…the mainstream media would scream ‘Labour Leader can’t do labouring’. Patrick Gower would interview angry tradesmen who would feel betrayed by Little, Duncan Garner would muse on how it will damage Little’s credibility with working class people while Mike Hosking would declare the 2017 election already a forgone conclusion because men won’t vote for another man who can’t handle a hammer.
Lead Report: We have a full transcript of the extended interview with Nicky Hager on the Snowden Revelations.
Response-Reports: We have two reports framing the Nicky Hager interview by rookie journalist Alistar Kata. She’s an absolute professional and a journalist to watch in the future (Audio report) + (News Report).
Full Coverage: And we have full raw coverage of this threat to contaminate infant and other formula in what the government states is an apparent protest over the use of 1080 in pest control.
Here is a list of things that happened in 1515 when the 500 year old Titirangi Kauri tree started growing…
Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founds Havana, Cuba
The army of Francis I of France defeats the Swiss at the Battle of Marignano
Thomas Wolsey is named Lord Chancellor of England and begins rebuilding Hampton Court Palace on the River Thames
Leonardo da Vinci completes Bacchus
Raphael completes Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione,Portrait of Bindo Altoviti and La velata
The first Johannes Schöner globe is produced
Henry the VIII is on the English throne
Maximilian I rules the Holy Roman Empire
Louis the XII dies on French throne
Moctezuma II rules the Aztec civilisation
I’m sorry, but if you have a 500year old tree on your property – you have no right to chop it down or green light its destruction! What unbelievably selfish maggots would agree to that!
The spineless and pathetic response from the City Council makes a mockery of environmentalism. If a 500 year old tree can’t be protected from some greedy developer mates of the Mayor, what the hell can be protected?
$640 dollars per day to add a veneer of gated community support for changing the flag? And what a wide spectrum of opinion, if your definition of wide is National Party voting media and advertising brand managers.
Julie Christie, Rod Drury, Nicky Bell, John Burrows, Kate de Goldi, Lieutenant-General Rhys Jones, Beatrice Faumina, Sir Brian Lochore, Stephen Jones, Peter Chin, Malcolm Mulholland and Hana O’Regan are about as representative of wider NZ as a South Island jury.
At a cost of $25.7 million dollars, can’t we save everyone’s time and our cash by just holding up the flag Key really wants…
…but we can’t do that because this whole flag debate is just a pointless distraction Key can wave around rather than answering serious questions about privatising state houses, rorting ACC, going to war in Iraq, child poverty, affordable housing, charter school whitewashing, student debt, inequality and of course mass surveillance.
Key’s arrogance in writing Winston off has changed with the realisation that an electorate as neglected by National as Northland has been is intending to send the Government a message by eliminating their ability to ram through controversial legislation with just the help of ACT.
Labour’s hamfisted campaign to date isn’t fair to Willow-Jean Prime who is an excellent candidate. The sudden wake up of Little giving his nod to Winston over the weekend should have been worked out well before now. This was a chance to look like a Government in waiting rather than squabbling again. If Winston wins it will mean the Greens get relegated to support partner in a Labour-NZ First minority coalition come 2017 as Labour’s move to the middle is now well set.
Regardless of who wins, Northland will still lose. The only hope for those ground down by poverty will be a change in Government 2017, it won’t be the replacement of the self-interested pretending to represent their interests.
Northland should hold out until Sabin’s ‘personal issues’ are made public, Key will have to promise 10 airports then.
The neoliberal NZ experiment has spawned a baby boomer subdivided middle class whose only illusion of wealth is the increasing property valuations generated by unfettered over seas buyers and slum lord property speculators.
Imagine what a political party designed to represent New Zealand’s young renters would do if it got into power in Auckland or Wellington.
Let’s call it the Generation Rent Party.
Wooing the young and disenfranchised vote certainly won United States President Barack Obama his second term, but it was clear after last year’s election that no one has managed it in New Zealand.
Let’s imagine if they did. What policies would they pursue?
First, they would try to make housing affordable again for first-home buyers who want to start a family before they turn 40 without having to beg parents and grandparents for money.
Or they would at least try to make rents consume less than 30 per cent of their disposable income.
House prices in Auckland are rising again at double-digit rates and rent inflation is accelerating into the higher single digits.
The median house price in Manukau was 25 per cent higher in January than a year ago.
Record high net migration, heavy buying by property investors pumped up with interest-only mortgages and unfettered buying by non-residents has combined with chronic under-supply to pump up prices.
The Reserve Bank is looking at tightening up on how much banks can lend to residential landlords.
The central bank has confirmed it is consulting on new rules for residential property investors, opening the door to new requirements for owners of rental properties.
After months of of speculation, the Reserve Bank said it was looking at creating a “new asset class treatment for mortgage loans to residential property investors” within its capital adequacy requirements.
The issue of residential property is increasingly political, with critics claiming the loan to value ratios established by the bank last year may have made it harder for first time buyers to get on the property ladder, but not for those with a portfolio of rental properties.
As Key looks to test 5000 state tenants to throw out onto the streets, the reality is we need less market forces and more direct State investment.
20 000 new state homes with new loan schemes to allow beneficiaries to buy their state houses alongside a capital gains tax, land tax and property speculators tax is what is needed, not slum lords and overseas speculators. 4 bedroom Apartment buildings for first time home owners in central cities would allow Gen X and Gen Y entry into the property market and a vast new building program would connect our forestry industry to training schemes and work programs.
The current plan to gut the RMA so that 500 year old tress can be cut down for more urban sprawl subdivisions rather than central city and central suburb intensification rely on cheap immigration to keep pushing prices up. This is bubble building economics designed for short term political gain at long term social damage.
We require new law cementing in long term tenancies with rent controls and the promotion of ‘ethical landlords’, people who refuse to squeeze every last drop of money out of their tenants for needless greed.
Our social inequality demands solutions, renters rights and affordable housing is part of that solution.
Right, well it’s taken something like half a decade … but we’ve finally reached a situation wherein pretty much everyone left-of-center who isn’t a die-hard Labourite (but then, I repeat myself) is lining up behind Winston Peters as the logical and natural champion of the common man against National.
I shall attempt to restrain my jubilation at reading ecstatically supportive pieces from so many people (including some pundits who not two elections ago saw fit to gleefully write us off) – and instead say merely this:
Welcome to #TeamWinston 😀 Hope you’ll stick around after the 28th to help us finish the job.
But it isn’t just the mercurial temperaments of the Parliamentary Press Gallery that have swung massively in Winston’s favour. While we here in New Zealand First customarily don’t place too much credence in the predictive power of polling (and why would we – polls have a nasty habit of woefully UNDERESTIMATING our support) … it’s difficult not to feel your spirits buoyed when a Reid Research poll comes out placing Winston at the head of the race on 35%.
Up until Wednesday, this was a safe National seat. With the sole exception of Social Credit taking out its predecessor of Hobson in 1963, National has maintained an unbroken monopoly on Northland and its antecedents since 1943. When Key declared earlier this year that Mike Sabin’s 2014 majority was “over 9,000“, the application of the Dragon Ball Z reference to convey how imposing and formidable National’s hold on the seat then seemed was bang on the money. (Although for what it’s worth, if we’re playing DBZMMP, Winston makes for a *far* more convincing Vegeta. Dragon Ball Key, by contrast, would be uttering “This isn’t even my final form!”)
But with National’s Mark Osbourne languishing behind Winston in the polls, it seems certain that National can no longer take the support of Northlanders for granted. We look forward to Key being made to eat his words about there being “zero chance” of the seat changing hands.
More interestingly, however, it’s not just National that Winston’s been showing up. The same “game-changer” Reid Research poll which had Winston on 35% also showed him damn near *doubling* the support of Labour candidate Willow-Jean Prime, who’s well back on 19%.
Some might say there’s nothing too surprising about one of the most inveterate and skillful campaigners in the country absolutely curb-stomping a local body politician whose sole experience in the big-leagues appears to be a single run as an electorate candidate less than six months ago. But considering the same candidate running for the same seat at the last General Election managed to capture nearly 26% of the vote when up against a sitting National MP vastly more well-known than Osbourne, the fact that Labour’s vote is in retreat despite an enormously tarnished local National brand suggests there’s something bigger going on.
I might be a little premature in saying this, but when Winston beats Labour up in Northland, it may very well signal the irreversible tipping point in Labour’s ever-accelerating transition from “Big Two” status to being a minor party. And, at the same time, a cementing of NZF’s return to eminence as the leading third party.
No wonder so many in Labour spent most of last week running scared all over social media trying to pour cold water on our imminent success. Word to the wise, guys – you can’t really call somebody FROM the electorate in question and who regularly spends as much time as possible in the area a “carpetbagger”. If you’re finding “Messiah” too much of a mouthful, perhaps “Mana Whenua” might be a more appropriate way of expressing his relationship to Northland. Also, as applies Andrew Little calling into question how long Winston would be around as the local MP … given the average length of tenure enjoyed by the last few Labour leaders, I’m not *quite* sure Little’s in the appropriate position to be calling into question the durability of anyone else in a political position.
By urging voters to be “intelligent” and “realistic” in their choice – then consciously echoing Winston’s campaign call to “send a message to the government” – Little has finally conceded that a victory against National up in Northland is far and away more important than any petty pride Labour might have been able to salvage by putting in an also-ran showing in this by-election. It also allows them to recast a poor result for their candidate as the inevitable consequence of “taking one for the team” by backing Winston, rather than further evidence of their ongoing slide to third party status.
Now while National’s spin-doctors will no doubt try to use this to shepherd Northland voters away from Winston by claiming that this means a vote for Winston is therefore suddenly a vote for Labour … it isn’t.
A vote for Winston is a vote for New Zealand First. It’s a vote to put the people ahead of politicians who take them for granted. And it’s a vote to send a message to the Government that it’s time they stopped arrogantly assuming that Labour’s dysfunction means National has an automatic “right to rule”.
Regardless of whom you normally support, or where you situate yourself on the political spectrum, there are solid reasons to back Winston up in Northland.
If you’re an opponent of the present government, then the justification for supporting Winston is clear. He’s done more in the last six days than Labour has in the previous six years to abjectly terrify National and remind them we live in a democracy where power actually can change hands.
If you’re a Green, then the scare-factor National is dangling in front of the electorate of a Winston victory delivering a stronger RMA ought to present a prima facie reason to beat the rush for #BlackGreen2017 and support New Zealand First right here, right now.
And if you’re a Nat (in which case, colour me genuinely surprised and appreciative of your patronage of this blog) … think of it this way. National takes Northland for granted because they know that no matter how little they do for you, there’s never previously been an alternative that you’d consider voting for. This means they’ve let your region languish and lead to them being so incredibly arrogant that they stood a man they KNEW before the Election to be facing serious criminal charges, and still expected you to vote for him. They then had the nerve to assume that you’d just do as they told you and vote in one of his associates as a replacement.
But no longer. When Winston entered the race last week, they started to get nervous. When 3News reported Winston ahead of their candidate on Thursday, they went into full-on panic mode. The most obvious sign of this has been their decision to deploy their greatest weapon – John Key – far more frequently into the electorate than they would have otherwise. So right off the bat, there’s conclusive proof that the threat of you voting for Winston gets your region more attention from the government and Prime Minister.
In other words, no matter what your political persuasion – or, for that matter, your prior opinion of Winston – if you’re not a blinkered backer of the current government … you’ve got something to cheer about when Winston liberates Northland later this month.
Q. What does National, Act and New Zealand First all have in common?
A. They all believe in horse trading over democratic process.
Labour has stood a candidate in Northland. She is fiercely local, listens to people and has the best interests of the Northland people at heart. It is also worth noting that she is one of the most popular Candidates in the Auckland and Northland Region for that very reason. Out of all the Candidates during the General Election, she was one of the most attentive when it came to disability rights for example.
Many Parliamentary Candidates stand for their own personal careers. I truly believe, knowing her, that Willow-Jean has the people at the core of her motivation.
And we come to the loss of democracy. Many people are urging for a deal to keep National out. Let’s get this straight from the start. I am not right of the Labour Party. I dislike National a lot, and see the damage they are doing. However the people, whether rightly or wrongly, chose them, and we live in a democracy, thank goodness.
I do not like National because this Government is not at all above lying, arrogance, self-interest and corruption. We have seen that time and time again, and yet the people sadly continue to support these toe-rags. I cannot understand why, but that is their choice, as we are in a democracy.
It has been pointed out to me that ten years ago a former Prime Minister who has long since moved to better things with the UN urged people to tactically vote. However, Labour still stood a Candidate, and fought the electorate, though it was unwinnable. People had a choice. We did not remove democratic process.
If we put democracy aside to reduce choice because we do not like the other Party we are no better than them, and do not deserve a democracy. On one hand we see demonstrations against TPPA because it takes our voice away, but on the other hand the same Party run by a cult figure wants to remove the freedom of choice for personal gains.
I am sickened by the removal of what we all hold dear in New Zealand. This to me holds the stench of corruption and self-interest, and I have never been more proud to be Labour. Seems like we may be the only ones who want to preserve democracy as opposed to following National Party dirty tactics and oiffsetting the voice of the people in favour of a preferred result.
I contend that this is New Zealand First’s version of underarm bowling, and I am sure it will backfire.
Simon Buckingham is New Zealand’s first diagnosed Autistic Spectrum lawyer. He is a social justice activist and passionate about politics.
We have been repeatedly assured by the Prime Minister that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) cannot spy on New Zealanders without a warrant. But what if the greatly enhanced knowledge we have gained from Edward Snowden’s disclosures of mass global surveillance, has actually left New Zealanders nakedly exposed to lawful warrant-less spying on their internet communications by the GCSB? That perverse and deeply disturbing outcome for New Zealander’s privacy and democratic freedoms has been overlooked by commentators on state surveillance since the GCSB Act was passed in September 2013.
The Snowden revelations of the last twelve months now mean that most of us have greatly increased expectations that our emails, phone calls and online activity will be intercepted. A Stuff.co.nz/Ipsos poll, of 21 June 2014 shows 71.6 % of New Zealanders believe United States spy agencies are gathering data on them.
These raised expectations that our communications will be intercepted, now profoundly affects the legal interpretation of a critical phrase – “private communications“, in the GCSB Act. The phrase is critical because it is supposed to provide protection for New Zealanders against the GCSB’s intelligence gathering powers (section 8B), and warrant-less interception powers (section 16).
Under the GCSB Act a communication can only be “private”, and therefore protected from interception, if one of the parties has a “reasonable expectation” that their communication will not be intercepted by some other person. A “reasonable expectation” in this context is not about privacy in the wider meaning of that term, or about loss of privacy. Defining “reasonable expectation” in the GCSB Act requires a much narrower and focused enquiry – as to whether the communication will be intercepted. It is irrelevant whether the interception occurs overseas, or within New Zealand.
The Snowden revelations have helped turn this critical phrase in the GCSB Act, which is supposed to safeguard our democratic freedoms and privacy, into a contrivance which now works contrarily to largely extinguish those protections. Lawful warrant-less surveillance of New Zealanders by the GCSB is possible.
No amount of oversight after the event can protect the public, if the GCSB is lawfully exploiting a legal loophole.
Would the public ever know that the GCSB was exploiting these legal flaws in this manner? The answer is they would not. The GCSB’s legal advice and internal operations are kept highly secret.
If the interception of everyday communications is deemed by the GCSB to be not private, and therefore legal, then no warrant is required from either the Prime Minister or The Commissioner of Security Warrants. Warrant-less interception is possible, no register need be kept, and any audit by the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security would confirm legal compliance. The GCSB could also lawfully request any Five Eyes partners or other foreign intelligence agency to share data it holds on New Zealanders.
The Government has known about this legal loophole, but has deliberately chosen not to close it. In 2010, the Law Commission Stage 3 Report on Privacy pointed out that the definition of “private communication” in the criminal law was outdated and seriously flawed.
In June 2013, submissions from the New Zealand Law Society, and Appeal Court Judge Sir Grant Hammond on behalf of the Legislation Advisory Committee, both raised serious concerns about the phrase “private communications” in the GCSB Bill. Sir Grant took his concerns to the media, where he stated –
“the definition of the term “private communications” within the protection clause of the bill was not clear and, because it was central to the protections in the bill, it needed further work.
“It’s a trigger provision. A lot of other things turn on it. “
Both the Law Society and Sir Grant strongly submitted that the phrase be strengthened to take account of changes in technology, and community expectations of privacy.
“The LAC suggests that the definition of “private communication” be revised to better reflect the level of communications, information and data privacy that New Zealanders may reasonably expect.”
The Prime Minister’s Office acknowledged that New Zealander’s metadata and content, would not always meet the legal test for a “private” communication, and could in some circumstances be intercepted.
But the Government would not agree to delay the Bill until a precise and protective definition was established. Instead the Bill was rushed through Parliament with a two vote majority – including that of MP Peter Dunne. Mr. Dunne gave his support in return for a commitment from the Government to review the definition of “private communication”, stating this is “what I have ensured will happen as a priority”. A year later, the review has not even begun, and the Government has delayed any review indefinitely.
Edward Snowden has stated that New Zealand was one of the countries to which the US and UK spy agencies provided “legal guidance” on how to degrade its legal protections and enable mass surveillance. In written testimony to the European Parliament, Snowden said,
“Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK’s GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers. These efforts to interpret new powers out of vague laws is an intentional strategy to avoid public opposition”
This context explains why the Government has rushed through radical changes to the GCSB Act knowing full well that a critical definition was deeply flawed, and explains why it has then reneged on a promised “urgent” review and delayed it indefinitely. The intention is clear – the GCSB wishes to retain the current definition of “private communications and with it – “loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations”
We know from Snowden’s disclosures that the NSA, with assistance from its ‘Five Eyes’ spy partners, – UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, now intercepts (and in some cases stores) emails, calls and internet activity on a global basis. 95% of all New Zealand’s internet traffic passes, via the Southern Cross undersea cable to the US, where it may be lawfully intercepted, as “foreign intelligence”. In many cases this will include communications between two people in New Zealand.
The NSA has “Network Security Agreements” with scores of cable companies worldwide, including Telstra in Australia. These agreements compel the cable companies to grant access to all the data on their cables when they land on US territory. Telecom New Zealand, which half owns the Southern Cross cable, has confirmed that once its cable entered US territory, it is legally obliged to co-operate with US laws.
One of Snowden’s documents suggests that the NSA has a broad no-spying agreement with New Zealand and the other “Second Party”/Five Eyes partners. But as this NSA flowchart makes clear – spying on citizens of “Second Party” nations such as New Zealand is possible with “additional approval.” In other documents released by Snowden, the phone, internet and email records of UK citizens not suspected of any wrongdoing have been analysed and stored by the NSA under a secret deal with UK intelligence officials.
The Snowden revelations have confirmed that the spy agencies –
have direct access to Google, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo data
intercept data on fibre optic cables on a global scale
unlock encryption, and monitor banking and credit card information
collect email address books and millions of text messages daily
may target NZ citizens without NZ Government knowledge or consent
infect computer hardware with malicious malware to allow spying
intercept web cam and other images
collect and store phone conversations for whole nations “word for word”
The mission of the Five Eyes partners has been articulated in a briefing as mass surveillance where globally, the spy agencies – “know it all, partner it all, collect it all, and exploit it all.”
Some might believe that the GCSB would never attempt to exploit a loophole in the law in this manner. The legal stance taken by the US and UK intelligence agencies suggests otherwise.
The US authorities recently successfully contended in court that customers of Lavabit, an encrypted email service, still did not have a reasonable expectation that their emails would not be intercepted.
The US Department of Justice has just argued in another case before the US courts that,
“the privacy rights of US persons in international communications are significantly diminished, if not completely eliminated, when those communications have been transmitted to or obtained from non-US persons located outside the United States”.
A loophole allowing the NSA to carry out warrant-less spying on Americans has been revealed in this Washington Post article.
The US Government also argues that Americans cannot expect that their private communications will not be intercepted by the NSA, when intelligence services of so many other countries might be monitoring those communications too.
In the UK, Britain’s top counter-terrorism official has been forced by a legal challenge to attempt to legally justifying the unwarranted mass surveillance of every Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google user in the UK. The legal sophistry advanced includes suggesting that two British users messaging each other on Facebook are not communicating with each other but with the Facebook “platform”. Even when privacy violations happen, it is not an “active intrusion” because the analyst reading or listening to an individual’s communication will inevitably “forget” about it anyway.
When the US and UK authorities use such dubious legal justifications, we should not be surprised if the GCSB interprets New Zealand law to facilitate warrant-less interception of our emails, phone calls and online activity.
Assume that the GCSB has targeted a prominent New Zealand citizen for surveillance. This person has a clean criminal record and no links to any terrorist or cybercriminal group. People with a similar profile have been subject to surveillance in the US.
A GCSB intelligence analyst has access to a NSA-developed computer data search program called XKeyscore. XKeyscore enables a single search to query “all unfiltered data”, including mass harvested email addresses, phone numbers, online chat, social media activity, web-based email and attachments, sent to or stored at 150 global sites, on 700 database servers. Disclosures confirm that GCSB staff has been briefed on the use of XKeyscore, and that at least one XKeyscore terminal is located in New Zealand.
A Five Eyes 2010 guide explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications. The analyst clicks on “Target has no reasonable expectation that communications will not be intercepted – not a private communication” and retrieves the data.
While the GCSB and the Inspector-General may possibly carry out audits of such searches, the GCSB Act does not compel either of them to make public any record of warrant-less interceptions, which are deemed to be lawful.
We know that the GCSB bungled the Dotcom case by unlawfully spying on a New Zealand resident. The Kitteridge Report identified legal non-compliance as the root cause of its failings.
New Zealander’s privacy and democratic freedoms will always remain under threat from non-compliance. But the real danger lies right under our noses in the revised GCSB Act, and in the exploitation of acknowledged loopholes which permit lawful warrant-less surveillance of New Zealanders.
The solution is clear. The GCSB must release its internal legal manuals, and the legal opinions it has received. The USA’s spy agency did so in November 2013. Carefully crafted semantics, denials and obfuscation from the GCSB and the Prime Minister will not suffice. Only when the public have seen the legal manuals and opinions can they judge whether or not the GCSB considers it has the power to lawfully spy on New Zealanders without a warrant.
Denis Tegg is a Thames lawyer with an interest in state surveillance and the erosion of civil liberties
Silicon Valley has given its approval to America’s burgeoning legal cannabis industry after the investors who bankrolled Facebook gave millions of dollars to drug start-ups.
Supporters of cannabis legalisation called it a “Berlin Wall moment” and a “tipping point” as money was committed by Founders Fund, the venture capital firm started by Peter Thiel, who gave Mark Zuckerberg his first US$500,000 ($638,000). Thiel has invested in New Zealand tech firms including Xero.
…and where are we in NZ? We have money spent on drug driving advertising…
…drug driving is just more stoner madness hysteria. THC remains in the body long after impairment meaning the stats of people crashing with it in their systems proves nothing.
The issues with cannabis are that they might have a slight increase in mental issues for those who are susceptible but that will only occur if young people start smoking cannabis early. If it becomes regulated, you are able to close the tinny houses near schools.
How can we be so backwards when America is so far ahead? The revenue, the cut in policing costs, the racist application of the law against young brown NZers and the ability to regulate cannabis are all there for us to seize, yet the political stalemate means the issue never gets debated.
Christ this uptight country desperately needs a joint.
EveningReport.nz episode 1: Extended interview with Nicky Hager on the Snowden Revelations.
EveningReport.nz episode 1: Extended interview with Nicky Hager on the Snowden Revelations.
AT 8pm TONIGHTEveningReport.nz goes live and it kicks off with an extended video interview with investigative journalist Nicky Hager on the Snowden Revelations.
We invite you to participate and debate the issues raised in this interview, both on the EveningReport site and here at TheDailyBlog. Both Nicky and I trust and hope the discussion will empower debate among progressive independently minded people, in fact among all people, and on other mediums.
We thank you in advance for stopping by at EveningReport.nz.
BACKGROUNDER TO THE DEBATE: As you will all no doubt be aware, a team of investigative journalists began last week to reveal how the New Zealand Government has been spying on a massive scale on a host of Pacific nations.
The spying has been a part of the United States-led Five Eyes alliance that includes the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
ALSO on Evening Report:
Keith Locke writes: No Public Accountability for the GCSB.
“YOU SHOULDN’T WORRY IF YOU’VE GOT NOTHING TO HIDE” is one of the mantras trotted out when New Zealanders complain about the GCSB having access to their private communications.
Let’s turn that mantra around as ask those running the GCSB why the feel they have to hide from public everything they do. Is it because, as recent revelations show, the agency is more about serving the interests of the US government than that of New Zealanders?
There’s analysis by Dr Paul Buchanan on democratic intelligence oversight.
REVELATIONS ABOUT MASS SURVEILLANCE gathering by the US and its primary allies serve the useful purpose of highlighting the need for, and proper role of, intelligence oversight in democracies. This essay provides a conceptual overview of some of the ideal types of democratic intelligence oversight.
Dr David Robie submits a column titled From a Coconet Spy Tempest to TPPA Secrecy.
PACIFIC commentator Barbara Dreaver called last week’s spying on the Pacific neighbours controversy a storm in a teacup. Or perhaps something more of a coconet tempest.
Sumner Burstyn presents a robust argument taking on Victoria’s Secret with her column: on the Second Circle of Hell.
In 2015 the wind is from a machine and the second circle of hell is Victoria’s Secret.
There, everything is come-on and insinuation, intimation and allusion. The walls are adorned with airbrushed images of innocence defiled. There are more angel wings than a junior school nativity play, the mannequins wear miniscule slashes of stretch lace and the entire store is drenched in enough lurid pink to make you hate the colour for life.
And I introduce Evening Report and why I believe it will be a welcome addition to the eMedia landscape with Analysis & Video Debate Backbone of Evening Report.
I have launched EveningReport.nz tonight under a ‘Independent Interactive Debate’ brand.
And as you can see, EveningReport.nz launches with an extended one-on-one interview with investigative journalist Nicky Hager on the Snowden Revelations.
Here, you will find this e-media site as less tribal than a blog. Know, it is independent at its core. And, it is driven by public interest fourth estate journalism principles.
There’s considerable excitement and encouragement for this project. I invite TheDailyBlog audience to check it out, comment, interact and bring what you have found back to TheDailyBlog too.
I’M TRYING TO IMAGINE the discussions leading up to Andrew Little’s wink-wink-nod-nod-a-thon on Sunday’s Q+A. Assuming, of course, that Andrew’s not flying solo on this one: struggling manfully to predict the direction from which the next manic media assault is going to come; and just winging the whole Northland by-election shemozzle by making up Labour’s strategy as he goes along.
Wouldn’t surprise me. Because, after the Cunliffe debacle, very little that Labour does surprises me.
Still, you’d like to think that the Labour Party is led by people who “get” electoral politics. Hard-bitten old tuskers who don’t allow themselves to be distracted by ephemeral political theatrics. And who can’t be deflected from “The Big Picture” by the blandishments of a hyper-mediated present. It would be so much more reassuring for the Left if that were true.
Is it though? Rumour (or, at least, Matthew Hooton on Radio NZ National) has it that Labour and NZ First went halves on a poll of Northland voters. Supposedly, to find out which of them stood the best chance of taking the seat. Waste of money. Labour’s never going to take Northland off the Nats. Why? Because Northland’s about as close as you get in New Zealand to the American Deep South.
Northland’s Pakeha voters might elect a Social Creditor like old Vern Cracknell, who took Hobson (as the northern half of the seat used to be called) back in 1966. And they’ll certainly give Winston Peters and NZ First a serious sniff. But Labour? Not a chance. Not while most of Northland’s Maori voters keep themselves off the General Electoral Roll.
Just drive North for a few hundred miles. You’ll pass through toothless, stubble-cheeked towns exhaling a cancerous death-rattle. Boarded-up shops. Takeaway joints. Pubs that look like sheds. WINZ offices. These are the brown towns. Hopeless. Jobless. Joyless. And then, suddenly, you’re in Keri Keri or Russell. Busy shops. Prestige Brands. Cafes with outdoor seating. Ladies with lap-dogs. Gentlemen in Panama hats. Boats. Beamers. Batches. Apartheid without the pass laws. The New Zealand dream gone dark.
So Labour should have saved its money. Taking the seat was a non-starter. Which could (should?) have meant handing the whole thing over to NZ First– with an additional promise to make Willow-Jean Prime’s feisty little campaign skirmishers available to Winston for the duration.
Short-term tactics rather than long-term strategy? For sure. But that’s pretty much what contemporary politics is about. For Labour, it would have been a case of “all care, but no responsibility”. If Winston won, it would only be because Labour got in behind him. If he lost? Hey! Nothing to do with the Left!
So, why didn’t they do it? When they knew Winston was standing, why didn’t they instruct Willow-Jean not to forward her nomination? Because, once it was in, the by-election could only be a lose/lose proposition for Labour. If Winston won, it would be in spite of Labour. If he lost, it would be because of Labour.
Presumably, Andrew and his advisers (if he has advisers) understood that. Presumably, they were after a much bigger and more worthy prize than Northland. Like Government in 2017. Presumably some hard-bitten old tuskers sat Andrew down and asked him some very hard-edged questions.
“What happens to NZ First’s numbers if Winston takes Northland? Do they go up? Or down?”
“And if they go up, how much of the increase will come from the Nats? And how much of it will be at Labour’s expense?”
“You say you want the party to be at 35 percent by the end of the year? How’s that going to happen with Winston hogging the spotlight?”
“You want to pull 150,000 votes off Key’s 2014 tally? Where do you think those 150,000 wavering Tories are going to end up if Winston recovers his reputation as a political giant-killer?”
“We thought you understood, Andrew, that winning in 2017 only happens over the battered and bleeding bodies of the Greens and NZ First.”
“If you want the corporates to resume stuffing money in the party’s war-chest, then Labour needs to be seen as the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the Opposition valley.”
“What does handing Northland to Winston on a plate make us look like, Andrew?”
“It makes us look like the stupidest sons-of-bitches in the valley!”
The political objectives of participating in a by-election may be strictly tactical, entirely strategic, or a mixture of both. Whatever the motivation/s, a political party needs to weigh the consequences of its participation very carefully. This was especially true of Northland.
From a purely tactical standpoint, Labour’s stance on the by-election was a no-brainer. Stand aside and see if Winston can take it.
Viewed strategically, however, Labour’s choices were very clear in Northland. The by-election was an excellent opportunity to compare and contrast Labour’s political objectives with those of NZ First.
Winston only stands a chance of winning in Northland because he is, in his heart-of-hearts, a Nat – and Northland is a National seat. Accordingly, the bulk of his votes will come from the “nice” people of Keri Keri and Russell and all the other comfortable settlements of the North. But the winning margin in this contest, the votes of desperate people living in dying towns like Kaitaia, have traditionally been cast for Labour.
In an MMP environment, Labour’s long-term strategic advantage will not be secured by suggesting that the interests of the deprived and the desperate can be served by other party. This by-election offered an opportunity to reiterate the historic message that things won’t change for the better in the brown towns of Northland until there’s a Labour Government in Wellington. A NZ First MP for Northland may make National work a little harder for its parliamentary majority, but he is unlikely to say or do anything that puts at risk the support of the reactionary cockies and conservative businessmen who have made it such a safe seat for the Right.
For Labour’s Northland supporters, without whose votes Winston Peters’ cannot hope to win the seat, this by-election promises little beyond the satisfaction of giving John Key a bloody nose. For the labourers repairing the electorate’s roads and bridges; the shop assistants selling tourists luxury merchandise; the over-stretched nurses and teachers struggling with the effects of poverty and neglect; National’s defeat is unlikely to bring them, or the people they serve, anything more substantial than schadenfreude.
So, Andrew, were these the sorts of issues that you and your advisers talked about before you went on Q+A? And, if they were, why couldn’t the party come up with something better than:
“In the end, by-elections are a referendum on the government of the day. If Northlanders feel they’ve been neglected and they can’t get their roads fixed and those sorts of things then they’re going to have to think about how they cast their vote in a way that sends a message to Government.”
Did it not occur to you that, with these words, you were delivering an even more important message to your own supporters? That any help that makes its way to Northland between now and 2017 is going to arrive gift-wrapped in NZ First Black – not Labour Red.
