Friday, March 15, 2024



National's clean car tax advances

The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with the government over what that rate should be, preferring something equivalent to a modern petrol vehicle and proportional tot he damage that light vehicles actually cause. The National majority dismissed this, because, and I quote "very efficient petrol vehicles pay less than their fair share." Very efficient petrol vehicles are usually very efficient because they are light, and therefore cause less damage to the roads than a hulking Ford Ranger. But I don't think we can expect the ute-brained MPs of the National party to understand that.

So, EV and PHEV drivers are going to be taxed at a far higher rate than they would pay in an equivalent modern petrol vehicle, in what is transparently both an attempt to punish those doing the right thing and decarbonising, and a desperate revenue grab to help pay for National's landlord tax cuts. That stinks, but its going to get worse, because National have announced that they want to move all cars onto the RUC system. We currently have a simple and efficient system of petrol taxes which is completely invisible to drivers and which is pay-as-you-go, and National wants to replace that with a complex system which requires people to pay large sums in advance, and at a higher rate than they do now, requiring actual enforcement by police rather than the money being invisibly extracted at the pump. Which sounds like both an enforcement nightmare, and an election-losing policy. So good luck with that.

Thursday, March 14, 2024



The return of Muldoon

For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and consultation rights. The backlash to his secrecy forced him to pass the OIA. His top-down control of Cabinet by holding the finance portfolio gave us a since-unbroken norm that the Prime Minister cannot also be Finance Minister, because it is too great a concentration of power. His abuses of the "elected dictatorship" and election "victories" where he won fewer votes than the Labour opposition laid the basis for our modern constitution and MMP.

All of which now seems awfully familiar. People are noting the similarities in abuse of the parliamentary process, and in the steamrolling through of pet projects. And now there's another one: "legislating" by press-release, with Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard purporting today to "suspend" the Significant Natural Area provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity:

Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).
The problem is that there is an actual legal process required to change a National Policy Statement, requiring public notification and submissions, and a board of inquiry or independent report. The government hasn't done any of it. And until it happens (or the government rams through an amendment under urgency), the law is still the law. Muldoon learned that the hard way in Fitzgerald v Muldoon; you'd think both Ministers and public servants would be aware enough of that case to stop Hoggard from making a similar mistake.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024



There's a name for this

Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to deliver on their promises can expect pressure from Parliament, and ultimately Ministers, to sort their shit out.

But NZDF has a solution to that whole problem: they just mislead Parliament about their performance:

“Entirely unreliable.” That’s the Auditor-General’s assessment of the Defence Force’s performance reports – and might well be the assessment of the Defence Force, full stop.

Auditor-General John Ryan (whose office’s work impresses more and more with every reading) has quietly pointed out to a Parliamentary committee that the Defence Force’s claim to have achieved 83 percent of its performance measures has to be treated with more than just the proverbial pinch of salt. It needs an emergency airlift aid delivery sack of the stuff.

A pattern has emerged where readiness targets are set to 100 percent each year – only to be reduced part-way through the year. “One capability target was reduced to zero percent in each of the last three years,” he notes. “The lowest target is then reported against as being met, so the results are entirely unreliable.”

The changes were made through supplementary estimates, so presumably approved by the then-Minister. At the same time, it seems outright fraudulent. And it is certainly misleading, and arguably a contempt of Parliament. The question is whether Parliament will actually do anything about this, or whether they'll just surrender their duty to scrutinise the use of public funds, and allow themselves to be bullshat by a chronically delinquent agency.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024



Climate Change: A test for National

He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has released its latest advice on NZ ETS unit limits and price control settings for 2025–2029. This is, in theory, technical advice on how many units the government should allow to be auctioned. But because the ETS system is under pressure due to an accumulation of past poor decisions, its going to be a real test for National.

What are those past poor decisions? Putting trees in the system, which seemed like a good idea when the system was first designed in the early 1990's, but is now looking increasingly questionable. Handing out millions of tons of free credits every year to large polluters, which looked like a great idea to National in 2009 when it wanted to bribe its cronies, but has also come back to bite us. Having a fixed-price option until 2022, which again seemed like an acceptable transition measure in the 2010s, but was wildly rorted for the profit of polluters when the supply of fraudulent overseas "credits" was cut off, and the system transitioned to full auctions just a few years ago. Together, these poor decisions have led to the buildup of a huge pile of surplus credits in the system. And somehow, it managed to grow by another 15 million tons last year, despite nothing being auctioned.

The Commission's job is to ensure that the ETS settings are in accordance with our emissions budgets, so their solution to this problem is to radically slash auction volumes. There's no side-by-side comparison of the recommendations with the current settings, but you can get a sense of the scale from this graph, which includes 2024's volume:

CC-ETSRec2024

For comparison, the current auction volumes for 2025 - 2028 (New Zealand units available by auction less the reserve amounts; the bit in dark blue on the graph above) are 12.6, 10.7, 9.1, and 7 million tons, so they are basicly halving them. And its clear that unless something is done about industrial allocation volumes, there's going to be very little auction supply from 2030 onwards.

This is, in theory, going to have an impact on prices, though it will be moderated if the surplus is used up. When the previous government faced a challenge like this, they fucked it up, trashing the market and causing a loss of certainty in the entire policy (though in retrospect this ultimately caused the removal of 23 million tons from the system, so: could have been worse). The question is whether National will do the same, trash the budgets and cause another year of chaos before being told to go back and do it properly by the courts. Or whether they'll take the lesson from last time, and accept the advice of the experts Parliament appointed to help them. Sadly, I don't have much confidence that a cabinet stacked with business cronies and climate deniers will do the right thing here.

(There's a number of other interesting things in this advice. Firstly, a warning that governments should not rely on the ETS as a source of revenue, because auction prices are uncertain and volumes will decline to meet budgets. Secondly, a recommendation that the reductions from non-ETS policies like the clean car discount and NZ Steel deal be locked in by ripping them right out of the ETS. Again, it remains to be seen whether National will listen on that, or whether they'll sabotage emissions reductions to make reality conform to their weird economic purism).

Monday, March 11, 2024



A giant Henry VIII clause

National introduced its corrupt Muldoonist resource-consent fast-track legislation to the House on Thursday, and rammed it through its first reading. Having read the bill, it is every bid as bad as signalled, taking selected resource consent decisions away from independent panels and putting them directly in the hands of Ministers. Its the sort of thing we haven't seen since Muldoon, and with good reason: it throws any pretence of merits-based assessment out the window, replacing it with a contest to see who can bribe or lobby the Minister the most to get their pet project through. Which is not how decisions in this country are meant to work.

So who benefits from this corrupt steamroller process? Who needs it? Who is it for? We can start with who doesn't need it: renewable energy projects. Because with very few exceptions, they find it very easy to get resource consent, give or take a few conditions about noise setbacks and monitoring (and solar projects don't even need that). Ditto roads: they get resource consent very easily as well. And normal housing projects. Or indeed, any normal project whatsoever. The RMA is really about mitigating adverse effects, which means restricting or imposing conditions on projects which do that. A project has to be truly terrible or just outright illegal to have an application actually declined.

And that's who this process is for: projects which cannot get resource consent under the current system. Coal mines in reserves. Polluting fish farms in pristine natural environments. Water schemes which would flood conservation land. Waste dumps which make people sick. Offshore mining schemes found to be illegal by the Supreme Court.

A common theme linking these projects is that they blatantly violate the law. They are terrible projects, with significant, unmitigable effects on key environmental values. But rather than fix them so they comply with our environmental standards, the companies pushing them have decided to lobby Ministers instead. And rather than respecting the law, or using a democratic process to change it, National's solution is to give Ministers the power to overturn it on a case-by-case basis for their donors and cronies. And that's the real horror here: once you unpack it, the entire law is just one giant Henry VIII clause, allowing Shane Jones to effectively rewrite and overturn statute on a whim, for the benefit of whoever gave him the most money.

That is not democratic. It is not consistent with the rule of law, or with our values as a country. Instead, it is corrupt, authoritarian, and arbitrary. But I guess that's what the National Party stands for now.

Friday, March 08, 2024



National's firearms law is authoritarian, intrusive, and unreasonable

On Wednesday night the National government rammed its new Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill through its first reading under urgency. The bill expands the existing FPO regime to apply it to gang-members convicted of non-firearms offences, and introduce a novel search power, allowing police to search any person (and their home, car, or anywhere they happen to be and anyone who is with them in a vehicle) if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that they are subject to an FPO. Just in case that wasn't clear enough about being warrantless and suspicionless, it explicitly says that there is no need to suspect that any offence has been or will be committed.

To call this "intrusive" is an understatement. The explicit lack of reasons required makes it the very definition of "unreasonable". And given that the NZBORA affirms the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, you'd expect the Attorney-General to have had something to say about it. But she didn't. No section 7 report of inconsistency was issued, and at the time of writing the usual analysis published where a bill has been found to be consistent with the BORA has been withheld (other bills passed at the same time or later have had theirs published, so its very definitely being deliberately hidden). So I think that tells us how seriously Judith Collins takes her statutory role under the BORA, and is another argument that politicians cannot be trusted to oversee or even report fairly on our human rights, and that the job should be taken off them.

But the police did publish a Supplementary Analysis Report, a sort of mini-RIS, in which they identify a significant risk that the bill could result in the entire FPO regime being considered to be inconsistent with the BORA by the courts. And that's not just about the risk of a formal Declaration of Inconsistency - it could also mean evidence obtained by the new search power being thrown out, and the crown being liable for damages where police exercise their powers unreasonably. And its easy to see why: we know how police abuse their existing search powers, and its easy to see how such a weak grounds for a search is going to combine with police institutional racism to increase such abuse. In the face of that, the police's claim that they will mitigate the risk by "develop[ing] internal guidelines to apply reasonableness limits on when and how searches are conducted" is just fucking laughable.

The police already have quite intrusive warrantless search powers where they suspect there are illegal guns, but the problem here is that the police explicitly regard the standard requirement of reasonable grounds to suspect that there are guns and a violation of the Arms Act to be an insurmountable barrier (which tells us something unpleasant about both their attitude to fundamental human rights, and their competence at their job). I expect a lot of effort is going to be spent at select committee to restrict that power, for example by limiting it only to where someone is actually subject to an FPO (which is currently only 30 people, and might, might, just manage to be BORA-consistent, but I'd need to look hard at what the courts and past Attorney-Generals had said about other regimes allowing automatic search after a court order). But even if that is done, there is a bigger problem: if any automatic search power is retained, the courts may issue fewer FPOs:

There is a risk that the imposition of new search powers may have a perverse effect if it results in a reduced willingness of Courts to issue FPOs. Courts may only issue FPOs where satisfied an FPO is necessary, reasonable and appropriate to assist in managing the risk the offender poses to public safety. If Courts consider that expanded search powers reduce the circumstances when an FPO is reasonable, this may result in fewer FPOs being issued and therefore reduced public safety benefits from the regime.
Basically, if an FPO means the police can kick in your door and terrorise your family and community constantly, whenever they want, then that significantly changes the equation on whether that is reasonable and appropriate. In fact, I'd think that the courts are unlikely to think that that is appropriate for any but the most severe firearms offenders, if even them (because, again, there are existing search powers). They are certainly not going to want to apply them to lower-level, non-violent offending by "gang members", as the police want (especially when one suspects they want that precisely so they can terrorise those families and communities; the Minister certainly seems to speak as if that is the goal). So, by demanding warrantless search powers to save them from having to do the basics of their fucking job, the police may end up shooting themselves in the foot on any benefits that might be gained from an FPO regime. Dicks.

But I guess if that happens, they'll just whine to National to overturn the courts and the BORA. And National would probably do it for them.

Anyway, the bill is currently open for submissions. If you'd like to express your revulsion at National's authoritarianism, you can do so here.

Thursday, March 07, 2024



Saying what needed to be said

National today announced that it would be introducing its corrupt Muldoonist resource consent fast-track legislation to the House today, and ramming it through its first reading under urgency. Unusually, the list of projects that will be pre-approved will not be included in the bill, but will be added later, so the public will not have a chance to scrutinise it and submit on it at select committee. Which smacks of yet another attempt to limit public scrutiny, in violation of our constitutional norms.

Labour has been weak on this, but today in Question Time James Shaw said what needed to be said, asking RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop (at 4:30s]:

is he aware that rushing legislation with such extraordinary executive powers through parliament under urgency with little public scrutiny creates a risk that any of the projects that are approved as a result of this bill could find themselves subject to future scrutiny, which could include the loss of the consent, possibly without compensation.
And all Bishop could do is splutter about the need to avoid "sovereign risk". But creating such risk is the point: what is legislated can be un-legislated. And where the legislation is passed by an abusive process, contrary to our constitutional norms, and to be honest, simply corrupt, repeal and cancellation without compensation is a necessity. Those bribing Ministers to have their projects included on their Muldoonist list need to be very aware of that.

(The next stage to keep them aware is obviously a Member's Bill. But that'll have to wait until the fast-track law actually passes).

As for Bishop, its a bit fucking rich of him, having just so viciously demonstrated how policy can change when the government does, to complain that a future government might not respect his decisions. Unlike Bishop, the Greens will at least do it with a proper select committee process, allowing everyone to be heard, and for the law to be considered legitimate. Though "stopping people from profiting from an ongoing crime" might in fact be one of the few justifications for all-stages urgency...

Wednesday, March 06, 2024



Climate Change: More arson

The planet is currently burning down around us. So naturally, Shane Jones has decided to grant another fossil fuel exploration permit to make it worse:

Only a single onshore petroleum exploration permit has been granted through the Block Offer 2020 competitive tender process.

Greymouth Gas Turangi had been granted a permit for an area covering about 70 square kilometres, north-west of Stratford in Taranaki, the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) said in a statement.

The permit was for a period of 10 years commencing 1 April 2024 and was subject to work programme conditions.

And today in Parliament he was gloating about his plans to restore offshore drilling, adding oil spills on top of emissions.

This flies in the face of the International Energy Agency's 2021 advice that there can be no new fossil fuel development. And in the face of that advice and the current crisis, it is simply arson.

As for what to do about it, the next government needs to pass legislation to sunset fossil fuels, revoking all permits and consents and prohibiting new development. There's an outline of the required legislation here; I look forward to some party adopting it as a member's bill.

Tuesday, March 05, 2024



Drawn

A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn:

  • Evidence (Giving Evidence of Family Violence) Amendment Bill (Tracey McLellan)

This was the smallest ballot in a long time, with only 53 bills entered.

Climate Change: The opposite of what is needed

Yesterday the National government announced its new draft Government Policy Statement on land transport 2024, which was of course all about roads. While the media is focusing on increases to car registration and fuel tax (both justified, and the latter should be done sooner IMHO), the real news is that they're paying for those roads (and their tax cuts for landlords) by ripping $1.5 billion out of public transport and half a billion out of walking and cycling. Oh, and banning Waka Kotahi from building footpaths. If that seems petty and stupid, well, those are the hallmarks of this government.

There are lots of ways this is stupid, but the big one for me is the climate. We are - optimistically - on the brink of a climate disaster. The government is meant to be doing something to help stop that, and its policy framework for doing so is the five-yearly process of budgets and emissions reduction plans under the Zero Carbon Act. They're currently meant to be finalising their second Emissions Reduction Plan, and in December 2023 He Pou a Rangi / Climate Change Commission provided them with advice on what should be in it. Here's what it recommended for transport:

  1. Simplify planning and and increase investment in integrated transport infrastructure and services that optimise public and active transport.
  2. Provide dedicated long-term funding for the construction of integrated cycle and rapid transport networks in major population centres.

Instead of doing that, the government is cutting both, to build more roads for utes.

The recommendations also included a handy graph about the emissions impact of various transport policies:

ERP2-fig-15-2

[Carbon reduction efficiency per dollar spent (USD). CC-BY 4.0 He Pou a Rangi / Climate Change Commission]

While the transport policy statement doesn't cost National's truck mega-motorways, they have previously costed tham at $24.8 billion. That's committing us to roughly 124 million tons of additional future emissions - just over 10% of our remaining emissions budget until 2050. This is the exact opposite of what is needed, and it seriously calls into doubt National's commitment to meeting its legislated emissions reduction obligations.

Monday, March 04, 2024



National's linguistic engineering

The National government came into office on a culture-war platform of eradicating te reo from public life. There are the obvious measures, like spending millions changing the names of government agencies, and requiring government agencies to primarily use English. But its not just government agencies. An OIA response I received today showed Ministers are also doing their bit, by eradicating the use of te reo from their official correspondence:

I have noted to officials in a meeting on 11 December 2023 that Ministerial correspondence should either be all in Te Reo Maori or English, not mixed language [sic]. This also applies to the formatting of my letter responses to requestors.
Which invites the question: which English? Or rather, whose English? Because New Zealand English (as opposed to American, British, or pre-Treaty Victorian English) has always included a large number of te reo words, including everyday greetings of the sort that the Minister is targeting with this policy. Modern New Zealand English has adopted (or stolen) more, as more people have grown more comfortable with te reo - but it has always been there. Issuing an injunction against "mixed language" simply denies who we are as a people and a country. But then, that's exactly what this policy is about, isn't it?

Friday, March 01, 2024



The Prime Hypocrite

National's Christopher Luxon unveils trio of fiscal transparency policies, RNZ, 15 May 2023:

The government had "abused" taxpayers for the past six years, Luxon said.

"I am sick of taxpayers being treated like a bottomless ATM, to be raided at any time, for any reason. National will respect taxpayers and bring fiscal discipline back to Wellington."

Budget 2023: Christopher Luxon clarifies National's stance on $5 prescription fee, NewsHub, 19 May 2023:

National leader Christopher Luxon has clarified his party's stance on the Government's decision to abolish the $5 prescription co-payment in Budget 2023.

[...]

He said: "I think if I can pay, I should pay".

"I think it's really unfair, it's money that's wasted on being spent on someone like me, for example, who can afford to pay for my prescriptions myself."

Luxon claims $52k accommodation payment to live in own apartment , NewsRoom, 1 March 2024:

The Prime Minister will receive a $52,000 top-up to his $471,000 salary to cover his accommodation expenses since he is not living in Premier House.

A spokesperson for Christopher Luxon confirmed he will claim the optional accommodation payment, despite living in an apartment in Wellington that he owns mortgage-free.

It makes Luxon the first Prime Minister in at least 34 years to claim the payment. Since Premier House became the official prime ministerial residence in 1990, previous titleholders have either lived there or, in the case of Wellington-based leaders Bill English and Chris Hipkins, stayed in their own homes.

So much for "I think if I can pay, I should pay". But I guess things just look different when you're in government, and there are expenses to rort. But when he's trying to talk about the cost of living, its utterly tone deaf - not to mention toxic - to be rorting more than a minimum wage worker is paid to live in your own fucking house.

But of course he doesn't see this as wrong or problematic in any way, because the fundamental ideology of conservativism is that there is one rule for them and one rule for us dirty peasants. He's simply making his contempt for ordinary people crystal clear.

Thursday, February 29, 2024



Aoteraoa, Ukraine, and Gaza

Today the government designated the political wing of Hamas as a terrorist entity, making supporting them a criminal offence. I honestly don't know much about Hamas' organisation, or how involved its politicians were in planning its crimes in October last year, but when Israel is actively carrying out a genocide in Gaza, designating the political representatives of its victims as "terrorists" seems a little on the nose. And it invites the obvious question: when will we apply a similar designation to the Israeli government and its genocidal "defence forces"?

But beyond that, we should think about what our obligations are as a country which supports human rights and international law and opposes genocide. And unfortunately, we have a very illustrative example right to hand: Ukraine. Ukraine is a victim of invasion by a neighbour which has explicitly announced their intention to eliminate its culture and people, and who has given effect to that intention with numerous war crimes since the invasion began. And in response, the New Zealand government has:

  • Applied sanctions to the Russian economy and leadership;
  • Explicitly called for Putin to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
  • Provided money and other support to arm Ukraine to defend itself;

I have not been especially vocal about this, because I have a low tolerance for horror at the moment. But I think that's an appropriate response for a small country at the bottom of the world with our values. Its doing what we can to support Ukraine to defend itself and to support a peaceful world with international law.

But I think we should be doing the same for Gaza too. Hamas's attacks on 7 October were a terrorist act. But the Israeli response since has been disproportionate, indiscriminate, and explicitly genocidal. And that's something we should not tolerate. We should be sanctioning Israel, Netanyahu, and senior members of his genocidal regime. We should be supporting their arrest and extradition to The Hague for trial for genocide. And we should be arming the Palestinians. A people are being exterminated while we watch. The very least we can do is give them the means to defend themselves against it.

Member's Day

Today is an unscheduled Member's Day. It should have been yesterday, but that was eaten by urgency. But while ramming through the government's cancer promotion law, the House agreed to do Member's business today instead. First up is the first reading of Cushla Tangaere-Manuel's Local Government (Facilitation of Remote Participation) Amendment Bill. This will be followed by Todd Stephenson's Parole (Mandatory Completion of Rehabilitative Programmes) Amendment Bill, and Rima Nakhle's Corrections (Victim Protection) Amendment Bill. There'll be a ballot for a single bill later today, then another one next week to fill the new gap on the Order Paper.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024



Another secret OIA "consultation"

When the previous government decided in 2018 to review the OIA, the Ministry of Justice decided to do the entire thing in secret, planning a "targeted consultation" with a secret, hand-picked group of lawyers, bloggers and commentators. Because obviously, wider civil society has no interest in the operation of the quasi-constitutional legislation which underpins government transparency. That blew up in their faces, but they didn't learn a thing from the resulting mess. Because they're now reviewing secrecy clauses as part of their Open Government Partnership commitments. And once again, they've decided to do it in secret:

The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties (NZCCL) is disturbed by the Ministry of Justice’s strange and secretive approach to open government and the Official Information Act, and is calling on it to consult the public on its proposals regarding the drafting of laws that oust the OIA, rather than five civil society organisations.

“This secretive consultation on secrecy clauses highlights the Ministry of Justice’s strange failure to understand that since the OIA is a law that provides rights to all of us, the public as a whole should be consulted whenever work is done that affects its operation and our rights. Consultation with only a few cherry-picked organisations is not only completely inappropriate for an Open Government Partnership commitment, but also likely to mean the Ministry doesn’t hear from individual experts and other organisations it didn’t favour,” says NZCCL Deputy chairperson Andrew Ecclestone.

“The Ministry’s bizarre thinking about who will be interested in laws that affect our right to information, and its conflict of interest regarding administration of the OIA, also demonstrate why it would be completely improper for the Ministry to conduct the review of the OIA that the National-led Government has committed itself to,” added Mr Ecclestone.

You'd almost get the impression that the Ministry of Justice believes that government is not the business of us dirty peasants, and that we should keep our dirty hands off it, except by voting once every three years. Which is a rather narrow view of "democracy", and calls into question their stewardship of this legislation.

The NZCCL has published the Ministry's consultation document, and I encourage everyone with an interest in freedom of information and the use of secrecy clauses to submit on it.

A revolting breach of Te Tiriti

In 2019, the Waitangi Tribunal released a preliminary report in the Wai 2575 inquiry, finding pervasive inequities in the New Zealand health system which systematically disadvantaged Māori, in breach of Ti Tiriti O Waitangi. It recommended the creation of an independent Māori Health Authority as one way of remedying these inequities. And for once, the government listened, backing the idea in a subsequent Health and Disability System Review and passing legislation to establish the Authority in 2022.

...and now, its gone, disestablished undder urgency by a racist government eager to eradicate Māori from public life. That disestablishment continues and perpetuates the Tiriti-breach the Authority was established to remedy. But on top of that, there's an extra layer of bad faith, with legislation brought forward specifically to forstall an urgent Waitangi Tribunal inquiry. Its contemptuous as well as wrong.

But "contempt for Māori" seems to be the government's primary agenda. The problem is that their very legitimacy as a state depends on Ti Tiriti. And every breach undermines that legitimacy. That has a long-term cost to Aotearoa. But as the government's climate change, infrastructure, and financial policies make clear, this government doesn't give a shit about that.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024



More dishonesty from Costello

When Cancer Minister Casey Costello was caught lying to the media and to Parliament about whether or not she had requested advice on cutting tobacco excise tax to benefit the cancer industry, her explanation was to blame "confusion arising from my understanding of the differentiation between seeking specific advice and accepting advice being offered". But now it turns out that she wasn't in fact passively "accepting advice being offered", but insisting on a particular policy and rejecting all advice to the contrary:

Health officials urged the government to retain key aspects of the smokefree law it plans to repeal, confidential briefings to Associate Health Minister Casey Costello reveal.

[...]

Officials provided Costello with multiple compromise options - including introducing a purchase age of 25 - which they said would have saved lives and money.

Costello rejected all of them.

Throughout this, Costello has behaved dishonestly and with contempt for the public and for Parliament (not to mention the officials whose advice she binned). The impression is of a Minister hellbent on inflicting her donor's plans on us, who will tell whatever lies she thinks are necessary to try and get away with it. And again, not so long ago Ministers were sacked for such deceit. But clearly Chris Luxon has lower standards than any of his predecessors. And given his lack of action, I think we're now entitled to draw some conclusions about his character and lack of honesty from this as well.

Monday, February 26, 2024



An anti-constitutional government

Aotearoa has a lot of problems at the moment: climate change, housing, water, rich people refusing to pay their way. So of course the government has decided to crack down on gangs, as a distraction from all of the above. Their proposals violate the freedoms of expression and association, and based on past court cases, the Supreme Court is likely to say so. But the government says it doesn't care about that either, and that it will simply ignore the courts:

The Justice Minister says if the ban being imposed on gang patches is found to breach the Bill of Rights, that would not stop the government enforcing it.

[...]

Asked whether banning gang patches would breach that right, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said "people have also got the right to be able live peacefully in a society without being intimidated and harassed".

"There's always a balance and we'll work our way through the human rights implications but of course we campaigned on bringing in these policies, we've been elected, the Cabinet's made the decisions, we've prepared the legislation and we're going to do what we said we're going to do."

If the bill ultimately was found to breach the Bill of Rights, Goldsmith said it would not stop the government from making it law.

Effectively they are saying, out loud, that they will ignore our constitution to inflict their policies. And combined with other recent moves - abuse of urgency, one-day "submission periods" for select committees, attempting to bypass the Waitangi Tribunal - it makes it clear that this is an explicitly anti-constitutional government.

This sort of authoritarian bullshit is exactly what the BORA is meant to prevent, both through pre-enactment policy checks and post-enactment scrutiny by the courts. And while section 4 in theory gives Parliament the final word, the scheme of the BORA, the recent changes from the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Declarations of Inconsistency) Amendment Act 2022, and actual practice around such declarations makes it clear that if the courts find an inconsistency, it is absolutely Parliament's - which means the government's - job to listen and fix it. Refusing to do so violates our constitutional norms and undermines the legitimacy of Parliament (see also: the voting age).

Fortunately, we have a solution for that: if Parliament can't be trusted to do the job assigned to it and guard our human rights properly, then we can replace s4 BORA, take the job off them, and give it to the courts (who clearly can be trusted to do it). And the more the government bangs their authoritarian drum, the better and better that solution looks.

Friday, February 23, 2024



Bought and paid for

Candidate donation returns for the 2023 election are out, and surprise, surprise - Shane Jones has been taking money from the industries he is now responsible for regulating:

Newly released donation information for 2023 election candidates show the Fisheries Minister received $5000 from West Food Seafood (Westfleet Seafoods Limited).

Earlier this month, Westfleet chief executive and shareholder Craig Boote was one of the industry leaders lobbying Jones to review policy around cameras, catch limits, bottom trawling and immigration waivers at an exclusive wine and oysters function.

[...]

Fisheries wasn’t the only industry to contribute to Jones’ more than $95,500 in candidate donations.

He received $3000 from Northland Forest, $5000 from J Swap – a logistics firm dealing with construction, transport and forestry – as well as $15,000 from high-profile property developer Andrew Krukziener.

[..]

Meanwhile, Jones received $20,000 from Vladimir Barbalich – a Wellington property developer and former financial backer and board member of fringe anti-mandate party Democracy NZ.

And as Minister for Fisheries, Economic Development, and Resources, he'll now be making the rules for the people who oh so generously gave him money (including devising an entirely new corrupt Muldoonist resource consent scheme which will place decisions in the hands of Ministers). But apparently he won't be influenced by it, because $20,000 is just a trivial amount of money to him.

Yeah, right. And if you believe that, I have some fish to sell you.

This sort of corruption undermines trust in government, and calls every decision Ministers make into question. And that alone should be reason to ban it. If we want government decisions to be made on the merits, and no be influenced by bribes, we need to get money out of politics entirely. And if that means politicians can't enrich themselves on the side, and have to be content with their very generous salaries, boo fucking hoo.

(Meanwhile, we also have a foreign-owned mining company blatantly interfering in our politics by buying themselves an independent to kneecap a candidate they didn't like. So I guess we can chalk that up as another fail by the SIS. Or is it only "foreign interference" if its from China?)

Wednesday, February 21, 2024



This is corrupt

Earlier in the month, a panel of "independent" experts in Wellington produced recommendations for the future of housing in the city, and they were a bit shit, opposing intensification and protecting the property values of existing homeowners. Its since emerged that they engaged in some pretty motivated reasoning on the latter issue, but why? BusinessDesk has the scoop: they had huge undeclared conflicts of interest:

Members of a controversial panel setting the agenda for Wellington’s housing own more than $7 million worth of property in the capital city, with five of the six properties not declared in the independent hearings panel's published conflicts-of-interest register. The properties include homes in Mt Victoria and Te Aro, suburbs in which the eight-member panel (IHP) recommended expansions to character precinct designations, which would hinder the construction of new housing.
I don't know about you, but making a decision which you will profit from while hiding that fact seems pretty fucking corrupt to me. And it should be enough to have their recommendations tossed for apparent bias.

But not just that. We've prosecuted, convicted, and even jailed people in the past for lying on their CVs in order to obtain a position. Lying on a conflict on interest statement seems to be no different. So, will these people be prosecuted? Or is fraud OK when it is done by rich people?