Bankrupting local government

Local government in Aotearoa is in a crisis. For decades, Boomers have voted to Keep Rates Low, running the infrastructure paid for by previous generations into the ground, while refusing to invest in more (or even repairing what they have). The bill for that is coming due in all sorts of ways - shit on the streets in Wellington, a lethal campylobacter crisis in Hastings, no money to maintain council housing. So rates are going to have to go up. But Boomers still don't want to pay. So National's solution is simply to outlaw rates increases.

I'm struggling to describe the stupidity of this. Rates pay for things. Things we actually need. And those things get more expensive with time, thanks to inflation and population growth. Meanwhile, central government keeps loading costs on councils, with demands for roads, fast-track projects with no infrastructure support, and the never-ending cycle of vetoing and over-riding planning documents, wasting millions of dollars in planning and consultation costs. And now the regime plans to effectively forbid local councils from keeping up with that. Which means declining council services - roads, rubbish, sewage, social housing, parks, libraries - and of course nothing new unless something is cut. It is a recipe for stagnation and decline, central government sabotaging local government, preventing it from meeting its statutory obligations to its people.

As for the "why", apart from the obvious one of pandering to greedy, freeloading Boomers, there's another equally obvious underlying agenda: privatisation. Local councils still own stuff - ports, airports, electricity lines companies, buildings, land. Strangling them financially by diktat will force them to sell that stuff to National's donors and cronies, finally achieving the mass-looting they've been slavering for since the 1990's. And if everything has to be destroyed so the billionaires can steal what is ours, well, that's a price their collaborators in the National Party are willing to pay.

This is not a good policy for New Zealand. It is being sold on short-sighted greed, and being used to deliver public assets into private hands. We need to stop it. And the way to do that is to vote the regime out in November.

No-one wants National's internet tyranny

Yesterday the National Party introduced its bill to ban young people from social media to Parliament. While ostensibly about "protecting children", the bill in fact establishes a "papers, please" regime to use the internet, exactly like that used in tyrannies like Russia and Iran. Users will have to prove their identity to access our most common communications platform, effectively ending anonymous speech and deterring political communication, while in the process giving all our personal information to foreign privacy-raping fascists.

(Yes, I know the bill says its illegal for companies to retain identity verification information for longer than required. And if you think that means anything, against either companies whose business model is destroying privacy, or our own government, I have a bridge across Cook Strait to sell you).

The good news is that no-one is buying it. National's policy - developed by public servants at public expense - has already been disowned by its own coalition partners, who are also upset at the way it has been announced and introduced despite their opposition. The Greens have said "fuck no!". And even notoriously-chickenshit Labour has said its in no hurry to announce its position. And its not hard to see why: because in addition to the privacy nightmare highlighted above, the simple fact is that these bans don't work. Just look over the Tasman, where 80% of under-16s are still using social media despite being officially banned from it. And that's also perfectly understandable: because this is how we live our lives now. People of all ages organise their work, their education, their social lives over social media. And trying to ban them from that, from hanging out with their friends, herding cats for their local sports or cultural group, or organising politically to change the government and the world, is a recipe for widespread non-compliance and entrenched contempt for the law.

This is not to understate the harm caused from and on social media. But trying to blindfold and gag kids, while making the rest of us live in a tyrannical surveillance nightmare, is not a solution.

What might be solutions? Much of the harm is caused by social media platforms themselves, invading privacy and pushing harmful content. So outlaw those things, and make those platforms responsible! Platforms currently enjoy "third party" protection for the harmful content they push, on the basis that they're just a neutral carrier. But if they're running an algorithm which puts stuff on people's timelines, they're making editorial choices, and they can and should be held accountable for them. Or, to put it in English, if Elon Musk's Nazi site pushes the Christchurch murder video onto people's feeds, then it should be held legally responsible for that and fined into oblivion. Likewise, we can impose a duty of care on social media platforms - and Labour has a member's bill for this. Either would have a lower impact on the human rights of New Zealanders than National's internet tyranny, while being far more effective at protecting all of us. But national clearly isn't interested in "effective"; they're interested in posturing before an election. And Aotearoa deserves better than that from its supposed government.

Oh FFS! I just got this posted, and then I see Labour has decided to support National's bill to select committee, solely so National can't spend the runup to the election bashing them on this. "A shiver looking for a spine to run down" indeed.

No way to run a country

Twenty years ago I joined a protest march over the Manawatū River. Fonterra and local farmers were using the river as a sewer, making it one of the most polluted in the western world, and people were sick of it. The march was a success: the state of the river became a serious issue in subsequent local body elections, and Horizons, the regional council was forced to act. They began a series of public consultations on cleaning up the river, and in 2010 they introduced the One Plan, which set limits for pollution, particularly nitrogen.

Basically, farmers wouldn't be allowed to shit in the river anymore, and they hated it. So they engaged in their usual tactic of predatory delay, dragging the plan through the courts on any excuse in an effort to prevent its implementation. But their appeals backfired, with the Environment Court strengthening the plan and the High Court upholding that. Even then, Horizons tried to rubberstamp pollution, until the courts stopped that as well, and made them actually enforce the law. But the Council's reliance on a tool called Overseer to calculate nitrogen loads caused further litigation, which eventually resulted in a change to the plan.

Which brings us to "Plan Change 2". It updates the nitrogen limits in the One Plan to account for Overseer's software change, and sets out pathways by which farmers who currently exceed them can get temporary consents. Like the One Plan itself, its the result of a careful process of consultation and consensus-building, and has been approved by the Environment Court. It should be becoming active any time soon. But it won't - because the regime has decide to simply overturn it by legislative fiat to protect its donors and cronies and let them keep on shitting in the river. Twenty years of democratic action and tens of millions of dollars in planning costs and legal fees gone, because one man - Andrew Hoggard - never liked the outcome, and decided to abuse his ministerial position to put his thumb on the scale, outside the normal process.

It's not just the One Plan - Hoggard will also be over-ruling Waikato Regional Council's similarly long-consulted rules to protect the Waikato, outraging Tainui (who view it as undermining their Treaty settlement). Its not just rivers - they're also stomping all over local councils who, after consulting their communities in accordance with the law, decided to use the RMA to regulate inshore fishing to mitigate its destructive effects. And it continues a trend displayed on climate change, transport, Māori representation, of the Beehive arbitrarily overturning court decisions and/or well-consulted local government decisions to impose their own views from above, without consultation or evidence, usually at the behest of some deep-pocketed industry lobby and tens of thousands of dollars in "donations". That's just how this regime operates. Its an affront to democracy, the rule of law, and local decision-making. Instead, we have arrogance, dictatorship and corruption.

This is no way to run a country. Local decision-making should mean exactly that. We can't have our lives micromanaged by Wellington, intruding into our lives and vetoing our decisions at the behest of lobbyists or their own weirdo freak ideology.

We need to overthrow this regime. Vote it out in November, prosecute those responsible for their corrupt practices and ban them from office, and reform the system so that it cannot happen again.

An urgent move to not fix anything

National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track legislation has a problem: in addition to being corrupt and Muldoonist, it allows developers to buy approval for projects where there isn't the infrastructure to support them. For example, the recently approved Delmore development in Ōrewa, which will require wastewater to be trucked out for the forseeable future, because there's no sewage connection there. Normally councils deal with this sort of problem by charging developers a development contribution to pay for the required infrastructure - something the right absolutely hates. But fast track bypasses all that, with the result that fast-tracked developments are artificially cheap, effectively subsidised by other residents. Which in turn means other areas get starved of their infrastructure or face higher rates to pay for the costs of ministers' special projects.

To their credit, National recognises this inability to make fast track projects pay for their infrastructure is a problem. They consider it so urgent a problem that they plan to fix it with completely out-of-the-blue committee stage amendments to an unrelated local government bill. But - and here's the kicker - they won't actually fix it. According to the Beehive press release,

The amendments will not apply to fast-track developments that have already been approved or where a substantive application has already been lodged with the EPA.

So, its "urgent" enough to "justify" doing further violence to our democratic system - but not urgent enough to actually fix. I guess they wouldn't want their pet developers to feel ripped-off, that they hadn't got their money's worth from their "donations". So we get performative bullshit instead.

Meanwhile, I remember when National thought development contributions held up development and discouraged growth. I'm glad to see they've finally realised that they actually pay for necessary things rather than just being made up by councils to spite the Mighty Lords of Real Estate. I wonder when they'll realise that about taxes?

National channels Orban

Last year, at the behest of its Five Eyes "allies", the regime passed a tyrannical anti-"foreign interference" law, criminalising "improper conduct" on behalf of a "foreign power". The law effectively allows the regime to criminalise anyone based on its own fantasies and misconceptions, and would have outlawed virtually every major protest movement in Aotearoa's history. It is a horrific assault on our democracy. And the National Party thinks it didn't go far enough.

National's Tim van de Molen has introduced a new Foreign Influence Transparency Bill to the ballot. The TL;DR is that it requires "foreign agents" to register. Sounds pretty mild, right? Except that when you unpack it, its even more horrific than than the "foreign interference" law.

Who needs to register? Anyone conducting any "political influence activity that they are directed to undertake by a foreign principal". Unpacking this:

• A "foreign principal" is a foreign government, a foreign political organisation, a foreign public enterprise, or an entity acting on their behalf. This is not the same definition as used in the "foreign interference" clauses of the Crimes Act - it is both broader and narrower, excluding some "foreign public officials" and all government-supporting companies, but including "foreign political organisations", which encompass not just governing political parties and their agencies (which are in the foreign interference law), but also

  any political party, political movement, or other organisation operating in a country or territory outside New Zealand that has as one of its primary purposes the participation in, or influence of, political processes or public office in that country or territory

  In other words, any formal or informal political group, and any NGO engaged in "politics". Which basically means everything: any non-NZ environmental, human rights, consumer rights or privacy NGO. It also covers international political groupings such as the Global Greens, Socialist International, International Democracy Union, and foreign think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, and the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation. The Atlas network is absolutely covered.
• "Directed" means requests as well as instructions. It likely covers the sharing of common tactics and strategies.
• "political influence activity" is where it really gets weird, covering not just formal lobbying, but also "communicating to the new Zealand public" about any election, bill, policy, or exercise of power; as well as "organising, coordinating, or funding any campaign, network, or activity" to mobilise individuals to lobby or protest or attend meetings, as well as collecting information to tailor activities. In the Crimes Act, there's specific protection for engaging in protest, advocacy, or dissent. Here, those things are specifically covered.

So basically any democratic activity which can be imagined to be connected to a "foreign principal" requires registration. All NZ political parties will be required to register, because they are members of international networks. So will most major NGOs. Because this is the modern world, with easy travel and the internet, and we talk to each other, share problems and tactics and what-worked-in-our-country and maybe-you-could-try-this, and that's apparently suddenly suspicious and foreign and practically seditious.

People engaged in these activities would be required to register. Failing to register or providing false or misleading information is an offence punishable by two years in jail (which is... pretty severe for an administrative offence – the same penalty for fixing an election!) There are open-ended administrative search powers, not subject to judicial oversight, to allow the registrar to investigate suspected offences. Finally, the government can designate “specified foreign powers” as posing an “enhanced risk” on very broad criteria, though this doesn’t seem to have any actual effect. Finally, every election candidate must be vetted against the register to see if they are on it, and the government must publish a gazette notice identifying them, the foreign principal, and the registrable activity. In other words, legally required state propaganda against candidates the regime doesn’t like.

Meanwhile, look at who is not covered:

• Billionaires: they're not governments, so they can do as much lobbying, electoral manipulation, and influence-buying as they want.
• Foreign corporations: These routinely engage in "political influence activity" in Aotearoa - witness the "grassroots" campaigns by dairy owners against tobacco regulation, or in favour of Pharmac buying the latest expensive new drug, or just the regular lobbying by the oil and gas or money laundering industries. This is all aimed at changing law or influencing the exercise of government power. But apparently its all OK because its "just business". But actual grassroots organisations - Amnesty, Greenpeace - are not.
• Diplomatic activity: foreign governments and groups like the Five Eyes (and all its spinoffs) get to lobby us to change our intellectual property laws, our privacy laws, outlaw encryption, criminalise protest, or indeed pass laws like this. But they get to be exempt from them.

While this is a member’s bill, being put in the ballot means it has the backing of the National caucus. They are all on board with this.

If this all seems awfully familiar, its because its a basic part of the "illiberal democracy" pioneered by Victor Orban in Hungary, and indeed of Russian tyranny. Call your enemies "foreign agents". Demand they register. Use the registrar to force searches and gather intelligence. Then jail them or shut them down. And while van de Molen points to similar laws passed by "like-minded liberal democracies" such as the UK and Australia, I would instead classify them as democratic backsliders hellbent on reintroducing tyranny.

These are not countries we want to be like. If this bill is drawn, it must be rejected.

Chris wins!

So, after a three hour emergency caucus meeting, Chris Luxon has emerged to claim that he has the National Party's full support and that his caucus is united. Which is obviously why he had to have a three hour meeting about it. Which means National will be going into the election with a historically unpopular Prime Minister - unless they change their mind about it next week.

Meanwhile Chris (the other one) will be overjoyed that the political landscape won't be shaken up after all, and he can continue trying to sleepwalk to victory. It would be nice if he actually put some effort in and tried to win, but he seems to have taken the journalists' "oppositions don't win elections; governments lose them" to heart, and interpreted it as meaning he has no agency whatsoever. Which I guess is consistent with his belief that politicians have no agency over the public either, and can't change hearts and minds - but its awfully disappointing tot he rest of us. And it invites serious questions about why we pay him so much - $309,000 plus rorts and slush - to basically do nothing.

As for Chris and Chris, I guess they'll be hoping for a National loss. Otherwise, they probably don't have a place in the post-election Cabinet. Oh dear. How sad.

Shaking it up?

Its 88 days until the election, and I had been planning to post about how the electoral landscape is becoming a little clearer. While the polls are statistically tied (still, with this regime, what the fuck are you doing Chris?), Opportunity is increasingly polling above the threshold, meaning they'll be in Parliament and no coalition seems possible without them. Meanwhile Luxon ruling them out basicly means he won't be in government, while Hipkins finally ruling out NZ First removes the big fear on the left: that Labour will once again choose a far-right coalition partner who will proceed to veto its policies, rather than the party which shares them and wants them to go further. It also crystallises the blocs, giving a clear choice between the current dysfunctional National-NZ First-ACT regime, or a Labour-Green-Opportunity-maybe-with-Te-Pāti-Māori, which seems perfectly workable precisely because of that shared agenda.

...And then Luxon goes and decides to put his leadership on the line (again), in a desperate effort to retain control of his clearly panicking caucus, a quarter of whom look likely to not have a job after the election on current polling. I have no idea which way it will go - I'm not any sort of insider, let alone a tory one - but obviously if Luxon is rolled its going to shake things up a bit, and put a bunch of stuff back on the table that Luxon had taken off it. It also means potential coalition instability, because the first thing a new National leader is going to want to do is put their coalition partners in their place, and they are likely to object to that, and maybe even pull the plug. There's a theory that if that happens Labour will step in and clean up the mess, providing confidence to retain the current election timetable at the price of gutting National's legislative program. That would be a sign of weakness and not being ready to fight, so of course I can see it happening because that pretty much describes Labour at the moment. A real opposition would of course be saying "bring it on" and "if you can't keep the government running, that's your problem", and "there are no votes for us [and there are not] in bailing you out", but its been a while since Labour was anything of the sort. And OTOH, that assumes National doesn't want an early election, which they're ready (or at least funded) for while Labour isn't...

Tomorrow might just be more nothing, another round of pointless National squabbling which results in nothing. And that would be the best outcome, because Luxon is such a loser that even Hipkins might be able to beat him (or rather, be carried to victory by his coalition partners). But if something actually happens, then the election is going to change in a big way, and Labour will actually have to do some fucking work if they want to win it. And honestly, I'm not sure they have it in them.

National (still) hates democracy

The National party in Aotearoa has always hated democracy. In the late 70's and early 80's they retained power in the face of majority opposition only by virtue of an unfair electoral system. When popular discontent at that led to a push for MMP, they opposed it. When the people won and imposed it on the traitorous political class who had given us Rogernomics and Ruthanasia, they tried to overturn it. And now, not content with using voter suppression in an effort to rig the next election, they're trying to rig all future ones by going back to the old, unfair system, which reliably delivered absolute power on minority support:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he would hold an MMP referendum if re-elected - but his coalition partner Winston Peters has ruled such a referendum out.

Luxon made the comments on Newstalk ZB.

He had been discussing a long-mooted referendum on whether to bring in a four-year parliamentary term and then started to discuss whether it was appropriate to see if the public was “still supportive of MMP.”

Asked if he would undertake such a referendum if re-elected, Luxon said “Yeah, I think I would.”

Fuck that. We are currently at a historic weak-point for the legacy parties - the latest Roy Morgan poll showed their collective support at less than 60% - and I'd suggest that that alone makes this idea an absolute non-starter. Any regime "elected" under such a system would lack any legitimacy and simply have no mandate to govern.

The good news is that its a non-starter, because Winston says "no". And as any future National government is absolutely reliant on that racist zombie for a majority, that means there's simply no parliamentary majority to pass the legislation required for a referendum, let alone a change. It simply won't happen (and no, Labour isn't going to agree to it either).

Which also makes it a perfect example of how National's "promises" are irrelevant. They can huff, and they can puff, but ultimately they need a majority to act, which means the agreement of multiple coalition partners. And for a lot of what they "promise" that agreement will not for forthcoming. They're simply a party of hot air.

49,000 unemployed under National

The June labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen again to 5.6%. There are now 171,000 unemployed, 49,000 more than when National took office.

The next - and hopefully final for this regime - set of unemployment statistics should drop right around election time. But we're basically looking at a regime which has deliberately increased unemployment by 40%, by slashing public service jobs and demanding the reserve bank focus strictly on inflation (meaning that it throws people out of work whenever rich people's money starts to evaporate). And that is an absolutely toxic legacy which should see them de-elected by an angry electorate. If we fail to do so, we have no-one but ourselves to blame when they fuck us over even more.

The best "democracy" money can buy

The Justice Committee has reported back on the bill Fonterra and Z Energy bought from National to grant them impunity for their ecocide. After a bullshit process where the public were given only ten days to make submissions, the committee has obligingly rubberstamped the regime's constitutional atrocity.

93% of the 623 submitters were opposed, with only 2.6% (largely major polluters) in favour. National calls this "democracy". What it is in reality is corruption, the best "democracy" money can buy.

Labour and the Greens have promised to repeal the law if elected. They need to go further, with an independent inquiry into the corruption which created it, and prosecutions for those responsible. They also need to protect our legislative process against this sort of abuse in future, with restrictions on political donations, full transparency around lobbying, restrictions on the use of urgency, short submission periods and short report-back times. Because what this incident shows is that our entire political system needs to be cleaned out and cleaned up. And if Labour and the Greens won't deliver that, they're inviting much worse anti-establishment politics and growing public alienation from the political system.

No freedom to question power

That, apparently, the Free Speech "Union"'s definition of "freedom of speech":

The Free Speech Union ‒ which exists to defend free speech ‒ has attacked a journalist for asking Health Minister Simeon Brown questions over email, after it obtained questions sent by a Post reporter about one of his appointments.

On Monday, The Post’s national affairs editor Andrea Vance emailed a series of questions to Health Minister Simeon Brown about his appointment of Dr Manoja Kalupahana to the Medical Council.

The appointment was gazetted on Friday and put on the Beehive website on Monday morning.

Before an answer was received and within three hours of the query going to the minister, the Free Speech Union issued a press release attacking Vance for even asking the questions.

The context here is that Kalupahana is an unprofessional racist weirdo, and that seems to have been treated as a qualification for public office by Simeon Brown. Meanwhile, from their past record, the FSU seems to exist primarily to protect such repulsive people from the natural consequences of their actions (which include people naming and shaming them for being exactly what they are). And that now extends to attacking the media for trying to get a public explanation for why such weird appointments have been made (the answer to which is probably "the FSU talked to ACT, who talked to Brown, and suddenly someone gets a fat board salary and a platform to sabotage a public institution").

But whatever influence peddling is going on behind the scenes, its a pretty weird definition of "freedom of speech" which says that the media can't question those in power. Some might take it as suggesting the FSU wasn't interested in freedom of speech at all, but merely using it in bad faith as a weapon to wage their weirdo far-right foreign-funded culture war on the rest of us.

National's "promises" are irrelevant

Over the weekend, National announced its latest election promise: increasing paid parental leave from 26 to 30 weeks. Which sounds good, except that this is the party which over-rode parliament to veto an increase in 2016, which cut Best Start payments, and stole $13 billion from New Zealand women by abolishing pay equity. As with their sudden conversion to solar energy, their own record gives them a huge credibility problem, and creates immediate suspicion about their willingness to actually deliver.

But even if they were willing, it doesn't matter. Because the ugly truth is that, given its preferred coalition arrangements, National's "promises" are irrelevant.

Look at the current coalition. Elected without much of a plan, National signed coalition deals with ACT and NZ First which puts the latter two parties in the policy driving seat and lets them call the shots. And this is only going to get worse. All the polls show National will lose seats in the election, so even if the regime manages to retain power by election rigging, National will have less power in it than they do at present. Which means even more NZ First and ACT policy, and even less of National's.

In short, it doesn't matter what National promises this election. If they retain power, it'll be ACT and NZ First policy they're implementing. National's "promises" are simply irrelevant.

Climate Change: Failure

National's first act in power was to repeal all effective climate change policy. How's that working out for them? Badly:

New Zealand is at risk of missing all of its climate targets, and time to get back on track is running out, the Climate Change Commission says.

The commission says lagging progress on switching to low-emissions technology is no longer just a climate change problem: it's preventing households from saving money on energy costs.

Its annual emissions monitoring report said New Zealand's climate pollution had gradually decreased over time.

However, progress stalled in 2024, and the pace of reductions now needed to double to get back on track, it said.

If the government did not come up with new ways to save emissions within the next year or two, the country would not be able to meet some of its targets at all, the commission warned.

And that's after they twiddled the numbers by refusing to update the budgets to take account of methodological improvements.

The full report is here. The figure on p9 says it all:

[CC-BY He Pou a Rangi]

The regime's policies - such as they are - are failures, and unlikely to deliver the emissions reductions claimed. Even if they did, the regime would still fail to meet the 2031-35 budget. Which means they need to do more. Instead, they're weakening the Commission and removing its ability to advise on budgets, so it can't make politically awkward recommendations to strengthen targets, or even meet them. Which makes it clear that this is a regime of arsonists, who want to burn down the world.

This regime needs to go. Vote them out in November, so we can start saving the planet.

Bring on the legislative ping-pong!

In 2020 an independent review suggested a repeal and replacement of the RMA system. The then-Labour government spent years doing the right thing, consulting affected groups and developing consensus policy, before progressing two replacement bills (the Spatial Planning Act 2023 and Natural and Built Environment Act 2023) through parliament under the normal legislative process. They eventually passed right before the 2023 election. The radical far-right National regime immediately repealed them. National unveiled its own version late last year, including American bullshit like "regulatory relief" (a propertarian scam to fiscally intimidate councils against regulating), and of course cutting the public out of environmental decision-making completely so Shane Jones's donors can drive their bulldozers everywhere. It came back from select committee last week, and its now (somehow) even worse, with the regime planning to statutorily nullify existing Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements (agreements between iwi and councils to manage the former's statutory consultation rights under both planning law and Treaty settlements) and allowing Ministers to rubberstamp consents despite their being otherwise illegal. The latter is a giant Henry VIII clause, fast-track on steroids, and further entrenches the nexus of corruption which has proven so profitable to government ministers with the fast track law. It is a recipe for further naked corruption and environmental devastation.

This is not what the public wants. According to the bill's departmental report, 74% of submissions were opposed, with only 3.7% in support. But its what donors wanted, and that's who buys this regime. But such overwhelming public opposition is a licence for the next government to take a hatchet to the bill and change it - or simply repeal it outright.

Chris Hipkins has (sadly) ruled out the latter. Its disappointing - I want to see National's legislation, all their legislation, burned to the ground and the earth salted - but understandable. Starting from scratch will take them three years again, just in time for a potential repeal. Chopping the obnoxious features out can be done in one, with a full parliamentary process. Or, if they're in the parts of the bill which take effect immediately and do irreparable harm, it can be done in a day under all-stages urgency. The next government doesn't need to hurry, as if passed the law won't take effect until 2029, but it also shouldn't piss about. Getting it done quickly and embedding the changes in the new planning process so that they are difficult to unpick without everyone having to do a shitton of extra work needs to be a priority.

And sure, if the government changes again, National could just reimpose their radical propertarian bulldozer bullshit. But so what? Let them play legislative ping-pong trying to repeatedly impose their radical, unpopular, weird ideas - and make them pay the price for it. "Environmental law should actually protect the environment", "Ministers shouldn't be allowed to take bribes", and "No-one should be able to approve a nuclear waste dump, no matter how much money someone slips Shame Jones" are not unpopular propositions in this country. Every time National espouses those ideas is going to cost them, and hopefully lose them more support. So make them argue for those unpopular positions as often as possible. Don't let them win by default because labour was too cowardly to fight back.

Climate Change: Incoherent

Two weeks ago, Climate Change Minister Simon watts was sending shitty letters to local authorities warning they were doing too much to adapt to climate change. Now, he's introduced a law to require them to do so:

Councils will have to come up with adaptation plans for communities at high risk from climate change hazards, under a proposed law change.

The Climate Change Response Amendment Bill, introduced to Parliament on Wednesday, will require councils to plan at least 30 years into the future, and spell out the likely cost.

[...]

Climate Change minister Simon Watts said for the first time, councils would be required by law to plan how high-risk communities in their area will prepare for the impacts of climate change.

This is utterly incoherent with their previous warnings, and it suggests that the regime simply has no idea what it is fucking doing. And of course, they're still leaving the question of who will pay for this completely up in the air - while constantly criticising councils for raising rates to cope with regime spending demands. Instead, like many things, its just been punted to next term, in the clear hope that another government will take the hit for it.

But while this piece of law is welcome, the rest of it isn't. Other nasty changes in the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill include:

• removing consultation requirements for Emissions Budgets and Emissions Reduction Plans, allowing everything to be done in secret without public input;
• removing all policy requirements from Emissions Reduction Plans, removing He Pou a Rangi's role in advising on them, and weakening monitoring;
• allowing the government to dictate He Pou a Rangi's recommendations on ETS limits and price control settings;
• removing the requirement that emissions budgets and decisions relating to them and Emissions Reduction Plans be consistent with the Paris Agreement and 1.5 degree limit. This in particular is contrary to international law.

So, do everything in secret, cut the public out, and return to the "good old days" where the government promised action then did nothing - which is what the law was meant to end. This is a total repudiation of the Zero Carbon Act. It is also the end of any pretence of bipartisanship on climate change - instead, National has returned to soft denial (accepting the problem, but refusing to act). Which means that the next government should end that pretence as well, and just implement real policy. Make the polluters scream! The louder they scream, the more of them who go bankrupt, the better!

National's New Zealand

How bad are things under the Luxon regime? We already knew that we had the worst wage growth in the world, with wages 6.4% below 2021 levels - which shows the lie of National's "economic growth". But what does that mean in reality? The Press headline from today speaks for itself: "Police are dealing with a new type of shoplifter - ‘everyday people’ who just need to eat":

A year ago, Sergeant Melissa Shaw’s retail crime team was set up to curb retail theft in Christchurch.

Shaw expected to deal mainly with drug addicts who repeatedly steal to fund their next hit. And there have been those.

But then came the surprise: A growing cohort of thieves who were not drug addicts, not kleptomaniacs, not youths.

They were parents and elderly people with no criminal histories, without the money to keep up with rising living costs, who stole food and clothing for themselves and their families.

And that's where we are now: normal people having to steal to get buy, because National's "rockstar economy" doesn't provide for them, and instead funnels everything upwards into the pockets of Luxon and his mates.

We desperately need to get rid of this government. So in November, vote for regime change!

Another outrageous abuse of the OIA

Two weeks ago the Ombudsman released his final opinion on the Prime Minister's unlawful hiding of information around his corrupt climate impunity law, and he was not impressed. As a followup, The Post filed another OIA with the Prime Minister, seeking correspondence between the PM, his "forgetful" adviser, and the Department of Internal Affairs (which hosts Ministerial Services and his his nominal employer). But the regime clearly wants to bury this information, because they have extended the request for 64 working days:

However, it was not until last week when branch performance director Penny Langley wrote back to extend the statutory timeframe by 64 working days.

Langley said “the consultations necessary to make a decision” meant DIA could not reasonably respond within the original deadline.

The extension, dated July 3, means the request is not due to be answered until October 7.

...which means that when they are inevitably late, or announce that a decision has been made but release will happen later, there will be no time to force release before the November 7 election.

This is an outrageous abuse of the OIA. It is also prima facie unlawful. The OIA is clear: extensions must be "for a reasonable period of time having regard to the circumstances". what's "reasonable"? The Ombudsman is equally clear:

Where Parliament has specifically mandated third party consultation on OIA requests, those parties have been required to respond ‘within 10 working days’. In its review of the official information legislation, the Law Commission suggested a minimum 5 working days’ notice. From this, it can be inferred that 5–10 working days would generally be regarded as a reasonable period of time within which to provide comment.

While the Ombudsman notes that more or less time might be appropriate depending on the circumstances, it is difficult to imagine circumstances which would justify 64 working days, and those which can be imagined - the person simply being unavailable for a protracted period of time - would also make it perfectly reasonable for the agency to simply make the decision itself without consulting at all.

DIA of course refuses to provide any justification for its decision, which in itself seems to be a violation of s23 OIA, and invites the natural suspicion that there is none (or rather, none which would withstand public scrutiny).

The Post has no doubt complained to the Ombudsman already about this, but for the rest of us its a reminder of how extensions are routinely abused, and how you should immediately complain about them. And if you're not sure about what to say, I have specific guidance for extension complaints here.

More lightning legislating

The House has been in urgency this week, as the regime struggle against the clock to pass its agenda. In addition to the inherent abuse of urgency, this has led to other abuses, with parliament once again returning to being "the fastest legislature in the west" to ram things through. And now there's another one: National has rammed its corrupt bill to protect polluters from liability for the climate change they are causing - the same bill a Ministerial Adviser violated the Public Records Act and hid the lobbyists' draft of from the OIA - through its first reading and sent it to committee. The committee report back date? 30 July. So the committee will have less than a month to "consider" this corrupt atrocity against the rule of law, turning it into little more than a rubber-stamp for Cabinet.

Submissions are open, and due by 9.00am, Monday, 13 July 2026 (note the dirty time chosen; you need to have this in by 12 July to be safe). So we have less than ten days to submit on this corrupt violation of constitutional norms. And this is what National calls "democracy".

The opposition has committed to repealing the bill if it becomes law, so any benefit Fonterra and Z Energy get from their corrupt lobbying will be transitory, lasting only until the repeal bill is passed and Mike Smith (or someone else) files a new case against them. Its probably worth supporting that in your submission, so Labour knows they're doing the right thing. Again, National's over-reach and abuse of power creates the potential to push back, and so we should push back hard, and demand not just repeal, but that polluters have absolute liability for the damage caused by their pollution. Fonterra and Z and their polluting mates have undermined our democracy to protect their profits. We need to punish them harshly for that, just so they don’t do it again.

Climate Change: Overdoing it?

Climate change is here, causing increasingly severe weather. In April, Wellington was flooded by extreme rainfall, making 40 homes uninhabitable and killing one person. Auckland suffered similar floods in 2023. We had more weather-related states of emergency in the first two months of 2026 than in the whole of 2025, and the number has only increased. A severe weather warning affecting multiple regions is issued every two weeks. But weirdly, the minister for climate change and local government thinks councils are doing too much to stop this, and has sent them a shitty letter demanding they pretend its not happening:

Wellington’s mayor has slammed a climate mitigation letter from the local government minister as “tone deaf”, in a city where a man died in flood waters and other residents scrambled for their lives mere weeks ago.

Local Government Minister Simon Watts’ letter to mayors, regional council chairpeople and council chief executives around the country started arriving in in-boxes about 6pm on Tuesday.

In it, he insinuated councils were “gold-plating” climate initiatives and building for worst-case scenarios at ratepayers’ expenses.

[...]

Asked for examples of problem initiatives, Watts’ office highlighted a Greater Wellington Regional Council regional flood hazard assessment, which produced a map showing where is prone to flooding risk. Areas severely flooded in April, such as Emerson St in Berhampore, were identified as being at risk.

The last bit makes it crystal clear why Watts is doing this: because clearly identifying climate change risks means some people's property values will drop. People with houses in flood zones might not be able to insure or sell them, and developers who have hoarded coastal property won't be able to develop it and might lose money. So to protect the imaginary property values of the rich, we all have to ignore what is happening before our eyes and pretend that everything is perfectly normal.

This is, simply, bullshit. And if Watts gets his way, more people will die. But Watts doesn't care. Weirdly, he seems to think none of this bad weather will affect him in any way.

Climate change is an existential threat to future for humanity. The regime has clearly chosen a side in that struggle, and it is the side of polluters and devastation. They have moved from passively not giving a shit to actively trying to stop people from doing anything about it. If we want a future, we need to throw this climate quisling regime out of office, and elect a government which will protect us, rather than protecting polluters.

Screaming works

Last month, the regime introduced the Conservation Amendment Bill, a steaming pile of shit which would allow it to sell off huge chunks of the conservation estate while opening up more of it to mining, development, and exploitation. Pretty obviously, this did not fit with the public's expectations and the value it placed on our natural taonga, and people started screaming about it. This week, after being challenged in the House, Chris Luxon tried to claim it was just about selling a few old buildings - but no-one believed him. And so just like that, the regime has backed down:

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka has announced the controversial exchange and disposal provisions for conservation land will be dropped from the Conservation Amendment Bill.

The minister said he never intended to dispose of vast swathes of the conservation estate, but acknowledged the public outcry over the bill. He took personal responsibility for giving New Zealanders that impression. “That’s on me – that’s on us,” he said at the Environmental Defence Society conference in Auckland. “We were not clear enough.”

Good. Our taonga places are exactly that - taonga, to be kept for future generations. No government has any right to sell or despoil them.

Obviously there's more work to do here. The bill guts regional boards, compromises Treaty settlements, and includes an odious "economic opportunities" clause in the department's functions which push it towards enabling rather than stopping the bulldozers. But stopping conservation land from being sold is a good first step. And if it helps drive a wedge between National (who want to get re-elected) and NZ First (who want to pay off their mining industry donors with public taonga) then that's a bonus. The sheer scale of public opposition has also opened space for a serious push-back - something the Greens have recognised - which could be leveraged into giving our taonga places greater protection. Hopefully people will push on that as hard as they can.

Meanwhile, the lesson in this is that if we scream loud enough, the regime backs down. Their desire to be re-elected is a weapon we can use against them. So keep screaming. Screaming works.