Thursday, September 19, 2019

An increasingly shoddy coverup

The Operation Burnham inquiry continued to question senior NZDF staff today, and their shoddy coverup over their knowledge of civilian casualties continue to fall apart. If you recall, first, we were asked to believe that it was all a series of "mistakes and errors": a senior officer with multiple degrees "misinterpreted" an acronym which he never misinterpreted anywhere else. Then of course there was the report itself, which NZDF categorically swore it didn't have, only to admit that they'd had it all along. But they claimed to have no idea who read it. But it turns out they were lying about that too:

However, the inquiry's chairman, Sir Terence Arnold, on Thursday morning raised the possibility of a second register – asking the Defence Force to get a copy immediately.

A barrister assisting the inquiry, Lucila van Dam, said they had not been aware of the existence of the alternative log.

The inquiry was told it took about 15 minutes to find the file and heard the entry said the ISAF report had been checked in on September 1, 2011 by the director of special operations.

It sounds like the inquiry should be asking some pointed questions about why there was even a second register in the first place, and why they weren't told about it earlier. And it sounds like they should be putting the former director of special operations on the stand to ask him some questions about the report and who he informed about it. Of course, he's described as having "a high level of integrity" by a former defence force chief - and if so, I'd expect him to answer. But sadly, given how other people similarly described have fared in this inquiry, I'm beginning to think that NZDF has a different definition of "integrity" to the rest of us.

Meanwhile, the standard of shit NZDF is expecting us to believe is becoming truly outrageous. And with every further piece of bullshit, the alternative explanation becomes more and more compelling: NZDF lied, and lied all along, to protect their reputation.

Climate Change: How to save the world



Solar and wind power, now cheaper than fossil fuels in many regions, must be scaled up rapidly to replace coal-fired generation, and this alone could halve emissions from electricity generation by 2030, according to the Exponential Roadmap report from an international group of experts.

If the rapid uptake of electric vehicles in some parts of the world could be sustained, the vehicles could make up 90% of the market by 2030, vastly reducing emissions from transport, it said.

Avoiding deforestation and improving land management could reduce emissions by the equivalent of about 9bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by 2030, according to the report, but contradictory subsidies, poor planning and vested interests could stop this from happening.

And when laid out like that, it doesn't look that hard. To steal a line from Jacinda Ardern, we can do this. We can save the world. But to do it, we need our governments to fucking listen to us, rather than the poisoners and polluters in the economic status quo who would rather see everything burn than their profits decrease. And that means you need to get out on the street next Friday (or tomorrow if you're not in New Zealand) as part of the climate strike, and threaten them with torches and pitchforks until they do.

A further attack on transparency

The Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) had part of its committee stage yesterday. its a generally tedious bill about the nitty-gritty of local government reorganisation. But it includes a clause making the Local Government Commission subject to the Ombudsmen Act, and hence the OIA. Great! Except of course there's a nasty twist: while being generally subject to the OIA, the Commission will have its own little secrecy clause, temporarily exempting from the OIA (until the investigation, review etc is finalised) assorted classes of information:

(a) the consideration of any matter under section 31:
(aa) a reorganisation investigation under Part 1 of Schedule 3:
(ab) the review of a local authority-led reorganisation application under clause 22C of Schedule 3:
(b) the resolution of a dispute under section 31H by the Commission under this Act or another enactment:
(c) the determination of an appeal or objection under section 19R of the Local Electoral Act 2001.

Naturally there's no assessment of this in the bill's Regulatory Impact Statement. According to the RIS, the Ombudsman was not consulted, and they did not submit on the bill (probably because they didn't notice it at the time). However, according to the summary of submissions [p 36], several groups submitted against this clause and in defence of transparency. Their submissions were ignored.

But looking at it from first principles, there seems to be little reason for secrecy. Take ground (a), which refers to the function of the Local Government Commission to:
consider, report on, and make recommendations to the Minister and any relevant local authority on matters relating to a local authority or local government considered appropriate by the Commission [or] referred to the Commission by the Minister

Why would this need to be inherently secret? More importantly, why would it need so much secrecy as to exempt it entirely from the definition of "official information" - a legal trick not even granted to national security information held by the SIS or GCSB? Insofar as such a report is "actively under consideration", advice (but not facts) relating to such an investigation could be legitimately withheld under s9(2)(f)(iv) (unless outweighed by the public interest, of course). And similar questions arise naturally from the clauses relating to local government reorganisation.

What about dispute resolution? Again, insofar as it relates to a private dispute between local government officials, s9(2)(a) provides all the protection that is needed. Alternatively, if the Commission is viewed as a mediator similar to the Human Rights Commission, s87 Human Rights Act provides strong protection for mediation-related information, but does not exempt it from the definition of "official information", and allows it to be released with consent.

As for exempting appeals over local body electoral boundaries, its worth noting that there is no such protection for the Representation Commission when deciding appeals against general electoral boundaries. There's simply no reason whatsoever for such secrecy.

The bill was drafted by the previous government, so this one isn't Labour's fault. But it highlights the disturbing trend, which Labour has allowed to continue, of agencies being granted any request for secrecy, and being given their own mini-Official Secrets Acts to exempt information they want to hide from the public sphere. And sadly, the legislative process includes no safeguards against this whatsoever. Again, the government needs to think about transparency and open government when designing legislation, just as they do about human rights, the Treaty, and gender equality. And it is simply shameful that they do not.

It is not too late for the government - or the opposition - to fix this, but putting up an SOP to strike s19 from the bill. It'll be interesting to see whether anyone does, or whether our political elite is happy with this growing trend of secrecy.

Ihumātao and Treaty settlements

Yesterday Ihumātao's mana whenua reached a consensus that they would like their land back, and asked the government to negotiate with Fletcher's for its return. The government's response? Try and undermine that consensus, while talking about how doing anything would undermine existing Treaty settlements. The first is just more bad faith, an attempt to keep Māori fighting themselves so dispossession can continue. As for the second, its simply a convenient excuse for inaction and for continuing injustice. Here's why.

First, keep in mind what the settlements are for: pretty much the entire country. There's a graphic here on Stuff which rams home the scale of loss, how much land was taken. While some was sold in commercial transactions, these were typically one-sided, and frequently the crown didn't bother to live up to its side of the bargain anyway. In other cases, land was legally confiscated, or simply stolen as "survey costs". The government has admitted that all of this was wrong, which is why it is settling. But it is not returning everything it took, plus 180 years of rent and interest. Instead, it returns a tiny fraction of its value, typically less than five percent.

Iwi accept these one-sided "settlements" because its basicly that or nothing. As Morgan Godfrey points out, by doing so, they are being extraordinarily generous, effectively making an enormous gift to New Zealand. But we shouldn't pretend that the government is really providing just compensation for what it stole, or that the low value of settlements is not in and of itself a severe and ongoing breach of the Treaty.

The government calls these settlements "full and final", and writes that both into the settlement deed and the law. We also shouldn't pretend that that means anything. Given their utter inadequacy compared to the harm done, their one-sided nature, their "take it or leave it" "negotiations", these settlements are only "full and final" by Māori goodwill - and whether they stick or not is a political question for each generation. If a new generation of Māori decides that their elders sold them out by accepting less than what was owed, then the government is simply going to have to deal with that, and make good. Because no person with a shred of conscience could consider what has been provided anything like just compensation for what was stolen - and until just compensation is paid, the wrong remains.

Looking at Ihumātao, the government makes much of the fact that Te Kawerau a Maki settled their claims in 2014. That settlement was for $6.5 million. That's around 20% of the (SHA-inflated) cost of Ihumātao, and if you look at the government acknowledgements in their settlement legislation, vastly more than that was stolen. Pretending that the redress was remotely adequate is simply unconscionable.

Which brings us back to goodwill. If the government wants to maintain that goodwill, and not reopen everything, then returning Ihumātao and/or protecting it would seem to be a good way to do that. On the flip side, the longer they refuse to do so, the more this builds, the more likely it is that Māori will start to demand actual compensation, rather than the modern-day beads and blankets they have been given. And I suspect the government really wouldn't like that.

Protecting our history


The government has bought Kate Sheppard's former home in Christchurch for more than $4 million.

The Ilam villa will be used as an educational centre for university research projects and school history trips, and made available for public access and events.

It was bought for $4.5 million at the start of September and it will be managed by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga in partnership with the University of Canterbury.

Which is fair enough. Alongside the Treaty House at Waitangi, its one of our most important historical monuments, and something we should preserve as part of our national story. At the same time, it raises an obvious question: if the government can buy Kate Sheppard's house, what it stopping it from buying Ihumātao?

Climate Change: Ostracising the coal-burners


Leading economies such as Japan and Australia will not be invited to speak at next week’s crunch UN climate change summit, as their continued support for coal clashes with the demands of the organisation’s secretary-general as he sounds the alarm on climate change.

Coal has emerged as a key issue ahead of Monday’s meeting in New York, where 63 countries are expected to speak, according to a draft schedule seen by the Financial Times.

In letters and conversations with heads of state, António Guterres, UN secretary-general, has demanded that countries attending the summit stop building new coal power stations, reduce fossil fuel subsidies, and commit to net zero emissions by 2050 — demands that have not gone down well in all quarters.

Countries which won't make such commitments, like Japan, or outright denier-states like Australia, the USA, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, are being excluded. Which is a good move. If we want to build a global platform for action, the first step is to sideline the coal-burners and deniers, to stop them from wrecking things. The next step is to link environmental performance to trade and other relationships, and move from ostracising them at climate conferences to ostracising them generally. Because when CO2 concentrations are this high and rising, these states are literally trying to end life on earth, making them hostis humani generis, the common enemy of all humanity. And they need to be treated as such.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

I'm glad I don't live in Auckland


Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere is being slammed for using the words "sieg heil" during a heated political debate with Phil Goff.

A 20 second edited excerpt of the conversation circulating on Twitter shows Tamihere responding to Goff's comment about enjoying Auckland for its multiculturalism with the words "I say sieg heil to that".

"I love this city for its diversity and we won't put up with the sort of nonsense that we get from racists coming into this country to tell us that multiculturalism doesn't work," Goff says.

Host Martyn Bradbury then asks Tamihere what he wishes for the grandchildren of Auckland to which he replies "I say sieg heil to that".

Tamihere has a long history of scumbaggery, from abandoning his cats, to talking about "front bums", to homophobia, and (directly relevant to this) saying he is "sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed". So all I can do is urge Aucklanders to use their vote wisely, and vote him off the island.

Climate Change: A history lesson

Why is New Zealand climate change policy so crap? The Herald this morning has a long article on the twists and turns of climate change policy in New Zealand [paywalled / depaywall script], which shows where we've been. The short version is that the government first began worrying about this way back in 1988, and then basicly did nothing for twenty years until it passed the ETS. Why did it do nothing, and let emissions grow and grow and grow? While the Herald glosses over the middle bit, the blame can squarely be sheeted home to these clowns:
[National MPs with cow at anti-climate change policy protest, September 2003. Image stolen from Stuff]

National was in government during the crucial period in the 1990's when we'd become aware of the threat. So what did they do about it? First, they set an ambitious target of a 20% reduction in emissions by 2000, but of course they imposed no policies to make it happen, and actively worked to prevent the RMA from being used to control emissions. They threatened business with a carbon tax if they didn't start reducing emissions by 1997, but (of course) didn't follow through. They then worked up a full plan for an emissions trading scheme, which was supposed to be imposed in 1999 - but didn't follow through on that. And they lost power, and suddenly went full Denier, opposing any efforts to price emissions (a policy they had supported in government), or even to make farmers contribute to the cost of the research required to let them reduce agricultural methane. Possibly this was just them revealing their true colours, or possibly it was just the usual hypocrisy and opportunism of opposition politics in our political system. But either way, it limited the government's scope for action, and delayed the ETS by another five years. And then, when it finally passed in 2008, the first thing National did when elected to power was gut it.

With this background, the idea that National should be taken seriously as a "partner" with whom the government should seek consensus on climate change is ludicrous. There's no good faith there, no commitment to action. Instead - and it is quite clear from their public statements on the issue - the only consensus they will support is one for inaction, for not doing enough, for failure. And a consensus for failure is simply not worth pursuing, even if you are stupid enough to think they'll stick to it.

Tuesday, September 17, 2019



Of course not:

The government has apologised for breaching a court ruling against the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia that could be used in the Yemen conflict.

International trade secretary Liz Truss admitted the government approved two licences for military equipment which could be used in Yemen.

This is despite the government freezing new arms licences for Saudi Arabia in June after the Court of Appeal ruled that it was “unlawful” for the government to license weapons exports without assessing whether there was an “historic pattern of breaches of international humanitarian law” by the Saudi-led coalition.

An apology isn't enough. The Minister has clearly acted in breach of the court ruling, and they should be prosecuted for contempt, just like anyone else would be.

Covering up the cover-up

Yesterday NZDF officials were put on the stand about the lies they had told over Operation Burnham, making implausible claims that it was all a big mistake. But along the way, we learned they had already been put on the spot about it by a previous Defence Minister, who had effectively accused them of a cover up. And outrageously, they attempted to hide this from the public:

A note made as the Defence Minister raked senior military officials over the coals shows concern the SAS were being shielded of allegations of civilian deaths.

The Defence Force attempted to suppress public discussion of the note, written by the military's chief of staff, at a public hearing for the Operation Burnham inquiry.

The note, from the 2014 meeting with Jonathan Coleman, defence minister at the time, read: "SF [special forces] are not fallible ... No question of their core skills, but political judgment, lack of insight and confused desirability of their actions having a certain shielding ... SAS credibility at risk".


Lawyer for the Defence Force, Paul Radich QC, argued the note should be suppressed due to it revealing "free and frank" advice from the Government minister.

Which is both a perfect example of how the "free and frank advice" clause of the OIA is abused, and of NZDF's attitude to this whole affair. Their first response to bad news is to cover it up, not because there is any "national security" or other public interest at stake, but merely because it is embarrassing to them and damaging to their reputation. But if the Defence Minister has criticised the military for attempting a coverup, that seems like the sort of thing the public has an absolute right to know.

NZDF should be ashamed. But more than that, they need to be held responsible for their coverups.

Not as important as they think they are

Farmers have been whining a lot lately, about the methane targets in the Zero Carbon Bill, about Canterbury's proposed nitrogen limits, and about the government's new proposals to stop them from shitting in our lakes and rivers. These policies are "throwing farmers under the tractor", they will force farmers off the land and "end farming as we know it" (something which needs to happen, as its clear to everyone but farmers that "farming as we (or rather, they) know it" is simply not ecologically sustainable). And of course that will be Bad For New Zealand, because farmers are the "backbone of the economy".

Except it turns out they're not:

New Zealand's new fresh water regulation rules will have no major impacts on the national economy, according to an independent report just out.

The report by independent economic consultancy New Zealand Institute of Economic Research shows that dairying represents about 3% of national GDP and is behind tourism in export earnings.

The study, commissioned by Forest & Bird, Greenpeace, and Fish and Game, found the impact on national GDP of the proposed reforms were unlikely to be major, stating that: “Due to the relatively small size of the dairy industry, the impacts of the government reforms are unlikely to be major at the national level, and not felt for many years due to the long lead in times proposed.”

Farmer whining assumes that they can not or will not do anything to improve their environmental performance. However, as the report points out, they have plenty of time, plenty of options and the regulations will force them to innovate and adopt better practices. Which means that if they choose not to and are forced out of business, that's really on them.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Climate Change: Trees, aviation, and offsets


First in that is an excellent in-depth piece by Charlie Mitchell in Stuff about what trees can and can't do to address the climate change crisis. It looks at the different carbon uptake of pine vs native forest, and in passing mentions how much carbon we've got locked up in our existing native forests: 6.5 billion tons of CO2-equivalent, or about 80 years of emissions. That's on one-third of our total land area, but it give an idea of what serious native reforestation can do, and how important its going to be for eventual drawdown: sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere and undoing the damage we've done. But the downside is that its going to take a thousand years to do it. Pine is less efficient in the long-run - 800 tons stored per hectare on good land, rather than 1300 to 1700 - and its a monoculture, with all the problems that entails, but it can do it in thirty years rather than a thousand. And because we only have thirty years, or less, and certainly not a thousand, then if we're serious about solving this problem we're going to have to shoot some cows and plant trees in their place (or, less violently, remove the ETS price cap, let carbon price rise, and let the market do the equivalent - something that is already happening to sheep and beef farming even at current carbon prices).

(Its actually not an either / or choice. We can apparently use pine as a nursery crop for native forest in the same way we currently use gorse. So that might let us combine short and long-term solutions. But low-value, high emissions farming is doomed either way the moment we stop subsidising it through the ETS)

The second piece is from the ODT, about the problem with offsetting. Unfortunately there's an embarrassing problem with it, derived from this paper, which overestimates by a factor of 250 the area needed to soak up aviation emissions (short version: they calculated it using the 3 tons / hectare annually absorbed by regenerating native bush, rather than the 800 tons / hectare sequestered in total by pine. Alternatively, you could view it as a perpetual offset for aviation for the next few centuries, but neither the authors or the ODT piece talks about it like that). But mistakes aside, there is a good underlying point in there: international aviation emissions are large (7.89 megatons CO2-equivalent in 2005 for international tourists coming to New Zealand, and 3.95 megatons for kiwis travelling internationally), they are not counted in anyone's national accounts, and they are increasing. And if we're serious about climate change, we need to do something about them.

As for what that something needs to be, the article points out that international air travel is highly concentrated among the wealthy:

"The vast majority of the world population has never stepped on to an airplane. So, the growth in aviation is mainly among people who have a longstanding habit of flying.

"This huge environmental impact is basically arising from long-standing habits of the rich, or nouveau riche, who fly more and more."

And the most obvious answer to this, as with any other public bad, is to tax the living fuck out of it to change that dirty, destructive habit. Whether this is done at a flat-rate or an escalating "frequent flyer levy" depends on your taste for intrusiveness, but either way, we need to tax it and end the effective ~$200 million subsidy to the tourist industry of letting them have their pollution for free. As an added bonus, we can then spend some of those taxes on soaking up the carbon emitted, but the primary goal has to be behaviour change. The best offset is to not emit in the first place.

Something to go to in Wellington



"Mistakes and errors"

Current and former NZDF top brass are being publicly grilled this week by the hit and run inquiry over their public responses to allegations of civilian casualties. Previously, they've claimed there were no casualties, a position which led them to lie to Ministers and to the public. Now, they're saying that position was all due to a series of unfortunate mistakes:

A critical report detailing possible civilian casualties in a SAS-led raid was overlooked and left in a Defence Force safe in a claimed accident.

The Defence Force's explanation for repeated denials of possible civilian deaths, a story of repeated errors and mistakes by senior military officials, has come during the first day of a week-long Operation Burnham inquiry hearing.

Among those "mistakes": that ISAF report into civilian casualties they swear they never had? It turns out they had it all along. And the SAS officer who sent the initial report on its contents "misinterpreted" it as clearing the unit and operation he led. Convenient, neh?

But even if you believe all that, NZDF then doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on those mistakes, apparently without ever checking the facts. At the very best, it makes them look like utter incompetents who shouldn't be trusted to run a children's birthday party, let alone an organisation which kills people. Less charitably, it just looks like yet another lie in an organised strategy of deceit. Whether they get away with it, well, I guess that's up to us.

Friday, September 13, 2019

New Fisk

John Bolton’s sacking delighted Iran – but the world is suffering under Trump and his fellow fragile tyrants

A sensible crackdown

The government has released its Arms Legislation Bill, containing the second tranche of changes to gun laws following the March 15 massacre. And it all looks quite sensible: a national gun register, higher penalties for illegal possession and dealing, tighter restrictions on arms dealers and shooting clubs, and a shorter licencing period. One interesting change is that all online sales will effectively need police approval, which will slow down the arms market on TradeMe.

The National party has indicated that they will oppose these changes, based on an earlier draft. Hopefully they'll change their mind on this. Otherwise, I guess they'll just be on the wrong side of history as usual.

California bans private prisons

Private prisons are a stain on humanity. Prison operators explicitly profit from human misery, then lobby for longer prisons terms so they can keep on profiting. And in the US, prison companies run not only local and state prisons, but also Donald Trump's immigration concentration camps. Faced with this moral outrage, California - once one of the heaviest users of private prisons - has banned them from operating within the state:



Existing prisons get to keep running until their contracts expire, and then they will have to shut down. For state contractors, that means prisoners will be transferred back to state prisons. As for ICE, presumably they'll have to start running proper federal facilities again, rather than contracting them out to the lowest bidder.

(As for NZ, thanks to National we will have a private prison running in South Auckland until 2040, unless Parliament legislates to void their contract. The sooner that happens, the better).

Why PPPs are a bad idea

When National was in power, they were very keen on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) - basicly, using private companies to finance public infrastructure as a way of hiding debt from the public. They were keen on using them for everything - roads, schools, hospitals. But as the UK shows, that "service" of keeping debt off the government books is very, very expensive:

NHS hospital trusts are being crippled by the private finance initiative and will have to make another £55bn in payments by the time the last contract ends in 2050, a report reveals.

An initial £13bn of private sector-funded investment in new hospitals will end up costing the NHS in England a staggering £80bn by the time all contracts come to an end, the IPPR thinktank has found.

Some trusts are having to spend as much as one-sixth of their entire budget on repaying debts due as a result of the PFI scheme... The findings raised concerns that the diversion of such large sums at a time when many trusts are in the red and coping with the fast-rising demand for care. There are fears it could damage the quality of care and risk patient safety because trusts do not have funds to hire enough staff.

And the reason why is obvious: firstly, it costs the private sector more to borrow than the government (especially at the moment). And second, they're going to want a hefty profit margin. And together, this means that the UK government is ending up paying over six times more for stuff than it needs to, if it had been honest about its spending and debt.

So when Labour talks of being "open for business" for transport PPPs, this is what they're open for: screwing the public with dishonest accounting and massively inflated costs, while big companies laugh all the way to the bank with guaranteed profits. And that is something we should simply reject.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

The obvious question


As someone with a memory longer than a goldfish's, I can't help but remember the Francis report into bullying and harassment at Parliament, which highlighted parliamentary staff's unusual employment arrangements:

[The] agreement contains a what staff often refer to as a ‘breakdown clause’, in which either the Member or the staff Member can invoke a relationship breakdown, based on ‘loss of trust and confidence’ as a reason for termination.

In the event of termination on this basis, the clause allows for the staff member to exit immediately or by agreement, on payment of notice and three months’ salary.

Maybe its just me, but I'd have thought that being the subject of a live sexual assault complaint which threatens to turn your (not-technically) employing party's reputation into a toxic firestorm would be exactly the sort of thing which would cause a "loss of trust and confidence". And if they'd exercised this clause when this was first brought to the party's attention, Labour wouldn't be in nearly the mess that its in now. It could honestly say that it had acted to keep its staff and volunteers safe, that it had tried to do the right thing.

Instead, they protected this man (apparently because of his close party connections). And they deserve to reap the consequences.

This is why people hate property developers

Property developers think there is an "oversupply" of houses in Auckland:



Property developer David Whitburn said there was a "bit of an oversupply" in some of the areas on the outskirts of Auckland.

Some of the sales being recorded were the final stages of large developments being finished, he said.

"Pokeno in particular, I do see an oversupply there and downward price pressure."

Good. Because downward price pressure is exactly what we need. But as for an "oversupply", we still have homeless people, and prices and rents are still out of reach of an increasing number of New Zealanders. But property developers and real estate agents, who drive the media narrative on housing policy, don't actually want to fix this. They're benefitting from the status quo, hoarding houses and profiteering from our misery. And they will panic and squawk at anything which even hints at threatening it.

We don't just need to threaten that status quo, we need to crush it. The government needs to build houses, and keep building houses, until house prices crash and houses stand empty unable to be sold because everyone who wants one has one. Until that happens, we have an undersupply, not an oversupply.

Australia to Pacific: "Fuck you, you can all drown"


Scott Morrison will not attend the UN climate action summit despite him being in America to visit the Trump administration at the time – deploying the foreign minister, Marise Payne, and the Australian ambassador for the environment, Patrick Suckling, instead.


A draft program for the summit, and a list of member states intending to present at the event, seen by Guardian Australia, did not include any reference to Australian participation. Morrison was asked by the Greens in question time on Wednesday whether he would attend the UN summit, and he said Australia would be represented at the event.

Asked by Guardian Australia to confirm whether the prime minister would be the Australian representative, and whether the government would offer any new commitments, a spokesman for Morrison said: “Australia has already outlined our policies to tackle climate change including cutting our emissions by 26-28% and investing directly into climate resilience projects through our regional partners”.

Morrison has also said that Australia is only setting climate change targets to 2030, and will not make commitments after that. Their message to the Pacific is crystal clear: "fuck you, you can all drown".

Implausible ignorance


I have been told by the complainants that Jacinda Ardern's former chief of staff Mike Munro knew about the allegations, her chief press secretary, Andrew Campbell, knew about the allegations, and the director of her leader's office, Rob Salmond, knew about the allegations. I have been told by two victims who work in Parliament that they went to Rob Salmond around Christmas time and made a complaint about the alleged perpetrator.

The Prime Minister has constantly said her office did not receive complaints and, in fact, encouraged the victims to speak to their line managers. They did. They have told me they went to Rob Salmond and nothing was done, and we are expected to believe that none of these men in her own office told the Prime Minister about the allegations...

(Bennett also details the witch hunt that Campbell ran to try and silence the victims, and the alleged perpetrator's "deep alliances" with Grant Robertson and involvement in Labour leadership campaigns. There's enough shit to cover everyone, it seems)

So, in order to believe the Prime Minister's claims of ignorance, we're required to believe that none of her key staff - whose job is literally to keep her informed of political risks like e.g. a case of sexual assault by a well-connected member of her party on a young volunteer - told her. Despite her supposed clear instructions in the wake of the last Labour sexual assault case that she was to be informed. And that she had no idea what was going on in her own office. And to be honest, I simply find that implausible. But if it is the case, then pretty obviously every single one of those named senior staff members has violated the Prime Minister's trust and failed in their jobs. So if its actually true, I'd expect them all to be being fired about now. And if they're not, then we can assume the PM's claims of ignorance are just another shoddy lie by just another lying politician.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Yes, the SIS is subject to the Public Records Act


The good news is that its wrong. Yes, a clause in consequential amendments schedule of the Intelligence and Security Act 2017 repealed the explicit reference to the SIS from the list of public offices in the Public Records Act 2005. But that was because another clause in the Act itself added it to schedule 1 of the State sector Act 1988, making it a department of the Public Service. Which of course are the very first thing in the list of types of bodies that are public offices covered by the Public Records Act. So, they're covered. It might be next-to-impossible to ever see anything they have ever held, but at least it will be kept so historians in a hundred years can look it.

Climate Change: Australia in denial

Australia is burning down again, and meanwhile its natural disaster minister is denying climate change:


Clarifying earlier comments that the question is “irrelevant” when considering the Coalition government’s response to intensifying bushfires, he told Guardian Australia he was unsure about the causes of the climate crisis but wanted to give the country the tools to adapt.


Littleproud’s position was supported by the Nationals deputy leader, Bridget McKenzie, the minister for resources and northern Australia, Matt Canavan, and the environment minister, Sussan Ley, all of who denied knowledge of or downplayed the link.

Its difficult to deal with a problem effectively if you deny it exists, or refuse to acknowledge its causes. The rampant climate denial at the top of the Australian political system is dooming Australians to higher costs and worse impacts.



Charitably, we're expected to believe that the people Labour appointed to investigate a complaint of sexual assault are so incompetent that they had no idea that that was what the complaint was about, despite being told repeatedly and at lenth. And that they're total muppets who can't run a proper complaints process (well, OK, most organisations can't. But this is the Labour Party, not amateur hour at the local bingo club. They have lawyers and so on who can tell them how to do it properly). Uncharitably, it just looks like an institution trying to protect itself and one of its insiders by the usual tactics of minimising the complaint and trying to shuffle the whole thing under the carpet. This is natural behaviour for institutions, we are told - except institutions are made of people, and doing this in a case of sexual assault requires that those people be either sociopaths, or absolute garbage. And either way, the whole lot of them need to go.

Member's Day: End of Life Choice, part 3

Today is a Member's day, and David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill continues its slow crawl through its committee stage. They're spending the whole day on it today, though the first hour is likely to be spent on voting left over from last time. After that they'll move on to part 3 of the Bill, and then another round of long, boring personal votes. There's still a couple of weeks left of this, but the majority for change seems to be holding up, and the bill looks like it will get its third reading and become law in late October.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Will Horizons act on climate change?


Climate change is set to be a key issue in Palmerston North for the next three years if those wanting to get on Horizons Regional Council have their way.


All seven [Palmerston North] candidates rated climate change as one of the top three issues the council would have to tackle.

Horizons also apparently has a new climate change strategy ready for the new council to consider. So will they act? Four councillors from Palmerston North plus one Green elected unopposed (!) in Whanganui only gives five, which isn't enough for a majority in a twelve-member council. We'd still need to see two more non-farmers elected in other parts of the region to have a majority for strong action. So, if you live in Horowhenua, Tararua, or Manawatū-Rangitikei, please vote for candidates who will act.

BORA reform is stalled


I was curious, so I asked for all advice about the proposal. You can read the response here. And the short version is that the proposal appears to be stalled. The documents leading to the announced in-principle decision suggested consultation with experts, with Cabinet approval by October 2018, and legislation in early 2019. But after that, everything stalled. There was a briefing on the outcome of Attorney-General v Taylor, in which the Supreme Court upheld its inherent jurisdiction to issue declarations of inconsistency, a briefing on options, and (in April) a draft Cabinet paper with the Attorney-General (both sadly withheld). But that paper does not appear to have been submitted to Cabinet.

As for why, who knows? Maybe Winston has vetoed an effective Bill of Rights Act, or maybe the government has just chickened out like they did over the capital gains tax. Alternatively, there's a screaming hint in the early briefing material, where they repeatedly push the idea that Crown law could mention an in-principle decision to allow declarations to the Supreme Court, and that "this could be viewed favourably by the Court... and could be relevant to the Court's deliberations". In other words, this was being pushed as a shoddy legal tactic, and now that that tactic has failed, the government sees no need to push it any further. Which is a pretty shitty way to do constitutional change.

Of course, that may not be the reason at all. But if the government insists on withholding information, then people are entitled to read between the lines and assume the worst. And if they don't want us to do that, they have an easy solution: front up and explain why an apparently serious proposal for real constitutional change has apparently been shitcanned.

A ditch for him to die in

Last week, English Prime Minister Boris Johnson boldly declared that he would rather die be dead in a ditch than delay Brexit. Unfortunately for him, the UK parliament accepted the challenge, and promptly dug one for him. The "rebellion bill" requires him to ask for and secure yet another temporary Brexit delay, and it has just received the royal assent. And if he refuses to lie down and shoot himself in it by obeying the law, then it will be the perfect thing to unite the UK's fractured opposition into voting no confidence and appointing a different Prime Minister to carry out parliament's will.

Monday, September 09, 2019

Climate Change: The wrong kind of trees?

Newsroom today has an excellent, in-depth article on pine trees as carbon sinks. The TL;DR is that pine is really good at soaking up carbon, but people prefer far-less efficient native forests instead. Which is understandable, but there's two problems: firstly, we've pissed about so long on this problem that we need to soak up carbon really fast; and secondly, that all our tree nurseries are geared for pine and other exotic forest species rather than natives, because that's what commercial forestry uses.

The proposed solution is hybrid forests - using pine as a nursery crop to provide shade and shelter for native seedlings underneath. When the pine dies, you have a native forest waiting to take over. People already do a similar thing with gorse (leave it be and rely on succession to do the rest), and it sounds viable in areas where you can already do that. Though apparently many landowners hate pine enough that they want nothing to do with it - in which case, we'll just see foreign forestry companies buying them out and planting it instead.

One point that needs to be made is that forest sinks aren't a way of avoiding emissions reductions. Yes, you can offset temporarily, but ultimately our emissions are going to have to be reduced to near-zero. Instead, forests are really a mechanism for drawdown: soaking up some of the carbon we've spewed into the atmosphere and locking it away in the biosphere instead. Given the amount we've emitted, we're going to need to plant an awful lot of trees, so we might as well start now.

No freedom of speech in Turkey

Canan Kaftancioglu is a Turkish politician and member of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). Like most modern politicians, she tweets, and uses the platform to criticise the Turkish government. She has criticised them over the death of a 14-year-old boy who was hit by a tear gas grenade during a protest, and over their nakedly oppressive response to the 2016 coup attempt. And as a result, she now faces almost ten years imprisonment after being convicted of insulting the government and "spreading terrorist propaganda":

A leading secular politician in Turkey has been sentenced to nearly 10 years in jail for "terror propaganda and insults" against the Turkish state.



Just another example of how Turkey is not a free democracy, but an oppressive, authoritarian state.

Good little vassals


The Inquiry found both agencies, but to a much greater degree, the NZSIS, received many intelligence reports obtained from detainees who, it was subsequently revealed, had been subject to torture. On one occasion the NZSIS provided questions to the CIA to be put to a detainee. While the NZSIS was not aware that detainee interrogations involved torture, it was known that the individual was being held by the CIA in an undisclosed location.

As the report notes, this should have been a red flag for human rights abuse, but it wasn't treated as such (which ought to raise serious questions about the types of people working at SIS). Neither were the widespread public reports that the US was engaged in torture and disappearance, or the fact that partner agencies were launching inquiries into it. Instead, the SIS seems to have culled all mention of those facts from its files of media reports - as if they were deliberately turning a blind eye. The report also notes that the directors of the SIS and GCSB did not inquire with the Americans about the allegations, or seek assurances from them. And it is said explicitly and repeatedly that the reason for that is that those directors did not want to upset the Americans:
...Directors also noted the risk of compromising intelligence flows of vital importance to New Zealanders... if they had challenged their US counterparts...

...there was an unspoken general rule that one did not ask direct questions about the operations of Five Eyes counterparts...

...[the directors] felt constrained not to do anything which would have risked or reduced New Zealand’s role as part of the alliance or to the flow of intelligence...

...they saw other risks, particularly the risk of compromising vital intelligence flows at a vital time, if they asked questions of their partner agencies...

...As one of the former Directors said, it was not realistic to think that New Zealand could have said “please explain” to the United States, the most powerful country in the world. Realistically the response would have been that New Zealand would again have been cut out of the recently resumed intelligence flow, at a time when it most needed it.

Its the same problem we've had all along: it turns out that the people at the top of "our" spy agencies are more loyal to America than they are to us. They're good little vassals to their foreign masters. And we were were paying them for that.

The inspector-General is very clear that the directors had a duty to assess the risks of torture and complicity and raise them with Ministers. They didn't. And that's a dereliction of duty right there. Not raised in the report, because it is outside the Inspector-General's jurisdiction: but equally important: where was the Minister? Because faced with those media reports in 2003, I'd have expected a popular and competent Minister to seek assurances from her agencies that everything was alright and that they were neither complicit in nor contaminated by criminal American behaviour. There's no evidence that she did. Even when interrogation reports of a "senior Al-Qa'ida detainee" were landing on her desk. So perhaps the spies weren't the only ones who were wilfully blind to this.

The report notes that it is "not possible to know" whether the SIS's questions resulted in the detainee - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - being tortured to extract responses to their questions. But to me, it looks like complicity. The legal framework has changed since then, and you'd hope that this review has made them more aware of the issues and their legal and moral duties. OTOH, given that everything these agencies do is secret, how would we ever know?

Friday, September 06, 2019

New Fisk

Lebanon’s crisis is almost unstoppable. Drone warfare is on the horizon

Labour's failure


A huge demand for emergency food parcels means the Auckland City Mission is struggling to prepare for the impending arrival of Christmas.

The social service provider has seen a 40 per cent increase in demand for food parcels this year, with a total of 23,020 flying out the door by June.

Missioner Chris Farrelly told the Herald the "cupboards are bare" and without an emergency food drive he is worried about how the charity will continue to provide for those in need.

"Literally we cannot do it at the moment. We are struggling just to get through what we need to do day by day, there is not much we can actually put aside for the pre-Christmas period," he said.

Labour ran on a kinder, gentler New Zealand, on ending extreme poverty. Implicitly, on putting foodbanks out of business. No-one expected them to fix the damage caused by decades of NeoLiberlaism overnight. But I at least expected them to stop things getting worse. But on this, as on so many other things, they're just a giant disappointment.

Thursday, September 05, 2019

Cleaning up the water

Today the government released its Action Plan for Healthy Waterways, aimed at cleaning up our lakes and rivers. Its actually quite good. There will be protection for wetlands, better standards for swimming spots, a requirement for continuous improvement, and better standards for wastewater and stormwater. But most importantly, there's a new National Environmental Standard for freshwater, which will impose controls on dairy conversions, intensification, and winter grazing unless they can prove they will not increase pollution. Farmers will also be required to have nutrient management plans and apply good agricultural practice. Federated Farmers are already whining that it will end pastoral farming in some parts of the country, so that's a definite sign that its headed in the right direction.

In the longer-term, councils are going to have to incorporate all of this stuff into their plans - so they won't just be able to turn a blind eye to nitrogen anymore. Which again highlights the importance of getting the right people on regional councils in this local body election and the next. Because if we let farmers continue to dominate regional councils, they will use their positions to sabotage implementation and enforcement, so they and their mates can keep on polluting for profit.

Fronting up

Today I appeared before the Environment Committee to give an oral submission on the Zero Carbon Bill. Over 1,500 people have asked to appear in person, so they've divided into subcommittees and are off touring the country, giving people a five minute slot each. The other submitters were a mixed bunch: three high school students, a bunch of angry farmers, a biochar advocate, a random greenie, a climate change denier, and a member of the IPCC (who wasted time to deny that the IPCC was telling newspapers in Whanganui what to print). Most submitters didn't explicitly address the bill, but instead just talked about climate change of peripheral issues.

My submission was a mess. Yes, I said what I needed to, but the nervousness at talking to people meant I was at least 50% "um". If you ask me to be a serial killer or a tortured prince or a Sci-Fi senator or a regency gentleman for an evening, I'm your guy. Plonk me in a chair and get me to talk about something I'm actually knowledgeable about, and I go to pieces. Clearly I should have written myself a character sheet.

I don't think there were any permanent members of the committee present (I had Kiritapu Allan, Adrian Rurawhe, and Ian McKelvie, along with someone else I didn't recognise). Which might be good news, because the committee seemed awfully taken in by those angry farmers complaining that their rural way of life was under threat from evil trees. Its kindof disconcerting that the fate of our environment (and the world) depends on these people. Still, there's one good thing: they didn't entertain the climate change denier for an instant.

Wednesday, September 04, 2019

Still juking the stats

The State Services Commission and Ombudsman have released another batch of OIA statistics, covering the last six months. Request volumes are up, and the core public service is generally handling them within the legal timeframe, though this may be because they've learned to extend rather than just ignore things. And the police - who are counted seperately - have learned how to report timeliness again (they also seem to have reported a whole year's worth of requests, twice as many as the rest of the public service put together. And its amazing how despite reporting 96.3% timeliness, they're almost always late with anything I ask them. But I guess that, like Mark Hanna, I'm just a statistical outlier, right? But I suspect what's happening here is that all of their court / legal process OIAs are handled in a timely fashion, while their political / policy ones are absolute shit. The only way to fix this is to report them separately so they can see where the problem lies).

The real problems seem to be in Crown Entities and DHBs. Some of these are small, and a single late request can make a big difference. But South Canterbury DHB stands out for its sheer shitness. They're not a low-volume agency; 60 requests a year is bigger than some ministries. But they manage only a 56.7% on-time rate. If these statistics are to mean anything, then SSC must respond to this appalling result and sort them out. Otherwise what good are they?

Meanwhile, the Ombudsman's statistics tell an interesting story. Complaints for full refusals are up again, reinforcing the idea that agencies are meeting their timeliness requirements by just issuing a blanket "no" (another example of why SSC needs to report outcomes rather than just timeliness: so we can identify such behaviour. But that's probably exactly why they don't want to). And the Ombudsman has moved even further towards informal resolution, with a massive 57% of complaints this half-year resulting in no investigation. The number was elevated by last half-year's massive number of complaints against school boards, and in a break with past-practice, they're claiming credit for remedies even when no investigation is undertaken. Which is both fair - getting a pre-investigation call from the Ombudsman is often all that is required - but also irritating, in that it destroys my time-series on the proportion of resolved complaints that resulted in a remedy (i.e. the proportion of noticed poor decision-making). While I could go through the data set and produce a back-compatible one, to be honest I can't be arsed dealing with it; I'll just wait to see if they produce compatible statistics next time, and start again.

Not impressed


So today they "reset" it. What does that mean? Nothing much. The government will apparently build houses - but won't bother with having targets by which it could be held accountable. They're loosening rules around KiwiBuild purchases, allowing them to effectively become speculative vehicles, while lowering deposit requires for HomeStart assistance (which makes no difference if you can't afford the mortgage payments anyway). Oh, and they're throwing $400 million at a poorly-defined "progressive ownership" scheme to benefit 4,000 families (which is probably nice if you're one of them, but with no detail, who knows?)

And meanwhile, rents are rising and people are living in garages. The above won't do anything to sovle this. In fact, if anything, it will make things worse, by pumping money into the housing market, preventing prices from dropping. But the latter, I suspect, is the point. Because while the obvious policy we need is a mass house-building programme of state and affordable homes, to crash both house prices and rents, the property owning class - which includes almost every MP - don't want that, because it would devalue their assets and their landleach income-streams. So instead we get this sort of bullshit, spending billions on producing the impression of action, while actually doing nothing much, because those selfish fucks want to preserve their and their friends' wealth, even if it means locking an entire generation out of home ownership for good and creating an English-style hereditary class structure.

I expected better from a Labour government. But like climate change, this is just another one of their broken promises.

Solar beats coal


The levellised cost of solar PV has fallen so far that all across Europe it is now beating spot wholesale electricity prices, and even with the addition of two hours’ storage it is still beating spot prices in some countries.

Those are two of the findings of a new report from Christian Breyer, professor of solar economy at Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology, who has wrapped up new data and forecasts and reinforced the view that solar PV is by far the cheapest form of bulk energy in many parts of the world, and is still competing with the addition of storage.

It gets better, because the price of solar is expected to halve in the next decade, and drop again by another third before 2050. Breyer notes that the changes are happening so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up, and policy decisions are being made based on years old information. Which isn't good when we are trying to decarbonise. OTOH, the market is good at finding profits, so it may get us there anyway. The question is whether it does it quick enough.

(And on that point, its worth noting that Marsden Point, an oil refinery, is going to host NZ's biggest solar farm. We're in early days yet, but our solar resource is comparable to Europe's, and there's no reason we shouldn't see the same cost structure. Its also worth noting that while they take up a lot of space, solar panels combine well with some forms of agriculture, particularly sheep. Which suggests an obvious thing for all those Canterbury farmers to farm instead of dirty cows: the sun).

Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Universities back the climate strike




Both are encouraging their staff and students to take part and neither will need to take annual leave nor explain their absence if they do so.

As VUW vice-chancellor Grant Guilford points out, the students are taking charge of their future, so the university needs to support them. And so do the rest of us. I look forward to other universities and employers following suit.

Monday, September 02, 2019

Another constitutional outrage


A senior cabinet minister has suggested Boris Johnson could defy legislation to prevent a no-deal Brexit if it is forced through parliament by rebel MPs.

The prime minister was accused of presiding over an “elective dictatorship” after his ally Michael Gove refused to guarantee the government would obey a bill barring the government from pursuing a disorderly departure.

In an astonishing admission, Mr Gove said “let’s see what the legislation says” when asked repeatedly whether the government would accept rebel legislation.

Last I checked, the UK purported to be a democratic state, in which the government was subject to the law rather than above it. But Brexit seems to be pushing Britain further and further into dictatorship and tyranny. And unfortunately, a chunk of UK citizens seem to be perfectly happy with that. They're willing to toss democracy overboard to get there way. But by doing so, they invite everybody else to do the same.

Ending dairy in Canterbury


A proposed move by Environment Canterbury (ECan) to protect Christchurch's drinking water by setting tough – some would say, draconian – nitrate reductions in the decades ahead and stop the nasties creeping below the Waimakariri River has some dairy farmers in states of high anxiety.

There are about 1.3 million dairy cattle in the region, a doubling from 2003 made largely possible by the expansion of irrigation schemes.


Some farmers consider the schedule of reductions beyond 2030 as a disincentive to keep going or encourage the next generation into the business.

Good. Nitrate kills children and increases long-term risks for bowel cancer. If it gets into Christchurch's drinking water supply, it will be a public health catastrophe. And while farmers are following the climate change playbook and trying to pin the blame elsewhere (the canterbury foothills, mate), we simply didn't have this problem before their cows started shitting everywhere during the dairy boom.

On climate change, on freshwater quality, and now on nitrate toxicity, the message is clear: if we want to survive, we need to massively cut back on dairy farming. Farmers simply need to find something else to do with their land. And if they've loaded up on debt to bail in to peak dairy on some of the hottest and dryest land in the country, they made a poor business decision, and they deserve to pay the price for that (Seriously: Canterbury is a terrible place to grow cows. The only stupider places are the Mackenzie Country and Hawke's Bay, and anyone stupid enough to do that deserves to lose their money). As for what they can do instead, I hear trees are reliably profitable now. Or they can always move to a city and get a job in an industry that doesn't rely on destroying the planet for private profit.

New Fisk

As Trump flip-flops on Iran talks, the reality is that the ‘crazed’ rogue leader now sits in Washington not Tehran

Is National the party of climate arson?

The Zero Carbon Bill is currently before select committee. While its targets are weak, its a generally sensible bill that promises to establish a long-term framework to guide emissions reductions. But National hasn't made up its mind on whether it will support it - and according to Andrea Vance in Stuff, there's a real chance their internal squabbles will see them go full denier on it:

A raft of angry opinion articles, full of wild speculation, questionable numbers and dodgy science, have recently begun to surface as the extreme elements in the [farming] sector looks to exert pressure on Parliament over the Zero Carbon Bill and emissions trading scheme.

Collins, the daughter of a Waikato dairy farmer, was ahead of the curve in harnessing that anger. In late July, she told a rural radio show the Government had thrown farmers under a bus.

By taking such a public and decisive stance on climate change legislation, Collins is throwing down the gauntlet to Simon Bridges who has pussy-footed around his position.

The disgruntled rural rump would be a powerful force to harness heading into the election.

Parties should represent their supporters. But it turns out that some of National's most vocal supporters are climate arsonists, who want to destroy the planet for their own profit. National then needs to choose who it wants to represent: the arsonists, who are minuscule in number and don't have anyone else to vote for, or suburban New Zealand, which wants to see a solution and is where elections are actually won.

Sadly, I think we'll all know which one they'll choose. While National has occasionally pretended to care, its record shows they have always been the party of climate inaction and foot-dragging. Their natural instincts are to oppose action. Unfortunately, at this stage of the crisis, inaction is as bad as active denial. And suburban voters should punish them for that.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Local elections need STV

Local body elections are underway, which is causing people to look at local government for once. And many of us don't like what we see. Our local government is basicly a gerontocracy, stuffed with dead white males. There are more councillors named "John" than there are councillors born after 1980. This is not representative, it looks nothing like New Zealand, and it discourages anyone under 60 from voting.

What is the cause of this problem? Writing in The Spinoff, Hayden Donnell has a simple answer: its the voting system, stupid. FPP and the block vote allow a narrow demographic - old people - to utterly dominate local government, converting their plurality into absolute dominance. But there's an alternative, STV, which is used in a few areas. And the evidence shows that local authorities which use STV have more representative councils, which look more like their voters.

Currently only 11 councils use STV (I am lucky enough to live in one, and my council looks a hell of a lot better than the West Coast's). This needs to change. STV is more democratic. It produces more representative outcomes. It is likely to boost long-run turnout, as younger voters see councillors who actually look like them. It should be adopted nationwide.

Feeding the kids

The government is trialling a free school lunch programme:


Starting next year, roughly 5000 year 1-8 children across 30 schools in Rotorua and Hawke's Bay will receive a free lunch five days a week as part of the policy's trial.


Good. It is simply indecent that children are going hungry in New Zealand, and this programme will help stop that. But its also a good investment: child poverty costs a fortune, and this will help reduce that cost, giving kids a better future. My only question is why they didn't do this sooner.

A constitutional outrage

That is the only way to describe Boris Johnson's request to suspend the UK parliament to prevent it from voting on Brexit (or voting him out of office). The UK parliament is the sole source of democratic legitimacy for that country's government. For the executive to purport to suspend it, nakedly to prevent debate, calls its right to govern into fundamental question.

Brexit has now become a full-blown constitutional crisis. There are already calls to protest in the UK. MPs are saying they will simply occupy the chamber and that the police will have to drag them out. Last time anything like this happened in the UK, that country got a civil war and the tyrannical executive lost their head. Hopefully it won't come to that. But the fact that this has even been tried underlines how urgently the UK needs democratic reform, to make it impossible.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

It turns out that someone does own the water

For the past decade or more the government has been looking at water issues, trying to find better ways of allocating it and of protecting our environment (or, in the case of National, allowing farmers to shit in the rivers without restriction). Lurking in the back of this work, resolutely unaddressed by the government, has been the Treaty. In 1840, Māori owned all the water in New Zealand, and it is legally questionable whether those rights have ever been extinguished. The government is in denial about this, claiming "no-one owns water" (while handing out property rights in it worth billions to farmers and foreign water-bottlers). But the Waitangi Tribunal has finally ruled on the issue, and they are crystal clear: water is a taonga, and it belongs to Māori.

In case anyone has forgotten, the Treaty of waitangi guaranteed Māori te tino rangatiratanga (or, in the English mistranslation, "full exclusive and undisturbed possession") over their lands, villages and all their treasures. This includes water. The RMA's water management regime and its predecessors have systematically violated this right by failing to recognise proprietary rights, by excluding Māori from use of what is ultimately their resource, and by failing to actively protect it as a taonga. Their conclusion:

Our view is that the Crown must now recognise Māori proprietary rights and provide what the New Zealand Māori Council called ‘proprietary redress’. We recommend that the Crown arrange for an allocation on a percentage basis to iwi and hapū, according to a regional, catchment-based scheme. We also recommend an allocation for Māori land development, and that the feasibility of royalties and other forms of proprietary redress be investigated.

Its a perfectly doable solution, and we've done it before for fish (which were similarly a taonga, rights over which were never extinguished). With a bit of patience, we could craft a reasonable settlement with a decent chance of sticking, and which would improve water management into the bargain. But pretty obviously, that would threaten established interests - all those farmers who have benefited from colonial theft, all those water bottlers getting "their" water for free then sticking it in bottles and on-selling it for a fortune. And where there's money on the line, there's going to be politics. I expect we'll see the National Party go full Brash over this, banging the drum for a racist extinguishment of Māori rights to prevent their cronies and backers from having to pay their way. As for Labour, they're such chickenshits they'll probably betray their Māori support base again, bow to National's hate, and turn it into Foreshore & Seabed 2.0. And if they do, they will deserve to be tossed out on their arses.

Finally, the Tribunal apparently recommended that Māori bring a test case to claim their rights, and the New Zealand Maori Council has taken them up on it. The government is not going to be able to dodge this. Instead, they're going to have to say whose side they're on, and suffer the political consequences.

Like something from the English Civil War

The UK's Brexit stupidity is reaching its endpoint, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is threatening to suspend Parliament to prevent a confidence vote or anti-Brexit legislation - effectively to force a no-deal Brexit by default. In response, a group of MPs have said they will simply continue to meet anyway:

Boris Johnson has been described as a threat to the “very nature” of British democracy at a cross-party meeting where MPs agreed to form an alternative parliament in the event of the prime minister shutting down the existing one to make a no-deal Brexit happen.

In a symbolic gathering at Church House in Westminster, where MPs met during the second world war, Labour’s John McDonnell took to the stage alongside the former Conservative MP Anna Soubry as well as the Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, and Caroline Lucas of the Green party.

They signed the Church House declaration, which said shutting down parliament would be “an undemocratic outrage at such a crucial moment for our country, and a historic constitutional crisis”.

The pronouncement added: “Any attempt to prevent parliament [from] sitting, to force through a no-deal Brexit, will be met by strong and widespread democratic resistance.”

160 MPs have already signed it, and the Speaker has made it clear he will not allow a dissolution. Altogether, its like something from the leadup to the English Civil War. Back then, an tyrannical executive sought to rule without input from Parliament, and it did not end well for him. Hopefully Johnson will back off from provoking constitutional outrage and crisis, otherwise it may not end well for him either.

Conservation land is for conserving

Today, the government declined an application to build a hydro power station on conservation land in the Morgan Gorge, near Hokitika. National MPs are complaining about this on Twitter, but if you read David Parker's very thorough decision, the reason the application was declined is clear: because granting it would have been contrary to the Conservation Act. The area in question is a pristine environment and an outstanding natural feature. Allowing the development would have changed its character utterly. Conservation land is held for the purpose of conserving its natural and historic resources, for both their intrinsic values and (where not inconsistent with those) for recreational purposes. The law requires an application to be declined if the proposed activity is contrary to the Act or the purposes for which the land concerned is held. The decline was thus a no-brainer. (And if any of those wailing National MPs disagree, they can always seek a judicial review of the Minister's decision. They won't, because it is very obvious they will lose).

The clear message here is that this isn't a National government which will ignore the law until forced to obey it by the courts. Instead, the law is going to be enforced. Obviously that will upset the orcs, who want to destroy everything for private profit. But they are exactly what the law is there to protect us from. Conservation land is for conserving. That should not be difficult to understand.

Climate Change: Holding polluters accountable

Climate lawsuits are a growing trend, with various people suing their governments in an effort to force real action on climate change. But suits against actual polluters seeking to hold them accountable for the damage they cause are relatively rare (though apparently growing). But now, in New Zealand, Mike Smith of the Climate
Change Iwi Leaders Group is taking our biggest polluters to court:

Smith is alleging that the named companies have committed public nuisance, have been negligent or breached other legal duties by emitting greenhouse gases and by not doing enough to reduce those emissions in the face of scientific evidence that their emissions have caused, and will continue to cause, harm.


The case against the companies is brought by Mike Smith, in his personal capacity, to protect his customary interests in land and resources in Northland. The litigation seeks relief including a declaration that the companies have acted unlawfully, and an injunction requiring each of them to reduce total net greenhouse gases by half by 2030, and to zero by 2050, or to otherwise cease their emitting activities immediately.

The companies named are Fonterra (New Zealand's biggest polluter by far), Genesis Energy, Dairy Holdings Ltd, New Zealand Steel, Z Energy, the New Zealand Refining Company, and BT Mining - basicly a who's who of New Zealand climate criminals. I expect it'll be a difficult case - quite apart from the sheer amount of money and lawyers the companies will throw at it, there's the obvious difficulty of proving direct responsibility for a global problem. And OTOH, that's what people said in the early stages of the legal war against the tobacco industry, and the same logic applies: the polluters have to win every case. Those seeking to hold them accountable need only win once. And as the damages rise and such lawsuits become more common, the hope is that they will have a deterrent effect on polluters and force them to change their behaviour - or risk going out of business and leaving their shareholders with nothing.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

PNCC hates parents

Palmerston North is often advertised as "a great place to raise kids". Unless you're a city councillor:

Palmerston North's city council has thrown out the idea of paying councillors' childcare costs, for now.

The Remuneration Authority this year approved the concept of allowing elected representatives to claim up to $6000 a year for a child's care while a parent was on council business.

But it left it up to individual councils to decide whether to adopt a policy.

Despite a spirited plea from the council's youngest councillor, mother-of-two Aleisha Rutherford, the proposal failed at Monday's full council meeting.

There's a long list of comments from councillors, which are worth reading just to see how backwards and unrepresentative Palmerston North's local "representatives" are. Rachel Bowen, Vaughan Dennison, Lew Findlay, Bruno Petrenas, Lorna Johnson, Karen Naylor, and Grant Smith voted against, and as a result I will not be giving any of them a preference next month. I am not interested in voting for sexist gerontocrats who support barriers to the participation of parents or potential parents in local government.

New Fisk


Yet another attack on transparency

The Finance and Expenditure Committee reported back on the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission/Te Waihanga Bill on Friday. Its a boring bill which would establish a Crown Entity which would produce reports about infrastructure needs, so I hadn't paid attention to it. I should have, because the bill includes a - increasingly common - secrecy clause, forbidding disclosure of any information gathered using the Commission's information-gathering powers unless it is already publicly available, in statistical form, or required by an enactment. The kicker? Those information gathering powers apply only to:

  1. a department named in Schedule 1 of the State Sector Act 1988, other than [the GCSB or SIS]
  2. a departmental agency named in Schedule 1A of the State Sector Act 1988:
  3. a statutory entity named in Schedule 1 of the Crown Entities Act 2004:
  4. the New Zealand Defence Force.:
  5. a local authority, as defined in section 5(1) of the Local Government Act 2002:
  6. a council-controlled organisation, as defined in section 6 of the Local Government Act 2002 (but disregarding subsection (4) of that section):
  7. Auckland Transport, as defined in section 4(1) of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009.

And disregarding some twists and turns around council-controlled port companies, every single one of those bodies is already subject to the OIA or LGOIMA. So, if they give information to the Infrastructure Commission (which as a Crown Entity is explicitly subject to the OIA), it becomes secret - but if you ask them directly, the usual rules apply.

It gets worse, because the Select Committee spent some time thinking about the OIA and LGOIMA and how it applied, tightly restricting the reasons an agency could refuse a request for information from the Commission and including a clause (currently s23(4A)) saying that information could not be withheld from the Commission if it could not be withheld under the OIA or LGOIMA. But somehow, in all of this, no-one on the Committee thought to question whether it was necessary to apply secrecy to information that was already presumptively public, and clearly no-one thought about it in the drafting process either. Our government is basicly completely blind when it comes to open government and proactive steps to protect it.

The fix for this is simple: amend s25 at the committee stage to explicitly permit disclosure under the OIA. But in the longer-term, this needs to stop happening. The government needs to think about transparency and open government when designing legislation, just as they do about human rights, the Treaty, and gender equality. Getting them to do that would make a great Open Government Partnership commitment.

(And meanwhile, there's another one: the new Venture Capital Fund Bill allows the (Crown Entity, subject to the OIA) Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation to create "VCF investment vehicles" under their control which are explicitly exempted from the OIA. This runs counter to the usual control principle, under which government-controlled entities such as subsidiaries of CRIs, SOEs and Crown Entities (and local government ones like CCOs) are subject to the OIA and/or Ombudsmens Act. No policy justification is provided for this secrecy).