and education for the poor are pure poison with the electorate, some are still True Believers under the delusion that if they just shout louder we'll all forget what those policies did to us and come round.

The second question is how credible Key's efforts to soften National's image can be when the party is still financially and politically dominated by Revolutionaries. And looking at their policy of strategic emptiness, of fudging their position in an attempt to be all things to all people (and incidentally hide their real intentions), I think the answer is "not very". If National really has changed, then Key should have no trouble in stating clearly that he will not seek to restart the Revolution or pursue 90's style policies. The fact that he hasn't speaks IMHO speaks volumes about his intentions.

Ali Panah granted bail

Ali Reza Panah, the Iranian refugee detained without trial for 20 months, has reportedly been granted bail:

A hunger-striking Iranian man who faces deportation from New Zealand has been granted bail.

Ali Panah has been on hunger strike for 53 days in protest against efforts to deport him to Iran, where he says he will be persecuted due to his conversion to Christianity.

[...]

Mr Panah was this afternoon released on bail at a hearing in North Shore District Court, Radio New Zealand reported.

The Department of Labour did not oppose his release.

Mr Panah was given strict bail conditions by the court including that he is to stay at his vicar's house and he is to resume eating.

I guess the government realised that if he died, people were going to lay the corpse on their doorstep.

This is good news, but its not victory. That will only come when we cease our indefensible practice of indefinite detention without trial and accept our human rights obligation not to return converts to religious persecution in Iran. There are still two more Iranian converts who have been similarly detained - one of them for over two years. Isn't it time we released them too?

Support Ali Panah

Amnesty International has begun a campaign in support of Ali Reza Panah and other Iranian converts to Christianity currently being denied refugee status and indefinitely detained:

Amnesty International's position is to oppose the return of proven Christian converts, as any such return would be unsafe.

Amnesty International believes any such return could see New Zealand in breach of its international human rights obligations under the Convention Against Torture and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights to which it is signatory

In cases of proven Christian converts Amnesty International recommends that individuals be provided with a "complementary form of protection", which would allow them to reside and work in New Zealand until such time as it is safe for them to return home.

[...]

What you can do
Write to or phone the office of the Minister of Immigration, David Cunliffe. If writing copy in your local MP. See this link for contact details: http://www.labour.org.nz/labour_team/mps/mps/david_cunliffe/index.html

1. Highlight Amnesty's position on the return of Christian converts to Iran
2. Call for proven Christian converts to be offered a complementary form of protection here in New Zealand until such time as the situation in Iran improves.
3. Point out that any such return could see New Zealand in breach of its international obligations under the Torture Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Additionally phone, visit or write to your local MP to raise concerns and ask for them to be forwarded to Mr Cunliffe.

If you don't know who your local MP is, Parliament has a list which you can sort by electorate here. Further information about human rights in Iran and the Iranian government's repression of religious minorities can be found here and here.

Is Labour going to let Ali Panah die?

Ali Reza Panah is now on the 53rd day of his hunger strike against his indefinte detention under immigration laws. According to Wikipedia, the estimated limit for a hunger strike is 60 days. People have lasted longer (the world record is 94 days), but its not likely. So, if his hunger strike continues, then sometime in the next two or three weeks Ali Reza Panah will likely starve to death.

What I'm wondering is whether the Labour Party is willing to see that happen. Are they so bereft of compassion that they will let a man die, just to prove that they are "hard", and that we are not a "soft touch" for refugees?

If so, then they will have finally and absolutely proven themselves to be a party without a soul.

Three day blitz

It seems the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies study was right: the US is preparing a massive three-day blitz on Iran, with the aim of taking out its entire military:

The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

As with Iraq, what happens after the bombing stops seems to be ignored. Obvious consequences are the utter poisoning of Iranian public opinion against the US (where previously it had been slowly moving in the right direction), and ramming home to small countries their need for nuclear weapons to deter US aggression. There's also a high chance of a wider regional war, or of Iran being reduced to a failed state, with resulting consequences for global security and oil supplies (and you'd expect the US to at least care about the last one). But they probably think they can bomb from on high, destroy what they want, and that everything will go back to normal once they declare "mission accomplished". I think the ongoing resistance to their occupation in Iraq shows the absurdity of that position.

The British quit Basra

British troops have begun withdrawing from the beseiged Basra Palace to a nearby airport, in the first stages of withdrawal from Iraq. The palace is the UK's last outpost in Basra itself, and comes under constant attack; supplying it has been called a suicide mission. Now instead they'll be based at the airport, a similarly indefensible position which comes under rocket and mortar attack around five times a day. Their only duty there will be training Iraqi troops and salvaging British (and American) pride by not leaving immediately.

The question now is how long even that token presence will continue. The UK government has clearly concluded that they can no longer do any good in Iraq; their presence there is both an incitement to the locals and a pointless waste of lives. They're itching for a full pullout, and its just a matter of months before they finally pull the plug.

Totalitarianism and sycophancy in Sydney

The annual APEC leaders summit is happening in Sydney next weekend, and so the city has begun its transformation into a police state. The CBD has been declared a "restricted area" under special legislation, and surrounded by a "rabble-proof fence". Meanwhile, the government has been contacting people on its secret "excluded persons list", warning them that they are banned from the CBD for the duration of the summit and that they could face arrest. While ostensibly targeting "persons who would pose serious threats to the safety of persons or property", the listing of protest leaders who have never been arrested in their life suggests that the aim is to silence dissent rather than deal with actual risks. If this happened in China, people would be screaming - but this attack on freedom of speech has passed virtually without comment in Australia.

The total cost of this hugely disruptive circus is over AU$170 million, almost $10 for every Australian, just so a bunch of rich pricks can meet under the illusion that the world outside - and the people who object to their presence and their agenda - doesn't exist. This "right" of world leaders to ignore the people is so ingrained that its chief beneficiary - George Bush - doesn't even realise that shutting down half a city for the sake of his ego is a huge inconvenience to the locals:

"I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about," he told Sky News when asked about the issue. "I'm looking forward to coming to, they tell me, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. If I inconvenience people, you know, that's not my intent.

But what really takes the cake is former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating's response to those complaining:

Paul Keating, the former prime minister and architect of the current APEC structure, said those complaining should "grow up, count yourselves lucky".

"Here you have leaders representing 60 per cent of the world gross domestic product, a massive power grouping, coming to your city to discuss world affairs, and we think it's a bother? Really?" he told the Herald. "Look who's here - the President of the US, the President of China, the Prime Minister of Japan, the President of Indonesia, the President of Russia.

"They are going to sit, personally and convivially, to discuss important measures. They honour us with their presence."

That's right - the people of Sydney should feel honoured that such important people have decided to fuck up their lives at huge expense. This sort of crawling sycophancy towards those in power would be perfectly at home among the apologists for the aristocracy in ancien regime France - but it has absolutely no place in a modern democracy.

Climate change: progress in Vienna

Despite the best efforts of regressive governments - including our own - the UN climate change talks in Vienna have managed to reach a positive outcome [PDF], recognising that

avoiding the most catastrophic forecasts made by the IPCC, including very frequent and severe droughts and water-shortages in large parts of the world, would entail emission reductions in the range of 25-40% below 1990 levels by industrialised countries.

Of course, it's not a commitment to avoid that scenario, but at least its a start. And hopefully it'll be expanded on at the climate change conference in Bali later in the year.

Diluting Agenda

Since the replacement of the insufferably irritating Lisa Owen with the rather-less-irritating-but-not-as-good-as-Simon-Dallow Rawdon Christie, I've started watching Agenda again. Now they're moving it to Sunday mornings - and making some changes in the process:

In addition to in-depth political analysis, and interviews with leading opinion makers, the new-look Agenda will feature news, sport and weather updates and regular arts and entertainment stories.

News? Sport?!? Entertainment?!? So instead of getting a couple of weekly, in-depth interviews about politics, we can get the same lightweight fluff and tabloid pap we get on the nightly "current affairs" shows? Screw that.

The reason I watched Agenda in the first place was the tight focus on politics and that it aimed high. If they're just going to turn it into Sunday-morning Holmes, then I might as well not bother.

New Fisk

Strange goings-on here in Lebanon...