The first sentence is commonplace, we all know the NZ police love to raid homes (mostly rentals) and arrest people, hey its part of their job. In this case it was an extremely luxurious rental to be sure (thanks Chrisco!). Normally its for life threatening crimes against humanity such as growing herbs in the backyard or holding audio tapes from conversations made by corrupt politicians. This time however it was because they had been working with US authorities in a timed attack on internet freedom under cover of protecting copyright.

The arrest of the people running MegaUpload was quite nicely timed in the middle (well nearing the end) of the debate around SOPA/PIPA (though the spectre of terrible internet controlling legislation will be around for awhile yet). The arrests speak further to the propaganda of ‘stopping piracy’ when really whats at stake are our internet freedoms.

So to the point really, why are the NZ police involved? Lets get political for a second, this article on Stuff by Henry Cooke, has him getting ahold of some politicians and asking them what they thought of the bill (or trying to). It will come as no surprise  to readers of this blog  that Gareth Hughes had the best of the responses; ‘He called the bill “draconian,” mentioned how much “fear and uncertainty” it would cause, harming innovation throughout the world, and “would like to see the New Zealand Government [...] express concern through diplomatic channels.” He also mentioned the New Zealand Copyright Act and how legislators with “limited knowledge of the internet are regulating it with chilling implications.” He tweeted today that the Green Party website will be blacking out in protest.’

Labour MP and party IT spokesperson Clare Curran didn’t come out against the bill directly (correct me if I’m wrong) which is standard fare from Labour, all sizzle no sausage. Although, they have retrospectively come out against the ‘Skynet’ bill (which they voted for in the first place allowing it to pass) Labour and it’s MP’s are guilty of being just as un-knowledgeable as some of the rest of the worlds politicians when it comes to ‘Teh Internetz’. Cracks me up. Still, better than nothing from Labour though eh?

Speaking of nothing, National MP Amy Adams, National’s Technology spokesperson, came back to the poor bloke with nothing, not even a ‘Thankyou for your email but we receive a lot of correspondence and no matter what the public say we’ll do what we’re told by large corporate interests‘ type email. Pretty lame if you ask me. But as one of the commenter’s on that same Stuff article points out, that’s standard fare for National, ignore it and hope it goes away, or if it doesn’t, change a law under urgency. No surprises there. If Labour dressed up and took the odd free dinner date from US corporate interests every once in awhile for the sake of ‘beneficial mutual relations’, then National goes straight to bed and skips the foreplay. National and the US are more like best mates than Labour and the US, which at least have a love/hate relationship. Read Nicky Hagers book ‘Secret Power‘.

I won’t get into the other parties, National ACT MP John Banks couldn’t rub two internetz together to start a book burning fire and unconfirmed sources report United Future MP Peter Dunne may still be using Windows NT. Hone wouldn’t have a bar of it I’m sure, he gets it, and NZ First would probably need Curwen’s help to get their head round it.

So back to the NZ Police raiding the homes of ‘internet criminals’, oh wait they were providing a service that non-criminals used too? And now the whole future of the cloud is at stake? Noone wants to upload their files anywhere, legal or not, if the government keeps on shutting down every site that hosts ‘em and then steals them all, like some sort of modern day pirates plundering booty to take back to their island where they amass their riches, oh wait… SNAP! Talk about double standards!

There has been some very valid commentary in the Listener about the demise of Stratos, and the threat to TV7, made by Toby Manhire. There’s also a profile of Wallace in the issue that appeared 14th January, by the estimable Jane Tolerton, whose collective biographies have been very popular.

In case any of the rest of you are also travelling, you might want to coincide your travels with the itinerary of Back Benches as it takes to the road and hits the provinces, starting with Hamilton this Wednesday. The venue is House on Hood, 27 Hood St, Hamilton, for those who are locals. Be there around 7pm to get a meal, or 8pm to get a seat & a drink before filming begins (assuming ‘home rules’ apply in out of town venues, lol.) I can’t vouch for the place, haven’t been there despite rellies in the Waikato, but I’m sure Wallace and Damian have had it well-vetted by the Production Crew. Apparently Pam Corkery will be in attendance, along with the panel of MP’s Tim Macindoe (Nat) Catherine Delahunty (Greens) Sue Moroney (Lab) , Tracey Martin (NZ First).

Then the Tour continues to Rotorua on the 25th of January, at The Shed, 1166 Amohau Street, Rotorua, which will be broadcast live, and followed on the 26th in Taupo at The Shed, 18 Tuwharetoa Street, Taupo – which will be broadcast the following week as a pre-recorded show.
After a week off, they come down to Wanganui to Stellar, 2 Victoria Avenue, Wanganui, for the final live-to-air session on the 8th February. For more details on these sessions, see Wallace’s blog.
There may be continued presence of NORML/ALCP campaigners, they seem to be a tenacious bunch, and fond of pub politics. Might be a bit early in the year for the campus political groups, however. All the more reason to tune in & see what comes up.

I had some time on the West Coast over the New Year break, and while absolutely enjoying the hospitality of my various hosts, visiting friends and family of my son-in-law, I also had some opportunities to explore some of the less satisfactory side of life on the Coast.

But first: the good bits.

Here’s a lovely picture of natural beauty, the Hokitika Gorge (I’ll leave out the pix with people scattered through them, you’re just getting the unadulterated glacier-fed river and bush-clad gorge).

Hokitika Gorge from the swingbridge

Then we wandered along towards Greymouth, and discovered Shantytown, which has gone up in price 500% since my son-in-law last visited a couple of years ago. As we weren’t a busload of asian tourists, we had a quick look, used the conveniences and left. It seemed like a good business, and the gift shop was doing a roaring trade in the smallest pieces of gold-flake I’ve ever seen in my life, but there you are, to each his or her own. The working small-guage gold-fields train from Kaitangata looked cute.

Kaitangata engine steaming towards the station, Shantytown

Further down the road, on our way to have a look at Lake Brunner, we stopped at the roadside info for the Brunner Mine disaster, the big news of 1896, and the reason we have any mining legislation at all, really. I popped across on the bridge that spans the Grey River, to check out the site remains and the memorial to the 65 miners who died in that incident, and found that there were also memorials to the 19 miners who died in the Strongman mine disaster in 1967, and the very recent Pike River disaster in November 2010.

Pike River Miners Memorial at Brunner Mine Disaster Memorial

In conversation with a local woman who was also by the memorial that day, I wondered whether the choice to work in the mines was not as real as she posited, due to the lack of other industry investment in the region. We discussed that one from opposing angles for a few minutes, before both coming to agreement on the fact that Pike River Coal had distinctly transgressed current mining legislation around safety, and that they would have to answer for that in Court in the remainder of the Commission of Inquiry. Meanwhile, there is at least one little boy born since the accident who has never met his dad, and many more family members who still grieve the loss of their brothers, sons, husbands and workmates and want an answer to why it was allowed to happen. Mr Whittall still has some actions to account for.

Greymouth is a pretty town, if prone to ground-level fog for much of the winter, according to my hosts. We had a late-afternoon lovo, the fijian version of hangi, but with a chilli-basted twist to satisfy the spicy palates of my relatives and their friends. With the afternoon sun glinting off the children’s paddling pool, and the surf crashing in the distance, I could fully appreciate why families would come to this part of New Zealand and relish the life it offers them. I left small-town New Zealand behind me when I moved to the city to study in my early adulthood, but I often find myself looking at provincial towns and seeing the beauty in their simplicity, their proximity to recreational areas, the unspoilt compact urban areas, and thinking ‘What if?’. Even the local newspaper had an attractive air to it!

Carpark wall mural at the Greymouth Evening Star

Two days on the West Coast was hardly enough to satisfy me, and my traveller’s bug wants to be sated with a trip to Karamea, a look at Punakaiki Rocks, maybe an expedition to see the Denniston mine historic site before too much longer – there’s a lot to see in this area, and I can see myself coming back again.
Perhaps that is a fitting way to give some help to the Coasters, too – building tourism and art/craft enterprises, showing off the history without degrading the lives of those who remain engaged in local industries, making a sustainable future for those who live in this beautiful but often harsh environment.

The resource wars have been going for nearly a decade now.
If there’s anyone left out there who thinks there really were WMD in Iraq when Bush invaded, now would be the time to check into that hostel for the delusional, and settle into the nice padded room with abundant security staffing and food service.
Iraq was a genocidal war to control oil resources, as is Afghanistan/Pakistan currently, as have been the insurgencies in the whole ME region.

We sit on our hands and ignore the rapacious and genocidal mania of the USA at our peril.
They have sunk, by means of their own economic policy of stealing from the poor, killing foreigners to gain resources, and lying to their own countrymen (and women) in order to extract the greatest profit from every human being within their sphere of influence, from being the great hegemony of the 20th Century to being a genocidal, imperialist facist state for whom surveillance and control of their own citizens is becoming a higher priority than any of the many wars they have engaged in on many fronts in the 21st C.

So as we roll towards NYE 2011, and New Years’ Day 2012, here’s my New Year’s plea:

To our neighbours in the Pacific Ocean, I pledge that we as citizens of NZ, and myself personally as a member of the Green Party, will do our utmost to reverse the decisions being made by selfish, greedy, over-consuming rich people in our country.

We will fight to get climate refugees from Tokelau, the outer islands of Fiji, Samoa, Rarotonga, Tonga, Kiribati (and other Pasifika nations who were not historically under the protection of NZ) some justice, some recompense, and above all, a safe haven to come to.

We in New Zealand have benefitted for decades from the willingness of our pasifika neighbours to come to our country, to work in our factories and fields, to do the jobs that our nice, pakeha, middle-class and educated children don’t want to do [because they're 'worth more' to us working in corporations overseas, paying back their student loans] which is why we need a brown underclass to clean office buildings, work in biscuit factories, and pick fruit and vegetables during our harvest season while our office workers holiday at the beach.

In short, for all the racism and class warfare we have inflicted on our pasifika neighbours (and I’m speaking here as a university-educated pakeha, a seventh-generation NZ’er of predominantly UK extraction, so there’s a large ‘we’ who identify in that category, you know who you are!), we owe a future to those who have not been driving SUV’s and European sports cars around the car-obsessed suburbs of our major cities.

In 2012, when the argument comes up about bringing the inhabitants of Tokelau to NZ in one big block, I don’t want to hear about your petty racism. I don’t want to hear you say that it’s a huge drain on our country to allow in the elderly grandparents of Tokelauans who have worked here for decades.

Have some compassion, the islands are salinating to the point where food cannot grow, and even the racist fiction that keeping the old people in the islands where they are ‘comfortable’ and have ‘familiar routines of life’ isn’t going to wash any more.
Remittances from their children and grandchildren who work here in NZ for minimum wages are not going to compensate for the inability to grow food that has been engendered by our carbon-rich, resource-greedy lifestyles.

Why am I getting rude and angry about this now, you ask?

Because christmas in my extended family has been about these issues, as my son-in-law’s father has flown back to Fiji to visit the old folk who remain, while his wife stays here and works through the christmas period, caring for elderly white folk in a provincial NZ town.
She can’t get her own mother into the country to look after her, because our immigration laws are so strict for brown people with the normal conditions of infirmity of aging.

Before you ask, every member of my extended family who has moved here from Fiji is in work, as is my daughter.
It’s all minimum wage or deeply working-class work, but it’s work.
They are exemplary citizens, plugging their way through the paperwork loops from work visas to residency, and eventually to citizenship, and they are the most uncomplaining, grateful, and apolitical members of my family, including my blood relatives who are much better off materially!

So as you pop the cork on a bottle of bubbly this New Year, listen to music at a festival, or just relax on a beach with family and loved ones, count your privileges and acknowledge them, and consider the possibilities:

1) that a small reduction in your life consumption over the next twelve months might be achievable,

2) that sustainability in business and personal life is not only acceptable but necessary, and

3) that Labour wasn’t just stealing policy points from the Greens in the run-up to the election to score media points, but because the time has come when these things have to be faced, and the Greens have already thought it through, in excruciating detail, driven by members with a conscious and conscientious input to policy development.

Firstly, to all my paid and unpaid colleagues in the Green Party around Aotearoa/NZ, let’s leave behind the many tragedies of 2011, and work towards a better year in 2012. Because we’re worth it, and so is every single citizen of our country, and every single worker who is here propping up our low-wage economy without the benefits of citizenship that we so blithely bestow upon our children at birth.

Secondly, to the fourteen Green MP’s who were sworn in before christmas, thank-you for standing, for campaigning so strongly, and for stepping up to serve us for the next three years. I’ll try not to be on your office threshold every week, but you may be seeing more of me, lol.

Thirdly, thank-you to every candidate who stood, campaigned, and contributed to this historic rise in our representation in Parliament, your efforts all around Aotearoa lifted the water-level for everyone who got in. Some of you are now my especial friends, we will work together in the future on issues of importance, arohanui a koutou, you also know who you are.

Arohatinonui ki a koutou katoa.

See ya in the other side in January 2012, I’m going bush, don’t expect replies to comments.

So for the last few years, we have had our pre-Christmas catchup, and she has then shared Christmas Day with friends who live locally to her.

Anyway, what a drama getting there today!  I live in West Auckland. My partner and I have one car between us, a decision we made in the interests of ecological sustainability. My partner had to work today and needed the car for that, so that option was out.

To get to Pukekohe by mid-day, I had to negotiate two trains and bus replacements between them, and that meant I had to leave home well before 10am.  Same on the way home, so for just over an hour and a half with my Mum in Pukekohe, I spent almost 5 hours traveling on trains and buses.

Surely the public transport system in Auckland can do better than that.

In the audience were many more MP’s, so the guys had a quick chat with David Shearer, Grant Robertson, and Mojo Mathers (first deaf MP, interviewed well by Damian, who expounded on her MSc in Ecology and Environment, which is going to be equally important to her as her Disability issues portfolio).

The show is here at TVNZ7.
The petition to save TVNZ7 is still here. Go on, it’s still worth sending them a message! Buy a t-shirt, even!!!

I edited this today to add the links, but I can’t be arsed describing all the wierd and wonderful things that happened during the show, so just click through and watch it, already. Chester Borrows gets an honourable mention for behaving like a complete arse. No prizes for identifying how many people I know got a chance to state an opinion during the vox pops, but I was assiduously avoiding Damian by hiding near the kitchen for most of the show.
And now here’s pix from last night:

Jan Logie with YG admirers

New MP's Mojo Mathers and Holly Walker

Wallace and Damian, didn't they do well?

1. The Greens are your best friends outside your own Party. Don’t go trying to claw back votes from the Greens, or they may not continue to be so. There are plenty of soft National votes to target.
2. A progressive government will necessarily involve both the Greens and Labour. Both parties should focus on our political enemies on the other side of the divide, who care little for either social justice or ecological sustainability.
3. Stop stealing Green policies (e.g. $15 minimum wage, removing the employment status discrimination in Working for Families, introducing Capital Gains Tax) and claiming them as you own. Voters will see that for what it is. Instead, give the Greens credit for good policy advances, and acknowledge the Greens for those initiatives.  In return, the Greens are likely to address issues Labour has raised, such as your concern about the sustainability of NZ Superannuation, which is a valid economic concern the Greens have not yet addressed.
4. Don’t worry about the Greens’ and Labour’s respective share of the vote. Trust the Greens’ “highly unlikely” position on giving National support on confidence and supply.
5. Adopt a “degree to disagree” position with the Green on issues we have significant policy differences about – e.g. foreign investment and trade policy, finite resource exploitation policy, and drugs and alcohol policy.  We can sort those out post-election 2014, when we see how the numbers stack up.
6. Don’t trust New Zealand First. They sold us all down the river in 1996 when they campaigned on defeating a National Government and then supported one post-election.  They also had a large part to play in the defeat of the Labour-led Government in 2008.
7. Don’t continue to shut out Mana. They may have only one vote at the moment, but I suspect they will grow. They are a strong force for observing and promoting Te Tiriti and for positive social change – things I hope the Greens and Labour agree on.
8. Don’t shut out the Maori Party. For reasons I think are misguided, they are on the other side at the moment. But if National (including its most bigoted supporters) can accommodate them and survive, so can the Greens and Labour; and we can do more to deliver Te Tiriti obligations and economic and social justice to Maori Party supporters than National could dream of getting away with.

Now MMP is locked in for our lifetimes, we have to get past the old FPP thinking. It is voting blocs that count now, not the dominance of one of the two old Parties.

New research by Michelle Nicol shows those polls may also have contributed to the record low turnout.

Her research found three main influences on people’s perceptions of politics and the election, with a lot of undecided voters going to the ‘popular’ party in order to feel as though they fit in.

I’ve often thought, and argued, that there should be a moratorium on opinion polls in the last three months (roughly) before an election.  They have two effects which I think are bad for democracy:

1. They influence both turnout and voting behaviour, often in a negative way – e.g. convincing people they should vote in a particular way because of what other people think, rather than according to their own beliefs.
2. They add to the punditry of discussion about who is going to win and lose, thus removing public space for informative debate about issues, personalities and policies.

Liberation discusses the issue in much more depth here (and comes to a different conclusion).

• National voters are statistically the most opposed to MMP, and National is and has been at its strongest ever in recent months.
• The one major flaw in MMP – the ability to coat-tail extra MPs in by creating a situation where a minor party can win an electorate seat, due to an accommodation with a major party – was exploited cynically and publicly in both Epsom and Ohariu.
• This election was going to have a low turn out, and a low turnout should have hurt MMP’s chances.
• The Rugby World Cup and the General Election sucked away many opportunities for informed debate about fairness, proportionality and good governance.  It allowed potential misinformation to flourish uncorrected. Despite all that most voters I talked to already understood what MMP was and how it was different from non-proportional systems.

If MMP wins despite all those factors, I don’t think anyone can complain any longer. I’m looking forward to the review now – and in particular a fix that stops the sort of tomfoolery we saw in Epsom and Ohariu.

However…

I’ve had a few niggling concerns at the back of my brain throughout this campaign. I understood that the ‘highly unlikely’ positioning thing was important in terms of being an independent party and positioning ourselves as separate from Labour. But let’s be honest – No party has been more diagrammatically opposed to National in their voting record over the last three years that the Greens (92 percent voting against the National Party vs Labour’s record of voting 58 percent against the National Party).  Much as we may be sick of it, our role for this next three years must staunch opposition to the National/Banks/Dunne government. Getting people to vote for us under the pretence that we might be able to work with National felt deceptive.

But the ‘highly unlikely’ thing didn’t bug me too much – it was relatively honest if we ignored the dog-whistling to soft National voters and looked at in a purely analytical way.

But more concerning for me has been the general tone of the policy presentation for the campaign. Instead of climate change we talked about holidaying people being able to swim in rivers.  Our advertising defined poverty purely in terms of children, and we presented a Green economy as some utopia where we need make no sacrifices, and everyone has jobs building windmills and goes camping every summer.

When ‘Vote for a richer New Zealand‘ first came out I thought it was cleverly ironic - undercutting our traditional beliefs about the value of economic growth. But, as the campaign went on it felt less ironic, and more divorced from an accurate reflection of what I understood Green economics to be. I believe a true Green economy will take away some people’s jobs.  It may create other jobs too but it will involve some hard choices that will hurt some sectors of the economy and benefit others. A Green economy should be challenging, because it is radically different from the current capitalist economy that both National and Labour support.

I know the party’s policies have not changed. But it felt to me that what we offered people to vote for us on was sun-drenched holidays swimming in rivers, pink batts for children and jobs for everyone constructing windmills.

What worries me is that our new MPs now face a tough choice. Do they represent the traditional Green values or do they represent the Green-lite values for which I suspect large numbers of voters voted? I hope they (the MPs), who will have talked to lots more voters than I, feel they have a mandate to be more than the advertising presented them as.