Breakfast and Heritage Hotels

I've received several emails from people who have contacted Heritage Hotels to complain about their sponsorship of Paul Henry's bigotry. According to Heritage, they are

not a sponsor of the Breakfast Show and ha[ve] not been for some months.

Which is interesting, given that their branding was all over the show's website yesterday morning. Either they're engaged in a clumsy lie, or TVNZ has been giving them free advertising for months.

I'm still waiting to find a list of Breakfast's other advertisers. The FaceSpy page lists Progressive Enterprises (Countdown, Foodtown & Woolworths) as being the primary buyer around the news slots; does anyone know of any others?

Update: Huh. Heritage Hotels' branding is still on the Breakfast Livestream, or at least the card saying it is not currently on-air. More free advertising from TVNZ?

(National Bank advertise all TVNZ's online video, so I don't know if its worth targeting them or not).

Toxic sludge is not good for you

Overnight, the collapse of a tailings dam in Hungary led to 600 - 700,000 cubic metres of toxic sludge from a mineral processing plant flooding local villages and spilling into a river. In addition to the force of the flood, it is also highly alkaline; it has already killed four people and injured over a hundred more, and the latter is likely to rise as chemical burns may take days to emerge. Its effects on the local environment are equally devastating, killing fish and contaminating land and waterways with heavy metals.

Its a signal warning of the dangers of the mining and minerals industry. These leaks happen a couple of times a year (list here), often with devastating results. Floods are bad enough; floods of toxic sludge which burn and poison and leave the land contaminated are another thing entirely.

If Gerry Brownlee had has his way, our national parks could have been exposed to this sort of risk (primarily from gold cyanidation and acid drainage). Fortunately, we stopped him. We dodged a bullet there, and we should be very glad of it.

Suppressed

I'd like to tell you who the two men arrested today over the Auckland Supercity voting scam are, but I can't - both have been granted name suppression. According to DPF this is an interim order, as they were initially denied it and appealed to the High Court, but the effect is the same: to prevent any publication of the names of those involved until the election is effectively over.

This stinks. There is immense public interest in this case, and a strong argument for publication as soon as possible so that voters can make up their minds if necessary. And at the end of the day, it is the voters I trust on this. That right has been taken away from us, not to protect the accused's right to a fair trial, not to protect a vulnerable victim, but to protect the accused from any immediate political consequences. And the result may be that someone gains political office in this country by fraud. Of course, that can be dealt with by an electoral petition - but I'd rather the voters were free to make up their minds from the outset, rather than being effectively systematically lied to in this manner.

I am unsure if the order extends to the accused's political affiliation, so I'll simply repeat what I said last month: if either of the people involved is a candidate or affiliated with a campaign, their party needs to disown them ASAP. No political party can support this sort of fraud. And if they do, then decent kiwis can't support them.

Correction: According to Checkpoint, one was granted name suppression, while the other was denied it and appealed. I'd love to see the judge's reasons for the former.

Utterly heartless

The government has decided to deport Sital and Usha Ram, meaning that their New Zealand-born children will be forced to accompany them.

This is an utterly heartless decision. These kids are kiwis. And the government is saying they should be kicked out, sent to a country they have never seen where they will be subject to discrimination, forced to live in a slum, and denied medical care on the basis of their (unalterable) New Zealand citizenship. But in addition to being heartless, it is also almost certainly unlawful:

TDA Immigration, the company representing the family, said the minister's decision went against court decisions on similar cases.

In a 2008 finding, Justice Susan Glazebrook said a citizen had a "cardinal and absolute right of residence" and that a comparison had to be made between the child's living conditions in New Zealand and what they were likely to encounter once deported.

In another finding, she said serious detriment to the citizen child could be sufficient to outweigh the right of New Zealand to protect its borders, allowing an overstayer parent to remain in New Zealand to care for the child.

The reason for those decisions is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which we are a party, which requires that in any decision affecting children, "the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration". The government has utterly ignored that principle in favour of taking a harsh line and punishing these kids for having the wrong parents.

Over on KiwiPolitico, Lew suggests a simple counterstrategy:

invite John Campbell into your home. Let him and his camera crew be present at the time of the forcible separation; in your living room and at the airport, and let the whole world watch, and listen to the wailing.

I agree. If the government wants to deport kiwi kids or break up a family, let it be seen to do so - and pay the political price for it.

Phil Goff: Cowardly and hypocritical

Phil Goff, yesterday:

Labour leader Phil Goff said Sir Anand was as much a New Zealander as he was.

"I would rate him as one of New Zealand's best Governors-General. Anand is a person that grew up in this country, understands this country as well as anybody... a fantastic Governor-General."

The comments were "silly... I think that was Paul Henry being Paul Henry".

Phil Goff, today:

Labour leader Phil Goff launched a fresh broadside at Mr Key for failing to challenge the comments when they were made during an interview with Henry yesterday morning.

"Those comments that Anand Satyanand doesn't sound and look like a New Zealander, frankly, are racist and they're offensive, and John Key should have had the guts to put Paul Henry in his place. He didn't."

Mr Goff said Henry's apology seemed genuine, but did not excuse the comments, and TVNZ's muted response was "pathetic".

"To suggest that most New Zealanders regard Anand Satyanand, our Governor-General, as somebody that doesn't look or sound like a Kiwi is just a bloody nonsense. This is a very decent man who's worked through his life for this country. Having offensive comments made like that about him as a human being is unacceptable to me and should have been unacceptable to John Key."

Which sounds great, but raises the question: why did Goff wait 24 hours to say it?

Its not as if he was unaware of the issue - his initial "Paul Henry being Paul Henry" comment was made within a few hours of Henry's original comments. But rather than stand up immediately for Labour's principles, he waited to see which way the wind was blowing. That's weak and cowardly. Slamming John Key for doing exactly the same thing just makes him hypocritical. Yes, Key's a chickenshit. But its difficult for another chickenshit to call him that.

There are a lot of good MPs in Labour who did the right thing on this the moment they heard about it. It would be nice if their leader was worthy of them.

Arrests

Radio New Zealand has just reported that two people have been arrested over the Supercity voting scam. Information removed to avoid possibly breaching a suppression order.

The initial charge is forgery, which carries a penalty of ten years jail. Other charges will apparently follow. The investigation is still continuing, so there may be other co-conspirators yet to be arrested.

As for what happens next, I expect there will be an electoral petition to ensure that the fraud has had no effect on the outcome. That could lead to the poll being declared void and a revote held.

Update: One sentence which may have identified one of the accused has been deleted to avoid any chance of breaching name suppression.

Head on a spike!

TVNZ just suspended Paul Henry over his racist comments. Good. At least they recognised that questioning whether people are New Zealanders really crosses the line.

But will they show the spine to sack him?

Digging a deeper hole

Yesterday afternoon, racist TVNZ presenter Paul Henry issued the usual non-apology "apology" for his questioing the citizenship and moral worth of non-Pakeha New Zealanders. He didn't apologise for being offensive, just for having caused offence. In other words, he accepts no responsibility for his actions, and instead blames his critics.

Today he topped that with an on-air "apology" which again minimised his behaviour ("I certainly didn't intend to sound racist"), then insulted and denigrated Roma. For those who don't realise, "gypo" is a perjorative, akin to "nigger". And while he claimed to be half-Roma, it was contrasted in a way which made it seem like that was something to be ashamed of ("the truth is much, much worse than that"). In effect, Henry "apologised" by saying

The Governor-General is a very distinguished man, and I am just a nigger.

That's not an apology. Its not funny. Its just more racism.

According to the Dim-Post, there will be protests outside TVNZ's Auckland and Wellington studios at 17:00 today. If you think racism doesn't belong on state TV, then go along and let TVNZ know what you think. And while you're at it, contact Heritage Hotels - Breakfast's main advertiser - and let them know that their sponsorship of Henry's racism tarnishes their brand, and that you won't be using their services if it continues. TVNZ has made it clear they employ Henry to be outrageous because he's good for ratings and advertising. If we want it to stop, we need to change that equation.

John Key: Chickenshit

John Key has finally spoken up about Paul Henry's racist comments this morning. But did he condemn them and stand up unequivocally for the rights of all New Zealanders? Yeah, right:

Prime Minister John Key says Breakfast host Paul Henry's comments about Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand were "just plain wrong" but they won't stop him from appearing on the show again next week.

[...]

The Prime Minister wouldn't comment on whether he thought the comments were racist, nor whether disciplinary action should be taken against Mr Henry.

And that's John Key in a nutshell for you: too afraid of the rednecks even to condemn an outright racist. What a chickenshit. A decent man would say clearly that Henry's comments were racist and intolerable, and refuse to appear on any show he hosted (hell, a decent man would have said it at the time, rather than flipping it off with a joke). But our infinitely flexible Prime Minister is clearly not a decent man.

By refusing to condemn Henry's racism, Key is effectively condoning it. I expect better from a New Zealand Prime Minister.

The effect of ECE cuts

The effect of the government's ECE cuts: parents not being able to afford to work:

Parents say they will work less and pull their children out of daycare when childcare centres put fees up to cope with $400 million of funding cuts.

A Christchurch survey, released to the Sunday Star-Times by the New Zealand Educational Institute, is the first to show how the government's early childhood education (ECE) cuts will affect families. It found that 92.3 percent of creches set to lose funding will increase fees.

[...]

E Tipu E Rea creche in Aranui, Christchurch, plans to raise fees from $4.20 to $5.20 an hour to help cover a $35,000 funding loss. Board of trustees president Kylie Jones said most parents worked fulltime and paid for 25 to 30 hours childcare a week, which would add up to $30 a week to their expenses.

The equation of working to pay for childcare so you can work is bad enough already - one of the examples in the article is already shelling out almost half of her after-tax income in childcare fees. This looks like it will be enough to tip the balance for many people. The result: skilled employees forced to quit their jobs because it is no longer economically worthwhile for them to continue.

This is another example of how National screws over the many for the benefit of the few. The effects of these cuts will mostly be felt by poor and middle class parents. Their kids will miss out on that vital, inequality-levelling education which provides a good start in life. Some of them will lose their careers, or have to put them on hold. Others will simply suffer a drop in living standards as they sacrifice something else so they can keep working. And meanwhile, the wealthy recipients of National's tax-cuts, who can afford higher ECE rates, will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Protest for abortion rights in Wellington this Wednesday

Right To Life NZ's court case to try and restrict abortion rights in New Zealand is back before the Court of Appeal tomorrow. This time, though, people will be there to greet it, and speak up for abortion rights in New Zealand.

When: 12:30 - 13:30, Tuesday, October 5.
Where: Outside Court of Appeal (Corner of Aitken & Molesworth Streets), Wellington. Politicians get to avoid reforming our abortion laws because they think its a dead issue. Its up to us to show them that its not, and that the current law (which effectively requires a woman to declare herself to be mentally ill in order to obtain an abortion) is not acceptable.

[Hat-tip: The Hand Mirror. You can sign up for the protest on FaceSpy here]

Spot the kiwi

One of these people is a kiwi, and the other is not. Can you tell the difference better than Paul Henry?

(Pictured: Bernard Fergusson and Anand Satyanand. One was born in New Zealand, the other in Britain. But you can't tell that from the colour of their skin).

Paul Henry: Racist

The latest Paul Henry incident: questioning whether Governor-General Anand Satyanand is a New Zealander:

On the Breakfast programme this morning Henry asked the Prime Minister about who he was looking to replace Sir Anand with when his five year term ends this year.

"Is he even a New Zealander?" Henry asked.

Mr Key said he was.

"Are you going to choose a New Zealander who looks and sounds like a New Zealander this time... Are we going to go for someone who is more like a New Zealander this time?"

Satyanand of course was born in Auckland - he's as kiwi as you or I (and indeed, as kiwi as Paul Henry, who was also born there). But because he's not pakeha, he doesn't count in Henry's eyes. According to him, only white people are true kiwis, and everyone else is an interloper.

These are the sorts of views I'd expect to hear from a member of the National Front, not from a New Zealand TV broadcaster. But TVNZ is already making excuses for him, willing to put ratings before basic decency again. While we can complain, they're pretty much signalled that they're unlikely to do anything about it - which calls the entire broadcasting complaints system into disrepute.

As for Key, I know its difficult when confronted by these sorts of attitudes to overcome the shock, but would it have killed him to stick up for the kiwiness of non-pakeha New Zealanders? Or did he do the calculation and decide to go for the joke to avoid getting offside with any rednecks in the audience? Someone should really ask him.

New Fisk

Grand old warbirds with a guilty past

An interesting trend

Phil Lyth has done an interesting analysis of votes cast so far in the local body elections, and discovered that small South Island towns are twice as likely to vote as cities in the North Island [PDF].

The Councils with the best voter turnouts so far are:

49.0% Chatham Islands Council
40.1% Buller District Council
38.0% Westland District Council
37.5% Ashburton District Council
37.9% Central Otago District Council
37.0% Waimate District Council

While the lowest turnouts are in:

20.9% Palmerston North City Council
19.8% Hutt City Council
19.6% Hamilton City Council
17.6% Wellington City Council
16.9% Porirua City Council
16.8% Waikato District Council

A quarter of Aucklanders, 24.8%, have voted for the new Supercouncil.

That's a fairly impressive difference, and I'm wondering what the reasons for it are. Smaller, tighter communities? Does local government matter more in rural areas? Do they just care more? I'm sure there's a sociology thesis in finding the reasons for the difference.

Against deporting kiwis

This is absolutely disgusting: the government is about to deport three kiwi kids to live in a slum in India because their parents are overstayers:

Eight-year-old Hemani Mall is terrified – saying she and her twin six-year-old brothers, all born in Hawke's Bay, do not want to live where there are no toilets or running water and that they will not be able to attend school or receive healthcare.

Their parents, Sital Ram, 40, and Usha Rani Ram, 32, have lived in Hastings for 11 years, seven of them as overstayers.

The parents are Dalits (AKA "untouchables"), and likely to be subject to pervasive, though illegal, discrimination. They own no land, meaning their kids will be condemned to a life of poverty. And those children won't be able to benefit from Indian government services, because they're not Indian citizens and can't become one until they renounce their New Zealand citizenship - something our law doesn't allow them to do until they turn 18. The result will be to deny them their rights to health and education affirmed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which we are parties.

Associate Immigration Minister Kate Wilkinson has rebuffed every appeal to decency for fear of being seen to be "soft" on immigration. But there is a clear case here for an appeal to be granted on humanitarian grounds - and on legal ones. The Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that

In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.

That applies to the government, and it applies to immigration decisions. And it is crystal clear that the best interests of these children is that they stay in New Zealand. And if that means letting their parents stay, then so be it.

A decision will apparently be made tonight. Hopefully, it will be the right one. And if not, well, Wilkinson will have made it clear to everyone that she is cruel and heartless and does not care about the rights of kiwi kids.

Britain's unaccountable police state

A couple of months ago the Guardian revealed that UK police were installing a CCTV network in Birmingham to monitor the Muslim community as a "counterterrorism" measure. The network was cancelled just a few weeks before it was supposed to go live. Today, an inquiry has found that the police engaged in an explicit campaign of deception to mislead the local community, and completely ignored the law around surveillance cameras:

Police devised a "storyline" that concealed the true purpose of the cameras. Counter-terrorism insignia was removed from paperwork as part of a deliberate strategy to "market" the surveillance operation as a local policing scheme to improve community safety.

[...]

Police assurances that security cameras would be used for local policing were highly misleading. Although ANPR data was to be shared on regional and national databases, the network was controlled by the counter-terrorism unit. There was "no local facility to view the cameras" and "nobody in place to monitor them".

[...]

Officers failed to comply with national CCTV regulations or conduct proper consultation. They did not obtain statutory clearance for the use of covert cameras and, Thornton said, there was "very little evidence" that police had even considered their legal obligations.

With such an obvious abuse of power and flagrant disregard for the law, you'd expect someone would have been held accountable. Yeah, right:

There have been no resignations or disciplinary action over Project Champion.

And there we have it: a lawless, unaccountable police state.

Meanwhile, it really makes you wonder whether New Zealand police are getting up to similar tricks here, especially given the lack of regulation around public surveillance. Unfortunately, thanks to their vigorous use of s6(c) of the Official Information Act (which exists to protect the right to a fair trial and the ability of police to conduct investigations, but is frequently used to cover up policy information relating to police), then we'll probably never know.

The tax justice campaign

GST went up today, as part of the government's "tax switch" to transfer more of the country's wealth to rich people like them. In response, the Alliance (remember them?) have set up the tax justice campaign, which is aimed at removing GST from food and replacing it with a tax on financial speculation (in other words, on the bankers who ruined the global economy). They're circulating a petition to Parliament on the issue, and there are stalls around the country set up today and tomorrow to collect signatures. Alternatively, you can download the petition directly from their website [PDF], get your friends to sign it, and post it back.

Their original goal was to collect 10,000 signatures in two days. According to their website they've already collected 12,000, which is impressive if its true. The more people who sign up, the greater the pressure on the government, and the greater the chance of seeing change eventually.

If you're interested, you can join the campaign’s Facebook group here. It has almost 4,000 followers already, which is pretty impressive for a New Zealand political issue.

Another abuse of power

In the wake of Tuesday's open letter from legal academics condemning the Canterbury Enabling Act, the Herald seems to have woken up. Today they have a stinging editorial attacking the government's latest power grab, over the Rugby World Cup:

The World Cup legislation sets up an authority - chaired and deputy-chaired by a judge or an experienced lawyer - to fast-track applications for activities and facilities, such as hospitality arrangements and liquor licences, that are considered necessary to cope with demand during the event.

In bypassing the normal consent process, the bill says the authority does not have to hold hearings on applications and that its decisions can be challenged in the High Court only on points of law.

Also included is a process for urgent applications. This grants an extraordinary level of power to the Rugby World Cup Minister, Murray McCully.

He may ignore the recommendation of the authority and substitute his own decision. The bill says he must take into account the authority's view, as well as that of other ministers, and that he must pay heed to public safety and mitigate "any adverse impacts". But his view is the one that counts, and his decision is final.

The result: another Minister with arbitrary and unreviewable (though far more limited) power. Again, its a constitutional outrage. But that's what you get from National. When faced with a problem (an earthquake, a few rugby games, farmers wanting water), their first response seems to be dictatorship. And that is something we should all be worried about.

Sniffing around people's bedrooms

From the Manawatu Standard yesterday, the latest appalling attack on the private lives of teachers:

The New Zealand Teachers Council is investigating a Manawatu principal after his school reported allegations that the man attempted to sell pornography online.

The complaint was laid after a Trade Me account with an email address using the partial name of the principal posted gay porn movie The Club for sale on the auction site.

In an unprecedented case, the Teachers Council is investigating the incident to determine whether the principal – who cannot be named for legal reasons – breached the industry's code of ethics.

As the article notes, this is perfectly legal (provided the buyer was over 18), and did not involve a use of school resources. The DVD was sold from the man's home computer. So the Teacher's Council is investigating someone - and could conceivably censure or deregister them - for private, legal conduct occurring entirely within their own home. The fact that its a gay porn movie gives it an air of homophobia, but OTOH the sorts of people offended by gay porn are likely to be offended by straight porn as well. The problem is more that school boards and the Teachers Council think they have a licence to sniff around in people's bedrooms, and sack them for being "indecent" or "breaking the public trust" if they don't like what they find. And that is a gross invasion of personal privacy.

Teachers, like anyone else, are entitled to have a private life. Teachers, like anyone else, are entitled to have sex. Teachers, like anyone else, are entitled to look at porn, gay or straight. None of these things is anyone's business but their own. And if anyone thinks worse of them for it, that's their problem. If they don't want to be offended, they shouldn't go sniffing in other people's bedrooms.