tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29799243281721051872024-03-06T11:41:00.475+13:00Dread TimesWatchman Ras Nandor Tanczos reports from Aotearoa / New ZealandAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.comBlogger84125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-61570937417734360542012-02-16T20:07:00.001+13:002012-02-16T20:07:30.386+13:00The Food Bill deconstructedI've been hearing about this Food Bill for months now. Facebook
sources tell me the Government is going to fine us for growing carrots
and lock us up for giving away our excess marrows. Hell, I've got so
many oversized zucchini's that I don't know what I'd do if it was
illegal to give them to my friends. I decided I'd better take a look for
myself.<br />
<br />
What a stupid idea THAT was. The select committee
report, including the bill as amended, ran to 378 pages of meticulously
crafted tedium. Only another late night reader of legislative material
can comprehend the depths of stupification of which I write. By the time
I got to the end I felt as braindead as Paul Holmes on Waitangi
morning.<br />
<br />
What comes next is not legal advice – or easy reading.
This is just a general explanation of what I think the bill means. I
need to read the bill a few more times to get the full picture but
frankly that thought makes a round with Sonny Bill Williams look
appealing. If you are responsible for a food business you need to get
some detailed advice about your specific situation. In addition the bill
is coming up for its second reading and there will be amendments made
during the Committee of the House stage after that, so it is likely to
change a bit. Nevertheless it is worth being aware of some of what it
does do, while getting some reassurance about what it doesn't.<br />
<br />
Firstly,
the bill will not affect people who grow or process food for themselves
and their family or keep seed. The bill does affect people who sell or
trade food, including barter, but how much depends of the scale and type
of the operation. Keep in mind that barter is not the same as
reciprocal gift giving of excess harvest. Barter is a commercial
transaction (maintaining value) while gift giving is a social
transaction (maintaining relationships). The bill does not mention gift
giving at all but I'd argue it does not apply to it.<br />
<br />
At the
lowest end of the scale, some people who trade food will have no new
obligations under the bill. They will be subject to “food handler
guidelines” but these will be educative only. This will be for things
like clubs providing food to members secondary to an activity, school
fairs, growers that sell at the farm gate or at farmers markets, very
small scale or home-based production, people who sell things like
chippies only, childcare providers where food handling is no more than,
say, cutting up apples. This is not a complete list and schedule 3 of
the bill sets it out in more detail.<br />
<br />
The next level is where
people have to go on a public register and will have to comply with a
National Programme. These will be designed to identify and deal with
potential health risks from food production. NB This will almost
certainly not deal with things like pesticide residues or GMOs, but will
be aimed at hygiene and gross contamination etc. They will also specify
what paperwork businesses need to do to reassure the Ministry that they
are complying. National Programmes with be at three levels of hassle,
depending on type of business.<br />
<br />
Level 1, the easiest, will cover
honey, wholesale horticultural growers and pack houses, sugar
refineries, people who sell hot drinks and prepackaged foods only, ice
cream and ice block makers and food transportation companies.<br />
<br />
Level
2 will include bakeries that only make bread, residential child care,
lolly makers, dehydrated fruits, crisps and popcorn, jam, pickles and
preserves, water and ice, frozen food (not ice cream), cereals and
biscuits.<br />
<br />
Level 3 businesses include those that make things like
alcohol and non-alcohol drinks, edible oils and margerines, food
additives (incl. vitamins and minerals), flours and grains and things
like dairies with pick 'n' mix lollies and garages that heat up pies.
Again, a full list of what is covered in set out in schedule 2 of the
bill.<br />
<br />
The heaviest regulation comes for businesses that have to
register a Food Control Plan. This includes the food retail sector
(bakeries, dairies that make filled rolls, fish mongers and butchers),
food service sector (on premises, home or commercial delivery, take away
and mobile) and manufacturers of everything from dairy products, herbs,
dips and nuts to commercially sterilised food, dry powders and
vegetable proteins. The full list is set out in schedule 1 of the bill.<br />
<br />
A
Food Control Plan must begin with a detailed description of the
business including the type of food it deals with and the nature of the
business. It must identify all the hazards and risks and set out how the
business will deal with them. It must also set out who is responsible
for the plan and verification procedures.<br />
The plan can be
developed by an individual business or adapted from someone else's. It
can also be based on a template that the Ministry may develop for
different classes of business. The plan must be registered and approved -
in practise by the local authority under powers delegated by the
Ministry. There are a range of procedures for amending, approving and
appealing.<br />
<br />
The bill also has special clauses for winemakers and
requires importers to be registered on a public register and comply with
certain requirements.<br />
<br />
If a lot of this looks like incredibly
bureaucratic paper-shuffling, that's because it is. Making dairies write
a Food Control Plan with all the on-going verification and paperwork
that goes with it because they make filled rolls is kind of bizarre.
What's more, if the dairy gets sold the new owner has to register a new
Food Control Plan. I seriously doubt that filled rolls and samosa from
the local Four Square present enough of a health risk to New Zealanders
to warrant this kind of bureaucratic overkill.<br />
<br />
In fact I don't
know any significant problems with the way the system operates now that
deserves this level of intervention. The current Food Act from 1981
probably does need updating but this is something far more ambitious
than that. It's Ministry empire building.<br />
<br />
The National led
Government is slashing jobs from the public sector and looking at how it
can further tighten the screws on the poorest and most marginalised
people in our community. At the same time it is introducing legislation
that will massively increase enforcement officers to ensure that – wait
for it – the local chip shop is up to date with their verification
paperwork.<br />
<br />
Most of the bill is not actually about how to
improve food safety. Its about how to make sure that the New Zealand
food industry obediently fills out all the necessary forms, and charge
them for the privilege. Make no mistake, the bill very carefully
empowers the charging of fees and levies, spending 12 pages on the
subject.<br />
The bill contains provisions for the appointment and
registration of 'recognised agencies and persons', 'verification
agencies and persons' and 'food safety officers'. With almost every food
business in the country having to register and comply with either a
National Programme or a Food Control Plan, expect there to be plenty of
them.<br />
<br />
The powers of food safety officers in particular are
concerning. They have the power to enter (using force if necessary) a
wide range of premises with or without a warrant. The power to enter
without a warrant is so unconstrained that it is hard to see why they
would ever bother to apply to get one, although its such a simple
process that they can do it on the phone if they leave it to the last
minute. If they do search without a warrant they have to give the owner
reasonable notice, unless that would interfere with the investigation.
They don't even have to produce the warrant and identify themselves if
“compliance would prejudice the successful execution of the warrant.”
for example if they forgot to bring them.<br />
<br />
The Food Bill isn't
as bad as some of the wilder claims being made about it, but does make
you wonder what on earth they were thinking. A more conspiratorial soul
might comment that it lies at the intersection where bureaucratic and
global food corporation's interests meet. Big businesses won't be phased
by it – it probably won't be that different from what they do now, but
it will be a major compliance obstacle for small and medium sized
businesses. New businesses in particular need to spend time on making
money to pay the bills rather than filling out redundant plans and
forms. Either way this bill will be bad for the majority of food
businesses and bad for consumers. The Minister needs to challenge her
Ministry on it and start again.<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<br />From <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/The-Food-Bill-explained-and-debunked---blog/tabid/1341/articleID/243163/Default.aspx#ixzz1mWcYnthc">monkeywrenching</a> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-12975380716656163692011-12-01T09:25:00.001+13:002011-12-01T09:30:21.031+13:00Te Hau<br />
<br />
Every day you change<br />
your eyes now slate not<br />
magnetite black<br />
or dark as the infinite sky.<br />
You are coming into your body<br />
into this world<br />
sharpening and shrinking<br />
like light through a lens<br />
a star coming into focus.<br />
<br />
I cried when you were born<br />
your body indescribably soft in my hands<br />
as soft as the womb you were born from<br />
"Once the head's out"<br />
she says<br />
"the feeling of the body sliding<br />
down the birth canal<br />
is amazing"<br />
<br />
I'll never know but<br />
I cried<br />
because of the intensity<br />
because of her courage<br />
because you had come.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-91822170716596680382011-11-29T16:37:00.001+13:002011-11-29T16:47:27.787+13:00Post election thoughtsNational supporters in Epsom will be congratulating themselves for following instructions and voting for John Banks. Now that he has climbed through the electoral window, his support may be crucial to a compliant National-led coalition government.<br />
<br />
It must have revolted National to depend on him after his weirdly camp cavortings during the campaign, a kind of Derek Zoolander crossed with Fifi the psychotic poodle, but surely no more than it revolted any of the liberals left in the ACT Party.<br />
<br />
Still, it is almost two weeks until the results from the special votes are released and a fortnight is a long time in politics. The Green Party will be hoping that they are delivered their usual late election surprise and get to add another MP to their 13. Looking at the numbers it is not impossible.
I would love to see Mojo Mathers in Parliament, both for her personal qualities and for the challenge that she would bring to the system as a deaf MP, but to be honest I'm not holding my breath. The political maturity that the Greens demonstrated in a focused, engaging and well run campaign means that they appeal to a broader section of the New Zealand public, but that they are less likely to be scooping up the last minute voters.<br />
<br />
Me, I'm predicting the specials will favour Mana and New Zealand First. I say Mana because they have strong support among young Maori and first time voters. These were the kinds of people who in the past have enrolled late just so they could vote Green. Now they'll be enrolling to vote for Hone Harawira. My prediction is also based on a great deal of wishful thinking. There are few things in politics these days as guaranteed to bring a smile to my face as the thought of the formidable Annette Sykes in Parliament. It is not only Te Ururoa Flavell who will be dreading the idea.<br />
<br />
New Zealand First was the big surprise result this election. There is no politician in the country who can do so much with so little as Winston Peters. Those who put his success down to memory loss among his older constituents misread the situation in my opinion. I recall seeing an interview with a young first time voter who said she'd vote for him because he was 'incorruptible'. Which is true if you think about it, in the same way that the Titanic now really is unsinkable.
It’s not that elderly voters have forgotten what he is like, but that young voters never knew in the first place. What Winston most undeniably is, though, is a bloody good scrapper. He knows how to make politics a spectator sport, and for that he will always, it seems, be rewarded.<br />
<br />
The party that I do not envy at all is the Maori Party. They face some very difficult decisions in the days ahead and even more so if the outcome of the special votes is that they actually become the king-makers.<br />
<br />
If National has the numbers to govern without them, they will have the opportunity to distance themselves over the next three years. If they decide to remain outside a formal coalition they can still negotiate a confidence and supply agreement or, like the Greens, a Memorandum of Understanding and make policy gains while remaining free to oppose the Government on an issue by issue basis.
And if they are genuinely unable to stop asset sales going ahead and do manage to get some kind of preferential deal for iwi, it's not just Maori who ought to thank them.<br />
<br />
I should note here that I always felt the Maori Party had more opportunity to distance themselves from National than they allowed themselves, even as part of the previous coalition. As far as I could tell, the challenge that led to the expulsion of Hone Harawira from the Party was not that he opposed going into coalition but that he thought the Party had become too servile.<br />
<br />
A good example that has since come back to haunt them was their support for National Standards – not just for the policy itself but their votes to allow the legislation to pass all its stages under urgency, avoiding public submissions. If they had been allowed, those submissions may well have warned the party of the danger that National Standards pose to schools like in Moerewa, where a hugely successful programme for Maori students is now threatened by closure.<br />
<br />
If National does end up needing them for a majority, though, the challenge is more acute, especially over asset sales. During the election campaign the Maori Party was forced to clarify their initially ambiguous position by saying that the party does not support asset sales, but that they support preferential rights for iwi if asset sales cannot be stopped.
Voting against asset sales if they did have the deciding vote would be consistent with their election promise but would put a huge strain on their relationship with National since Key has said that the issue is not negotiable. Given how important asset sales are to Key, would he threaten to refuse to form a Government if the Maori Party is unwilling to support them? Going through with such a threat would be a dangerous game indeed.<br />
<br />
Up to now the Maori Party has been unwilling to seriously test their relationship with National. On the other hand this could be exactly the opportunity the party needs to address its strategic positioning. The astute position that the party took when it first formed, of non-alignment, has morphed into a perception that they steer to the right.
In the last few days of the campaign the Maori Party recognised the danger and tried to reposition itself towards neutrality. If National relies on the Maori Party to form a Government after this election, taking an uncompromising stance on asset sales would be a way to win back a perception of independence and perhaps start to woo back some of the progressive Maori vote that the party has lost to Mana and the Greens.<br />
<br />
from my 3news blogAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-50997599083281578712011-11-19T00:19:00.002+13:002011-11-19T00:27:24.465+13:00Key's curious desire to talk policyIt is refreshing to hear John Key demanding the media focus on policy in the election campaign. Curious strategy, since I would have thought National's policy platform was their Achilles heel but they do need to get away from the poor handling of the storm in a <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/Media-stunt-bungle-helps-propel-NZ-First/tabid/419/articleID/233172/Default.aspx">teacup.</a><br /><br />National has relied heavily on John Key's easy-going charm, using things like RadioLIVE’s 'politics-free' Prime Minister’s <a href="http://www.radiolive.co.nz/The-Prime-Ministers-Hour-in-full/tabid/506/articleID/23478/Default.aspx">hour</a> and a presidential-style campaign, and Key's overreaction to what should have been a minor affair hurts his brand. Ironically, the party which has expended so much effort to play up Key's personal characteristics now has to convince people to shift their gaze.<br /><br />Which is a good thing. It would be nice to think the election might be decided on what the political parties plan to do if they become government, rather than which of the leaders we'd rather have round for a barbie. Anything which takes us closer to that goal has my support. This is especially true in the context of an on-going global financial crisis, looming oil supply <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil">constraints</a>, accelerating environmental degradation and increasing frequency of extreme weather events due to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/17/ipcc-climate-change-extreme-weather?newsfeed=true">climate change.</a>.<br /><br />National has been criticised for being on the “smile and wave” plan when it comes to economic management. In my view that is unfair. National does have a clear plan for the future, which is to strip mine the country.<br /><br />From Key's <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5094448/PM-backs-mining-souths-lignite">enthusiastic</a> support of Solid Energy's plan to dig up lignite (the lowest value and dirtiest type of coal) and convert it into briquettes, urea and diesel, to his secretive meetings with <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/Key-keeps-meeting-with-Anadarko-boss-quiet/tabid/1160/articleID/233099/Default.aspx">Anadarko</a> boss James Hackett this week, one of the companies involved in the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, to his on-going commitment to dig up the conservation estate, National remains committed to coal mining and deep sea oil drilling, despite this putting at risk the natural environment that is so fundamental to our national identity.<br /><br />Similarly, National intends to strip-mine Aotearoa's wealth by partially privatising a number of State Owned Enterprises. This will turn a sustainable income from the returns from those shares into a one-off payment, effectively giving Key's government (if elected) a chunk of money to spend but leaving a short-fall for future governments to make good. As with deep-sea oil drilling, National seems prepared to sacrifice the future well-being of the country for a short term cash boost.<br /><br />What makes it worse is how National intends to spend the money. A significant portion of it will be spent on education and health – which is a bit like selling the tractor to pay for school fees. Education and health spending are basic budget items that should be paid out of income. It would be lunacy to sell income-generating capital to pay for them.<br /><br />The rest of the money will go on subsidising farm irrigation. This will speed up the expansion of dairy farming at the very time when we need to put limits around it.<br /><br />Creating taxpayer-funded artificial profits for farming (which are increasingly owned by corporations rather than families) prevents diversification of the economy by preventing more efficient land use in marginal areas. It also speeds up the killing of our lakes and rivers and makes it impossible for us to pull our weight in international efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change.<br /><br />The problem voters face, of course, is where else to turn. Labour has taken a bold step in announcing a range of courageous policies that begin to take it back to its base.<br /><br />Phil Goff is looking more attractive to the public when he occasionally manages to relax at bit and stop trying so hard. The fact that most of Labour's best ideas are actually samples of long time Green policy may be a good or a bad thing depending on how one looks at it, but what Labour lacks in my view is coherence. Labour needs to be clear about its vision if it wants to be convincing, and it may just be too soon after its foray on the right to do that.<br /><br />The party that does have a coherent economic policy, one that actually grapples with the realities of the 21st century, is the Greens, which is why they seem to be on a trajectory to becoming the main opposition to National. Let’s just hope they get enough votes this election to prevent Steven Joyce and Gerry Brownlee doing the skinhead moonstomp all over Aotearoa New Zealand.<br /><br />Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/Keys-curious-desire-to-talk-policy---blog/tabid/419/articleID/233219/Default.aspx#ixzz1e3SnSVylAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-67302502877109928192011-09-29T14:30:00.003+13:002011-09-29T14:35:41.004+13:00My (late) representation to Parliament on the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) BIllThe Chair<br />The Justice and Electoral Committee<br />Parliament Buildings<br />Wellington<br />29 September 2011<br /><br />RE: VIDEO CAMERA SURVEILLANCE (TEMPORARY MEASURES) BILL<br /><br />Dear Chester and the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee<br /><br />Firstly, I appreciate that the closing date for representations on this bill was yesterday. However given that the public was given just one day to lodge a view, I hope that you will consider receiving this brief late addition.<br /><br />My views are as follows:<br /><br />1. I totally oppose this bill as unnecessary, inimical to good policing and as offensive to justice and the rule of law.<br /><br />2. I urge the committee to report it back to the House with a recommendation that it not proceed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">UNNECESSARY</span><br /><br />I sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee from 1999 until 2008. During that time the committee scrutinised the Evidence Bill (now Act). The very lengthy consideration the committee gave to section 30 (2) is what informs my view that this bill is simply not needed. As you well know subsection 2 (b) states that<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">“if the Judge finds that the evidence has been improperly obtained,</span> (they must) <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">determine whether or not the exclusion of the evidence is proportionate to the impropriety by means of a balancing process that gives appropriate weight to the impropriety but also takes proper account of the need for an effective and credible system of justice.”</span><br /><br />It is simply not credible that the judiciary will let serious accusations go undetermined, given their obligation to give proper account of the need for an effective and credible system of justice. The fact that the Supreme Court decision that led to this bill allowed the improperly obtained evidence that was the focus of appeal, be admitted in the prosecution of 4 of the defendents demonstrates that there is no need to violate the doctrine of the seperation of powers by retrospectively legitimising police activity.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">INIMICAL TO GOOD POLICING</span><br /><br />The Law Commission report into search and surveillance powers had put the police on notice that the legality of the use of covert filming was questionable. The fact that the police continued to rely so heavily on these techniques demonstrates an attitude to the law that is careless at best.<br /><br />Retrospectively legitimising this activity holus bolus rewards such an attitude and makes a powerful statement to the police that they can be haphazard in following the law when it comes to gathering evidence. The only real sanction that exists to keep the police within the law, and in conformity with the intentions of Parliament when it enacts laws proscribing search and surveillance powers, is for improperly obtained evidence to be excluded in court. I find it hard to believe that the intention of this Parliament is to condone police impropriety.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">OFFENSIVE</span><br /><br />It seems extraordinary that a country that purports to be a democracy that respects the separation of powers and the rule of law can contemplate passing retrospective validation of illegal police video surveillance, under urgency, with a select committee process lasting one week and with one day for the public to prepare representations. I do not think I need to spell out further to this committee why<br />this bill and this process is offensive to justice and the rule of law.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">CONCLUSION </span><br /><br />I offer thanks in advance in the hope that the committee has agreed to accept this late representation. I urge the committee to send this bill back to the House with a recommendation that it not proceed and with a report that spells out clearly why this bill is ill-conceived and offensive.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-12317246789963371402011-09-29T14:21:00.002+13:002011-09-29T14:28:34.282+13:00Emergency surveillance law shows the Crown has too much powerNew Zealand is not a democracy, if by that we mean government for the people, by the people. This was proven to me beyond a doubt when I was sworn in as an MP for the third time in 2005. MPs are required to swear allegiance to the Queen and her successors before they can take part in the Parliament. When I tried to add “to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi” (Parliament's true sources of legitimacy) I was forbidden to do so. MPs allegiance must be to the British Crown alone.<br /><br />I was neither the <a href="http://blog.greens.org.nz/2005/11/17/swear-words/">first</a> nor the <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5284635/Speaker-refuses-to-swear-Harawira-in">last</a> MP to attempt to add something meaningful to the oath, but it was a personal reminder about who the Parliament serves. Allowing New Zealanders to elect the people who serve the Crown in this country fools us into thinking that those representatives are there to serve us. More importantly, it obscures the lie that is at the heart of our constitution – that the source of political authority is the Queen. <br /><br />The Parliament only sits after it receives Letters Patent from the Queen giving it the power to do so. Every Act passed through Parliament has to be signed off by the Queen, or her proxy the Governor General, before it becomes law. Regulations are actually Orders in Council from the Queen or the Governor General, made on the advice of her Minsters. Within our system, the Queen is the very source of political power and legitimacy.<br /><br />This is not just abstract political theory. It distorts our very thinking about what the Government can and can't do. It is the reason why New Zealanders have so few real protections from the State, protections that would limit the power of the Crown. It is the basis for the Governments ability to sack an elected council in Canterbury and <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/3526047/ECan-councillors-sacked">replace</a> it with hand chosen appointees, or forcibly take over the <a href="http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyid=204642">administration</a> of the waterfront from Auckland City. It is what allows the Government to seriously contemplate passing a law under urgency to <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/Urgent-surveillance-law-offensive---Greens/tabid/419/articleID/226886/Default.aspx">legalise</a> police surveillance that the courts have already ruled was illegal and that the police were repeatedly warned about. It was what allowed the last Labour Government to steal huge areas of land based on the ethnicity of its owners with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. The power of the Crown trumps the rule of law.<br /><br />If we were a real democracy, our political system – our constitution – would be based on the recognition that sovereignty flows from the people, not from a monarch (and a foreigner at that). It would embody the idea that political power flows upwards. Sovereignty begins with our right as human beings to make decisions over our own lives. We express it in the collective decisions we make as communities. Elements of it can be passed on to the national parliament and to the regional and global governance bodies that we collectively choose to take part in. <br /><br />A New Zealand democracy would be based on the Treaty of Waitangi, which reinforces the local decision-making rights of hapu over the things that affect them. In the Maori language version of the treaty that the chiefs and Governor Hobson signed, Maori never ceded sovereignty to the Crown. The idea that the Queen is the sovereign power is simply incompatible with the tino rangatiratanga of hapu. That is why the courts have had to invent the “principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” in an attempt to sidestep the international legal doctrines that give priority to the Maori language version.<br /><br />A real New Zealand democracy would provide protection for all its people from the arbitrary use of power by the State. It would safeguard our human and civil rights from those given enforcement power over us, such as the police, prison system, customs, and increasingly food and medicines regulators. At present New Zealanders have no constitutional protection at all. It is only the lack of a simple majority due to MMP that has slowed the Government from ramming through an emergency retrospective law to give police carte blanche powers of video surveillance.<br /><br />Finally a real democracy would not have local councils made and unmade by the whim of the Crown, but as expressions of people's inherent right to make decisions at a local level over the things that affect them at a local level. The ability to sack a properly elected council and replace it with Government appointees is an outrage, made possible only by a distorted view of political legitimacy and power.<br /><br />New Zealand will become a republic sooner or later. The real question we need to ask ourselves, though, is much deeper. Does the power of our Parliament come from some person because they are more divine than the rest of us, more imbued with wisdom and justice? Or rather does it come from the people and their inalienable right to rule their own lives, and their choice to bestow on the Government the ability to make decisions in the best interests of the nation? Once we have decided that, eveything else will become clear.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-41295246711294582382011-09-08T17:21:00.002+12:002011-09-08T17:27:25.065+12:00Take prosecution power away from policeA young man I know was in court recently. He and some friends were drinking round the back of a sports club and they decided to smash a window. It was typical dumb drunk stuff and they deserved to get caught. He didn't deserve a conviction for attempted burglary, which was what the police charged him with.<br /><br />I asked the police prosecutor how he justified an attempted burglary charge when the window was visibly barred and impossible to enter. He said that if the window hadn't been barred he was pretty sure the kids would have tried to get inside.<br /><br />I don't need to mention that the young guy was Maori. Of course he pleaded not guilty, on the reasonable basis that he wasn't trying to burgle the place, he was just being a vandal. The case dragged on for about a year, wasting police and court time and costing who knows how much money. Eventually, frustrated over police delays and deferred proceedings, he pleaded guilty on the promise of a community sentence. I guess you could call it conviction by attrition. If the charge had been willful damage or some such, however, there would have been a guilty plea and the case could have been dealt with straight away.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif<br /><br />For me it was just another example of why prosecuting practice needs to change. The case didn't make the national news, but it illustrated the point just as well as the infamous case of the autistic light bulb collector <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/5484663/Charges-dropped-against-autistic-looter">Cornelius Smith-Voorkamp</a>. Mr Smith-Voorkamp was accused of being a looter, detained in custody for 11 nights (and his partner for 6 weeks) and prosecuted for 6 months before the case was dropped in August. All for taking two light bulbs. Then there is the case of singer <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/music/news/article.cfm?c_id=264&objectid=10749466">Tiki Taane</a> who was charged in April with disorderly behaviour likely to incite violence. He sang the NWA song 'Fuck the police' while police were in the club he was performing at. The case was dropped this week but it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the police deliberately wasted months of court time and fistfuls of public money for a bit of personal revenge.<br /><br />The Minister of Justice Simon Power, like Justice Ministers before him, has recently introduced changes to the legal aid rules in a bid to cut costs. It's time his officials pointed out to him that a more effective, although less populist, way to cut spending on lawyers, as well as get the courts running more smoothly, would be to crack down on ridiculous prosecutions.<br /><br />The problem is that the police seem to lose perspective. That's understandable – they are in the thick of things. But it means that we cannot rely on the police to not prosecute matters that just shouldn't ever go to court. It means we cannot rely on the police to always lay charges that are in proportion to the offense that was actually committed.<br /><br />That's without even mentioning those cases where police perjury is involved, http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif<a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4355159/Ex-police-officer-sentenced-for-perjury"></a>suchttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifh as when then-senior constable <a href="http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/policeman-jailed-lying-teen-crash-3804930">Neil Robert Ford</a> caused a traffic accident, lied about it and persuaded a to blame the victim. Shane Cribb, 17, was charged and found guilty. Mr Cribb and his supporter Steve Potter spent 5 years fighting for justice. After it was over Mr Potter said that he worked out what really happened within days of the accident. He commented that "If I could see what was gapingly wrong, why couldn't the authorities? That's the thing that I really still struggle with."<br /><br />This case also demonstrates that the police find it hard to make objective decisions when it comes to prosecuting police officers who may have broken the law. The failure of the police to prosecute Constable Abbott after he shot Steve Wallahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif<a href="http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/waitara29.htm"></a>ce dead in Waitara in 2000 is another example. The family had to bring a private prosecution before the legality of that killing could be tested, even though the courts found there was a case.<br /><br />We have to take prosecuting decisions out of the hands of the police. We need an independent Public Prosecutors Office with responsibility for deciding when to prosecute and what charges to lay. The job of the police should be to investigate crime, interview suspects and gather evidence. Having a prosecutors office which can then evaluate the evidence without any prior stake in the case would clear the crap out of the courts as well as give citizens a bit more protection from malicious prosecutions. Who knows, it might even have saved those Operation 8 defendents who have just had their cases dropped after four years of legal hell.<br /><br />from my <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/Take-prosecutions-away-from-police---Nandor-blog/tabid/1341/articleID/224965/Default.aspx">Monkeywrenching</a> column 8 Sept 2011)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-1705603205744171942011-06-22T15:27:00.003+12:002011-06-22T15:30:35.014+12:00Te Tai Tokerau by-electionI've always thought that calling the Te Tai Tokerau by-election was a mistake for Mana. Not because of the cost to the country, which is insignificant in the context of what it costs to have a democracy. I thought it was a mistake because of the costs to the party.<br /><br />Firstly the Mana Party has few resources. While almost the entire Te Tai Tokerau section of the Maori Party seems to have gone straight over to Mana, its bank accounts probably didn't.<br /><br />Even in terms of human energy, it is a big ask to expect party activists to run a by-election and then have to run the general election campaign straight after. Door-knocking, mailbox drops, stalls and billboards take a lot out of a branch.<br /><br />Added to this, the Labour Party is free to give the by-election its undivided attention in a way that it could not do in a general election. Especially this one. While the Labour machine may not cut a lot of ice in Ahipara it has certainly made some headway in the southern, more urban end of the electorate. Getting those votes back takes a level of grunt that Mana may not have.<br /><br />Perhaps most importantly, at this stage in its life Mana needs to be building its organisation, its membership, its policies and its processes, not getting itself bogged down in a skirmish in the North. At the Mana Party launch I challenged the party to avoid becoming the kind of political party that revolves around one man, by building a truly national organisation with strong collective leadership. That means Hone Harawira getting around the country, building branches, shoulder tapping candidates and organisers and inspiring people to get involved. It also means getting the principles and policies of the party clear.<br /><br />It is by doing this that Mana has the potential to become a potent political force. My hope for years has been to see a third political space open up in New Zealand parliamentary politics, where a combination of small parties is able to challenge the duopoly of National and Labour. As a greenwing activist and commentator it seems obvious that the core of that third force would be the Greens, an independent Maori voice and a genuine left party. Mana has the potential to fill more than one of those spaces, if it is able to bring together the Pakeha left and progressive Maori in the way its launch suggested it might.<br /><br />Instead Mana is using its time to prove that Hone Harawira has a mandate to be the MP for Te Tai Tokerau. Honestly, I don't think anyone doubted it. In fact (with the benefit of hindsight) it seems obvious that a by-election would be unable to improve on the assumption most of us already had - that support for Hone in the electorate was virtually unanimous. All a by-election could ever do was weaken that assumption, which of course is what the polls have now done. I'm pretty confident that Hone will win on Saturday but he will probably never again look as unassailable as he did before the by-election was called.<br /><br />That is not to say there have been no benefits for Mana in this race. Hone has been generally acknowledged the winner in his various debates by mainstream political commentators. His political style has had some of the rougher edges knocked off in the tumble of the campaign and the more exposure he gets, the less of a caricature he becomes in people's minds. That undermining of the irrational fear and loathing that many Pakeha have will be useful in the longer term.<br /><br />But whoever takes the seat on Saturday, Kelvin Davis will consider himself a winner. He has represented the Labour Party well. He will be an MP either way and even if he does not take the seat he will be the man that almost knocked out Hone Harawira on his first run. It seems he is, as he says, a born politician and I'm sure it won't be long before the press gallery starts calling him Labour's rising star and speculating on his leadership prospects. Which is kind of why I'm rooting for Hone – the born activist and shit stirrer. Who Hone represents is those people who rarely get represented in the New Zealand colonial parliament.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-3699471738752457552011-06-08T15:16:00.002+12:002011-06-08T15:20:15.990+12:00Greens step forwardI still have the photos from the day in 1998 that the Green Party left the Alliance. It was the day I joined. I'd refused to become a member before then as I couldn't stand the kind of old left politics that the Alliance represented and I couldn't understand why the Greens would continue to yoke themselves to a party that despised them. Just as I could never understand why we yoked ourselves to the Labour Party when I was an MP, a party who despised us no less.<br /><br />So I was happy to see the Greens finally take an independent stance on post-election negotiations at this weekend's conference. The Greens have said that they will attempt to work constructively with, and challenge, whichever party leads the government after the November elections but that anyone who wants Green support would need to make “significant progress on Green Party environmental, economic and social policies and initiatives” before that could happen. In conclusion, it is unlikely, but not impossible, that they would support a National-led government, and it is possible, but not certain, that they would support a Labour-led government.<br /><br />Cue the hyperbole. <a href="http://tumeke.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-i-cant-vote-green-this-election.html">Bomber</a> says its about loyalty, although he doesn't explain why the Greens owe Labour any loyalty in the first place. Paradoxically, he also says that while he “believe(s) in everything the Greens have ever said and done when it comes to policy” voting Labour would be a better choice. He remains conspicuously silent on how he reconciles this with Labour's record on all the issues he holds dear. Sue Bradford attacks the Greens for “<a href="http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/greens-step-to-the-right">taking a step towards the right</a>". When you see the political world in monochrome then of course black, white, and shades of grey are all you have to describe it. The Greens have always been more colourful than that.<br /><br />The Greens can be described as 'left', just as the colour of a puriri tree can be described as 'dark', but not adequately so. The Greens have an uncompromising commitment to fairness and equality. They also have a commitment to individual rights and to limitations on the power of the State, but I wouldn't describe them as 'rightwing' either. What I would say is that by rejecting the left / right dichotomy as inadequate to describe Green politics, the Greens become free to adopt what is valuable from either end of that spectrum and evolve it in accordance with their own philosophies. Some people on the left would say there is nothing valuable to be found on the right, and vice versa. That kind of locked-in thinking is exactly the problem. Being 'green' identified provides room for finding creative, holistic, solutions to current social and environmental challenges. <br /><br />The post-election negotiating strategy is not about the Greens commitment to the 'left' in any case, but their (lack of) commitment to the Labour Party. Labour has time and again shown that it prefers going into coalition with just about anyone but the Greens. Only the Maori Party and Hone Harawira seem more distateful to them. The Greens continuing to pledge themselves unreservedly to Labour would indicate a distinct lack of self esteem and political nouse.<br /><br />To my mind there are a number of reasons for the Greens new approach. The first is simple negotiation tactics. Only a fool gives their commitment to a deal before negotiations have begun. Actually it is worse than that. In the past the Greens have said only that they won't support National to govern. While they never promised to support Labour, their commitment has always included the recognition that they would have to support Labour if Greens held the balance of power. Allowing National to govern by withholding support from Labour would be as bad as actually voting for National. Labour knows this. What the Greens have done in the past, then, is to guarantee a deal with Labour, before seeing any terms, but only if Labour can't find anyone better. That is what various spokespeople for the left would have the Greens keep doing, it would seem.<br /><br />The other reason is that sooner or later a child has to let go of mama's skirt. Given the sad state of the Labour Party right now, it seems an appropriate time to do so. The Greens announcement at the weekend does not indicate that they are about to support National to form a government. In fact it suggests the opposite. What it does say is that the Greens are finally standing on their own two feet.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-32837868297691383672011-01-31T17:50:00.004+13:002011-01-31T19:26:14.231+13:00Bringing the Maori Party back from the brinkTomorrow the Maori Party has a chance to pull back from the brink, when Hone Harawira and Te Ururoa Flavell meet at <a href="(1)http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10703208">Taheke Marae</a> in Rotorua for the first time since Mr Flavell made a formal complaint against his colleague. To do so, though, will take a much more skillful handling of the conflict than the party has shown thus far. <br /><br />The key question is whether either side actually wants to pull back anymore. I doubt Hone wrote the column that preceeded all this with the intention of splitting the party, but he may now be beyond caring. What is clear, though, is that the leadership of the Party has been trying to force him out for a long time. Over a year ago I <a href="http://rasnandor.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-on-ets-maori-party-and-hone.html">wrote</a> about how a rumour campaign had been started against Mr Harawira (well before the 'white motherfuckers' email) that seemed intended to undermine his support base. More recently rumours were being circulated in the party that he was considering leaving the Maori Party, including giving impetus to the speculation that he might team up with Sue Bradford and Matt McCarten.<br /><br />In trying to oust Harawira, though, the difficulty that the party faces is not just that he is a hard man to take out. Mr Harawira does represent an important strand of opinion in the party. I have spoken to Maori activists all over the country – at tangi, at hui and at celebrations – who have volunteered their dissatisfaction with the direction of the party and their intention to vote Green this election if things don't change. In particular they highlight Metiria Turei's intelligent, articulate and principled outspokenness on things of concern to Maori – including an array of environmental issues such as mining – and they wonder why the Maori Party has so often remained silent.<br /><br />The Maori Party leadership might respond that these criticisms are unfair. That the party has achieved a number of important successes for Maori as a result of their relationship with National. Many mainstream Pakeha political <a href="(1)http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/maori-party-could-be-torn-apart-nn-84757">commentators</a> would agree. The real judges of whether the trade-off has been worth it, though, will be Maori voters come election time. And not just voters. One of the factors in the Maori Party's success thus far is the enormous energy and enthusiam of its activists. It is those activists, the election harvesters, that are starting to down tools, pack up and go home. If the party loses their support it will still survive but in my view will go into decline. Rather than winning all 7 Maori seats as I once hoped, it is likely that they will start to lose seats. <br /><br />Hone will no doubt win Te Tai Tokerau should he choose to contest it as an independent. The <a href="(1)http://www.3news.co.nz/Is-a-new-left-wing-party-on-the-cards/tabid/419/articleID/196574/Default.aspx">speculation</a> that he might lead a newly formed Left party (or even more bizarrely join a Left party led by <a href="(1)http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4598641/Bradford-confirms-Leftist-party-talk">Sue Bradford</a>) is no more than wishful thinking in my opinion. That rumours continue to swirl says more about the lack of confidence that such a party could get elected on its own merit than anything about Mr Harawira's intentions. That is not to say that I would not love to see a genuinely Left party in the Parliament. My long term hope has always been for a coalition of Greens, Browns and Reds to between them make up the dominant partner in a Government. <br /><br />Having said that, the best thing for the Maori Party, and for Hone Harawira, in my view is to resolve their differences. That means finding some new accomodation between them that recognises both their need to honour their commitments and maintain their relationship with National and their need to honour the voice of their own people and maintain a clear distance from National. In particular the influence of the Iwi Leaders Group on policy, a cause of dissatisfaction among many supporters, needs to be opened up for debate.<br /><br />If the Maori Party, and Mr Harawira, can achieve this then they will have done something extraordinary. The biggest challenge for the Maori Party has always been to balance the interests of its diverse constituency. If they cannot, and Mr Harawira is forced to leave, then they will have failed that crucial test.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-89790714046712447842010-12-13T13:08:00.001+13:002010-12-13T13:10:38.650+13:00WikileaksThere are different kinds of heroes. Some are people who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time but who rise to the occasion. There are the quiet heroes who sacrifice to give their children a better start, the parents who break the cycle of abuse so that their children never have to endure what they did. There are professional heroes – fire fighters and ambulance operators. People like Police Inspector Mike O'Leary, who risked his life and suffered severe burns to rescue two children from a burning vehicle. These are the people we celebrate.<br /><br />But there are those who bear as much emnity as acclaim. People who put themselves on the line in order to expose the truth and challenge power. The danger these people face is not from random natural events, from enemy soldiers or dangerous criminals. The danger they face is from their own governments and its allies, their armies, their police forces and their secret services.<br /><br />One of these is Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of Wikileaks which last week released 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables into the public domain. The cables have already proven to be highly embarassing both to the US Government and to others. They show the US spying on its allies and on UN officials, including taking iris scans, DNA samples and fingerprints from foreign officials. It shows the US Government condoning corruption and human rights abuses in “friendly” governments and using its diplomatic power to advance the interests of US corporations. It shows collusion in torture.<br /><br />You may ask what is new about any of this. We know that the Whitehouse's rhetoric on 'freedom' and 'anti-terrorism' goes hand in hand with funding terrorists and supporting dictators. What these cables provide, though, is self incriminating evidence of the corruption at the heart of American foreign policy. It is worth reflecting on the role that the Waihopai spy base plays in this, as the New Zealand Government prepares to persecute the 3 men who helped pull the cover from that place almost 3 years ago.<br /><br />Of course Mr Assange isn't sounding much like a hero after being accused of various sexual offenses in Sweden. He is currently detained in Wandsworth Prison, London after being refused bail and is being held almost incommunicado. On Wednesday, according to The Guardian, he was allowed one 3 minute phone call with his lawyer.<br /><br />Rape accusations should not be belittled. Women face major obstacles to get justice in the courts, especially in Sweden. However I can't help noting some suspicious elements to the case. First, no charges have been laid. He is only wanted for questioning. The allegations led to a police arrest warrant in August but it was rescinded a day later by a senior prosecutor. Apparently she said that she believed the women, she just didn't feel what happened was a criminal act. <br /><br />It is hard to see how Assange can be denied bail and extradited just so he can attend a police interview. Katrin Axelsson of 'Women against Rape' has remarked at the unusual zeal of Swedish and British authorities to pursue Assange. “There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety” she writes. “Women don't take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst”.<br /><br />According to media reports the USA has already talked to Swedish authorites about on-delivering him to the USA, where media commentators are calling for him to be assasinated and the Justice Dept is talking about espionage charges. Given Sweden's compliance (documented by Wikileaks) in delivering prisoners up for torture to Egypt under US pressure, it seems unlikely they would refuse. What remains to be seen is whether making a martyr out of Assange will weaken Wikileaks, or just make it grow.<br /><br />(from my Waikato Times column 11 Dec 2010)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-49299252632384626282010-11-29T14:01:00.002+13:002010-11-29T14:07:30.601+13:00Pike River - Hard Coaled FactsThe bodies of the Pike River miners haven’t even been recovered yet and the industry PR has begun. Days before John Key’s announcement of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the disaster, the Chief Executive of the Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce was on <a href="http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/pike-river-2010/62703/mining-key-economic-driver-on-west-coast-chamber">National Radio </a>talking up the economic benefits of coal mining for the West Coast. On the same day the Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn was saying that business at Pike River needs to continue. Commendably Pike River Coal itself was more circumspect, saying that the focus for now is the families.<br /><br />Most New Zealanders would agree. The nation watched alongside the families as the tragedy unfolded. People spoke about it in their lunch rooms and over cups of tea. We waited to hear the outcome, hoping to be able to celebrate some unlikely good news. We felt the shock and sadness of the families at the news of those 29 deaths. Now our thoughts and prayers are with them as they farewell the departed, those they love who have returned to the Oneness of all things.<br /><br />There are always lessons to be found in death of course - reminders of how short our time is in this life, how unpredictable the end. I feel for those whose last words to their beloved were harsh and angry, an overspill of some small irritation now made completely irrelevant. I think about the personal legacy each man left, unknown to me, but alive in the hearts of friends and family, of times shared together, of gestures of love, friendship, generosity and solidarity. The stuff that really matters once you are gone.<br /><br />In one sense, though, these men’s deaths are part of the price paid for coal. Coal mining IS dangerous. There are many things that can be done to manage and mitigate risk but we are deluding ourselves if we think we can have coal without some people dying for it. Just as we are deluding ourselves if we think we can sustain our petroleum addiction by drilling in ever more difficult and dangerous places without suffering more marine catastrophes. Fossil fuel addiction, like P addiction, has little regard for its collateral damage.<br /><br />The real destruction from continued coal mining, though, will be the deaths it causes outside the mines rather than inside them. As the world meets this week in <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWKNIsIlmQZKnCDPqM-mkA2zQUwQ?docId=ed6c3e6e8124442b8ae6ce631a7beba5">Cancun</a> to have another go at trying to avert a climatic disaster, there is growing concern about feedback loops such as the methane from thawing Siberian <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2010%2F11%2F28%2FMNAN1GCV8F.DTL">permafrost</a>. The other big concern is the impact that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/greenwash-clean-coal">coal</a> is having on the climate – especially as the reality of <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil">peak oil</a> hits home. <br /><br />Conventional oil production is already plateauing and will begin to dwindle. At the same time increasing demand will push prices up to record highs (prices will be erratic but the trend will be upwards). One of the likely responses will be an increase in the use of tar sands and coal-to-liquid fuel to fill the gap. In fact New Zealand’s own government owned Solid Energy has just such a plan to convert lignite coal to <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10684627">diesel</a>. The world cannot afford to keep burning coal even at our current rate, never mind increasing its use through these mad schemes. At the same time the coal industry’s great hope of Carbon Capture & Storage is being increasingly <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/13235041?story_id=13235041">discredited</a>. <br /><br />Let’s be blunt - it is time to end the coal industry. It is important that we properly acknowledge the deaths of the 29 men at Pike River, but in the end there is a bigger question to be decided than mine safety.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-9894572802428990192010-11-15T17:27:00.000+13:002010-11-15T17:28:07.623+13:00Waste to dieselOne of the worst things I have ever smelled in my life was a rotting pumpkin. We'd spent the summer travelling around Aotearoa in my van and it had accompanied us the entire journey. Coming back through Taupo someone picked it up by the stalk intending to use it in a soup, but the little handle pulled off with a wet slurp to reveal the decomposing putrescence inside. The only good thing about that day was that no-one managed to spill the contents of the curcubita all over the upholstery.<br /><br />I was taken back to that unpleasant event last week at the presentation of a new report into household organic waste. It's been known for some time that one of New Zealand's big waste / resource recovery issues is the kitchen waste going into landfills. This and other organic waste is the main source of methane emissions going into the atmosphere from landfills (3 percent of NZ's greenhouse gas emissions) and a major source of toxic sludge out the bottom.<br /><br />The stupid thing about it is that, like most of the stuff going into landfills, kitchen and green waste is a valuable resource if properly processed. By simply composting food and garden scraps, for example, it is transformed by an amazing natural alchemy into rich, fertile soil. Applied to agricultural and horticultural land it adds nutrients, builds topsoil, increases earthworm counts and healthy microbial activity, increases the water holding capacity of soils and boosts yields. Since New Zealand loses a significant amount of topsoil each year it seems amazing that we don't already do it.<br /><br />Unfortunately New Zealand's waste stream is mostly locked up by multinational corporations who make money by trucking rubbish to landfills and burying it. Foreseeing the rise in environmental awareness, and an increase in reuse and recycling, they have been preparing for the future by locking councils into long term contracts that guarantee waste volumes for their tips. They often use their monopolistic position to bully smaller councils into signing contracts that more or less prevent the introduction of comprehensive recycling services.<br /><br />Luckily there are a number of New Zealand operators who take a more responsible approach. Many people are already aware of the stunningly successful efforts of the various enterprises making up the Community Recycling Network and the huge environmental, social and economic benefits they bring to their local communities. They and other New Zealand businesses are demonstrating that taking environmental and social responsibilities seriously makes for better business practises.<br /><br />So I was eager to go along to the report launch and hear what other options there are when it comes to kitchen waste. The report was written by Eunomia Research for Greenfingers Garden Bags / Earthcare Environmental Ltd and Envirofert Ltd and develops a cost / benefit analysis for household organic waste. It looks at what best practise councils do around New Zealand, what different authorities do overseas and models a variety of options for New Zealand to see where the greatest benefits are likely to be found.<br /><br />In the end what seems to give the best outcome is a weekly kitchen waste collection and a fortnightly other rubbish collection. Food scraps makes up the bulk of most people's residual rubbish (after recycling) and if that is collected separately then the residual rubbish is halved. Smell is probably the biggest problem with a fortnightly pick up, but if the food scraps are gone this shouldn't be a problem. The presenters demonstrated a neat sample kitchen caddy for the bench, with a locking lid to keep out pests and with watertight, breathable compostable bags for a liner.<br /><br />The costs to implement such a scheme are minimal, given the other savings to be gained from reducing frequency of residual rubbish collection and savings in landfill charges. The research suggests that a substantial consumer surplus can be gained from composting the waste in this way instead of landfilling it. When organic waste is composted it is broken done by aerobic (air loving) bacteria. This means it either has to be turned regularly or to have air forced into it. The main by-products are carbon dioxide, heat and plant food.<br /><br />Even better than composting, according to the report, is putting the waste into am anaerobic methane digester. Anaerobic digestion is when anaerobic (air hating) bacteria break the waste down. The byproducts of that are methane (a powerful greenhouse gas), heat and plant food. This is what happens in a landfill, and even with methane capture most of the methane goes into the atmosphere. In a digester all the methane is captured and can be used as a natural gas for burning, or can be turned into diesel to run vehicles. This is being successfully done overseas.<br /><br />So we can turn the country's kitchen waste into diesel and run all the rubbish trucks on it, instead of letting it rot in the landfill and pollute the ground and the atmosphere? That's worth getting on to your council about!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-6798051550157255432010-10-30T17:31:00.002+13:002010-10-30T17:36:27.615+13:00Death by stupidityOne of the things I love about Aotearoa is that our forests are pretty safe. They do eat people ocassionally but it's rare. The taniwha in the rivers do too, now and then, but people usually know where the danger spots are. What we don't have are a dozen varieties of venomous snakes, scorpions, lethal spiders or large people-eating carnivores. I guess an angry pig could do some damage if it caught you unawares, but it's not something trampers are likely to worry about.<br /><br />All of which, I guess, makes the tragic death of Rosemary Ives all the more aggravating. The idea that a person could be accidently shot while brushing her teeth before heading off to bed at a DoC campsight makes me angry as hell. My immediate response was to “throw the book at the bugger responsible” for being negligent with a lethal weapon, for shooting near a public campsight, for 'spotlighting' from the road and for just being a dick. The fact that 2 other similar incidents were reported over the same weekend just added to my disgust.<br /><br />A Hamilton man, Andrew Mears, has now been charged with careless use of a firearm causing death and I welcome that. His lawyer says that his family wishes to meet with Ms Ives' family to express their sympathy but have been advised that it is too soon. I have no doubt that Mr Mears and his family are completely shattered by this event and I hope that they do get an opportunity to express their sorrow to the Ives' face to face because it may help soothe that family's terrible, irreparable loss.<br /><br />But I am beginning to wonder what good 'throwing the book' at anyone would actually do. If Mr Mears is convicted, what use would there be in putting him in prison? It won't affect his likelihood of reoffending. To be honest I'd be surprised if he could even bring himself to pick a gun up again. Neither will it have any deterrent effect. Anyone stupid enough to hunt in the dark near a campsight by spotlighting from a vehicle is clearly not thinking about possible consequences – to themselves or to others. If the possibility of killing someone isn't enough to dissuade them, the length of the sentence if they do is unlikely to have an impact. <br /><br />There are three issues that a real justice system would need to address, in my opinion. The first is how the family and friends of Ms Ives can find some peace in the midst of their grief. A restorative justice approach seems to me to be much more likely to deliver that than the standard cold court system and I hope they are given the chance to consider it and support if they wish to use it. <br /><br />The second is to hold the culpable person responsible. Again, a restorative justice conference where the killer has to face Ms Ives' family and look them in the eyes would be a lot harder, and a more powerful way of taking responsibility, than time in prison.<br /><br />The third issue is how do we prevent, or at least lessen, this kind of moronic behaviour in the future? Hunting accidents are not THAT uncommon, although usually it involves hunters shooting other hunters, often their friends. If people faithfully followed the Arms Code that they are tested on when they apply for a gun license this shouldn't happen, but I suspect that some people treat it like a school test – learn it enough to regurgitate on the day and then forget about it. <br /><br />The Deeerstalkers Association is urging all hunters to learn from the bad practises that led to Ms Ives' death, but I wonder whether a more systematic approach is called for. The question is, how do we make people understand when they get a gun license that carelessness really can lead to them killing someone. How do we get them to really think about that? Our current licensing procedure doesn't even try. Perhaps a compulsory viewing of the confessions of convicted hunter-killers would help bring the lesson home.<br /><br /><br />(from my Waikato Times column 29/10/10)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-39896871372107782562010-10-05T15:05:00.001+13:002010-10-05T15:07:14.749+13:00Ankle tapping MMPI was quite impressed with the way John Key tried to <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/ACTs-meltdown-threatens-MMPs-reputation/tabid/419/articleID/173170/Default.aspx">ankle tap</a> MMP a couple of weeks ago. He never actually came out and said that he wants to get rid of it. Instead he told us, the public, that this is what WE are thinking. We just needed a little help to work that out.<br /><br />It was a brilliant tactic. It allowed him to take a stab at our electoral system while leaving room to about-face if the political dynamics and focus-group opinions change. It sounded like he was on the pulse of the nation, but committed him to nothing. John Key may be relatively new to parliamentary politics, but he's a natural.<br /><br />Key has tried from the beginning to portray himself as an impartial adjudicator in the MMP debate. He is only holding a referendum because that is what the public want. It is 'the people', rather than John Key, who are now questioning MMP as a result of the ACT party's self-destruction. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't take that view he told us. This begged the question of exactly which 'people' he was referring to. The answer came a week later. Leaked minutes showed that his chief of staff had been talking with Peter Shirtcliffe about pushing the Supplementary Member (SM) system as an alternative to MMP.<br /><br />Peter Shirtcliffe, for those that don't know, was the main figure behind the campaign to derail the MMP referendum in 1993. He was chair of Telecom at the time, and realised that a more democratic voting system is a threat to corporate profits. He managed to get more donations from his big business buddies than Labour and National combined, which is telling in itself, and the combination of big money and deceptive advertising almost took the referendum. Nevertheless people power won the day in the end.<br /><br />To be fair, John Key probably was a bit agnotic about MMP while ACT remained a viable political partner. While an outright majority would make it easier for National to ram free market fundamentalism through parliament (which was one of the reasons we got rid of FPP in the first place) he was quite comfortable knowing that he could rely on ACT for support on one side and the Maori Party on the other. This provides a lot of scope for a centre-right politician, with the bonus of having a coalition agreement to blame for unpopular policy initiatives in either direction. With ACT gone at the next election, as seems likely, Key now has only one direction to lean. National must be burning offerings in thanks that the referendum planning is already underway.<br /><br />So expect to see more undermining of MMP by the National Party up until the election. It's not without its own risks for them though. Drumming up concern about the influence of small parties under MMP may grow a mood for change, but a return to FPP, or a move to SM, may not bring that to an end. Getting rid of MMP will probably spell the end of some small parties, but one in particular will be the big winner. The Maori Party has five MPs by virtue of its electorate vote. Party votes add nothing. With the other small parties gone, it is likely that Labour and National would both be reliant on the Maori Party to form a government on a regular basis. Far from ending the influence of small parties, a move to a less proportional system would probably just give the Maori Party a monopoly.<br /><br />I suspect that is not what Peter Shirtcliffe had in mind.<br /><br />(from <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/EnvironmentSci/Monkeywrenching">Monkeywrenching</a>)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-13463008925310480862010-09-15T16:23:00.001+12:002010-09-15T16:27:54.302+12:00Peaking oilFor a country so dependent on importing and exporting we are amazingly relaxed about the state of the world's oil supply. The <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,715138,00.html">report</a> into 'peak oil' by the German military leaked in Der Spiegel last week barely rated a mention in our mainstream media. Neither did the British government's Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security <a href="http://peakoiltaskforce.net/download-the-report/2010-peak-oil-report/">report</a>. Both made sobering reading.<br /><br />Let's be clear - no one is saying that the earth is running out of oil anytime soon. In fact 'peak oil' refers to the peak of production, when we are producing the most we ever will. The problem is that production will then start to decline at the same time as resurgent powers such as China and India seek a bigger share. Oil prices are likely to become very erratic as speculation and recurring recession drive demand up and down, but the basic trend will be a permanent oil supply crisis with fossil fuels becoming very expensive.<br /><br />The likelihood of this and its implications are what the two reports were attempting to explore. The British reports warns of a supply 'crunch' in the near future and says that we need to act now to prepare. The Bundeswehr report warns of shifts in the global balance of power, a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, a "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises. Both reports stressed the urgency of the situation that we face.<br /><br />Up until a couple of years ago discussions around peak oil were never heard among ‘hard-nosed’ business people or politicians. It was only the extremist freaks that kept trying to bring attention to these issues – hippies, greenies, geologists. Now, like on so many other issues, fringe opinion is being adopted by the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/13/suncor-energy-oil-intelligent-investing-cenovus.html?boxes=Homepagechannels">mainstream</a>.<br /><br />(As an aside, wouldn’t it be nice to see some acknowledgement of the hippies? I’m sick of seeing guys in power suits talking about the environment and then saying “but don’t think I’m some kind of hippy” as if we would ever mistake their boring old arse for one)<br /><br />It looks like peak oil is here, although we won’t know the precise moment until it has passed. Globally we go through just over 30 (US) billion barrels of oil a year, but for the last ten years new discoveries have amounted to around 10 billion barrels a year. We have already got most of the easy to get stuff and now we are going after the rest. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is in some ways a predictable outcome of our oil dependency as we source our oil from increasingly more remote oil fields, employing more complex and inevitably riskier production techniques.<br /><br />However there does not appear to be any energy source capable of fully replacing oil, and neither are we making the investments now that would be needed to even attempt to do so. In Aotearoa the government is still ploughing money into road building while neglecting the transportation systems that will survive the end of cheap oil – rail, coastal shipping, walking and cycling. There is even talk about spending some $20 million to put a tunnel through the <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/4126152/Kaimais-eyed-for-road-tunnel">Kaimai’s</a> to carry road freight (hat-tip <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Mark4Hamilton">Mark Servian</a>). I can’t help wondering what that money could do if we invested it in trains.<br /><br />One thing for sure is that the end of cheap oil will hit us all hard. Fossil fuels power our food production systems and its distribution. Transportation, materials production, international trade, construction... basically everything will become a lot more expensive. There is a lot that we can do to begin preparing for the end of the oil age, and many <a href="http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/">communities</a> are already getting started. While we cannot maintain our current lifestyles, we can maintain or even improve our quality of life. We just need to do the kinds of things that hippies have been talking about since the 1970’s – energy efficiency, localised economies, waste reduction, passive solar building design, walkable cities, and a focus on building communities rather than making more stuff.<br /><br />Despite the government’s wilful negligence on this issue we have a choice – begin to make the transition towards a low energy future or ignore the problem and watch Rome burn. Personally I’m not waiting for the politicians.<br /><br />(from Monkeywrenching)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-38408768398454612802010-09-13T19:20:00.001+12:002010-09-13T19:25:50.775+12:00Ecological overshootLast week the human species went into debt. Not financial debt, but in something far more important – the service flows of the environment. Money is just something we made up, useful but ultimately illusory. If we go into ecological debt, on the other hand, there is no government or lending establishment that can bail us out. There are no appeal rights against the laws of nature.<br /><br />It's a simple idea. Think of it like a business. If it spends more than its income, eating into its capital, it will eventually go bust. A family budget is the same. If times are hard you may have to spend some of your savings on groceries and rent but sooner or later you have to learn to live within your income.<br /><br />Natural resources are the same. We cannot continually take more resources than the environment can regenerate, yet most wealthy countries live far beyond their environmental means. If everyone in the world lived like the average American we would need the resources of at least 5 planets. For the UK it is 3.4 planets, and New Zealand is probably somewhere around there. The per capita consumption of China is estimated to be close to one planet living.<br /><br />I personally don't aspire to the lifestyle of the average chinese, so I'm interested in how we reduce our consumption without losing our quality of life? Which begs the question of what it is that makes the 'good' life. It's something that we don't seem to much ask ourselves these days, obsessed as we are with living the 'big' life. We have locked ourselves into a growth frenzy that makes us work harder for less happiness. Most people have less time to spend with their family or their friends, less time to walk along the river bank or share a meal together and less financial security despite the economic growth of the past few decades. <br /><br />Much politics is focussed on cutting spending on the things that make people happier in order to boost spending on things to increase economic growth. It is assumed that this will make us better off, although there is no evidence to think so. In my opinion, it is time that we began to invest in infrastructure to improve the well-being of our people. Not because it will boost tourism, not because studies show that happy citizens are more productive, not because it will give savings in the health sector, but simply because it will make us all better off in the only terms that really matter – enjoyment of life.<br /><br />One of the candidates for Hamilton City Council, Mark Servian, has said “A community is a home, not a business, so council spending decisions should be based on 'cost-benefit', NOT 'profit-loss'. Neither a household or a firm can let itself go broke, but the city is first and foremost where we live our lives. The council is our shared project for making our collective home much more pleasant”. I agree. It is a pretty bleak vision that sees pavements, drains and rubbish as the only things councils should be interested in. In my view we will learn to live within our ecological means by living better lives and local councils have a major role to play in that..<br /><br />One obvious strategy in Hamilton is to invest in making it a more walkable, cyclable city. With our flat streets, our gully system, our river banks and our parks it is hard to imagine a place better suited for it. This could be combined with a functioning passenger rail service to Auckland and better cycle and public transport connections to outlier towns to make getting around a joy rather than a source of road rage. I wouldn't be the only one that would be both happier and greener because of it.<br /><br /><br />http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day<br />http://www.bettertransport.org.nz<br /><br />(from my Waikato Times column)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-81253794528698576582010-08-27T14:40:00.001+12:002010-08-27T14:41:30.755+12:00Miscarriages of Justice and what to do about themThere is no such thing as a perfect justice system, where the guilty are always convicted and the innocent acquitted. In fact the most heinous mass murderers, the tyrants and warmongers that decide the fate of nations rarely even stand trial. Justice, like truth, is a journey rather than a destination.<br /><br />One traveller on that road is Professor Graham Zellick, who has been in Aotearoa recently to talk about the UK <a href="http://www.ccrc.gov.uk/">Criminal Cases Review Commission</a>. This was set up in 1997, following some high profile cases in the UK, to review possible miscarriages of justice. His talk was both informative and compelling, partly because New Zealand's justice system is a part of the 'common law family' that stems from Britain and is subject to many of the same problems.<br /><br />That problems exist in the New Zealand appellate system is not news. Public disquiet remains about a number of high profile convictions. Other verdicts, such as Arthur Allan Thomas, David Doherty, Alec Waugh and David Bain have been overturned after lengthy terms of imprisonment. It was concern about such cases that led retired High Court Judge Thomas Thorpe to conduct a self funded investigation into miscarriages of justice and recommend that New Zealand establish a body like the UK CCRC.<br /><br />Appeal courts find it very difficult to correct certain kinds of problems in the court system. According to Zellick, this is partly due to an excessive confidence the system places on jury verdicts. Appeal courts are happy to look at questions of law, procedural issues and the like. They are very reluctant to look at questions of fact and say that the jury simply got it wrong.<br /><br />One of the ways that juries can be misled is through expert witnesses. Zellick spoke about the case of Sally Clark in the UK who was imprisoned for murdering her cot-death baby, mostly on the basis of now-discredited theories of a Dr Meadows. As he spoke I was reminded of the FBI evidence that was so crucial in convicting John Barlow, evidence that has now been shown to be wrong.<br /><br />Although it is not a point he made, it also seems likely that juries give unwarranted attention to certain kinds of evidence. Contrary to common sense, two of the biggest causes of wrongful conviction (as evidenced by DNA based exonerations) are confessions and eye witness identification evidence that most ordinary people would expect to be reliable.<br /><br />The UK CCRC gets about 1000 applications a year, refers 30 - 40 cases back to the courts and about 70 percent of those result in a conviction being quashed. This is all at a cost of around £8 million. The Scottish CCRC, serving a population of around 5 million people, costs about £1 million. When you consider that it costs about $90 000 to keep one person in prison for a year then a CCRC in Aotearoa might well save us money, if effective justice is not a strong enough argument for the Government.<br /><br />Currently in this country once appeal rights have been exhausted all that remains is an appeal to the Crown for the prerogative of mercy. According to Zellick, this is a bit muddled in New Zealand. The prerogative of mercy is originally a power that the Crown has to overturn a conviction or to commute a sentence. Under the Crime Act this has been changed into an ability for the Governor-General in Council to refer a conviction back to the courts. In practise it is a decision of the Cabinet, which is constitutionally undesirable. The process has been described as ad hoc and inadequate by at least one QC.<br /><br />Certainly the prerogative of mercy has not provided any benefit for most of the cases where it seems likely or possible that the conviction is unsafe. Note that this does not necessarily mean that the person can be proven innocent, but rather that their conviction cannot be sustained by the evidence. Our system requires proof "beyond reasonable doubt" in criminal cases and it is questionable in number of cases whether this threshold was ever reached. Peter Ellis, John Barlow and David Tamihere are all cases that in my opinion should be looked at by an independent body.<br /><br />Even more compelling is the case of Scott Watson, who was convicted for the murder of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart in the Marlborough Sounds in 1999. Having read a reasonable amount of different material about the case, I am convinced that not only is there a miscarriage of justice but that Scott Watson is innocent. Unfortunately he, and the others, seem unlikely to get justice until New Zealand has an independent, transparent body to look at alleged miscarriages of justice and do something about it when it finds then.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-8093218580865453032010-08-12T21:12:00.001+12:002010-08-12T21:15:09.537+12:00Suicidal tendenciesI’ve got my own theories about the high rate of suicide in New Zealand (and most of the western world). To my mind we need to address the alienation, the atomisation and the anomie of modern life if we want to get to the roots of the problem. In addition I find it hard to believe that at some level we don’t all feel the ecocide rending the planet. We are part of the fabric of life, despite the illusion of separation, and cannot be mentally healthy while we continue to wreak destruction on ourselves.<br /><br />Such thinking was not, I suspect, behind the Chief Coroner Judge Neil MacLean’s call for more media reporting of suicide. He pointed out that while the number of people dying from suicide is 50 percent higher than the road toll, suicide receives comparatively little attention. In this he is correct. The money spent on reducing the road toll is considerable, with public media campaigns and strong enforcement around drink driving and speeding. Suicide prevention is small fry in comparison.<br /><br />It is hard to understand why this is so. Suicide is not a new problem. Perhaps there is an assumption that it is primarily a youth problem. I don’t mean to be indelicate, but young people only draw significant political attention and ministry resources when we can blame them for shit. There has been far more media time, mental energy and government money spent on boy racers than ever was directed at suicide prevention.<br /><br />An indication of our collective lack of interest is the fact that an international expert on suicide prevention, Annette Beautrais, <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/our-hidden-tragedy/4015206/Suicide-expert-quits-country-in-despair">left the country</a> just a year and a half ago because of what a colleague described as a lack of support and recognition from the NZ Ministry of Health. Even more telling, the Associate Minister of Health with responsibility for the area, Peter Dunne, didn’t seem to be aware of this.<br /><br />The media, of course, will blame the politicians for the lack of reporting. The Coroners Act does restrict reporting of suicide to some degree, but this is a bit of a cop-out. The Coroners Act says that if a coroner has found a death to be self-inflicted, no one can make public anything other than the name, address, and occupation of the person concerned and the fact that the coroner has found the death to be self-inflicted. Unless you have the coroner’s permission. They can only give that permission if it is unlikely to be detrimental to public safety.<br /><br />Given the contested evidence about the effect of media reporting, this seems a good thing. It is a cautious approach that leaves the door open if the evidence stacks up against the notion of ‘copy cat’ suicides. In addition it is the Chief Justice who has responsibility to draw up guidelines for coroners about what may or may not be detrimental.<br /><br />Strangely you’d never guess this from Judge MacLeans comments. I agree that more reporting is probably a good idea, but it is in his hands to allow this to happen.<br /><br />Secondly, the restrictions are only around the particulars of specific deaths. There is absolutely nothing to stop the media covering the broader issue of suicide such as trends, research and causes. In particular more coverage of how to spot the warning signs and what to do about it if you do would be helpful. In fact the extensive coverage of suicide in <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/our-hidden-tragedy/4013673/Suicide-is-a-problem-for-us-all">The Press</a> this month is a good example of just what can be done under the current law.<br /><br />There are many laws that do need to change in this country but this is probably not one of them. Let’s see what we can do with what we have before we start demanding another act of parliament.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-32417760844351155162010-08-06T16:34:00.002+12:002010-08-06T16:38:29.424+12:00In need of a radical localismApparently local body elections are coming up soon, although most people would never know. Some of the more imaginative candidates in Hamilton are getting up to all kinds of interesting stuff, but chances are the turn-out this year will be as low as every other local election. Which suits those in power quite nicely.<br /><br />I can understand the lack of interest. The thought of going to a council meeting kind of makes me cringe inside, even though I know that local councils have more influence on the day to day lives of ordinary people than Parliament does. A lot of my constituency work as an MP was either doing pycho-therapy or explaining to people why I couldn't do much to help them because it was a COUNCIL ISSUE. Even then, I'm not sure it ever inspired them to vote for their city councillors.<br /><br />More recently there has been another reason to be disinterested in voting in local elections. The sacking of Environment Canterbury and its replacement by a government picked board was a complete travesty of democracy, removing democratic representation so farmers could seize water resources more easily. The fact that the people of Canterbury won't even get to vote for their regional council this year just adds to the injury. The reorganisation of Auckland's goverance to allow the city to be run by business people for business people is a similar usurption of democracy.<br /><br />The problem stems from our colonial history. In Europe power tends to be more localised because nation states grew out of the federation of independent cities and provinces. Local power often has constitutional protection. In New Zealand the nation states was enforced from the outside and it was highly centralised from its inception so as to facilitate our exploitation. Simply put, we were designed as a farm for England rather than as a democracy. The source of political power is not seen to be the people, but rather the Crown. While we no longer farm for Britain alone, we are still a commodity producer. Efficient production remains a more powerful political imperative than the right of local people to have a say over the things that are important to them.<br /><br />Some of the most interesting social developments in Europe have resulted from the exercise of local power. The Dutch quasi legalisation of cannabis, for example, began with a decision by a local prosecutor not to prosecute for cannabis. The resulting policy has been so successful at reducing drug related harm than it has been adopted in most of Holland and increasingly in other parts of Europe too. In New Zealand such a development would be impossible. Here we have centrally controlled pilot schemes, with all the political arse-covering that this involves. If successful, they usually have the plug pulled on them in short order so as not to threaten any entrenched interests.<br /><br />Because power is seen as flowing down from Her Majesty, rather than originating in the people and flowing up to the Parliament, local bodies provide no constitutional constraint on the Government. As we have seen, the Government can sack councils at will. Neither is there any overarching constitutional constrain on the Government. The Government can pass any laws it likes, even if they breach basic human rights, so long as it has the requisite majority. Our system is very much a product of that brief moment in time when the Nation State was all powerful in Europe – just forged out of autonomous provinces and city states but not yet constrained by regional or global systems of goverance. We are frozen in time.<br /><br />The question is, which do we value more highly - efficiency or democracy? It has become heretical to question any demand of the market, as if the desires of human beings are legitimate only insofar as they facilitate the economy. We have been enslaved by our own invention. The answer, in my opinion, is a radical localism and it begins with a participatory local politics.<br /><br />(from my Waikato Times column 6 August 2010)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-35225956515767869972010-07-27T14:29:00.001+12:002010-07-27T14:31:36.558+12:00Maori Language WeekBy Nandor Tanczos<br /><br />You can't force people to learn to speak Maori. Actually, you can't force people to do very much at all in the long run, which is why the PR techniques pioneered by Dr <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie">Goebbels</a> remain such a popular means of social control.<br /><br />No, Maori speaking will become more widespread in this country for the same reason that most immigrants learn to speak English: you can't be a fully functioning citizen of this country until you can speak the languages of the land.<br /><br />You can get by of course, as did those old aunties I knew as a child, who had come out from Europe at an advanced age and who struggled to say more than the basics in English. Many of them spoke multiple European languages but that didn't help much in New Zealand in the 1980's so they stayed within their ethnic enclave, lived long and happy lives and never understood the country they now lived in.<br /><br />What separated them, and I think most Pakeha, from the unashamedly monolingual and the proudly ignorant that I occasionally come across these days is that they understood it as a weakness. They would have changed it if they could.<br /><br />I think that a growing number of people feel that about Te Reo today. It is embarrassing for both Maori and Pakeha to go on to a marae, to hear the kuia open the ceremony and lay down the kaupapa of the day with their karanga, to hear the kaumatua follow the women with whai korero, to hear the hapu stand and sing ancient chants in support, full of history and whakapapa and wisdom, and to not understand a word of it.<br /><br />It is embarrassing to sit stony-faced as the assembly roars with laughter over the banter and the barbed jokes. It is discomforting to stand and mouth words to songs you don't know as the people around you fill the air with rising harmonies and deep booming notes. It is most of all disturbing to realise the extent of ones own cultural ignorance and incompetence.<br /><br />For most of us that realisation of ignorance leads to a desire to learn more so as to understand more. For some others it creates a defensiveness and a retreat back to the comfort zone. Perhaps that is why some people continue to determinedly call Taranaki mountain 'Mt Egmont', continue to butcher simple Maori phrases or seek to make a virtue (and political capital) out of their refusal to spell place names correctly.<br /><br />It's just the frightened child inside them, feeling lost in a complex world. Nevertheless the fact that many of us are less able than a toddler when entering a Maori environment is not really our fault.<br /><br />Luckily Maori people tend to be extraordinarily forgiving of even quite serious unintended offences. They know that our education system does little, by and large, to prepare New Zealanders for the social reality of living in Aotearoa today, where the ability to walk confidently in both worlds will increasingly determine our ability to participate and succeed.<br /><br />Most of us, I think, welcome this new reality. We live in Aotearoa, in Polynesia, and we reflect that in our food, our lifestyles, our attitudes and in the maorified English that we increasingly speak.<br /><br />What is also clear is that, as with many other indigenous cultures around the world, the Maori worldview has something of great importance to offer a human population increasingly alienated from the natural world of which we are a part.<br /><br />This is not to romanticise or wish away the many problems that Maori society faces, but simply to recognise that Maori people, after killing off the moa and irreparably changing the New Zealand environment, learned over time to live in balance with the natural ecosystems of this land and much of that knowledge remains. Pakeha culture has not yet done so, and has much to learn from tangata whenua in this regard.<br /><br />Maori Language Week is a good time to acknowledge this, to do a stocktake of the state of the language and for people to pick up a few more words and phrases to bring into their lives. Hopefully it will also renew that desire in a few more of us to become true bicultural citizens.<br /><br />(from <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/Maori-Language-Week/tabid/1341/articleID/167621/Default.aspx">Monkeywrenching</a>)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-66225094792944907252010-07-19T18:39:00.002+12:002010-07-19T18:43:15.540+12:00What are universities for?Right now we need sociologists more than we need scientists. We need philosophers more than we need forex traders. We need activists far more than we need accountants. There has probably never been a more important time in human history than now to stop and have a good think about where we are going, as we begin to reach the environmental limits of our planet. How predictable, then, that our government should this year launch a renewed attack on universities, and in particular on those disciplines that might help us to do so.<br /><br />Reflective thinking has, of course, rarely been encouraged by governments or the corporations whose interests they serve. Universities are fine as long as they are churning out lawyers, accountants and managers, grist for the mill, but philosophy and the humanities have long been viewed with suspicion. So when Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce indicates that he wants to make a university degree nothing more than a glorified trade certificate he is simply articulating the logical outcome of decades of tertiary education policies from both Labour and National.<br /><br />University student bodies were centres of dissent during the heady ‘70s when many of our senior MPs were cutting their political teeth. The children of western affluence had begun to question the point of it all, to ask fundamental questions about what makes 'the good life'. Was material accumulation all there was? How many people would we sacrifice to maintain it?<br /><br />Interestingly, a number of studies suggest that it was around this time or slightly earlier that economic growth in the west stopped correlating with increased well-being. Those hippies were on to something. For whatever reason though, and there were many, that momentum came to a halt. Politicians ever since have wanted to make sure it doesn't happen again.<br /><br />The student loan scheme radically changed New Zealand universities. After 1990 students and policy makers alike increasingly viewed tertiary education as essentially vocational, simply in order to justify the graduate debt that accompanied it. The result has been a burgeoning of the business and law schools while humanities have been in decline. Clearly this isn't happening fast enough for the current minister, who now suggests that tertiary funding be linked to employment outcomes. This was a bad idea when it was applied to Youth Training Schemes (YTS) in the 1990's. It's an even worse idea applied to universities, polytechs and waananga today.<br /><br />The most unconvincing element of all this was the minister's explanation.<br /><br />"This will send a strong signal to students about which qualifications and which institutions offer the best career prospects - and that's what tertiary education has got to be all about," he said.<br /><br />The second part of that statement is almost certainly his actual opinion, but to suggest that cutting funding to philosophy is the best way to let students know that they will earn better money from an LLB is just insulting.<br /><br />Students are well aware of their career prospects, that's why most of them are getting a tertiary education in the first place. Let's be frank - this is about the minister wanting to influence what kinds of things get taught, despite his bald denials.<br /><br />Which brings us back to the question of what is the point of a tertiary education anyway? Of course we need vocational training we need skilled doctors, teachers, electricians and plumbers. But we also need philosophers, historians, critical thinkers and questioners and to my mind we need them more urgently.<br /><br />Humans have become extraordinarily good at doing all kinds of things, but we seem to have stopped asking why we bother. The fundamental economic rationalism that informs this government, that sees education and culture and the conservation estate for that matter - as valuable only insofar as they serve the economy, is a profoundly depressing philosophy. That it is out of step with the thinking of most New Zealanders should make the minister pause.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-17054951776664336822010-07-09T18:52:00.002+12:002010-07-09T18:58:47.369+12:00Climategate - no one looks goodNo one comes out of the “<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/07/climate-emails-question-answer">climategate</a>” email saga looking good. Not the political <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/08/AR2009120803402.html">hopefuls</a> who jumped on the band wagon. Not the sceptic <a href="http://poneke.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/gate/">bloggers</a> who allowed their conspiratorial paranoia to get the better of them. Not the climate change sceptic movement generally, whose more extreme members perpetrated a far more vicious kind of <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece">bullying</a> and intellectual fraud than they accused their opponents of. Not the scientists at the centre of the saga, who acted to hide data and frustrate those they saw as 'outsiders'. Certainly not the journalist who, in a show of age and banality, appended the tired suffix “gate” to the damn thing.<br /><br />The third independent review of the emails leaked from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, like the Oxburgh <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece">Report</a> and the UK House of Common Science and Technology Committee <a href="http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/hc-387-i-uea-final-embargoed-v2.pdf">Report </a>before it, has largely cleared Phil Jones and the other scientists there. It found that their honesty and rigour as scientists was not in doubt. It found no evidence of any behaviours that would undermine the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). What it did find, though, was a lack of openness and an unhelpful and defensive approach to requests for information.<br /><br />The more serious accusations, such as that researchers cherry picked and manipulated data to achieve the results they wanted, were rejected. The famous 'hockey stick' graph, which shows relatively flat global temperatures for the past thousand or so years and then a spike beginning in the 20th century, was called into question by an email which spoke of using a “trick” to “hide the decline”. This was not a decline in actual global temperatures but in a proxy measure (tree ring data) from the 1960's on. From that time tree ring measures cease to follow actual recorded temperatures and there is a suggestion that pollution is the cause. The report looked at this matter and concluded that the “trick” (of adding in the real temperatures) was used in the sense of 'neat technique' to combine proxy and actual temperature measurements. While the original paper that developed the graph, and the IPCC use of it, had extensively discussed the uncertainties around it and the problem of the divergence of tree ring and actual temperature measurements, the report was critical of its use without these cautions in a World Metereological Organisation report.<br /><br />Those who had hoped and expected to see the entire edifice of global warming theory come tumbling down as a result of these emails will be in shock. This was probably their best hope of swinging the public debate and it failed. They will be looking for something that makes sense of this result and no doubt some will choose to blame an ever widening conspiracy. The idea that it may be because the evidence actually points to climate change being real is for some people unthinkable. Human history is littered with the corpses of those that would rather die than give up their beliefs.<br /><br />My hope, though, is that we are able to do something more profound with this moment than lapse back into our respective camps and either gloat or glare. The majority of people are not actually signed up members of any camp in this debate. There is growing concern about climate change because the majority view of scientists seems to be that it is occurring, as a result of human activity, and it carries huge risk for us all. That view has been unaffected by these email leaks, and in fact may become more explicit as scientists respond to the lies and intimidation of some extremists revealed by this saga. But there is also growing concern about what looks like a loss of objectivity among some researchers. The defensiveness and obstructionism among CRU scientists that the emails reveal is unacceptable. If anything, they feed the concern that some scientists are trying to hide something.<br /><br />One of the failings of the green movement has been in not understanding that people can question the science and indeed the politics of climate change without being anti-science or a cypher for the oil industry. Perfectly reasonable people have perfectly reasonable questions about it and treating them as the enemy is not helpful. Indeed if this saga shows anything, it is the need to depolarise the debate. It may be that the insular tribalism shown by the CRU was a direct response to the aggressive and personal attacks upon them, but it was an unhelpful approach. You don't fight fire with fire, but with water. The challenge for us all, to echo the report, is to find ways to have good public debate that allows the scientific to be discussed, in all its uncertainties, so that people have a better understanding about what we know and what we do not. That problem is, of course, not limited to this issue.<br /><br />Part of that discussion needs to also be about how we deal with climate change. The National Party made a good start last year with its public consultations but then seems to have ignored them. In my view part of the cynicism about climate change science is driven by the blatant attempt by big business to snatch atmospheric property rights. For example the New Zealand Emission Trading Scheme seems unlikely to do anything to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions since consumers, taxpayers and foresters (bizarrely) are being forced to subside our biggest emitting industries. Its easy to see why some think the whole thing is a scam.<br /><br />The other issue that the saga highlights is the growing tension between social media and privatised science. All through the western world we have seen a relative disinvestment by governments into science and research and therefore the increasing importance of privately funded science, joint venture research and an emphasis on the commercialisation of research by public institutions. As a result we have seen the growth of interest in, and jurisprudence around, intellectual property rights. How this affects the openness and verification of scientific research is an important discussion. I recall questioning New Zealand's own ESR some years ago about what research they were relying on when they made claims about the efficacy of drug testing in the work place (they were in the process of introducing it into New Zealand on a large scale) to be told that the research was commercially sensitive and therefore not open to scrutiny.<br /><br />All this is in contradiction to the dynamics of the internet, where everyone expects access to everything and the right to comment on it. While this can open the floodgates to the distasteful, the distorted and the dishonest it can also harness the power of people in the same way that distributed virtual supercomputers harness masses of home PCs . It may be an uncomfortable notion to those who are used to beavering away in a corner of a university with little scrutiny except from their peers but in a world where the myth of value-free and outcome-neutral science and technology is dissolving away, it offers an important opportunity bring some democratic oversight to bear on science. In drawing the importance of this to the attention of scientists, climategate has indeed been a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/04/climatechange-hacked-emails-muir-russell">gamechanger</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-87785713620701534952010-07-09T11:43:00.000+12:002010-07-09T11:44:02.842+12:00Rhythms of LifeDeath is the ultimate yard stick. If there is anything that can measure the value of our brief personal existence, it is when we fold back into the totality. Death is the supreme perspective and although its lessons are unwelcome and painful we all have to learn them sooner or later.<br /><br />I've been getting a lot of lessons from death recently, although I'm not sure I'm actually any wiser. The most recent was at the funeral of Jan Abel – my good friend's mother, herself a friend I should say. I listened to the service, to the memorials and recollections and they made a vivid impression on my mind. She was a strong, courageous and spirited woman, an adventurer who, in her youth, had ridden a white horse across the Sahara. Yet I imagined that even in her final moments those days had felt to her like yesterday, just as my own misspent youth feels to me today. <br /><br />The generations, it struck me, come in waves both rapid and relentless. The rolling rhythms of life that see us change from babes, to children, to young adults full of life and trouble, to pillars of our families, then to wise old heads and death go so quickly that we barely have time to figure out the game before its over. Those waves began long before we got here and will continue long after we have passed away and it is those waves, not the water itself, that defines the human experience. We may drive cars instead of walk and we may play playstation instead of cards but the things that matter the most remain unchanged, making a mockery of our egos and our status.<br /><br />Does anything remain of us after we die? We can speculate on whether the soul lives on or simply dissolves back into the energy of the universe but to argue about it is pointless. We will all know soon enough. We can build religions around our hopes and desires in an attempt to find a solution to death, but there is no solution, there is only acceptance. <br /><br />We do know that we live on in a sense, in the memories of the living and in the coiled strands of DNA carried by our descendants. When I listened to the eulogies for Jan and the memories that people cherished it was clear that they were about who she was, not what she had. They spoke of the love she showed to others – not just her family and friends but through her work with the Child Poverty Action Group. Her love lives on in those touched by it, a much preferable form of immortality to cryonics<br /><br />I don't imagine that Jan had many regrets about her life. She made mistakes, as we all do, and had done what she could to repair the damage. She was blessed to see her granddaughter born, to see the new wave begin its rise and rush towards the shore. I imagine that as she looked back upon her life, with death at her shoulder, she was pretty content. <br /><br />Not all people are, of course. Perhaps the famous mid life crisis comes from suddenly being confronted with the lessons of death, as we begin to bury our parents and friends. In the East this time of life is traditionally associated with taking up a spiritual practise. In the west, where aging and death is often seen as an enemy to be vanquished rather than a part of life to be accepted, it more often takes the form of an attempt to flee death's approach. Men in particular are reknowned for trying to rejuvenate the plum tree by cutting off all the branches, but death cannot be outrun. Death is not a competitor, but a counsellor.<br /><br />(from my Waikato Times column 9/7/10)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2979924328172105187.post-62065039189547854012010-06-15T18:11:00.000+12:002010-06-15T18:12:07.770+12:00GE clover like pulling a Cat out of a HatWhen I heard AgResearch today announcing a breakthrough in the genetic engineering of white clover I was reminded of Dr Seuss. Not his explicitly environmental classic 'The Lorax' so much as 'The Cat in the Hat Comes Back'.<br /><br />I still remember the sense of panic in the book as a pink stain in the bathtub grows bigger and badder from the grotesque attempts by various cats to clean it up, until it has turned into a major disaster.<br /><br />The attempt to fix greenhouse gas emissions by genetically engineering clover for pasture fills me with a similar sense of alarm.<br /><br />There is no doubt that something needs to be done to address New Zealand's agricultural emissions. New Zealand has the 11th highest per capita emissions in the world and around half of that comes from agriculture, in the form of methane and nitrous oxide.<br /><br />The massive growth and intensification of dairy farming is pushing that contribution up, both by cutting down forest carbon sinks to grow pasture and by converting relatively low intensity sheep and beef farms into high intensity dairy farms.<br /><br />On the face of it, then, genetically engineering white clover to reduce greenhouse gas emissions seems a good idea. By identifying and then manipulating a genetic 'switch' which allows clover to concentrate condensed tannins in its leaves and stems; AgResearch hopes to be able to reduce methane from stock.<br /><br />This has enormous commercial potential for AgResearch both here in New Zealand and in the international market. The recent Global Research Alliance meeting in Wellington (see http://www.3news.co.nz/Feeding-the-world/tabid/1341/articleID/150090/Default.aspx) is testament to that.<br /><br />There are a range of other potential benefits from this work. AgResearch claims that it will mean less bloat in stock.<br /><br />This is good from an animal welfare and economic point of view, since bloat can be both painful and fatal. In addition the animals will produce more meat and milk, presumably as a result of the reduced methane production.<br /><br />Conventional clover makes stock more productive anyway, but farmers tend to keep clover cover limited since it can cause bloat. If genetically engineered clover does not cause bloat then farmers can have a higher proportional of pasture in clover.<br /><br />This is likely to lead to less nitrogen fertiliser being used as well, since clover is leguminous and fixes (or rather hosts a bacteria which fixes) nitrogen in soils.<br /><br />From an ethical point of view the fact that this is intragenic genetic engineering rather than trangenic may comfort some people. The insertion of human genes into sheep is highly offensive to many.<br /><br />The manipulation of clover genes and reinsertion of clover genes into clover does not lead to the same level of abhorrence. The genetic engineering industry has been playing on this, with international apologists such as Caius Rommens arguing that intragenic genetic engineering should face less stringent risk assessment procedures than is usual.<br /><br />New Zealand's own Tony Connor similarly argues that intragenic genetic engineering is not really genetic engineering at all and so is not, or should not be, covered by the legislation.<br /><br />Since AgResearch says that this new clover is at least 10 15 years away from commercial release, expect to see them lobbying heavily around this issue over the next few years.<br /><br />This approach only makes sense, however, if all concerns about genetic engineering are irrational by which term I do not mean spurious. If the concern is solely about inappropriate boundary crossing then intragenic genetic engineering must be acceptable. However the genetic engineering debate was never just about emotion versus science.<br /><br />While I do not for one minute seek to belittle the emotional response of many people that genetic engineering 'just doesn't seem right', I also know that a number of scientists, geneticists even, have grave concerns about the way that genetic engineering is developing.<br /><br />Those concerns are not blunted by whether the source material comes from the same species or another.<br /><br />Professor Jack Heineman likens the process of genetic engineering to cutting a few sentences out of a magazine and inserting them randomly into a book. Most of the time the resulting pages makes no sense.<br /><br />Occasionally they do, but we don't always know all of the resulting changes. Similarly the organisms created by genetic engineering are usually not viable, but occasionally they are.<br /><br />It doesn't matter whether the inserted words are from the same book or a magazine; the context of the words has changes sufficiently to make the results uncertain. For that reason he rejects any notion that intragenic genetic engineering be treated any differently from transgenic.<br /><br />New Zealand should be particularly careful about the commercial release of a pollinated pasture plant. Should this clover be released it is almost certain to spread across the country very rapidly and affect surrounding non-genetically engineered varieties and species.<br /><br />In addition, as the Royal Commission on Genetic Engineering pointed out, we know very little about the effects of genetic engineered organisms on living soils.<br /><br />AgResearch's solution to methane emissions run the risk, like the cats in the Dr Seuss story, of creating even bigger problems than what we started with. Just as importantly, though, it falls prey to the problem of reductionist thinking that is a significant cause of the ecological crisis we are in and I don't just mean climate change.<br /><br />By attempting to fix methane emissions by genetically engineering pasture AgResearch is likely to exacerbate the many other environmental problems associated with dairy farming in this country.<br /><br />The unwillingness to accept any limits to dairy expansion has become a national psychosis and has already led to a government sponsored coup against Environment Canterbury.<br /><br />It is time to accept that the best all round solution to the problem of unsustainable dairy farming is to de-intensify, and even better, to go organic.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362796849542826597noreply@blogger.com6