Thatcher's final insult

Margaret Thatcher's final insult to the people of the UK? Pre-emptive arrests for her funeral:

Police officers are monitoring social media, internet forums and BlackBerry messaging networks in the expectation that Margaret Thatcher's funeral procession next Wednesday will be targeted by protesters.

The possibility of demonstrations during the funeral has raised concerns that police may adopt the controversial tactic of making pre-emptive arrests.

Thatcher was a public figure, and it is entirely appropriate for the people to express their views of her and her time in power on her death. Those views may be unpalatable to those currently in power, but the UK is supposedly a country with freedom of speech and assembly, and those rights do not suddenly disappear just because someone is dead. Or because those in power want their chosen narrative to be uncontested.

Meanwhile, The Guardian seems to be trying to de-legitimise the spontaneous celebrations which erupted on word of Thatcher's death:

Police were called to a number of incidents in London and Glasgow on Monday night after a series of "parties" were held to "celebrate" the death of Thatcher. Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP for Streatham, made clear his anger on Twitter after a "party" was held in the Windrush Square area of Brixton in his constituency.

Why the scare quotes? Can't they officially admit that a lot of people were actually rather pleased by Thatcher's death?

No excuse for GCSB spying

The GCSB's excuse for its unlawful spying on New Zealanders was that the law was "unclear". When it said

Neither the Director, nor an employee of the Bureau, nor a person acting on behalf of the Bureau may authorise or take any action for the purpose of intercepting the communications of a person... who is a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident.

it apparently, against all logic, didn't mean it.

So was it the intent of Parliament to give them an excuse, to enact an apparently absolute prohibition but add a "not really" somewhere? I've just spent some time reading the Parliamentary debates on the passage of the GCSB Act, and the answer is a resounding "no". For example, here's Michael Cullen introducing the bill at its first reading:

Clause 16 permits interception of foreign communications without a warrant in specified circumstances. That simply preserves the bureau's existing abilities to intercept such communications under existing law---subject, of course, to clause 14. That means the bureau is not permitted to take any action for the purpose of intercepting the communications of a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident unless that person is acting as a representative of a foreign organisation.

Clause 17 sets out the conditions on the Minister issuing an interception warrant. The emphasis is explicitly on foreign communications... Clause 20 sets out the conditions on the issue of a computer access authorisation, which may relate only to computer systems of foreign persons or foreign organisations

Phil Goff:

In particular, this legislation makes it clear that the bureau's signal intelligence operations do not target the communications of New Zealand citizens. That is not simply a matter of faith, it is confirmed annually in the reports of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

Wayne Mapp:

The interception powers relate specifically to foreign communications... So the legislation, particularly clause 14, makes it absolutely clear that communications by New Zealanders are not the target of the bureau.

And Simon Power, at the committee stage:

[C]lause 17, which relates to the issuing of the interception warrant, is completely subject to the restrictions imposed by clause 14. In legal terms, the bar is actually set quite high for those who are seeking to obtain or intercept information by one means or another.

The will of Parliament was pretty clear: the GCSB wasn't to spy on New Zealanders. The GCSB violated that. And they need to be held to account for it, not excused and given broader powers.

Against spying on New Zealanders

Yesterday the Kitteridge report into the GCSB was released, revealing that they'd unlawfully spied on a hell of a lot more people than just Kim Dotcom. Despite a clear prohibition in law, they had thought that they could spy on New Zealanders when asked to by the SIS. The report recommended "clarification" of the law.

Today we learned what John Key wants that "clarification" to be: legalising their unlawful practices so they can spy on New Zealanders:

Prime Minister John Key has suggested a law change would allow the Government Communications and Security Bureau (GCSB) to spy on New Zealanders.

[...]

[I]n China last night, Key told media the GCSB was the logical agency to monitor New Zealanders "for a variety of reasons", but the law would need to be clarified to allow that.

"GCSB should be able to provide agency support for NZSIS under the right conditions and with the right oversight," Key said.

He confirmed that would mean spying on New Zealanders.

Key promises that this will come with "better oversight". Even with that promise - which given the "oversight" demonstrated so far by him is not worth the bits it is written in - this is not a bargain we should accept. We have been told for decades that the GCSB does not spy on New Zealanders. We have been reassured with an absolute prohibition in law. And it should be retained. There is a name for countries who spy on their own citizens: they are called tyrannies. We should not take this step towards becoming one.

Time to strengthen the BORA

Last week, the government announced plans to criminalize anti-mining protests via an amendment to the Crown Minerals Bill. Today Geoffrey Palmer, the architect of the Bill of Rights Act, announced that the proposal breaches international law and human rights. But today in Question Time the Minister said that it has not received any review for consistency with the Bill of Rights Act, and the government does not plan for there to be any.

This makes a mockery of the BORA. That legislation is predicated on Parliament being a defender of our rights, and only violating them knowingly and with proper warning, on the theory that it will make a considered decision. But where amendments are introduced like this, with no BORA review (not even an internal one), then that process is a nonsense. Parliament cannot defend our rights if they do not know when they are being broken (arguably they don't defend them anyway, but that's another issue...)

There are two alternatives here: the first would be to strengthen the scrutiny provisions of the BORA, to extend reporting of inconsistencies to amendments as well as on introduction. That would cover not just SOPs, as here, but also select committee amendments. Alternatively, if Parliament won't properly scrutinise the laws it is passing, then we will need to get the courts to do it for them and give them the power to overturn inconsistent laws. The choice is theirs.

Carter covers for Solid Energy

On March 7, Solid Energy CEO Garry Diack lied to the Commerce Select Committee by denying that former CEO Don Elder had offered to attend the select committee. It was an open and shut breach of Parliamentary Privilege, and one which needed to be punished in order to ensure that other CEOs do not also lie to Parliament. But Speaker David Carter has refused to forward the complaint to the Privileges Committee. His reason? He won't even give one.

This doesn't just strike at the heart of Parliament's ability to hold the state sector accountable; the later also strikes at one of our most fundamental constitutional conventions: that decision-makers (especially in quasi-judicial roles) must give reasons for their decisions. Carter is behaving like an autocrat here, someone who does not believe he is responsible to us or that his decisions can be judged by us. And that is simply not acceptable.

Labour's latest epic fail

A sign of how far Labour has sunk under David Shearer: issuing a press release "paying its respects to the family, friends and colleagues" of Margaret Thatcher and remembering her "service to the people of Britain".

This remember was a woman who crushed the left in the UK and turned its Labour Party into a Blairite clone of herself. Who hung around with Pinochet (something being noted in Chile) and fully supported his crimes. Her family are an arms dealing coup-monger and a racist, her colleagues tories. Her "service to the people of Britain" was exclusively to the 1%, at the direct expense of the people "labour" parties are supposed to represent (who are, I should note, celebrating with spontaneous street parties).

This is not the sort of person any "labour" party should pay its respects to. And it speaks volumes that Shearer thinks that she is.

Lawless and dysfunctional

So, the Kitteridge report into the GCSB apparently shows up to 85 further cases of illegal spying on New Zealand citizens. According to former GCSB Director Bruce Ferguson, the spying was done on behalf of the SIS and Police and had warrants from them. But the law is crystal clear:

Neither the Director, nor an employee of the Bureau, nor a person acting on behalf of the Bureau may authorise or take any action for the purpose of intercepting the communications of a person... who is a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident.

(My emphasis)

Which outlaws even assisting with warranted interceptions under other acts. And for the GCSB to have got that wrong again suggests they are illiterate morons incapable of reading and understanding their own governing legislation.

Naturally the spies are blaming the law, and its apparent that their preferred outcome is a law change to allow them to spy with impunity. That is not something we should accept. While a criminal prosecution may by iffy, there needs to be accountability for this. Heads need to roll for it, and the prohibition on domestic wiretapping needs to be preserved. If we erode that rigid separation of powers between police, SIS and GCSB, then we are likely to encourage all sorts of unpleasant behaviour.

Meanwhile, that's not the only problem with the GCSB:

The GCSB's organisation was overly complex, fragmented and had too many managers. Poorly-performing staff were tolerated, rather than fired or disciplined, because of fears that disgruntled former employees could pose a security risk.

The agency was also isolated and disconnected from the rest of the public service, the report says.

GCSB staff were reluctant to stray outside classified channels or seek external advice. New legislation was not analysed for possible implications on GCSB's activities.

Record-keeping within the bureau was poor, with staff relying on oral briefings or emails. Kitteridge struggled to find crucial policy documents and noted that some audit reports were missing.

She also identified a lack of oversight by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, the watchdog who visited only four times a year, and was tied up with SIS work.

The core problems here are a culture of secrecy and a complete lack of oversight. The former is part and parcel of being an intelligence agency, but its clearly gone toxic, and the agency needs a thorough clean-out. But the lack of record-keeping is more troubling. If there's one thing you should be able to rely on spies to do, its to write everything down (and stamp it "Top Secret" for extra thrills). If GCSB aren't doing this, we also need to ask whether they are actually capable of doing their job.

Finally, there is one question the report apparently doesn't address: do we actually need GCSB? The bureau has two purposes: collecting foreign intelligence, but supposedly also to help our government), and providing computer security to the government. The former seems unnecessary, especially as it is primarily done on behalf of and to benefit a foreign power. It should be de-funded and stopped. If we're going to have a "Government Communications Security Bureau", then that is exactly what it should focus on: the security of communications by our government. And nothing else.

No tears for Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher is dead. Around the world tories will be weeping, and demanding that others share their grief. Fuck them. Thatcher was a horrible person who inflicted terrible suffering on the UK, and her victims will rightly be lining up to piss on her grave. But while the woman is dead, her political project lives on - and its that we have to kill.

Meanwhile, we can rejoice in the final irony: the woman who declared that there was "no such thing as society" died a hypocrite, receiving an enormous state pension and £100,000-plus a year in "expenses". And she'll be getting an enormous state-funded funeral. If she stood by her beliefs, rather than just espousing them as a mask for hating the poor, she'd be paying for it all herself.

Business doesn't want youth rates

Before youth rates were repealed back in 2007, the Unite union had waged a successful campaign which eliminated them from the fast food industry. The strategy was simple: unionise, demand equality, and start wrecking their brand if the business didn't agree. McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks and Pizza Hut all gave in. And it seems that some of them have learned their lesson:

McDonald's and Restaurant Brands have joined a scree of retail giants who have decided against paying 16 to 19-year-olds the new youth wage.

The Warehouse, Farmers, Kmart, Bunnings and major supermarket operator Countdown had already committed to rejecting the new youth rates.

All of these companies have public reputations to uphold. None of them want the stigma of being seen to discriminate against young people, who are a major part of their market. Sadly, the same can't be said for Foodstuffs, who have said they are interested in using youth rates in their New World, Four Square, and Pak n'Save supermarkets. Which means there may be a boycott in their future...

Enabling the tax-cheats

The Sunday Star-Times had the first New Zealand angle from the massive leak of data from international tax-havens: the role of New Zealand companies in enabling international tax-cheats:

Leaked documents reveal one of New Zealand's richest families was for a time at the heart of a major international tax haven company that hit the news in the United States last week.

John Spencer, New Zealand's richest man in the 1980s and still incredibly wealthy, was - with his family - majority owners of the company called TrustNet, whose extremely secret client records have been leaked en masse to a Washington DC-based journalism organisation. The leaks reveal the identity of tens of thousands of people who use tax havens: some involved in dodgy activities and evading tax, others in lawful activities including companies doing business across political borders and individuals living in multiple countries or legitimately minimising their tax.

Surprisingly, the leaks show New Zealanders are involved extensively in this shadowy world of offshore companies and secret bank accounts.

The company at the centre of the Washington leaks was set up by New Zealanders, has been staffed by many New Zealanders and for 14 years was majority-owned by the Spencers.

There is now a network of New Zealand lawyers involved in this business, helping rich people hide their money and cheat on their taxes. While its not a big angle, they're aided in this by lax company law, which makes it trivial to set up a front company here, and by our legal institution of "New Zealand foreign trusts", which allow wealthy foreigners to ensure their money is secret and untaxed. New Zealand is a part of this problem, and if we want to stamp out tax cheating, we need to start in our own back yard.

ICIJ also has a detailed history of Portcullis TrustNet and its involvement in the wine-box scam here.

Saved

Japan has had its worst whaling season ever, and its all thanks to Sea Shepherd:

The haul from Japan's whaling mission in the Southern Ocean was a "record low" this year, a government minister said on Friday, blaming "unforgivable sabotage" by activists.

The hunt netted just 103 Antarctic minke whales, less than half its tally last year, and no fin whales, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said, adding it was the lowest total since "research whaling" began in 1987.

The fleet, which was again harassed by militant environmentalist group Sea Shepherd, is due to arrive back in Japan over the next few days, Hayashi told a press conference.

Say what you like about Sea Shepherd, but they are getting results. In the past three years they've reduced Japan's whale slaughter by around 80%, saving around 2,000 whales in the process. They've been so successful that the Japanese government has been reduced to stealing tsunami aid money to continue funding its whaling program. And hopefully they'll keep doing the job until there is no more whaling.

New Fisk

Khalil Raad's Palestinian pictures chart the history - and the tragedy

Not helpful

North Korea is currently engaged in one of its semi-regular sabre-rattling exercises in an effort to frighten its own people with an outside enemy and distract them from their poverty and starvation. Usually these things come to nothing, but you never know, and so the international community is being cautious, with the US cancelling a missile test to avoid escalating the situation. So naturally, its the perfect time for John Key to blurt out that if the US gets involved in a war, he's happy to send kiwis to die alongside them:

If war breaks out, the United States and Australia would likely join to defend the South. Mr Key implied we would side with our old allies and New Zealand would be at war with North Korea.

"I wouldn't want to speculate, but obviously we have got a long and proud history of coming to the support of South Korea. Taken to the extreme, and without interventions and resolutions to the issues, that is of course possible."

On the one hand, Key was merely stating the obvious. Collective security is a fundamental part of New Zealand's foreign policy, and if the UN asked for armed intervention as it did in 1950, we would find it hard to refuse. But now really isn't the time to be saying that. Key described the actions of the North Korean regime as "not helpful", "overly provocative", and "destabilising the region". He might as well have been describing himself.

This is not how democracy works

You're an elected politician. You've just been caught out in a clumsy lie over appointing a crony to a sensitive position. So what do you do? In John Key's case, he is now refusing to answer media questions:

Prime Minister John Key says he will no longer answer questions about his actions without warning, following controversy over his role in the appointment of spy boss Ian Fletcher.

During an interview on Radio Live, Key described those reporting on the story as ''knuckle heads'' and said he would change his approach to answering questions both in Parliament and to the media.

[...]

Denying accusations that he had lied by omission, he said he had only had ''15 seconds, with no warning, on a process that happened 18 months ago'' and he should have taken time to research the answer.

''What I should have done, and what I will be doing in the future, is saying, well, the member needs to put that down to me in writing, and I'll be doing that to the journalists as well,'' Key said.

This is not how democracy works. Democracy isn't just about free, fair and regular elections, but also ongoing accountability to the people. Scrutiny by the media is the basic means of that accountability. Refusing to accept that is the act of a dictator who believes himself unaccountable, not of an elected, accountable representative.

Still, there's a plus side: if the media don't roll over and obligingly submit all questions early so the appropriate lies can be put in place, then we will have a new form of entertainment: watching the PM wriggle and squirm as people keep asking him stuff he's said he won't answer. Either he runs away, or he looks arrogant and shifty; either way its not a game he can win. The only question is whether the media will actually show some backbone in the face of this arrogance, or whether they've been bought off by their annual bottles of "PM's Pinot".

Class warfare in the UK

The British government is cutting welfare to the bone in the belief that this will incentivise people to magically make the economy better. Meanwhile, they give the queen, the world's richest woman, a £5 million pay-rise.

This is class warfare at its most naked. The poor get robbed, and the money goes to an idle aristocrat who is more than capable of paying her own way.

The Prime Minister's memory hole

Writing in the Herald, Toby Manhire points out just how much we're expected to believe the Prime Minister has "forgotten":

Where he stood on the 1981 rugby tour. A meeting about convention centre plans with SkyCity. How he voted on the drinking age. That picture the spies showed him with Kim Dotcom's face on it. And to the archive of prime ministerial brain fades another can now be added: that phone call to childhood friend Ian Fletcher, advising of the vacancy for New Zealand's top spook.

(Missing from the list: TranzRail shares and where his assets are invested...)

I think its time we stopped pretending: when the Prime Minister says "I cannot remember", what he really means is "I don't want to tell you". And when he says "I forgot", what he actually means is "I lied".

Good riddance to Afghanistan

The NZDF has finally lowered the flag in Bamiyan:

The New Zealand flag has been lowered for the final time at Kiwibase in Bamiyan marking the official close of the Provincial Reconstruction Team and this country's 10-year involvement with it.

The United States and Malaysian flag, representing other nations in the PRT, were also lowered leaving the Afghan flag flying alone.

The Kiwi troops are due to pull out this month, although a final date has not been set, leaving just 27 personnel in a "behind the wire" role in Kabul.

The base will now be stripped of equipment, which will be retuned to New Zealand, and the base will be handed over to Afghan security forces for use as a barracks.

So what did they achieve there? The Defence Force has been talking about "huge gains" as a result of their occupation, including more schools and hospitals - but all of that will be washed away when they leave. All they did was bring a temporary respite, at the cost of ten lives and propping up a corrupt torturing theocracy. And that just wasn't worth it.

But I suspect that the real gain according to the government is the improved relationship with the US that has come from supporting their war. I can think of no more eloquent comment on this than Malcolm Evans' cartoon showing the cost: ten gravestones. If you asked New Zealanders if they thought we should ceremonially sacrifice one of us every year to keep the Americans happy, the answer would be a resounding no. But that is exactly what our government has done. And we should hold them to account for it.

Unmasking the tax-cheats

The rich are the biggest thieves on the planet. Globally, they are estimated to be hiding US$21 trillion in tax havens to avoid paying their fair share. Now, thanks to a mega-leak, the identities of who is hiding what are going to be unmasked:

Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife.

The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens.

The leak has already exposed a Mongolian politician, a Canadian Senator's husband and a dictator's daughter. And there will be more. Interestingly, Nicky Hager was involved in the analysis, so hopefully we'll be learning about our local tax cheats as well.

The consequences of eroding the public service

Back in 1999, the public service had undergone a decade and a half of cuts. One of the consequences was an increasingly narrow focus on "core business", and the dumping of functions deemed unnecessary. The New Public Management meant managing to targets, so if it wasn't in the KPIs, it didn't get done. The net result? When they went to run the 1999 election, the Department of the Courts (who had previously provided returning officers and polling staff, as well as the institutional knowledge of people who had done it for years) decided that running elections was not its job and withdrew its staff. Which meant that on election night, we didn't get results until 3am.

Why am I thinking of this all of a sudden? Because the cash-strapped Department of Conservation has similarly decided that a longstanding service which it provides - rural fire-fighting - is not really its job and is cutting back its rural fire crews. It just costs too much money to have these people trained and equipped to stop the conservation estate - and other parts of the countryside - burning down. While DoC will save money in the short term, this erosion of capability is going to have long-term effects. If we're lucky, it will simply transfer the costs elsewhere - someone else will step in to fill the role that DoC is withdrawing from (making the "saving" largely illusory if it is a public body). If not, then the consequences could potentially be fatal. But hey, that'll be on Someone Else's Budget...

The scary thing is that DoC has been here before. Cuts and capacity erosion were directly implicated in the Cave Creek disaster. They - or rather, their Minister - seem to have learned nothing.

Not OK

State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie called an extraordinary press conference this afternoon to defend the Prime Minister's crony-appointment of Ian Fletcher to head the GCSB. In the process, he said that John Key's behaviour was "not atypical" and that it was OK for him to intervene. Bullshit. While it may be normal for John Key to shoulder-tap his mates, it is not the process envisioned by the State Sector Act. That Act is crystal clear: the SSC examines the applicants and recommends an appointment. The government's only options are to accept it, or to reject it and appoint their own person (in which case they have to tell us they are doing so via a Gazette notice - an accountability mechanism which ensures they never do it). The Minister's input is at the beginning of the process - where they inform the SSC of matters they want taken into account in the appointment (e.g. whether they want someone capable of steering a department in a new direction, or able to cope with additional responsibilities the government plans to enact) - and at the end (when they presumably shape Cabinet's view of whether to accept the recommendation). And that's it. While encouraging cronies to apply and letting the panel know that a particular applicant has your favour isn't in itself illegal, its a complete subversion of the process. And that's not OK.

(And its worth noting that National agrees - or at least did when they were in opposition. Remember Clare Curran? Her appointment to the Ministry for the Environment was grossly improper. And she was just a PR flack, not the Chief Executive of a dangerously lawless agency...)

It is natural for Ministers to want to return the public service to a spoils system to reward their cronies. It is the duty of the SSC to resist that urge to corruption and protect the values of neutrality, independence and professionalism which allows the public service to serve regardless of who is in office. By bowing to Key's blandishments and appointing Fletcher, Iain Rennie has done us all a disservice, and placed those values at risk.