Open government: We're doing it wrong

Earlier in the week the government finally announced the appointment of the Stakeholder Advisory Group required under the Open Government Partnership, with not a former National MP in sight! It also announced that it was beginning public consultation on its Midterm Self-Assessment Report, which is due at the end of September. But there's a hitch: they're doing it wrong.

What OGP members are supposed to do is consult on their draft reports. Its right there in the OGP's procedures manual [p. 39]:

All countries are required to have at least a two-week public comment period on draft self-assessment reports before finalizing, for public input on implementation performance into account.

And here's an example of how the UK did it.

Instead, National is consulting at the beginning of the process, asking vague questions about its unambitious "goals". Which means that unless they hold another round of consultation before the report is submitted (highly unlikely given the timeframe), New Zealand will fail its first assessment under the OGP.

Heckuva job, guys. Glad to know you're on the case.

And on the positive side: it will be good to have the government called on its bullshit. Because right from the beginning, its been clear that they've had no real commitment to the OGP. They dithered over joining, ignored consultation requirements in developing their action plan, then chose completely unambitious goals which were basicly stuff they were doing anyway. They're not interested in open government, and they're certainly not interested in greater transparency. And having a formal declaration of that from an international body might be the only way to get some change.

Another reason to like Corbyn

Another reason to like Jeremy Corbyn: in addition to wanting to put Tony Blair behind bars for war crimes, he wants to scrap Trident:

Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn will use the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima to set out his plan for nuclear disarmament in the UK.

Speaking at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament commemorative event in London on Thursday, Corbyn will say that if he were prime minster he would not replace the Trident nuclear weapons system and would transition away from nuclear weapons entirely.

[...]

“As a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Britain should therefore give a lead in discharging its obligations by not seeking a replacement for Trident, as we are committed to accelerate concrete progress towards nuclear disarmament.

“Senior military figures have described our existing nuclear weapons as ‘militarily useless’ and our possession of them encourages other countries to seek a similar arsenal while undermining the efforts being made to advance the cause of international nuclear disarmament.”

Good. The UK's nuclear arsenal is a dangerous waste of money, and the sooner it is rid of it the better. Like the rest of the military, its just a hugely expensive relic of empire. Which means the British establishment will probably stop at nothing to defend it.

Dodgy as hell

How dodgy was Murray McCully's Saudi sheep bribe? So dodgy that he instructed the Saudis to avoid any mention of "compensation" in their invoices as that would involve lawyers [evade trialwall with incognito window]:

Foreign Minister Murray McCully wanted to set up his deal over the Saudi Arabian farm so lawyers and bureaucrats would not be involved.

He did not want the payments to the Al Khalaf Group called “compensation” for the losses they suffered as a result of New Zealand’s ban on the export of live sheep for slaughter.

And his aides were busy instructing the Al Khalaf Group what wording to use on their invoices even before the Cabinet had approved the project.

[...]

The report quoted Mr Assaf as saying that if the Government also proceeded with the MoU “the issue of compensation would therefore be less costly.”

It goes on: “The Minister noted that he would not want any financial contributions to be treated as compensation as this would involve a plethora of lawyers and bureaucrats. Rather he would prefer an investment in a partnership.”

McCully told the Saudis to invoice him before Cabinet had approved the expenditure, and told Cabinet the spending would be "for services set out under our contract". In other words, he cut a deal without consulting his Cabinet colleagues, then repeatedly deceived them about the purpose of millions of dollars of spending.

In a functional democracy, McCully would have been forced to resign for this. But under National, he'll probably get a knighthood. A "higher standard of government"? I think not.

Another appointment from nowhere

Back in June it was reported that former National MP Eric Roy had been appointed to the board of Landcorp. This seemed like another case of cronyism, so I submitted the usual OIA for documents on the appointments process. I got the documents back yesterday, and they're interesting for what they don't show.

Roy's name doesn't appear anywhere in the list of nominations. He doesn't appear on the shortlist. He appears not to have been interviewed. Instead, the first time his name appears in the process is on April 2, a week before an appointment paper is due to go to Cabinet, when a Treasury senior advisor asks one of Todd McClay's staff for Roy's phone number. Around that time they also appear to have spoken to the chair of the Landcorp Board about him. A week later, on April 9, his name is before Cabinet for appointment. And hey presto, he's on the board and being paid $36,000 a year of your money.

In short: when other nominees fell through, McClay appears to have simply shoulder-tapped an old caucus mate for a well-paid sinecure. Its pure cronyism.

The caveat to this is that McClay has been, shall we say, "enthusiastic" with the redactions, deleting vast amounts of material as "not relevant" or on privacy grounds. Its possible that details of Roy's nomination, interview, and shortlisting are among this. They shouldn't be, but its possible. But if that's the case, and everything really is above board but McClay has redacted it, he really has no-one to blame but himself.

Policy failure: ECE

In 2010, the government cut both teaching standards and fuding for early childhood education. The result? Half of ECE centres are failing to educate children:

The government is under fire for pushing "bums on seats" in the early childhood sector while ignoring concerns about quality.

Teachers' union NZEI and the Green Party say a report released by the Education Review Office showing almost half of early childhood services are not doing enough to help under-threes learn reinforces there are huge problems with quality in the sector.

[...]

The report focused on communication and exploration - two key parts of New Zealand's early childhood curriculum, which services are obligated to implement to get a licence.

The curriculum aims to support good "learning dispositions" which set children up for better outcomes - research shows good early childhood education can support better employment, income, criminal justice and health later in life. The study found 46 per cent of services did not provide a curriculum that helped children become competent and confident communicators and explorers - 30 per cent were classified as having "limited responsiveness", while 16 per cent were "not responsive".

The fundamental problem here is that the government views the ECE sector as babysitters rather than educators, and so doesn't see the value of qualified, registered teachers. And the above is what you get with that approach: substandard education, which feeds into our primary schools and the rest of our education system.

The real tragedy here is that ECE is one of the best investments a government can make. If you want people to succeed in life, you start at the beginning, with high-quality ECE. The government's refusal to fund a high-quality, universal ECE system simply shows how shortsighted they are; rather than investing in our future, they'd rather give tax cuts to the 1%.

"Independent" reports aren't

How do privatised prison providers get such glowing reports? The same way tobacco companies get "scientific evidence" that smoking doesn't cause cancer: bribery:

A former prisons chief who wrote a glowing “independent” report about a controversial youth offender unit run by G4S had previously been paid thousands of pounds as a consultant for the private security firm, the Guardian has learned.

Sir Martin Narey, former director general of the prison service, published a report in July on Rainsbrook secure training centre in which he wrote that “very challenging children” were treated “overwhelmingly well”. He concluded: “My test in visiting places of custody for over 30 years is to reflect about how I’d feel if my son or daughter were incarcerated there. In Rainsbrook’s case, I would consider him or she to be safe and to be generally well treated.”

Narey’s verdict was delivered months after a joint report by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and the chief inspector of prisons in May into the centre condemned it for a series of failings . It pointed to the dismissal of six members of staff after a series of incidents of gross misconduct, staff who were on drugs on duty, and others who had behaved “extremely inappropriately” with young people, causing distress and humiliation.

Ofsted inspectors, who visited Rainsbrook in February, also revealed that a child who suffered a fracture, possibly as a result of being restrained, did not receive treatment for 15 hours because senior staff overruled clear clinical advice that he needed treatment.

Its the same tactic: the false "independence", the money under the table. But the fact that they have to pay consultants to say nice things about them doesn't make those things true - and in fact suggests the opposite.

Climate change: Time for farmers to pull their weight

For the past decade or more, farmers have been saying that they can't do anything about climate change. It's too hard, too expensive, there are no solutions which would let them reduce their emissions.

Bullshit:

Research co-authored by Matthew Deighton, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal last week, found a new stock feed additive, NOP, cuts the methane produced by cows by almost a third.

It interferes with an enzyme in the methane-producing micro-organisms in the cow's stomach. "It's a very, very small amount – as little as one gram – in the daily feed of a cow. So that means it really has the opportunity to get on to farms, as we don't have to drastically change the diet of the animals."

Even more excitingly, the addition of NOP allowed the cows to put on extra weight, which was good news for farmers, Deighton said.

There still needs to be further work done, particularly on residues, but they're expecting it to be on the market within five years. At which stage its time to call the farmers on their bullshit, and make them use it. Everyone else is doing their bit to reduce emissions; its time our largest polluters pulled their weight as well.

The end of coal in NZ

Huntly is closing down its coal-fired generators permanently:

Genesis Energy announced its last two coal-burning electricity generators at Huntly Power Station will be permanently withdrawn from the market by December 2018, signalling the end of large scale coal-fired generation in New Zealand.

The decision is being hailed as another step towards having 90 per cent of New Zealand's electricity supply generated by renewables by 2025.

Chief executive Albert Brantley said the company has been on track to retire the four coal/gas fired Rankine units since 2009.

What's better is that its been driven out by "lower cost renewable generation, principally wind and geothermal". In other words, there's just no space in the market for coal any longer. Which means we're unlikely to see any new coal-fired stations constructed.

This is backed up by MBIE's Electricity Demand and Generation scenarios, released in May. Their cost of generation assumptions show that coal has been pushed completely out of the market, and that they do not expect any new coal-fired generation to be built, ever (and they're probably still over-estimating the cost of wind). Coal simply has new future in New Zealand any more.

"I agree with Jeremy"

Another reason why Jeremy Corbyn should lead the UK Labour Party: he thinks Tony Blair should be charged with war crimes:

Tony Blair could be made to stand trial for war crimes, according to the current Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn.

The veteran left winger said the former prime minister was reaching the point when he was going to have to deal with the consequences of his actions with the coming Chilcot inquiry report.

“I think it was an illegal war,” he said in an interview with BBC2's Newsnight adding that former UN secretary general had confirmed that. “Therefore he (Blair) has to explain that,” Corbyn said.

“We went into a war that was catastrophic, that was illegal, that cost us a lot of money, that lost a lot of lives,” he added. “The consequences are still played out with migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, refugees all over the region,” he said.

Pressed on whether Mr Blair should be charged with war crimes, he said: “If he's committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who's committed a war crime should be.”

That ought to go down well with Labour's base.

Meanwhile, panicked by the thought that left-wing people might want to reconnect with the party that abandoned them and vote for a leader who espouses their values, the Labour heirarchy is desperately scrutinising new memberships to cull out potential Corbyn supporters. Which just shows how establishment they've become - democratic in name, but not in substance...

Canterbury's dictatorship fails

When John Key replaced the elected Environment Canterbury with unelected dictators, it was supposedly because it wasn't making enough progress on cleaning up Canterbury's rivers. Five years of dictatorship later, they've actually gone backwards:

The Canterbury Regional Council (Environment Canterbury) has failed to meet its own deadline for cleaning up the region's rivers - and has, in fact, gone backwards.

In the five years since the Government replaced elected councillors with commissioners for their lack of progress in meeting targets, more rivers have become unsafe for swimming.

In 2010, the new council set itself a target of ensuring 80 percent of rivers in the region were safe for swimming. At the time, 74 percent of rivers fell into this category.

Today, the council announced that only 67 percent of rivers were safe to swim in.

So much for "making the trains run on time". But given that the dictatorship's primary policy has been to give more water to farmers, allowing more irrigation and more pollution, its hardly surprising. A regional authority wanting to clean up rivers would be restricting irrigation, not promoting it.

Meanwhile, we have an illegitimate regional dictatorship destroying Canterbury's environment for the enrichment of the few. Its time it went. Its time for elections.

The sheepgate files

The government dumped the documents on Murray McCully's sordid Saudi sheep bribe last night, and its revealed the deal was dodgy from start to finish. Firstly, that "legal advice" the government had which showed that they were exposed to a claim of up to $30 million in damages for refusing to allow live sheep exports? It turns out that it came from the Saudis, not from the government's lawyers. In other words, it was "legal advice", but a try-on. Secondly, the Auditor-General had significant doubts about the legality of the scheme (which is going to be interesting if they now investigate it). As for Treasury, they opposed it from the beginning because it was "not within scope of existing appropriations", violated Cabinet spending guidelines and because it was "not clear from the paper what the $10 million committed is being used to purchase". And when things went wrong and the sheep died, John Key was instructed to lie about it.

So, just to make that clear, Murray McCully spent $10 million outside of his appropriation and possibly unlawfully purchasing fuck knows what from a dodgy Saudi billionaire. It looks like a bribe, it smells like a bribe. When are we sacking him?

43,000 unemployed under National

The latest Household Labour Force Survey was released today, showing that despite Treasury projections of a fall, unemployment had risen for the second quarter in a row. There are now 148,000 people unemployed, 43,000 more than when National took office.

So much for the "recovery" - unemployment bottomed out at 5.5% in September last year, and is now going back up, so it doesn't look like we'll be seeing kiwis back in jobs anytime soon. Instead, unemployment seems to be structurally a full 2% higher under National than under Labour. Which is 40,000 more people out of work, their families scraping to get by on a pittance. As for National's "something special", we blinked and missed it. Unless you're a rich MP owning multiple houses in Auckland, of course, in which case you're rolling in it while the peasants starve...

Pointless waste

Today's example of the pointless waste of the "war on drugs": a woman jailed for two years for growing her own cannabis:

A leading figure in Kaikohe's arts and business communities has been jailed for two years after being found guilty of possession of cannabis for supply.

Kelly van Gaalen was sentenced in the Kaikohe District Court on Thursday following a jury trial last month. Friends and family in the public gallery, including her three children, wept and called out as the distraught 38-year-old was led away.

Van Gaalen was a member of the Kaikohe-Hokianga Community Board as well as the chair of the Kaikohe Community Arts Council and promotions manager for the Kaikohe Business Association. She has resigned from her positions. A community board by-election will be held in October.

It costs nearly $100,000 a year to keep someone in prison. Can anyone really say that that's money well spent in this case? Can anyone really say that jailing this woman will make us safer, or improve our society? Imprisoning recreational drug users who harm no-one but themselves is simply pointless and wasteful, and the sooner we stop doing it the sooner the police can refocus their resource son real crime.

Why was this a private prosecution?

The CTU has won a private prosecution against an unsafe employer:

The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) has won a private prosecution against a Tokoroa forestry company over the death of a worker, after the government safety regulator declined to prosecute.

In 2013, loader driver Charles Finlay was crushed to death by a log while working in the dark.

WorkSafe investigated but said it could not find enough evidence of wrongdoing to prosecute the 45-year-old's employer, M & A Cross Ltd.

But now M & A Cross Ltd has pleaded guilty in the Rotorua District Court to breaches under the Health and Safety Act.

Its great that the CTU have won this case, but at the same time, they should never have had to bring it in the first place. We have a government agency, WorkSafe, which has the specific job of prosecuting dangerous employers. But whether by underfunding or industry capture, they did nothing - a clear failure of the system. And if they won't prosecute a case where someone died, you really have to wonder how many other cases they're refusing to prosecute, and whether their refusal to enforce the law properly is making our workplaces more dangerous.

Something to go to in Wellington

Jane Kelsey will be speaking about her new book, The FIRE Economy, in Wellington tomorrow night:

The FIRE economy – finance, insurance and real estate – is now the world’s principal source of wealth creation. Its rise has transformed our political, economic and social landscapes. From rising inequality and ballooning household debt to a global financial crisis and fiscal austerity, instability has accompanied this new orthodoxy. Yet it has proven remarkably resilient, even resurgent, in New Zealand and abroad.

The continuing narrative of neoliberalism in New Zealand reveals financial crises to be inherent to the very structure of the FIRE economy. How we respond to New Zealand’s future crises, however, means questioning what responses the failing neoliberal orthodoxy will actually permit. In detailing the barriers the FIRE economy presents to change in New Zealand, Kelsey points towards socially progressive, post-neoliberal futures.

All welcome. If you would llike to attend, please register here. If you know of anyone else who may be interested, please pass this invitation on to them.

when: 17:30, Wednesday 5 August
Where: Lecture Theatre 1, Old Government Buildings, Stout Street, Wellington

Climate change: The US acts

The US is finally acting on greenhouse gas emissions, with new rules under the Clean Air Act requiring states to reduce emissions from power plants by 32% by 2030:

The final rules propose a 32% cut in carbon emissions from power plants by 2030 on 2005 levels, up from the initial proposal of 30%. However states will only have to comply by 2022 rather than 2020 as originally proposed, and will be able submit their plans on meeting the targets by 2018 instead of 2017.

CO2 emissions from power plants fell 15% between 2005 and 2013, meaning the country is halfway to the target.

Monday’s version of the rules also gives an explicit boost to wind and solar power, angering the natural gas industry which will still be a large beneficiary of the switch from coal to gas-fired power plants, which produce much lower emissions.

Which is good, but is also verging on being too little, too late, with a new study showing that we now need net emissions to go negative (either through carbon capture and storage, or extensive reforestation) if we want to limit ourselves to two degrees of global temperature rise. Meanwhile, US republican polluters are naturally planning to sue to try and overturn the law so they can keep on profiting by destroying the global climate. Hopefully they'll lose, but they'll probably delay implementation and snatch a few more years of profits, which is all these sociopaths care about. And then they'll complain that no-one will ensure their beachfront condo against floods or hurricane damage...

Two ideas for open diplomacy legislation

Last week, I called for a democratic foreign policy. With the collapse of TPPA negotiations over the weekend, we've got some time to think about this and about what needs to change. Here's a couple of ideas.

Firstly, we need an Open Diplomacy Act. The essence? That any information which our government provides to other parties in international treaty negotiations, or which they provide to us, must be immediately proactively published. Why? So we can see what the government is doing, obviously. Like the OIA, this will enable participation in decision-making and promote accountability of Ministers and officials. But it will also help put our foreign policy on a more democratic footing, by providing us with the information which would enable us to meaningfully consent to the decisions made (as opposed to today, where being mushroomed means that these decisions cannot be said to have any form of consent or legitimacy).

Note that this applies to material which the negotiating parties have already made public to each other, so it doesn't undermine the government's ability to keep its bottom lines secret in negotiations (unless they tell the other parties, in which case they're no longer secret). What it does prevent is them lying to us about what they're doing, or selling us a pig in a poke then presenting us with a fait accompli.

Secondly, we need some way of providing public consent to highly controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement clauses, which allow corporations to sue us if we legislate to protect public health or the environment. A recent member's bill from NZ First would have banned them outright; I'm happy enough to permit their approval by referendum (which means the government actually has to convince us of their merits). The decision belongs to the people because it effectively limits the scope of government - and that's a decision for us, not them. As a bonus, this would sidestep the prohibition in Standing Orders forbidding votes on the same issue in the same year, so such a bill could be introduced immediately.

The question is whether the politicians will move on this, or whether they're happy with the current situation of secret deals and no meaningful consent.

Something to go to in Christchurch

[Via NZ Council for Civil Liberties]

New Fisk

Abdullah al-Senussi execution: This perversion of justice suits Western security services just fine

Disappearance to execution?

Remember Khalid Muidh Alzahrani? A Saudi refugee who had fled religious persecution, last year he was kidnapped from his home in Christchurch and flown back to Saudi Arabia by Saudi officials. Now, there are worries that he has been executed:

Friends of a Saudi refugee who left New Zealand in mysterious circumstances fear he may have been put to death.

The police case file reveals no-one has heard from Khalid Muidh Abudulla Alzahrani, 43, since October, when he sent a series of text messages from Saudi Arabia to a friend stating he had been detained by his father, was due to appear in court and needed help from the New Zealand embassy.

The Government has been unable to assist, claiming it can do little for residents or refugees not travelling on a New Zealand passport.

Those who knew Alzahrani fear the worst. They believe he may have been imprisoned and tortured or executed.

So, just to make this clear, the Saudi Arabian government kidnapped a man to whom New Zealand had extended its protection, rendered him overseas, and may have murdered him. And our government simply doesn't want to know. I guess they wouldn't want any concerns about criminal behaviour or human rights from interfering with their precious trade deals.

Meanwhile, I'm still wondering: where were the SIS? We pay them $50 million a year specifically to protect us from stuff like this. Either there was a failure of intelligence around the Saudi government's actions, or they let them happen. Either way, we deserve some answers, so we can make sure this never happens again.