A bad sign

On Friday, a New South Wales court heard the case of Violet Coco. As part of a protest against inaction on climate change, Coco had blocked a Sydney motorway for 25 minutes. Using anti-protest laws passed by NSW's fossil-fuel-funded government, the judge jailed her for 15 months, with a minimum non-parole period of 8 months. The outrageous sentence has been condemned around the world, and has drawn more attention to Australia's attacks on the right to protest and transition into a fossil fuel tyranny. And now, the National Party wants to bring that tyranny here:

A new member’s bill will be lodged in the ballot that would make obstructing state highways, major roads, tunnels and bridges a crime.

The bill proposes up to two years in prison, a $20,000 fine, or both.

After disruptive rail protests on Wellington state highways, National are taking a stand against further obstructions.

Its only a member's bill, but member's bills tend to become official policy. Which makes this a very bad sign. At a time of increasing climate crisis and ongoing catastrophe's, National's answer is not to cut emissions, but to jail those demanding they do so. In addition to being grossly undemocratic, that simply does not seem to be a credible response.

Update (8/12/2022): Apparaently NewstalkZB memory holes its interviews really quickly, but fortunately the Wayback Machine had it, so I've updated the link. There's also a press release on Scoop for those looking for more information.

Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day, the last one for the year. First up there is a bunch of new private and local bills - the Thomas Cawthron Trust Amendment Bill, the New Plymouth District Council (Perpetual Investment Fund) Bill, and the Hawke’s Bay Agricultural and Pastoral Society Empowering Bill. None of these should be very contentious (or at least, not at this stage), and they're all likely to be sent off to select committee before the dinner break. After that, there's the committee stages of Ginny Andersen's Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill and Deborah Russell's Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill, which will probably take the rest of the night. If the House moves quickly it may get on to the second reading of Ian McKelvie's Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for Race Meetings) Amendment Bill, which has the weird feature of the committee refusing to make a recommendation on whether it should be passed or not as it is a "conscience issue" (a perfect example of how our political system simply abrogates responsibility on alcohol policy). There is unlikely to be a ballot tomorrow.

Justice for Ukraine?

Overnight, Russia launched more missiles against Ukraine, targeting apartment blocks and electricity facilities in an effort to terrise civilians and freeze them to death over winter. And there are more photos of Russian war crimes in occupied areas doing the rounds. So I'm glad to see some progress at the UN towards holding Russia's leadership to account for their crimes:

A draft resolution is circulating at the United Nations in New York for a Nuremberg-style tribunal to hold the Russian leadership accountable for crimes of aggression in Ukraine amid signs that US opposition to the proposal may be softening in the face of lobbying by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

[...]

The international criminal court has already started investigating war crimes in Ukraine, but Ukraine’s leadership argues that the ICC is hampered in that while it can try those charged with individual war crimes, it cannot prosecute the Kremlin leadership over the broader crime of aggression since Russia is not a signatory to the relevant statute.

Van Schaack, speaking in London at a Lawyers for Justice in Libya event, said the US had not taken a firm position on a special tribunal. However, she believed there was merit in holding trials in absentia of Russians accused of war crimes if it was not possible to extradite them.

The EU has already expressed support for such a tribunal, so the question here is whether its done by them or the UN. The latter obviously has more moral weight, and will be a stronger condemnation by the international community of Russia's crimes. And its in the interests of the international community to do it: non-aggression and human rights are the cornerstones of the modern international order (even if they are observed in the breach), and allowing aggression and war crimes to go unpunished will encourage them. Whereas trying aggressors and criminals protects everyone.

Whether Putin and his cronies actually end up before such a tribunal obviously depends on how the war ends (and what happens inside Russia in response). But at the least, this will make sure they can never set foot outside Russia or its tiny club of fellow tyrannies ever again. And that they'll never be able to enjoy their stolen wealth ever again.

Submit!

The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee has called for submissions on the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill. Submissions can be sent using the form here and are due by Monday, 23 January 2023.

The main thing the bill does is fix this problem, where the purpose of the Crown Minerals Act to "promote" mining means that nothing miners want to do can ever be refused and major environemtnal issues like climate change cannot be considered, even when another law says they can be. Which is a good thing, and its probably worth telling the committee that. But weirdly, despite this being absolutely urgent (especially given that there are mining permits up for extension soon), it won't take effect until July 2023.

This is likely because of the other thing the bill does - strengthen consultation requirements with iwi and hapu. Obviously, that's something which takes time to set up, and so a delay for that is reasonable. But there's no reason the bill has to come into effect all at once, and the vital change to the purpose clause should not be delayed. Instead, it and the related changes (part 1 and sections 7,8,9,17 and 20) should come into effect the moment the bill becomes law. That way, the problem will actually get solved, rather than NZPAM having another 6 months in which to rubberstamp permit extensions. So, if you're planning a submission, please add a few words urging immediate implementation of the change to the purpose clause.

Writing a submission isn't hard - basicly "I support this bill, but this is what I'd like to see changed". Mine was all of 189 words, which is about a hundred words shorter than this post. So please, fill out the form and send yours in today.

Yet another OIA inquiry

All year the Ombudsman has been trying to tell us that everything is fine with the OIA. But earlier in the year he released another report showing problems, particularly around ministerial interference and stonewalling, and now he's been forced to open another inquiry into precisely those problems:

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier will investigate journalists' complaints that government departments excessively delay responding to Official Information Act (OIA) requests.

[...]

Boshier said reporters had complained that when information was finally released “it belongs in the history books rather than the headlines” and limited the public’s ability to participated in decision-making.

“I am worried delays are leading to the perception – especially among journalists – that the Official Information Act is being used as a bureaucratic tool to stifle the flow of information. This is not in line with the principle of availability that is the foundation of this law,” Boshier said in a statement on Monday.

I have stuff I'd like to say here, but I can't, because I'm gagged - by the Ombudsman. Which is a bit shit really.

But what I can say, without breaching any "confidentiality" the Ombudsman purports to unilaterally impose, is that we have known for a long time that there are effectivley two OIA's - one for routine, non-controversial requests, and one for "political" requests about information Ministers and officials would rather not reveal. Requests of the first type are granted speedily, or at least within the time limit. Requests of the second time are extended, stonewalled, or just shitcanned. And government gets away with this in part because the Ombudsman drags his feet investigating, doesn't open formal investigations, doesn't use his powers to put Ministers and public servants on the carpet, and never, ever reports formally to Parliament when he discovers unlawful behaviour. In other words, the watchdog is asleep, and is disinclined to bite. And so Ministers get away with murder.

Meanwhile, at her postcab press conference the Prime Minister was hiding behind Te Kawa Mataaho's statistics to claim that everything is fine. The problem of course is that the statistics are... not good, distorted by statutory non-OIA requests, and gamed by agencies seeking to make themselves look good. But that doesn't matter, because the purpose isn't so much to illuminate problems as to help Ministers bury them - as we're seeing today.

Anyway, the Ombudsman will inquire, and in six months to a year they'll release a report, which may highlight some problems. And it will join all the other ones on the shelf. The OIA has been under permanent investigation for the best part of a decade. But part of the problem is that Ministers and officials aren't willing to actually do anything about the findings, and the Ombudsman isn't willing to step up enforcement to force them. Which suggests that what we need isn't yet another Ombudsman's inquiry, but an actual law with teeth,and a watchdog willing to enforce it.

Climate Change: More subsidised pollution

Back in 2020, the government realised that the industrial allocations in the ETS - supposed to protect large polluters from unfair competition from countries who didn't pay for their carbon - was overallocated. They were giving away too many free credits, resulting in windfall gains to polluters. So, they started talking about reducing industrial allocations (in 2024, letting polluters rort another hundred million dollars from us). Now, they've introduced a new bill to tweak the industrial allocation scheme. And as might be expected from this useless pack of quislings, it seems designed to massively increase pollution subsidies.

The problem is in section 15 of the bill, which amends the clause which defines eligible industrial activities. At present an industry is defined as "highly emissions-intensive" (and eligible for a 90% pollution subsidy, decreasing over 40 years) if it emits more than 1600 tons of CO2 per million dollars of revenue. An industry is "moderately emissions-intensive" if it emits more than 800 tons per million dollars. The bill would scale these thresholds to a carbon price of $25 / ton - which we haven't seen since pre-2020), which effectively lowers them significanly.

To put that in concrete terms, at today's carbon price of $81 / ton, the threshold for being "highly emissions intensive" will be 247 tons per million dollars of revenue. Which means that every current moderate activity will now be reclassified as "highly emissions-intensive", giving them an immediate 50% increase in their subsidy. As will a whole bunch of other industries that previously were not considered emissions-intensive at all.

And in practical terms, rather than fixing the carbon rort, Labour will be massively expanding it. They'll be giving free carbon credits to more and more polluters, at higher and higher rates, effectively turning the "polluter pays" principal on its head.

Oh, and while they're at it, they'll also be reducing the penalty for not paying your ETS liabilities when deforesting from triple the carbon price, to half or a quarter of it. Which means a direct financial incentive for deforestation. Merry xmas!

This is not consistent with reducing emissions. It is not consistent with human survival. Always foot-draggers, this government has now flipped into directly encouraging emissions. Some "nuclear-free moment".

Still asleep at the wheel

A couple of months ago, I asked various government agencies whether they had produced any advice on the impacts of Long Covid, and was shocked to learn that they hadn't. Newsroom's Marc Daalder has been keeping an eye on this issue, and in an article today, he reports that the government is still flying blind on Long Covid:

We know very little about the impact of Long Covid in New Zealand, largely because no one is looking into it.

Official Information Act requests to the Treasury, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Ministry for Social Development and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment on work done to discern the potential impacts of the illness all came up blank. More specific requests to the health and education ministries seeking any information about the impact of Long Covid on the health and education workforces, also returned nothing.

Astoundingly, while the rest of the world has woken up to this pandemic legacy, New Zealand is still flying blind.

This is an abdication of the basic duty of the public service to prepare New Zealand for future challenges and to contribute to informed decision-making by ministers. It both leaves the country vulnerable to a future wave of disability and workforce shortages and means Covid-19 policy-making lacks crucial considerations about the impact of virus spread.

As he points out, Long Covid is likely to have significant impacts on the health and welfare systems, and on the economy. It means more people unable to work, meaning higher healthcare and welfare costs, reduced wages, and reduced tax income to pay for it all. Responsible agencies would be thinking about this. But they're not. And as a result, the advice on Covid policy is one-sided, considering only the economic costs of restrictions, and not the economic benefits from less Long Covid. Which helps explain how its so shit, I guess.

Entrenching entrenchment

Last week, Parliament passed a rare entrenchment clause, protecting water assets from being sold by future governments without a referendum. As a supporter of anti-privatisation as a constitutional principle, I don't really have a problem with this - the supermajority which passed it represents a broad consensus across Aotearoa, and such supermajorities should be able to do things. But some people do, and as a result Labour is chickenshitting out, claiming (falsely) that they had no idea what they were voting for (which isn't the excuse they seem to think it is), and sending the issue back to Parliament's Business Committee to be "resolved" (which means repealed).

(I recognise that there are issues with passing such provisions under urgency, and that's on Labour for choosing to do their bill that way. As for the opposition being unaware of it until after it happened, that reflects as badly on them as the government's false claims of not being aware of what they voted for. Or are we really expected to accept that we pay MP's the big bucks to pay no attention whatsoever to the legislation they are voting on?)

Meanwhile, in all of the excuses and whining, the actual issue of how to protect public assets from being looted by the government of the day is being lost. But writing on Public Address, Graeme Edgeler has a suggestion there: a referendum on asset protection:

If you are someone who thinks public ownership of water infrastructure is so important that the government should act to entrench it, you do not need to convince National to agree with you. You need to convince the public (that shouldn’t be difficult: public ownership of water infrastructure is very popular!). Because there are two ways to entrench a law in New Zealand, and both have been used: the entrenched parts of the Electoral Act 1956 were entrenched by Parliament a supermajority of MPs (in fact, all of them) voted for it. But the Electoral Act 1993 isn’t law because Parliament voted for it, it’s law because the public voted for it: the entrenched bits of that are actually entrenched because there was a binding referendum.

If you are a Gordon or a Max, or a Eugenie, that’s your solution. Don’t settle for 60% protection. Go into the next election with the policy: if we cannot get 75% support in the House of Representatives to protect the continued public ownership of water infrastructure, we will hold a binding referendum on it, requiring a future Parliament to either agree by a 75% majority to sell water assets, or to come back to the public in a further binding referendum.

Which is good, but invites the question: why wait? Why not have the referendum at the next election instead? Because an easy fix for this is to amend the commencement clause so that entrenched protection for water assets only takes effect when backed by a referendum held under the Referenda (Postal Voting) Act 2000.

It is however an excellent suggestion for the broader issue. Because water assets aren't the only public assets in danger of being looted by future governments and sold off corruptly to their cronies. There are also state-owned enterprises, mixed-ownership model companies, crown-owned companies, and assorted other entities. All of these should be protected. And the way to do it is by an anti-privatisation law, backed by a referendum, which protects and entrenches public ownership and limits the ability to divest without a similar referendum or supermajority. And obviously, I think the Greens should offer such a bill among their policies at the next election, and demand it as part of the price for any coalition (I'd like to see it from Labour too, but that would require them to deliver on their public rhetoric, and my expectations on that front are low).

Constitutional scholars say "parliament can't bind its successors". But there's a power in Aotearoa which can bind future parliaments: us. And we should do it.

Open Government: Not achieved

Newsroom reports on the reaction from civil society organisations to Labour's new draft Open Government Partnership National Action Plan, and its pretty scathing:

The Government’s claims to greater openness and transparency have yet again been called into question, with New Zealand’s latest open government plan containing proposals “so weak as to be a joke” according to some.

Civil society groups have lashed officials’ and politicians' failure to properly include their voice and produce an ambitious document, questioning whether it is worth their time to take part.

Transparency International rates it as "not achieved". The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties feels they wasted their time. Amnesty International "had stepped back from involvement in the process due to internal capacity issues" - meaning that they judged it as not worth the effort of participation. Which makes sense: the government has demanded a significant amount of free labour from these very busy organisations, then ignored them. They have basicly used them as a prop for their claims of co-creation, which were really nothing more than a box-ticking exercise, in order to boost their reputations. You can see why people might feel exploited by that, and why they might not be willing to participate in future.

There are countries which actually manage to do this right, which give real power to civil society to tell them "this is what we would like you to do", "this is how you can open government". The New Zealand government has been absolutely uninterested in that. They joined the OGP for the headline, and then focused resolutely on using it as a PR-scam, pretending their business-as-usual policies were change. The problem now is that even if they changed tomorrow, they're fucked. They've burned activists and civil society organisations on this four times now. Do they really think they'll get anyone to contribute again? Instead, it seems that we could get more progress by asking the OGP to throw New Zealand out, because it looks like the government needs that sort of shock to change its approach.

Climate Change: Be careful what you wish for

Throughout the (misnamed) he waka eke noa process, farmers have insisted on farm-level pricing, largely as a way of getting more subsidies for their pollution - and sadly, Labour looks set to give it to them. They're already complaining about the "bureaucratic nightmare" - a nightmare entirely of their own making - which means they're going to spend a lot of time to learn what we knew all along: their choices are basicly to shoot cows or plant trees. But there's another nightmare they're setting themselves up for. Farm-level pricing means that there will be farm-level emissions-data. And banks look likely to demand this and use it in their lending decisions:

Fonterra and its farmers risk not being able to access debt funding in the future if they don’t meet banks’ sustainability expectations.

“We're starting to see more and more pressure come from the banking sector,” Fonterra chief executive Miles Hurrell said in an interview at Fieldays near Hamilton on Wednesday.

Banks were wanting to set Scope 3 carbon emissions targets, which includes emissions they are indirectly responsible for, and not meeting their expectations could result in less favourable funding rates or ultimately not being able to access funding in the future, he said.

[...]

Farmers would be facing similar risks with their businesses, he said.

This is because banks are setting scope 3 emissions targets, covering everything they are responsible for - which includes the farms they lend to. They want to meet and exceed those targets, so the pressure is going to go on borrowers to reduce their emissions. Farmers with poor emissions records may find themselves with less favourable terms, or even unable to get credit. banks are already facing pressure over lending to the fossil fuel industry; this is going to enable environmental groups to pressure them on lending for cows as well as coal.

But its not just the banks. Fonterra is also setting such a target, and is already facing significant consumer pressure over its emissions. So it will also be demanding that farm-level data, and using it to make decisions about who they accept milk from and how much they pay for it. So dirty farmers may find themselves unable to sell their product, and unable to renew their mortgage, and be forced out of business. Which is I think a win for the rest of us.

The irony is that farmers had accepted putting agriculture in the ETS at the producer level a decade ago, they'd be facing only pressure from Fonterra. Dragging their feet and insisting on the less efficient and less effective pricing mechanism has left them more exposed. Perhaps they should have been more careful in what they wished for?

Reported back

The Justice Committee has reported back on the Electoral Amendment Bill. The bill implements the recommendations of the Ministry of Justice consultation on election funding - the one where the Ministry of Justice conspired with the labour party to keep its highly influential submission totally secret - and the Labour-dominated select committee has recommended that that regime is basicly unchanged. So, the disclosure threshold will be lowered from $15,000 to $5,000 - which is better, but not far enough - but at the price of reduced transparency over very large donations. Coming in the wake of Monday's report on how donations buy influence over policy, it just seems like the big parties writing the rules to suit themselves (and their donors) in the usual corrupt stitchup. And it seems unlikely to go far enough to resolve the real trust issues that have built up around election donations.

Meanwhile, National and ACT are screaming bloody murder over the lowered threshold. Which really makes you wonder: what corrupt deals are they trying to hide?

The SIS: spying on the government's political critics

The big worry about the SIS and GCSB is that they will be used to spy on the government's political critics. Whenever this worry is expressed, the spies and their Ministers say that of course that would never happen. The problem? It has:

Journalist Nicky Hager will receive $66,000 from the Security Intelligence Agency after his phone records were unlawfully spied on.

[...]

The SIS sought Hager’s phone records after the journalist published a book, Other People's Wars, in September 2011. The book contained details of New Zealand's involvement in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, obtained from confidential sources.

A particular Defence Force officer was suspected of being Hager's source, but sufficient evidence could not be found and the Defence Force asked the SIS to assist. It gathered metadata from the officer's home phone and cell phone, and tried to link it with two months of metadata from Hager's home phone.

This was unsuccessful, and both the SIS and the Defence Force pursued the investigation no further.

Acting Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Madeleine Laracy later determined the SIS had no lawful power to investigate.

"I have been unable to find that the [SIS] showed the kind of caution I consider proper, for an intelligence agency in a free and democratic society, about launching any investigation into a journalist's sources," she said.

This was an outright case of the state spying on a journalists who had criticised it. And while this happened in 2011, the current SIS director, Rebecca Kitteridge, defended it to the hilt. Which shows that all their promises of "reform" are lies. They're the same bad old organisation they always were, a threat to our democracy rather than its defender. And it is long past time we disbanded them, or nobbled them so they can never threaten us again.

Interestingly, when I submitted on the Protection of Journalists’ Sources Bill arguing that it needed to be expanded to cover intelligence agencies, DPMC said that it would never be a problem because the purpose of the Intelligence and Security Act's was to "protect New Zealand as a free, open, and democratic society". It turns out they were lying, and that while they were saying this the SIS was covering up exactly the sort of spying on journalists the bill was intended to address. Which tells us that we should never believe anything the government tells us about "national security". Its just self-serving lies from spies.

We need greater transparency on party funding

Yesterday Max Rashbrooke and Lisa Marriott released their report on political party funding. The gist of it can be gathered from the title: Money for Something. Big donors are donating big money for big influence over policy, and the current regime seems designed to facilitate rather than prevent this undermining our democracy. But they have some solutions as well:

Donors giving more than $1,500 to political parties should be identified, no individuals should be able to give more than $15,000 in a year and only eligible New Zealand voters should be able to donate to political parties, a new report recommends.

If this seems familiar, its because its what people have been recommending, and parties resisting, for years. And the reason it never happens is because our political parties and the politicians who belong to them are corrupt, addicted to a stream of dirty money. Currently the government is trying to make some moves on donation reform, but its basicly half-measures, undermined by that addiction and corruption (so corrupt in fact that the Labour party thinks that its submisison to the Ministry of Justice on the issue, which is likely to highly influential given that the Ministry serves the Minister, can be kept secret).

The report also recommends state funding of political parties, linked to tax credits or "democracy vouchers". The cost of this - $6 to $8 million a year - is a pittance, especially compared to the known cost of corruption (just look at how much Winston forked over to the racing industry, or how Ministers funded by the fishing industry just cost NZ $200 million). And its a tiny price to pay to break the influence of the rich over our political system, and kick them out of their perpetual government.

Entrenching anti-privatisation

Last week, Labour put the House into urgency to push on with its legislative agenda. Part of this included the committee stage of the three waters bill, and something unusual happened: they passed an entrenchment clause protecting the bill's anti-privatisation clause - meaning that a future government would need the support of a 60% majority in the House, or a referendum, in order to privatise water assets.

Constitutional scholars were outraged as this eroded our constitutional norm of entrenchment. And Labour being Labour, it looks like they're doing their usual chickenshit thing and reversing course because someone criticised them, rather than standing up for what they voted for. And I think they should stand up for it, because this is an important battle and there's no better chance than this to establish a constitutional norm against privatisation.

In case anyone has forgotten, successive hard-right governments in the 1980's and 1990's betrayed Aotearoa and sold off state assets to their mates at bargain basement prices, looting the state to enrich a clique of connected businessmen. The privatisations were corrupt, many of the former state assets were then asset stripped and run into the ground, and several had to be bailed out (some multiple times), or bought back so that we would have functioning infrastructure. This exercise in right-wing looting established privatisation as a dirty word in New Zealand politics. Many New Zealanders regard it as a crime, and something that should not be allowed to happen ever again. That's difficult in our constitutional system, and our way of doing it is effectively a constitutional warning sign: an entrenchment clause. While on the face of it an entrenchment clause says "you can't repeal this without a supermajority", the clause can itself simply be repealed (or in some cases bypassed by altering things elsewhere). So its actual force lies in the respect politicians have for it.

(Arguably, we don't do this often enough. The BORA is not entrenched, and has already been altered by a government to gut the right to a jury trial simply to save money. MMP (as opposed to its FPP bits) is not entrenched either. Or the list of prohibited means of discrimination in the Human Rights Act. Governments can, have, and are going to fuck with these for piss-poor reasons, and we should make it more difficult for them to do so. But that's another post...)

Those constitutional scholars are worried that using entrenchment for a mere "policy" issue will erode that respect. Which misses the point: the question of whether public assets belong to the public or to the government of the day to be corruptly distributed to its cronies is a constitutional one. The entrenchment clause simply makes that clear and answers "never again". And in terms of respect, that gets established by doing the thing and making it stick. Norms become norms by becoming normal.

Those constitutional scholars are also trying to scare people with the prospect of future governments doing this for other issues. What about if National and ACT entrench a three strikes law? What about if they entrench low taxes? Whatabout? Whatabout? Whatbaout?

Well, what about it? Under Parliament's standing orders, entrenchment clauses must be supported by at least the level of support needed to overturn them (so if something would require a 60% supermajority to overturn, it needs a 60% supermajority to pass). Under MMP, governments have tended to be weak, with coalition majorities of 5 votes or less. Gaining anything beyond a bare majority almost always requires gaining the support of parties outside the governing coalition. The current government is unusual in that respect, with a single-majority party and an extra 10 or 12 votes likely to support its agenda. The only other example is Helen Clark in 2002, where a collection of centrist parties in the House potentially allowed large majorities to be assembled (and resulted in much more consensus policy than usual). Otherwise, it would mean working with the opposition. And I honestly don't have a problem with that. Under MMP, party strength in the House reflects voter strength at elections. If a government can build a coalition behind an issue to entrench it to require a 60% majority to overturn, then all power to them. We live in a democracy, we get the governments we vote for, and we live with the results. If we don't like them, then we vote differently next time, throw the bums out, and don't let them back in until they've changed their ways.

Yes, doing this by an SOP under urgency is not ideal (and that's on Labour for how they chose to do this stage of the bill). Ideally, the government would have introduced an anti-privatisation bill at the beginning of its term, with anti-privatisation and entrenchment clauses for all classes of public assets. But they didn't, so its left to the Greens to do this piecemeal as things come up. Anti-privatisation is supposed to be a core principle for Labour. If they chickenshit out now, they'll be confirming their weakness and lack of principle. But then, that seems to be Labour in a nutshell now, doesn't it?

Open Government: Another farce

Yesterday the government released its draft Fourth Open Government Partnership National Action Plan 2023-24 for consultation. Like previous versions, the plan was meant to be "co-created" with civil society. And like previous versions, that obligation seems to have been observed mainly in the breach, with the government conducting a series of sham "consultation" events around the country, then ignoring practically every piece of input they got from them. As for the outcome, the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties is scathing:

In spite of the Minister’s instruction to officials, the ‘draft’ Action Plan launched today for 2 weeks of public consultation is yet another weak action plan stuffed full of pre-existing or already planned programmes of work by government departments.3

Only two of the eight commitments in the plan are pieces of work that would not have taken place without civil society input, and one of these is so weak as to be a joke.

They then go on to describe the plan as full of "tools for officials" which would have happened anyway - a clear violation of the OGP's additionality requirement.

Last year, ten top civil society organisations wrote to Chris Hipkins about the co-creation process, threatening to walk away unless they saw improvements. I'm now wondering if they'll carry out that threat. Because clearly participating in the government's sham "co-creation" process is a waste of time, and a distraction from other things they could be doing. And after four times round, the government is clearly not going to change its stripes on this. They signed up to the OGP solely for the PR value, with no intention of actually opening government, and they've given no indication that that attitude has changed. Its time to end the farce, and instead of collaborating, call for NZ's suspension from the OGP.

An engineered recession is class warfare

The Reserve Bank has just come out and admitted that they are engineering a recession to protect the rich:

The Reserve Bank is deliberately engineering a recession to reign back inflation after being slow to raise interest rates, Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr admitted to a select committee on Thursday.

But he forecast the 1% decline in the economy that the central bank is forecasting could be “job rich” and said the country was relatively well-positioned internationally.

The Reserve Bank raised the official cash rate by 75 basis points to 4.25% on Wednesday and surprised economists by forecasting the rate would peak at 5.5% next year while also predicting a further rise in inflation and a year-long recession beginning in April.

The bank forecast that official unemployment would climb to 5.7% in 2025, from 3.3% currently.

And all of this to keep wages low and prevent the wealth of the rich being eroded at a slightly faster rate. What else should we call it but class warfare?

Recessions have consequences. The IMF goes into some of them here. People lose their jobs and livelihoods, children lose their futures. In addition to the bankruptcies and suicides, there's a general reduced life expectancy for the victims, and poorer educational outcomes (and so reduced lifetime outcomes) for their children. This is what Adrian Orr has chosen. This is what he is inflicting on us. Every business failure, every bankruptcy, every suicide will be his fault. And we should hold him accountable for it.

But we also need to hold accountable the politicians who have enabled him to commit this awful crime, while washing their hands of the consequences in the name of "reserve bank independence". Because there are other ways to reduce demand in the economy, which don't involve throwing people onto the bonfire to satisfy the greed of the rich. We could for example tax away the excess corporate profits which are driving inflation. Or raise income taxes on the rich to soak up excess demand. Or tax wealth directly. Instead, our political class - and both major parties are guilty here - have chosen for the last thirty years to make ordinary people pay the price. Like I said, its class warfare, by the rich and their politicians (who are also rich) against the rest of us. And we should not accept it.

That's no how you do democracy

Last night, the English Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish government cannot hold an independence referendum. Having said that Scotland is not a colony, they then turned around and effectively said that they are, by forbidding them from holding a democratic vote on their own constitutional arrangements unless another country says they can.

Pretty obviously, this is incompatible with any notion that the UK is a democratic country, let alone a voluntary union. In a voluntary union, the parties can choose to leave. Instead, Scotland is locked in, trapped in a cage unless England decides to let it out. They're handcuffed to a partner who economically abuses them. Which makes the need and desire to break those chains even stronger.

But the ruling goes further than that. Because the Supreme Court's logic of looking at the extended (rather than strictly legal) effects of a Scottish law for constitutional impacts can apply to other things. For example, Scotland has a democratic system of government, rather than Westminster's backward first-past-the-post. It has lowered the voting age to 16. While the legal effect is restricted to Scotland, each of these presents an alternative, and implicitly makes a moral case for it, putting pressure on Westminster to change its rotten constitutional system. That is, they affect the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Will Scotland's domestic policies now be micromanaged by England to stop Scotland from making them look bad, on the basis that everything is constitutional?

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that the SNP will run a de-facto referendum on independence at the next available election, and polling is already saying that they will receive more than 50% support. So there's going to be a democratic mandate for independence whether Westminster wants one or not. The next question is whether they will recognise it, and allow Scotland to leave peacefully and democratically, or whether they ignore the expressed democratic will of the Scottish people, and effectively announce their intention to retain Scotland by oppression and force?

Labour attacks LGOIMA - in secret

Today the government used urgency to introduce a new Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. The bulk of the bill deals with land information memorandums (LIMs), requiring local authorities to notify of natural hazards and granting them immunity for doing so in good faith (hopefully forestalling lawsuits by coastal property owners worried about the effect of such notification on their property values). That bit's fine. But part 2 of the bill amends the disclosure regime, adding national security to the withholding grounds, and introducing a Prime Ministerial veto on release. This aligns LGOIMA withholding grounds with those in the OIA,and according to the explanatory note is being done as

The lack of these conclusive grounds for withholding information may inhibit the ability of local authorities to seek or receive advice on security risks and increase the risk of disclosure of information that could prejudice New Zealand’s security or defence or the international relations of the Government of New Zealand.

Of course, the reason they aren't in the LGOIMA at present is because councils don't do that shit, and nor should they. The Ministers promoting the bill need to be asked for specific examples of such inhibition, or what foreign governments or intelligence agencies our councils are cooperating with, whether information has been released, and what harm it has actually caused. And if they have no such examples, if this is just an arse-covering exercise "just in case" or to enable such cooperation, this part of the bill should be rejected.

According to the bill's departmental disclosure statement DIA "did not engage with local authorities or speak to local government sector organisations about the withholding grounds due to time constraints" (the thought of consulting the real stakeholders - the public - seems not to have occured to them). And yet, they supposedly produced a regulatory impact statement on it in June, which still isn't online and has been kept secret for the last five months. There is also apparently a BORA vet, but its also secret, and likely won't be released until after the bill's first reading. Sadly, given Ministry of Justice's track record, I doubt they'll engage with the freedom of expression issues raised by expanding withholding grounds, let alone the rule-of-law problems of allowing the Prime Minister to over-rule the Ombudsman. But it is highly disturbing that a bill restricting freedom of information rights and expanding secrecy was developed in total secrecy, without consulting those primarily affected: the public.

OTOH, it is a pattern sadly typical for Labour. And when they're currently wanking internationally about their participation in the Open Government partnership, while expanding secrecy at home, it just looks two-faced.

Climate Change: Fixing the Crown Minerals Act?

Back in August, the High Court ruled that the Zero Carbon Act isn't worth shit and that the government can continue to approve new fossil fuel exploration without having to consider climate change. The core of the problem is the Crown Minerals Act, and in particular its purpose: "to promote prospecting for, exploration for, and mining of Crown owned minerals for the benefit of New Zealand". Now, the government is finally fixing the problem:

The Government will change “nonsensical” mining legislation that requires it to grant oil companies permits to look for new fossil fuels.

[...]

Energy Minister Megan Woods announced that a crucial sentence about promoting mineral exploitation will be changed, so the Government can say no to companies.

This is good, of course - but the government needs to go further. We don't just need a minerals regime that allows mining companies to be controlled - we need to phase out fossil fuels. And that means not just being able to reject new permits for coal and petroleum, but banning them, while sunsetting existing permits and their associated resource consents. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's Prohibition on Seabed Mining Legislation Amendment Bill will do that for offshore mining, and Eugenie Sage's Crown Minerals (Prohibition of Mining) Amendment Bill would do it for coal. Labour opposes both. Which tells us exactly how un-serious they are on climate change.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the court decision, NZPAM has been extending gas and oil permits right, left and centre. It would be good if the legislation explicitly overturned those self-interested, politically-motivated decisions.

Finally

At the 2020 election, Labour promised to regulate property managers. Now, they're finally doing it:

The Government’s announcement that rental property managers will be regulated has left the industry asking for more detail, and tenants calling for landlords to be regulated too.

Regulating property managers was one of the Labour Party’s campaign promises in the last election, because the industry is not currently regulated.

Earlier this year the Government proposed a licensing scheme for them, and on Tuesday Housing Minister Megan Woods announced a new regulatory system for the industry.

It would involve compulsory registration and licencing for both individual property managers and their organisations, training and entry requirements, practise standards, and a complaints and disciplinary process which would be administered by the Real Estate Authority (REA).

Property managers are unhappy, but they would be, wouldn't they? Now they'll have to behave like the professionals they say they are, and they'll be able to be held to account for unprofessional behaviour. Which seems to be a Good Thing from a basic consumer rights perspective. But bad I guess if you like having unaccountable power over your serfs.

But while this is a good thing, there's a big gap in the system: private landlords. They need to be regulated and licensed, to ensure basic standards. And if they're unwilling to meet such standards, they should leave the industry.