It is not the first time that Digital Earth has come to New Zealand – Auckland hosted it in 2006, thanks largely to the efforts of Richard Simpson, who was at that time a city councillor – but it is a real feather in Wellington’s cap to have won hosting rights for a much sought after event. Apparently there was even some outfit called NASA in the running to play host!

“With a vision to harness the world’s data and information resources through international cooperation, the ISDE [International Society for Digital Earth] aims to establish a digital replication of our planet which will allow us to monitor, measure, and forecast natural and human activity on the planet.”

We are constantly bombarded with information, and the generation of new knowledge (or at least new information) proceeds at an extraordinary rate.  I have been excited about the potential of the Digital Earth project to utilise and make that knowledge more accessible, ever since the Auckland event that focused on issues of sustainability, defined at the time as ‘humankind’s collective survival goals’.

I am under no illusion that there is a technological silver bullet that will save us from ourselves in terms of challenges like climate change, resource depletion, peak oil, diversity loss.  Some of the information management and spatial technologies do however provide us with some powerful modelling, representational and analytical tools to inform our decision making and advocacy for behavioural change.

There could be significant economic spinoffs from the Summit too, as it provides an opportunity for New Zealand companies with a stake in the technologies and their application to demonstrate what they can do.  Companies like Right Hemisphere have proven that distance is not an insurmountable barrier to successful innovation in hi-tech , even in the highly competitive and demanding aviation industry.  I’m confident that the tourism sector will also work hard to see that the 500-odd delegates in town get a good taste of what Wellington and New Zealand have to offer!

The issue is not new, nor is it unique to New Zealand, but there is significant  potential for our retail sector (and the many thousands of people directly and indirectly employed within the sector) to take a big hit if the trend towards online shopping continues unabated.

On one side of the argument are claims of anti-competitive ‘price-gouging’  by local sellers, taking advantage of a captive market and so charging whatever the market will bear. Allowing consumers to purchase overseas, the argument goes, is a good way to ensure local suppliers are pricing goods fairly.

The other side of the equation however is that retailers routinely see people in their stores who inspect, try out, try on and generally inform themselves, using the retailers’ time and expertise, and then walk away from the store and buy online  straight out of an American wholesale warehouse with a dramatically different cost structure. 

I’ve personally heard people bragging of having spent time in local motorcycle accessory shops getting advise and taking advantage of the opportunity to inspect and compare goods on offer, then buying directly from the US or Australia. We all like a bargain, but one can question the ethics of such a practice, and the likelihood that in time we will simply drive the local suppliers out of business which doesn’t really help anyone’s cause.

Being a bit more diligent about applying GST to such purchases is only fair, according to retailers, both to level up the market a bit and to provide much needed funds to the government’s coffers.

It’s a tricky equation.  Retailers need to be on their game, making sure that the ‘shopping experience’ for in store customers is as positive as it can be.  Many of course are adapting, by offering both direct in store sales while also getting into the online game themselves (if you can’t beat ‘em…).

For consumers, there is the risk that if online purchases don’t measure up to expectations, getting refund or other recompense can be difficult, or not viable financially.

The political challenge is to find the right level of regulation to protect the legitimate concern of local business people and their employees, without denying people the right to make their own choices as consumers with access to a global marketplace.

Most of the time, they would be right.  Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly evident that in the case of people convicted or even accused of crimes, we are not meeting the standards that we should expect to be met in a liberal democracy.

Roger Brooking, the author of Flying Blind , has blogged recently about some of the brutal and degrading practices that are commonplace in our prisons.  Sleep deprivation, constantly repeated strip searches, inadequate physical and mental health care  - these are attributes most of us would ascribe to totalitarian regimes with no regard for human rights or the rule of law.

There is a Corrections Amendment bill currently before Parliament, and it would be nice to report that the law is moving towards more rather than less humane treatment of accused and convicted people, but unfortunately the reverse is true.

I recommend a look at the first reading speeches for this Bill, where Julie-Anne Genter and I spell out the reasons the Greens are opposing it.  Julie refers specifically to the issue of ‘squat searches’, to the evident discomfit of the Hon Maurice Williamson, who would clearly prefer not to be confronted with the reality of what is being proposed.

If an MP or anyone else gets squeamish about such treatment of people, so plainly described in Roger’s blog, then let them speak out against such abuse, and in favour of more humane and intelligent treatment.

The proposed legislation would serve to worsen the situation Roger describes.  I encourage people to challenge government MPs and others who support the bill, ask them why they think it is ok.

Ask them to justify this sort of treatment which does not match our commitment to human rights, and which in any case does nothing to make our communities safer.  We just end up with people being released from prison who are more alienated from society and societal norms, more likely to reoffend, more likely to respond in kind to the the brutal treatment they have been subjected to.  We can do better, and we should.

Wilson has served 18 years in prison, is coming to the end of his sentence, and under existing law must be released no later than September this year.

The Justice Minister, Judith Collins, has indicated that we will soon see before Parliament a bill that would make it possible to extend Wilson’s sentence, to keep him in prison despite the completion of his term.

The Minister denies there are any human rights issues, and insists that in any case the bill ‘will be assessed for consistency against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act’. This is at best disingenuous – the Minister knows full well that even if a bill is deemed inconsistent with NZBORA it can be passed unhindered through the House.

Section 4 of the NZBORA states that :

• No court shall, in relation to any enactment (whether passed or made before or after the commencement of this Bill of Rights),—

  • (a) hold any provision of the enactment to be impliedly repealed or revoked, or to be in any way invalid or ineffective; or

  • (b) decline to apply any provision of the enactment—

  by reason only that the provision is inconsistent with any provision of this Bill of Rights

This is a wholly unsatisfactory situation, and one that a private member’s bill in my name would seek to rectify if pulled from the ballot box, but it is the current law.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Article 11,  speaks plainly against “…a heavier penalty be[ing] imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed”.

Wilson’s crimes were horrific, and if sentenced today he could be liable to a sentence of preventative detention, effectively an ‘open-ended’ sentence that would allow for his continued imprisonment.

To use the power of Parliament to retrospectively apply a heavier sentence is, however, a dangerous road to tread.  Parliament makes law which the judiciary then applies, and retro-fitting that relationship in response to a single case is rarely a good idea. This is especially true when there are existing remedies, other means to deal with any threat to public safety.

The Minister does of course have every right to present a bill, and doubtless a bill such as that being proposed will find some level of support both in Parliament and in the public domain. What the Minister must not do is push the bill through in haste, in any way that reduces the opportunity for the fully informed and balanced debate which is appropriate to anything that meddles with or potentially compromises our basic commitment to human rights and the rule of law.

It is when we as a society are dealing with the most beastly of human actions that we must take the greatest care to exercise our reason, our commitment to justice and proper process, our humanity. 

Mr Joyce insists that opposition to his 19th century ideas of  ’growth’,  based on more mining, more extraction, more road-building, more export of high volume / low value commodities, is contrary to the wellbeing of New Zealanders.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is extraordinary that Mr Joyce is not recognising what smart New Zealand business people and others have long since worked out: that ‘business as usual’ is not an option if we want to build a sustainable and resilient 21st century economy that reflects our social and environmental aspirations.

A little tinkering around the edges, splashing a bit of greenwash about, will not deliver the future that is within New Zealand’s grasp.  We need courageous political leadership to help affect a fundamental shift, a managed transition to a low-carbon, high value-added economy, with a much higher level of self-reliance in basic necessities, while leveraging our natural advantages and the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of our business sector (not least of all our SMEs).

While primary production is important and will remain so, we will not achieve our collective objectives through producing ever larger quantities of milk powder and pine logs.  Seeking to extend our ability to feed our oil addiction for a decade or two more is no substitute for investing heavily in developing alternatives to a carbon intensive economy, especially at a time when there is massive demand internationally for solutions that recognise that economic wellbeing is utterly dependent on maintaining environmental integrity.

We recently heard that despite a levelling off of the prison muster, and the government’s professed confidence that they have in place strategies to reduce offending and recidivism, Ministers Tolley and English have  nevertheless determined that we need yet another ‘fiscal and moral failure’, a 960-bed men’s prison at Wiri.

I invite you to do some arithmetic around the $900,000,000 Wiri proposal.  This big number is supposed to be the maximum required to build, maintain and operate the prison (including a profit margin for the private consortium of Fletchers, Spotless and Serco) for 25 years.

Let’s assume that Bill English got it right when he suggested a capital cost of $250,000 per bed, despite that figure being markedly lower than the previously estimated cost of Wiri’s construction,  in excess of $400 million.  Giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming the lower figure, that accounts for $240 million of the $900 million total.

Spread the remainder over the life of the contract; build in some assumptions about the occupancy rate for the prison;  assume (despite the lack of any evidence!)  that the private operator can dramatically reduce the $93,000 cost per prisoner per year, and see if you can produce numbers that make sense.

My calculations tell me that either the prison is going to run at a very low occupancy rate, or Serco is expected to achieve some truly heroic savings, which could only come at the expense of maintaining acceptable conditions for staff and inmates.

We are now told that the Wiri prison is needed to replace capacity which will be lost with the closure of some of our older prisons, with Invercargill, New Plymouth and Wellington’s Mt Crawford being the likely candidates.

The combined capacity of those three sites is little more than half the proposed capacity at Wiri, which begs the question of which other sites will be closed.  The degree of centralisation this would seem to entail is bad news for inmates and their families who might hope to maintain contact through visits while inmates serve their time, given the added costs of travel for people who are seldom well off financially.  The available evidence is that reducing contact between inmates and their family and other support networks reduces the likelihood of rehabilitation and reintegration, whih is bad news for community safety and the economy.

I had (foolishly, it seems) been optimistic that a more enlightened social policy and good economic sense might prevail, that the Government would cut their losses and abandon the project. This could even have been done with a degree of Ministerial face saving, given some evidence that prisoner numbers are leveling off, and lining it up with the Government’s professed enthusiasm for cost cutting in the public sector.

It beggars belief that this massive amount of money, $900 million , is to be wasted, when all the evidence is that a fraction of that amount, spent intelligently on reducing offending and recidivism, could see us closing prisons rather than building newer and bigger universities of crime.

‘Justice reinvestment’ is the shorthand for a strategic approach that proposes spending much less public money in the long term while getting much greater gains from managing and reducing offending differently, and increasing public safety and well-being.

Some of this Government’s own initiatives are at least pointing in the right direction – the ‘prevention first’ programme being rolled out by the Police; the intended (albeit long overdue) pilot programme for drug courts in Auckland and Waitakere; policies aimed at diverting young offenders away from the justice system.

These are the sorts of approaches – along with proper drug and alcohol assessments and treatment; literacy and skills programmes; support for released inmates to find stable and affordable accommodation, a job, and help to reintegrate back into society – that will get us to where we need to go.

Instead we have this ‘public private partnership’ being touted as the answer.  The history of private prisons internationally is that they end up costing more, do not reduce recidivism, and become a cash cow for multi-national providers of ‘services’.

Worryingly, legislation before the House also contains provisions to devolve powers to private contractors that should stay firmly within the domain of the State, such as determining an inmate’s security classification.

This decision is an expensive travesty, and the Government should be ashamed of its lack of imagination, its refusal to accept  compelling  evidence that it is wrong,  and of being lost in a 19th century mindset around corrections.

I’m never persuaded by reassurances that ‘front line’ resources will not be reduced.  I saw first hand in the tertiary sector how (initially at least) ‘front line’ teaching staff numbers were not reduced, but ’efficiencies’ (i.e. cuts) in support staff meant that academics were spending more time with administration and so spending less time with teaching and research.

It is a particularly critical time in policing as the new Commissioner seeks to improve public safety and confidence with initiatives like ‘prevention first’.  The focus on community engagement, and preventing crime and reoffending, is exactly the right approach, but it will fail if police officers are not adequately resourced or lack the time to build relationships and to understand their communities.  No amount of dealing out iPads and iPhones and other no doubt useful technologies will compensate for an over-stretched and stressed human resource.

Given the government’s enthusiasm for privatisation, one hopes the cuts are not a precursor to seeing here what is happening in Britain, where  there is a move afoot  to farm out to the private sector many of the functions of the police forces, including core functions like “investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public”.

A police spokesperson in UK has said “Bringing the private sector into policing is a dangerous experiment with local safety and taxpayers’ money…We are urging police authorities not to fall into the trap of thinking the private sector is the answer to the [governing] coalition’s cuts.”

We need a well resourced police force focused on reducing crime as well as enforcement.  We don’t need a run down service, relying on ‘Rent-a-Cop to plug the gaps.

The Greens see a lot in the report that we can support, but there are also some serious issues or concerns that the report skirts around. (In his presentation Phil O’Reilly, one of the authors, did make clear that the Group worked to a quite specific terms of reference).

Mr O’Reilly also proposed in his speech that “Our target should not be to try to balance economic growth and environmental protection. It should be about enhancing both environmental protection and biodiversity and engendering economic growth as well as all the other things that we seek in society.”

I couldn’t agree more.  I have long been suspicious of the language of ‘balance’, which has become a code for accepting  a little more environmental degradation in exchange for a little more (invariably short term) economic benefit. That’s just a race to the bottom, and we should have no part of it.

The report correctly notes that “The concept of green growth is also based on the realisation that natural capital is finite and that all ecosystems have limits, and that sustaining growth will mean working within those limits.”  We desperately need to be doing more to assess and report on the state of our natural capital and ecosystem services, and to embed those values into our economic strategy as firmly and as routinely as we address purely economic data.

Rather than simplistically measuring ‘growth’ as increases in production, consumption and exchange, we need to measure and incorporate indices of environmental and human wellbeing. Fortunately we do not need to break much new ground in this – such approaches have been adopted or trialled in a number of developing and developed countries.

One of my personal frustrations with the report is that some of its better recommendations propose doing things that people in business and the public sector were in fact doing at least five years ago, and in some cases much longer.

Recommendation three, for example,  proposes the Government should support coordination and integration of programmes to build business capabilitywithin SMEs, while involving private and public sector stakeholders.  Recommendation four encourages the government to facilitate businesses’ practical understanding of how to improve environmental performance and to take advantage of ‘green growth market trends’.

I know from my time as a sustainable business adviser that such programmes were gaining real traction and delivering measurable outcomes across a range of sectors, but sadly many of them took a hit and were scaled down or lost altogether when the government withdrew political and financial support soon after the 2008 election.

This report does provide some grounding for a better informed and engaged public debate about our future economic and environmental direction.  To do so will however require a willingness to adopt some different and challenging  assumptions about what constitutes ‘progress’ and ‘value’.

David Clendon: What is the Government’s contingency plan if there is a catastrophic oil spill or leak resulting from exploratory drilling?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Maritime New Zealand is responsible for ensuring that New Zealand is prepared for, and able to respond to, marine oil spills. The Marine Pollution Response Service consists of internationally respected experts, who manage and train a team of about 400 local, Government, and Maritime New Zealand responders.

I didn’t find that particularly reassuring at the time, and find it much less so now given what is happening off Tauranga. We know some smart and dedicated people, both professionals and volunteers,  are working desperately hard trying to avert a major disaster, but so far we have seen just how little capacity we have to manage an accident.

Nobody ever wants an oil spill anywhere in the marine environment, but in terms of acccess and ability to respond,  the location and timing of this spill could have been a great deal worse.  The vessel ran aground on a reef scarcely 20km from Tauranga, one of our largest, busiest and most modern ports.  It occurred in calm weather, and was known about almost immediately. Yet we have still struggled to bring together the necessary expertise and hardware to deal quickly  with the crisis.

How much worse would the situation be if we were to allow deepwater off shore drilling, which the Energy Minister and her government are so eager to do, and an accident occurred a long way offshore in foul weather.

The American response to the Gulf of Mexico disaster involved hundreds of vessels, and many thousands of  military, civilian and volunteer personnel.  It also required a second rig to drill the relief well that ultimately enabled the stemming of the oil flow into the waters of the Gulf.

New Zealand does not and will never have that sort of capacity.  The oil companies will resist having to take responsibility to provide it.

There will always be accidents at sea that threaten our coastlines, wildlife and the livelihoods of people who rely on the marine resource.  We need to continually assess and reassess the risks of such accidents and put in place appropriate safeguards and countermeasures.

To knowingly invite and even encourage deep water drilling, an activity that we know is highly likely to cause problems entirely beyond our ability to resolve them, would be reckless in the extreme.  I hope that the reality of having to deal with the Rena incident will cause the government to think again about our energy future in the interests of our environmental and economic wellbeing.

What I found was a rather more interesting (and also more demanding!) event, the brainchild of an enterprising group of AUT students who donated their time and skills to organising the morning as part of their communications degrees.

Posing as a ‘star’ for the morning, alongside Blair Strang, a real star,  I was invited to compete to see what distance I could clock up on an exercycle in blocks of three minutes.  I don’t find an MP’s lifestyle to be especially conducive to maintaining fitness, but  managed to produce at least some reasonable results, although Blair did manage to take the lead (by a modest margin ) in our final ‘contest‘.

The point of all the silliness and panting was to raise awareness of what Habitat does in the community, and of their plan to host a sponsored ‘Bike and Build’ cycle ride from  Auckland to Wellington next year, with proceeds to go toward completing a building project in Wellington.

So if you are keen to ride all or part of the way between our two largest North Island cities, for a good cause, keep an eye on the Habitat website for details.  You have plenty of time to get fit for it if you start soon!

The technique is used to extract ‘unconventional’ oil and gas – that’s industry speak for sources of hydrocarbons that until recently were deemed too expensive or difficult to extract, but as the reality of peak oil kicks in the boundaries are being pushed further out.

The technique has been implicated in serious contamination of water supplies, and a correlation has been drawn between fracking and swarms of earthquakes in at least three American states.  It has been banned in France, is under investigation in other European states, and some parts of the US.

Fracking has happened in Taranaki, and has been proposed for other parts of the country, including the East Coast and Canterbury. The industry in New Zealand is staunchly defending the practice, with John Bay, the Chair of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association (PEPANZ), insisting that problems elsewhere were caused by ‘cowboys’, whom our government would not allow to operate here.

Given the present government’s enthusiasm for extraction of oil and gas, and their willingness to downplay the risks,  I’m less inclined to rely on them!  The fracking that has occurred in Taranaki was done without resource consents .   The Taranaki Regional Council only last month decided that perhaps there had better be a consenting process in future.

The Greens believe in evidence based policy.  Much of the evidence we are seeing indicates that fracking is  dirty, dangerous, and completely at odds with an intelligent 21st century economic or energy strategy. We want a halt to the practice until we see clear evidence that fracking really is safe, poses no threat to human health; our land, water or level of seismic activity; and that any benefits really could outweigh the costs.

I”m launching a petition that asks Parliament to initiate an independent investigation through the Office of  the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and for an immediate moratorium on the practice until or unless the PCE can give fracking  a clean bill of health. I hope you will sign it, and encourage others to do the same.

So download the petition [PDF] here and get people signing it!

The Herald highlights the massive cost of building new prisons, with the proposed Wiri project having cost us over $20 million before construction even begins.  The prison is a public private partnership (PPP), a model which is inevitably going to cost more given that the private provider will reasonable demand a profit, and I agree with the Corrections Association assessment that the difference will be made up by cutting staff numbers and wages for those staff, a sure recipe for making an already difficult environment even more dangerous.

The reason for continuing to build prisons despite the Minister for Finance correctly labelling them moral and fiscal failures?  Simply because we have one of  highest rates of incarceration and recidivism in the developed world, and are doing almost nothing to turn those figures around.

Drug and alcohol counsellor Roger Brooking has documented the long term and systemic failure of our prison system in his book ‘Flying Blind’, reviewed recently in the Listener.  Mr Brooking will today be offering copies of his book to MPs on Parliament steps at 1pm, in the hope that more will realise the futility of spending vast sums on containing people in concrete boxes, while doing little or nothing to deal with root causes, especially drug and alcohol dependency or addiction, illiteracy, mental health problems and the paucity of reintegration support for inmates post-release.

As a guide, compare the total amount of the Corrections budget – around $1.1 billion and growing – with the amount spent on alcohol and drug treatment in prison – about $3.4 million.  This despite the evidence that drugs and alcohol are factors in over 80% of all offending. The problem is not that we are spending too little on corrections.  The problem is that we are spending it foolishly, in ways that we know from decades of experience do not and cannot affect positive results.

Unfortunately National MPs will not be on hand to receive a copy of Brooking’s book, having apparently been offended by the subtitle of the book “How the justice system perpetuates crime and the Corrections Department fails to correct”.

Truth hurts I guess.

Dr Smith has announced today that he is  “…asking businesses to come forward with innovative solutions on how we can expand the infrastructure for TV recycling and raise awareness of how to recycle and properly dispose of this electronic waste.”

A report published in July this year highlighted the nature and scale of the crisis facing us, associated with the switch from analogue to digital television, and the general preference of many consumers to replace older style cathode ray (CRT) television sets and computer monitors with the modern ‘flat screen’ style. The volume of old and soon to be unwanted CRT TVs means that  (among other things) thousands of tonnes of lead will be available to be recycled and reused in some way, or dumped in landfills to pose a real threat to the environment and human health.

The Community Recycling Network in partnership with RCN has made good use of funding from the Waste Minimisation Levy (another successful Green Party initiative) to establish a ‘pilot’ programme setting up collection points and recycling facilities around the country, and more are planned. The bug in the ointment however is that people bringing unwanted items in for recycling are obliged to pay, to meet at least some of the $20-00 (approximately) cost of processing. Some individuals (and many businesses) will pay the sum quite willingly, but many will not.

The Minister could resolve the dilemma very quickly by establishing a mandatory product stewardship scheme which would provide the cash flow to manage the backlog of e-waste that is very soon expected ‘on stream’, and in the longer run to maintain the viability of collection and processing facilities.  Purchasers will pay marginally more for the product,but not to a level that will cause pain, and will then have no liability when they dispose of the item.

We know that the industry, especially the importers of product, are not opposed in principle to a scheme, but will not support a voluntary scheme because they are immediately put at a commercial disadvantage from ‘free riders’ who would enjoy the benefits but not share the cost.

The Minister needs to cut to the chase and initiate a comprehensive scheme, rather than continue to work around the margins with incremental and ‘one off’ projects, worthy though they might be.

The Chair of PEPANZ appears almost breathless with excitement as he seeks to fulfil the primary objective of his organisation, “to publicise, promote and advance the interests of the oil and gas exploration industry in New Zealand”.

The East Coast, we are told, has been only ‘lightly explored’.  In fact there have been  surveys done of the area’s onshore and offshore potential since at least the 1970s, and the likely existence of  reserves recognised, albeit in a number of discreet fields rather than one large single reserve. All that has changed is that in the face of declining reserves of cheap, readily accessible oil and gas elsewhere, the industry is moving to ‘frontier’ areas with  a much higher risk profile than would have been contemplated even a decade ago.

Apache we are told is a ‘solid’ company, and isn’t it good that Shell are now players in the South Basin?

With a US$43 billion asset base, Apache are certainly in a position to accept some financial risk from frontier exploration, especially when our government is hanging so much of its misguided economic policy on the back of an extraction-based model worthy of 19th century robber barons.   We  New Zealanders of course will be carrying 100% of the environmental risk – it is our land, water and coastlines that could be irreparably damaged in the event of  a major accident.

And of course while it is noted that Shell has entered the fray in the South Basin, no mention is made of ExxonMobil and Todd both bailing out on the grounds of unacceptably high risk due to the harshness of  the environmental conditions and  remoteness.

Explorers apparently are not put off by protests from Greenpeace (who we are told are only in it for the headlines) nor by ‘local tribal groups’.  That sounds to me like throwing down a wero, a challenge,  one which I’m sure nga iwi o te motu will not hesitate to take up!

We are told that fresh water contamination from fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in the US has only been due to ‘cowboy’ operators cutting corners, but we need not fear for our precious water resources because the Government will ensure that no such operators will be allowed here. I wonder how our single inspector will detect the presence of cowboys, assuming they are astute enough not to turn up wearing a ten gallon hat and carrying a six-gun?  How will he or she manage to be present at every site throughout every operation to spot corner cutting?

We desperately need a government with a progressive, 21st century economic policy, based on the kind of initiatives that groups like Pure Advantage are advocating.  We need a clean green economy that works for everyone, not a backward looking ‘drill and hope’ mentality that creates so much environmental and economic risk for so little benefit.

As Frog indicated, we knew only that ‘a government bill’ would be introduced under urgency.  At about 10.30pm on Wednesday night, we were presented with one paper copy of the bill,  no electronic version to facilitate distribution to caucus members or our researchers; no supporting documentation, no regulatory impact statement, no evidence in support, and this was ‘graciously’ given only on the basis of keeping the strictest confidence.

We were obliged to speculate about the harm that the bill was intended to remedy and the need for the secrecy and urgency; we were required to second guess what the intent and real purpose of the bill might be, and it was not until about 8.15am on Thursday that we got access by phone to a ministerial adviser who confirmed that our speculation was more or less on track. 

We learned in the course of the debate that the Maori party, as a confidence and supply partner, had the bill  ten days earlier.  (I must say in passing that they made good use of the time – Rahui Katene delivered some very fiery and well crafted speeches opposing the bill , and good on her for doing so!).

I have it on good authority that the Act party, on the other hand, was as surprised as we were by the content of  the bill, and had as little prior warning of it. Indicative of the parlous state of the Nat – Act relationship perhaps?

Despite my direct questions, Labour was rather coy about confessing when they were given access to the bill, which leads me to assume they saw it well in advance of the tabling.

My point in all this is that the process demonstrates that the two old parties are locked into the game of making deals with each other, without making any  attempts to build consensus across the House, which they might otherwise have done had they approached us in a reasonable fashion about the ‘error’ they sought to correct. 

Had we been taken into their confidence about the problem (which they have been aware of  for ten months!) we could well have negotiated a process that would have allowed us to air our misgivings, to draw on appropriate legal advice, and even potentially to cooperate in drafting a piece of legislation that would then have gone through a proper process of public and parliamentary scrutiny and delivered an appropriate outcome. 

We have had an MMP parliament for nearly 15 years – how much more time do these guys need to get up to speed with the ‘new’ reality, and to respect and indeed to utilise the possibilites for the more consensual form of politics that it presents?  Maybe the next generation…?

One comment in terms of the substance of the bill – I repeatedly asked the government during the debate for evidence that since the police stopped retaining youth particulars ten months ago, their task of identifying and apprehending young offenders has been more difficult.  I’m still waiting for an answer, which leads me to suspect there is no such evidence, and so the law change was not only procedurally undemocratic but also unnecessary!

Apparently the panel, with five Maori, one Pacific Islander, one Asian, and five non-Maori, is “…on the surface, stacked against more than three-quarters of the population”.  Makes me reluctant to even consider what might be going on below the surface!

“A government plan to dovetail New Zealand into tail-wagging Maorification must be resisted…the rabid property demands of Tuhoe – who want their own private fiefdom in the hills – are evidence of a brand of racial separation that has no place in New Zealand”.

Rather odd language from a newspaper that is usually a staunch defender of property rights.  It is well established that Tuhoe never sold or gave away their land in Te Urewera, and that Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finalyson, not generally described as one of the more radical figures in Cabinet,  favoured giving them back control of the land until sideswiped by John Key’s populist antennae.

“Economic growth and investment confidence should not be threatened or undermined by the potentially nation-fracturing agenda of a minority”.  I’m guessing they are talking about Maori here, rather than this NACT government.

This sort of divisive nonsense does NBR no credit, and serves no useful purpose.

p.s. There must have been something very strange in the coffee at NBR this week – in the same edition, Owen McShane informs us (while yet again railing against metropolitan urban limits and in favour of urban sprawl) that “EU bureaucrats invented the IPCC to punish our rural sector with ‘food miles’ and ‘bovine methane’. ” Who knew?

Part of the spend is committed to yet another monument to failure and lack of imagination or leadership – the proposed men’s prison at Wiri, which is budgeted at around $370 million. That figure represents about eleven year’s worth of our current annual spend on treating drug and alcohol problems for prison inmates.  This is despite the figures from Corrections indicating that alcohol and/or drugs are involved in around 80% of  crimes committed.

Reinvesting that money into community based drug, alcohol and mental health treatment programmes; on literacy and basic education; on work creation and on accommodation to assist  inmates to make the transition into society post-release, would all give a vastly better ‘bang for the buck’ and over time make our communities safer and more secure.

All the international research points that way, and it is a shame that this government and indeed the last one allowed themselves to be locked into the frame of ‘tough on crime’ rather than into a rational and compassionate approach to removing this blot on our national wellbeing.

Apparently they commissioned some research in May “…on a range of issues pertinent to the Trust”, and have now sent a letter to all MPs because ” …[the Trust] now have a poll about crime in New Zealand and are interested in [MP's] opinions”.

The first question asks if prison sentences for violent crimes in NZ are too short, about right, or too long.  Now I’m not sure how many MPs keep a careful track of what sentences are being handed down for violent crimes, the circumstances of each case, and read the full judgement, but I would have thought that level of detailed understanding would be necessary to form a view.  But I guess we can all have ‘an opinion’  based on what we hear on talkback radio or at parties.

The next question asks if the level of violent crime in NZ is getting worse, about the same, or getting better.  Putting aside niggly queries like whether they are  asking about frequency or intensity,  the ’level’ of crime of any sort is a matter of fact rather than of opinion.  The police and the courts do record such things, after all.  There is also the point that an increase in reported crime, violent or otherwise, can sometimes be a good thing, indicating that people are less inclined to turn a blind eye.

We are asked for an opinion as to whether ‘…punishments given for Youth Offending such as graffiti, vandalism and petty theft [are] too soft, about right, or too hard’.  Again, this assumes a level of knowledge and an associated ability to make informed judgements,  as per their first question.

We are also asked for an opinion as to whether multiple sentences should be cumulative or served consecutively, and whether ‘DNA [should] be recorded for any person arrested for a crime’.  I assume they mean ‘every’ person, though I’m not sure what value there would be in taking a DNA sample from an accountant charged with fraudulent use of a document, or a company director responsible for an illegal prospectus.

You’ve probably worked out by now that I won’t be responding to the Trust’s questionnaire.  It is a foolish piece of pseudo – research, and no doubt the conclusions / headlines they endeavour to extract from it will be equally foolish.

If you want to read some useful and well founded research into the causes of crime in New Zealand, and some practical and thoughtful proposals about how to make our communities safer by reducing the incidence of crime and recidivism, have a look at Robson Hanan Trust,  the Prison Fellowship NZ , or even the Ministry of Justice. 

The causes of crime are complex and multi-faceted, and need to be addressed on many fronts by  public and community agencies working in a coordinated fashion.  Cheap slogans and uninformed ‘opinions’ offer nothing of value or substance, and should be treated accordingly.

“The D-word – dairy – cited by Mr Key in in linking together the wonders of free trade with China and India should give cause for concern.  Recent reports on how the likes of the Hauraki Gulf and the Kaipara Harbour are changing into marine sewage ponds thanks to bovine excrement and fertiliser runoffs show we are being ‘uddermined’ by poisoning our country to feed foreigners.  Yes, we can sell artificially sustained grass-fed dairy products, but no – as Mr Key so painfully discovered as an interviewee on BBC television – we can’t keep lying about our pure, clean and green image.”

I spent a great day at the Ice Ideas Conference on Friday and came away more convinced than ever that we have the people, the ideas and the capacity to put our economy on a vastly more sustainable footing.

Nobody in the room of some six hundred was heard to suggest that selling more and more  milk powder, or raw logs, or any other high volume / low value commodity is going to give us any joy economically, socially or environmentally.

Those commodities will inevitably hit environmental limits and constraints, as dairying has already shown, and trying to create financial capital at the expense of natural capital is a fool’s errand.