Climate change: A line in the sand for our species

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its special report on limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, and argued strongly that the current two degree target is too dangerous:

At 1.5C the proportion of the global population exposed to water stress could be 50% lower than at 2C, it notes. Food scarcity would be less of a problem and hundreds of millions fewer people, particularly in poor countries, would be at risk of climate-related poverty.

At 2C extremely hot days, such as those experienced in the northern hemisphere this summer, would become more severe and common, increasing heat-related deaths and causing more forest fires.

But the greatest difference would be to nature. Insects, which are vital for pollination of crops, and plants are almost twice as likely to lose half their habitat at 2C compared with 1.5C. Corals would be 99% lost at the higher of the two temperatures, but more than 10% have a chance of surviving if the lower target is reached.

Sea-level rise would affect 10 million more people by 2100 if the half-degree extra warming brought a forecast 10cm additional pressure on coastlines. The number affected would increase substantially in the following centuries due to locked-in ice melt.

Oceans are already suffering from elevated acidity and lower levels of oxygen as a result of climate change. One model shows marine fisheries would lose 3m tonnes at 2C, twice the decline at 1.5C.

Or, to put this in very small words so politicians can understand it: a lot of people are going to die or have their lives made miserable unless you sort this out. The insect result is the worst, and they're basicly saying that two degrees commits us to global famine, and all the instability that brings. Sea-level rise means involuntary migration, and more instability. This is not a pretty future the Olds are building for us, and we need to fight for a better one.

How do we stop it? The report is clear: we need a 45% cut in emissions by 2030, and a reduction to zero by 2050. Which puts James Shaw's wibbling about everyone being "equally unhappy" with his climate change targets on Saturday in perspective: we can't afford his bullshit. Anything other than a target of net zero across all gases is committing to burning the planet. And if a Green climate minister commits to that, he and his party can kiss their jobs goodbye at the next election. I will not vote for any party which promises to destroy the world, and I strongly suspect that feeling will be shared by a significant number of Green supporters.

Debra Roberts, one of the IPCC working group co-chairs, called the report a line in the sand for our species. It needs to be a line in the sand for our politicians as well. They need to decide whose side they are on: humanity's, or that of the polluters. And if its the latter, we need to vote them out as quickly as possible.

The exception that proves the rule

On Friday, the police announced they were charging the secretary of the People's Party with failing to declare donations on time. Great! Parliament has made it clear that they regard this as a crime, and its good to see the police finally enforcing electoral law for once. At the same time, you have to ask: why only the People's Party?

In case anyone has forgotten, the secretary of ACT, Garry Mallett, committed exactly the same offence in 2014, and was duly referred to the police over it. Who then did... nothing. Its as if they have one standard for cimes by people who are in power, and one for people who aren't.

(In case anyone was wondering, its too late to prosecute Mallett now, because politicians wrote themselves a self-serving little time-limit. if the normal rules applied, then it would be a category 2 offence with a 5 year limit for filing charges. its almost as if politicians don't want to be subject to the law like the rest of us dirty peasants...)

Australia wants refugees to die

Australia is currently detaining hundreds of refugees in a concentration camp on Nauru. Being detained indefinitely without hope pretty obviously causes mental health issues, and self-harm and attempts at suicide are regular occurances. To some extent, this problem is mitigated by NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, which provides counselling to Australia's gulag victims. But now, the Nauruan regime has ordered them to leave:

Nauru’s government has ordered Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to stop work there immediately, despite a physical and mental health crisis in the country.

The medical NGO has been providing psychological and psychiatric services to residents, asylum seekers and refugees on the island since late 2017.

MSF staff wrote to its clients on Saturday to tell them it could no longer offer them treatment because of an order from Nauru’s health minister, who said the its services were “no longer required on the island”.

MSF said in its letter that the order meant its “mental health activities in Nauru must stop, effective today, Saturday, 6th of October”.

The Nauruan regime has not given a reason for this decision, but its pretty obvious: because Australia wants them to. MSF referrals are key to refugees winning cases in Australian courts to be transferred there for urgent medical care (which cannot be provided by Nauru's inadequate medical system). No more doctors means no more referrals, and no more refugees entering Australia. As with "Nauru's" decision to ban the media, we will no doubt find Australia's sticky fingers all over this.

Of course, kicking out MSF effectively means prohibiting refugees from receiving proper medical care, a decision which will inevitably cost lives. But Australia and its puppet regime in Nauru don't care about that. They want refugees to kill themselves, or die miserable deaths due to inadequate care, pour encourager les autres.

This decision is pure, unmitigated evil. And both the Australian and Nauruan governments should go to The Hague for it.

Looking into it

So, Callaghan Innovation's treatment of OIA requests from the Taxpayer's Onion and its wrongful release of personal information about them seems to have backfired badly, with the Ombudsman announcing that they may launch an investigation. And they should. Because apart from the concerns about differential treatment, Callaghan chair Pete Hodgson's admissions this morning about the wrongful release - effectively, that he believed it to be justified by the "abuse of process" the Taxpayer's Union had carried out by exercising their statutory right to information to embarrass his agency - should give cause for concern. In case anyone has forgotten, this was exactly the reasoning used by Paula Bennett in exposing personal information about beneficiaries who criticised publicly criticised her, and its as unacceptable from Hodgson as it was from her. When we entrust government agencies with our personal information, whether voluntarily as when making an OIA request or by coercion, we expect them to be a proper and ethical custodian of it. This means not just adhering to the requirements of the Privacy Act and only using it for its specified purpose and not disclosing it without lawful authority to others, but also not using it to mount political vendettas against people. Callaghan Innovation's actions, and Hodgson's endorsement of them, are contrary to that principle, and suggest an element of vindictiveness which is inappropriate in a government agency and which undermines public trust in government. And that damn well needs to be investigated and stamped out.

As for the Ombudsman, though, his comment that "if there are abuses, by either requesters or agencies, I want to look into it and report on it" is cause for concern. He should not need to be reminded, but it is no part of the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman to "look into" the actions of requesters. It is not part of their functions under the OIA, and neither is it part of their functions under the Ombudsmen's Act. In both cases, those functions are limited to investigating the decisions of government, of Ministers, agencies and officials. Any action therefore to "look into" the "abuses" of requesters would be unlawful. If the Ombudsman wants to eliminate subterfuge from requesters, the way to do it is by restoring public confidence in the OIA system and protection of personal information so that it is unnecessary.

MI5 supports criminals

One of the functions of Britain's MI5 is to support law enforcement agencies in the prevention and detection of serious crime. But it turns out they're doing the opposite, with an official policy of ignoring serious crimes by their agents and informants:

MI5 grants its informants legal cover to participate in crimes that may extend to murder, torture and sexual assaults, a tribunal has heard.

The policy, in existence since the early 1990s, is likely to have enabled the Security Service to conceal wide ranging illegal activity, Ben Jaffey QC, representing an alliance of human rights group, told the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) on Thursday.

The policy was so secret that even judicial oversight of the practice, introduced in 2012, was not initially acknowledged. Sir Mark Waller, a retired judge appointed to oversee the policy, was instructed by the prime minister at the time, David Cameron, not to comment on its legality.

[...]

The document shows that MI5 sought to give its agents even greater freedom to commit criminal offences than that usually proffered to police informers. “The service has established its own procedure for authorising the use of agents participating in crime,” it states.

It says any authorisation to commit crimes “has no legal effect and does not confer on either agent or those involved in the authorisation process any immunity from prosecution. Rather, the authorisation will be the service’s explanation and justification of its decisions” should the police investigate.

Cameron's direction shows the utter toothlessness of the UK's intelligence "oversight". If "watchdogs" can be instructed to ignore unlawful activity, then they're not "watchdogs", but PR scams. It remains to be seen whether the investigatory powers tribunal falls into that category as well, or whether it will uphold the UK's legal ban on soliciting torture and other serious crime.

An unrepentant bully

The Department of Internal Affairs has released the redacted investigation report into the allegations of bullying against former Minister Meka Whaitiri, showing that the investigator David Patten found it probable that Whaitiri grabbed (that is, assaulted) her staffer and yelled at them. DIA also released a letter from Whaitiri's lawyer, showing that she vigorously contested the allegations and the report's conclusions, and even alleged that they were politically motivated. But the clincher is Whaitiri's press release, the core of which is this:

I am disappointed my behaviour led to a complaint.

Not disappointed in the behaviour, but that someone had complained about it. Which is what you'd expect from a bully.

Whaitiri's responses simply confirm the allegations of the report and show that she is completely unrepentant to boot. Faced with a complaint of bullying, she's tried to bully her way out of it. I'm glad she failed, and glad she's no longer a Minister. While she can't be sacked as an MP, the sooner she leaves Parliament, the better. There should be no place for bullies in our Parliament.

As for the Maori caucus, their backing for this unrepentant bully reflects poorly upon them all. They need to take a long, hard look at themselves, the behaviour they are supporting, and the political standards they accept. Supporting a bully to keep on bullying is never right, and they need to acknowledge this.

New Fisk

I watched a Palestinian family lose their land 25 years ago – and this week I returned to find them

Contractors, public records, and the OIA

One of the big shifts in government over the last 30 years has been the move to contracting out of services. Budget cuts, staff caps, and the pressure to "do more with less" has seen agencies contract out core operations, sometimes to low-cost providers, sometimes to the very people they've just sacked. But this raises issues around official information, public records, and our right to access them. Are agencies protecting our rights and complying with their statutory obligations?

The answer, according to an OIA filed through FYI, the public OIA system, is "partly". The requester asked for information on MPI's contractor email records policy, and specifically how Public Records Act compliance is managed. MPI's response includes the relevant contract templates for each of the three types of arrangement contractors are hired under. Contractors employed under a Work Authorization agree to turn over all information and intellectual property to MPI at termination. Those employed under an all-of-government recruitment agreement are merely required to conform to New Zealand law and to MPI policies (which includes adhering to the OIA). Only the government's Model Contract for Services includes a specific OIA / Public Records Act clause, requiring contractors to keep records, turn them over immediately if required to perform a statutory duty (and in a reasonable timeframe otherwise), and store them for seven years after termination. Which neatly covers OIA responsibilities during the contract, but unless MPI and other agencies demand a full turnover at the end of a contract, means this official information effectively disappears from government control (and public access) the moment a contract ends.

Whether they do in fact ask for such a turnover seems like a good subject for a followup request, perhaps to multiple agencies. But if they don't, then with increasing use of contractors, we run the risk of an increasing chunk of our public records disappearing from the public record.

Australia undermined freedom of the press in Nauru

When Nauru effectively banned journalists five years ago, it was very convenient for Australia, silencing all sorts of awkward questions about their concentration camp on the island and what was going on there. Except it wasn't merely "convenient": it turns out that Australia had conspired with Nauru to make it happen:

The Australian government is jointly responsible for Nauru’s media access policy for the immigration detention centre, departmental documents reveal, despite claims for years that it is solely an issue for Nauru.

The Australian government has repeatedly claimed it has no involvement in Nauru’s decisions around media access and specifically its repeated refusal to Australian outlets.

But the previously unpublished official arrangements, tendered to federal court as part of an affidavit in a Nauruan medical transfer case, reveal the notoriously restrictive media policy to be a joint effort.

“The governments of Australia and Nauru will agree to a media and visitor access policy and conditions of entry,” the document said. “Media seeking access to centre will be required to obtain permission from the [Nauruan] secretary for justice and to sign a media agreement.”

The Australian government then claimed it had nothing to do with the media ban, and that it was entirely up to Nauru. It turns out they were lying. Who'd have thunk it?

This isn't ethical, and its not acceptable. Australian voters should hold their government to account for it.

A wrongful release

Yesterday the Herald carried a story about the Taxpayer's Onion using fake names to lodge OIA requests. They uncovered this by learning the names and emails of people who had made OIA requests to Callaghan Innovation, then hitting the "password reset" button on those accounts - a crude form of hacking - to uncover the recovery addresses. So how did they get the requester emails in the first place? Callaghan Innovation provided them in response to an OIA request.

This is... unusual, to say the least. And it seems to me to be a prima facie case of wrongful release. Someone's contact information and the fact that they made a particular OIA request is personal information about them. The privacy withholding ground is then immediately engaged. That withholding ground must always be balanced against the public interest, but it usually requires an extremely good reason to overturn where contact information is concerned. Most public interest factors are concerned with official actions, not private ones. Where personal information of members of the public are released (e.g. Peter Thiel's immigration files), the justification is around ensuring the accountability of officials for their decision-making, not the accountability of private individuals.

("But the identities were fake!" you say. That doesn't really change the issue. Whether a person used a false identity to lodge an OIA request is itself personally identifying information about that individual, and so the privacy ground is still engaged. Except arguably, more strongly, because the potential for embarrassment from release is higher)

I've done a lot of OIA requests over the years, and the identities (let alone contact details) of low-level staff and members of the public are almost always withheld (and where they're not, its usually due to error, not deliberate). And you can see that Callaghan does exactly that with its staff. Obviously, the Herald specifically requested names and contact details, but there are serious questions to be asked about why they were released, and whether a proper process around the decision was followed. I've filed an OIA to get to the bottom of that; we'll see what it turns up in 20 working days.

Meanwhile, there is one takeaway lesson from this: you should always use a false identity when requesting information from Callaghan Innovation. Because they have just demonstrated that they will not respect your privacy, and therefore can not be trusted with your personal information.

Blasphemy repeal advances

Something I missed: the Justice Committee reported back on the Crimes Amendment Bill last Friday. The bill contains a few minor tweaks to the Crimes Act, including repeal of the archaic offence of "blasphemous libel", and the committee recommended unanimously that it be passed:

We heard concerns that the repeal would encourage hate speech against God, incite violence, and remove a safeguard for religious freedom. It was suggested that the repeal would disrupt the maintenance of wholesome boundaries in the media, and would insult God and the Christian foundations of New Zealand.

We consider it highly unlikely that the repeal of this little-known provision would result in any of these issues.

I'd also note that many of those issues are simply not the legitimate concern of government in a free and democratic society. what people think of other people's imaginary friends is simply no concern whatsoever of government.

Now that its back from committee, the bill should hopefully be passed by the end of the year.

Climate change: $840 million

That's how much climate change cost us between 2007 and 2017, according to a recent report from VUW and NIWA:

A report by Victoria University and NIWA commissioned by The Treasury, which draws on international scientific peer reviewed evidence, has found that climate change related floods and droughts has cost the New Zealand economy at least $120M for privately-insured damages from floods and $720M for economic losses from droughts over the last 1
0 years. This is expected to be a conservative estimate due to the inclusion of only two weather-related hazards, the choices made regarding the attribution of droughts, the neglect of nonfinancial losses, and the use of insured
damages rather than full economic losses for some events.

Which doesn't sound like very much - a mere $84 million a year. Sure. But remember, this is going to get much worse. And the big driver - drought - is going to become an annual event. A decent drought costs the economy ~$1.5 - $2 billion, which the model currently attributes 20% of to climate change. But as we move further and further from historic weather patterns, that percentage is going to increase significantly, at the same time as drought frequency increases. By 2050, we're easily going to be looking at a billion dollars a year in costs from drought alone.

Which puts all of that whining from farmers about having to pay the cost of their emissions into perspective. They're the primary beneficiary of action to reduce climate change, in that drought costs fall primarily on them, but they're also the biggest objectors to actually doing anything about it. Effectively, they're expecting the rest of us to pay to save them - and pay them for the damage they suffer due to their own selfishness as well. But supporting self-interested, environmentally destructive leeches is not something the public is going to put up with for long. If farmers want our assistance, they need to show they're working on the problem, by paying the full cost of their emissions.

An ordinary practice

Shock! Horror! Someone is using false names to make OIA reqeusts!

False identities were used by a right-wing lobby group to make Official Information Act requests of a government agency.

The Herald uncovered evidence showing people seeking information for the NZ Taxpayers' Union did not actually exist - and that numerous email addresses from its purported members were actually directly linked to its head office.

One single Taxpayers' Union email address was linked to nine ghost people who filed OIAs seeking information, including details later used by the lobby group to seek publicity.

The Herald approached the Taxpayers' Union for comment. It refused to talk for two days then issued a statement admitting it used bogus identities to make OIA requests.

Of course they do. So does every serious requester. In fact, I would be extremely surprised if the Herald's David Fisher, who produced this article, hadn't done it himself. As for why, the reason is simple: because there is a well-founded perception that agencies treat requesters differently based on who they are and the reason they believe they are requesting information. A request from a journalist or advocacy group may be delayed, transferred, or see as much information withheld as possible, while a request for exactly the same information from a random member of the public will see it speedily released. So regular requesters often pretend to be other people to get the information they are seeking.

Its a practice as old as the OIA itself. I recall reading an ancient article about the toxic days of the Fourth Labour Government, where people in one Minister's office were having to make pseudonymous OIA requests to find out what other Ministers were doing. Nowdays, with email and FYI, its trivially easy. Make a throwaway account, file OIA request, wait 20 working days. Its only problematic if the agency is one which uses eligibility requirements as a barrier, or if you want to complain to the Ombudsman later.

Is it legal? The Law Commission noted in its 2012 review of the Act that there's no requirement for requesters to provide their real name, and agencies would have no way of knowing if they did anyway. It therefore made no recommendation on the matter. The Ombudsman is on record (in their submission to that review (Q45)) that there should be no requirement for requesters to state their real name. So its certainly not seen as a problem by those responsible for upholding the OIA regime.

In other words, rather than some weird and underhand practice, its a common OIA tactic, and likely used by the journalists themselves. Rather than investigating it, maybe the Herald should be looking at why it is necessary, and campaigning for a better freedom of information regime, rather than persecuting those struggling to make it work.

(Meanwhile, the Herald's investigation seems pretty dubious itself. They obtained the email addresses of requesters, though its not clear how, and then attempted to hack the accounts to learn their password reset emails. FYI is on record as saying they did not provide the addresses, and I think there's interesting questions to be asked about how the Herald did it...)

Edit (4/10/18): David Fisher has got in contact to assure me that he has never made a pseudonymous OIA request. I guess I get to be surprised then.

Vexing bullshit

That's the only way to see the High Court's decision The Attorney-General v Dotcom, released today. In the context of ongoing litigation, Kim Dotcom had filed urgent Privacy Act requests to multiple agencies requesting everything they held about him. The agencies had responded by transferring the requests to the Attourny-General, his opponent in the litigation, who then refused them as "vexatious". The Human Rights Review Tribunal had previously held that both the transfer and refusal unlawful: that the transfer to an agency which did not in fact hold the information being sought was contrary to the Act, and that the bar to vexatiousness being very high - previous rulings had said that it required a request to be such that no-one could make it in good faith - the refusal was also unlawful. The High Court has refused this. Its reason? Because Dotcom had requested information in the context of litigation, and he had had the temerity to demand it urgently.

This, simply speaking, is bullshit. Information held by an agency about you does not become "more closely connected" with another agency simply because you are involved in litigation with the government. And requesting urgency does not make a request inherently vexatious. To the contrary, under the traditional legal interpretation, being involved in litigation with an agency is a good reason to seek information held by that agency, and a strong indication that a request is not vexatious. Insofar as the request for urgent treatment of a request is seen as unreasonable, the appropriate action for an agency to take is simply to process it in normal timeframes - not refuse it.

The High Court has turned the law on its head. It has given licence to government agencies to play that games with each other and transfer requests to agencies which do not hold the information sought, while dramatically expanding the definition of vexatious to allow any request from someone the government labels an "enemy" to be refused. And this affects more than just the Privacy Act, because the Official Information Act shares these provisions. Secretive government agencies will use this decision to refuse requests.

With this decision, a subservient and authoritarian High Court has undermined official information rights for us all. We can only hope that it will be appealed and overturned, or the freedom of information and privacy regimes are in real trouble.

Teachers to government: pay up

Last week, primary school teachers rejected the government's pay offer. Today, the PPTA recommended that secondary teachers do the same. The government is now looking at the scenario of a joint teacher's strike:

The possibility of secondary educators joining their primary school colleagues in sector-wide industrial action in the future isn't being ruled out.

The measure, which would send a powerful message about the level of industry dissatisfaction over pay and conditions offered by the Ministry of Education, has been raised as primary educators prepare to vote on national strikes next month.

If New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa members vote yes, a week of rolling strikes will take place region-by-region starting with Auckland on Monday, November 12.

The government will no doubt plead poverty, but when they're spending billions on pointless war toys, it rings a bit hollow. The blunt fact is that teachers have been underpaid and understaffed for years. Now, its time for the government to pay up. Or they can teach their own damn kids.

Winston and MMP

Winston Peters says he wants to hack around with the electoral system:

Changes to the MMP electoral system could be back on the table including the controversial coat-tailing provision, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has indicated.

[...]

Peters told TV1's Q + A he would be open to the last MMP review being revisited.

The previous Government had thrown the last review "in the rubbish bin."

Asked if he would be open to the review being reconsidered, he said that was a "marvellous suggestion."

"I might put that to my cabinet colleagues and after consultation, if they agree, we might do that."

The problem? Changes to the electoral system traditionally require supermajority support, but there's no consensus in Parliament for any change. National (and NZ First) oppose any move to make the electoral system more democratic by lowering or removing the threshhold. And Labour, who do want to do that, won't do it unless it also gets to remove the electorate lifeboat - making the system less representative in the process. On both sides, the positions are driven by naked self-interest and an effort to fuck over each other's potential coalition partners for electoral advantage. The interests of voters in being able to cast a vote for the party they prefer and be represented without distortion are ignored by our self-interested political elite.

If the government makes these changes without supermajority support, they will both lack legitimacy, and open the door to a future National government doing the same (and on that front, remember that undemocratic National hates MMP, and that the system is not entrenched). Given the parliamentary deadlock, the only legitimate way to change the system is to put specific questions to voters in a referendum. But given the scale of the changes, people may very well ask why they're voting on them, rather than MPs sorting it out.

Priorities again

Newsroom this morning has an interesting piece on IRD's enforcement priorities:

IRD collected just $10,000 in unpaid tax from people living in Australia last year, but netted $1.7 million in student loan repayments from Australia.

The IRD made just eight requests for assistance from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) in the 2017/18 tax year to net the $10,777.44 in unpaid tax, according to information released under the Official Information Act.

A 1995 tax treaty with Australia, updated in 2009, allows the IRD and ATO to share information and request assistance in collecting tax.

The low take is especially surprising the IRD collected $1.7 million in student loan debts and $45.2 million in child support debts over the same period.

Terry Baucher, director of tax consultancy Baucher Consulting, filed the OIA request and told Newsroom he was “shocked” at the tiny amount of unpaid tax collected from Australia, especially given how many New Zealanders live there — including some who move to escape tax owed here.

As with the previous piece on the different levels of enforcement for students and property speculators, the message is clear: IRD is tough on students, but soft on tax cheats. Given that student debtors are just that - debtors, a civil matter - while tax cheats are actual criminals who undermine the integrity of the tax system, surely it should be the other way round?

NZ First vs NZ values

NZ First held its annual conference over the weekend, and in addition to drivel like saying we need to buy back Kiwibank (its wholly government-owned), they also passed a remit requiring immigrants to respect "New Zealand values":

A remit to introduce a Respecting New Zealand Values Bill for migrants and refugees was passed by party members despite some opposition, and will now go to the caucus for policy consideration.

These values would include respect for gender equality, legal sexual preferences, freedom of religion and a commitment not to campaign against alcohol consumption.

As others have already pointed out, Winston Peters voted against the Bill of Rights Act (which enshrined freedom of religion and forbade the government from discriminating on the basis of gender), against homosexual law reform, civil unions and marriage equality, against easter Sunday trading, and for raising the drinking age. These positions are generally shared by his party. So, those values NZ First wants to force migrants to "respect" are not values they respect themselves.

So who would NZ First ban? In addition to a couple of their own bigoted MPs (Dail Jones and Peter Brown), they would also have rejected that notorious immigrant anti-alcohol campaigner, Kate Sheppard. Except of course they wouldn't think of any of those people as "immigrants", because they're white.

NZ First's "values test" isn't really about values at all - values NZ First has shown it despises. Like other, similar proposals in places like Australia and the Netherlands, its really about race and discriminating against migrants due to the colour of their skin. Which, fundamentally, is what NZ First has always been about.

No credibility

Last week, Stuff Circuit revealed a long and dirty history of collusion between the police and New Zealand's most anti-democratic private investigation firm, Thompson & Clark. There were immediate calls for an inquiry. And now, one is going to be held. But rather than being run by an independent, outside body such as the ombudsman or even the "Independent" Police Conduct Authority, the police will be investigating themselves:

Police have launched an internal investigation into its use of external security consultants, including Thompson and Clark.

Earlier this year, the state services commissioner widened an inquiry into the use of outside security consultants by state services but police were exempt from this.

However, in a statement police commissioner Mike Bush said it was important police actions were also open to investigation.

[...]

A senior detective will lead the investigation, which will be completed by the end of October.

A whole month! I think this shows us exactly how seriously the police are taking this. Throw in the fact that they'll only be looking at whether any collusion breached the police code of conduct - not whether it was lawful or appropriate - and I think we can confidently conclude that it will be a whitewash from start to finish. We can write the final report now: "nothing to see here, move along". And all details will of course be kept secret "to avoid prejudice to the maintenance of the law" (which the police interpret as covering damage to their reputation).

Investigating your own case is a fundamental conflict of interest. We don't trust other agencies to do it. We shouldn't trust the police either. Their "self-investigation" simply has no credibility. We need a real inquiry, by someone independent of the police.

International Right to Know Day

Today, September 28, is International Right to Know Day, a day where we celebrate and promote freedom of information and open government. Our government is pretty open, and has recently announced major moves towards proactively releasing cabinet material which are pretty much unprecedented. Still, we could do better.

The Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner marked the day with the a public Q&A session on Wednesday. I wasn't able to attend, but I'm looking forward to watching it on YouTube here.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to mark the day, I can think of no better way of doing so than using the Official Information Act to ask the government something. If you're not sure how to do that, go to FYI, pick an agency (the list of popular agencies is always good, but you can search), decide on something you'd like to know, and ask them. If they obey the law, you should get your answer in 20 working days.