Fiji bans political parties

Well, not in so many words. But it will be the effective outcome of their new party registration rules:

Fiji's military regime has imposed a draconian new decree on anybody planning to create a political party ahead of democracy-restoring elections promised for next year.

[...]

Under the decree the 16 previously registered political parties will have 28 days from Friday to re-register.

Previously a party needed 180 members to become registered. Now it must have 5000 and the initial registered number must not include police or military officers, trade union officials or various defined government officials.

With a Fiji population of only 870,000, the membership threshold appears to be a significant bar to creating any political party.

Even at the height of their popularity neither the Indian-dominated Fiji Labour Party nor the ethnic Fijian party Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua had 5000 registered members.

I'm not sure the regime has thought this through. They've spent the past six years calling for a new, non-ethnic electoral system, and the draft constitution provides one: a dual-level proportional representation system with regional lists and a national top-up. That proposal has wide acceptance - Fiji's political parties recognise the need for change in this area. But the new system requires political parties in order to function, and will not produce fair outcomes if there aren't any (or if there is only a single, regime-backed one). The regime's desire to punish those who spoke out over its treatment of the constitution commission and draft constitution seems to be at the direct cost of its supposed long-term objectives. Unless of course they've just decided to give up on the whole democracy thing after all...

Not even pretending anymore

The government has given up even pretending that its suspension of democracy in Canterbury is because an elected ECan would make the "wrong" decisions:

But the Government says elections this year could potentially produce the same deadlock between rural and urban councillors that created the need for commissioners in the first place.

It says the commissioners' work on freshwater needs to be finished before elections are held.

Local Government Minister David Carter says he did not want the commissioners' unfinished work on water going to a council that may have the same rural-urban balance of power as its predecessor.

Which, when you get down to it, is the same justification used by Pinochet, Franco, Bainimarama, and every other two-bit despot: "those fools will ruin the country by voting for something I don't like, so therefore their decision must be overturned". Yes, National used a law rather than guns to do it - but that's just a question of means. The underlying anti-democratic ideology is exactly the same.

Before the dissolution, urban representatives responded to their voters, and moved to protect Canterbury's water. That meant that farmers didn't get everything their own way. That's democracy - and if one of our two major political parties doesn't like it, then I think we have a severe problem in our country.

A new low

The latest in democracy-suppression from the UK: a local council is suing three of its own members for harassment for lodging Freedom of Information Act requests:

A Conservative-controlled council is to seek an injunction against three of its councillors for alleged harassment.

Rutland County Council has voted to set aside £90,000 for legal action against independents Nick Wainwright, Richard Gale and David Richardson.

The three members of the Rutland Anti-Corruption group (RACP) are accused of harassing senior officers in a series of requests for information.

Mr Richardson denied the charges and said he did not fear legal action.

This is a new low for Britain's democracy. The right to seek information under the FOIA is a statutory one, and an important means of holding officials to account. But their harassment law is so broad that it is almost certainly covered: "harassment" is doing something which annoys someone more than once - regardless of context. The law has been used against protesters, and now it looks likely to be used to silence a democratic opposition.

What next? Injuncting journalists from making FOIA requests which "annoy" officials? Or maybe the government could injunct the opposition for its repeated annoying questions in Parliament? Its on that level - and just as dubious.

(Lets just hope the Taranaki District Council doesn't notice this, or we could start seeing similar tactics here...)

Not so "neutral" after all II

One of the great myths of the UK's (and our) constitutional system is that the monarchy is "neutral" and does not involve itself in politics - something we have now learned is bullshit. A second great myth is that the monarch plays only a ceremonial role, and does not take an active role in decision-making. That too is bullshit:

Whitehall papers prepared by Cabinet Office lawyers show that overall at least 39 bills have been subject to the most senior royals' little-known power to consent to or block new laws. They also reveal the power has been used to torpedo proposed legislation relating to decisions about the country going to war.

The internal Whitehall pamphlet was only released following a court order and shows ministers and civil servants are obliged to consult the Queen and Prince Charles in greater detail and over more areas of legislation than was previously understood.

New laws required to receive the seal of approval from the Queen or Prince Charles cover issues from higher education and paternity pay to identity cards and child maintenance.

In one instance the Queen completely vetoed the Military Actions Against Iraq Bill in 1999, a private member's bill that sought to transfer the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to parliament.

So much for reigning rather than ruling. When you're deciding on child maintenance and identity cards (and indeed, on the constitutional question of whether Parliament rather than Ministers should decide whether to go to war), you are making highly political decisions, and playing an active role in government. All of course while being unelected and unaccountable. And to add insult to injury, its all done in secret - the documents showing how the royals attempt to bully Ministers have been kept secret, on the hypocritical grounds that releasing them would compromise their neutrality (by exposing the truth that they're not).

This is not a suitable constitutional arrangement for a democracy. Political decisions should be made by elected, accountable politicians - not unelected, unaccountable inbreds. If the Windsors want to make these sorts of decisions, they should stand for election and gain a democratic mandate for doing so.

TPP: A mug's deal

Remember the Trans-Pacific Partnership? This proposed free-trade deal with the US is supposed to bring us enormous economic benefits by boostign exports. So what's actually in it for us? Nothing:

A top trade official from the United States says her country is yet to make an offer in trade talks on better access to its markets for New Zealand dairy exports.

The comments from the US chief negotiator in the TransPacific Partnership, Barbara Weisel, come despite a deadline for the talks to be completed by October.

Last month Trade Minister Tim Groser said it was high time the US made an offer on dairy in the 11-country talks if the October deadline is to be met.

But Ms Weisel says no such offer was made at the last round of talks in Auckland, held after Mr Groser made his comments.

So, the Americans are demanding we accept US-style copyright law (you know, the one that allows vindictive prosecutors to persecute activists and drive them to suicide as revenge for opposing it), and give up Pharmac (which saves us tens of millions a year by buying cheap medicines), and in exchange they're offering us nothing. That's a mug's deal, and one the government should reject.

"Stalling tactics"

ASH is outraged that the tobacco industry are using the OIA to request information on government tobacco policy, and are accusing them of trying to "bog down" the Ministry of Health with their requests. So how many requests did tobacco companies and their lawyers send in this effort to flood the Ministry and halt progress/ Thousands? Hundreds?

Nope. Nine in two years - less than five a year. I've been known to send that many in a single day. And against a backdrop of 450 requests a year processe dby the Ministry of health, its a drop in the bucket.

But apparently, these requests asked for a lot of information!

[British American Tobacco]'s first request, sent in May 2011, consisted of 63 separate points for documentation on plain packaging reform.

But as the article points out, the requests were largely declined because they would have required "substantial collation and research" (I would hope that this was done only after the Ministry had consulted with the requester and considered fixing a charge or extending the time limit, as they are required to do by law). So pretty obviously the Ministry has the tools to deal with such requests without suffering undue administrative stress.

While I don't like the tobacco industry, this is simply an attempt by ASH to smear them, at the cost of weakening the right of access to information for everyone. But as DPF points out, the OIA is not limited only to groups the government approves of - it is for all of us. And we weaken it at our peril.

How many NZ jobs did The Hobbit create?

Back in 2010, the National government agreed to subsidise The Hobbit films. So how many jobs did that subsidy create? They have absolutely no idea:

The Government is being accused of fabricating the number of jobs created by The Hobbit films following its $67 million subsidy to Warner Brothers.

The claim comes after correspondence between Prime Minister John Key's office and Hobbit director Sir Peter Jackson's Wingnut Films was released to New Zealand First under the Official Information Act.

[...]

The correspondence does not say 3000 jobs had been created - only that 3000 people was "a good number" for those working on the films.

In June last year, Key said in a statement: "The Government has actively supported the filming of The Hobbit movies in New Zealand because of the enormous economic benefits they're bringing to the country, including the creation of around 3000 jobs."

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the documents showed nobody had any idea how many jobs had been created by the Government's subsidy to Warner Brothers.

The first thing you do when giving money to create a supposed economic benefit is to quantify that benefit, so you can decide whether it is actually a good idea. The second thing you do is check it after the fact to see whether the projection was correct, and whether that benefit actually eventuated. Key appears to have done neither. Instead, his numbers are pulled out of the arses of his spindoctors, predicated on an apparent belief that all of those people at Weta were employed solely for the Hobbit, and wouldn't be making other movies if they weren't making this one - something which is demonstrably false.

Meanwhile, the bigger question remains unaddressed: this movie - the first of three - has already made over a billion dollars. Its is hugely profitable, and would have been so without Key's $67 million gift. The economic benefit would have existed anyway. So why were we subsidising it again?

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Fiji: So much for the constitution

Fiji's military regime appears to have been taking lessons from Judith Collins. First, they commissioned an internationally renowned expert to draft them a new constitution. Now, they've chucked the entire thing out because they didn't like the results:

Fiji's military dictatorship has slammed a draft constitution drawn up with New Zealand aid as an appeasement to racist divisions in the Pacific nation.

But military strongman Voreqe Bainimarama, who rules Fiji by decree, told the nation on Thursday night there will be a new constitution – and democracy restoring elections next year.

But while Bainimarama smears the new constitution as promoting racial division, the draft (which is only available because it has been leaked on the internet) delivers exactly the electoral system that he wanted: a single national electoral roll, with seats allocated by proportional representation. The real problem seems to be the one highlighted earlier in the week: that the new constitution sees no role for the military in government, and seeks to make it subservient to an elected, legitimate Parliament. The fact that this is now considered unacceptable by Fiji's military shows us exactly why things need to change.

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The Novopay clusterfuck rolls on

Another week, and more fuckups from Novopay. This mess has already cost us over half a million dollars, but the real problem is that some teachers haven't been paid correctly for over five months. Which is absolutely intolerable. Isn't it time heads were put on spikes over this?

Also intolerable: Novopay's shit customer service. That second story reports that

Those trying to contact the Novopay service centre to report mistakes were forced to wait up to an hour and a half and 15,000 calls were unanswered or abandoned.

...which is par for the course for modern "customer service", but you'd expect that when Ministry of Education contracted with Novopay they included a requirement that queries were responded to in a timely manner (and if they didn't, time for more heads on spikes). This isn't even remotely timely - its just the usual tactic of piping everything to /dev/null in the hope that complaints will disappear. But when we're talking about people getting paid so they can pay the rent and have enough to eat, its just unacceptable.

How long is the government going to put up with this? Isn't it time the Minister - metaphorically speaking - walked into Novopay's office with an axe and did her best Conan the Barbarian impersonation? Or, less metaphorically, started activating the penalty clauses in Novopay's contract for non-delivery of service? Its her head or theirs. Time to choose.

The cost of cuts

Back in the 90's, then then-National government cut the public service to the bone. But the work it was expected to do didn't decrease, so the result was that expensive consultants were hired to perform basic tasks. Now, its happening again:

documents supplied as part of [the Ministry of Education's] 2011-12 financial review show it hired external consultants to conduct basic functions such as responding to Official Information Act (OIA) requests and writing speeches.

New Zealand Education Consultants was paid $49,707 between August 2011 and this month to help with the Kawerau School merger.

Sara Cunningham received $115 an hour to provide OIA ministerial support, Tammy Thompson $75 an hour as a ministerial writer and Caravel Group was paid $170 an hour to write business cases. Tuck Grye earned a total of $89,592 in the 2011-12 financial year for evaluating requests for information.

"Ministerials" is bureacratese for "answering the Minister's questions" - in particular, drafting response to their questions in Parliament. There is no more basic function in the public service than this, and it is central to the chain of accountability which allows government decisions to be perceived as legitimate. Outsourcing it is basically giving up on any pretence that a Ministry is fit for purpose. As for outsourcing OIAs, Ministry of Education receives 450 OIA requests a year - more than enough to justify retaining in-house expertise, which you can bet will be a damn sight cheaper than an inflated consultant rate of $115 an hour.

National's "cost-cutting" is really just another form of waste. It strips core capability from the public service, while requiring them to hire it back at inflated rates. We get reduced accountability and a public service which is no longer fit for purpose. But National's consultant friends are laughing all the way to the bank.

National's class warfare in health

When it stood for election in 2008 and 2011, National promised more elective surgery and "better, faster, cheaper health care". What they didn't mention was the caveat: "for rich white people":

A Government group is looking at limiting access to common surgical procedures which cost taxpayers $641 million a year.

The National Health Committee has to find savings of $30 million this financial year from elective procedures deemed to be of little benefit.

The money would be used for smarter investment in other parts of the health system.

The only specific elective procedure the committee has so far named for "disinvestment" is the insertion of grommets.

Grommets are tiny ventilation tubes placed in an incision in the eardrum to treat persistent, painful infections called glue ear.

...which is a disease of poverty which can have a long-term effect on hearing development and therefore learning. But its victims are mostly poor brown kids - people National doesn't care about. So, it wants to take medical resources away from them - in the process condemning some to much worse life outcomes - so it can use them on rich white guys with heart disease.

This is not a fair outcome. But its so very, very National, isn't it?

Not so "neutral" after all

One of our great constitutional myths is that the monarchy is neutral - they are "above" politics, and don't get involved in issues of policy. They reign, but they do not rule.

Bullshit:

Prince Charles has held private meetings with eight government ministers in the last 12 months, including Michael Gove, the education secretary, and Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury.

Palace records show he also met with ministers with responsibility for defence, culture and further education, as well as top civil servants involved in British defence interests in the Middle East and the UK economy.

Details of the meetings with senior political figures in the Westminster and Cardiff governments, including why they were held and what was discussed, have not been not made public, in line with a convention of secrecy around communication between both the Queen and the heir to the throne and government ministers.

Regardless of what you think of Charles' opinions, this is deeply constitutionally improper. If the monarchy is "neutral", it needs to act like it - and that means not abusing their position to lobby for their pet policies. Alternatively, if they want to be political actors, then they should abdicate and stand for election like any other politician. The current hypocritical position of pretending to be neutral while playing politics under cover of secrecy is neither democratic, not sustainable.

No freedom of speech in Kuwait

Ayyad al-Harbi is a Kuwaiti tweeter. Two months ago he criticised the country's Emir online. He was arrested, and today he was sentenced to two years imprisonment:

A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison on Monday for insulting the country's ruler on Twitter, his lawyer said, the second person to be jailed for the offence in as many days.

[...]

The court sentenced Ayyad al-Harbi, who has more than 13,000 followers on Twitter, to the prison term two months after his arrest and release on bail.

Harbi used his Twitter account to criticise the Kuwait government and the emir. He tweeted on Sunday: "Tomorrow morning is my trial's verdict on charges of slander against the emir, spreading of false news."

And he's not the only one. Yesterday a second man, Rashid Saleh al-Anzi, was also jailed for two years for a similar offence. Sadly, the exact things these people said are not available - but the idea that someone should be jailed for criticising those in power is ridiculous and undemocratic. But then, Kuwait is a monarchy - so "ridiculous and undemocratic" pretty much sums up its entire constitutional structure.

Supply and demand

Its January, and therefore it must be time for the usual seasonal whine from employers about a lack of unskilled workers. Normally the culprits are orchards, but this time its from Christchurch, where employers can't find people willing to work for minimum wage:

Trish Paterson, recruitment manager for Christchurch-based employment agency Ryan Recruitment, said many local companies were struggling to fill positions that required no qualifications or skills that can be learned on the job.

"It's not so much that [jobs] are not available, but in a lot of cases they are paying minimum wage and there are other employers paying more, even if it is only 50c per hour, people will move jobs for that," she said.

The company was even struggling to find people to stand with Stop/Go signs to manage traffic at road works.

As is clear from Paterson's comments, the real problem here is that the wages on offer are too low. Housing costs have risen, so people want more money to match; meanwhile, thousands have left the city, so there's a local labour shortage and they can shop around. But rather than recognise this and suggest the obvious solution - increasing wages to a level where people will take your shitty boring job - she instead suggests flooding the market with unskilled immigrants to keep wages down.

Its a perfect example of the hypocrisy of our business community - its all "free market" and "deregulation" until they're on the sharp end of it, when suddenly they want the government to intervene to set prices at an artificially low level and effectively give them a social subsidy through the welfare system. And all so they can enjoy higher profits at our expense.

If you live by the market, you can die by the market. If your business isn't profitable at prevailing wage rates, then its not profitable and should fail. Its that simple.

Pure waste

Stuff this morning reports on the waste of the war on drugs: every year, we imprison hundreds of petty drug users:

Hundreds of people are locked up for petty drug offences every year - many for crimes our top legal body says should not exist.

Justice Ministry figures show a significant amount of court time is taken up by minor drug cases, with nearly as many people imprisoned for possessing a small quantity of cannabis as for dealing.

Among these offenders are hundreds imprisoned for possessing a pipe or a needle, an offence the Law Commission recommended legalising last year.

The figures also show fewer than one in three minor drug offenders is offered diversion, allowing them to avoid a criminal record.

[...]

Imprisonment for petty offences almost equals the number locked up for more serious crimes.

This isn't just a tremendous waste of court time, prison space, and ultimately public money - it tremendously socially harmful and may contribute to the problem. These criminal convictions have lifelong consequences, affecting employment prospects and travel. And sending people to prison for such bullshit can actually turn them into real criminals. In the words of Drug Foundation director Ross Bell, "You send someone away for a minor drug conviction and they can come out a meth cook".

Last year, the Law Commission recommended that we stop imprisoning people for minor drug offences such as low-level possession and possession of implements, and instead introduce a mandatory cautioning scheme including referrals to treatment agencies. This would reduce the social harm created by current policies, and save public money into the bargain. But it wouldn't be "tough on crime", so our Justice Minister (then Police Minister) has rejected it out of hand. She'd rather waste tens of millions of dollars of our money and ruin hundreds of lives a year to retain her image as "the crusher".

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Fiji: A bad sign

For the past year, an independent Constitution Commission appointed by Fiji's military regime has been overseeing the drafting of a new constitution, under which democracy will supposedly be restored after elections in 2014. But there are now severe doubts about whether the military will accept the document. First, the military seized all printed copies of the draft, and burned them symbolicly in front of the commission's head. And now, they are explicitly rejecting constitutional provisions aimed at preventing further coups and ousting them from politics:

Fiji's military has bluntly rejected a proposed constitution that would have forced soldiers back to the barracks and weakened the power of the Fiji Military Forces (RFMF).

"Let me tell you this, don't mess with the RFMF," the military's No 2, Land Force Commander Colonel Mosese Tikoitoga said.

[...]

Leaked copies revealed that the new constitution would significantly downgrade the military from any role in political life. It would also be smaller and have no role in internal security.

Tikoitoga's hardline response would deepen concern over Fiji's future direction. Last week New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said he had fears about what was happening in the country.

Tikoitoga, who was effectively in active day-to-day command of the military, rejected the proposal that soldiers should not have to follow orders they consider illegal.

He said that whether orders were right or wrong, they had to be obeyed and whoever gave the order would be responsible if questions arose over the order.

"Soldiers sign an oath to follow orders and they will at all times abide by it," he said.

He rejected any downsizing of the RFMF, which can call on up to 10,000 soldiers, saying cuts would not happen.

Its the latter which is the real problem. Fiji has too many soldiers with too many guns and too little to do. Coups are a natural consequence. Emasculating the military and shrinking it to something more in line with the country's actual needs is a necessary step to restoring a stable democracy. But that means sacking an awful lot of colonels, and lower prestige for those who remain. And given the army's well-established contempt for democracy and the rule of law, those colonels will be strongly tempted to use their guns to protect their budget and prestige (and give themselves a promotion into the bargain).

Meanwhile, its looking like Fiji's promised post-2014 "democracy" will be a democracy under the gun, where the military is constantly threatening to step in, and major political decisions are dictated at gunpoint rather than reflecting the will of the people. And it will stay that way until Fiji's people decide to stand up for themselves and take to the streets against their abusive "defence" forces.

Tasers: Torturing the mentally ill

When Tasers were first introduced to New Zealand, people warned that they would be disproportionately used against the mentally ill. They were right:

Since the nationwide rollout of Tasers in March 2010, they have been drawn by police officers 1320 times and discharged 212 times.

The battery-powered stun guns fire electric barbs, which penetrate a person's skin and deliver a shock of up to 50,000 volts.

Numbers released under the Official Information Act show nearly a third of those hit were considered by police to have mental health issues.

Mental Health Foundation chief executive Judi Clements said they had always feared those with mental health problems would be a target for officers using Tasers and the figures confirmed that.

There are two ugly trends exposed here. One is the move by police from "policing by consent" to "compliance policing", where the public are made to obey by the constant threat of force. The second is pure laziness, with police dealing with troublesome cases by reaching for their electric torture device rather than their brains. Neither is acceptable.