This is not what armed police are for

Last month, the police announced a trial of specialist roaming armed units, which would drive round (poor, brown) areas in armoured SUVs, armed to the teeth. When they announced the trial, they told us it was about having armed police "ready to attend major incidents at any time if needed". What it actually means is armed police doing traffic stops:

Residents and politicians fear new armed police teams are being used for lower-risk responses and "preventative patrolling" after an arrest in suburban Hamilton over the weekend.

Video footage shows police from the newly formed Armed Response Teams pulling over a car linked to a dishonesty crime on a suburban Hamilton road.

The footage showed two officers, at least one with a Glock pistol, talking to a man sitting in a car on the side of the road. No other police cars or officers can be seen.

Police later said the stop was entirely appropriate, and resulted in the man being arrested without incident for "breaching conditions".

Basicly they're sitting by the side of the road running number plates and looking for people to pull over and point guns at - exactly the sort of shit you get in America. It is not what armed police are for in New Zealand, and it is likely only a matter of time before some twitchy, hyped-up cop machine-guns someone.

Spain's failed electoral gamble

Spain went to the polls today in the second elections this year, after the Socialists (who had come to power in a confidence vote, then gone to the polls in April) rejected the offer of a coalition with the left-wing PoDemos, and instead decided to gamble n a better outcome by forcing Spaniards to vote again. Judging from the results, that gamble has failed; the Socialists have lost a few seats, PoDemos have lost a lot more, and the "centrist" (but actually right wing) Citizens, who the Socialists saw as a better coalition partner, were wiped out. Instead, the big winners have been the Popular Party (which was founded by fascists), and the misogynistic, Islamophobic Vox (actual fascists). And the reason for that can be laid squarely at the feet of the Socialists, and their decision to run on a hate campaign against Catalonia.

Meanwhile, in Catalonia, pro-independence parties won more seats than ever before, and again saw off the Socialists to be the largest party. Despite the wishes of the Spanish parties, Catalans are not simply going to go away. If they want a government which doesn't involve fascists or the children of fascists, they need to actually sit down and talk. Sadly, I expect they'll try and beat people into submission instead.

The astroturf party

National has finally rolled out its "BlueGreen" astroturf party, fronted by an array of former nats and people who were dumped by the Greens for not being Green enough. Its initial pitch is described by Stuff as "very business-friendly", and its priorities are what you'd expect: conservation, predator-free funding, a "war on weeds". But what does it have to say about climate change, the biggest environmental problem facing the country and the planet? Nothing useful:

"We will work with rather than against our farmers and industry.

"We are not prophets of doom. We are an optimistic party."

He said New Zealand should "lead where we can" on climate change but not "suffer serious economic consequences as a result of that".

He supported agriculture going into the Emissions Trading Scheme at some point in the future, saying farmers had to be protected.

So this is basicly a climate inaction party - just like their backers. They're about watering the garden while the planet burns.

National hopes that this sort of greenwash will win enough votes from the Greens to either provide them with a new coalition handpuppet to replace David Seymour, or (their preferred option) drive both parties below the 5% threshold, removing the environmental voice from Parliament and restoring FPP by default. But either would require Green voters to like the policies on offer. And to be honest, I don't think this is going to fool anyone.

New Fisk

Everything you were told about the Syrian war was wrong – until now

Climate Change: As predicted

Yesterday, when National voted for the Zero Carbon Bill, I predicted they'd gut it the moment they regained power, just as they had done to the ETS. And indeed, they have explicitly promised to do exactly that within their first hundred days in office. What would their amendments do? Abandon the Paris Agreement 1.5 degree target. Get the Commission to review the use of forest sinks, so the Minister can ban them and protect inefficient farmers from market forces. Remove the (weak) statutory methane target and instead have it set after a review by the Commission - allowing the Minister to weaken it still further. Oh, and let the government give up because its too late to do anything - clearly National's preferred position on climate change. So, what was the point of trying to compromise again?

The government wanted "political consensus" and policy durability. They have failed, and they were always going to. National simply has too strong a denier streak for them to ever accept effective policy on this issue. The only way that is ever going to happen is if the government simply enacts strong policy, makes it reality, and dares them to repeal it - just as they did with the anti-nuclear law.

Climate Change: Passed

The Zero Carbon Bill has just passed its third reading, uanimously. In the end, National supported it - but we all know they'll turn around and gut it the moment they regain power. Meanwhile, I guess ACT's David Seymour didn't even bother to show up.

I am on record as saying the targets in the bill are inadequate. I stand by that. They were fine for 2008 when the bill was drafted, but a decade of inaction means we have to cut faster and deeper than we would have needed to if we'd acted back then. And with the way the news is going, I think that parliament will be back to shave at least a decade off that target. And the sooner it does it, the better.

Unfortunately, thanks to Green co-leader James Shaw's commitment to "bipartisanship" - making concessions to National in the foolish belief that they will not be reversed the moment the balance of power shifts - that may not be possible. At least, it may not be posisble with him. This is his bill, his deal. As with the agriculture sellout, if we want better policy, he has to go.

Earlier in the week I heard someone quote Jacinda Ardern about how she wanted the bill to settle the issue, and how she didn't want to see any more school-strikes or tractors driving up Parliament steps. Farmers are planning to do exactly that on November 14, and the next global climate strike is on November 29. So, it looks like she will have both by the end of the month. Which is what you get for selling out: you don't please your opponents, while angering your supporters. And if that sellout costs her her government in the end, then that's the judgement of the voters on her compromises.

Justice for Bomber

When the Police were trying to cover up for the National Party over Dirty Politics, they went all-in with their abuses of power. They illegally search Nicky Hager's house, violating his journalistic privilege and invading his privacy. They unlawfully acquired Hager's bank records. They did the same to left-wing blogger Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury, telling his bank he was suspected of "computer fraud" in order to obtain his records. The bank subsequently cut off his accounts, and the resulting stress caused significant hardship. But now, the Police have admitted wrongdoing, apologised, and paid damages:

An apology has been made by police to blogger Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury after officers investigating the identity of the hacker Rawshark used a loophole in the Privacy Act to unlawfully access his private information.

[...]

A letter to Bradbury from police said: "Police apologise for the stress and other psychological harm caused to you by virtue of your involvement in this investigation."Police accept that you were not involved in 'computer fraud' and that you were not involved in the hack of Mr Slater's accounts.

"Police have also agreed to pay damages as part of the settlement of your claim, and to destroy the information received from the banks."

Good. And given the harm caused, I hope the settlement is substantial. But as with Hager, damages don't seem like enough. The Police broke the law. The officers who planned and oversaw that deliberate and vindictive lawbreaking need to be fired.

Britain's climate tyranny was unlawful

Last month, in response to a wave of protests by Extinction Rebellion, the British government purported to ban their protests from the whole of London. It was a significant interference with the freedoms of expression and assembly, and another sign of the country's decline into tyranny. But now, a court has declared the "ban" unlawful:

Mr Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Chamberlain said the Met’s section 14 order that XR “must now cease their protests within London” was unlawful because it went beyond the powers granted to police by the Public Order Act 1986.

In a judicial review ruling handed down on Wednesday morning, the judges said the Met had been wrong to define Extinction Rebellion’s two-week long “autumn uprising” as a single public assembly on which it could impose the order.

“Separate gatherings, separated both in time and by many miles, even if coordinated under the umbrella of one body, are not a public assembly under the meaning of section 14(1) of the 1986 act,” Dingemans said.

“The XR autumn uprising intended to be held from 14 to 19 October was not therefore a public assembly … therefore the decision to impose the condition was unlawful because there was no power to impose it.”

Hundreds of people were arrested for breaching the "ban". Now, they're looking at suing the police for damages. I hope they do, and I hope they win, because institutions need to be dealt a financial bloody nose when they overstep the mark, to provide a strong incentive not to do it again. But there needs to be harsher consequences than that. The commissioner of the metropolitan police signed an unlawful order which significantly interfered with the freedoms they were supposed to protect. They need to be fired, with no pension, pour encourager les autres. There should be no mercy for tyranny by government officials.

More crime from the spies

Last year, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security reported on significant problems with the intelligence warrant system. While they were unwilling to declare any warrant "irregular" (meaning unlawful) due to the recent law change, they were also not willing to give the system a clean bill of health. Now, they've done a followup report, and while there have been improvements in several areas, they have also for the first time reported that a number of warrants did not meet the statutory criteria under the Intelligence and Security Act 2017:

As noted above (paragraph 10) the Inspector-General reached the view this year that one of the Bureau’s Type 2 warrants was irregular for a lack of sufficient operational detail in the application and a consequently inadequate demonstration of necessity and proportionality. We have since found that another Bureau Type 2 warrant was irregular for deficiency of information on one of the activities for which authorisation was sought. The Bureau is working to address the issues raised by this warrant.

Late last year we formally advised NZSIS that activity under one of its Type 1 warrants was irregular, as it involved a privacy intrusion beyond what was articulated in the warrant application. The Service did not agree...

The Inspector-General says they will be doing more work to bring the agencies into compliance, but shouldn't they be doing more? Because, to point out the obvious, the effect of a lawful warrant is to authorise things like the use of interception devices or the unauthorised access of a computer system, both of which are crimes. If the warrant wasn't lawful, then the activities conducted appear to be criminal. Shouldn't the spies therefore be being prosecuted? Or does the law simply not apply to them like it applies to the rest of us? And shouldn't the agencies be paying damages to the victims of their criminal interference with privacy? Instead, it seems like secrecy will let them just get away with it. With the result that no-one will be held to account, and that there is no incentive not to repeat such behaviour in the future.

This shows the toothlessness of our "watchdog". Yes, they've got quite a bark on them. But like the IPCA, nothing ever results (except perhaps law changes retrospectively legalising the spies' crimes). And that means that their net effect is to provide a veneer of accountability to unaccountable criminal agencies. Until they can prosecute people - and actually do so - they're a sham, and a waste of everyone's time.

Meanwhile, we should remember: spy Minister Andrew little approved these warrants, despite their unlawfulness. Which shows that he is aimply unfit for his position. And it should also cause severe questions about trusting this Minister and these agencies with any more powers, like the control orders they're currently trying to ram through Parliament.

11,000 employed under Labour

The labour market statistics have been released, and unemployment has risen to 4.2%. There are 115,000 unemployed - 11,000 fewer than when Labour took office. In that time the minimum wage has gone up by $2 an hour, which shows that the right's fears about increases causing unemployment are simply false. Instead, it seems to boost living standards quite healthily. Why did National oppose that?

Boycott this democratic fraud

The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has called for submissions on Andrew Little's tyrannical Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill. Normally I encourage participation in the democratic process. I am not doing so in this case. Instead, I encourage all of you to boycott this submissions process, and to post publicly or email your MP to say that you are doing so and why. Why? Because the submission period is less than a week: until November 10. And people may remember that we've been here before.

Last time the government tried to ram through legislation on this topic - John Key's Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill, I encouraged people in good faith to submit on it. Several did. I found out afterwards that the committee didn't even bother reading the submissions, and that the entire process was simply a stitch-up. I and the people I had encouraged to submit had wasted our time and might as well have not bothered.

In short: a submission period this short is simply a fraud, designed to lend a veneer of democracy to tyranny. I refuse to participate in it, or lend my reputation to perpetrate it. They fooled me once, but I won't be fooled again.

Is there anything useful you can do as an alternative? Not at the moment. Like I said, its a stitch up, and it will be rammed through no matter what we think. The most we can do is express our anger, our disgust, and our distrust of a system which acts like this. But remember this at election time. We need to take our democracy back. And that means de-selecting or de-electing every MP who supports this bill. They will no longer protect our rights, so they all need to go.

Climate Change: Ban private jets

Aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and within it, one of the fastest sources is elite travel: billionaires flitting around the world in their private jets, spewing excessive pollution into the atmosphere just so they can avoid mixing with us dirty peasants. But in the UK, the Labour party has a plan to deal with this source of unnecessary pollution, by banning private jets from UK airports:

Labour is exploring plans to ban private jets from UK airports from as early as 2025 should it win the election, in the party’s latest broadside against the super-rich.

After a report revealed carbon emissions from the sector equivalent to 450,000 cars each year, Andy McDonald, the shadow transport secretary, said that billionaire users of private fossil fuel aircraft were damaging the climate and the party would consider a ban.

He tweeted on Monday: “The multi-millionaires & billionaires who travel by private jet are doing profound damage to the climate, and it’s the rest of us who’ll suffer the consequences. A phase-out date for the use of fossil fuel private jets is a sensible proposal.”

Sounds like a good idea. The average private jet journey emits ten times as much as flying economy class, and 150 times as much as using high speed rail. And it serves no useful purpose whatsoever. If billionaires want to keep doing this, then let them lead the investment in zero-emissions flight, and do something good for humanity for once.

Climate Change: Untold Suffering

That's what we face if we don't stop climate change, according to a warning from 11,000 scientists:

The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists.

“We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” it states. “To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.”

There is no time to lose, the scientists say: “The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.”

The statement is published in the journal BioScience on the 40th anniversary of the first world climate conference, which was held in Geneva in 1979. The statement was a collaboration of dozens of scientists and endorsed by further 11,000 from 153 nations. The scientists say the urgent changes needed include ending population growth, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, halting forest destruction and slashing meat eating.

These changes are achievable: we have the technology. Implementing it, however, requires political will. And that is what is lacking. Worldwide, our political establishments are deeply corrupt, in hock to the polluting industries which have caused this problem, afraid to change the status quo because their backers and funders will lose out (and yes, that means you, James Shaw and Jacinda Ardern, with your chickenshit targets and sellout to farmers). But with no more time for procrastination and fudging, they need to make a choice: act, or be utterly discredited. Because we are going to solve this problem. These industries are going to be destroyed, just as the massive horse industry was with the invention of the motor-car and the tractor, or candles by electric light. The only question for the politicians is whose side they're going to be on, and whether they want to be swept away with their polluter mates.

Meanwhile, the US has begun the process to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, signalling their refusal to take action. The rest of the world should respond with a blockade and trade sanctions. In the interim, you can start reducing American emissions by voting with your wallet and not buying American.

Good riddance

National MP and former Conservation Minister Maggie Barry will not seek re-election next year. Good riddance. Because in case anyone has forgotten, barry is a bullying thug who terrorised both public servants and fellow MPs. She is one of the people who makes Parliament a toxic workplace, and our country is well rid of her. The only sad thing is that she has been allowed to quit, rather than being dumped by voters as unfit for public office.

Now, if only Meka Whaitiri would do the same...

Climate Change: D-Day

The Zero Carbon Bill is back in the House today for its second reading. While this isn't the final stage, its still effectively D-Day for the bill. Because today, at around 5pm, is when we're going to find out if it has a majority, whether National will support it or retreat forever into being the party of climate arson, and whether NZ First will still be backing it, or whether they will be sabotaging it at the last minute.

While the framework established by the bill is good, the targets it sets are inadequate. They were fine for 2008, when the bill was drafted, but there's been a decade of unchecked emissions since, meaning we now need to cut deeper and faster if we are to stay within a safe carbon budget. I told the select committee in its hearings that with the way the news was going, the present targets would simply mean that they'd be back in five years time to strengthen them. And I think that that is exactly what will happen. Rather than delivering "certainty", this bill is simply another excuse for inadequate action. And we are all going to pay the price of that.

Winston is right

Winston Peters is in court today, suing a bunch of former Minister and civil servants over their pre-election leak of his superannuation repayment. He's characterised the leak as malicious, and said that it is repugnant that his information was passed on to Ministers to use for political advantage. And he's absolutely right. WINZ had a legal duty to protect his privacy. And instead of doing that, they handed private data about a past issue which had been resolved to their satisfaction and which they had decided was not worthy of prosecution or further action to Ministers to be used for a shoddy political smear. They absolutely deserve to be taken to the cleaners over this, and the one disappointment is that the government is protecting those involved, rather than letting them carry the can personally for their bad-faith actions.

As for former ministers Anne Tolley and Paula Bennett, by leaking the information (and even by not immediately sacking the "public service" crawlers provided it to them) they demonstrated that they are unethical shitbags. They deserve to be taken to the cleaners too - and personally, rather than being protected by the government. which just smacks of a cosy establishment pact to protect each other from the consequences of wrongdoing. And that's the point where I disagree with Matthew Hooton: yes, Bennett and Tolley clearly can't help themselves. But that doesn't mean we should excuse their shitbaggery. To the contrary, it signifies their need for punishment, to deter other would-be shitbags. But it also demonstrates their absolute unfitness for public office: because someone who would abuse people's private data in this way is absolutely unfit to have access to anything.

Meanwhile, WINZ seems to be in full-on victim-blaming mode, which is just irrelevant. Because the issue here isn't how the error happened in the first place - they've previously accepted it was not Winston's fault when they decided to deal with it with a simple repayment - but that they decided to leak it to Ministers. Their choice of "defence" strategy shows that they still suffer from a sick culture of hating the people they are meant to be assisting. The current government has promised to change that culture, and "bring kindness back". Clearly, they still have a lot of work to do on that front.

New Zealand should not fund bigotry

Two years ago, the Cook Islands government announced that it was planning to join the civilised world and decriminalise consensual homosexual sex between men. Now, they've reversed their position, and decided to criminalise lesbians into the bargain:

Two years ago, in a step welcomed by many people including the gay and lesbian communities, the Pacific nation's Parliament removed "indecent acts between men" and sodomy from a draft Crimes Bill.

On Saturday, select committee chairman Tingika Elikana said they would reinstate the clause.

In fact, in an unintended consequence of moves to make legislation gender-neutral, the anticipated effect of the bill will be to also criminalise sex between women, as well as between men.

The select committee's recommendation to Parliament would reinstate a penalty of up to five years' imprisonment, and a sentence of seven years' prison for consensual sodomy.

New Zealand currently provides $66.17 million a year to the Cook Islands in development assistance - about a quarter of their entire government budget. I doubt New Zealanders are very happy with the thought of their taxes supporting a foreign government to support bigotry and put gay people in jail. Respect for basic human rights should be a fundamental condition of any funding, and if the Cooks refuse to observe them, we should cut it entirely.

New Fisk

The new revolutions of the Middle East are not the same, but they all share this one fatal flaw

More tyranny in Australia

The boycott is a fundamental tool of protest. By choosing who we buy from, we can send a message, and hopefully change corporate behaviour. Historically, boycotts have been effective, for example over apartheid in South Africa and Israel, in forcing divestment from Myanmar, and in ending bus segregation in the USA. Which is probably why Australia's increasingly tyrannical government wants to ban them:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has accused environmental activists of "economic sabotage" and "indulgent and selfish practices" and says the government will look at legislation limiting potential damage to businesses.

Mr Morrison also said secondary boycotts were affecting small businesses providing services to industries such as mining companies, and the government would seek to protect them as they had farms in the wake of animal rights protests.

"We need to progress cautiously, but if it's not OK to have secondary boycotts being run by unions - and we got rid of those a long time ago - then it's not OK for environmental - not environmental, these are anarchist groups, and that's what they are - to be able to disrupt people's jobs and their livelihoods and to harass in the way that we've seen down in Melbourne, it's ugly and I don't think it's good for our country," Mr Morrison told radio station 3AW on Friday.

He also wants to crack down on protests, all to support Australia's dirty fossil fuel industry. Which sounds like another reason to boycott Australia until they start behaving like a civilised democracy again.

This government has a problem with secrecy

As introduced, the Zero Carbon Bill included an expansive secrecy clause, which would have covered virtually all decisions by the Climate Change Commission over our most important policy area. The Ministry for the Environment admitted this was a mistake (or as they put it, an "oversight"), and the select committee removed it. But at the same time, they introduced a new secrecy clause in s5ZV covering information requested by the Commission or the Minister about Adaptation.

How did they get here? Unfortunately the full advice isn't available yet (I have an OIA request in to get it, but they'll likely say "secret" again, just like they did with the original). But there's some clues in the supplementary advice given by MfE to the committee on the issue. The first thing to note is that this clause seems to have been proposed by MfE when proposing amendments to the bill. The committee expressed concern about it, and wanted to know why it went beyond the requirements of the OIA. MfE's response was to try and justify it:

The types of information that would be gathered through the adaptation reporting power may be highly sensitive in nature (e.g. trade secrets, privileged legal advice, financial information, etc.). Therefore, a mechanism to prevent public disclosure of this information is necessary. However, it is not proposed to be a blanket protection...

But first, they have proposed a blanket protection, which would forbid any disclosure whatsoever, ousting all other law. Second, almost all of the agencies from which information can be requested are public agencies, already covered by the OIA, so the effect of the clause is to make public information secret. Third, for the few edge cases which aren't already covered by the OIA, this evades the obvious question. What about the existing protections in the OIA? Here, MfE's advice has a section titled "Limitations of the Official Information Act 1982 to protect sensitive information", but they don't actually provide any. They say nothing about why the OIA is supposedly insufficient. Instead, they seem concerned about it limiting the ability of the government to use the information it has requested. Which is exactly the sorts of fundamental misunderstanding of the law which led them to propose the original secrecy clause. It's advice so bad, it comes close to misleading the committee, and thereby misleading parliament, and I am absolutely astonished it was accepted.

So, to give the committee the advice MfE didn't: the OIA already protects trade secrets, commercially sensitive financial information, and privileged legal advice. It also protects information where production has been required by law and it is important that it is supplied in future. While these protections are all subject to the public interest in disclosure, that interest is much lower for third-party information, and in practice these provisions are some of the strongest in the Act. Absent some compelling reason - which MfE simply hasn't provided - there seems no reason to believe these existing protections will be insufficient. The clause is unjustifiable and should be struck from the bill at the committee stage.

Meanwhile, it has become clear from both this and other cases where such clauses have been introduced that this government has a secrecy problem. They, or a clique of public servants, do not trust the Official Information Act and are trying to gradually oust its transparency regime by stealth, a bit at a time. And this is not something we should accept. Government business is public business. Government information is public information. It belongs to us, not them, and any politician who does not accept that deserves de-election.

Update: And then, not ten minutes after posting this, I find the "justification" in another report (on p 121 - 125). And it basicly boils down to private sector paranoia about the possibility of disclosure under the public interest clause, and a complete failure to conduct any actual analysis of how likely that is or when it might happen. It then suffers from the same problem of fundamental misunderstanding of the law and drafting failures as the earlier secrecy work: they think they're not creating blanket secrecy, but they are. And it really calls the competence of MfE's advisers in this area into question.