No Right Turn

The problem with Christchurch

2012-01-31T16:15:00.000+13:00

Writing in The Press, Will Harvie puts his finger on the problem with Christchurch:

Voting rights of Cantabrians have been trampled in recent years.
In 2010, the elected leaders of Environment Canterbury were overthrown by Parliament.
In 2011, the elected leaders of Christchurch City Council lost control of our central business district, first to satan [sic], then to Civil Defence and now to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority.
Something has to control the rebuilding of Christchurch, but that doesn't mean Cantabrians must quietly accept decisions made by these temporary masters.

And that's it in a nutshell: the people of Christchurch want a say in the future of their city. And that is being denied to them, both by CERA and by an increasingly authoritarian Mayor and council CEO (AKA the "Bob and Tony show"). The answer, as always, is more democracy: a mayor that listens, a council that responds, a CERA which serves the people of Christchurch, rather than politicians in Wellington. And if they don't get that, people will - and should - protest until they do.

High stakes

2012-01-31T13:14:00.001+13:00

And right on cue, the Māori Party are threatening to walk away from National over the exclusion of Treaty clauses in National's privatisation programme:

The Maori Party says it may quit its support of John Key's government over its asset sale plan.
Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples say plans by the government to have no treaty clause in the SOE sale legislation is a deal breaker.
The pair say maori are already contemplating a hikoi over the issue - and Mrs Turia has raised concerns that the issue may flare up at Waitangi celebrations this weekend.

There will be a deal over this. National needs the Māori Party to protect it from mid-term departures and disgruntled backbenchers. And the Māori Party need to be seen to stand up for their people. So there will be Treaty protections in the sale legislation.

But its a bad way to start the relationship for the term, and it shows how vulnerable National is if the Māori Party wants to throw its weight around. ACT and Dunne have much less leverage by comparison, at least if the Māori Party stays in the picture. If they walk, then John Banks will have a veto on all policy - a position National will not want to end up in.

What is it about local government?

2012-01-31T12:55:00.000+13:00

Whanganui District Council has rejected a switch to an attendance-component to their salary. Because making sure that councillors actually do the job we are paying them to do would be a Bad Thing, apparently.

The arrogance on display here is appalling. Here we have a local body basically saying that they should be paid whether or not they actually do their jobs. They wouldn't accept that logic as employers, and neither should we.

One of the opponents did have a point in saying that not all work takes place around the council table, but that's why its an attendance component. They'd get paid for their representative role, and they'd get paid for their formal, legislative one. The problem here is that some councillors are shirking on the latter - and shortchanging voters in the process.

Privatising away Treaty rights

2012-01-31T12:45:00.000+13:00

The government has revealed that its plans for asset sales do not include carrying over existing protection of rights guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi. The State-Owned Enterprises Act has a Treaty clause, which has been decisive in major cases protecting Treaty rights. In the interpretation of the courts, it requires the government to be mindful of outstanding Treaty claims (or potential claims) when selling those assets, and to protect the rights of potential claimants. In the case of land, this has meant permanent caveats on SOE land, making it subject to return to its original owners on order of the Waitangi Tribunal (though IIRC this power has never been exercised). But its not just about land. There are outstanding claims or potential claims over control of water and subsurface minerals. Failing to include the Treaty clause in sale legislation would prejudice those claims, and prevent just settlements.

Which makes this an explosive issue for the Māori Party - and for the government as well. The Māori Party's support agreement with National [PDF] does not commit them to supporting privatisation, but its a bigger problem than that. It is simply politically untenable for the party to prop up a government which undermines the Treaty in this manner. If National proceeds with this plan (and they have the votes to do it regardless of what the Māori Party think), then they will be putting the Māori Party in a position where it must either renounce its confidence and supply deal, or be crucified by its own supporters.

(As an aside, I wonder if National told them about this when they were negotiating that agreement? If not, then it would seem that they have been less than full and frank, and negotiated under false pretences).

National does not need the Māori Party's support; it has a bare majority with ACT and Peter Dunne. But it needs them as cover to protect against any mid-term departure. The Māori Party should use this leverage. They've been betrayed, so they're entitled to threaten confidence and supply, and they should do so to protect the rights of their people.

Time to change the Overseas Investment Act

2012-01-30T14:53:00.001+13:00

John Key's excuse for the Crafar farms sale? His hands were tied. But he's promising to change the law if we make enough noise about it:

''Obviously that's a sovereign right that we have.
''We can change the law but at this point I would have thought it would be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.
''We should look at it, if the flow of sales starts to accelerate and people really become very concerned.''

I think we should take Key at his word, and start expressing that concern. Either he'll be forced to keep his promise, or he'll be exposed as a two-faced liar who will say anything to try and get an issue to go away. Either way, we help create the conditions for a law-change to restrict these sorts of damaging asset-sales, which can only be a Good Thing in the long term.

Another good reason for the Scots to vote for independence

2012-01-30T11:54:00.001+13:00

Scotland looks set to have a referendum on independence in 2014, to coincide with the 700th anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn. There are many good reasons for the Scots to vote for independence - being able to run their own country as they wish, rather than being dictated to by Tory toffs in London being the best - but the Guardian today points out another: they'd get to kick out English nukes:

Asked during the referendum debate in the Scottish parliament last week whether the government of an independent Scotland would do a deal to keep Trident, the first minister Alex Salmond replied: "It is inconceivable that an independent nation of 5.25m people would tolerate the continued presence of weapons of mass destruction on its soil."
His comments seemed to be directed at senior British defence officials figures who have suggested that they could negotiate a treaty allowing the Trident missiles, warheads, and submarines, to remain in Scotland.

While this won't matter to the Scots, once kicked out, said nukes would have nowhere else to go - there are no viable alternative bases. England would have to give up its ruinously expensive and utterly pointless nuclear deterrent, whose only purpose is to preserve defence policymaker's ego against the US and the French. They'd be doing England - and the world - a tremendous service.

New Fisk

2012-01-30T11:22:00.000+13:00

The present stands no chance against the past

Undeserved

2012-01-30T11:19:00.001+13:00

When Christchurch City Council CEO Tony Marryatt received a $68,000 pay rise in December, he was quick to claim that it was recognition for his performance. It turns out that he lied:

Documents released by the council under the Official Information Act show that Marryatt's performance reviews have gone gradually downhill since 2009.
His overall performance, excluding self-assessment, decreased from 4.3 out of 5 in 2009 to 3.9 in 2011.
Marryatt's ratings declined in six out of seven categories over his three performance reviews, based on anonymous reviews from councillors and senior management.

I think this confirms what we already knew: Marryatt's pay rise was utterly undeserved, an exercise in cronyism by Bob Parker and his faction of the council. And now that its been exposed, his position is utterly untenable. He has lied to us. He has tried to blackmail the council, making return of that undeserved money contingent on their obeying him (a complete reversal of the democratic relationship). He needs to go. There is no place for greedy narcissistic psychopaths in our public service.

There's no need to be religious about it

2012-01-27T15:32:00.001+13:00

Alain de Botton wants to build an "atheist temple" in London. All I can ask is why? The whole point about atheism is not caring about religion, not wasting your time believing in imaginary gods. But if you don't believe in imaginary gods, why would you want to waste your time not believing in them either? If the idea is irrelevant, a sad delusion resulting from flaws in our neural architecture, then why waste any time on it at all?

Which makes the idea of building a special building where people can congregate and contemplate their mutual lack of faith extremely puzzling. Its caring far too much, being almost... religious about it. Which seems to really be missing the point entirely.

The PREFU SNAFU

2012-01-27T13:51:00.000+13:00

So, the government has announced that it may not be able to reach its fiscal target of returning to surplus by 2015. On the one hand, this isn't really surprising: the global economic crisis has got worse, and you'd expect us to be affected by it. On the other hand, Treasury was forecasting a 2015 surplus just three months ago, and dismissed any suggestion that its forecasts were too optimistic. For them to reverse themselves so suddenly suggests that they got it seriously wrong, in the process making both our major parties (who made campaign policy on the basis of those projections) into liars. The question now is whether anyone will be held to account for that. Sadly, I think the answer will be "no".

But this also raises a bigger problem. Back in the 90's, we amended the Public Finance Act to require pre-election disclosure to protect us from governments who shuffled big economic problems under the carpet and left them for their replacements to deal with. But while that may protect us from lying politicians, it doesn't protect us from Treasury - who in the past have demonstrated a definite political agenda, and may not be above stacking their projections to advance it (in particular by crying "crisis!" so as to apply the shock doctrine). Which makes it all the more important that this "error" is investigated and those responsible held to account.

Selling out New Zealand

2012-01-27T12:09:00.001+13:00

As expected, the government has agreed to sell Crafar Farms to the Chinese. Reading through the Overseas Investment Office Advice [PDF], the case for this is extraordinarily weak: the sale may create five to seven jobs; the "new investment" is small compared to the value of the asset (and reading other sections, largely deferred maintenance); the "environmental benefits" are all things they should have been doing anyway (such as excluding stock from waterways), and no account is taken of the significant environmental costs of their plans to ramp up production. Meanwhile, the supposed "benefit" of increased export earnings will be offset by the fact that the profits will be taken offshore. So what we're left with is a farm school, which is really just a way of them getting cheap, government subsidised labour for their workforce, and which doesn't require the purchase of ten farms to operate.

This is not a strong case. But the OIO is a rubberstamp, and the government wants to "send the right signals", both to China and to farmers (who would see any restriction as an attack on their property values, and hence their business model), so we end up with a strategic asset and a significant chunk of our dairy production falling into foreign hands. What this shows is that we need a significant tightening of our overseas investment regime, along with a change in mindset at OIO so we have people willing to actually enforce it, rather than just rubberstamping every decision with "approved". As for National, they've sold out New Zealand - again. And they'll do the same with our power companies too.

An overreaction

2012-01-27T11:28:00.001+13:00

That's the only way to describe yesterday's extraordinary extraction of Australian Prime Minsiter Julia Gillard from an Australian Invasion Day protest yesterday. Protestors yelling and waving placards and banging on things? Better treat it like an assassination attempt! And so now we have a lovely photo sequence of Gillard being dragged away like a sack of potatoes by her security detail, lest she have to actually face her people and listen to their concerns. Because obviously, a leader in a democracy can't possibly do that, can they?

Fallow on privatization

2012-01-26T16:36:00.000+13:00

Writing in the Herald, Brian Fallow calls National's privatization programme "a solution in search of a problem". Treasury analysis of our state-owned energy companies shows that they are well-run and profitable. The dividends are about the same as the interest on money the government would have to otherwise borrow (and certainly "within the margin of error" given the uncertainties involved). Which makes the entire exercise pointless:

True, the policy would reduce the Government's gross debt compared with what it would otherwise be, releasing capital for higher priority spending while avoiding the need to approach skittish offshore funding markets.
But there is an opportunity cost to that. The private sector money has to come from somewhere.
If "Mum and Dad" investors reduce their bank deposits, for example, to invest in the SOEs then, all else being equal, the banks will have to increase their offshore borrowing.
Alternatively there may be switch out of other forms of saving, including Government stock.
It is only if the privatisation process increases national savings that it will lessen the country's, as distinct from the Government's, reliance on offshore lenders.

Fallow calls this "a lot of trouble just to ensure some New Zealanders own more of these enterprises, while the rest own less". And it is. But for National, that is the point. This was never about "improving efficiency", "reducing debt" or (and this one is truly awful) "giving (rich) kiwis something to invest in". It is about wealth transfer: about taking those assets away from us, and giving them (and their monopoly dividend-streams) to their rich mates, while letting other rich mates clip the ticket on the way through. It is about looting the state for their own profit. Everything else is just excuses and spin.

This shouldn't be surprising. It is, after all, what National exists as a party to do. But at the same time, its not acceptable. Those companies are ours. And we should not let them be stolen by a new generation of elite thieves in the style of Fay and Richwhite.

New Fisk

2012-01-26T12:15:00.001+13:00

We've been here before – and it suits Israel that we never forget 'Nuclear Iran'

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend

2012-01-26T12:07:00.001+13:00

During the election campaign, Labour came out heavily against foreign asset sales. So its entirely natural that they'd oppose the Chinese bid for Crafar Farms. Unfortunately, they're supporting its competitor, Michael Fay, instead.

Think about that. Fay - a former tax exile - is one of the worst villains of the 90's. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about him:

Michael Fay and David Richwhite are best known for gaining wealth in a series of loosely regulated privatization and asset swapping transactions that occurred between 1986 and 1993 - involving their companies European Pacific, Capital Markets and Fay Richwhite and the former state owned operations Bank of New Zealand, Tranz Rail and Telecom New Zealand, and the pension accounts associated to them.
Deals were done in which Fay and Richwhite personally gained over half a billion dollars (2.2% of NZ's 1985 GDP) from a country on the verge of bankruptcy, while their minority shareholders lost $277 million, by in part imitating the offshore financial practices outlawed in Europe and America 30 years prior.
One notable transaction among these actions was their role as advisors to the government on the sale of New Zealand Rail Limited to overseas interests; a deal in which Fay and Richwhite later brought 31.8 per cent of the shares, and were subsequently investigated for insider trading by NZ authorities.

This is a man who specialises in using political influence to gain strategic assets, then loads them with debt, pays himself an enormous "special dividend", and flicks them off. And he is likely to do exactly the same thing to Crafar Farms. The net result is that we'll be having this same debate about Chinese ownership in a year or two, while Fay laughs all the way to Switzerland. Supporting any business deal by such a man is a mistake. The only thing any Labour politician should be talking about with Fay is how we can get our money back from him.

Leaked

2012-01-26T12:05:00.002+13:00

The infamous "teapot tape" has been leaked online. I'm currently seeking legal advice on whether I can link to it here; in the meantime the link is going around Twitter and other social media.

The Dotcom bail decision

2012-01-25T13:20:00.001+13:00

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has been denied bail. The NBR has the full decision (in four parts) here. Reading through it, it basically came down to perceived flight risk: the US talked this up, the police told the judge horror stories of people absconding, and how they could abscond if they set their mind to it, and the latter especially seems to have been decisive. Troublingly, that evidence was heard in closed court, and the affidavit returned to the prosecutor to prevent it from being accessed from the court file, so the core evidence here is effectively secret. While able to be contested by the defence, we are not allowed to view it and decide whether it stacks up (and hence whether the judge's decision was correct, or whether he was misled). Also troublingly, all conditions (including 24 hour curfew, electronic monitoring, and a ban on using or communicating by computer, internet, or even telephone - basically an electronic death sentence) were refused. So much for the BORA requirement that those charged

shall be released on reasonable terms and conditions unless there is just cause for continued detention.

So, we're going to lock a guy in jail for a month or two, in the process undermining his defence in a serious criminal case, on the basis of secret evidence which may be no more than a police fantasy. Which is beginning to sound like Ahmed Zaoui territory again.

There is ample grounds for appeal here, and I expect Dotcom will take it.

No justice for Haditha II

2012-01-25T12:22:00.001+13:00

So, what's the penalty in the US Marine Corps for ordering your soldiers to massacre 24 Iraqi civilians, including seven children?

Nothing:

A US marine who admitted charges linked to the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2005 should face no time in detention, a judge has recommended.

Again, the message is clear: "we matter. You don't. You can be killed with impunity, because you are not American". Justice for all? Only if you're American, it seems. And this is why Iraq is longer willing to play host to American soldiers: because the US will not hold those soldiers to account, even when they commit war crimes. It is time for the international courts to step in, and provide the justice America is clearly unwilling to.

Pure greed

2012-01-25T11:51:00.000+13:00

Another day, another excessive local body payrise, this time for Kapiti Coast District Council CEO Pat Dougherty, who scores himself an extra $44,000 a year, an increase of 18%. As with the business sector, this excessive payrise isn't driven by any improvement in performance; under Dogherty KCDC has faced large blowouts on major projects, and is looking at a 12% rate rise to fund those shortfalls. Instead, its just pure greed, a way of keeping score. And at a time when ordinary people are looking at nil or sub-inflation wage rises, and so falling behind, it is simply unacceptable.

This greed on the part of local body management, this belief that their salaries should be compared to the private sector, has to stop. They are public servants, not corporate warlords. More generally, the culture of high executive pay needs to end. The total disconnect between pay and performance makes it clear that these people don't earn their inflated salaries. Neither are they "compensation" for higher risk; its not CEOs who are on 90-day trial periods, subjected to random restructurings, and sacked because their boss comes in hung-over in the morning. Instead, its just pure greed, a way of keeping score. In the process, they boost inequality, distort perceptions of worth and value, and fleece their shareholders of returns. Over in the Guardian, George Monbiot proposes a maximum wage, which can be trivially enforced by setting a 100% marginal tax rate above a certain level. And that is beginning to look like a very good idea.

Part of the democratic process

2012-01-24T15:33:00.001+13:00

What is it with the right and democracy? In response to tensions in the Christchurch City Council, which have seen councillors criticise the Chief Executive's lavish pay increase and autocratic style, DPF demands that "some or all" of them "must go". Because obviously, the last thing you can possibly have in an elected body is disagreement. No, we should shut it down, sack them all, appoint a dictator.

The fact of the matter is that these councillors are elected. They are there to represent their constituents, some of whom are not exactly happy with their council or its CEO. In other words, they are doing exactly the job we expect elected representatives in a democracy to do. The idea that this justifies the imposition of another dictatorship is as obscene as it is laughable.

What next? DPF will advocate the unseating of MPs who disagree with the government and criticise the public service? Because that is essentially the "problem" here. But in Parliament, we recognise that is part of the democratic process, part of how government is kept responsible to us and held to account. It would be nice if he (and Christchurch’s autocratic primadonna mayor) understood that that applies to local government too.

Shorter National MP

2012-01-24T14:20:00.000+13:00

"Children must starve to teach parents responsibility". Yes, really:

Northland National MP Mike Sabin, who chaired the meeting, warned that if schools provided lunches then mothers and fathers would never have to do it.
"But they are not doing that anyway," Mr Reid responded. "You can walk around every pub in Kaitaia and mums and dads are investing in the poker machines."
Mr Sabin retorted: "We have to investigate that, otherwise we'll have 50,000 more parents who are not feeding their children."

What a wanker. But oh so typical of the National Party's mindset that poverty is an individual failing rather than a structural problem in our society. And their "solution" - cut school lunches and make kids starve - effectively sacrifices children's life-chances to that cruel ideology.

But hey, they're just poor kids - no-one National cares about.

No justice for Haditha

2012-01-24T11:17:00.000+13:00

On November 19, 2005, US Marines massacred 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha. The killings were initially covered up as "collateral damage" from a roadside bomb, and many of the victims - who included seven children - were labelled "insurgents". But media investigations revealed what had really happened: after one of their number had been killed by a bomb, the US soldiers went house to house, with guns and grenades, murdering indiscriminately.

Eventually, in the face of public pressure, the US charged eight marines with a variety of crimes, including murder, manslaughter, and obstruction of justice. And then, one by one, those charges were quietly dropped. Today, the last of the accused, Sgt Frank Wuterich, who had been facing murder charges, plead guilty to dereliction of duty as part of a plea bargain:

He faces a maximum of three months confinement, two-thirds forfeiture of pay and a demotion to the rank of private.

Given the prior record of US military courts in these sorts of cases, the bus ticket he will be slapped with won't even be soggy.

And this is what the US calls "justice". But there's no justice here - just a military refusing to hold its own to account, and in the process sending a message to the world: we can murder you with impunity, because your lives count for nothing. And then they wonder why people support or join terrorist groups...

New Fisk

2012-01-24T10:57:00.001+13:00

Fragments of history rescued from oblivion
In the line of fire: Tom Hurndall

Places to go, people to be

2012-01-20T11:20:00.000+13:00

There are things I'd like to be blogging about today: the final death of Project Hayes (not heartbroken; it was environmentally marginal, and there are plenty of other large wind projects in the pipeline); Auckland's efforts to leverage its local prostitution ban into a nationwide one; the arrest and expected extradition of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom in Auckland (which, because our own media are so obsessed with themselves, we had to read about on BBC) and its parallels with the UK TVShack case; or the fact that our extradition agreement with the USA not only includes abortion, but also sodomy, which hasn't been a crime here since 1986. But sadly, I'm busy. I'm off to attend New Zealand's largest roleplaying convention, and my brain is full of other Things (some of them squamous, formless and shifting, and waiting to eat you).

Normal bloggage will resume on Tuesday.

Ending the whitewash

2012-01-19T13:08:00.001+13:00

Shortly after being elected, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced the establishment of a formal inquiry into his intelligence services' collusion in torture and rendition. It was a whitewash from the start. Run by the Intelligence Services Commissioner, hearing evidence in secret, and boycoted by human rights groups, it was never going to be the independent investigation the public (and the law) demanded. And even the revelation of a smoking gun - MI6's "policy on liason with overseas security and intelligence services in relation to detainees who may be subject to mistreatment", which explicitly told spies to balance the value of the information obtained against the amount of pain that would be inflicted - did not alter that fact. Rather than naming names and holding those responsible to account, the Gibson inquiry was always simply going to shuffle crimes under the carpet, "restore" the image of the intelligence services, and "draw a line under events", so the spies could right on back to torturing, without this messy clamouring for accountability and prosecutions.

Which is why I'm glad its finally over. A whitewash inquiry is worse than no inquiry at all. As we've seen with the numerous inquiries into Blair's lies before the Iraq war, it just gives those responsible something to hide behind, while doing nothing to get to the truth. It undermines both accountability and the truth itself.

...which is of course why the British government loves them so much. Hold a whitewash, "draw a line" - then claim that the issue is settled and that the public is being unreasonable in continuing to demand accountability. But until there is accountability, until there is justice, until those responsible are sacked, prosecuted, and driven from public life, it will never be "over".

More corporate psychopathy

2012-01-19T12:30:00.002+13:00

A Greek default is widely viewed as a potential trigger for a global economic meltdown, as it exposes banks to massive writedowns, and in turn governments to massive bailouts, creating a further liquidity crash. So naturally, hedge funds are trying to engineer one in order to profit from their Credit Default Swap contracts:

A group of hedge funds is threatening to block a last-ditch attempt to save Greece from defaulting on its huge debt pile, unless they are guaranteed a significant payout.
There will be a final attempt today – when a group representing Greece's private sector bondholders meets senior ministers in Athens – to negotiate a writedown of the value of the country's debt ahead of a crucial bond repayment deadline next month.
Sources familiar with the talks, which collapsed at the end of last week, have said that a number of hedge funds are holding up the restructuring deal to ensure that they make a fat profit, after snapping up Greek bonds at distressed prices.
[...]
This is because these funds are believed to have purchased insurance policies on their holdings of Greek bonds, known as Credit Default Swaps (CDS). If Athens fails to pay its maturing debts in March, that would trigger large CDS payouts to these funds from the large financial firms that sold them the insurance.

The hedge fund's position is simple: pay them a big bonus, or they destroy the global economy - and either way, they profit. And its a perfect example of how psychopathic our financial industry has become.

Blackmail should not be a business. Threatening to impoverish and immiserate billions should not be a business plan. Our psychopathic corporations need to be reined in, and made to behave ethically. If they cannot, they need to be broken up, so they will no longer be such a threat to society. It is that simple.

Still useless

2012-01-18T14:34:00.000+13:00

This morning, Labour industrial relations spokesperson told the New Zealand Herald that "it's not helpful for politicians to get involved" in the Ports of Auckland dispute. This afternoon, she's on Red Alert trying to reassure Labour supporters that her party really does care about workers' rights. The upshot? They care - but not enough to actually take a stand or do anything.

Like I said, useless.

New Fisk

2012-01-18T10:11:00.001+13:00

Poverty is main culprit as 19 die in slum tragedy

Useless

2012-01-18T09:36:00.001+13:00

So its come to this: after a week of silence on the Ports of Auckland dispute, the Labour Party has come out and confirmed that it is in fact a useless waste of space:

Yesterday Labour industrial relations spokeswoman Darien Fenton, who has been spotted on the picket line at the port, said her party was not taking sides in the dispute.
"We've been hoping that the parties will settle this, that they'll find a way through this."
Ms Fenton said Mr Shearer had been in regular touch with both sides, "and he's in contact with me and we're all discussing it regularly".
"Our strong view at this point is it's not helpful for politicians to get involved."

Its not quite Walter Nash's "neither for nor against", but it amounts to the same thing. Faced with a test of its core values, Labour flunked, preferring to sit on the fence rather than speak up. And as a result, their party's name is now an exercise in false advertising. What does Labour stand for now? It's certainly not labour. Instead, all they offer is an alternative set of political managers, a different set of bums on seats. And this is supposed to inspire people to turn out and vote for them? The only thing it inspires me to do is look for a party that actually appears to believe in something.

But its not just a case of undermining their brand. Labour has just sent a clear message to its supporters that that support is a one-way street. You can support them, but they won't support you. No self-respecting person should accept such a one-sided relationship.

Speaking out on Ports of Auckland

2012-01-17T13:17:00.001+13:00

While Auckland's "Labour" Mayor, Len Brown, seems happy for Ports of Auckland to force pay cuts and casualisation on its workforce, others in Auckland’s local government aren't. Yesterday, 28 board members stretching across 10 local boards issued a joint statement calling on Ports of Auckland to abandon its plans and return to the negotiating table:

In an unprecedented move, 28 Auckland Local Board members from 10 different Boards are uniting to call for Ports of Auckland to return to good faith bargaining and drop plans to outsource jobs at the port (a full list of Board Members is below).
“Ports of Auckland Ltd is a Council-owned company. We support its operational independence, but the current dispute has escalated to a strategic level. We are particularly concerned that actions being taken by Port management, including what appears to be a pre-determined strategy to contract out port jobs, are inflaming matters”, say the Board members.

Its good to see that someone, at least, thinks that politicians should get involved in politics.

These are mostly Labour people, so parts of the party obviously care. But its Parliamentary wing and leadership are still remaining conspicuously silent. David Shearer has apparently just wrapped up his holiday, so maybe we'll hear something from him soon. If not, and Labour stays silent on what should be a core issue, then I think we'll have to lower our (already low) expectations of the party even further.

National tries to control the media

2012-01-17T12:43:00.001+13:00

Just before the election, TV3 screened Inside Child Poverty: A Special Report. The documentary was funded by NZ on Air, and its aim was to expose child poverty in New Zealand and get people thinking about it. It succeeded. Unfortunately, that success was at the expense of the National Party, which really, really didn't want to talk about the issue. And so post-election, its hacks on the NZ on Air board are trying to ensure that it never happens again:

A move to censor television programmes likely to embarrass the government during election campaigns is being considered by the broadcasting funding agency, NZ on Air.
The minutes of the NZ on Air board’s December meeting reveals a decision "to seek legal advice on whether NZ on Air could require an additional clause in the broadcast covenant requiring broadcasters not to screen programmes likely to be an election issue within the Election Period as defined in the Broadcasting Act".

Because obviously, the last thing we want during an election campaign is for voters to be thinking about the issues...

This move to control the media for the convenience of political parties is Fiji-style stuff, the very opposite of what we expect in a democratic country like New Zealand. It is being pushed by board member Stephen McElrea, who just happens to be John Key's electorate chairperson, aided by a board afraid of "embarrassing" the government. Which tells us that NZ on Air needs more independence, including the freedom from political crony appointments. Their job is to fund television, not ensure the smooth re-election of the powers that be. And if some of that television makes the government-of-the-day look bad, by reminding people of facts and issues they would rather we were ignorant of, then that’s just something the politicians have to wear.

The Greens on Ports of Auckland

2012-01-16T13:02:00.001+13:00

Over on FrogBlog, the Greens' industrial relations spokesperson Denise Roche speaks up about the Ports of Auckland dispute:

Ports of Auckland have consistently said that they want to increase productivity. However the hardline approach and lack of flexibility from the CEO, Tony Gibson, has resulted in days lost to strikes, and now the threat of a lock out doesn’t create a productive workforce. I wonder what the management’s real aims are, given that the company had previously drawn up a strategy to contract out the workforce, and Tony Gibson is threatening to call for expressions of interest while the contract talks were stalled. This is hardly ‘good faith bargaining’ – and it quite likely breaches the existing industrial relations laws.
If the Board and management of POA were so concerned about increasing productivity and increasing the profit margins, how could they possibly consider a spend of $5million on redundancies – and potentially much higher costs resulting from legal action from the Maritime Union?

This is good to see. As for Labour, they're still missing in action, probably waiting for a focus group to tell them what their principles are. And they wonder why people don't turn out to vote for them...

New Fisk

2012-01-16T12:11:00.001+13:00

The 'invented people' stand little chance

Royal parasitism

2012-01-16T12:10:00.001+13:00

The UK is currently in the grip of a banker-induced, austerity-worsened recession, and cutting spending everywhere. So naturally, in the midst of all this belt-tightening, the government wants to spend £60m on a new yacht for the Queen.

This is simply obscene. The Queen is one of the world's richest women, perfectly capable of buying her own yacht. Meanwhile, UK citizens are looking at a decade of cuts, austerity, and economic stagnation. Last week, the government tried (and fortunately failed) to cut benefits to disabled people to save money. Apparently they can no longer afford even basic dignity for their weakest citizens. Against that backdrop, expecting people to cough up for a luxury toy for their rulers shows the same level of complete and utter disconnection from the lives of ordinary people as the infamous "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche".

This is feudal parasitism at its worst. And its time it was ended. The only thing the citizens of the UK should be giving their monarch for her birthday is a one-way ticket into exile.

Fiji: A fragile ego

2012-01-13T16:37:00.000+13:00

An example of how fragile the ego of Fiji's dictator is: having failed to win a TXT-poll for "personality of the year", Voreqe Bainimarama forced the offending media organisation to change the result and declare him the winner. And now, he's using his cronies in the Commerce Commission and Media Development Authority to punish them for giving offence.

I just hope no-one has been dragged to camp and tortured over this. But its an example of the sheer pettiness and narcissism of Fiji's dictator. What next? He'll be entering the Olympics, and threatening to beat people if they don't let him win?

New Fisk

2012-01-13T15:35:00.001+13:00

This is not about 'bad apples'. This is the horror of war

And while we're on the subject of silences

2012-01-13T13:16:00.001+13:00

The Greens haven't said a word on Ports of Auckland either. No press releases, and nothing on Frogblog. While they don't have the history of Labour in this area, they have a progressive industrial relations policy (arguably more progressive than Labour's). Which makes their silence just as odd.

Again, I expect parties to stand up for their purported values and those of their supporters. If they don't, then their basic bargain of offering representation in exchange for votes is simply a fraud.

Growth and distribution

2012-01-13T12:55:00.001+13:00

Labour's failed Rangitikei candidate Josie Pagani has a piece in the Herald this morning, in which she gives her views of what went wrong for Labour, and talks of the need to "[increase] the size of the pie so everyone can get their piece". In response, the Dim-Post asks:

why are Labour still using ACT Party rhetoric about the panacea of economic growth, when all our economic statistics, social indicators and lived experience over the past thirty years tell us that the benefits of ‘growing the pie’ now aggregate to a small number of high-net worth individuals? The rest of us stay where we are, or go backwards.

Because while that was certainly the experience during the 80's and 90's, it wasn't what happened last time Labour was in power. Compare the following two graphs from MSD's Household incomes in New Zealand: trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2007. The first shows decile changes in real equivalised household income (that's household income normalised for family size) from 1988 - 2001 - basically, the Revolution):

The second shows the same change between 2004 and 2007:

Quite a difference, isn't it? Instead of the poor being impoverished for the benefit of the rich, we have a much more equal distribution, with most of the benefits of growth being directed to those with greater need. While the exclusion of beneficiaries from Working For Families meant that it didn't do enough for those at the very bottom (an exclusion Pagani supports, I should note - which makes me glad she is not in Parliament), its undoubtedly a fairer distribution.

There are basically two types of economy in New Zealand: The National economy is marked by high unemployment, regressive tax changes, and attacks on workers' rights. The Labour one by low unemployment / an engineered labour shortage, large increases in the minimum wage, and a more progressive and redistributive tax system. And the two produce very different distributional outcomes.

The problem is that the more we live in a National economy, the more we believe that that rhetoric is at best empty, and at worst a direct threat to make you worse off for the benefit of some suited Auckland fat-cat. If Labour wants to use growth-rhetoric, it needs to be clear that it is offering a different sort of growth. And I think that being explicit about that, about how it is achieved and about National's distributional record, is the best way to do that.

(Of course, we also need that growth to be sustainable, and not based on the mining of our environment. But that's a different kettle of fish altogether...)

The usual whitewash

2012-01-13T12:20:00.000+13:00

British police have decided that they will not investigate the complicity of their intelligence services in the rendition and torture of British residents by America. The reason? "Insufficient evidence". They asked the spies, the spies denied it, and that apparently is good enough for them. So much for justice - it takes a back seat to not embarrassing those in power.

The good news is that at the moment they can't perform the same sort of tawdry whitewash over more recent renditions to Libya. There, thanks to the Libyan government, we have documentary evidence that the UK provided information on Libyans in the UK, and "took credit" for the rendition of Sami al-Saadi, who was detained for six years and tortured with beatings and electric shocks. So, there will be an "investigation". But that doesn't mean there will be justice. Instead, they'll just wait for public anger over the case to die down, then make exactly the same claim of "insufficient evidence" in a year or two's time. The government will then "draw a line under the matter" and try and pretend it never happened. Question ex-Ministers? Dig through the paper trail? Do their jobs? All of that will take a back seat to the British establishment's highest priority: protecting themselves and ensuring that their abuses go unpunished. And then they wonder why people turn to terrorism...

A deafening silence

2012-01-12T18:06:00.001+13:00

Over on Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow, Robert Winter asks where is Labour on the Ports of Auckland dispute. Its a good question. Labour is supposed to be the leading party on the left. It proudly proclaims that it

started its life as... a voice for the working classes who believed that a fairer future was possible.

So you'd expect them to have something to say on an unpleasant industrial dispute in which management is clearly seeking to crush a union and erode both workplace safety and living standards in the name of greater profits - but there hasn't been a peep out of them. Not an interview, not a press release, not even a post on Red Alert. Their silence is deafening.

It would be nice if we had a Labout party which stood up for its purported values, stood up for its supporters rather than simply taking them for granted. Sadly, that seems to be too much to expect from the modern NZLP.

New Fisk

2012-01-12T11:47:00.001+13:00

Assad faces his people's hatred – but as their anger grows, his excuses are still just the same

Guantanamo: A petition

2012-01-11T15:46:00.000+13:00

Amnesty International is using the tenth anniversary of Guantanamo bay to highlight the issue, with a petition to US president Barack Obama calling on him to close the gulag, release its prisoners or give them fair trials in proper courts, and investigate and prosecute US officials responsible for torture and disappearance. You can sign it here.

Guantanamo: A decade too long

2012-01-11T15:42:00.001+13:00

Ten years ago today, on January 11 2002, the US transferred its first load of prisoners to its gulag at Guantanamo Bay. A decade on, 171 prisoners - including twelve of that first shipment - are still there. They have been imprisoned for up to ten years, without charge, and without trial. Many of them have been tortured.

Their continued detention, and the continued existence of Guantanamo, is a stain on the record of the United States. The right not to be imprisoned without trial is fundamental. Those accused of crimes must be charged, and the evidence heard in open court before an impartial tribunal. Those who cannot be charged, or who are not accused of crimes at all, must be released. Those are the rules of civilised society, entrenched in international law. By refusing to obey that law, the US marks itself as a rogue state, its leaders criminals who themselves should be put on trial.

A decade of this abuse is a decade too long. its time for it to end. Guantanamo delenda est: Guantanamo must be closed.

Climate change: Good news and frustration

2012-01-11T14:05:00.001+13:00

Some good news on the climate change front: scientists have found a cheap and easy way of filtering CO₂ from smokestacks, or even just from the atmosphere:

Their tests showed that these inexpensive materials achieved some of the highest carbon dioxide removal rates ever reported for humid air, under conditions that stymie other related materials. After capturing carbon dioxide, the materials give it up easily so that the CO2 can be used in making other substances, or permanently isolated from the environment. The capture material then can be recycled and reused many times over without losing efficiency. The researchers suggest the materials may be useful on submarines, in smokestacks or out in the open atmosphere, where they could clean up carbon dioxide pollution that comes from small point sources like cars or home heaters, representing about half of the total CO₂ emissions related to human activity.

Of course, we still need somewhere safe to store it - but that's half the problem solved.

At the same time, it also highlights the frustration of climate change policy: we have the technology, we can beat this problem, decarbonise the economy, and live sustainably as a technological society - but our politicians (old, rich, and invested in the destructive status quo) are not making the policy changes necessary to push us down that path, and instead seem set to do nothing and just let it happen. And so we're on track for a disaster, one which will ruin my future, your future, and the future of your children and grandchildren and generations to come - and that disaster is completely avoidable.

"The national interest"

2012-01-11T13:19:00.000+13:00

So, having failed to smear Ports of Auckland's workers as greedy, lazy, and overpaid, the right have turned to a different argument: apparently it's "in the national interest" to casualise them and cut their pay:

If the Maritime Union didn't see this one coming, then they haven't been paying much attention to the Ministry of Transport report on container productivity at New Zealand ports. Nor has the union been paying attention to the Productivity Commission which estimates exporters and importers spend upwards of $5 billion a year on freight and has forecasted annual trade could be boosted by $1.25 billion if transport costs were shaved by 10 per cent. There is a national interest issue at stake here.

As usual, "the national interest" is just code for the interests of the rich. Who will benefit from that supposed $1.25 billion boost in trade? Not ordinary people. In a National economy, with high unemployment, low wages and tax cuts for the rich, only people at the very top benefit from growth. (Don't believe me? Take it from Statistics New Zealand). Meanwhile, ordinary people, in the form of wharfies and their families, will bear the costs. What O'Sullivan is hiding behind her grand talk of the "national interest" is the usual story of impoverishing the many for the enrichment of the few. Which isn't in our interests at all.

(This applies generally, BTW. Where economic growth results in costs (e.g. environmental destruction, lower wages, reduced government services, greater inequality) but no benefits for most people, then we have no reason to support it. If the rich want us to buy their rhetoric of "growing the cake", they need to actually share it with us).

But besides the distributional argument, there's an inconsistency here. If the shoe were on the other foot, and we were talking about taking half a billion a year off the ultra-rich in order to produce a larger social benefit (say, by applying their own logic to them and cutting their outrageous CEO salaries to make them work harder so that our business sector would be more efficient), O'Sullivan would be squealing about private property rights, theft, and the need for compensation. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If you believe rich people shouldn't be made worse off for the benefit of others (or be compensated if they are), then you must believe it for poor people too. Anything less is simply rank hypocrisy.

Tony Blair: Tax cheat?

2012-01-10T17:12:00.000+13:00

Back when he was campaigning to be British Prime Minister, Tony Blair was harsh about tax cheats, saying:

For those who can employ the right accountants, the tax system is a haven of scams, perks, City deals and profits.
"We should reward people who work hard and do well. We should not make our tax rules a playground for revenue avoiders and tax abusers who pay little or nothing while others pay more than their share."

Now that he's a former Prime Minister paid millions of pounds a year as a "consultant" for bankers and autocrats, its a different story:

When you have already spent half a million pounds on rent, £300,000 on furniture and £2.3m paying your staff, an extra £8m on unexplained “administrative expenses” might seem to be stretching credulity, but that is what Tony Blair has told Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, which as a consequence has received a rather smaller cheque from the former Prime Minister than it might have expected.
Records sent to Companies House reveal a substantial leap in Tony Blair's income in the year ending March 2011, but such a rise has not been passed on to the taxman. One of his many companies and partnerships, Windrush Ventures, declared a turnover of £12m, up from £8.5m the year before. But Mr Blair's accounts claim that just over £1m of this is profit, the rest written off as "administrative expenses", with no further explanation given for some £7.74m of the total. With the corporate tax rate at 28 per cent, this left Mr Blair with a tax liability of only £315,000.

It seems that Blair is now engaging in exactly the sort of dishonest cheating he once criticised - all of course while receiving a massive state pension and armed bodyguards for life courtesy of the UK taxpayer. Sadly, given Blair's past displays of hypocrisy and insincerity, its not exactly surprising.

What the Ports of Auckland dispute is about

2012-01-10T13:14:00.000+13:00

Ports of Auckland Chief Executive Tony Gibson has responded to the port worker's latest offer of a modest wage rise coupled with productivity improvements by threatening to casualise the entire workforce. Which shows despite the port's public rhetoric, this dispute isn't really about increasing the efficiency of the port. Instead, its about control and casualisation - and therefore ultimately about cuts to wages and conditions, about ruining people's lives and livelihoods in order to increase profits (and gain fat bonuses for "improved performance", of course). And Len Brown supports this. Its nice to know which side he's on.

As for Gibson, his behaviour - his refusal to negotiate, his swanning about on holiday rather than trying to solve the dispute, his reaction of rage to anything less than complete surrender, and now his threats - call to mind a certain personality type. And the consequence of that insistence on complete and utter control has been a loss of business for the company he manages, and a loss of value for its shareholders, the people of Auckland. They should hold him accountable for that. Sadly, given the way modern corporate governance insulates management from any real control, that seems unlikely.

Who benefits from National's charter schools?

2012-01-10T12:37:00.000+13:00

Destiny Church. They've announced plans to move their existing private school to South Auckland and re-establish it as a charter school in order to receive public funding.

This is what charter schools mean: giving taxpayer's money to cults to peddle their wackiness, without being subject to the normal curriculum or normal educational standards. Its about paying for indoctrination, rather than education. But that is no business of the education system, and not something that government money should be spent on.

Part of the problem

2012-01-09T15:03:00.001+13:00

Via Dim Post, John Key puts New Zealand writers in their place:

I have always believed we should enhance the literary skills of our young people and while our literary heroes may never challenge the glory and respect given to our All Blacks, we still need role models to inspire us.

The clear message? Literacy doesn't matter as much as sport.

Perhaps if our Prime Minister wasn't sending such messages, we wouldn't have such a problem with poor literacy in our society.

New Fisk

2012-01-09T12:34:00.001+13:00

The shocking truth that killing can be so casual

Len Brown shows his true colours

2012-01-09T12:25:00.001+13:00

So, Auckland Mayor Len Brown has intervened in the Port of Auckland’s dispute, appealing to the workers' patriotism as "loyal Aucklanders" and demanding that they accept casualisation "to make the port more productive and profitable for the council".

Right. So, in Len Brown's world, port workers are expected to sacrifice their livelihoods and job security so that Aucklanders - which in practice means rich pricks in Epsom - can enjoy lower rates. Fuck that shit. If the price of being a "loyal Aucklander" is accepting the sort of employment casualisation prelevant in the fast food industry, then his Auckland isn't worth any sort of loyalty. Len Brown wouldn't work under those conditions, and he shouldn't expect anyone else to.

And as for Brown, its nice to know where he really stands on workers' rights. All those people on the left who worked tirelessly to get him elected in 2010 should be reconsidering whether they'll give the same assistance next year. With attitudes like these, Brown isn't worth your vote, and he's certainly not worth your time. Time to find someone else to support.

Natural consequences

2012-01-04T10:18:00.001+13:00

Executive psycopaths, Gardiner Morse, Harvard Business Review October 2004:

Chances are good there’s a psychopath on your management team. Seriously. I’m not talking about the “psycho” boss that employees like to carp about—the hard-driving supervisor who sometimes loses it. He’s just difficult. Nor am I referring to the sort of homicidal “psychopath” Hollywood likes to serve up—Freddy Krueger, say, or Brando’s Colonel Kurtz. Neither is, clinically speaking, a psychopath.
I’m talking about the real thing, the roughly 1% of the population that is certifiably psychopathic. True psychopaths are diagnosed according to very specific clinical criteria, and they’re nothing like the popular conception. What stands out about bona fide psychopaths is that they’re so hard to spot. They’re chameleons. They have a cunning ability to act perfectly normally and indeed to be utterly charming, as they wreak havoc on the lives of the people around them and the companies they inhabit.
Many of psychopaths’ defining characteristics—their polish, charm, cool decisiveness, and fondness for the fast lane—are easily, and often, mistaken for leadership qualities...

Beware corporate psychopaths – they are still occupying positions of power, Brian Basham, Independent, 29 December 2011:

My companion, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.
He then makes an astonishing confession: "At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles."
Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.

Clive Boddy (2011) "The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis", Journal of Business Ethics 102:255-259:

The knowledge that Corporate Psychopaths are to be found at the top of organisations and seem to favour working with other people’s money in large financial organisations has in turn, led to the development of the Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis. The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is that Corporate Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of the whole organisation and yield [sic] considerable power, have largely caused the crisis. In these senior corporate positions, the Corporate Psychopath’s single-minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self aggrandizement to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to an abandonment of the old fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.
[...]
senior level remuneration and reward started to increase more and more rapidly and beyond all proportion to shop floor incomes and a culture of greed unfettered by conscience developed. Corporate Psychopaths are ideally situated to prey on such an environment and corporate fraud, financial misrepresentation, greed and misbehaviour went through the roof, bringing down huge companies and culminating in the Global Financial Crisis that we are now in.
Writing in 2005, this author commentating on Corporate Psychopaths predicted that the rise of Corporate Psychopaths was a recipe for corporate and societal disaster. This disaster has now happened and is still happening. Across the western world the symptoms of the financial crisis are now being treated. However, if the Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is correct, then this treatment of the symptoms will have little effect because the root cause is not being addressed. The very same Corporate Psychopaths, who probably caused the crisis by their self-seeking greed and avarice, are now advising governments on how to get out of the crisis. That this involves paying themselves vast bonuses in the midst of financial hardship for many millions of others, is symptomatic of the problem.

New Fisk

2012-01-04T09:27:00.000+13:00

Bonfire of the dictators
France's shamefully forgotten allies

Absolutely damning

2011-12-30T13:00:00.000+13:00

Last month, I highlighted the new Internal Administration Circular 11-10 [PDF], which requires immigration officials not to record reasons for their decisions, in violation of both the right to justice and the Public Records Act. I was curious about how the Department of Labour had come up with a policy which apparently violates New Zealand law, so I asked them, requesting all advice and communications on its drafting, including any legal advice on its consistency with the Public Records Act or on Immigration New Zealand's ability to defend a challenge to its decisions. Today I received a fat packet of emails and drafts - and they are absolutely damning.

The first point to note is that the offending clause was a rather late addition. The first draft of the revised circular took exactly the opposite approach, requiring a full rationale which

should show that the Immigration Officer has taken into consideration all the relevant facts of the case and has come to a logical, reasonable decision based on those facts.

This was then meant to be checked by a second officer to ensure quality decision-making. The first thing to go was the second-party check, after concerns were raised about it not matching existing practice ("officers make their own decisions"). The discussion email [PDF] calls this a "classic quality vs timeliness issue" - and the Department seems to have decided on timeliness.

As for the recording of reasons for decisions, according to the timeline provided [DOC], this decision was made in early July after concerns were raised by "Resolutions" [PDF]. The immigration officers concerned were remarkably frank about their reasons [PDF]:

[Resolutions] strongly feel that including rationale just opens us up to the risk of judicial review and ombudsman complaints.

And the ultimate reason for excluding them?

I wouldn't want to make it mandatory to put something (rationale) in AMS [DoL's database] which is likely to generate more work and complaints for branches.

Yes, that's right: they did it explicitly in an effort to thwart complaints.

There were no drafting instructions or Ministerial signoff for this decision. The new circular was developed by a business analyst, who according to the cover email [PDF] decided to "just forge ahead and redraft [it] and see if people scream". There was no legal advice on its consistency with the Public Records Act, and the matter is never raised in any of the email discussion - though in their cover letter the Department asserts consistency, maintaining that the note that a decision has been made is enough for compliance:

In the Department’s view, the recent guidance around section 61 clearly articulates the most prudent business practice in terms of recording decision making under section 61 given that section 61 decisions are made in an officer’s absolute discretion.

In my view, this conflates prudent business practice around avoiding complaints with prudent business practice around records management. But that, I guess, is ultimately a decision for the Chief Archivist to decide.

All-up, we have a government department which has acted deliberately to thwart judicial and Ombudsman oversight, for reasons of its own convenience, apparently in violation of New Zealand law. The question is whether the Minister will act - or whether he will effectively endorse this situation with his silence.

New Fisk

2011-12-30T12:16:00.000+13:00

Turkey's long road to reconciliation

Live by the market, be buried by the market

2011-12-23T10:09:00.000+13:00

Margaret Thatcher is one of Britain's greatest criminals, whose disbelief in society caused her to destroy it. As a former Prime Minister, she is in line for a state funeral when she dies (which will provide a focus for protest over her toxic legacy). Which is rather ironic, given her beliefs about the role of the state. And so someone has started an e-petition (a formal UK government consultation exercise which can trigger Parliamentary debates) demanding that her funeral be privatised:

In keeping with the great lady's legacy, Margaret Thatcher's state funeral should be funded and managed by the private sector to offer the best value and choice for end users and other stakeholders. The undersigned believe that the legacy of the former PM deserves nothing less and that offering this unique opportunity is an ideal way to cut government expense and further prove the merits of liberalised economics Baroness Thatcher spearheaded.

And they're right. Thatcher was an anti-statist. Surely she should live - and be buried - by those ideals, rather than leeching a final fling at the expense of hard-working taxpayers. Anything less would be hypocritical.

Meanwhile, on the Guardian, Sunny Hundal has some ideas on what Thatcher's privatised funeral could look like:

Consider the endless possibilities, for die-hard Thatcherites, of privatising the event. I think we can agree it should be ticketed so it can turn a profit. Perhaps an IT company (let's call them Crapita for example), could sell tickets via the internet. You may have to wait a couple of months to get the system off the ground but at least it'll work … eventually. If it's anything like the privatisation of the railways, none of the funeral services would run on time and you'd end up with 500 people in a church meant for 200.
But there could be optional extras otherwise denied by the state. You could pay to have an opportunity to wail, as North Koreans seem to have perfected. Wailing while stabbing a picture of Arthur Scargill should obviously cost much more. Opportunities to sell Thatcher memorabilia (a picture of her with Pinochet, sir?) would be endless. It could even boost our sagging economy.
The television rights to the event should be auctioned off, perhaps for a private library dedicated to Thatcher (with John Maynard Keynes banned from the economics section of course).

Unmentioned: selling the right to spit on the corpse or piss on her grave (because its going to happen, so they might as well get money for it). Hell, they could even provide the service, so that those unable to attend in person could have someone do it for them.

Morality? Taste? The market does not know of such things. And if you're happy with the mass unemployment, poverty and degradation which were the inevitable result of Thatcher's policies, you can hardly get prissy about a little matter of degrading a corpse. But if you want to be hypocritical about that too, you can always pay for it not to happen. That's what the free market would want.

The shock doctrine in Christchurch

2011-12-23T09:25:00.001+13:00

So, after two earthquakes and a year of struggle, Christchurch residents get to have more misery inflicted upon them, in the form of the privatisation of their hospitals:

Doctors are accusing the Government of starting the privatisation of health services, with a suggestion the private sector could help pay the $600 million cost of rebuilding Christchurch's public hospitals.
The Government is looking at the proposal, which includes allowing private investors to build and manage hospital buildings.

Tony Ryall says that this has "worked well overseas". In fact its been a complete disaster, with health authorities forced to cut services, close wards, sack staff and impose charges in order to pay the inflated fees of the (government-mandated) private providers. And its a bad deal financially: a UK National Audit Office study has found that PPPs there have not been value for money, and have resulted in the government paying £262bn so far for assets worth only £55bn (and that's so far; there are still 37 years to go on the contracts). But it funnels government money into the pockets of donors and cronies, which Ryall would probably consider success.

As for doing it in Christchurch, this is pure shock doctrine: take a disaster, and use it to ram through unpopular "reforms" which no-one would ever vote for if given the choice. If the people of Christchurch don't want their health system turned into a price-gouging "profit centre" for foreign parasites, they need to stand up against this. And if we don't want similar treatment to be inflicted on us eventually, we need to support them. This is just a foot in the door to the mass privatisation of public services, and the government abandoning its key role in the health sector to private enterprise. If you value your health, you need to help stop it.

This will be interesting

2011-12-22T15:09:00.000+13:00

Yunus Rahmatullah is a Pakistani citizen. In 2004 he was captured in Iraq by British special forces, handed over to the US, and rendered to the Americans' prison in Afghanistan. Now, a UK court has found that he is being unlawfully detained, and ordered the UK government to demand his return so he can be released.

This will be interesting. Rahmatullah was handed over under a Memorandum of Understanding which allows the UK to also demand his return. But the Americans are alreay dragging their feet, and may be unwilling to effectively release someone they regard as an "enemy combatant". But if they don't, then they'll be breaking their word to their closest ally. This won't just place any future prisoner transfers in doubt - it would also expose British officials to war crimes charges for breaching the Geneva Conventions.

But its also potentially relevant here. New Zealand troops in Afghanistan have similarly taken prisoners and handed them over to the US. As with the UK, those prisoners are our continuing legal responsibility. Meanwhile, New Zealand courts pay attention to UK precedent because of the close parallels in our legal system. Which means that our prisoners (who remain our legal responsibility, even while in US custody) could similarly challenge their detention, and possibly succeed.

The meatworkers win

2011-12-22T13:11:00.000+13:00

Two months ago, Canterbury Meat Packers locked out its staff at CMP Rangitikei in an effort to extort a 20% wage cut and force its staff to work harder for less money. Today, the parties reached a settlement - and CMP has been forced to back down:

Following negotiations yesterday a settlement was reached that has now been accepted by the workers and while some pay cuts have been agreed, these have been reduced to a level that the workers were prepared to accept. Importantly all the non cost conditions that the company sought to also remove have been put back in the new agreement and the workers will be paid a $500 payment on return to work. There are a number of other improved provisions in the agreement.

So, not total victory, but still a win, and made possible because the community stood behind them. OTOH, in the bigger picture, its the workers who made the sacrifice, while their bosses keep getting bonuses. And that is fundamentally unjust.

Climate change: Europe acts on air travel

2011-12-22T12:47:00.001+13:00

The European Union has defeated a legal challenge to its plans to include airlines in the European ETS - meaning that from January 1, any plane travelling to or from Europe will have to start paying the cost of their pollution. Good. Air travel is estimated by the IPCC to be responsible for 3.5% of overall climate change, and is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Its exclusion from the EU-ETS was an anomaly which should have been corrected long ago. And now that they're in, they'll have a direct economic incentive to clean up their act, use more fuel efficient aircraft and flight plans to minimise their environmental impact.

Meanwhile, the US, whose airlines challenged the law, is refusing to accept it, and has passed a law making it illegal to pay European carbon charges. Which means their airlines will either have their planes seized on the tarmac for non-payment, or will no longer be able to fly to Europe.

(Meanwhile, I'm waiting for John Key to again whine that it is "unfair" for air passengers to pay for their pollution. No, its not. What's "unfair" is them not paying for it. Why should the rest of us environmentally subsidise rich jet-setters?)

MMP review: Overhangs

2011-12-21T15:20:00.001+13:00

MMP is currently being reviewed, with an issues paper due out in February. In anticipation of that, I'm doing a series of posts on the review questions. This one will focus on the fifth question:

What should happen when a party wins more electorate seats than it would be entitled to under its share of the party vote

Or, what should we do about overhangs?

Overhangs are a Bad Thing. They distort the proportionality of the House, which is the reason we shifted to MMP in the first place. But they're also a necessary consequence of the system, the price we pay for having electorates. Given that we're committed to a mixed member proportional system, and list-only PR is not on the table in this review (it would require a referendum, both legally and morally), the question is how to deal with them.

Currently, the law has two ways of doing this. If the party is registered, we expand the size of the House. If its not, or an independent wins a seat, we don't. This is obviously inconsistent, and there seems to be no reason for the distinction (though, as an independent or an unregistered party has never won a seat, it doesn't particularly matter). One popular suggestion is that we should fix the size of the House and follow the second method for all extra MPs. I disagree, because this seems to distort proportionality even more. Its bad enough if a party wins more electorates than its entitled to. Its adding insult to injury if you then expect the other parties (and, indirectly, their voters) to pay for it.

Inconsistent

2011-12-21T13:06:00.000+13:00

Just before the election, in a fairly transparent display of kicking criminals for votes, the government introduced the Prisoners' and Victims' Claims (Redirecting Prisoner Compensation) Amendment Bill to the House. As the title suggests, the bill amends the Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Act to remove any possibility of abused prisoners receiving financial compensation, regardless of the severity of the abuse. As convicted criminals, they will have no rights.

Today, the Attorney-General found that to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act [PDF] and with our obligations under international law. Their reasoning is worth repeating:

Enjoyment of the basic human rights is the entitlement of every citizen. Denial of an effective remedy to a particular group of society excludes that group from the protection of the Bill of Rights Act.
The exclusion of prisoners from the protections of the rights affirmed in the Bill of Rights Act is objectionable. Prisoners are subject to the day to day control and exercise of coercive power by the state, and as such are especially vulnerable to misuse of state power.
This group's position is recognised by rights relating to those in custody in s23(5), which provides that everyone deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the person. Denying prisoners the effective protection of the rights affirmed in s 23, specially enacted for their protection, is unjustifiable.

Sadly, I expect the National Party, driven by a desire to grub votes by pandering to the "hang 'em high" brigade, will ignore this. Which neatly highlights the problem with the Bill of Rights Act: it is predicated on MPs doing their jobs, and taking s7 reports seriously as a warning to stop and think before passing a law. They don't. Very few debates on bills subject to a s7 report engage with the human rights concerns raised, and Ministers seem to regard such reports as a sign they're "tough", a badge of honour rather than an indictment.

If Parliament won't do its job as the guardian of our rights, its time we took it off them and gave it to the courts by entrenching the BORA as supreme law. Politicians have shown that they cannot be trusted. Judges can be. At the least, they have to give reasons - which is more than our politicians ever do.

Threatening democracy

2011-12-21T12:25:00.001+13:00

This is unbelievable. Just days after being confirmed as Minister for Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee is interfering in the Christchurch City Council and threatening to use his powers to sack councillors who oppose Mayor Bob Parker:

Days after being reappointed, Brownlee waded into Christchurch politics, accusing some councillors of being ill-informed and not supporting Mayor Bob Parker.
"There is a case for some elected members of the council to step up and learn a little more about what is going on than they know at the moment.
"We need to get past the idea that we are waiting for someone else to do it," he said. "I have great sympathy for the mayor. I don't know that he is all that well supported by the council."
[...]
Brownlee said several people had asked him to "sack the bloody council and you guys [Cera] can get on with it", but Cera was not big enough to take over all of the council's role.
"We are a small organisation and you need people who know where things are at."
However, he did not rule out using his special powers to sack councillors or assume some of the council's responsibilities.

Sacking an entire council and turning Canterbury into a dictatorship was bad enough; threatening politically motivated sackings of elected representatives in order to make life easier for your political allies is even worse. But apparently its now par for the course for our dictatorial National government.

No abstention

2011-12-21T11:58:00.001+13:00

As expected, the Greens have responded to John Key's demand for vassalage with a polite "fuck off and die". And given the contents of today's speech from the throne, its not surprising. Through its mouthpiece, it promised the weakening of environmental protections, the gutting of the ETS, more mining and drilling, as well as privatisation, more inequality, and more cruelty towards both the poor and those in the power of the state. This is the exact opposite of what the Greens stand for, and therefore they couldn't support a government promising such savagery to remain in power. They'll still explore ways they can work together, on the few positive things National plans to do, but the general approach will be one of opposition.

Swearing in

2011-12-20T11:46:00.001+13:00

Last year, Speaker Lockwood Smith banned the longstanding practice of making an alternative affirmation (to the Treaty, to the people of New Zealand, whatever) in an effort to enforce a monolithic (and outdated) view of our constitution and culture. Anyone making an alternative affirmation would be ejected from the chamber, rather than simply asked to do it again properly. By banning this low-key form of protest, he invited more disruptive forms - and that was demonstrated today, with Hone Harawira making a loud speech about the Treaty as he was approaching the Clerk to be sworn in. Entirely within Standing Orders (or at least those enforced by the Clerk today) - but rather more disruptive to the chamber than the previous low-key protests.

And that's what happens when you ban quiet protest: it doesn't make people shut up, it doesn't make the issue go away, it simply makes them angry and invites more disruptive methods to get the message across.

The Greens, BTW, seem to have decided as a caucus not to protest individually, but to make the affirmation and call on the government to modernize it afterwards. Key's comments in that article about there being no need for change shows the futility of that approach. If the Greens want change, they need to highlight the issue. There are ways of doing that politely, while complying with Standing Orders (e.g. holding their own public swearing-in ceremony before or after the formal one, with modern oaths, and inviting everyone of like mind to come along). But they've sadly missed the opportunity for doing that this year.

Good luck with that

2011-12-20T10:47:00.001+13:00

National has begun talks with the Greens on a policy agreement, but are playing hardball, with John Key demanding abstention on confidence and supply in exchange for any policy crumbs.

Good luck with that. The Greens have repeatedly stressed that it is highly unlikely that they will support National in this way. I think that's putting it in too positive a light. The chances of the parliamentary Green party, let alone the Green membership (who get to vote on any substantive agreement) giving any sort of support on confidence and supply to a government committed to polluting our rivers and oceans, destroying the global climate, digging up our conservation land and selling our state assets is zero. The cost of such support would be for National to abandon those policies, the chances of which are also zero. So, if the parties want to work together in any way, then they need to accept that any deal will not include anything in the nature of confidence and supply, and instead find areas where they do have common ground.

Neither party needs to make a deal here. National already has its majority, and the Greens understand that they are unlikely to get anything significant (and certainly not anything National didn't want to do anyway). Which makes Key's demand for vassalage as the price of anything all the more puzzling. But maybe that second-term arrogance is kicking in already.

Rejuventation

2011-12-19T14:44:00.001+13:00

David Shearer has announced Labour's new lineup, and it looks like a total rejuvenation for the party. The tired old faces of the Clark era (and their baggage) are gone, relegated to the backbenches. Instead, prominence is given to Labour's class of 2008, people like Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern, Su'a William Sio and Phil Twyford. Yes, the front bench has some former junior Clark Ministers on it - Parker, Cunliffe, Cosgrove, Mahuta - but the overall tone is of generation shift.

Despite their drop in rankings, the old guard get to keep significant responsibilities - for the moment. Parekura Horomia still gets to run Maori Affairs from the backbenches, and Phil Goff takes up Foreign Affairs again (which is what he's good at). But with these people expected to retire in the next term, they'll need to relinquish their responsibilities sometime before the next election to allow time for their replacements to settle in and get up to speed.

Overall, it looks like a good lineup. It sends the message Labour needs to send: change! Now we've just got to hope that they're up to it.

MMP review: Open lists

2011-12-19T12:07:00.001+13:00

MMP is currently being reviewed, with an issues paper due out in February. In anticipation of that, I'm doing a series of posts on the review questions. This one will focus on the fourth question:

Whether voters or political parties should decide the order of candidates on a party list

As someone who favours giving power to voters rather than parties, my answer is "yes". But how can it be done?

Wikipedia has information on the various open list systems used overseas. The basic system is that voters can tick a party, and (or by) tick one or more candidates on that party's list. Which means that you need a bigger ballot paper, or multiple ballot papers (one per party), or numbered candidates and a box to write in. Any candidate who gets more than a set threshold (usually some fraction of the list's quota, the effective number of votes required to elect a single MP on it, and varying with the weight assigned to the party's choice) goes straight to the top of the list, in order of votes received.

The effectiveness of such a system depends on how many voters use it. In the Netherlands, most simply vote for their chosen party's top candidate in order to ensure they enter Parliament. In Sweden, over 25% of voters pick a candidate, and low-ranking candidates are regularly elected against their original list-ranking. Given the significant extra expense and hassle involved, I think we'd want to see some research about how many people would actually use this option, and review it after a couple of elections to see whether the use justified that hassle. But I think its worth a serious look. One of the biggest complaints about MP is that it took power from voters and gave it to the party's list makers (as opposed to its local selection committee); open lists would give us that power back.

New Fisk

2011-12-19T11:09:00.000+13:00

The adventures of Tintin in Beirut

MMP review: By-elections

2011-12-16T17:27:00.001+13:00

MMP is currently being reviewed, with an issues paper due out in February. In anticipation of that, I'm doing a series of posts on the review questions. This one will focus on the third question:

Whether list MPs should be able to stand as candidates in a by-election

The reason for this is because of the 2009 Mt Albert by-election, in which three of the top four candidates were sitting list MPs. The result was that voters were in a sense not really voting for these candidates to enter Parliament, but for the next person on their respective party lists. This seems a little odd, and led to calls to ban sitting list MPs from standing (or rather, force them to resign in order to stand, which would effectively be the same thing). But I think this oddity disappears when you stop to think about what an electorate vote means under MMP.

Under MMP, as we keep being told, we have two votes. The party vote you give to the party you want to represent you in Parliament. The electorate vote you give to the person you want to be your local representative. And that latter bit is the key here. In MMP by-elections, we're no longer voting for who we want to see in Parliament, any more than we are in electorate contests in general elections. We're voting for who we want to represent us, locally. Whether that person is currently a list MP, and whether their victory will see them joined by the next person on the list is strictly irrelevant to that question.

Backing this up is the culture which has emerged under MMP of list MPs adopting local electorates. These list MPs are the natural candidates in any by-election. They already have an established relationship with their local constituents, and may be regarded by some of them as a preferred choice. Prohibiting them from contesting by-elections denies voters that choice. It does mean that it doesn't really matter which of them wins - they're fighting over the right to call themselves MP for X rather than MP from X - but that's largely true of general elections as well. MMP was meant to make electorates meaningless, and turn them into pure competitions about local representation. And dual candidacy in by-elections lets that happen.

OTOH, its not the most important issue in the world. If the review comes back with a recommendation to prohibit list MPs from contesting by-elections, its not going to distort our democracy or cause anyone to lose any sleep. But to some extent, I think its a non-issue anyway; the initial grumpiness seems to have been driven by the spectre of Judith Tizard, and was entirely absent during the subsequent Mana and Te Tai Tokerau by-elections, despite both being contested by list MPs.

Irrelevant and out-of-touch

2011-12-16T13:36:00.001+13:00

Oh dear. It looks like "our" foreign monarch doesn't actually know who "her" representative in New Zealand is:

The Governor-General is The Queen's representative in New Zealand. As such, he or she performs the same constitutional role in New Zealand as The Queen does in the United Kingdom.
The current incumbent is the Honourable Sir Anand Satyanand, GNZM, QSO.

Satch left office at the end of August. Jerry Mateparae has been Governor-General for the last three months. I guess no-one bothered to tell his "boss". Which just shows how irrelevant and out of touch the foreign monarchy is.

Feudal relics

2011-12-16T13:03:00.001+13:00

The Republican Movement of Aotearoa New Zealand highlights the feudalism which still lies at the heart of our constitution:

The Governor-General appointed a new government today. By doing so he used one of his "reserve powers" - the ability to appoint the Prime Minister and Cabinet (technically the Executive Council) without anyone "advising" him to do so. All on his own, he re-appointed Prime Minister John Key. In the smoke and mirrors world of "our" constitutional monarchy, the fact that we had an election - where we all had a say last month - doesn't feature.
[...]
The Governor-General's re-appointment of the Prime Minister is a nicety. It has no practical value other than to remind us that under the constitutional monarchy, power comes from a monarch. It's as if that election we had was just to arrange the seats in the Governor-General's debating club.

This is a relic of feudalism, when the monarch was supreme, Parliament was just their debating club, and the Prime Minister was the monarch's Prime Minister. But that hasn't been the case in our constitutional structure for over three hundred years, and while there has been further evolution since then (notably the introduction of democracy), its been the case ever since that it is Parliament which makes governments, not the monarch. And yet we continue the old feudal fiction in our public ceremonies. Other examples are the Speaker of the House being granted the House's privileges by the Governor-General (rather than asserting them at axe-point), and the House being summoned "to tell the members of Parliament the Government’s reasons for bringing Parliament together to meet" (rather than it meeting by itself as the independent and legitimate source of political power).

Like the oath, these feudal relics do not reflect the values of modern, democratic New Zealand. And its time we expunged them. Parliament should formally elect the Prime Minister, rather than them being appointed by an unelected head of state. Its privileges should be set in statute, rather than being dependent on the grace and favour of the representative of a foreign monarch. And it should set its own agenda, rather than being ceremonially told by that foreign monarch's representative what it should discuss. Symbols matter, and ours should reflect our values, not those of a long-ago and far away foreign country.

MPs and oaths

2011-12-16T12:40:00.000+13:00

On Tuesday, the new Parliament will meet for the first time and MPs will be sworn in. The oath they use is a matter of some contention, requiring allegiance to a foreign monarch rather than the people of New Zealand, and failing to mention the Treaty of Waitangi, our founding document. It reflects the values of nineteenth century Britain, not those of modern New Zealand.

The Greens at least are aware of this, and a number of them (including Holly Walker and Gareth Hughes) have set up a survey asking for your views. At the least, it will inform them in their work to reform the oaths and turn them into something more appropriate for a modern, democratic society. But it may also be a prelude to a few making a symbolic protest over the oath to highlight the issue.

A Trojan horse

2011-12-16T11:47:00.001+13:00

Over the weekend the government signed a confidence and supply agreement with the Maori Party [PDF]. A core provision of this agreement was a "Ministerial Committee on Poverty". You'd think from its title that this committee would be about finding ways to reduce poverty, but you'd be wrong. Instead, its about finding ways for the government to save money:

Deputy Prime Minister Bill English is clear what the new ministerial committee on poverty he heads won't be about - it won't set about throwing money at the problem of what he calls "hand-wringing or writing strategies".
It will be concerned with getting the best results from the hundred of millions of dollars being spent on social service delivery, he says.

In other words, "efficiencies" and cuts. And actual poor people and their lives and life-chances? They will be sacrificed to the almighty god of austerity. So much for the Maori Party actually helping its people.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bill English, who will be chairing the Committee, seems to think that they won't need to actually measure poverty in any way because "a lot of that is already reported in the MSD's Social Report that it puts out each year" [audio, about 2 minutes in]. I guess he didn't get the memo that the Social Report has been cancelled, precisely to stop it from reporting those measures. Which doesn't exactly give us reason to have faith in him or his committee.

An "extraordinary achievement"

2011-12-15T16:39:00.001+13:00

With the last US soldiers scheduled to leave Iraq within days, US President Barack Obama is praising their "extraordinary achievement". What "achievement" is that? A million civilian casualties? Three million refugees? It's extraordinary all right (and all the more so because the perpetrators of this atrocity are still walking free rather than in a dock in The Hague) - but only a sociopath would call it any sort of "achievement".

Still, at least its over. The problem is how to stop the US from engaging in this sort of atrocity ever again.

Protecting the Mackenzie Country

2011-12-15T15:13:00.001+13:00

In 2009, the Mackenzie District Council issued Plan Change 13, which sought increased protection for the area's natural environment by classifying it as an outstanding natural landscape (which has legal consequences under the RMA). The plan change was watered down after public consultation, but that wasn't good enough for the region's farmers, who wanted any suggestion of natural landscape values (which might prevent them irrigating and factory farming) expunged. So, they appealed to the Environment Court - which, after 18 months, has delivered them and the Council a stinging rebuke by restoring the original classification:

Environment Court judge Jon Jackson's 170-page interim decision, released yesterday, suggested the commissioners' decision did not go far enough.
The Mackenzie Basin as a whole was "an outstanding natural landscape", rather than an area which features outstanding landscapes, as suggested by the hearings commissioners, he said.
Judge Jackson was also concerned the plan change "left hanging" several important issues about the basin's environment – including land-use intensification and wilding pine control.
"Not only are there matters of national importance involved, but several of the core elements of sustainable management," he said.
"If there is only one foreseeable, in fact, obvious, need for everyone, it is that they wish to experience the outstanding natural landscape and foreground to Aoraki-Mt Cook."

This isn't over yet; the Council can still appeal, as potentially could the various farmers who tried to weaken protections. But it significantly shifts the baseline towards protection and away from intensive farming in the Mackenzie. And hopefully that shift will continue.

The US is now a third world nation

2011-12-15T13:30:00.001+13:00

Running water and sewage is a basic of living in the developed world, their absence one of the defining features of underdevelopment. So its shocking to see that, thanks to the economic crisis and local government corruption, poor people in the US are now going without these basics:

Tammy Lucas is the human face of a financial and political scandal that has brought one of the most deprived communities in America's south to the point of what some local people believe is collapse.
She says: "If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch up the light, my water might get cut off. So we're in between. We can't make it like this."
Mrs Lucas's monthly sewerage rate bills - the amount levied by the county to flush away waste and provide water for baths and showers - has quadrupled in the past 15 years. She says it is currently running at $150 (£97) a month, which leaves little left out of her $600 social security check for food and electricity.

So, the US is now a place where ordinary people can't afford even to drink from the tap or shit in their own toilet. Meanwhile, of course, the people at the top hiked their pay by 30 - 40% last year. No wonder people are occupying Wall Street...

Monarchy is no safeguard

2011-12-15T12:02:00.001+13:00

One of the myths of monarchy is that it is the ultimate constitutional safeguard, with the monarch able to step in and sort out any constitutional crisis. The current crisis in Papua New Guinea is a perfect disproof of that. Thanks to the refusal of the previous Prime Minister to accept the ruling of the Supreme Court, they now have two parallel governments: two Prime Ministers, two cabinets, and two Governor-Generals. As for the Queen "sorting out" the crisis, she doesn't want a bar of it:

While either of the two sides could seek the royal assent to their choice as governor-general, the Queen is likely to try to avoid a decision until the turmoil resolves internally.
Experts said Buckingham Palace will be very unlikely to put phone calls from the Pacific nation through to the Queen.
[...]
"She would most likely not act until it became absolutely clear who was the prime minister and comprised the national executive council. While there was any doubt on that question, she would be unlikely to act ... Buckingham Palace will make sure that whoever answers the phone will give a placatory answer but they will be canny in not getting the Queen involved. If I were her, I would become rather hard to contact."

So much for the "ultimate safeguard". If Papua New Guineans want a solution, they'll have to find it themselves. As for the Queen, she'll just rubberstamp the eventual outcome, no matter what. Which makes you wonder why anyone bothers with her.

Churnalism from Garth George

2011-12-15T11:47:00.001+13:00

The Herald's Garth George has already got a reputation for plagiarism, and he's at it again, lifting the core of this morning's column on the evils of the Greens from a press release from Right To Life head Ken Orr. Compare and contrast: here's "George":

As a pro-life mate of mine reminded me this week, in 2008 the Greens in the Victorian Parliament voted for the decriminalisation of abortion. This meant that it was no longer a crime to kill an unborn child and Victoria now has the most permissive abortion law in the world. It provides that any woman can demand an abortion for any reason.
The Greens in Australia also support same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption, and an education system which teaches that homosexuality is normal.
Last year the Greens promoted bills to legalise euthanasia in the New South Wales, Western Australian and Victorian Parliaments. Senator Bob Brown, the leader of the Greens in the Australian federal Parliament, has said that passing euthanasia laws is a top priority.
My mate reckons that the New Zealand electorate ought to recognise that in our Parliament the Greens represent a threat to the protection of the right to life of unborn children, the elderly and the ill and to the institution of marriage as exclusively between one woman and one man.
He points out that the Green Party in Germany has similar policies.

And Orr:

The election of 14 Members of Parliament from the Greens Party is a matter of grave concern. The electorate should be aware of the hidden agenda of the Greens Party.
In 2008 in the Victorian Parliament the Greens voted for the decriminalisation of abortion which meant that it was no longer a crime to kill an unborn child. Victoria now has the most permissive abortion law in the world. The law provides for abortion on demand and a woman can now demand an abortion for any reason.
The Greens in Australia support same sex marriage and same sex adoption. The Greens also support the education system teaching that homosexuality is normal.
In 2010 the Greens promoted Bills to legalise euthanasia in the New South Wales, Western Australian and Victorian Parliaments. Senator Bob Brown the leader of the Greens in Australia has said that passing euthanasia laws was a top priority.
The electorate should recognise that the Greens represent in our Parliament a threat to the protection of the right to life of unborn children, the elderly and the ill and to the institution of marriage as exclusively between one woman and one man. The Greens Party in Germany has similar policies.

This is pure churnalism, a word-for-word regurgitation of PR with no additional research or journalistic work. While its par for the course for time-pressed hacks, its a bit odd to see it in an opinion column. Surely the Herald is paying George for his opinion, not that of whichever press release last crossed his desk?

The giveaway was that he used Australian examples. Ironically, he didn't need to - there are plenty of examples of the New Zealand Greens supporting equality and human rights for all. They put up a bill for same-sex adoption in 2006, they support same-sex marriage as a matter of party policy, and they recognise the danger of homophobic bullying in our schools. While they don't seem to have policy on it, they've overwhelmingly supported death with dignity and abortion rights. If George had bothered to spend five minutes with Google, he would have learned all that - and avoided looking like a lazy plagiarising hack in the process.

MMP review: Dual candidacy

2011-12-14T15:59:00.001+13:00

MMP is currently being reviewed, with an issues paper due out in February. In anticipation of that, I'm doing a series of posts on the review questions. This one will focus on the second question:

[Should] a person should be able to stand as a candidate both for an electorate seat and on a party list?

Being able to run as an electorate candidate and on the party list is known as dual candidacy. And there are two main gripes about it. The first is "zombie MPs", incumbent candidates who are defeated in their electorate but return via the party list (examples this term include Paula Bennett, Clayton Cosgrove and Chris Auchinvole). The feeling here is that these MPs have been "given the boot" by their electorates, and so it is unfair in some way that they return "by the back door". But this, like the electorates themselves, is a legacy of FPP and its parochial structure of representation. Under MMP, there are two ways for MPs to be elected: via an electorate, and via the party list. The former requires a local constituency, the latter a national one. Zombie MPs have lost the first, but they retain the second, which is a democratic mandate for their election. National Party voters across the country voted for Bennett and Auchinvole, which is why they're in Parliament. And its entirely inappropriate for local hicks in Waitakere or West Coast-Tasman to exercise a parochial veto on that national-level support.

(People might also want to remember that there are different scales of loss. Was Paula Bennett, who lost by 11 votes, "given the boot" by the people of Waitakere? Was Brendon Burns, who fell 47 votes short, "kicked out" by the voters of Christchurch Central? In a tight electorate contest, there doesn't seem much of a mandate for preventing someone from taking up a list seat).

But while everyone focuses on "zombie MPs", they miss the real picture. Its not just defeated incumbents who can return via the list, but defeated challengers - people like David Parker, Hekia Parata, and Russel Norman. All of these candidates contested unwinnable electorates in an effort to build a constituency; all lost. Without dual candidacy, that would be that - meaning that you simply would not get such high-profile challenges. While this might work for the major parties (who have no shortage of candidates, and some sort of process by which candidates who try and fail in an unwinnable seat might eventually get a crack at a safer one), it would be absolutely disastrous for the smaller ones. Without dual candidacy, smaller parties could not risk any of their high-profile talent in electorate contests. At best, this would mean that small party voters could never vote in an electorate for anyone they actually wanted to win it; more likely, it would mean they largely abandoned electorate races to focus solely on the party vote. And that would be a tragedy for our democracy.

As a final note, I think the culture of list MPs adopting electorates, combined with the slow dying-off of old FPP generation, will see these concerns disappear. Many electorates now effectively have multiple MPs serving them, with voters making no distinction over who won or lost the electorate race and who came in on the list. As that becomes more ingrained, FPP-driven concerns about "zombies" should fade.

Burns is out; let the Dolchstoßlegende begin!

2011-12-14T12:18:00.000+13:00

The judicial recount in Christchurch Central is complete, and National's Nicky Wagner has won by 47 votes. Which means its about time for the Labour hacks to start their angry Dolchstoßlegende muttering about how their guy would have won, if it wasn't for the Greens - just as they did over Epsom and Ohariu. Obviously, this is true in a mathematical sense; the 2,321 votes won by David Moorhouse is far more than Wagner's tiny majority. But its predicated on an absolutely toxic assumption: that Green supporters owe Labour their votes, and that they have some obligation to stand aside to let Labour win. Which is absolutely nonsensical.

To point out the obvious: the Greens are their own party, with their own priorities. If Labour wants their electorate votes, it has to earn them. Clearly, Labour does earn some of those votes (Iain Lees-Galloway earned mine). Equally clearly, it doesn't earn them all. Stamping your feet and demanding support out of some assumed feudal overlordship of the left is unlikely to help earn more. And doing it where the outcome is absolutely meaningless (as here) just makes you look even more arrogant.

(And yes, it is meaningless. Under MMP, whether voters in Christchurch Central chose Nicky Wagner or Brendon Burns makes no difference to the overall outcome. It makes no difference even in terms of the Labour list; Burn's success would simply have meant the elimination of some other Labour MP. The only person it matters to is Brendon Burns. But while its a tragedy for him, and for Labour's organisation in Christchurch, it means absolutely nothing in terms of the balance of power in the House).

Austerity fails in Greece

2011-12-14T11:12:00.001+13:00

For the past year, whenever the IMF, ECB, and politicians have talked about Greece, its always been about the need for austerity: more cuts, more sackings, less spending. And now, that austerity has had the predictable result: economic collapse:

The International Monetary Fund slashed its growth forecasts for Greece and warned that ever-deepening recession was making it harder for the debt-ridden country to meet the tough deficit reduction targets under its austerity programme.
In a report likely to fan financial market concerns about a possible debt default, the regular health check by staff at the Washington-based Fund said the situation in Greece had "taken a turn for the worse".
[...]
The IMF, together with the European Union and the European Central Bank has imposed tough conditions on Greece as the price of financial support that has allowed the government in Athens to continue paying its bills. In the fifth report carried out since the start of the crisis 18 months ago, IMF officials suggested that the austerity programme might need to be eased in view of the damage being caused to the economy by the recession.

At least they seem to finally be realising that they've made a mistake. Unfortunately, it will be the Greek people, rather than these unelected foreign technocrats, who will suffer the consequences.

Farmers lie about dirty dairying

2011-12-14T10:50:00.001+13:00

Dirty dairying is one of our country's biggest environmental problems, resulting in polluted waterways and undrinkable (and unswimmable) water. But the government fobs off concern about it, pointing to the "Clean Streams Accord", an agreement between Fonterra, central government and regional councils, under which Fonterra promises to get its farmers to clean up their act voluntarily. Every year, MAF produces an annual snapshot of progress (collected here), and every year it shows that farmers are slowly but surely fencing their waterways, complying with the RMA, and setting nutrient budgets. So we don't have a problem, right?

Wrong. That report is based on what farmers tell Fonterra assessors every year. And it turns out that they lie, overstating their compliance on excluding stock from waterways by 100%:

The Clean Streams Accord’s Snapshot of Progress claims that 84 percent of Fonterra dairy farms have fully fenced off all Accord-type waterways. However a technical report by MAF, also released today, reports that just 42 percent of farms had achieved complete stock exclusion from Accord waterways.

(Link added)

Which neatly explains why, despite annual snapshots showing regular progress, our lakes and streams get dirtier and dirtier. Our farmers are not committed to resolving this problem. They just tell the assessors whatever they want to hear, and continue on behaving in their old, polluting ways. Fonterra gets greenwash headlines, the government gets to pretend there is no problem, farmers make money at the expense of the rest of us... and our environment continues to be destroyed.

Obviously, this isn't good enough. Self-regulation is a failure. If we want this problem solved, then we need real regulation. Which in practice means regional councils stepping in and requiring total stock exclusion from their waterways in their regional plans, and being willing to vigorously police and prosecute farmers to force compliance. Otherwise, they'll just continue doing exactly what they're doing: shitting in our rivers, and then lying about it.

Obscene

2011-12-13T16:43:00.000+13:00

A woman in Saudi Arabia has been executed for "witchcraft and sorcery". This is simply obscene. The death penalty is bad enough, but applying it on the basis of superstition and fairytales makes a total mockery of justice.

Climate change: Canada cheats on Kyoto

2011-12-13T16:35:00.001+13:00

Canada is withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. On the one hand, its not exactly surprising; the Harper government is full of climate change deniers, and openly hostile to international law. On the other hand, its also a blatant violation of their word, an attempt to cheat the Protocol and avoid meeting their obligations under it. Since they've done nothing to cut their emissions, that would have meant paying someone else to make equivalent cuts under the Protocol's "flexible mechanisms". The Canadian government is talking up the cost of this - C$13.6 billion, or C$1,600 for every Canadian - but that's what happens if you let your emissions grow. And just imagine what that C$13.6 billion could have done to green Canada's energy supplies...

The real worry is that this sets a bad precedent, and invites other polluter nations to do the same. Why meet your obligations, if you can just withdraw? Whatever comes after Kyoto (if anything does), we need to make sure that it cannot be cheated in this way again.

Constitutional crisis in PNG

2011-12-13T12:04:00.000+13:00

Last year, Papua New Guinea's long-serving Prime Minister Michael Somare was ousted due to absence. The removal was immediately challenged in the courts, and today the Supreme Court has declared it unconstitutional and ordered Somare's reinstatement. But at the same time, Parliament rammed through retrospective validating legislation declaring that the removal was legal; they also seem to have advised the Governor-General (who of course complied) to revoke Somare's leave of absence as an MP and declare his seat vacant - making it difficult for him to resume his position. So, PNG now seems to have two Prime Ministers, one backed by the courts, and one by Parliament, though the Governor-General seems to be backing the former for now. As for the current (previous?) government, they'll be facing contempt of court charges for their blatant attempts to interfere with the judicial process.

This could go in all sorts of unpleasant directions (there has already been an armed standoff outside Government House, and reports of gunfire). The safest, of course, would be for Somare to resume his position and face an immediate confidence vote (seeing as he can't govern without the backing of Parliament anyway). The question is whether PNG will take that path, or whether one faction or another will start a coup.

It's David

2011-12-13T11:27:00.001+13:00

Journalists tweeting from outside the Labour caucus room report that David Shearer is the new Labour leader, with Grant Robertson as his deputy. The question now is whether he'll live up to expectations, or whether Labour has made a terrible mistake in gambling on charisma rather than proven competence. And while they're not my party, it does matter; Labour's ability to present a credible alternative Prime Minister and win votes is vital to the success of any left-wing coalition.

Of course, there are other questions too: whether he'll clean out the dead wood (the fact that they are his primary supporters suggests not), whether he'll retain the left-wing platform Labour ran on this election, or shift right in an effort to "me too" National... and whether he'll use Cunliffe's obvious talents, or waste them on the backbenches in petty punishment (sadly, Labour's internal culture suggests the latter - but I'd love to be proven wrong). Either way, Labour's got a leader, and we're stuck with them for at least three years. And we just have to try and make the best of it.

New Fisk

2011-12-13T11:08:00.001+13:00

Alaa al-Aswany: 'Overthrowing Mubarak was too good to be true'

Climate change: Ruining my future

2011-12-12T16:22:00.000+13:00

So, Durban is done and the fix is in. Oh yes, they have a "framework" for a new climate deal with "legal force", covering both developed and developing nations. But even if its successful, it won't be finalised until 2015, and won't come into effect until 2020. The graph below, from Shaping Tomorrow's World, tells you everything you need to know about the effectiveness of such a deal:

The longer we wait, the harder the task of keeping stabilising CO₂ concentrations gets. By choosing to wait until 2020 before doing anything, our governments have made the job more than twice as hard, forcing us to cut emissions by 9% a year rather than 3.7%. And by doing so, they've also set themselves up to declare the problem to be "too hard" and avoid doing anything at all.

In other words, our governments at Durban have just decided to let the planet burn, so they can continue to live in artificial, unsustainable comfort for another decade. This isn't just a matter of them ruining the world for their children and grandchildren; they're also ruining it for you and me. I expect to live for another forty or fifty years, barring accidents. And these rich, polluting fucks have just decided that the world I'm going to be living in will be much worse than the one I live in now. As you might be able to tell, I'm pretty pissed about that.

And just to top it all off, New Zealand is part of the problem. We've abandoned Kyoto, refused to be part of the EU-led deal for a provisional second commitment period, and done our best to spoil negotiations for everyone else. Naturally, the National Government is pretending that this is some sort of "success". But its not. We have collaborated in ruining the future, and all so farmers can continue to make money by mining our environment and externalising their costs onto everyone else.

Australia is now more progressive on climate change than we are. Australia. Thanks a lot, National.

MMP: Against the threshold

2011-12-12T13:03:00.001+13:00

Now we've voted to retain MMP (by a bigger margin than when we first adopted it in 1993), the statutory review clause kicks in, and we get a chance to improve it. The review will be conducted by the Electoral Commission rather than politicians (though politicians will still get the final say, since they'll have to pass the legislation through parliament), and they'll release an initial consultation paper and call for submissions in February. It will focus on six specific questions, which do not include the Maori seats or the size of Parliament. The first of these is obviously the threshold, so here's my thoughts on it:

What thresholds parties should have to cross to qualify for an allocation of list seats in Parliament? None. The threshold distorts our democracy, preventing the natural rise and fall of parties, and creating perverse and downright toxic incentives for parties to either gift seats to others or attempt to disenfranchise large blocks of voters. Many European proportional systems have no threshold, and our system would work perfectly well applying the Sainte-Laguë formula directly to the party vote.

The "justifications" for the threshold - "extremism" and "instability" - turn out to be myths when examined closely. There simply are no political parties in New Zealand toxic enough to justify disenfranchisement (if it can ever be justified). Looking at the counterfactuals (with the caveat that voting patterns would undoubtedly change without a threshold), the 2011 election would have seen the Conservatives and ALCP gain representation; 2008 would have given us NZ First, the Kiwi Party, and Bill & Ben. None of these parties represent anything to be afraid of (well, no more so than ACT), and they are as worthy of democratic representation as you or I. And none of those results would have led to the feared "instability". While there would have been more small parties in the middle, there would also be easy governing coalitions available, and the presence of multiple possible support partners dilutes the power of each. The oft-cited bogeymen of Israel and Italy are the result of those countries' respective political cultures, not of their electoral systems.

Which is why supporters of the threshold seem increasingly to be relying on the idea of "effective parties" as a defence. The ideas is that a small party of less than six MPs cannot function effectively in Parliament, due to lack of debate spaces, primary questions, and select committee spots (not to mention punitive proxying rules). Against that, we've seen several small parties - the Progressives in 2002 - 2005, ACT and United Future in 2005 - 2008, ACT and the Maori party in 2008 - 2011 - do exactly that. But more generally, the question of whether a given party is "effective" or not can only be answered by the voters it represents. If Parliament's rules reduce the effectiveness of small parties, then the onus is on the House to change those rules, not on voters to change their preferences.

The Maori Party's deal

2011-12-12T12:08:00.002+13:00

National signed a confidence and supply agreement with the Maori Party yesterday, giving it a comfortable majority on budget votes. But the deal itself [PDF] is very loose. The Maori Party agrees to support the government on confidence and supply and procedural votes. In exchange, they get a couple of Ministerial portfolios (worth about $70,000 each to Turia and Sharples) and a pile of small policy wins. The headline policies there - whanau ora and a Ministerial Committee on Poverty - aren't actually worth much; the first is just an agreement to "progress" and "evolve", which means SFA, while the latter will be chaired by Bill English and stacked with National Party Ministers like Tony Ryall and Paula Bennett who believe that poverty is a personal moral failing rather than a pressing social ill, and therefore won't go anywhere (though interestingly, John Key is now saying it might develop an official poverty measure, less than a year after saying that we didn't need one - so we might get some progress, though at the same time its substituting measurement for action).

The real gains in this agreement come from the small stuff: more money to fight rheumatic fever (a third-world disease we shouldn't have in New Zealand), more home insulation, more help for ECE and job training, and a new focus for TPK. And a biggie is not making privatisation a confidence vote, leaving the Maori Party free to oppose it (though given that they're the party of Big Iwi, whether they actually will is another question entirely).

(And yes, while this makes Peter Dunne the key vote on controversial issues like asset sales, contrary to The Standard's fantasies, he's not going to oppose them. His support agreement includes support for National's "Post-Election Action Plan", which includes privatisation. Having given his word, I don't expect him to break it).

From the Maori Party's perspective, its not bad given that National didn't actually need their votes. From National's its giving themselves cover, as well as playing the long game and locking the Maori Party in for 2014. Having supported National for two terms now, they're going to find it difficult to change sides and support Labour. Which means that if the latter want to be in government, they need to up their own game, rather than just rely on a coalition realignment.

New Fisk

2011-12-12T10:55:00.000+13:00

Bankers are the dictators of the West

AFK

2011-12-09T09:40:00.000+13:00

Normal service will resume on Monday.

The obvious question on charter schools

2011-12-08T16:36:00.001+13:00

As we all know, National's support agreement with ACT included an out-of-the-blue infliction of charter schools. This failed American model will be trialled first in Christchurch East and South Auckland - both strong Labour electorates. Which invites an obvious question: why aren't National and ACT trialling these schools on their own kids? Why aren't they trialling them in Epsom, Helensville, and the North Shore? Surely if these schools are all they claim they are, then they should be beating down the door?

Sadly, the answer is equally obvious: not even their supporters believe the schools will work - or at least, not strongly enough to risk the future of their own children (or their political career) on it. So instead we have the usual story: the children of the poor get to be guinea pigs for the crackpot theories of the rich. And if it doesn't work out, well, its not as if anyone important suffers, is it?

If Key and Banks want to run this experiment, they should put their money where their mouth is: run the trial in their own electorates, and send their own kids to them. The fact that they won't speaks volumes.

Hope for Russia?

2011-12-08T15:25:00.001+13:00

Russians went to the polls over the weekend in legislative elections, which seem to have been the usual con-job: stuffed ballot-boxes, intimidation, 146% turnout in some regions. But where in the past they would have meekly accepted this as the way things are, they're protesting about it. And now they've been joined by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who has called for a re-run:

Mr Gorbachev told Russian news agency Interfax in Moscow: "I think they [Russia's leaders] can only take one decision - annul the results of the election and hold a new one."
The former leader, 80, initiated democratic reforms in the final years of the USSR but rapidly lost popularity and influence after the emergence of the new Russian state under the late Boris Yeltsin.
"Literally by the day, the number of Russians who do not believe that the declared election results were honest is increasing," he said.
"In my opinion, disregard for public opinion is discrediting the authorities and destabilising the situation."

I don't think the Russian regime will listen - this time. But the fact that people are standing up and objecting to fraudulent elections is some cause for hope. Fixed elections can only prevail as long as people accept them. If they don't, if there is a mass public rejection of the results, then things tend to change very quickly. While I don't think it will happen this time, its a sign that Russians' patience with this sort of despotic behaviour is wearing thin. Which if it continues to build, should see change in the relatively near future.

A challenge to our new MPs

2011-12-08T13:51:00.001+13:00

Parliament will sit on 20 December for the swearing in of new MPs and the election of a Speaker. Last time this happened, a number of MPs (including Te Ururoa Flavell and Hone Harawira) did not make their affirmations in the prescribed form, instead swearing allegiance to the Treaty of Waitangi. Over the course of the term, they were joined by others, including (IIRC) Gareth Hughes, Kevin Hague and Catherine Delahunty. This was a long-standing tradition in our Parliament; opinions on our constitution differ, and those of such views were allowed to represent their constituents and express them before mouthing the words required by law. But earlier this year, Lockwood Smith overturned that tradition, ejecting Hone Harawira from the House in an effort to erase those differences and enforce his preferred cultural and political values. Since then, he has forced through a change in Standing Orders to continue to enforce those norms.

Of course, that doesn't make those differences go away. And this election, we've had more MPs than ever elected representing the new New Zealand, whose loyalties lie not with an old woman 19,000km away, but with our founding document and their fellow citizens.

Pretty obviously, the state opening presents an opportunity for these MPs. And so I challenge them: stand up for what you believe in. Make your oath or affirmation to the Treaty, to the people, first, then do it "properly". And if the Clerk throws you out of the House for the day, so much the better! When Lockwood Smith changed the rules to enforce his values, he invited the state opening to be turned into a farce. And that is exactly what our MPs who believe in a new New Zealand and a new constitution should do.

Update: Added Kevin Hague to the list. He has some thoughts on the affirmation here:

In the past several MPs - including the Maori Party's and some in the Greens - have altered the oath to include the Treaty of Waitangi before being stopped and told to deliver the correct wording stipulated by law.
Green MP Kevin Hague said if he was re-elected he had every intention of doing so again, but would have an "ethical dilemma" if the Speaker laid down the hard word beforehand.
"For an oath to be meaningful it needs to be meaningful to the person giving the oath. What MPs in New Zealand should be swearing allegiance to is to New Zealand, and it is appropriate to include allegiance to the Treaty in that."

I'm hoping he'll stand by this on December 20.

Secret justice in Fiji

2011-12-08T11:36:00.001+13:00

What's worse than a sedition trial? A secret sedition trial! Radio New Zealand International reports that five men charged with sedition in Fiji are to be tried in secret, with the public and media excluded:

Fiji Village says the Magistrates Court in Suva today ruled that the public and the media will be barred from court during the case.
The state’s application for a closed court argued it was in the interests of public safety and the fact that other people allegedly involved in the case have not yet been arrested and charged.
It is alleged that the five conspired to writing seditious words in public places in Suva last August.

There is only one reason for doing this: that the government's "evidence" will not be convincing to the public, and the stitch-up obvious. Which is precisely why civilised countries demand that their trials happen in public, under full media scrutiny: to ensure the fairness of the outcome, and to ensure public confidence in the integrity of the system. But its been obvious for a while that the justice system in Fiji has been corrupted, with judges leaned on or sacked and replaced to produce the government's desired outcomes. The fact that they feel they must now operate in secret simply reinforces the perception that their court process can no longer be trusted to stand scrutiny in the light of day.

English bullshits on inequality

2011-12-08T09:44:00.001+13:00

On Tuesday, the OECD pointed out that we are a world leader in inequality, and recommended higher taxes on the rich as the core of a solution. Bill English disagees, saying its not the answer. So what is?

In one sense, English is right. There is more than one way to curb inequality. Japan, for example, has a strong social contract, with jobs for life and social restrictions against runaway earnings at the top. But somehow, I don't think that's on the table (English wouldn't stop rorting his housing allowance simply because it was immoral, so he's hardly going to take a pay cut for the sake of social cohesion). High-paid jobs and low unemployment are another part of the solution, but National isn't interested in that either (their policy of high unemployment, insecure employment, eroding employment rights and sub-inflation increases to the minimum wage is all about preserving a low-wage economy and allowing employers to make higher profits by short-changing their workers). Then there's benefits to top up the incomes of those at the bottom. But National is cutting those, and is unwilling to ensure a tax base which can fund them. Which brings us back to the need for higher taxes on the rich, and especially on wealth...

So, when Bill English says "higher taxes are not a solution", he's actually saying "we are not interested in inequality". His interviewers should call him on that bullshit, and hold him to account for it.

Even Treasury thinks ACT is mad

2011-12-07T15:56:00.001+13:00

Stuff reports that Treasury - which isn't what anyone would call "moderate", let alone "left-wing" - opposes ACT's spending cap legislation as too extreme:

Officials wrote in April: ''The Treasury does not support imposing constraints on the ability of government to set fiscal strategy via hard parameters in legislation.''
In the impact statement, Treasury argued future governments which did not want to be bound by the rule would get around it by giving tax breaks or increasing charges or tariffs.
It also concluded there would be instability if the rule ''was likely to be overturned shortly after introduction'' by another government.
Treasury instead recommended a review of the Public Finance Act.

And its not the first time. Here's what they thought of ACT's other pet issue, legislated regulatory standards [PDF]:

We do not support the Taskforce’s proposed Bill [which the ACT Bill was base don - I/S]. We doubt the chosen principles can attract the broad-based support necessary to induce enduring behavioural changes, and compliance costs could exceed benefits. The interpretive direction presents a particular risk of unintended outcomes.

Instead, they recommended better Parliamentary review - a proposal which has now been formally adopted in the National-ACT confidence and supply agreement.

So, what does it say about a NeoLiberal party when even Treasury thinks its policies are mad?

The European Commission's answer to the Eurozone crisis

2011-12-07T15:14:00.001+13:00

Foreign dictatorship. Yes, really:

The European commission could be empowered to impose austerity measures on eurozone countries that are being bailed out, usurping the functions of government in countries such as Greece, Ireland, or Portugal.
[...]
A confidential paper for EU leaders by the EU council president, Herman Van Rompuy, who will chair the summit on Thursday and Friday, said eurobonds or the pooling of eurozone debt would be a powerful tool in resolving the crisis, despite fierce German resistance to the idea.
It called for "more intrusive control of national budgetary policies by the EU" and laid out various options for enforcing fiscal discipline supra-nationally.

This is madness. All it does is swap economic instability for political instability. We're already seeing in Greece that people will not put up with austerity for the sake of the bankers when imposed by an elected government. Imagine how they'll react when its imposed by foreign officials in the interests of a foreign power, without any suggestion of a democratic mandate.

Europe's great achievement has been to spread democracy from the Atlantic to the Baltic. Now they want to throw that away, while releasing the most toxic forms of nationalism from their box. And all for the sake of the banks. If Europe goes down this path, then the European Project might as well be over - because it will no longer be worth supporting.