Vetoing transparency to protect hypocrisy

One of the ground rules underlying the UK's constitution (and our own) is that the monarchy is "politically neutral". They don't get involved in politics, and Parliament doesn't cut their heads off. The UK's Freedom of Information Act has already exposed that as something of a sham, revealing extensive lobbying by Prince Charles on everything from architecture to education policy - but the actual "black spider memos" he writes to Ministers have been kept secret. That looked like it would change last month, when the Guardian finally won a seven-year battle in the Information Tribunal for their release. But now, the release has been vetoed by the Attorney-General. His reason?

"Much of the correspondence does indeed reflect the Prince of Wales's most deeply held personal views and beliefs. The letters in this case are in many cases particularly frank.

"They also contain remarks about public affairs which would in my view, if revealed, have had a material effect upon the willingness of the government to engage in correspondence with the Prince of Wales, and would potentially have undermined his position of political neutrality."

In other words, by exposing the fact that he was not behaving neutrally, people might think he wasn't neutral. And so transparency is vetoed to protect hypocrisy, to allow a member of the royal family to deny in public what he is doing in private.

Only in Britain would such deference to an unelected inbred trump basic constitutional principles. Bring on the republic!

20% Pure New Zealand

A couple of years ago, Tourism New Zealand started the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign, marketing the country to tourists on the basis of our environmental record. Meanwhile, a report on our beaches and rivers has found that only 20% of our rivers are safe to swim at;

The Ministry for the Environment's latest report card - issued weeks before summer weather sends Kiwis flocking to the water - has left opposition parties questioning New Zealand's 100 per cent pure brand.

The results showed water quality was poor or very poor at 52 per cent of monitored river sites.

A further 28 per cent were graded "fair" - with a risk of illness for those swimming there.

Only 20 per cent of monitored river recreation sites were graded good or very good.

Beaches did better, with 60% rated as "good" or "very good". But its still an appalling indictment on our environmental record, and on the government which has allowed this deterioration to happen. And it naturally damages our tourism, as well as our health.

As for the cause, the fact that the problem is with rivers and not beaches points the finger firmly at farmers. They're destroying the country - and our tourism industry - for their own profits, externalising their costs in the form of pollution. Its long past time they were forced to clean their act up.

National's agenda: unaccountability and secrecy

Last month, in their annual report, the Ombudsman strongly criticised the government for "highly dangerous" attempts to remove public bodies from the coverage of the Official Information Act. And now National is at it again, this time over charter schools. The proposed s158X of the new Education Amendment Bill gives charter schools a blanket exemption from government oversight:

The Ombudsmen Act 1975 and Official Information Act 1982 do not apply to a sponsor of a partnership school kura hourua when the sponsor is performing functions under this Act or a partnership school contract.

Which doesn't just mean that the media, politicians and members of the public won't be able to scrutinise charter school policies and decision-making - it also means that if your kid goes to such a school, and they are treated unfairly, then you will have no right to demand answers, or to fair treatment, unless of course you are rich enough to be able to bring a High Court judicial review under the BORA - because that thankfully will still apply. If you're poor, however, you can kiss justice and fairness goodbye.

National's agenda here is clear: unaccountability and secrecy. Yes, they really do think that bodies receiving public money perform better if they do so in total secrecy, with no independent oversight. Yes, these schools will have a contract with the Minister. But the incentives of such an arrangement are to set low performance standards so as to ensure "success" while looking the other way even on blatant failure so as to avoid political embarrassment. We have only to look at the debacle of our private prisons to see that.

There is a simple principle at stake here: if an agency receives public money to do public work, then we should be able to see what they are doing. That principle should apply to charter schools. It is that simple.

Not just any illiterate moron

More revelations in the GCSB spying scandal today. Firstly, the GCSB were told of Dotcom's residency in February, but "failed to understand the implications" and didn't click to them until they were pointed out by Dotcom's lawyer. As the Herald points out, this means they knew when they briefed John Key on February 29.

Secondly, the person who "failed to understand the implications"? He is now GCSB's chief legal officer:

Hugh Wolfensohn held pivotal roles during and after the bureau's spying operation, having oversight of operations, the legal office and the entire agency.

He has emerged as working at the bureau 16 years ago in Nicky Hager's book Secret Power as "CX" - the designation used to describe the agency's legal officer.

Mr Wolfensohn has used three titles at the agency in the past 12 months. Herald inquiries established he held the title of "operations director" since the GCSB and police were briefed about Megaupload in August.

Then, on December 19, Mr Wolfensohn assumed the role of "acting director", three days after the GCSB began spying on Mr Dotcom.

He held the position until January 29, when incoming director Ian Fletcher became the fifth person in just 18 months to lead the agency. Mr Wolfensohn was signing letters in May this year using the title "chief legal adviser".

So, when I quipped about the GCSB being illiterate morons who couldn't read their own Act, it turns out that the illiterate moron in question was in fact the moron who would be expected to be most knowledgeable about such details. Which is simply unbelievable. Either GCSB are lying to us, and have knowingly conducted unlawful surveillance - or their chief legal adviser is a complete incompetent. Either way, he shouldn't be drawing a public service salary.

Update: And it gets better: Wolfensohn apparently helped draft the Act he does not understand. And we're supposed to believe he didn't realise the spying was unlawful? Yeah, right.

Member's day

Today is a Member's Day, and assuming there is no filibuster, a potentially very interesting one, with bills on both child poverty and the high dollar before the House. But first, there's two private and local bills to get out of the way. These are the usual sorts of things - repealing some old local body empowering legislation, and altering the trust for Riccarton Bush - and they should whizz through. Alternatively, if the government decides that it doesn't want to talk about its economic agenda and its effects, then filibustering them could eat the entire day.

Next there is the vote on Darien Fenton's Local Government (Council-Controlled Organisations) Amendment Bill, which was delayed at the end of last Member's Day due to NZ First filibustering their own bill (I guess Winston was still down on Courtney Place). The fate of the bill depends entirely on the vote of Peter Dunne, and I guess we'll get to see today whether he supports transparency or secrecy in the governance of council-owned assets.

After that, there is Winston Peters' Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Amending Primary Function of Bank) Amendment Bill and Metiria Turei's Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill. These are both likely to be highly contentious, given that they basically address pressing issues the government is refusing point-blank to act on. And again, it will be interesting to see whether Peter Dunne stands on child poverty.

Finally, there's Te Ururoa Flavell's Oaths and Declarations (Upholding the Treaty of Waitangi) Amendment Bill, which might end up before a select committee.

If the House does well, it will make a start on Darien Fenton's other bill, the Local Government (Public Libraries) Amendment Bill, which protects free basic library services. I expect National to vote against that too.

If there is no filibuster, there will be a ballot tomorrow for three bills.

"Nothing to fear, nothing to hide"

Throughout his recent political donation scandal, ACT MP John Banks has repeatedly claimed he has "nothing to fear, nothing to hide". The implication is that he is being upfront and transparent about things. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth:

ACT leader John Banks did ask police not to publicly release his statement on the Kim Dotcom donations and opposed the publication of the entire file, documents reveal.

Banks' lawyer David Jones QC told police it would be used by his ''political adversaries'' and for ''irresponsible commentary.''

Banks has always insisted he had "nothing to fear, nothing to hide,'' over the donations scandal.

His statement was censored when police released their file on the investigation last month. Other statements, including that of Dotcom and his lawyer Greg Towers, were made public.

Which raises the question: what was Banks hiding? What is he so frightened of us seeing? And shouldn't John Key be sacking him about now, given that he has lied to the public about this?

Good news on ANPR

When the police first started deploying automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology, I and others raised concerns about its use and potential abuse. Even at the limited trial stage, it seemed to raise significant privacy issues - police were basically databasing the movements of innocent people with no probable cause, and had declared that they had no intention of consulting the Privacy Commissioner about it. The good news is that according to Tech Liberty the police have now reversed this position, and will no longer be retaining ANPR data.

And it gets better: they have also apparently reversed their position on whether a warrant is required to track people using ANPR:

Police considers that with so few cameras, the technology cannot be used to "track" vehicles. In any event, Police cannot track vehicles other than in accordance with the Search & Surveillance Act 2012.

(The Search & Surveillance Act requires a search warrant for any use of a "tracking device", which is defined tautologically as "a device that may be used to help ascertain, by electronic or other means ... the location of a thing or a person". Which would seem on the face of it to include ANPR).

Of course, the police have given out contradictory information on this topic before, so there's some reason for suspicion. But at face value, this is excellent news, and a step away from a British-style surveillance state.

FFS again!

The WINZ privacy scandal just gets worse: it seems they were previously alerted to the security flaw not just by members of the public, but by their own security consultants:

The New Zealand ministry at the centre of the kiosk breach scandal has admitted it was warned of a potential security hole more than a year ago by systems integrator Dimension Data.

It was revealed yesterday that members of the public could access confidential documents from kiosks installed at the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development (MSD) welfare department, leaving data from multiple agencies, corporations and citizens wide open.

Despite yesterday claiming no hole had been found in DiData’s security testing, MSD today confirmed to CRN a report in April 2011 had identified flaws in its system, which the department ignored.

“Since yesterday afternoon I have received further information that means I am not confident that we took the right actions in response to Dimension Data’s recommendations on security,” CEO Brendan Boyle said in a statement.

I can understand WINZ ignoring warnings from members of the public, who they regard as the enemy. But their own security auditors? This takes muppetry to a totally new level, and heads need to roll for it.

Starbucks: Tax cheats

In addition to making crap coffee, it turns out that Starbucks are also tax cheats:

Starbucks has used accounting tricks to pay almost no UK tax on the millions of coffees, sandwiches and cakes bought by the British public for the past decade, it was revealed yesterday.

An investigation showed the coffee company has paid only £8m in corporation tax to HMRC in the 14 years since it arrived on British high streets, despite generating sales of £3bn.

Starbucks UK's accounts show that it has minimised its tax burden by officially recording losses of tens of millions of pounds year after year.

Yet in its briefings to stock market investors and analysts over the past 12 years, the Seattle-based firm has consistently stated that its UK unit is "profitable" – and three years ago even promoted its UK head, Cliff Burrows, to run its much larger US operation. According to an investigation by Reuters, the anomaly can be explained by the use of legal accounting techniques which leave the coffee company paying HMRC proportionately less tax than other food and drink firms such as McDonald's and KFC.

All perfectly legal, of course - but deeply, deeply immoral. And again, it makes you wonder whether their New Zealand branch is using the same tricks.

National doesn't care about rape victims

Back in August, funding cuts led to Wellington Rape Crisis having to limit its services. Fortunately, the public stepped up and filled the funding gap, but it left a bitter taste. This is a vital public service. As such, it should be funded by taxes, not private charity.

Fast forward two months, and this time its Auckland rape and sexual abuse victims who are looking at having their service cut. why? Because the government reneged on a promise to fund them:

News of the shortfall came despite a commitment from the Government to work closely with HELP to establish a sustainable telephone service for the future in December 2011.

There is information on how to donate in the article, and here. I'm sure the public will step up again, but in this post I'm primarily concerned about the politics of the thing. And its unpleasant. There's an obvious pattern that emerges from these two incidents: the government doesn't care about rape victims. These services cost a pittance, and yet there is no money for them. Why? Because unlike tax cuts, inflated CEO salaries, there's no obvious benefit to rich white men like themselves. They've got a billion dollars a year in ETS subsidies to benefit their farmer-cronies, but nothing for rape victims.

Just another example of the public squalor National's meanness is driving us towards.

Injunction time

When the government paused its asset-sales programme for "consultation" a few months ago, we all knew that it was a box-ticking exercise which would change nothing. And as expected, it hasn't - they've announced that they will move immediately to remove Mighty River Power from the State-Owned Enterprises Act, so they can flick it off next year.

So, its injunction time. As with New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney-General (1987), the government is attempting to sell Treaty redress, in violation of clear law saying that it must act consistently with the principles of the Treaty. In 1987, the courts were clear that that was not acceptable, and enjoined any asset-transfer. The question is whether the government's bad-faith "consultation" will fool them into changing their minds. Given the direction of Treaty jurisprudence over the last 25 years, I doubt it.

Lithuania votes

Lithuanians went to the polls today in the first round of parliamentary elections - and have voted resoundingly against their neoLiberal, pro-austerity government which had plunged them into a Greek-style austerity-induced recession. But there's a catch: Lithuania uses Supplementary Member, with the party and constituency votes held on different days. So, their unfair electoral system could still produce a perverse result due to the electorate vote.

The second round of voting will be held on October 28.

A call for sanity in the UK

Six years ago, the UK government established the UK Drug Policy Commission to "provide independent and objective analysis of UK drug policy". Six years on, it has reported back - and recommended some radical changes:

The report by the UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC), an independent advisory body, says possession of small amounts of controlled drugs should no longer be a criminal offence and concludes the move will not lead to a significant increase in use.

The experts say the criminal sanctions imposed on the 42,000 people sentenced each year for possession of all drugs – and the 160,000 given cannabis warnings – should be replaced with simple civil penalties such as a fine, attendance at a drug awareness session or a referral to a drug treatment programme.

They also say that imposing minimal or no sanctions on those growing cannabis for personal use could go some way to undermining the burgeoning illicit cannabis factories controlled by organised crime.

There are obvious parallels with the recommendations of the Law Commission here in New Zealand - and for good reason: both reports are driven by a recognition that the war on drugs has failed, and has resulted in enormous resources being wasted on prosecuting people for no purpose. An evidence-based, public-health focused regime would produce much better outcomes, while saving vast amounts of money.

Sadly, the UK government won't listen: the Home Secretary Theresa May has already rule dout any changes. Which means they will continue wasting money and lives on this pointless exercise on "looking tough" for years to come.

A worthy bill

Back in 2009, Acting Principal Family Court Judge Paul von Dadelszen called for a complete overhaul of the Adoption Act, arguing that it was outdated and discriminatory. Predictably, the government did nothing. But now Green MP Kevin Hague will be fronting a bill to totally rewrite the law:

The Member’s Bill places adoption in the Care of Children Act, as originally intended by the Law Commission, and makes the best interests of the child the fundamental principle underpinning the law. The Bill also:

• Ensures that all adoptions will be “open” unless exceptional circumstances mean there is a need to extinguish links with the child’s biological parents. While this has become common practice, the current law does not provide for it at all.
  
  
• Removes unnecessary restrictions on the kinds of people who may be considered to adopt, ensuring that adoptive parents can be selected from all the options, in the best interests of the child.
  
  
• Acknowledges, but does not regulate whāngai arrangements, which are instead controlled by traditional Iwi practice.
  
  
• Provides for the adoption of children conceived and born through altruistic surrogacy arrangements.

Its worth noting that this isn't just a Green effort; there's been a cross-party working group on it for some time, and National's Nikki Kaye has also contributed strongly to it.

This is a bill whose time has come. And it speaks volumes about the government's priorities that they are leaving it as a member's bill rather than progressing it themselves. But I guess ensuring fundamental rights for kids and adoptive parents just doesn't benefit National's rich backers enough.

Oh FFS

It seems WINZ was alerted to its IT muppetry last year:

Beneficiary Advocacy Federation spokeswoman Kay Brereton said she alerted officials to the fact members of the public could access sensitive information in July last year.

Ms Brereton said staff at the Wellington People's Centre (WPC) were trained to use the self-service kiosks when they were introduced at Work and Income (WINZ) offices.

[...]

She said an IT person from WPC found you could track backwards into WINZ's system.

"We got to the place where we could find all the IP addresses for all the computers in the local network and we thought that was probably far enough.

Brereton alerted both the immediate WINZ staffer who was training them, and national office. And it appears they did exactly nothing in response. This isn't just rank incompetence - its actively not giving a shit. WINZ's shitty attitude towards their "clients" poisons everything they do.

Muppets

So, it turns out that WINZ are a bunch of fucking muppets at computer security, allowing sensitive, private information to be accessed by anyone at any of their kiosks (or indeed, anyone on their network). Including invoices from contractors, address information for beneficiaries, and medical information on abused kids.

Great job, guys. Good to know you're taking care of the extremely sensitive information people entrust to your care.

But it doesn't stop there. You can also access configuration information, including passwords (stored in plain-text, naturally) for WINZ's internal servers.

This is a fundamental failure of basic network security, the level of carelessness you'd expect from ACC or SIS. Heads need to roll for it. Meanwhile, it certainly makes you think twice about their plan for a massive database of at-risk kids. Given their security practices, they might as well be drawing up a shopping-list for pedophiles.

If you'd like to thank Keith financially for his journalism, you can do so here.

No freedom of speech in the UK

Over the past few years Britain has developed an increasingly intolerant attitude towards public expressions of dissent, arresting and even jailing people for criticising its involvement in Afghanistan, for failing to visibly enjoy the olympics, and for expressing republican views. And now we have another case, with a man sentenced to four months imprisonment for wearing a T-shirt with anti-police slogans:

A man who wore a homemade T-shirt containing an offensive anti-police sentiment in the immediate aftermath of the deaths of PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes has been jailed for a total of eight months.

Barry Thew, 39, of Radcliffe, Manchester, was sentenced at Minshull Street crown court in Manchester to four months in prison, after admitting a section 4a public order offence – displaying writing or other visible representation with intention of causing harassment, alarm or distress. Thew also admitted breaching a suspended sentence imposed for a previous offence of cannabis production for which he was ordered to serve another four months concurrently.

The court heard that at 2.15pm on 18 September, less than three-and-a-half hours after the officers were killed, he was seen in Radcliffe town centre wearing a white T-shirt with the handwritten message on the front and back. He was arrested and taken into custody after complaints from outraged members of the public.

The T-shirt said on its front: "One Less PiG Perfect Justice." On the back: "KiLL A COP 4 Fun.co.uk HA, haaa?"

In bad taste? Sure (but then, so were the police's actions in killing Thew's son three years ago). But something he should go to jail for? Hardly. While its a crime to incite murder, its not a crime to express satisfaction at someone's death (example: David Cameron was notably not arrested for this). Free and democratic societies recognise this, and robust societies can deal with it. But the UK is no longer free and democratic, let alone robust; the increasing intolerance of those in power towards any view which is not suitably fawning towards them demonstrates that.

An alternative

Faced with National's utter disinterest in jobs and its refusal to allow Parliament to investigate the matter, Labour, the Greens and NZ First have done the only thing they could: launched their own inquiry:

Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First plan to run their own inquiry into the manufacturing sector in New Zealand.

The leaders of the three parties, David Shearer, Russel Norman and Winston Peters made the announcement today at the end of a "Jobs Crisis Summit" in Auckland run by the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union.

The Government blocked an inquiry on manufacturing by the finance and expenditure committee and so the Opposition decided to run an inquiry independently.

An independent inquiry like this won't have access to a select committee's resources or powers - but it won't need them. Those in denial - including the government and its finance-sector backers - would never have cooperated with a formal inquiry anyway. All the independent inquiry has to do is bring together people who recognise that there is a problem and/or have an idea towards a solution, and provide them with a platform from which to advocate an alternative economic approach - a task which will be much easier without the "do nothing" status quo's involvement. And if in the process they manage to work out some way of working together and present themselves as a broad coalition government in waiting, so much the better.

Telling us what we already know

A whistleblower has come forward to tell us what we already knew: that the UK's "investigation" into torture and war crimes by its soldiers is a whitewash:

Louise Thomas, an official working with the inquiry team who says she has resigned in protest at the lack of progress, spent six months working with the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), which was set up in response to a growing number of complaints from former prisoners. Many were detained at a secretive interrogation centre that the British military operated in the south-east of the country.

Thomas, 45, a former Wren who also served as a police officer for five years, told the Guardian she had seen around 1,600 videos of interrogation sessions, a number of which showed prisoners being abused, humiliated and threatened.

They suggested that some of the detainees were being subject to extreme sleep deprivation and beaten between interrogation sessions.

Thomas alleges that the abuses recorded in the videos are being investigated in an ineffective manner, by investigators who sometimes show little concern for what they are seeing, and that not all relevant material has been handed over to the inquiry by the MoD.

"I saw a really dark side of the British army," Thomas said. "The videos showed really quite terrible abuses. But some of the IHAT investigators just weren't interested."

The army's response? That these claims will be investigated by IHAT's management. Who will no doubt whitewash the whitewash by finding that nothing is wrong and that the whitewash team is conducting a "thorough investigation". That's how the establishment operates. The problem is that this shameless abuse is utterly corrosive of public trust. If British politicians and officials want to know why people think they are liars, they have only to look at their own habitual responses to official wrongdoing.

(And meanwhile, another seven British soldiers are being investigated for murder in Afghanistan. But no doubt they'll whitewash that too).

Hone stands with the people

Mana Party MP Hone Harawira was arrested last night at a protest against state house privatisation. His crime? Blocking a driveway. The sewer will no doubt be going apeshit about this, but I think its admirable. It shows that Hone stands with the people, that he's willing to get directly involved in grassroots protest and share the same risks as everybody else in doing so. You won't see Labour (let alone National) MPs doing that; they're too "respectable" to get down and dirty with the peasants.