Another company after cheap migrant labour

In the past I've argued that we should not be rewarding companies with poor labour practices by subsidising them with migrant labour because kiwis won't take their shit jobs. And today we have a perfect example of the problem, in the form of Ritchies' Coach Lines:

The Government should reject a national bus company's request to fill 110 bus driver jobs with migrant workers, a bus driver union says.

Ritchies Transport Holdings made a request to Immigration New Zealand on March 3 seeking permission to hire overseas labour to fill 80 bus and coach driver roles for Auckland, 15 for Dunedin and 15 for Queenstown.

Because bus drivers are not on the Government's skill shortage list, Ritchies must obtain permission from Immigration New Zealand in the form of an Approval in Principal to fill the vacancies with overseas workers.

[...]

Bus drivers did not want to work for Ritchies because it was known as a low paying company, [First Union transport and logistics secretary Jared Abbott] said.

It recently won a number of new contracts which were tendered at a price so low it required drivers to be paid a wage which was not attractive to local talent, he said.

The market solution for a company which can't find workers at the pay and conditions it is offering is to offer more. If they can't afford to, then well, maybe they shouldn't lowball their bids. Instead, these scum are sticking their hand out and demanding foreign labour so they don't have to pay a proper wage. That's not acceptable, and they should be rejected. If they're not profitable without a subsidy, then they're not profitable at all, and they deserve to go out of business.

New Fisk

Watching on as Islamist fighters are evacuated from war-torn Eastern Ghouta

Dodgy as hell

Like many former Pacific colonies, Nauru retrained judicial links with its former colonial master, using an Australian court as its final court of appeal. Last month they abolished those ties. That's a good move, except for one detail: they did it in secret, and apparently to strip defendents in political cases of their appeal rights:

Nauru's justice system is without any court of appeal, after the Nauruan government severed ties with the Australian judicial system.

The move by the Pacific island's government has left former Opposition MPs involved in highly-politicised cases with no avenue of appeal.

Their lawyers only found out about the change after a chance encounter with senior Nauruan officials on a flight to Brisbane.

[...]

The ABC understands this took place on 12 December and that it took effect three months later.

Nauru establishing its own supreme court is a good thing. But this seems calculated to deny justice to the government's political enemies. And that's simply not acceptable.

Still paying off National's cronies

When they were in power, National established a system of charter schools to direct public money into private pockets. And now that they're out of power, we're still paying for it:

Taxpayers have paid $3.4 million to five proposed charter schools that may never open.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins has told National education spokeswoman Nikki Kaye that two proposed schools were paid establishment grants on the day the Ardern Government was sworn in, October 26.

Two others have been paid establishment grants since then, apparently because the new Government was bound by contracts signed before the election even though Hipkins has introduced a bill abolishing charter, or partnership, schools.

None of the five schools is believed to have paid back any of the money yet because they are still negotiating about either opening state or integrated schools instead, or recovering their costs for dreams that will never be realised.

Screw negotiations. This is public money, and it should be repaid. The government should introduce a clause into its charter school abolition bill to ensure that it is. The public should not be paying for schools which will never open, or for assets for private companies who will take them and run.

Time to repeal this discriminatory law

At the moment several North Island local authorities are about to hold referenda on Māori wards. But Local Government New Zealand wants the law allowing the public to veto Māori representation removed:

Changes must be made to the way Māori wards are decided on, Local Government New Zealand says.

President Dave Cull has penned an open letter to the government asking for the Electoral Act to be changed.

He said the process is unfair and inconsistent.

And he's right. The process for deciding Māori wards is different from that for deciding normal wards: in one case, Pakeha get a veto, in the other they don't. And this is pretty obviously discriminatory on the basis of race. If such a law was introduced today, it might attract a formal report under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. And when you put it like that, repeal seems more than justified. Either all ward arrangements must allow a referendum, or none should.

New Fisk

These are the faces of those who have been affected by the siege of Eastern Ghouta

A lawless multinational

So, it turns out that in addition to being a tax-cheat, Facebook has also been ignoring the Privacy Act:

The Privacy Commissioner says Facebook has breached the Privacy Act 1993.

The Commissioner’s finding comes after Facebook refused a complainant access to personal information held on the accounts of several other Facebook users.

The social media company said the Privacy Act did not apply to it and it did not have to comply with the Commissioner’s request to review the information requested by the complainant.

The Commissioner found Facebook was subject to the Privacy Act and had fundamentally failed to engage with the Act. He said Facebook’s position that the Privacy Act did not apply to it was surprising and contrary to its own Data Policy in regards to responding to legal requests for any personal information it held.

This simply isn't acceptable. The Privacy Act applies to all companies operating in New Zealand, regardless of where they hold data. Facebook operates in New Zealand, so it is subject to the law, no matter how inconvenient it is to lawless, tax-cheating silicon valley tech-bros.

Not that it is actually inconvenient. The Privacy Commissioner' statement makes it clear that Facebook had a number of options available to it, and there's a strong possibility they could have lawfully refused the request. Instead, they simply refused to process it. Unfortunately, there's no criminal penalties under the Privacy Act. This sort of attitude from foreign multinationals is a strong argument that we need some.

New Fisk

Egyptian President Sisi will win again, partly thanks to the Christian vote
As we look back on the horror of Iraq 15 years later, I wonder – would this have happened if Trump was president?
Why are politicians comparing everything to the Second World War?

A coverup unravels

Back in February, Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran embarrassed herself in Question Time trying to pretend that she hadn't been trying to hide a meeting with RNZ's head of news, Carol Hirschfeld. First, the meeting never happened. Then it was "informal". RNZ executives obediently trotted out the same line in front of a select committee, saying that the two had just bumped into one another at a cafe and had a few words over breakfast - entirely natural, nothing suspicious. But it turns out that that was a lie, and it has now cost Hirschfeld her job:

Radio NZ senior manager Carol Hirschfeld has resigned over a meeting she had with broadcasting minister Clare Curran.

Hirschfeld met with Curran on December 5 last year. The meeting was pre-arranged, and was in Curran's ministerial diary.

However, RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson said Hirschfeld had repeatedly assured him the meeting was coincidental, and that she and Curran had talked after bumping into each other in a Wellington cafe.

On Sunday, Hirschfeld told Thompson the meeting had in fact been pre-arranged.

On Tuesday, Thompson said he had accepted Hirschfeld's resignation, effective immediately.

Which is fair enough - causing your bosses to mislead Parliament is definitely a firing offence. But pretty obviously, Hirschfeld isn't the only one who should be losing her job over this. From the start, we've had nothing but lies from Curran. Under Helen Clark, deliberately misleading the public was a sacking offence. Will Jacinda Ardern hold her Ministers to the same standard?

An abuse of power

New Zealanders like to think that our country is free of the sort of routine corruption and abuse of power regularly seen in places like the United States. Not any more:

National is accusing NZ First of holding the regions to ransom after a junior MP was sent to try and heavy Rodney MP Mark Mitchell out of advocating on behalf of a project in his electorate.

Mitchell said he was approached by freshman NZ First MP Jenny Marcroft at the weekend, telling him the party was considering funding the Mahurangi River Restoration Project but the party would need Mitchell to cease his involvement in the project.

He alleged Marcroft also said any funding for the project would be contingent on an assurance from National that it would not seek to ask any questions related to the project, of the responsible minister, in the House.

Marcroft has been told to apologise, so that's pretty much an admisison of guilt. At the same time, a mere apology is not enough for such a disturbing allegation. Marcroft has done something completely unacceptable: attempting to leverage government spending to use it as a weapon to bully and bribe an opponent. That sort of behaviour has absolutely no place in our politics, and neither do people who do it. She simply has to go.

$90,000

That's how much the government owes Kim Dotcom thanks to former Attorney-General Chris Finlayson's arrogance:

The Crown breached the privacy of the internet mogul Kim Dotcom when it refused to release private information about him, the Human Rights Review Tribunal finds.

The Tribunal's finding released today said Dotcom wrote to 28 Ministers of the Crown in July 2015 requesting all private information held about him.

The 52 requests were in near identical terms and were forwarded to the Attorney General.

Mr Dotcom also said the request was for pending legal action and urgency was sought.

One month later the Solicitor General declined the request, saying they were vexatious, meaning it did not have sufficient grounds or was purely intended to be difficult.

Today, the Tribunal found the Crown had breached the Privacy Act by refusing the request for information. The Crown has been ordered to pay $90,000 in damages.

And that conclusion ought to have been obvious from the start. The transfers were inappropriate (if not made in outright bad faith), and the bar for vexatiousness is extremely high, and only gets higher when the requester is engaged in litigation against an agency and has had their privacy breached. The Attorney-General basicly treated the Privacy Act like the OIA, perverting it for political reasons. And that's simply not acceptable.

Which leads to the obvious question: will Chris Finlayson be paying this money (and the resulting costs) personally? Or will he hide behind his former office to avoid the consequences of his bad decision-making? And if he does, then what incentive is there for future attorney-generals not to make similarly bad faith decisions?

Though I guess Dotcom has an answer for that:

After years of perseverance the time is here, we won, we’re getting to the truth. I’m no longer the defendant.

To former AG Chris Finlayson, former PM John Key and everyone else who was part of the real ‘Mega Conspiracy’, it is showtime! Private prosecution! I see you in Court.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 26, 2018

I look forward to the results of these cases, because they will be fascinating...

The full judgement is here.

Places to go, people to be

Nothing from me today - I'm off to Hydra, Wellington's annual larp convention, to be some other people for the weekend.

Normal bloggage should resume on Monday.

Pervasive criminality

Fishing is a criminal industry. Operation Achilles revealed that 80% of fishers under-reported their catch, dumped fish, or committed other serious breaches of fisheries law. And if you were thinking that that was just an isolated incident, a few bad apples, you're wrong:

A Ministry report obtained by Newshub has revealed extensive illegal activity in the set net fishery off Kaikoura, including illegal dumping, misreporting and "virtually non-existent" reporting of marine mammal bycatch.

The Kaikoura coast is home to a host of marine life and a popular set net fishery. The Operation Loctite report, which details illegal behaviour by four out of five set net fishermen in the area, was leaked to Newshub.

[...]

A compliance team investigated in 2011 to see if fishers were obeying the 24-hour soak time rules - that's the time limit for how long a net is allowed to be left in the water before being collected.

The team uncovered a range of illegal activity, with fishers leaving nets in the water for seven times the limit in some cases.

A dead fur seal was hauled up in one net and quote species of fish were dumped. False reporting of catch was noted, and reporting of marine mammal catch was "virtually non-existent".

Of course, no-one was prosecuted, and when some were caught doing it again in 2015 and prosecuted, they were fined a derisory $3,000. This sort of enforcement and penalty structure clearly isn't a deterrent to this pervasive criminality. The law permits penalties of up to 5 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. It is long past time it was enforced.

Public service for private gain

National MP Jonathan Coleman is quitting politics. Good riddance. But what's concerning is that having spent three years ruining the public health system as Minister of Health, he's gone straight to work for a private healthcare provider which exists because of his party's continuous vandalism. Most charitably, he's seeking to use the knowledge gained in public service for private gain. But bluntly, it looks like a payoff, a reward for boosting their business by making the public health system suck. And neither is acceptable. Again, we need legislation to stop this revolving door and to limit post-career conflicts of interest by politicians. We already prohibit former Immigration Ministers from working in the immigration sector for 12 months. Its time we did that to other Ministers as well.

Drawn

A ballot for six member's bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn:

• Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt of Court) Bill (Chris Finlayson)
  
• Oaths and Declarations (Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill (Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki)
  
• Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill (Scott Simpson)
  
• Fair Trading (Oppressive Contracts) Amendment Bill (Duncan Webb)
  
• Electronic Compliance with Reporting Requirements Bill (Adrian Rurawhe)
  
• Education (Social Investment Funding and Abolition of Decile System) Amendment Bill (Erica Stanford)
  

Of these, Stanford's bill is likely to be voted down (being simple vandalism). The rest will likely pass their first readings. Finlayson's bill implements Law Commission recommendations, and should really be a government one; while it needs amendment (it retains the archaic offence of "scandalising the court", basicly a sedition law to protect judges from criticism), I'm hoping it passes.

More MBIE spying

So, it looks like Greenpeace and earthquake victims weren't the only targets of Thompson & Clark Investigations spying:

Another group is claiming to have been spied on by the security firm Thompson and Clark.

As well as being paid by the government to spy on Greenpeace and at least one earthquake claimant in Christchurch, it can now be revealed it has also been monitoring three activist groups, including Oil Free Wellington.

Oil Free Wellington found out it was being watched by Thompson and Clark when it made an official information request for emails from the firm to MBIE, the government department with oversight of oil and gas exploration and mining.

And again, MBIE seems to have actively colluded in this, despite a government directive not to spy on protest groups. But that's what happens when you have an agency completely captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate: the whims of that industry become more important to them than explicit instructions from their elected masters.

The SSC's inquiry needs to be broadened, to cover all government agency collaboration with TCIL, and their potential use of other companies for similar work. More importantly, its clear that we need tighter regulation of the private investigation / security industry to stop them from being used to undermine our democracy in this way.

Meanwhile, it has now been six months since MBIE told me that they would release their communications with Thompson & Clark. Just a few days ago MBIE claimed they were still "in the final stages of sign-out, and will be sent to you as soon as possible". Which is basicly what they told me six months ago. Which really makes me wonder what the hell is going on over there and what they have to hide...

Replacing the Privacy Act

Yesterday the government introduced a new Privacy Bill to the House. The bill is a wholesale replacement for the existing Privacy Act, which re-enacts existing law with a few tweaks. Most importantly, there are
restrictions on overseas use of information, mandatory reporting of data breaches, and new powers for the Privacy Commissioner to issue compliance notices. Unfortunately, it doesn't go far enough: prosecutions for breaches must still be brought by the (grossly underfunded) Director of Human Rights proceedings, and the penalties for ignoring the Privacy Commissioner's notices are derisory. There's also no move to correct the hole which renders journalists subject to the Act depending on whether they write books or articles - a nonsensical provision which significantly threatens media freedom. But all of this can be fixed by select committee, and hopefully it will be.

Meanwhile, its worth noting that this bill has been seven years in the making, stemming from a law Commission report way back in 2011. But despite agreeing the broad shape of the reforms back in 2014, the previous National government never bothered to enact them - protecting our privacy from abusive foreign corporations just not being a priority for them. The new government has made it a priority, and if the commencement date in the Bill - 1 July 2019 - is anything to go by, intends to enact it quickly.

Pointed criticism

How deceitful has NZDF been over Operation Burnham? Keigh Ng has put together a lovely data visualisation on the Herald, which challenges you to identify the villages and buildings from Hit and Run on commercially-sourced satellite photos. For most people, its a matter of ten or twenty seconds - a trivial amount of time compared to the 352 days NZDF took. And when you consider that they have rooms full of professional staff trained specifically in examining and analysing satellite imagery, it looks even worse. Almost as if they didn't want to do it, because that would mean admitting that their initial PR response was wrong...

When a government agency lies to the public like this, it needs to be held accountable. And when it lies to the public about murdering innocent people in our name, there is an even stronger case. We need an inquiry into NZDF's handling of this. But we also need a criminal investigation into their war crimes and apparent attempts to pervert the course of justice. As for its head, Lt General Tim Keating, who oversaw all this: he needs to be fired. Not allowed to retire quietly in three months as scheduled, but fired. But knowing the way NZDF operates, they'll probably recommend him for a knighthood.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day, and one of wall-to-wall first readings. First up is Simeon Brown's Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill, a piece of classic law-and-order bullshit about filling prisons. Second is Kieran McAnulty's Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill, which would improve the rights of contract workers in the "gig economy". It's a bill which has been a long time coming and which seems well justified in the modern employment market. Next there's Melissa Lee's Accident Compensation (Recent Migrants and Returning New Zealanders) Amendment Bill, which plugs a small hole in ACC coverage (a whole which NZ First is trying to make bigger). And finally there's Barbara Kuriger's Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill, which is yet more law and order bullshit from the party of pedophobes. If the House moves quickly, it could make a start on Denise Lee's utterly misnamed Employment (Pay Equity and Equal Pay) Bill, which is designed to make equal pay claims more difficult.

Angie Warren-Clark's Crimes (Offence of Blasphemous Libel) Amendment Bill has been withdrawn, since now ther's a government bill.

There should be a ballot for three or four new bills tomorrow, depending on how many they get through today.

Repealing Blasphemous Libel

Last month, Angie Warren-Clark's Crimes (Offence of Blasphemous Libel) Amendment Bill was drawn from the ballot, and the bill is likely to have its second reading tomorrow. But that apparently isn't fast enough for Andrew little - he's included a provision to repeal blasphemous libel in the government's new Crimes Amendment Bill, which he introduced to the House yesterday:

New Zealand's archaic anti-blasphemy law is to be scrapped under the new government.

Justice Minister Andrew Little introduced legislation on Monday to repeal the decades-old law.

Blasphemous libel is listed in the Crimes Act and comes with a punishment of up to a year in prison but has not been prosecuted since 1922 - and even then was unsuccessful.

Labour sought to repeal the law when in opposition last year, but National blocked its attempt, saying the public should first have a say.

The government's Crimes Amendment Bill will be considered by MPs later this year and people will have a chance to make submissions when it goes before a select committee.

The repeal is part of an omnibus to repeal old and outdated laws, including the year-and-a-day rule for homicide. Using a government bill generally means faster progress, though it can't have a first reading until Thursday.

Its unclear yet whether Warren-Clark will pull her bill, or let it proceed in parallel as a spur to government action. But either way, its good to see politicians falling all over themselves to do this, after years of inaction.