The inquiries follow confidential Cabinet information about proposed state sector restructuring and mining in the conservation estate finding its way into the public domain.

I think those responsible for the leaks were doing a service in the interests of democracy. Despite the presumption under the Official Information Act that “information shall be made available unless there is good reason for withholding it,” this does not apply in practice to information being considered by Cabinet.  That is because the Official Information Act provides as “good” reasons for withholding information “the confidentiality of advice tendered by Ministers of the Crown and officials” and maintaining “the effective conduct of public affairs through the free and frank expression of opinions by or between or to Ministers of the Crown or members of an organisation or officers and employees of any department or organisation in the course of their duty”.

Those provisions effectively permit Ministers to keep proposals under consideration by Cabinet secret until such time as the Minister decides to release them, and with whatever spin the Minister eventually decide to put in them and on them.

That is bad for democracy.  In a democratic society the public should as a matter of principle be able to obtain and scrutinise information about what its elected Government is considering and have input into its decisions at all stages of the process.  The “free and frank expression of opinions” exclusion from the Official Information Act frequently denies the public that opportunity, with the Cabinet’s decision often being a fait accompli before the public learn anything about it or the information that has been considered in making it.

Of course there will sometimes be genuinely good reasons, such as New Zealand’s national security, international relations, maintaining New Zealand’s law and/or economic stability, or commercial confidentiality, for withholding official information. But no genuinely good reason for secrecy appears to exist in the cases of the proposals for state sector restructuring or the proposals for mining in the conservation estate.  Nor does a genuinely good reason exist in many other instances where Cabinet documents are kept secret.

Instead of engaging in a witch hunt to attempt to identify those responsible for the leaks, the Government should be reviewing the Official Information Act, and its own practices under it, to ensure that information is publicly available as a matter of principle rather than kept secret to give the public the mushroom treatment for Government’s own political convenience.

Green Party Health Spokesperson Sue Kedgley has been collaborating with Health Minister Tony Ryall and Associate Health Minister Jonathan Coleman on the proposal. This work is part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the Greens and National in April 2009.

In this podcast, Sue speaks about the proposal – why it’s needed, what it sets out to achieve, and what the process is from here.

Co-Leader Russel Norman also reflects on the MOU between the Greens and National in light of the announcement.

You can read the consultation document here.

This week’s music is from Auckland-based “chamber pop” outfit Canadia, off their most recent EP Beg Steal and Burrow.

You can now subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes – search for “green party” in the podcast section.

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This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Fortunately the judge didn’t see it like that and fined them $50k even though the regional council only asked for $40k. Hopefully this means that regional councils will be emboldened to ask for bigger fines on coporate criminals like Morton and next time fine them much more.

The original press release from the regional council announcing the fine had a freudian slip in it and called them “Moron Estate” instead of “Morton Estate”. Personally I think they got it right the first time.

And if you want to hear about the classic case of a community getting shafted by dirty farming – read this one, which Don Nicholson from the Feds has agreed to help me fix.

After a dirty campaign from Labor, there is a tidal shift in Tasmanian state politics, where the Greens now hold the balance of power. The Greens gained 21% of the primary vote (+6% on 2006), and have a confirmed four seats in the 25-seat Parliament with a fifth possible. Perhaps the time of old-growth logging is finally nearing an end?

Watch Greens leader Nick McKim’s election-night speech.

In other news IMF starts back-tracking on unfettered-capitalism-orthodoxy

The latest news is that we’ve agreed with National on a draft proposal for the regulation of natural health products.  Natural health products includes many vitamin and herbal supplements as well as lotions, gels and shampoos. 

New Zealanders have a right to know these types of products are safe and it is government’s job to set up and monitor rules to ensure safety.  That’s a fairly straightforward idea, but it got complicated under the previous Labour government that wanted to regulate natural health products jointly with Australia. 

Our Sue Kedgley has worked persistently on this issue for many years and now we’re that much closer to rules that are better for local businesses and protect consumer.  Good stuff.

It is one of three areas where we are working with National under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed last year.  The biggest of the three is the $323 million home insulation fund that has proved wildly popular and is on track to make 180,000 New Zealand homes warmer and drier, lowering power bills for families and health costs for the country. 

We’ve also got in behind John Key’s national cycleway where Kevin Hague is providing expert advice so that Nga Haerenga is designed to work well for both tourists and locals.  We tried to work with the Nats on energy efficiency as well, but couldn’t make any progress there and withdrew that topic from the MoU.

Nearly a year on since we signed the working agreement, it’s timely to ask how it’s going.

There are the practical, tangible measures – homes getting insulation into the ceilings and under their floors, the Waikato River Trail open for cycling – and then there’s the political component which is a bit harder to measure.

We think it’s important for the Greens to contribute to good government where we can – even from Opposition.  If a piece of policy or legislation matches up with our values then we want to support it and work to make it better.  The MoU gives us a framework to work constructively with National when we have common ground.  We have found some common ground and got good results in the three areas listed.

We’ve copped flack from Labour MPs for this approach but we think this is a mature approach. We also note that, as at February 18, Labour had supported 63 of National’s bills at third reading while the Greens had supported only 42 of them. We think our approach is independent, principled and practical.

It’s not a long list of MoU work, but we don’t have a whole lot of common ground with National.  We disagree with John Key’s Government a lot more than we agree and we knew it was important to maintain our independence in any working relationship. 

The MoU is designed so that we are unconstrained. We do have the freedom to voice our views loudly and clearly and we’re doing that.  As just one example, I think it’s fair to say we’ve helped change the agenda when it came to plans to mine the conservation estate.  Speaking up against bad policy is a powerful tool.

So practical steps forward where we can and the freedom to voice our opposition elsewhere.  In sum, the agreement is working as best it can given National’s agenda and the Green Party’s beliefs.  It’s an honest approach – we stick to our values and you know where we stand.

[For the political junkies, Labour have voted with National 12 times at first readings, and 16 times at third readings, since the start of this term of Parliament. For the Maori Party it's 13 and 17. For the Greens it's 0 and 1.]

Yesterday, Labour voted with the Government again on a Bill that everyone except the Greens supported – the Education Amendment Bill.

We opposed this supposedly “technical” Bill because it included clauses to facilitate corporate control of school boards. In doing so, we seem to be the only ones consistently opposing privatisation in the education system.

The Maori Party did express concern about these aspects of the Bill but they still voted for it.

It’s fascinating, because if you just read the Regulatory Impact Statement which describes the Bill it would seem to be just about police vetting of school tradespeople and registration issues for teachers. Actually, like most legislation there is always fine-print to examine.

This Education Amendment Bill continues a trend towards corporate control by allowing corporates to be statutory managers of schools. It also allows the combining of school boards, potentially disenfranchising local communities.

The Quality Public Education Coalition (QPEC) was one of the small number of submitters against this Bill who saw its potential to further undermine public schools. QPEC has the experience and the capacity to step back and analyse the bigger picture.

With their support, we are prepared to be a lone voice in Parliament to at least make sure there is opposition to any form of privatisation on the public record.

Schools are not businesses to be managed efficiently in order to produce more labour for the market. Schools are communities, and as communities in partnership with the state they need the ability to run their own affairs and proper resources. We don’t need Pepsi Cola High School being managed by a firm of corporate auditors whose bottom line is profit.

What is happening in Canterbury is eerily similar to what is happening in Auckland—layers of democracy are being quietly got rid of and replaced by unelected political appointees, who work behind closed doors and are not accountable to the public in any way.

One of the key aims of right wing governments is to shrink democracy and the state, using a time-worn set of tactics. First they manufacture some crisis to argue that democracy is inefficient and not working properly (the Royal Commission in the case of Auckland, the Creech review in the case of Canterbury) and then they use that review as an excuse to turf out democratically elected Councils—seven in the case of Auckland, and one in the case of Christchurch.

Most alarming of all, ordinary voters are hoodwinked into going along with all this, not seeing the hidden agenda at work here.

That’s why I have been calling Rodney Hide’s Super City plans Rogernomics phase 2. Having been thwarted in his plans to sell off national assets, Rodney Hide is focussing his attention on local government, and using the restructure to corporatise the Auckland City Council and ready it to sell off some of its $28 billion worth of assets.

Now he is turning his attention to Canterbury, and is about to implement a similar plan here, aided and abetted by local Mayors, some of whom are no doubt driven by personal agendas of wanting to amalgamate Councils in Christchurch so they can become the Lord Mayor of Christchurch.

In Auckland many local leaders such as Chair of the Auckland Regional Council Mike Lee, originally supported the Auckland Super City plan. But now that the true agenda of the Super City has become clear Mike Lee and other one-time supporters of the super-city have become outspoken opponents.

My bet is that is that the same thing will happen in Christchurch, and some of those who are currently supporting moves to oust Environment Canterbury and replace it with a Commissioner will wake up in a few months time and realise that a coup d’état has happened, which has left them powerless and without the ability to influence such significant issues as how Canterbury’s water is managed and allocated.

The fact is that Mr Creech was unable to find any statutory basis for dismissing elected Councillors or any reason to justify removing Councillors. So it will be interesting to see what excuse Rodney Hide and Dr Smith come up with to justify their dismissal.

Appointing Jenny Shipley would be such a blatant power grab. Replacing elected Councillors with a government appointee would undermine the whole principle of local democracy, and Cantabrians should be careful or they will find themselves without local representation on issues they care passionately about.

This is a real victory for the Greens, the environmental movement, and everyone who’s spoken up in opposition to the proposals since we revealed them in December. More than 4,000 people made submissions against the proposals, and a facebook group against them has more than 27,000 members.

However, as Russel has pointed out this morning in this press release, the battle is not over yet. The iconic Mackenzie Country landscape is still at threat from applications to take water for irrigation in the upper Waitaki, and the applicants are saying they may reapply for the effluent consents in future.

Environment Minister Nick Smith had some lovely green rhetoric on Morning Report this morning – he should follow it with a National Policy Statement on the Mackenzie that actually protects it in future!

The DominionPost reported yesterday that the Fire Service was dragging its feet over the installation of diesel fume extractors at fifteen fire stations around the country. The extractors are expensive — $15,000 per unit — and the Fire Service claims there is no proof breathing diesel exhaust from truck engines is harmful. “There was no quantifiable risk for staff from exposure to diesel fumes,” said operations and training director, Paul McGill.

Are the Fire Service taking Public Relations lessons from the tobacco industry? The link between long-term exposure to diesel exhaust and cancer is well proven. Carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and fine particulates are all contained in diesel fumes and have been linked to respiratory illness, cancer, and premature death.

Motor vehicle pollution is estimated to lead to the premature mortality of 400 people per annum in New Zealand already — the so-called “other” road toll — so why would the Fire Service put our fire fighters at risk?

The Fire Service needs to be taking a precautionary approach to their workers health and safety and clean up the air at their fire stations.

Figures obtained under the Official Information Act show 100 people who claim sickness-related and invalids benefits in the Queenstown-Lakes and Southland regions cite drug or alcohol abuse as a reason for being unable to work.

Hang on a minute!  It is not beneficiaries who cite alcohol or drug issues as being the reason they cannot work.  It is medical practitioners, who have diagnosed them with an illness, in these cases substance dependency, and certified to Work and Income that they are unable to work because of it.

Put in the context of the total muster of sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries in Work and Income’s Southern Region, who numbered 10,286 in December last year, those on benefit because of  alcohol or drug dependency are less that 1% of the total.  Hardly an issue that warrants sensational banner headlines, I would have thought.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, who set the scene for stigmatising beneficiaries in this manner, was quick to wade in again by spinning the Government’s policy of work-testing sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries:

But the Government was determined to break the cycle of welfare dependency and “shifting the focus to what people can do, not what they can’t, is an important part of that”.

No amount of work-testing is going to get people who cannot work because of alcohol or drug dependency back into the workforce.   All that will do is make them feel harassed and more likely to sink deeper into the faux refuge of their dependency.

What will help them get back into work is better and faster access to treatment and rehabilitation programmes.  But in response to government health funding restraints, District Health Boards are cutting back on those.

Hat Tip: greenfly in the comments thread

While life goes on as normal in Parliament it seems the Government has forgotten we have a Kiwi sitting, right now, in a Japanese jail.

I asked the Foreign Affairs Minister, Murray McCully, on Tuesday what he was doing to help New Zealander Peter Bethune. Mr Bethune did what our Government hasn’t done, which is to stand up to illegal Japanese whaling. He was detained by a Japanese whaling vessel as he tried to deliver a citizen’s arrest to the Captain who had allegedly rammed his boat, the Ady Gil.

In response to my question the Minister conceded jurisdiction in this case to Japan, essentially saying “not much”. I don’t think this is good enough. The New Zealand legal system could be dealing with this issue.

I’m urging Mr McCully to explore the legal opportunity in the Maritime Crimes Act 1999, to bring our man home. You can read the background and legal opinion here.

I think the Government should have looked down this avenue earlier, however I’m not surprised. The Government has been very quiet on the plight of Peter Bethune, and has switched to a very weak stance towards Japan on their whaling. The Government is supporting a position at the International Whaling Commission which would see Japanese whale hunting legalised. Ostensibly it’s an attempt to reduce the numbers killed – but I think Kiwi’s understand you can’t save whales by killing them.

Let’s do more than providing consular support and having the occasional chat with Japan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Katsuya Okada about Bethune. Let’s try harder to join with the Aussies who are already campaigning hard to bring home Bethune and return to our prior long standing anti-whaling stance.

Does he stand by his statement “Notwithstanding the public consultation process, it is my expectation that the Government will act on at least some of these recommendations and make significant changes to Schedule 4.”?

The government has no answer.

It’s a rare piece of good news out of the Beehive, but let’s face it; the bill was a stupid idea to begin with.

A Treasury study in 2004, three years after the legislation removing youth rates was passed, showed increasing youth employment.

It’s kind of funny that the oldest person in parliament is trying to screw over the youth. Imagine a bill that seeks to pay older people a smaller minimum wage or Maori, or women? It would be outrageous.

However, I do have my own positive Private Members Bill which seeks to amend the Human Rights Act. Currently the HRA allows discrimination in pay based on age.

30 (2) Nothing in section 22(1)(b) of this Act shall prevent payment of a person at a lower rate than another person employed in the same or substantially similar circumstances where the lower rate is paid on the basis that the first-mentioned person has not attained a particular age, not exceeding 20 years of age.

By removing this section we also fix a contradiction in our law between the Minimum Wage Act and the Human Rights Act.

This amendment makes it harder to erode the rights of youth workers.

The last place we should see age-based pay discrimination is the Human Rights Act.

Update

A copy of my bill is available here [pdf].

I only had to read the Executive Summary of the report to get a totally different picture.

The report slams the Ministry for the Environment for failing to protect public heath. It establishes that only a small number of substances—mainly heavy metals—were monitored; it says these would not have had serious health effects.

Scandalously the company and MFE did not monitor the site and its surrounds for the dioxins, PCB’s and other organochlorine compounds that were spread in to the air. Some of these toxic chemicals were actually created by the malfunction of an experimental “clean” technology.

These “chemicals of concern”, as the report calls them, are infamous because there is virtually no safe level of exposure and they bio accumulate in the food chain.

The local people have been told that because there was no monitoring data collected no one knows the level of risk they have been exposed to. Because Dioxins and other dangerous chemicals have a long half-life (some more than 30 years) in the environment and our bodies there can be a wide range of intergenerational health effects—from cancer to reproductive disorders, immune related disease, diabetes and heart failure. While the Ministry of Health is calling for further testing and is working with the community on the issue their media statement mimics the negligence during the clean up has had negligible effects.

The only good thing is that the secret is out. People living through that noise and dust suspected they were being exposed to dangerous chemicals without monitoring, and they were right. What I don’t understand is why the Ministry of Health press releases would pretend this wasn’t true. Who are they trying to protect? Public health or perhaps the agencies responsible for a failed chemical clean up?

Nats to pay miners to dig up national parks

Video: what we know about climate science

Lehman Brothers: the next Enron

Israeli envoy sees “historic crisis” with U.S.: report

National Rules Out Supporting Roger Douglas Youth Rate Bill

First off – welcome to the Nubrella – a hands-free umbrella you can wear while cycling. So long, as CAN says, “you don’t mind looking like you’ve been partially devoured by a giant transparent caterpillar”.

So will the Nubrella revolutionise cycling in NZ? Well, I don’t like to be pessimistic about its chances but a lot of cycling advocates believe strongly that the perception you can’t “cycle and look normal (or be normal)” is one of the main barriers to cyclists getting started. That’s why bloggers like Unity Finesmith and groups like Frocks on Bikes are so keen to push the message that cyclists can be stylish.

Would you wear a nubrella?

In other cycling news

* The British government has just released an Active Travel strategy which aims to make 2010 -2020 the “Decade of Cycling”. Among other initiatives they want to provide cycle training to every child in Britain. Isn’t that a great aspiration?

* In possibly related news John Key recently had a good time on his bike at St Mary’s school in Hastings. He was there because Paul McArdle, a wealthy donor, has just given 62 new bicycles to the school and installed several cycle tracks around the school in an effort to encourage cycling. While right now this new Bikes in Schools initiative is being driven privately perhaps if it is successful the government will take the plunge and decide to invest in rolling it out to more schools around NZ.

* And finally, a new study just published by NASA suggests that on-road transportation is/will be the biggest global contributor to climate change in the short-term. A compelling argument for more investment in the active modes (cycling and walking) you might think…

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question I have is about the use of the word “soon”. The question was on notice; it was not a supplementary question. The use of the word “soon” is not, I think, an acceptable answer-

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member-

Dr Russel Norman: -in the light of the fact that the question was on notice.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down; I am standing. It may not be acceptable from the member’s point of view, but “soon” reflects a timeframe of shortly, or whenever that may happen.

It seems that if something will happen “shortly or whenever” then that is soon. Yeah whatever.

Save Radio NZ meeting – a packed St John’s in the city – Wellington

 150 people showed up last night to a Save Radio New Zealand meeting organised jointly by myself and Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson.

Gaylene Preston and Jon Johansson also spoke, along with many members of the audience, all voicing their concern that the government’s decision to freeze Radio New Zealand’s funding indefinitely will undermine the quality and independence of Radio New Zealand.

Dr Jon Johansson

It’s odd that conservative governments the world over seem to dislike public service radio. George Bush targeted public service broadcasting and John Howard spent years attacking Australian national radio. It was only a public revolt that saved public service radio in Australia and I suspect it will be the same here.

Reading an exchange of letters between the Minister and Radio New Zealand’s Board, it appears that the Minister is using the funding crisis that he has created to try to force Radio New Zealand to adopt a more commercial model –just as he did to TVNZ.

He is demanding a ‘change of mindset’ on the part of the Board, and an exploration of ‘other revenue models’ –which is obviously code for demanding that Radio New Zealand take a more commercial approach. He has also floated loopy ideas such as reducing or shutting down the Auckland office of Radio New Zealand and introducing sponsorship (how about McDonald’s Morning Report, or Charlie’s Checkpoint?). And he is now floating the idea of Radio New Zealand sharing its news office with Maori TV and TVNZ 6 and 7!

The Minister is trying to create the impression that New Zealand can’t afford Radio New Zealand in its present form. But clearly, it is all a matter of priorities. If any project is called a motorway the government can’t bend over far enough to find an extra billion dollars or so. And now we learn its about to give a $4 million subsidy to mining companies to help them explore mining in our precious national parks! And somehow the Government just managed to find $30 odd million to fund private schools and the America’s cup!

The Minister does not seem able to grasp why it is important that we have one public service broadcaster left in New Zealand that is free from commercial pressures; that is not beholden to advertisers and sponsors, but only to its listeners; and that can hold corporations as well as governments to account, without fear or favour. Or perhaps that’s what he is worried about.

As Brian Edwards has pointed out in a recent blog, it is almost impossible to have quality broadcasting in a commercial radio environment, because the saturation level of advertising required to keep a commercial radio station viable makes in depth coverage of complex social and political issues almost impossible. Everything is reduced to bite sized chunks that fit around advertisements and there’s no room for extended interviews or in depth discussions of complex ideas, which are the daily fare of Radio New Zealand.

It was great to see a Radio Zealand reporter turn up to cover the meeting, because clearly there are moves to stop Radio New Zealand staff from discussing the funding cuts. The Acting Chief Executive of the Department of Culture and Heritage advised the Minister of Broadcasting recently –‘you may wish to indicate your concern to the Board about continued public comment by Radio New Zealand about funding.’ In other words, you may wish to gag Radio New Zealand. So it’s great to see that they haven’t bowed to this pressure yet.

Now we see a similar head-in-the-sand approach being taken by Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne in response to the Ministry of Health’s Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs’ recommendation on the classification of the drug LSD.  The EACD found:

Members also noted that LSD’s potential to cause death is very low and that the few reported international cases were generally from accidents or possibly related to over-activity of the adrenal gland.  Members were advised that there is no evidence that LSD can create dependence.

There was discussion around the appropriateness of New Zealand’s classification of LSD as a Class A controlled drug and whether this is proportionate to the risk of harm or danger associated with the substance.  The Committee agreed that with regard to the risk of harm, a Class B or even a Class C classification may be more appropriate.  The Committee discussed the fact that a Class B classification would provide Police and Customs with sufficient enforcement powers for surveillance and monitoring any involvement of organised crime in supplying LSD. Changing LSD’s classification could mean that a stronger focus can be placed on more problematic drugs.  Members agreed that the current classification of LSD in New Zealand could have been influenced by historical and international classifications and the Committee was advised that LSD was included in the 1960s drug conventions and classified under psychotropic substances in 1971.

Based on the evidence of the risk of harm associated with LSD in New Zealand, the EACD agreed that LSD is inappropriately classified.

Peter Dunne’s reaction:

…Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne says he has met with the committee and made it clear the government has absolutely no interest in pursuing the matter. He says the arguments for change were theoretical and were not agreed on by the full committee.

Not good enough!

The only bit of Dunne’s statement that is confirmed by the minutes of the EACD meeting (MSWord, 76kB – extract quoted above) that discussed reclassification of LSD is that he met with them – he is recorded as a “guest present” at the meeting.  The minutes confirm the EACD took an evidence-based, rather than theoretical, approach to its work.  They also make no mention of any EACD member dissenting to or abstaining from the recommendations.  I can only assume what Dunne means by “not agreed on by the full committee” is that two committee members gave their apologies for the meeting, so their opinions on the issue are unknown.

It all makes me wonder why the Government bothers to have expert advisors at all if it is just going to dismiss the evidence-based advice they provide.