"One wonders whether the point of the Harmful Digital Communications Act, in the view of some MPs, is to silence critics.”

“New Zealand MPs are so keen to be seen to be 'doing something' about cyber-bullying that they are about to pass a poor piece of law that will do something terrible. If the  Harmful Digital Communications Bill passes, MPs who feel sad because of a media story can have the publisher jailed.” 

~ composite quote from 2015 from No Right Turn and Tim Watkin 

“[Given] that defamation would [otherwise] have applied. One wonders whether the point of the [Harmful Digitical Communications] Bill, in the view of some MPs, was to silence critics.”

~ Eric Crampton from his 2015 post 'Harmful Digital Communications and chilling effects'

Judith Collins's legacy: image over reality.

A career summarised: no ideas, no direction, no success -- and not one car crushed

What does a career in politics achieve? 

This afternoon Judith Collins will give her valedictory speech in Parliament. Journalists call her career "colourful." They call her "Crusher." Let's review what she's done there over the years.

• she was one of 23 MPs who rented their home to themselves at taxpayers' expense
• she was always ready to give the trough a decent nudge -- costing us in 2023 more than $24,200, made up of more than $6000 for accommodation and just over $18,000 on travel (a massive saving for us from 2009 when her limos and international travel were costing us nearly $200,000)
• need we mention using her position to help the export business for which her husband was a director?
• brought down for the first time (of many) by her own Entitle-itis, one wag suggested 'Trougher' Collins would be a better nick than 'Crusher'
• as Police Minister she continued to ensure that gangs could make decent profits on illegal drugs, while also ensuring police focus more on revenue-gathering than resolving real crimes (cementing an image as tough but crushingly ignorant)
• as the #DirtyPolitics saga did reveal, she maintained a disinterest in ideas, and a consequent obsession with scandals and (ineffective) dirty tricks
• and as Police Minister (her only real job) what did she actually do beyond asset confiscation; suspension of your right to silence; and expanded search and surveillance powers for an extraordinary range of government departments? 
• apart from, of course, bringing in pathetic new laws to "crush" cars instead of simply applying laws already on the books -- the main goal of which "seems to be the generation of positive media coverage for Judith Collins"
• as opposition MP in 2007 she stood up on the steps of Parliament to swear total opposition to the anti-smacking amendment; and then one month later filed obediently into the lobbies to vote for it
• in any competition between real action or spin, it was almost always spin she favoured -- even if it made us less safe
• as Opposition MP in 2005 and desperate to be noticed, she did point out that the Labour Government's Working for Families package is an election bribe paid being paid for with voters' own money -- and then as government MP and minister continued to administer the bribe
• keeping alive the tradition of promising and reneging, Collins was happy to be photographed firing a pistol to court the gun lobby (posting one on her own Facebook page in case you missed it); before  being the only National MP to support banning semi-automatic weapons for civilian purposes, and to boast about it
• as Corrections Minister she drove the reintroduction of private prisons -- for the actual privatisation of force, an unconscionable mixing of the dollar and the gun, with all the temptation to corruption and abuse that goes with it
• as Opposition Leader, Collins did promise the National Party would reverse any attempts by the Ardern government to criminalise speech beyond the threshold of "inciting violence," and warned against ending up with "UK-style hate speech legislation that has ended up with people being criminalised and even imprisoned for foolish and silly comments." All good, except that as (In)Justice Minister she had already drawn up much the same thing under her Harmful Digital Communications Act which hit us in 2015
• as Police Minister in 2016 she did correctly observe that the primary welfare problem to solve is not a poverty of money, the premise behind Labour's Working for Families programme, but "a poverty of ideas, a poverty of parental responsibility, a poverty of love, a poverty of caring. ... it is not just a lack of money, it is primarily a lack of responsibility." And then sat back as her Government and Party kept the policy, and did nothing to arrest the real poverty she'd identified
• And just to be clear: 'Crusher Collins never even crushed one car. Not one. (Only three cars in total were crushed under her legislation, all of which were after she was moved on from the job.) Which could be her real legacy: one of image over reality.

On the credit side, 

• she did, as opposition MP, do a mini-Rosa Parks in walking out when women were refused permission to powhiri except from the back of the room
• she did, as leader, once proclaim National to believe in property rights (despite it being National who introduced the property-rights-destroying RMA) and did accurately point out that the ACT Party did not, saying "there they are arguing for more planners doing more planning rather than actually letting people get on with building their houses"
• she did, as leader of that same National Party, lead it to its second-worst-ever election defeat in 2020, with a 19% swing against
• she was one of the two National MPs who signed up to the bi-partisan accord on housing that helped lower rents and begin the blessed fall in over-priced house prices -- and then disgracefully remained silent has her new boss kicked it into touch, delaying real housing reform now for nearly four years.

Judith Collins arrived in Parliament after a decade in law and (govt-appointed) directorships as a young, fresh-faced MP in 2002, eager to solve the country's problems and to advance her own career. Without any ideas to guide her however she did nothing to solve anything, helped expand the role of government, and spent a life in service to the trough.

So, more exposure than most, but in the end no different to any of the other highly-paid beneficiaries there, really.

And now she's off to another taxpaid trough at the Law Commission ...

Collins in 2002: all promise, no substance

NB: Ele Ludemann posts a contrary assessment ...

Four years of housing uncertainty. Thanks National.

Important to remember that on top of Chris Bishop's announcement this week of recommended changes to the Resource Management Act, unlikely you'd think to be passed before the next election (with all the uncertainty that that will generate), is his and his boss's other injection of uncertainty into housing — i.e., what the planners will and won't allow on a building site — with an admission, buried in a speech yesterday, that this uncertainty will persist until at least 2027!

Dan Brunskill spotted the admission tucked into the speech, calculating that "National's U-turn on the bipartisan accord caused a three-year delay to housing reform"! He explains:

In a speech to the Property Council summit in Auckland on Thursday, Bishop said "Going for Growth” and other reforms would only be bedded in “from 2027 or so onwards.” 

This delay follows the National Party’s decision to abandon a bipartisan housing agreement, called the MDRS (medium density residential standards), negotiated from the National side by Judith Collins and Nicola Willis in 2021.

At the time, Willis said Labour and National had come together “to say an emphatic ‘yes’ to housing in our backyards.” [And this gave every developer certainty.] 

But new party leader Christopher Luxon sided with his NIMBY caucus colleagues in the run-up to the 2023 election and forced [sic] Bishop to rush out an alternative policy after letting his opposition to the arrangement slip during a public meeting.

National’s new policy allowed councils to opt out of the denser housing rules, provided they zoned their cities for 30 years of growth "immediately" — but, almost two years later, not a single council has formally adopted the policy.

Bishop said on Thursday the finer details of the policy’s first phase were still being worked through by officials and local councils should be ready to implement them in 2027.

This is partly due to a “sequencing problem” as the Government is also planning to introduce an entirely new resource management regime towards the end of next year. ... 

Housing reform and the new resource management rules will be implemented as part of the 2027 Long Term Plan cycle [they hope], or roughly four years after Bishop backtracked on the MDRS.

Four fucking years! George Gregan would be proud.

Speaking of NIMBY numpties, here's Bishop's idiotic boss protesting a new apartment development on the site a of a decommissioned and abandoned mechanic's workshop:

Thieving scum

 

Twenty-three parasites. (Back pockets not pictured.) [PIC: Dom Post]

Go on, when you read the headline you already had a fair idea about whom this would be.

Yes, readers: politicians.

A person with a smile painted on at the front and a bulging back pocket in behind.

Thieving scum.

A fair proportion of whom are taking your money to stay in their own Wellington home:

DOM POST: Twenty-three MPs are claiming an allowance [sic] of between $34,000 and $52,000 [per annum] to stay in their own Wellington homes, a perk that sees the taxpayer help politicians pay off their mortgages.

Nice. I'm sure to most of these entities that kind of money is the sort of chump change that fills up the back of the couch; but there's many a taxpayer who would that like that kind of money back to pay their own goddamned mortgage. 

Dom Post reports the scum includes "six National Party ministers, the Speaker Gerry Brownlee and deputy speaker Barbara Kuriger [who] claim the capped allowance to [supposedly] cover living costs in the city," poor lambs. "They then use it," says the Dom Post, "to pay rent on property they already own. Seven Labour MPs and two from ACT are also receiving up to $34,000 a year, the maximum paid to backbenchers." 

Yes folks, the entitle-itis is parliament-wide. The Dom Post names the roll call of thieving scum to be these:

ACT

Simon Court

Todd Stephenson

NATIONAL

Mark Mitchell

Melissa Lee

Louise Upston

Stuart Smith

Barbara Kuriger

David MacLeod

Tim Costley

Paul Goldsmith

Judith Collins

Catherine Wedd

Andrew Bayley

Vanessa Weenink

Paul Garcia

Gerry Brownlee

LABOUR

Keiran McAnulty

Willie Jackson

Duncan Webb

Arena Williams

Jan Tinetti

Jenny Salesa

Deborah Russell

As the Post wryly notes, "Many of these MPs have extensive property portfolios."

Some of these parasites have form already, claiming large "expenses" and the accommodation allowance, including ACT's big-spending Todd Stephenson and National's Judith Collins and Louise Upston; and Labour's Willy Jackson, Jan Tinetti, Deborah Russell, Jenny Salesa, Arena Williams and Duncan Webb are all there again, treating the taxpayer as an ATM machine. (This attitude is truly everywhere, isn't it.)

Scum. 

Every.Single.One.Of.Them.

Parliamentary entitle-itis is catching

It's not just Christopher Luxon with a bad case of entitle-itis. There is a raft of other MPs and ministers who think taxppayers — you – should help them pay their mortgages on their Wellington homes.

MP expenses came to almost $1.7m and Ministerial expenses came to more than $670,000. ... The National Party - which has the largest caucus in the Parliament - spent the most on expenses in the period, totalling almost $731,000.

Here's a list of the scum currently or recently claiming large "expenses" and accommodation allowances from you (costs are for three months, unless stated):

• Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was the biggest expense of the lot, at a cost of just more than $57,500 - including VIP transport of more than $39,000. The rest was made up of costs of almost $7500 for accommodation, air travel of $9500 and "surface" - ground travel, such as taxis of more than $1300
• The next highest expenses cost in National's caucus was Auckland-based Defence Minister Judith Collins, at a cost of more than $24,200, made up of more than $6000 for accommodation and just over $18,000 on travel. Also giving the trough a decent nudge were West Coast's Maureen Pugh at just over $21.500; Taupo's Louise Upston at $21,000; and Christchurch-based Matt Doocey and Rotorua-based Todd McLay at just under $20,500.
• During the last Government, there were four ministers in the same situation as Luxon, living in their own homes in Wellington and claiming the ministerial accommodation allowance, which is up to $45,000 a year. These were Willy Jackson, Jan Tinetti, Deborah Russell and Duncan Webb. All are likely to claim again this year, but on a lower accommodation allowance.
• In addition, last year four other Labour MPs were living in their own Wellington properties while claiming the allowance. These were: Jenny Salesa, Arena Williams, Jamie Strange and Sarah Pallet.
• And in 2024, there are now 20 MPs (not yet named yet) with second-homes in Wellington who are claiming up to $45,000 so that taxpayers can help pay their mortgages.
• Labour's David Parker and Manurewa MP Arena Williams both claimed around $23,000 on expenses. Ingrid Leary in South Otago and Tangi Utikere in Palmerston North.
• Greens's Manurewa-based co-leader Marama Davidson enjoyed almost $26,000 of largesse in her last two months in the ministry trough. Third-assistant speaker Teanau Tuiono declared almost $25,000 of expenses, while Auckland-based Chloe Swarbrick grabbed $17,500 and former Greenpeace activist Steve Abel claimed just over $17,000. 
• ACT's Mark Cameron, based in rural Northland, declared almost $21,000 in expenses, the highest of any ACT MP. That included almost $10,000 on accommodation and a similar amount on travel. ACT's second-highest grasper is Todd Stephenson, living in Queenstown, claiming just under $19,000.
• NZ First's Jamie Arbuckle, from Marlborough, spent more than $16,000, while Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi - who lives in a remote part of his Waiariki electorate - spent $36,500 of your money, and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer nearly $22,500.
• Other big spenders in the last few months include and Grant Robertson, given $42,369 to go see the rugby, 

A nice rort, if you can get it.

The lowest spenders [include] new Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds, who is based near Wellington. She spent $521, most of which was $403 on flights. ... and [Labour] Leader Chris Hipkins - who is based in Upper Hutt - declared $1129, all of which was on flights. 

Good for them. On this, if nothing else.

"The National Party believes in private property rights..."

 Nice to hear this from a National Party leader:

The National Party believes in private property rights, and we believe in a property-owning democracy.

Even nicer of it could be believed -- the National Party being the party that introduced the Resource Management Act (RMA) -- the one law that, more than any other, has destroyed private property rights in this country.

Perhaps we could begin trying to believe it if we were to see them fighting to have private property rights written into the legislation replacing the RMA?

This however is a fair tilt at a competitor for the property-rights voter:

"We've got other parties who say that they do [believe in private property rights]- ACT, yes, and there they are arguing for more planners doing more planning rather than actually letting people get on with building their houses," Collins said.

Boom! 

National leader/new PM: Your pick? [updated]

 

Unless you know something I don’t, there’s nothing to pick between any of the contenders for John Key’s job when it comes to rolling back the state. To my knowledge, the credentials of all of them on that score measures pretty close to zero. At best.

But let us know you have any cogent thoughts about any of them – or why they might be especially good or bad at the job.

And in the spirit of #dick’sdailyquestions, maybe answer this one for us too:

Q: How will John Key's resignation affect your everyday life?

UPDATE: While updating the archives, amid discovering Bennett and Joyce were both much more nannying than I’d remembered, and that Jonathan Coleman had barely attracted any mention over the years, I discovered this amusing idea from Not PJ’s Bernard Darnton for a new reality TV show that could, with these contestants, be once again very topical. He called it Benny TV:

Here's a new 'reality' TV that someone might like to pitch to Julie Christie.  Or perhaps an idea for some good research for a keen statistician.

Time for a top-rating prime-time TV show to answer the question:  “Who’s the country's biggest beneficiary?  Who really is the biggest moocher on the taxpayer, the biggest sucker on the state tit, the biggest bludger, trough-snuffler and rent-seeking-rort-mongering-entitlement-bogan in the country.”

You can see the show now, can’t you.

“Our next guest is the new Minister of Housing 'Whack-it-on-Your-Bill Phil' Heatley – a man who takes the idea of “state houses” so seriously he’s tried to corner that market himself.  A man with so many houses being paid for by so many taxpayers it would take a Cook Islands taw lawyer to work out.

“Could he be the country’s biggest beneficiary?

“Or is it the new Mistress of Police, Judith ‘Crusher’ Collins, whose arse isn’t so big that she can’t shoot up a taxpayer-funded housing loophole when she sees one, or a good old-fashioned taxpayer-funded limo ride when she can get one.

“Or the new Welfare Matron, Paula Benefit, who’s racked up a whole lifetime on the taxpayers’ tit – “a poster girl for National’s welfare policies” she called herself when she was appointed to head up NZ’s biggest spending department-- and doesn’t look like stopping any time now."

“Or is it our current Minister of Finance, Beneficiary Bill, who pulls down a bigger salary than any business would ever pay him, and claims still extra for having "a place of residence" he visits around twice every year?  A man with so many children only a thousand-dollar-a-week taxpayer subsidy is apparently enough to keep the whole brood together.

“Champion effort that.

“Or could it be it’s the former Minister of Finance Dodger Rugless, who likes to take advantage of the taxpayers' largesse to swan around on foreign holidays, making sure it’s us who picks up his tab?

“Or is it one of EnZed’s former ministers or Prime Ministers, one of them who hasn’t been picked up the latest News From the Trough, but who got a taste for things taxpayerish early on and is unable to kick the habit?  One of the former tit-suckers who can't take their mouth from the teat, and who's pulling down all the free travel and perks and the platinum-plated politicians' superannuation scheme that we're all paying for?

“What about the former Minister of Wine & Cheese Jonathan Hunt, or former PMs Shipley, Bolger, Palmer, Moore -- or the UN's new pin-up girl Helen Clark? Could one of them be our champion?”

"Stay tuned for another thrilling episode of Who’s the Biggest Beneficiary?  Brought to you, naturally, by NZ on Air, so you can see more of who you’re paying for.”

Well, maybe not such great TV – although you would see plenty of red herrings and a lot of scuttling for cover. But high time surely for someone to answer the question.

Could be fun!

.

“But when was the last time that the police needed to do raids, armed or otherwise, on a brewery or a distillery?”

 

The armed standoff in Kawerau began with a police raid on someone growing marijuana. A peaceful drug attracting violence only because it has been made illegal.

An armed standoff only begun because this harmless drug has been made illegal.

Meanwhile, while the police ride helicopters to pluck harmless leaves from the countryside, they manage to resolve only 10% of the burglaries inflicted upon New Zealanders – 164 unresolved burglaries a day -- not because they can’t, but because they don’t want to. Why don’t they want to? Eric Crampton offers one reason: Priorities.

If it puzzles you that the New Zealand Police can find resources to run raids on marijuana growers, which sometimes turn into armed standoffs, but cannot find resources to solve burglaries, remember this:

The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act enables police to seize assets believed to be the proceeds of crime, with or without a conviction.
Since it came into effect, $382 million worth of assets has been restrained (which means the police hold on to it during an investigation), while $85 million has been forfeited altogether. The funds recovered are used to fund law enforcement initiatives.
Police Minister Judith Collins says police have been “extremely successful” in investigating and seizing the “dirty money” of criminals and gangs since the legislation was introduced.
About 96% of forfeitures and 86% of restraints are linked to drugs and organised crime.

What profit is there in solving a home break-in? Anything you seize has to go back to the property's owners. But if you go after the folks who only commit victimless crimes, well, there's nobody who has to be compensated out of the seizures.
    I hate saying I told you so, but I did tell you so.
    The cops will tell us that the standoff's lesson is that police should be better armed. But when was the last time that the police needed to do raids, armed or otherwise, on a brewery or a distillery? Or on the Petone cigarette plant?
    The better lesson is that legalised markets are less violent and have less need for armed cops.

Update: Commenter Ben rightly notes that the funds don't go directly to the police. Here's the NZ Drug Foundation on that:

The lion’s share (70 percent) has gone to Police, Customs, Justice and Corrections. Health gets the rest.

Don’t like gangs? Then legalise cannabis.

 

Ever the populist, Police Minister Judith Collins has announced what she calls “a multi pronged attack on gangs” and a plan to “tackle drugs, illegal gains and firearms.”

But you can’t talk sensibly about a War on Gangs without also talking about the government’s War on Drugs. Not properly. As the prohibition of alcohol proved so conclusively in America—coinciding as that sorry period did with the birth of big criminal gangs there – where you have prohibition, you have a ready income stream for criminal organisations. (It was prohibition, if you like, that caused the Greatness of Gatsby.)

You might have thought then that ripping away their secure income stream would have been the obvious “prong” with which a police minister might begin attacking gangs. Even the most obvious.

Challenged on this point on Morning Report this morning however, Collins airily dismissed the notion. Accepting that gangs’ "primary income is from selling drugs," she was Asked by Espiner what would happen to gangs’ finances if marijuana were legalised, Collins rather bizarelly insisted that they would then get into legalised prostitution and harder drugs like methamphetamine.

But this is nonsensical. A Justice Ministry study that Collins could easily have read in her previous post found that during the in-depth interviews of 656 sex workers “there was no mention of gang involvement or coercion.” Overseeing the research, the Ministry’s Prostitution Law Reform Committee considered “that the links between crime and prostitution are tenuous. The Committee could not find any evidence of a specific link between crime and prostitution.”

The notion is as bizarre as her claim that legalising marijuana, for example, would see an explosion of methamphetamine being sold on the street. As thousands of current and former members of law enforcement who support drug regulation rather than prohibition argue—including Scotland Yard’s former head of drug policing—prohibition doesn’t mean people stop consuming drugs, they just change the drugs they're consuming.

Here, Collins could benefit from getting to grips with what Milton Friedman called The Iron Law of Prohibition: which says that the more you actively prohibit drugs, then it is the more virulent drugs you actively encourage. 

    Friedman proved, for example, that prohibition changes the way people use drugs, making many people use stronger, more dangerous variants than they would in a legal market.
    During alcohol prohibition, moonshine eclipsed beer; during drug prohibition, crack is eclipsing coke. He called his rule explaining this curious historical fact “the Iron Law of Prohibition”: the harder the police crack down on a substance, the more concentrated the substance will become.
    Why? If you run a bootleg bar in Prohibition-era Chicago and you are going to make a gallon of alcoholic drink, you could make a gallon of beer, which one person can drink and constitutes one sale – or you can make a gallon of pucheen, which is so strong it takes thirty people to drink it and constitutes thirty sales. Prohibition encourages you produce and provide the stronger, more harmful drink.
    If you are a drug dealer in Hackney, you can use the kilo of cocaine you own to sell to casual coke users who will snort it and come back a month later – or you can microwave it into crack, which is far more addictive, and you will have your customer coming back for more in a few hours. Prohibition encourages you to produce and provide the more harmful drug.
    For Friedman, the solution was stark: take drugs back from criminals and hand them to doctors, pharmacists, and off-licenses. Legalise. Chronic drug use will be a problem whatever we do, but adding a vast layer of criminality, making the drugs more toxic, and squandering £20bn on enforcing prohibition that could be spent on prescription and rehab, only exacerbates the problem [and helps raise the profits for gangs].

Collins talks about offering “a path out of gangs.” If she’s serious, then most obvious is to make them unprofitable.

After all, it’s working exactly that way in Mexico, where legalising American weed has been off killing drug cartels.

In fact, as both Ethan Nadelmann of the N.Y.C.-based Drug Policy Alliance and Richard Branson, the chairman of Virgin Group point out: drug legalisation is pretty much the worst thing that could happen to organized crime.*

Are you listening, Judith?

---

RELATED POSTS:

• Don’t like drugs? Then legalise cannabis. – NOT PC
• "Stop arresting people for drugs and start offering help" – NEWSHUB
• Legal US Weed Is Killing Drug Cartels – Jonah Bennett, DAILY CALLER
• The Only Thing Drug Gangs and Cartels Fear Is Legalisation – Johann Hari, THE WORLD POST
• Prohibition Caused the Greatness of Gatsby – NOT PC
• Friedman's "Iron Law of Prohibition" – Clark & Watkins, SUN LIVE
• Portugal’s Experiment in Drug Decriminalisation Has Been a Success – Mark Thornton, MISES INSTITUTE
• The Economist explains: The difference between legalisation and decriminalisation- THE ECONOMIST

*   Note that they say legalisation, not merely decriminalisation. Decriminalisation can mean that it’s legal to enjoy drugs but still illegal to sell them. Portugal, for example decriminalised every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin in 2001, to discover that to discover that drug use went down rather than up, that the drugs being consumed were far safer than they were before, and most importantly Portugal now enjoys the second-lowest death rate from recreational drugs in all of Europe (after experiencing one of the worst rates with prohibition)
But because the selling of those drugs in Portugal is stil illegal, it is still largely in the hands of gangs – who are certainly being nicer than they were, but are still at heart just gangsters. “Decriminalisation’s flaw,” notes the Economist, “is that it does nothing to undermine the criminal monopoly on the multi-billion-dollar drugs industry. The decriminalised cocaine consumed without criminal consequences in Portugal is still supplied by the gangs who cut off heads in Colombia. Washington, DC’s version of legalisation is similarly flawed: although possession has been legalised, Congress has prevented the city from legalising the buying and selling of the drug. The capital’s pot business will therefore remain a criminal monopoly. The new law is good news for the people who harmlessly get high. But unless it is followed up eventually by legalisation of the supply-side of the business, it is [still] good news for the crooks who sell it.”

 

The #1 reason for #dirtypolitics: the barrenness of the "centre-right"

The #DirtyPolitics saga saw the commentariat almost immediately begin comparing John Key to their favourite modern-day bogeyman, Richard Nixon.

On the face of it, the link looks seriously overblown. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy led a shambolic dirty tricks team directly overseen by Nixon’s Attorney General that ran a series of lurid operations including luring political opponents with prostitutes, attempts to destroy political party conventions, and carrying out break-ins of journalists and political opponents.

Cameron Slater runs a blog.

If the commentariat can’t see the difference between a blog post and a break-in, we can only despair.

That said however,on a level deeper than the superficial non-similarities pointed to by the regular critics, with all their wild mud-slinging, there is a connection to which they are and will always remain blind.  The real connection is not so much dirty trick s or Judith Collins’s alleged enemies list; the real connection is ideology – or, to be precise, the lack of one.

“Some of the most serious allegations I’ve seen…”

"These are some of the most serious allegations I’ve seen," said David Cunliffe this morning, about allegations that bloggers Whale Oil and Cactus Kate wrote “attack blogs” at the behest of a paying client and a justice minister “gunning for” a minion.

The Herald publishes a graphic calling a senior bureaucrat the “victim [their word] of a number of highly critical blogs.”

Are these people serious? The victim? What, off mob violence? Of a violent mugging? Of a drive-by shooting? No, of some “highly critical blogs.”

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Fucking. Kidding. Me.  Someone wrote some things about him online, and this bureaucrat is now a fricking victim?

This sort of silliness both overstates and understates the power of blogs – and vastly downplays some of the most seriously serious scandals of recent years. (Did Mr Cunliffe not see Helen Clark buying an election with $800,000 of taxpayer-funded pledge card, then retrospectively legislating to make it all legal?  Or the Winston Peters-Owen Glenn-Helen Clark debacle of 2008  – or Winston’s theft of $150,000 of taxpayer money? Or Don Brash dealing secretively with a small but well-funded religious cult to get around donor rules? Or, even, the blatant theft of emails and correspondence of your political opponents … )

I’m sorry, but if these are truly the most serious allegations he’s ever seen he seriously needs to get out more. (Maybe ask David Shearer about the sort of serious stuff that goes on in the world’s warzones, for example.) So a blogger wrote “attack blogs” about a bureaucrat.  How hurtful. How harmful. I’m amazed the poor fellow wasn’t hospitalised.  Just imagine, being attacked by a blogger!  (Maybe pay a visit to your friend and adviser Greg Presland’s home at the Double Standard, David, or Matt McCarten’s Bradbury Blog, to see how folk do this sort of thing just for sport?)

It rather overstates the effect of bloggers, don’t you think, to take this sort of silliness seriously. To get all sanctimonious about what amounts to a few colourfully-phrased blog posts. As blogger Ruth used to say, a blogger is a brain on a chair. He has a keyboard, not a gun. His influence is precisely as much as the degree to which his stories and smears are taken seriously.

This is basically an online flame war that’s spilled over into real life, and is somehow making headlines.

Is attack politics itself wrong?  Then where’s the condemnation of Trevor Mallard. Or Winston Peters.  Are baseless attacks out of order? Then talk to those two again, or every political blogger ever, everywhere. Are attacks on bureaucrats themselves wrong? Not as long as these pricks hold the power of life, death and penury over all of us.

You don’t like what a blog post says, then don’t read it. Move on. There’s plenty of others saying plenty different.

I’m not sorry Judith Collins resigned.  That was long overdue. Not for things she did in the shadows, but for the many and serious outrageous offences against taxpayers and individual liberty done right out in the open – for which she received and receives nary a condemnatory quip even from her political adversaries.

There is an insufferable whiff of sanctimony wafting over this whole sorry saga. It doesn’t just overstate the importance of this kind of attack blogging, the degree to which it is taken seriously demeans and disregards the real power that bloggers and politicians can wield.

Of that, more here.

Crushed [updated]

Gutless, and gone?

UPDATE: Good riddance. A shame she wasn’t sacked for all her real offences.

Judith: think it possible you may be mistaken [updated]

It’s true that both a person’s and a politician’s emails should be private. But what might have been revealed by the reaction to the illegal @Whaledump was more than just some ill-considered repartee.

How Judith Collins has reacted to media pressure about her behaviour – leaving her Prime Minister to bat for her when she should be fronting herself – has been revealing. It turns out Entitleitis isn't just for corporate cronies and lowly-paid beneficiaries. Cabinet ministers get it too.

But then, they are the country’s highest-paid beneficiaries.

Irony, then, that Collins’s biggest crime according to this document dump was revealing the name of a former Helen Clark staffer she thought might have revealed Sir Double Dipton’s double dipping.

Nonetheless, Judith Collins is once again embarrassing her party, her cabinet and her Prime Minister – this time in the middle of what should be a campaign, when she is already on her third last warning.

And by refusing to front, she not only allows the story to continue until she does, she reveals again her overweening sense of Entitleitis.

Yes, she has Entitleitis, just like most ministers do in a second-term government: she thinks she is entitled to her ministerial position and baubles*, and anybody or any questions on any subject suggesting she might not deserve them should be ignored until they go away.

If it’s not Entitleitis, then it’s a severe case of cowardice. Not a good look for a woman who likes to revel in the name ill-named moniker ‘Crusher.’

In either case, she would do her colleagues, the campaign – and, let’s face it, the country -- a power of good by pissing off.

Now, would be good.

* Baubles? Not sure what she costs us now, but back in 2009 the pint-sized power luster was racking up $46,000 plus rorts for accomodation and $188,981 a year in flights and limos. And all we got in return for that was “asset confiscation; suspension of your right to silence; expanded search and surveillance powers for an extraordinary range of government departments.” You know, stuff she did right out in the open.

UPDATE 1: Nice to  hear Leighton thinks the same. (Although more politely.)

UPDATE 2:  Interesting to see that Cameron calls his “former Beehive contact” Jason Ede “gutless” for not fronting up. If he means it for his other mate, he obviously means it double for this one.

UPDATE 3: An emailer pointed out Collins was bearded at the airport wearing a carpet. Not a great looks, but she does answer questions.

RELATED POSTS:

• A postcard to “Crusher” Collins
• Getting “tough”

#SurveillanceState: Privacy for me, but not for thee, say National ministers [updated]

The presumption of Westminster Government ever since the 1688 Bill of Rights used to be that anything was allowed citizens except what was prohibited by law, while nothing was permitted government except what was permitted—with one important corollary therefrom that while citizens should be safe from intrusion into their privacy and property except by due process of law, government itself should be transparent.

That presumption is dead.

Apparently when it comes to privacy and property, politicians think they are our masters and not our servants. One rule for them, and another for us, it seems. 

This view is confirmed today in the questioning of David Henry by parliamentarians over his cavalier release of emails between Peter Dunne and journalist Andrew Vance.

“I found it quite chilling that the private emails and communications of ministers and staff were treated with a contemptuous attitude,” says Judith Collins, who this afternoon will file into the Ayes lobby to vote to treat our own private communications with unutterable contempt.

“Don’t you realise that communications between ministers and journalists are sacred,” says Gerry Brownlee, who after lunch will shuffle down to the Chamber to make all communications between you and I profane.

These two slugs recognise the chilling effect of making private communications public—they understand their sanctity.

But only when it comes to themselves.

They are, in a word, disgusting.

UPDATE: John Banks compounds the disgust, suggesting during his own line of questioning that the Henry inquiry had “trampled on the rights and freedoms of Members of Parliament and the fourth estate in a very cavalier manner.” This afternoon this sorry excuse for a human being, whose one vote will get the National bill through the House, will confirm his lack of any credentials to lead a supposedly liberal party by agreeing to trample on the rights and freedoms of every New Zealander.”

He is, in a word, a hypocrite.

Judith Collins is talking bullshit

It’s reported that former local tax lawyer Judith Collins reckons the internationally-respected former Canadian Supreme Court judge’s report on compensation for David Bain is wrong on law, contains assumptions based on incorrect facts, and "lacked a robustness of reasoning used to justify its conclusions.”

I say that’s bullshit.

I say the reason she won’t make Justice Binnie’s report public is because it will be patently obvious everything she says about it is bullshit.

I say the reason she’s not taken the report's recommendation to grant compensation—the only reason—is nothing to do with Justice Binney’s alleged errors in law, and everything to do with the public’s overwhelmingly negative reaction to David Bain getting compensation.

She’s a politician. She couldn’t care less about the law. But she does care about the public.

But the public should get over themselves. The public, who overwhelmingly mistrust David Bain, should realise nonetheless that a jury in our highest court of law found him not guilty after thirteen years in prison for a(nother) case the police bungled, and he’s entitled to compensation for wrongful imprisonment.

And she should say that.

And she should stop impugning someone who I have no doubt knows the law vastly better than she does.

Let’s deal with the sackings first, and leave the repairs ‘til later

I see Judith Collins, under pressure about the shambolic setup that is ACC, has chosen a scapegoat. She’s sacked the Chairman.*

That this will do nothing to change the setup that is ACC is immaterial.** Action was called for, and action has been taken. And action is what Collins is all about—or at least the appearance of action.

After all, who cares about actually changing ACC when you can get the same headline for a quick sacking.

* * * * *

* Well, actually, he’s headed for a nice sinecure as chairman of the ANZ Bank. But I’m sure “sacking” will be the spin.

** No more will it change the setup that is ACC than the sacking of IRD Commissioner Graham Holland after the inquiry into the corrupt culture of the IRD changed that organisation. But it looks mighty impressive, doesn’t it.

Getting “tough”

No, I can’t get excited about Paula Bennett’s latest announcement to “get tough” on someone. Or at least to look like she is.

Her announcement this week informs us she intends to “’consider’ giving courts the power to remove children from abusers at birth,* something CYFS can—and does—already do.” **

This is not the first time Bennett has announced what has happening without her for some time.

In this she differs from Judith “Crusher” Collins, her cabinet mate, only in that while Bennett’s reputation for “getting tough” is based on announcements she might do something about something already being done, “Crusher” earned her nickname for announcing she will do something about things that still aren’t being done.

They make an ideal pair of virtual book ends, fiddling with “announcements” while their portfolio areas burn.***

* * * * *

* Not that there should be excessive controversy. The job of governments—the only job—is to protect individual rights. The primary way this is done is by criminals losing  rights commensurate with their crime. The only principled objection to this could be what government agencies do with the children they seize. Which is not always pretty.
** Thanks to Dim Post for the observation.
*** Both child abuse rates and benefit numbers are up on Bennett’s watch. While under Collins’s watch as minister for police and ACC the reputation of both reached their nadir.

Image over reality

From a government that increasingly believes in style over substance comes two announcements making clear that image is more important, to them, than reality. At least in their minds.

We have the report from the Gnats’ weekend conference that—at a time when around 450,000 adult NZers are on welfare—the Tories plan only to get “tough” on around 1600 16- and 17 year-old beneficiaries too young to vote; on young folk who were first made unemployable by government schools, and then priced out of the market by this government having removed Youth Rates.

And we had the report yesterday that despite the inept Judith “Crusher” Collins’s grandstanding about getting “tough” on street racing by crushing cars, not one car has yet been crushed. (Asked to comment on this failure, the Non-Crusher points to a 15% drop in street racing, apparently oblivious to the fact that way more than 50% of the Christchurch streets where most racing was done are now impassable.)

What we have here is a reliance on image (getting “tough”) over the disastrous reality the Gnats refuse to either confront or acknowledge. Add to that their insistence on continuing to borrow $300 million per week rather than confront the reality of their over-spending, and you have a recipe for a government who prefers doing headlines to doing the hard stuff.

That they think they can get away with it is due only to a media and opposition who are as inept as each other in being able to hold them to account.

Judith Collins. Making New Zealand less safe. [Update 2]

Why has the licensing of air gun owners suddenly been announced by this government?  Because of three shootings involving air guns.  Judith Collins reckons after these three shootings that we’ll all be safer if she passes a new law requiring all owners of air guns to get a license.

But will we really?

The man the police gunned down for defending his family’s West Auckland home against intruders—the armed police having failed to identify themselves before breaking in to question him--was holding a stolen air rifle.

The man who shot and killed Police Sergeant Don Wilkinson outside his Hain Ave, Mangere East, house with an air rifle--—the police having failed to identify themselves before going on his property as part of a drugs operation—was using a stolen air rifle.

Things might have been different in both these incidents if police hadn’t gone about their work by acting so like criminals themselves that they were easily confused for being intruders. But since both these incidents involved stolen guns and people quite happy to break other laws, it’s unlikely that either would have been any different because of Ms Collins’s knee-jerk law change. Criminals are unlikely to be slowed down because they haven’t got the right paperwork with them.

That’s also the case with the other tragic shooting in recent weeks involving an airgun.  Keith Kahi was shot and killed in a Botany Downs driveway. Shot by a man holding a high-powered airgun over what’s suggested involves drugs. But while being “pleased” the government is doing something, Keith’s older brother Derek still wonders if this law change is the “something” that should be done. “Since most criminals did not have firearms licences, he questioned what impact it would really have.”

It's the old saying: `Guns don't kill people, people kill people.'
    "The legislation might stop your average Joe Bloggs from going along and buying a lethal weapon. That's a good thing, but it's not going to stop the criminals out there, they'll find other ways."

Yes. They will.

Frankly, there’s nothing at all in Ms Collins’s proposed law change to suggest that either Don Wilkinson or Keith Kahi would still be alive if she’d been any quicker off the mark in jerking her knees. It’s simply foolish to pretend that criminals are going to start doing their paperwork simply because Judith Collins says they must. (And if she’s successful in licensing airgun owners, then what’s next: boys who own shanghais?) What her law might do, however, is to encourage owners of airguns who do become licensed owners to then head out and buy a real gun—or even several real guns, putting even more guns into circulation, in the hands of people who may not yet be ready to use them-- which is not exactly what she’s after, I’m sure.  A view confirmed by Petone gun shop owner John Howat, who says,

If you require someone to have a gun licence they will just go for that and never buy an air-gun, they'll go straight into real guns. It cuts out those learning steps out, which is the last thing you want to do."

If Ms Collins really wants to make New Zealand safer, she might contemplate the other link in the two fatal shootings that have encouraged her to spring into action. She should take the advice of Dr Richard McGrath after the recent shooting of two Christchurch policemen who (like Sergeant Don Wilkinson) were shot by occupants while invading their property as part of a drugs operation.

The elephant in the room is this: The escalation of violence occurred because the two officers involved had decided to investigate a house that smelled of cannabis. And handling cannabis is currently illegal. If the house smelt of incense or fried chicken, there would have been no reason for the policemen to try and execute a search of the house, and no reason for the occupants to fear visitors. It was the smell of an illegal substance that set the whole sorry train of events in motion.
    “The libertarian solution to what is essentially a non-problem (a house smelling of cannabis) is to legalise all acts of non-aggression—which includes adults making, selling and smoking dope. That is not to endorse the cannabis industry, but to remove it from the sphere of crime, where it simply does not belong. If cannabis handling was legal, talkback callers would not now be wringing their hands over bringing back the death penalty and allowing police officers to carry side-arms.”

Prohibition escalates violence in New Zealand just as much as it did in 1920s Chicago, and in Underbelly-era Australia. If she’s really serious about making New Zealand safer for everyone, including policemen, she’d be giving those facts some serious thought.

That’s if she is serious about safety, instead of just a populist headline.

UPDATE 1: The anatomy of a kneejerk:

[Pic taken from NZ Conservative]

 

UPDATE 2:  Keith Locke goes populist—calling for not just gun-owners to be licensed, but for every single firearm in the country to be registered—something that cost Canada $2 billion and still failed to achieve anything.  “Bad timing Mr Locke, on gun registration” says Stephen Franks.

Keith Locke's call for gun registration maintains the Greens' usual faith in government  It follows last week's Sunday Star Times 'expose' of how many firearms are circulating. But both come at a curious time.
    “Because New Zealand's law has just been praised  by the authors of an international survey of firearms law, and firearms murder rates. The Herald's story on that study knocks the stuffing out of the efforts of Mr Locke and the SST.
    “Sadly for  Taupo's Jeremy Graves a willingness to look at the law and the evidence together is still too much for the Police to handle…”

Read on here.

A postcard to “Crusher” Collins [update 3]

Asset confiscation; suspension of your right to silence; expanded search and surveillance powers for an extraordinary range of government departments – I tell you what: I’m with Danyl here asking why is it that Minister for Police Judith Collins is so damn popular? And the country’s media so fawning?

Beats the hell out of me.

People say things like, “Oh, if you do nothing wrong then you’ve got nothing to fear from expanded police powers.” What fatuous nonsense. That’s like saying if you’ve got nothing to hide then there’s no need to hang curtains on your front window.

Expanding the scope of “what-you-can-do-wrong” is just one way the state can make you feel its hot breath down your collar.  What they’re doing here is enlarging the scope of what they can do to you even if you’ve done nothing wrong at all.  Even if there’s no real proof of wrong-doing.  Even if there’s no chance of any conviction, or of any finding of guilt—the government and its agencies will soon be able to do a complete end run around the protection of the court system to search you, to surveil you, and to confiscate what you’ve got, merely on their say-so that you’re someone who’s not to be trusted.

As an opponent of enlarged state power myself, I’d like to think that all of us in that team would be thought of that way.  Which is just one very personal reason I’m outraged at the overturning of yet more fundamental legal rights going back centuries that this government is wasting no time overturning.  Presumption of innocence?  A criminal standard of proof? Just cause? Due process?

It’s almost like the Nats don’t even know or care, they exist . . .

“The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed.”  That’s a basic principle of Objective Law. What it’s being changed to by the Key Government is, to paraphase:

“The government’s retaliatory use of force will be unleashed to search for evidence that a crime has been committed, to deny your right to remain silent about any alleged crime in which you’re thought to have been involved, and to seize whatever assets the government deems to be forfeit from whomever they deem to be a suspect – under rules they’ll make up as they go along.”

Doesn’t sound like me to be praiseworthy.  Sounds to me more like something to fear.

Judith has already earned herself the moniker “Crusher,” despite not having crushed one car, and not looking likely to in the near future.  But she has already begun crushing some of your most basic protections against your being abused by the state and its multitude of agencies, quangoes and departments.

If you’re one of those who’s been thinking that HeadMistress Collins is doing good work here in making it “easier” to get to criminals, I would urge you to reconsider.  What she’s doing is making it easier to “get” the innocent, whether or not they’ve even displayed any criminality.

And if you can’t prove that someone is guilty in a properly established court of law, what gives you the moral authority to treat them as if you have?  Answers on a postcard, please.

UPDATE 1: No Right Turn spotted this chilling exchange on Sunday’s Q&A TV programme, on which HeadMistress Collins appeared:

"Paul Holmes pressed her on civil liberties, pointing out that the asset forfeiture regime was the end of "innocent until proven guilty". The Minister's response?

It's fantastic isn't it?

Yes, Really. We have a fascist as a police Minister.

It gets worse. What stops the police from abusing the vast new powers National (and, to be fair, Labour - because this bill and the Search and Surveillance Bill are both Goff's babies) has introduced? Apparently, the police are supposed to be concerned for their reputation, and afraid that they would "lose all credibility" if they victimised innocent people. Yeah, and I have a brewery in Mangitinoka to sell you. But Collins thinks we have other safeguards as well …  Lets look at those one by one, shall we?

Read on to watch NRT demolish them one by one.

UPDATE 2: Liberty Scott has more analysis in this post of The HeadMistress’s political populism and her gleeful evisceration of the burden of proof: Tough on crime, tough on rights.

UPDATE 3: And there’s this postcard from Scoop: Fascist Police States: Libz Habeas Collins' Corpus On A Spike