Building upon recent episodes of A View from Afar, Political Scientist Paul G Buchanan and journalist Selwyn Manning discuss The Politics of Desperation. This episode flows on from our discussions about long transitions and the moment of friction.

As the old status quo begins to crumble (under the weight of fraction), political leaders and elites invested in it get increasingly desperate, leading to more dangerous decisions, more acute moments, and, increased chances of mistake, miscalculation and unanticipated backlash.

The Politics of Desperation accentuates an ongoing downward spiral. And, the Politics of Desperation takes form in differing degrees. For some, the risk of losing is merely a dent in the leader’s ego, reputation, and an awakening that voters have moved on from their style of politics.

But for others, a loss will prove to be devastating, for example; should Donald Trump lose his bid to regain the United States presidency, he will face sentencing as a felon and perhaps even face jail time. For Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, a future loss or a collapse of his right-wing coalition would likely see him facing domestic charges and possibly charges laid by the International Criminal Court for his role in the disproportionate use of military might in Israel’s war on Gaza.

So, Paul and Selwyn discuss the examples of the Politics of Desperation from around the world and assess the risks as the world rests on the cusp of an unknown future.

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RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

And at a macro level, Paul and Selwyn assess how ‘Post-Colonial Blowback’ is a power giving rise to the Global South and its worldwide influence in global geopolitics.

INTERACTION:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the government – works in the public interest, and doesn’t encourage corruption and lobbying that produces poor decisions.

A bright light needs to be shone on the whole process, in which three ministers will be able to greenlight projects such as mining or housing development without the usual resort to the Resource Management Act processes. As I wrote about in early March, the whole new Fast-Track process will inevitably encourage closer linkages between vested interests and politicians, risking cronyism in decision-making – see: The Government’s new fast-track invitation to corruption

Because the normal democratic processes will be bypassed for projects chosen by the three ministers, what will be sorely needed is scrutiny from outside. I’m therefore proposing to run a campaign of analysis and awareness about everything to do with the new Fast-Track process, but especially of the projects that are being lined up for inclusion in the Schedules being inserted into the Bill. So far there has been a dangerous lack of transparency about this process – especially about which businesses and organisations are being invited to submit projects. Overall, the ethos of this reform programme seems alarmingly secretive and anti-democratic.

The name that I’m proposing for this campaign is “Fast-Track Watch” (Hashtag: #FastTrackWatch), to be hosted by the Democracy Project, which I run at Victoria University of Wellington. The main vehicle and output for this investigation and scrutiny will be a series of columns I’ll send out on the Substack platform, which I will make available to all media for free publication. Together, I hope that this campaign will be something of a watchdog on the Fast-Track activities.

In order to analyse the various organisations and businesses involved, and particularly their linkages with each other and politicians, I’ll be using the research databases I am developing as part of my broader programme of work on vested interests at the University. I will try to identify potential conflicts of interest and dubious relationships involved.

But I will also need the help of others: I’m hoping to crowdsource information about the potential Fast-Track projects and processes. Therefore, hopefully whistleblowers and well-informed citizens will provide additional information. Please send me your tips, ideas, feedback, or offers of assistance.

Likewise, if you’re a journalist or involved in media, please contact me if you want to collaborate in any way to help get material out to the public that helps keep scrutiny on the Fast-Track processes.

There will, of course, be many bona fide projects and proposals that deserve to be given resource consents or even fast-tracked by the government. This campaign isn’t against development per se, but merely being done to provide additional scrutiny and transparency, so that there is less chance of unscrupulous and damaging projects getting through the Fast-Track process simply because they’ve employed smart lobbyists, or have good connections with politicians and officials.

If you’re interested, please get in touch, in confidence. Contact me: bryce.edwards@vuw.ac.nz or just reply directly to this email. And please forward this “call” to other interested people, to grow #FastTrackWatch

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington.

Michael Wood has become a victim of his own complacency about conflicts of interest. He simply didn’t take integrity rules meant to protect the New Zealand political system from corruption seriously. And that’s rightly led to his downfall.

Wood’s complacency about corruption-prevention is hardly unique. The whole country has generally been far too relaxed about conflicts of interests in politics and public life.

And why wouldn’t we be? After all, we are told consistently that New Zealand is the least corrupt country on earth. Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index always ranks us at or near #1.

Complacency about corruption

The problem is we’ve become conditioned to believe the hype, and not to trouble ourselves with the idea that conflicts of interest occur in our politics. The upshot is that New Zealand simply doesn’t have much in the way of significant safeguards against political corruption.

And where any safeguards do exist, they are generally only followed as a box-ticking exercise, rather than with real rigour. Overall, we simply have a political culture of not thinking too much about integrity and corruption. We smugly regard these issues as being problems found in other countries, not ours.

There is also sometimes a tribal and arrogant orientation in New Zealand party politics that views corruption and dodgy deals as something that “the other side do”. Labour thinks National is corrupt and unethical, and vice versa. The fact that politicians appear to have an unwavering trust in themselves and their own side, means that they think the rules about corruption are actually there for their opponents rather than their own team.

In this regard, it’s not really surprising that Wood didn’t seem to think that the conflict of interest procedures in Parliament or Cabinet really mattered that much. And, in fact, for a long time he managed to get away with not abiding by the rules. It should be alarming that he was so easily able to fob off any questions about his conflicts of interest from annoying officials. But, of course, politicians have surely been doing this forever in New Zealand.

Politicians out of touch with growing concerns about corruption

Traditionally New Zealand hasn’t had political scandals about corruption and ethics. My own research shows that the word “corruption” was hardly used in the New Zealand media until recent years. However, there does seem to be a quickly escalating public concern about political corruption, conflicts of interest, and about the integrity of our politicians and political system.

Partly this is a result of the large number of integrity-based scandals occurring in New Zealand politics across all political parties and governments. This has fuelled a greater sensitivity about any wrongdoing of New Zealand’s political class. And journalists are now starting to look more deeply into the financial affairs of politicians and officials.

Unfortunately for Wood, he simply wasn’t up with the new sensitivities. Like many politicians, he appeared to think he was beyond reproach. And he would still be a minister today if it hadn’t been for a Herald journalist digging into this area when the Auckland Council was looking to sell shares in Auckland Airport.

Similarly, Meng Foon, was forced to resign this week from the Human Rights Commission because of his undisclosed conflicts of interest. He was only caught out because earlier in the year a journalist started to investigate who had provided donations to Cabinet ministers. When Foon was found to have donated to Kiri Allen, now the Justice Minister, an investigation was carried out by the Human Rights Commission, which found that he also hadn’t adequately disclosed his conflicts of interest with emergency housing. As with Wood, Foon seemed to be complacent about the requirements. And Foon’s employer, the Human Rights Commission, didn’t seem to even have processes equivalent to the Cabinet Office for ensuring compliance.

The key point is that throughout the political Establishment there is complacency about enduring integrity is maintained. But this laxness is now up against a heightened public and media concern about untrustworthy authorities, corruption and integrity. And it’s not just individuals who are under scrutiny – the systems supposed to safeguard the integrity of political and public life haven’t yet caught up with this new public mood against complacency.

Explaining Michael Wood’s conflicts of interest

Michael Wood was initially stood down from his Minister of Transport position when it became clear he had not managed his ownership of shares in Auckland Airport. But he was finally removed entirely from Cabinet yesterday when the Prime Minister became aware that he also owned shares in numerous other companies in which he might have a conflict of interest.

It turns out that Wood has been using two family trusts for the management of his shareholdings and assets – the Michael Wood Family Trust and the JM Fairey Family Trust (alongside his wife, Auckland Councillor Julie Fairey).

The use of such trusts is a complicated business, allowing great benefits for politicians, and it was the management of these trusts that has created headaches for Wood. For example, it’s possible that his problem with divesting of his Auckland Airport shares became complicated because he owned these outside of the trusts and wanted to shift these into the trusts as a way of divesting them without having to sell them.

This could have held up the process considerably, especially because it would have required that the Minister would also need to be removed as a legal trustee of any such trust. This might explain why the process of sorting out the Auckland Airport shares was so complicated for Wood. This more complicated pathway to managing his conflicts of interest turned out to be something that got put into the “too hard basket”.

Wood’s family trusts also held shareholdings in numerous companies that Wood was regulating and making political decisions about. He owned shares in telecommunications companies Chorus and Spark, and as Immigration Minister had given these companies a significant help in allowing special immigration concessions for telecommunications technicians.

Similarly, Wood owns shares in the company that owns the Bank of New Zealand, and Wood was closely involved in setting up a Commerce Commission investigation into the banking industry – one that critics say has been designed to be too soft on the banks.

Given that the public now knows that Wood had a financial interest in many companies he was making decisions about, there might now be grounds for competitors to demand judicial reviews on the decisions that Wood has been involved in. The public therefore now needs to know the details of all the shareholdings in those trusts – at this stage only the banking and telecommunications shares have been divulged.

Good moves by the PM to tighten Cabinet rules

The Prime Minister has announced new processes for managing the potential conflicts of interests of ministers. He’s to be congratulated in modernising and tightening up the previously complacent rules. All five steps that Chris Hipkins has implemented are good ones.

But he has hesitated to implement the sixth proposal, instead opening up for consultation the idea that ministers should not be allowed to own shares in companies at all, unless they are in a blind trust or managed fund like Kiwisaver. This is also a sensible proposal, and will hopefully be quickly agreed upon and implemented.

Newsroom reports today that if it was implemented, nine current ministers would be forced to divest their shares in companies, and of the seven who were contacted, “none committed to divesting them”. In contrast, “Three senior National MPs – Chris Bishop, Simeon Brown and Judith Collins – immediately told Newsroom they would divest their shares if elected to Government, regardless of whether the rules are changed.” The Act Party dissented, with leader David Seymour saying “We don’t want it to be a priesthood where you have to enter unclothed and penniless. That you live in a monastery for time you’re a minister.”

But all of the new, tighter rules will only apply to ministers. Yesterday, Hipkins had nothing to say about the rules for Parliament, the public service, and for Crown agencies. These also desperately need tightening up. After all, Wood’s transgressions also apply to Parliament. And Meng Foon’s case has highlighted the lax rules, or at least the policing of them, in government agencies.

The End of secrecy

In general, there needs to be a lot more transparency regarding the potential conflicts of interest of politicians and officials. Even what the Prime Minister is proposing for Cabinet level means that most of the crucial information stays behind closed doors, with the public expected to just trust that the Cabinet Office will keep the politicians honest – something they don’t have a good track record on. We now need to see a much more open process, and less secrecy.

Ultimately, the increasing numbers of transgressions, together with the heightened public sensitivities about conflicts of interests and potential corruption means that something more significant is required.

Consideration should be given to the establishment of an Anti-Corruption Commission. After all, New Zealand is very light on watchdogs who are willing to bark at politicians. Yes, there is the local branch of Transparency International, but as a creature of the Wellington political class it’s often absent on corruption debates, or patting public officials and politicians on the back for their minimal efforts on integrity.

The good news to come out of all the scandals over the serious lapses of ministerial integrity – including Kiri Allan, Jan Tinetti, Stuart Nash, and Michael Wood – is that it indicates that the era of complacency over conflicts of interests is over. The public no longer appears to be willing to take politicians at their word that New Zealand is free of corruption. This greater scepticism is the best possible guardrail we can have for the prevention of rotten governance.

Sunday’s announcement by Justice Minister Kiri Allan about forthcoming legislation on hate speech has sparked concerns that the country is headed for a second round of culture wars over free speech. As one journalist states today, Allan is “reigniting last year’s political firestorm”.

Some have suggested that Labour are about to make another attempt – after former Justice Minister Kris Faafoi had earlier put the hate speech law proposals on ice – to push through divisive and controversial legislation. Campaigners against hate speech have expressed their gratitude for Allan’s announcement, while free speech campaigners have warned that they are ready for a big fight.

The reality is likely to be much more prosaic – instead of Labour implementing far-reaching and radical reforms on speech regulation, Kiri Allan can be expected to simply make some tweaks to the current laws. Allan and Labour will be hoping a minimal or watered-down approach will satisfy those calling for hate speech to be suppressed more vehemently.

The background to the current hate speech law reform

The Labour Party has long been keen on tightening up laws on hate speech. And advocates for tighter rules on speech, such as the Human Rights Commission, have campaigned for government action.

But it was the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks that resulted in 51 deaths that initiated the current reform programme. The subsequent Royal Commission of Inquiry recommended 44 changes, including reform of hate speech laws. The Commission report complained that the current laws do not “provide a workable mechanism to deal with hate speech”.

The Government agreed to implement these, with Minister Andrew Little being responsible for overseeing the response to the Commission report.

There are a number of possible areas that hate speech campaigners want changes on. The most basic reform is to adjust which groups in society should have legal protection from hate speech – i.e. what forms of speech can be criminalised. At the moment, hate speech laws only target discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin. Religion is the most obvious missing category, with others also calling for gender and gender-diverse groups to be specified as needing protection from hate speech.

The Government has previously been keen to go much further than simply adding religion and gender to the groups to be protected from hate speech. There is an argument that the current definition of hate speech in the law makes prosecutions too difficult, because the threshold for the courts to convict is far too high. And as evidence of this, there has been only one prosecution for hate speech in the last three decades. The Royal Commission argued that the current law “does not provide a credible foundation for prosecution”.

The Labour Government therefore attempted last year to implement a thorough reform of hate speech laws, with the notion that the current rules are “not fit for purpose”. But what they proposed was full of serious problems, and produced a backlash.

This was most vividly exposed when both the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice were unable to explain the reforms to the public. Labour politicians couldn’t promise that the reforms wouldn’t lead to prosecutions for examples such as young people blaming the “Boomer” generation for monopolising housing wealth.

The moderate, watered-down fix on hate speech

There really is no chance that Labour wants to spark a culture war on free speech as it’s about to go into election year. It’s quite the opposite – the Government has an interest in getting this issue off the agenda as quickly and quietly as possible. As many commentators have rightly pointed out, a big debate about Government clamp-downs on political speech would not go down well in an election year.

It’s not surprising, and quite telling, that Labour is talking about wanting to obtain National’s support for their legislative changes. It points strongly to the likelihood that Labour has been developing a very moderate, or watered-down, fix for the hate speech problem.

The Prime Minister is reported as wanting to introduce “a slimmed down reform package” that National could support. As Newsroom’s Marc Daalder argues today, “To get National’s support, the reforms would have to be dramatically different from what was proposed last year.”

There are some clear signs that Labour wants to just focus on fixing the omission of religion from the current hate speech laws, with the PM saying: “I would have thought that amongst politicians there should be good support for saying, actually, you should not experience hate speech and incitement based on your religion. It’s a fairly simple concept”.

Ardern also told media this week that the Government is only aiming at minimal change: “Where there were issues last time was because there were other amendments around some of the thresholds in language that caused some concern, but let’s get back to our first principles on this one.”

It seems obvious from such statements that the upcoming reforms will simply add religion and gender to the list of protected groups, but won’t involve more radical changes to definitions of hate speech. We might also expect that the Government could modernise the legislation to take into account digital communication, and this is also likely to be uncontroversial.

The backlash from advocates of strong laws on hate speech

Justice Minister Kiri Allan made her announcement of hate speech reform this week on TVNZ’s Q+A, saying “I can make this promise to you, I will be making announcements on hate speech by the end of this year” and “I guarantee I will be introducing law I intend to have concluded and put into law by the next election”.

Allan had good political reasons for making this statement, and for keeping the details under wraps. The Government is under pressure to fulfill their promises for reform in this area, and this week the Government had to front up to the second He Whenua Taurikura hui on counter-terrorism and violent extremism, where they knew that would be challenged on this issue. Therefore, a pre-emptive announcement was necessary for this audience, as well as for the Labour Party conference this coming weekend.

Andrew Little is also under strong pressure from the Kāpuia advisory group that he has established to consult with the Government over implementing the Royal Commission recommendations. The chair of Kāpuia, Arihia Bennett, has made numerous complaints to Little about the Government’s “lack of clarity, a lack of funding or a lack of observable progress” in dealing with issues like hate speech.

Other voices for reform such as political commentator Morgan Godfery and Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon have been demanding radical changes on speech regulation. Foon has accused the Government of “dragging its heels” on the reforms and saying that this was allowing “hate allowed to fester”.

Advocates of a much more radical clampdown on political speech are likely to be extremely disappointed by what the Government eventually announces. If the National Party is able to sign up to a minimal change to the legislation, the Green Party and others will almost certainly feel aggrieved that the Government isn’t taking a more radical approach, and Labour might well be accused of capitulating to the free speech brigade.

So although some are expecting free speech advocates and maybe even the National and Act parties to come out fighting against Labour’s upcoming reforms, it’s much more likely is that the advocates of radically-tightened laws on speech will have more cause to revolt against Labour’s mild changes.

Further reading on free speech, hate speech and extremism

Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Hate speech debate overshadows Royal Commission progress
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Disinformation seminar cancelled amid threats, harassment
Ripu Bhatia (Stuff): More action needed to protect vulnerable groups from hate – Amnesty International
Jonty Dine (RNZ): Community groups urge need to combat online hate speech at second counter-terrorism hui
Waatea News: Māori ready to tackle extremism fall-out

Other items of interest and importance today

ECONOMY, BUSINESS, EMPLOYMENT, HOUSE PRICES
Bernard Hickey (Interest): Actually, we’ll almost all be just fine
Richard Harman (Politik): The end of the golden weather (paywalled)
Geraden Cann (Stuff): No money, in negative equity and facing double interest costs a year after buying first home
Morgan Godfery (Stuff): The big banks are making obscene profits. Let’s tax them
Julie Anne Genter (Herald):  Prioritising people over profit with a fairer tax regime (paywalled)
RNZ: Tax cuts not the only tool to help low-income workers – National
Susan Edmunds (Stuff): Banks’ big profits ‘mean they have duty to help struggling borrowers’
Susan Edmunds (Stuff): Reserve Bank issues warning about rising mortgage rates, falling house prices
David Hargreaves (Interest): RBNZ says house prices still above sustainable levels
David Hargreaves (Interest): Paying our way – how are we managing the mortgage hikes?
Imogen Wells (Newshub): National, Labour back spatting over tax as report paints grim picture for housing market
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): Financial stability: Dark cloud over NZ’s economy as interest rates jump
RNZ: Housing downturn grim, but not another financial crisis – economist
Liam Dann (Herald): Can low unemployment and high wage growth really be a bad thing? (paywalled)
Esther Taunton (Stuff): Here’s what a near-record low unemployment rate really means for workers and businesses
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): Unemployment still at near-record low of 3.3%
Herald: Biggest leap ever recorded in wage growth, unemployment flatlining near record lows
RNZ: Unemployment rate holds steady at 3.3%, wages rise strongly – Stats NZ
David Hargreaves (Interest): Private sector wage rise blows all forecasts out of the water – 8.6%
Jenny Ruth (BusinessDesk): NZ unemployment rate steady at 3.3% in third quarter, wage inflation hot
Susan Edmunds (Stuff): Countdown staff agree to 12% pay rise deal

HOUSING CRISIS
Herald Editorial: Getting action on social housing (paywalled)
Denise Piper (Stuff): Government’s $55m funding to help whānau living in tents and cars in Northland
Ashleigh McCaull (RNZ): Govt partnership with Māori aims to fund up to 100 homes in Te Tai Tokerau

PARLIAMENT, HAMILTON WEST BY-ELECTION
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Biggest Budget decision coming next month (paywalled)
Michael Neilson (Herald): National ‘disappointed’ no compromise on Māori electoral roll options
Rachel Maher (Herald): Andrew Little claims Hamilton West Labour candidate was ambushed, not the ambusher
Jonah Franke-Bowell (Stuff): Labour Hamilton West candidate seen at ambush protest against own minister
Richard Prebble: Where Hamilton West goes, goes the country
RNZ: Another step in Hamilton West by-election with issuing of writ
Catrin Owen (Stuff): Convictions quashed for man who was drunk when he emailed PM threatening to kill
Craig Kapitan (Herald): Conviction quashed for Michael Cruikshank, who sent threatening emails to Jacinda Ardern

THREE WATERS
Kate MacNamara (Herald): $70m from Covid fund fuels Three Waters spend up (paywalled)
Te Rina Kowhai (Newshub): Tribal leaders slam mayors’ Three Waters replacement plan
RNZ: Auckland treatment plant that just got $2m upgrade shutdown due to contaminant

LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Todd Niall (Stuff): Less pay for top councillors as Auckland mayor Wayne Brown ‘spreads jam further’
Steven Walton (Stuff): $75,000 by-election sparked by community board member’s resignation
Emily Ireland (Local Democracy Reporting): Wairarapa leaders weigh in on lowering voting age
Caley Callahan (Newshub): Gore officially home to youngest-ever New Zealand mayor after recount application thrown out
RNZ: Gore mayoralty: Tracy Hicks’ bid for recount turned down

HEALTH
Phil Pennington (RNZ): Revealed: The hospital radiology departments at high risk
Stuff: Advocate ‘gutted’ as Pharmac reviews blanket funding of child cancer medicines
RNZ: Pharmac reviewing child cancer funding after patients voice concerns of inconsistencies
RNZ: Covid-19: ‘Variant soup’ set to drive up infections – expert
Jane Nixon (1News): Cure Kids CEO weighs in after Starship rejects $570k donation
Jane Nixon (1News): Starship Foundation fronts amid backlash over $570k rejected donation
Rachel Smalley (Today FM): I am baffled by the decision made by The Starship Foundation
John MacDonald (Herald): Starship shows how beggars can be choosers
Matthew Rosenberg (Local Democracy Reporting): Gisborne falling behind in water fluoridation
Simon Mercep (1News): Families dipped into pockets in bid to save Auckland rest home
Darren Bevan (Newshub): Mike King breaks down discussing latest suicide rates, makes tearful plea to improve Aotearoa’s mental health services

ALCOHOL
Tim Chambers, Joseph Boden, Matthew Hobbs, Nicholas Bowden (The Conversation): Why New Zealand must consider restricting alcohol sponsorship of broadcast sports as part of a wider law reform
Herald Editorial: Finding balance on alcohol outlets (paywalled)
Andrew Bevin (Newsroom): Liquor sale law changes may make licensing trusts redundant

ENVIRONMENT, RMA
Chris Trotter (Daily Blog): David Parker Rejects Co-Governance
Susan Edmunds (Stuff): RMA reform bill introduced ‘within weeks’, PM says
RNZ: Leading NGOs sign open letter calling for PM to support mining ban on conservation land
RNZ: Helen Clark: Mining boom could harm environment, communities
Olivia Wannan (Stuff): Climate Minister blames court for inaction on tougher climate pledge
Ian Powell: Should the Prime Minister go to Cop27? ‘Blood, blood, blood’
Matt Skinner (Interest): Department of Internal Affairs report puts a spotlight on NZ communities & councils facing both flood risk and financial hardship
Katie Todd (RNZ): ‘The first thing buyers ask us’ – Flood zones pose hazards for insuring homeowners
Kevin Trenberth (Newsroom): Climate change reparations – who pays?
Oliver Lewis (BusinessDesk): New Zealand gas production about to ‘fall off a cliff’ (paywalled)
Kerry Harvey (Stuff): Documentary series Brave New Zealand World looks at how we can safeguard against global disasters

JUSTICE
Seni Iasona (Newshub): ACT Party, Women’s Refuge disappointed $20 million victim support scheme helps more alleged perpetrators than victims
Frankie Vaughan (Stuff): Being 10 shouldn’t mean being old enough for criminal responsibility
Chris Lynch: What will stop the violent crime wave committed by Children?
Soumya Bhamidipati (RNZ): Bailiffs to wear body cameras in health and safety move
Stuff: European decision boosts case of NZ resident fighting extradition to China

BUY NOW, PAY LATER DEBT
Rob Stock (Stuff): Government to regulate ‘buy now, pay later’ loans by end of year
Gareth Vaughan (Interest): Buy now pay later transactions to be treated as consumer credit contracts as government moves to regulate
Adam Pearse (Herald): Harmful ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ debt traps targeted in new Government checks
Logan Church (1News): New rules on the way for buy now pay later schemes – Govt
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Spinoff): Farewell to the unlimited freedom of buy now, pay later schemes

FARMING
Conor Knell (Stuff): ‘Back farmers like we back All Blacks’: Luxon lends ear to rural frustrations
RNZ: Groundswell aims to distance itself from Voices for Freedom
Gerhard Uys (Stuff): $12,000 fine won’t put Groundswell farmers off agriculture census boycott

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TRADE
Thomas Manch (Stuff): New Zealand to reopen diplomatic post in junta-ruled Myanmar
Sam Sachdeva and Emanuel Stoakes (Newsroom): ANZ faces further pressure over Myanmar ties
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Latin America trade deal: NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hints at progress
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): UK-NZ trade deal battles on through British turmoil
James Halpin (Stuff): Case against woman raising funds for Russian army could hinge on bank details – expert

TRANSPORT
Bernard Orsman (Herald): Auckland Transport spends $33m to reduce speed limits (paywalled)
RNZ: Cartel behaviour warning for eight freight forwarding companies

EDUCATION
Anna Whyte (Stuff): Critics say Government’s promises to school-leavers fall flat
John Gerritsen (RNZ): Principals expect pandemic’s disruption to learning will take years to make up for
John Gerritsen (RNZ): Test results indicate pandemic set back children’s education by months

CALLAGHAN, INDIGO, MANAAKI
Damien Venuto (Herald): The Front Page: The ‘murky’ controversy embroiling Callaghan Innovation and Manaaki
Pattrick Smellie (BusinessDesk): Callaghan: no idea about conflicts in We Are Indigo investigation
Peter Griffin (BusinessDesk): What to learn from the We Are Indigo-Callaghan mess (paywalled)

OTHER
Phil Pennington (RNZ): ‘Strong demand’ for identity verification tool despite ministries’ lack of interest
Lucy Thomson (Newshub): Guy Fawkes weekend sparks debate over whether Government should ban sale of fireworks
Lachy Paterson (Newsroom): November 5 fireworks for Parihaka not Westminster
Matthew Scott (Newsroom): Marathon visa waits despite dedicated immigration team
Jody O’Callaghan (Stuff): Māori have the solutions to Aotearoa’s ‘dark past’

In this, the 21st episode of A View from Afar for 2022 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning analyse the notion, and perhaps the reality, of Trumpism beyond Trump.

In earlier episodes, Paul and Selwyn have examined how Trumpism, and even Bannonism, has been exported as a cult, a cultural political movement, around the world. And, we gave detailed examples of how it manifests itself in countries as untypical comparatively as New Zealand and Brazil.

And in this episode, Paul and Selwyn deep dive into this notion – that while Brazil’s out-going right-populist president Bolsonaro was narrowly defeated by his left-positioned rival Lula, there’s a risk that Brazil’s version of Trumpism will live on well after Bolsonaro’s electoral defeats at the ballot-box and enforce a formidable impediment to their successor’s policies.

And in addition, they examine what to expect from the United States’ mid-term elections. Will the GOP’s Trump endorsed candidates assist in removing a Democratic Party majority in the US Senate?

And finally, they explore the Israel elections and whether Benjamin Netanyahu will return to dominating Israel’s political sphere.

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE: Paul and Selwyn invite and encourage you to interact while they are live with questions and comments. They recommend you do so via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, as Facebook is undergoing significant changes. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

You can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
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If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

A View from Afar – Bannonism-Trumpism, a cultural ideological export – Political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning deep-dive into how Aotearoa New Zealand is in the cross-hairs of two distinct political powers – one has been around for awhile and applies influence operations aimed at elites; and the other is new to this part of the world and uses cultural and ideological diffusion that is aimed at civil society and aims to change the character of democracy itself. Can countries like New Zealand resist the slide into US-styled political chaos?

In this podcast we explore the under-defined, but hardly hidden, ideology that we will refer to as Bannonism-Trumpism.

So what is taking shape in New Zealand? Why is New Zealand a political lab-rat of sorts?

How is this battle taking place for the minds and political thinking of New Zealand voters?

What should you be aware of?

What political parties are most vulnerable to these two powerful external influences?

What is the end-game?

Is resistance achievable?

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast while they consider these big issues, and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

When significant voices on the political left start speaking out against Labour’s proposed hate speech laws it’s a sign that they’re in big trouble. With criticisms now coming from across the political spectrum, it’s much more likely that the Government will ditch the botched speech regulation reforms.

The latest leftwing activist to speak out against the proposals is unionist Matt McCarten. He is encouraging the public to make submissions against the proposals (submissions close tomorrow).

McCarten’s leftwing credentials are strong – not only has he been involved in progressive and socialist organising for decades, he was the Labour Party’s Chief of Staff at Parliament for two years from 2014. His opposition will carry a lot weight.

This week he made the following statement: “Free speech is not a left-right political issue. It’s about democratic civil society where everyone has a right to have their say. Sometimes your opinion can make other people uncomfortable and even create conflict. But sharing your views can start a real conversation of ideas that often leads to positive societal change. If we risk free speech then we risk progress. We must not allow that.”

McCarten also gave a lengthy interview with another leftwing activist, Dane Giraud, of the Free Speech Union, on the problems he sees with the proposals, as well as wider criticisms of the contemporary left – see: Interview with legend of the NZ Union movement Matt McCarten.

McCarten’s views in this interview have also been discussed by leftwing blogger Steven Cowan – see: Matt McCarten: The liberal left has abandoned working class politics.

Cowan has also written about his own opposition to what he sees as a clampdown on political activity and expression – see: We need more democracy, not less. He argues the hate speech laws are just a continuation of the growth of a “liberal support for authoritarian identity or woke politics and for cancel culture”. In contrast, he points to historic socialist figures who have battled for free speech.

In this regard, it’s also worth reading Victoria University of Wellington academics Michael Johnston and James Kierstead who explain how free speech has been vital to not just democracy and progress, but for marginal groups liberating themselves – see: Hate speech law a threat to democracy. They say: “The historical record, from the suffragettes to the civil rights movement to gay liberation, makes it clear: free speech has been a vital – perhaps the vital – tool in the struggle of marginalised peoples to defend their rights.”

They have written this week about their opposition to the proposals – see: Why the new ‘hate speech’ legislation should be scrapped. They argue that leftwing governments should be concerned with advancing leftwing policies and dealing with problems faced by those at the bottom, but Ardern’s Government is instead pursuing an illiberal programme on political expression. They say the Government is siding with a more illiberal movement around the world that is concerned with suppressing open debate.

The political commentator who has led the fight against the hate speech laws is Chris Trotter. Last week he reported on the only authoritative public survey that has been carried out on the hate speech proposals, which shows the public is clearly more opposed than supportive – see: Free speech vs hate speech – by numbers.

The survey commissioned by the Free Speech Union shows that 43 per cent are either strongly or somewhat opposed, 31 per cent are somewhat or strongly in favour, and 15 per cent are neutral. The survey shows that Labour and Green voters are much more inclined to support the proposals, and National and Act supports much less so. There are some other interesting demographic skews as well – in terms of gender, ethnicity, income, and geography.

Trotter has written at length about the problems with the hate speech proposals. His latest column on this is a plea to the Prime Minister not to go ahead with the ill-thought-out changes to the law – see: I understand why you want to do it, Jacinda – but don’t.

Trotter explains that the horrors of the Mosque attacks have made this a personal quest for Ardern, but argues it’s a mistaken response that won’t achieve its objective and will have many undemocratic and harmful consequences.

The Government-friendly blogsite The Standard has also published a strong critique of the new law, pointing out that the existence of free speech has allowed radical political organisation to occur, and “we need our existing freedom of expression protected more, not less” – see: Oppose this new hate speech bill. They point out that the Labour Party was able to be founded because of free speech, and “I doubt the Labour Party would have been able to exist today if this proposed control of speech had occurred then.”

Others on the left have also been outspoken. Martyn Bradbury, the editor of the Daily Blog, has written frequently about how the left should be opposing the Government’s reform ideas. In a recent blog post he says: “we are the Left, we should be championing free speech, not repressing it! We can’t allow brittle millennial trigger culture to hand the State powers that history tells us will be used against us!” – see: Kris Faafoi has gone into hiding over Hate Speech law & would Debbie Ngarewa-Packer get prosecuted?.

Also writing on the Daily Blog, John Minto has labelled the proposed hate speech laws “feel good legislation” that “comes with its own awful side effects” – see: Challenging hate speech – yes but let’s adapt our existing legislation.

Minto argues that, although the Government thinks the reforms would protect minorities, it’s possible minorities would be the victims of clamp downs. For example, “I think it will be the Muslim community and progressive voices who are more likely to feel the harsh edge of this law”, and other activist groups such as pro-Palestine movements would easily be labelled hateful and threatened with prosecution.

This last point has also been made by media law scholar Steven Price, who pointed out on TVNZ’s Q+A on Sunday “Hate-speech laws are often used to prosecute the very minorities that they are designed to protect” such as “gay people who are attacking religions who are attacking them”. You can watch this here: Q+A with Jack Tame – Lawyers ‘tearing their hair out’ over proposed hate speech laws.

For an excellent review of the Q+A debate, see Graham Adams’ latest column: The thorny hate-speech debate sorts sheep from goats. He discusses Price’s negative evaluations of the possible law changes – especially his view that it would be difficult to establish what is and isn’t a crime under the Government proposals.

Adams also highlights the appearance on the Q+A panel of former Labour MP Sue Moroney, who grapples with the lack of clarity in the proposals, essentially recommending that people self-censor to avoid prosecution. He quotes Moroney: “Well here’s a tip for middle New Zealand. If you think that what you’re about to do or say or tweet might actually be hate speech or might be captured by the law, don’t do it… and we’ll all be better off… If you’re making that judgement – ‘Could this be illegal?’ – don’t do it!”

Adams also points to a recently published video of police officer warning a street preacher: “There is a difference between preaching and hate speech and you are very close to crossing the line”. On this video, barrister and legal commentator Graeme Edgeler has tweeted to say: “The police officer is recorded saying there’s a fine line between preaching and hate speech. He then explicitly acknowledges they had not crossed that line, and still thinks he has a role in policing what they are saying. That is concerning.”

Edgeler has written frequently about the Government’s new proposals. His concluding blog post is a must-read, as he argues strongly against the hate speech laws in their current form, and he is highly critical of how the Government has gone about the reform process – see: The New New Prohibition.

Edgeler draws parallels with other draconian attempts to outlaw harmful activities such as alcohol and drugs, which have been counterproductive. He says: “We may be facing a similar issue with hate speech.”

Amongst his many problems with the proposals, Edgeler highlights the lack of certainty over what would actually qualify as illegal hate speech in the new rules, which he says would have a chilling impact on public debate: “An important component of the rule of law (perhaps the most important) is certainty. The law should be declared in advance so that people can comply with it. And the biggest problem for people who will try to moderate their behaviour in response to a new criminal law isn’t whether they can recognise a bunch of things that will be covered by it, it’s whether they can recognise what things won’t. Because if it is not clear, then important, protected speech will be chilled.”

Edgeler points to another lawyer’s strong arguments about the problems of enforcement – the idea that even if the legal system ends up absolving an individual of hate speech crimes, the mere fact of having to fight a prosecution will be extremely chilling – see Liam Hehir’s Hate speech and what legal elites sometimes miss about the law.

This roundup column has focused on some of the hate speech law dissenters, most of whom are firmly on the left of the political spectrum. But there are other progressives who have been very favourable to the new rules, and are worth checking out – see Donna Miles’ New hate speech law needs our love, Eddie Clark’s Why ‘inciting violence’ should not be the only threshold for defining hate speech in New Zealand, Joel Maxwell’s Hate speech proposals should have started with Te Tiriti, and Guled Mire’s When we’re afraid to speak, democracy is threatened.

Ultimately it seems likely that Ardern will pragmatically decide to ditch the proposals, given that they have turned out to be such a mess. This will be hard to do, since Ardern has made much of her promise and it’s a Labour Party manifesto commitment. Nonetheless, according to Graham Adams there are signs the Prime Minister is trying to find a way out – see: Is Ardern preparing her escape route from hate speech laws?.

Finally, the Minister of Justice responsible for the hate speech proposals gave a train wreck of an interview about the reforms and then went to ground – or as one commentator recently said is probably “tied up in a basement somewhere by the Prime Minister’s staff and not allowed to do interviews”. But his failure to front on this and other important issues is explained today by Jo Moir – see: What’s eating Kris Faafoi?.

The pictures of Professor Pal Ahluwalia, the vice-chancellor of the University of the South Pacific (USP), and his wife Sandra Price on the morning of Thursday, February 4, during their long and unexpected plane journey back to Brisbane after their shock expulsion from Fiji brought back memories for us.

Former Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, still very much a politician and leadership contender for elections in 2022, argued that the FijiFirst government’s behaviour in deporting Professor Ahluwalia and his wife was nothing short of childish.

He should know. He began Fiji’s coup culture with two coups in 1987, unleashing a wave of violence upon Fiji’s people: assaults, burglaries, arson, and imprisonment.

One group of demonstrators was gassed. Dr Anirudh Singh, a university scientist who criticised Rabuka’s biography, was hijacked by a military unit and severely tortured, his hands broken. In effect, anyone who by their actions signalled dissatisfaction became fair game.

In January 1988, we found out too that we had become fair game. After the first coup in May 1987, we had been warned by economist Wadan Narsey (another victim, later forced out of USP by government pressure and, in his case, the Bainimarama government) that our close friendship with William Sutherland, the deposed Prime Minister’s permanent secretary, might create problems for us. (William escaped Rabuka’s military, who came for him immediately after the first coup, and managed to leave the country. But at Nadi, troops dragged him off the plane. Only the pilot’s brave refusal to take off without all his passengers enabled him to leave.)

In reality, anything could cause problems. USP where one of us (Robbie) worked as a senior lecturer had long been subject to cliques at loggerheads with each other.

A simple call to the military could create a lifetime of pain for helpless individuals. Then VC, Geoffrey Caston, soon discovered this when hash harriers (social runners) left their cars outside his home and he was charged with holding unauthorised meetings.

Shadowy Taukeist activists
We had a member of Rabuka’s shadowy Taukeist activists living next door to us in Raiwaqa who didn’t look kindly on us, particularly around the time of the second coup in September 1987 when he held operational meetings in his home.

We also brought attention upon ourselves because we decided to write on the coups in our evenings. All news was censored, so to find out what was happening we would frequent certain bars where public servants and officers often hung out.

Asking the odd question, but mostly listening to conversations, could provide some framework for understanding what was happening.

The other author of this article (Akosita) was a journalist with the then Fiji Sun, but also did stories for London’s Gemini news service. She had been asked to send a story on the current political scene, but the only way to get it out was via Fintel, the government’s centralised telecommunications system.

She discovered on handing over the article to be faxed that Fintel had been militarised. An officer read her piece, said the fax was down and asked her to come back in the late afternoon.

We did, but before we could enter an employee exited and whispered that a whole group of soldiers was waiting for her. We decided to leave but were followed by a military vehicle for some time. Eventually we headed up to the Sun editor’s home and got approval to fax from the newspaper’s offices.

That still had to go through Fintel and was refused. In the end we used an old telex. But no sooner had the article been sent, power to the suburb was cut.

Things heated up
From that moment on, things seemed to heat up. Our house was raided by military intelligence. The family we allowed to live in the empty quarters under the house was turned against us and became the military’s spies. And our phone was tapped. After the first raid we took to taking everything to work that we had been writing in the evening.

Then everything went quiet. Classes finished at USP and we travelled to Vanuatu where Robbie taught for three weeks. Then we took a three-week holiday in Australia, in part to relieve the tension that went with two military coups, roadblocks, curfews, arrests, and beatings of friends.

When we returned in January, we went to Akosita’s parents to inform them that we intended to marry. On arriving back in Suva, Robbie received an urgent message to go to the university. There he was told that the government had decided not to renew his work visa and asked that he leave the next day.

The university suggested we go into hiding while they tried to sort it out. The sociologist Vijay Naidu (later thrown by the military into Fiji’s old death row cells) kindly took us up to the New Zealand High Commissioner’s residence, but his wife informed us that her husband was in the bath preparing to go out.

“We couldn’t help Richard Naidu (another expelled local who had been assaulted by Taukeists),” she argued. What makes you think you are different?

The next day was busy. Packers in to remove nine years of living. Then a quick trip down to the Registry Office. Then off to historian Jacqui Leckie’s house ostensibly to hide. Nothing worked. Everyone knew where we were and Rabuka refused to budge.

How did it come to this?
He told a New Zealand newspaper that Robbie was a security risk and had to go. So he eventually did, flying first to Auckland to stay with journalist David Robie, feeling we suspect much like Ahluwalia and possibly thinking: how did it come to this. And what is next?

As it turned out USP was good to Robbie. They kept him employed and planned to install him in Vanuatu. He would fly into Suva two or three times a semester to teach. But once the Fijian government heard of these plans, they declared him a prohibited immigrant and encouraged Vanuatu to ban him also. He eventually found work in Australia and the university paid for our effects to come over.

All’s well that ends well, and he did go back to teach again in Fiji as a professor of development studies in 2004, smartly leaving ahead of the well-advertised 2006 coup.

That coup was led by the current Prime Minister and bore all the clandestine and nasty tactics that Rabuka and others had employed since 1987 in the name of sovereignty. This is a country that now chairs the UN Human Rights Committee yet has managed to impose a draconian curfew ever since covid-19 became a potential threat.

Standing up to political pressure is not something that comes naturally to the politically appointed USP Council. Let’s hope it does for Pal’s sake and for the health of the Pacific’s regional university.

Let’s hope also for the notion of academic freedom, unfortunately often more honoured in the breach in the Pacific. In the early 1980s Mara’s pre-coup government pressured Ziam Baksh – a young Indo-Fijian academic – who called for a common term to refer to all Fijian citizens.

Much later, USP bowed to criticism and forced Professor Narsey to resign. Governments like to be in control, and Fiji is no different from many others in this regard, preferring instead a culture of silence.

But its assault on good governance under the pretence of sovereign rights, its attempt to pre-emptively sack a vice-chancellor, now threatens to unwind the Pacific’s great experiment in regional education and end the diversity of views and pathways so valuable for any democracy that wishes to garner the best for its peoples. All will lose if they succeed.

Dr Robbie Robertson is adjunct professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne where he was formerly Dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. Akosita Tamanisau works as an assessor in the Victorian homelessness sector. They are co-authors of Fiji: Shattered Coups. This article first appeared on DevPolicyBlog and is republished here with the authors’ permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The National Party is in trouble again for its Facebook advertising campaigning. Late last week, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled against one of the party’s social media ads targeting the Government’s vehicle efficiency feebate scheme. The authority ruled it was “likely to confuse or deceive consumers”. The ad had claimed that the feebate scheme would cause the costs of some cars to be increased by $6000 when, in fact, the highest direct fee would be $3000.

National had provided argumentation for its claim, which the ASA ruled “insufficient”, and the party now plans to appeal the decision – see Craig McCulloch’s National told to pull online attack ad, but will appeal ruling.

According to Newshub’s Dan Satherley, despite the ASA’s ruling, the offending ad remained online and there was nothing the ASA could do about this: “As of Friday, the ads remained online. The ASA has no statutory power to force the party to take them down. The ASA has plans to set up a rapid-response unit to tackle misleading political ads with far more urgency next year, which is an election year” – see: National to appeal after ‘car tax’ advert ruled misleading.

National argued that the party had followed the spirit of the law but the ASA have got them on a technical breach: “It has been the previous view and practice of the Advertising Standards Authority that the spirit of the code is more important than any minor technical breaches… People have a right to express their views and this right should not be unduly or unreasonably restricted by rules.”

The whole issue raises questions about whether New Zealand is headed into an environment of “post-truth” online advertising of dirty politics and deliberate deception, as has been witnessed in other political systems. There is increasing debate about “weaponised advertising technology” being used by political parties.

There have been a number of recent media stories investigating the surge of Facebook advertising by various parties, with a strong concern about the dangers this poses for democracy, especially since many of the ads are dodgy. For the best investigation of this, see Q+A’s seven-minute video (and article): Voters warned to prepare for dirty politics as battle steps up online a year out from election.

Here’s the main point: “A year out from the General Election, political observers are warning voters to prepare for some dirty politics, with the battle for votes increasingly being fought online. TVNZ1’s Q+A has discovered New Zealanders are already being targeted with some of the less-than-transparent tactics seen overseas. Like never before, National is churning out the attack ads on social media, it’s campaign machine already in full throttle.”

National is particularly under scrutiny, with allegations that the party is moving into some sort of Trump-like post-truth way of operating. For example, Peter Dunne highlights in the Q+A item how National leader Simon Bridges recently claimed “one person’s facts are another person’s misinformation” when justifying misleading claims by a National MP.

The suggestion is that National is importing aggressive and negative social media tactics from its counterparts overseas – with many noting a recent trip by Bridges to meet with the Australian Liberal Party and Scott Morrison, who were notable for their aggressive social media campaigning that helped them pull off their surprise election victory this year. As the Q+A item notes, the Liberals “had the help of some Kiwi digital whizzes – Young Nats Sean Topham and Sam Guerin, and social media strategist Kelly Boxall, another Kiwi who has recently been working in Simon Bridges’ office.”

The item features Labour’s election campaign chair Megan Woods vowing that Labour won’t be going negative in its election next year, but pointing the finger at National: “I’m worried that we are seeing these green shoots of a reasonably desperate and negative campaign that’s coming through already”.

National’s campaign chair is Paula Bennett, and in the video she defends the party’s rather simplistic attack messages as being helpful for voters: “People don’t have a lot of time in their lives to sit down and wade their way through a 40-page document like this Government sometimes puts out, that literally says nothing. So we are able to take that, condense it down to what matters”.

The social media company Topham Guerin is apparently not actually being employed yet by National, according to Henry Cooke. However he notes that the party’s “current campaigning shows much similarity to the ads used by the Liberals in Australia” – see: Facebook ads will dominate the next election – but our politicians don’t have to tell us about them.

Cooke points to National’s heavy use of Facebook advertising, saying that at one point the party had 14 separate advertisements running. But the parties of Government have also embraced this platform: “Labour also runs a large number of ads on Facebook – 15 as of Thursday evening. Most of these ads promoted Labour policies, both nationally and in specific regions, or simply asked users to sign up for updates on the page. But Labour and the Greens have dipped their toes into negative Facebook campaigning.”

The attractiveness of Facebook advertising is outlined by Cooke: “Facebook ads are much cheaper to both produce and broadcast than traditional television advertising, and can be targeted at minute slices of audience and easily tested with those audiences.”

The question is whether there is enough regulation of these advertisements, especially given the increasing fears about “political parties posting untrue or exaggerated content”. As a possible solution, Cooke points to a new Facebook transparency tool that has been introduced, which might help keep the campaigning cleaner: “The ‘Ad Library Report’ is mandatory in several countries and allows the public to track every ad a political party or issue group puts out on the platform, and see how much money is being spent and who the ad is targeted at.” It keeps an archive of all the ads run by political parties and advocacy groups – so even if a Facebook ad is only up for a short period it can still be located after the fact.

Unfortunately, Cooke reports that none of the political parties have yet signed up to the tool, despite its availability. National is quoted about this: “We are already subject to a rigorous approval process of our ads by Facebook, and public transparency of the ads we are actively running on Facebook at any one time. We have yet to consider the Ad Library Report function in Facebook, and will no doubt make a decision on this in due course.”

Cooke also explores the reluctance, or lack of ability, of authorities to regulate social media political advertising in his article, Stopping viral misinformation in the next election will be a task for all of us. He adds that there’s “good reason” to avoid too much regulation: “We respect free speech, especially political speech.”

New Zealand’s official election agency is a focus for some of this debate: “The Electoral Commission regulates political ads on the authorisation level – but has no jurisdiction over truthfulness.” Cooke does suggest that “The Electoral Commission could look into demanding that parties be more transparent about their online ad spending, if Facebook itself would make them.”

Instead, it’s the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that has responsibility for dealing with claims of accuracy. But, it’s “a voluntary industry body with no legal power to compel anyone to do anything. It also generally takes about two weeks to deal with a complaint, although it does have a quicker response team during elections.”

The role of the ASA is discussed further by RNZ’s Colin Peacock, who reports: “For the last election the ASA ran a ‘fast-track’ process during the campaign period which required a response from the advertiser and any other relevant party within 24 hours of a complaint – and its website says most complaints were settled within three or four days. The ASA told Mediawatch the arrangements for next year’s election have yet to be determined” – see: Oncoming online onslaught of paid political ads?

Peacock points out another important part of the issue – that a lot of Facebook and social media ads are taxpayer funded. It’s unclear to what extent current ads are paid for out of parliamentary funding budgets, but certainly when it comes to the election they will be taxpayer-funded. Peacock explains: “Electoral law changed in 2017 to allow political parties to spend more of their own money on online ads – as well as $750,000 previously earmarked by the Electoral Commission for opening and closing addresses on TV and radio.”

This “weaponised advertising technology” is also discussed by Katie Kenny and Tommy Livingston in a good feature article which discusses “the risks of a post-truth political landscape” – see: Can Kiwis tell fact from fake news in the leadup to the 2020 elections?

In this, a distinction is made between misinformation and disinformation: “While misinformation often arises out of genuine political debate, disinformation is typically a covert attempt by a maligned state or interest group to distort public views.” The suggestion is that it’s the use of the latter which could be a challenge for New Zealand democracy, as it has been elsewhere. The argument is: “Disinformation campaigns contributed to the rise of President Donald Trump in the United States and to Brexit in the United Kingdom.”

Both major parties accuse each other of producing “fake news”, and the article cites challenges that have been made to them to commit not to. Tom Barraclough, who is researching how to detect the use of “deep fakes”, says: “I have not seen any commitment by political parties to refrain from using manipulated imagery or video”.

Technology commentator Paul Brislen also identifies in this article that it’s the Facebook platform that is particularly “dangerous”. This is because “There are growing trends among older people to just use Facebook as a source of news and that alarms me”. Young people are of less concern he explains: “Today’s students are being taught critical thinking skills in the classroom and know not to believe everything they read online”.

This week RNZ’s podcast, The Detail, also looked at the rise of social media amplifying so-called fake news, asking: Is post-truth politics creeping into New Zealand?

In this, Newsroom political editor Sam Sachdeva suggests that “post-truth” manipulation of voters has always been in politics, particularly with the central role of political party spin-doctors, but that it is potentially becoming worse with the use of Facebook and so forth: “I guess the question some people raise is, with the rise of social media, this eroding trust in politicians from the public, and the ability to amplify misinformation, or simplistic soundbites, or key phrases that you want to get out – being able to do that through Facebook, Twitter, or other mediums – has that made it worse?”

As to whether we should worry about the effectiveness of the surge of Facebook ads, it’s worth noting that Claire Robinson – who is the New Zealand authority on political advertising, and published a very good book on its history last week – has given reason not to worry: “Decades of international research has failed to find solid evidence that political ads (of any kind) have any effect on changing a voter’s mind and therefore manipulating the outcome of individual elections” – see: How Facebook has revolutionised the art of political persuasion.

Robinson says that we should be more worried about how governing political parties are now more inclined to put out official information via their Facebook pages instead of through traditional government channels. She says: “Today, video policy announcements are as – or more – likely to be posted on a Labour, New Zealand First or Green Party social media feed as they are to be logged as formal government documents on the Beehive website.”

She suggests this is “insidious” and “potentially more damaging to our democracy” because it means “the lines between the interests of, and accountability to, the public and the political party get blurred”.

In a similar way, this week the Herald’s Claire Trevett has commented that Jacinda Ardern “uses social media in a more cunning way than any Prime Minister has before”, explaining that she “enjoys a benefit none of her predecessors really had, one that was delivered to her by the Twitter and Facebook: easy livestreaming” – see: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s social media stealth propaganda (paywalled).

Trevett also challenges Simon Bridges’ recent claim that Ardern spends too much time on Twitter: “it is untrue. Ardern has tweeted only three times this year. Bridges has sent out at least 30 in the last month alone. The last time Ardern tweeted was in May to acknowledge the death of former Australian PM Bob Hawke. She did not even tweet about meeting Mr Twitter – although Dorsey did.”

Finally, there will be no surprises about what politician is doing the best on Facebook this year, see Zane Small and Taylor Sincock’s report from April about New Zealand’s most Facebook-savvy MPs revealed.

The chart shows what we in New Zealand would call the ‘progressive parties’ (ie leftwing) in red and green. Together they got 58 percent of the vote. What we in New Zealand would call a landslide win to the Left.

But no, the result was actually a landslide win to the Right – and quite a belligerent Right, given the new government’s propensity to cut back on government-funded services. The PC party scored 61 percent of the seats, leaving just 39 percent to the Left; the Conservatives are comfortably in charge in Ontario.

Canadian democracy is horribly distorted by the socalled ‘firstpastthepost’ voting system (never mind that the PCs never got close in Ontario to the 50% ‘post’ that constitutes a popular majority). Divided and ruledover is the fate of the Left in Ontario, and probably Canada too, especially when Ford moves over into Federal politics.

I cannot see much momentum to change. Ontario had a referendum in 2007. FPP soundly defeated MMP. A similar result (61% to 39%) occurred in British Columbia last year. Federal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abandoned his party’s commitment to electoral reform soon after taking office in 2016. The only hope seems to be little Prince Edward Island, which did support MMP in a popular referendum in 2016, and will hold another in October this year.

In a socially progressive (but arithmetically challenged) country, the divided Left can only beat the remorseless FPP arithmetic when it throws up charismatic personalities (such as Trudeau) as its leaders.

———————–

It’s a change that could well end up ensuring Act’s survival – and maybe even its growth – at next year’s election. By repositioning the party as some sort of antithesis to what Seymour sees as the “woke” liberal establishment that is now recasting New Zealand politics, Act is possibly making itself more relevant than it’s been for a long time.

The issue has a growing potential to win votes. As Graham Adams argues today, “In hitching his wagon to the star of free speech, Seymour has no doubt calculated that it is a sleeper issue that will draw a swag of new voters — even from among those who would normally have to hold their nose to cast a vote for Act in the light of other policies they may find distasteful” – see: Can defending free speech boost David Seymour’s fortunes?

Adams also argues that a focus on political freedoms fits with Act’s traditional libertarian philosophies: “It’s a no-brainer for Seymour to stand up for free speech. Act has always been a party dedicated to keeping the long arm of the state out of our lives (and pockets) in a way that National often only pretends to be. It is a topic — like assisted dying — that is perfectly suited to Act’s liberal philosophy.”

Of course, at its core, Seymour’s new-look Act Party is still the same economically rightwing party it has always been. At the conference in the weekend we saw the usual re-assertion of those values and principles with the return of Roger Douglas style policies around flat-tax, education vouchers, and talk of reducing the bureaucracy. The splash of pink that’s been added to the party’s logo shouldn’t be taken to indicate much more than an attempt to soften the party’s old-fashioned image.

There’s some reason to be sceptical about Seymour’s motives for Act’s re-orientation towards the Zeitgeist issues of free speech and hate speech. In the past, Act and Seymour have certainly descended into political desperation and opportunism at times. Their last annual conference in August was embarrassing in how much the party pandered to populism and social conservatism. At the time, I wrote that the party was in danger of losing the last semblance of any coherent appeal or political soul – see my column, The death throes of the Act Party.

However Seymour’s stance on free speech appears to be genuine. He’s been pushing such positions on political liberty for quite some time. Furthermore, there’s something very different about this latest reorientation. Partly it’s because the ideological landscape has changed so much in the last few months. This is a response to the Christchurch massacre, but also due to the growing “culture wars” and debates over personal behaviour and speech.

Of course, the Government has also announced its intention to bolster hate speech laws. Clearly Seymour is aware of a growing divide around issues of political freedoms and is strongly positioning himself on one side. Such divides relating to the “culture wars” need to be taken seriously, as they could yet have a big impact on New Zealand politics.

In Seymour’s view, which he expounded at the weekend, the political left has actually become quite illiberal and authoritarian in nature. This is best conveyed in Nicholas Jones’ article, ‘Intolerant left’ wants to censor your thoughts and speech, Act Party leader David Seymour says.

In this, Seymour suggests the political left has now given up on the principles that they used to hold on political freedoms: “For a long time, we could rely on the liberal left to uphold freedom of expression. They may have wanted to take your property, but at least they’d let you have your thoughts and opinions.”

As this article explains, Seymour has announced a new “Freedom to Speak” policy to reform the current laws around hate speech. Apparently, a member’s bill “would repeal parts of the law that makes some speech unlawful if it is threatening, abusive or insulting and likely to ‘excite hostility’ against a group of people or bring them into contempt on the ground of their colour, race or ethnicity. Today, Seymour said the bill would remove from the Human Rights Act the words ‘abusive’ and ‘insulting’ and leave only ‘threatening’ as a crime.”

Seymour explains: “It should never be a crime to insult or abuse someone with language because nobody should ever be punished on the basis of subjective opinion.”

Seymour also went on Newshub’s The Nation on Saturday to explain his new “Freedom to Speak” legislation that he intends to submit to Parliament as a private members bill – see: Nazis and racists ‘offensive’ but shouldn’t be arrested – David Seymour.

As the article accompanying this interview explains, “David Seymour wants Kiwis to have the right to be offensive without having to worry about getting arrested. Instead, he hopes ‘contempt and ridicule’ will stop racists from spreading their poisonous views.”

In the interview, Seymour also takes aim at the Human Rights Commission, explaining that he would abolish it, saying “As an electorate MP, I have been to the Human Rights Commission and asked them to help with constituents, and they’ve run for the hills”.

Liberal/Illiberal backlash

There’s been a strong reaction to both Seymour’s proposed legislation and his shift to campaign on free speech issues. Newshub has reported the head of the Māori Council, Matthew Tukaki, arguing that Seymour’s bill is a “protection racket for those who think it’s their right to call me a n****r”, and furthermore, “I say to David Seymour if you were black and someone called you a n****r, or a fat black bastard or a black c**t, you’d want to have some protection and right of legal challenge” – see: Māori leader ‘sick and tired’ of free speech advocates looking for ‘excuse to call me the N-word’.

As well as Tukaki associating Seymour with racism (“This is not the apartheid-era South Africa where he gets to pick and choose what names people call people of colour, like myself”), this article reports Barrister Thomas Harre arguing that the courts need to be given the power to decide whether certain statements are “freedom of speech or something that should be punished”.

Another lawyer, Thomas Beagle, the chairperson of the NZ Council for Civil Liberties, suggests that Seymour’s reform of the speech laws would be bad for civil liberties: “The problem we’re seeing these days is that people are using speech to stop other people speaking, they’re using it to suppress certain groups” – see Ollie Ritchie’s David Seymour faces backlash over Freedom to Speak Bill.

Beagle also says: “I think it could be a dangerous approach because there’s a lot of speech out there which is very harmful for people, and when we look at laws around changing that we need to worry about the harm as well as the freedom of expression”.

Plenty in the media have condemned Seymour’s stance on free speech. On Twitter, for example, a number of journalists have been showing their disgust and disagreement with Seymour’s stance. For example, Stuff journalist Philip Matthews (@secondzeit) has tweeted: “I don’t think David Seymour is a Nazi or a racist but there’s no doubt he’s trying to (and will fail to) exploit an opportunity presented to him by the murder of 51 Muslims. I wish he’d rethought it.”

In contrast, the AM Show’s Duncan Garner has lent support this morning: “I think it’s dangerous to have limits to free speech – it’s a hot debate right now. Act Leader David Seymour made some good points over the weekend, and I think the state has to be very careful it doesn’t pass too many laws and rules around what we can and can’t say” – see: Government’s clampdown on free speech dangerous for all of us.

An ongoing campaign for Seymour

The weekend wasn’t the first time that Seymour has been outspoken or controversial about speech or political freedoms. He’s written a number of opinion pieces in recent months about his concerns. For example, last month he explained how Now more than ever we must defend free speech. In this he makes the case that free speech is vital in a democracy, because it helps solves problems and allows open debate. By contrast, he argues that hate speech laws are counterproductive: “laws which criminalise offensive opinions are likely to create resentment and anger rather than cure hate.”

He poses three challenges for those in favour of increased hate speech laws: “Here are three important questions for those favouring strong hate speech laws: “How is hate speech to be defined? Who gets to define it? And how can we trust those people not to use hate speech laws to suppress ideas they don’t like?”

For another useful example of Seymour putting forward his arguments against an opponent, see TVNZ’s Q+A debate: MPs David Seymour and Louisa Wall clash over Israel Folau case during hate speech debate.

A much more contentious clash involved Seymour arguing that Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman is “a real menace to freedom in this country” due to her campaigns on hate speech. This has caused a strong response, not just from the Greens, but also from Judith Collins who condemned Seymour’s language – see: Act leader David Seymour taken to task for Golriz Ghahraman comments.

At the time, Ghahraman was being subjected to threats from white supremacists, which required an upgrade to her parliamentary security. For the Act leader’s response to all this, see Belinda Feek’s David Seymour: I’m not racist, that’s ‘absolutely absurd’ (paywalled).

Seymour has claimed that the clash with Ghahraman has led to increased offers of help for his party – with a 30 per cent increase in membership and improved fundraising. According to one report: “Seymour attributes his public ‘free speech’ spat with Green MP Golriz Ghahraman as an unexpected driver of donations. He told Stuff that Act received ‘tens of thousands’ in donations afterwards. The number of people who joined Act and donated money over that week was the party’s best week since he had been leader and likely for a decade before that, he claimed” – see Collette Devlin’s Are these the last rites for the Act Party or its rebirth? ().

Finally, where is the National Party in all this? And does Seymour also criticise the main party of the right for their stance on free speech? For the best discussion of this, see Graham Adams’ Simon Bridges is hobbled in hate-speech debate.

The “cockup or conspiracy” debate was vividly explored yesterday in RNZ’s weekly Nine-to-Noon Politics show, with a clash between rightwing commentator Matthew Hooton putting forward the “conspiracy” arguments, against leftwing commentator Stephen Mills arguing for a “cockup”.

Hooton put the case that the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, had been complicit in dirty politics, and explained why he might take such a risk: “Because he was extremely angry… He thought ‘I’ve got an opportunity to attack the National Party using the Police and false allegations of hacking and I can turn the story around’. And it worked.”

According to Hooton’s theory, the conspiracy involves many in the Beehive: “This involves the Office of the Prime Minister, the Office of the Finance Minister, the office of the head of the spy agencies, Andrew Little, and the Treasury secretary – who have told lies to the public”.

In contrast, although Mills agreed that a conspiracy is always a possible explanation, he replied to Hooton: “I know that you’re psychologically kind of framed to believe it’s a conspiracy, but I think that the evidence is almost always that it’s a cock-up”. Hooton hit back, saying “I think that you’re part of the cover-up Stephen because you’re deeply involved in the Labour Party, and you’re close friends with all the people in this who are in fact telling lies”. It’s a fascinating piece of political debate – listen (from about the ten-minute mark) here: Political commentators Mills and Hooton.

Hooton’s theory is explained at length in his Herald column from Friday, in which he paints what has happened as “the sort of thing that might happen in a quasi-democracy like Russia, or in House of Cards” because “making up a false allegation about the Opposition and calling in the police” is what we normally associate with despotic governments rather than our own – see: Truth gets lost in hacking claims (paywalled).

The idea that Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf was acting alone and without the complicity of at least some in the Beehive is scoffed at by Hooton: “the Beehive’s story of a suddenly rogue Treasury Secretary doesn’t ring true. Treasury Secretaries simply don’t, of their own accord, recklessly use inflammatory words like ‘hack’ to describe searches of their own websites, or call in the police to investigate matters involving the Opposition, especially when already advised by the GCSB there had in fact been no breach of security.”

According to Hooton, Makhlouf appears to be taking the hit, when it is “deeply implausible” that the Government had no knowledge of his actions until afterwards. For example, Hooton says: “Wellington’s infamous ‘no surprises’ rule in practice operates as a “prior approval” rule. More importantly, Beehive staffers are in almost constant real-time contact with people in departments, including through private communication channels like WhatsApp and SnapChat in an effort to thwart the Official Information Act.”

In Hooton’s favour, the Herald’s Derek Cheng also broke the story on Friday that the head of the GCSB had contacted the Beehive on the Tuesday when the scandal was first unfolding, to communicate that no hacking had in fact taken place – see: Budget Bungle: the Govt was told there was no hacking but kept tight-lipped (paywalled).

According to Cheng, “Andrew Hampton, head of the Government Communications Security Bureau, made an urgent call to GCSB Minister Andrew Little in an attempt to stop Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf from publicly saying that his department had been hacked”. And he reports “National deputy leader Paula Bennett said it was inconceivable that Little didn’t pass that information on to Robertson and Ardern straight away, and they should have immediately revealed the advice that there had been no hacking.”

The exact timing and details of this GCSB communication to the Beehive informing them that Treasury was wrong to suggest any hacking is now vital to working out whether there was a cockup or a conspiracy, and who was responsible.

Robertson went on TVNZ’s Q+A last night to defend his handling of the scandal, and explained why he got it wrong in his own public statement about the Budget leak: “We were relying on the advice that we had at the time. We didn’t know what had happened. That’s what the police were looking into” – see 1News’ ‘The advice we had’ – Grant Robertson defends his initial description of pre-Budget release as hacking.

In his interview with Jack Tame, Robertson was asked about whether he sufficiently challenged the advice from Treasury about the “hack”, and he replied “I’m on record as saying that Mr Makhlouf was very clear in his description to me of what he described as 2000 or so attempts to hack into the Treasury system”.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has until now been reluctant to comment on the crucial timings involved, with the justification that the whole issue is now the subject of the State Services Commission investigation. However she has now come out to say that the GCSB contact with the Beehive came after Robertson and the Treasury made their public statements about the “hack” – see Derek Cheng’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: Ministers didn’t know GCSB advice when they said Treasury was ‘hacked’.

Nonetheless, questions remain as to why the Government didn’t correct the record the next day. Cheng reports: “The following day, neither Ardern or Robertson revealed the GCSB advice despite being questioned repeatedly in the House about the so-called hack and despite National leader Simon Bridges calling Robertson a ‘liar’ for saying that the Treasury had been ‘hacked’.”

Commentators continue to question why Robertson or even the Prime Minister failed to act. According to Fran O’Sullivan, the Government could have saved everyone a lot of hassle by being up front: “Once Little, Hampton, Robertson and Makhlouf knew an error had been committed — and that there was no substance to the hacking claims — they should have simply ‘fessed up all round: issued a correction (accompanied by an apology by Makhlouf) and pulled back from the politicking. There would have been political embarrassment. But that would have been transitory. Instead, they allowed a wrongful claim to persist, for 36 hours, that National had hacked Budget information” – see: Pomp and trying circumstances for a Gabriel Makhlouf farewell (paywalled).

Gordon Campbell writes that, when the truth became apparent in the Beehive, this “should have galvanized Robertson to go on the front foot and (a) publically clarify the likely nature of the leak (b) re-assure the public of its limited nature and thereby (c) begin to distance the government from Treasury’s overcooked initial “explanation” as to what had happened. As we now know, Robertson did none of the above. As a result, the government now remains ensnared with Treasury’s mishandling of its information” – see: On how the Treasury debacle reflects New Zealand’s wider security problems.

Similarly, Herald political editor Audrey Young says that Robertson is now vulnerable on this question, and today’s Parliamentary Question Time might allow some clarification on this – see: GCSB advice shifts focus from Makhlouf to ministers (paywalled).

Young thinks, however, that clarity is unlikely to be forthcoming today: “Unfortunately for National, the rules of the debating chamber mean that any minister, including the Prime Minister, is able to decline to answer a question if he or she believes it is the public interest not to do so. Ministers need simply say that because it is the subject of an SSC investigation, they do not believe it is in the public interest to answer. Speaker Trevor Mallard may indirectly criticise such judgment calls but he cannot override them.” See also, Barry Soper’s Jacinda Ardern will need her flak jacket over Budget debacle during question time.

Andrew Little is one of the ministers who could help clarify what happened, but he’s currently overseas. And according to Richard Harman, “the Prime Minister will be in Hamilton at the Field Days on Wednesday and the deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters will substitute for her. That is unlikely to make anything any clearer” – see: Budget leak spotlight turns on the spies.

According to Harman, there are also still questions about whether GCSB acted fast enough in the scandal, when they could have possibly corrected the public’s misinformation: “There are questions about why the GCSB kept the information about what had happened at Treasury to itself and did not see fit to advise its own Minister about what had happened even though the issue was dominating news headlines all through Tuesday. If it was a straightforward human error, as National sources are saying, then why wasn’t the GCSB able to say so?”

The whole episode has shown “politics at its ugliest, most naked, worst” according to Tracy Watkins who also says the official State Services Commission inquiry “seems designed to shut down questions” – see: Farewell speeches for outgoing Treasury boss likely to be short.

Watkins wonders if the scandal might end up damaging Ardern, because “Labour’s danger is it starts to wash up against ‘brand Jacinda’, which is supposed to be above all this. Why do politicians never seem to learn that the cover up is almost always worse than the crime?”

She also points out that it appears that the leaking to the media of details of the GCSB call to the Beehive is also dodgy: “there can only have been one purpose in leaking details of that phone call – to hang Makhlouf out to dry. The higher the stakes, the dirtier and more desperate the tactics look.”

This is something that Fran O’Sullivan has also commented on: “The Beehive did not wait for Ombler’s inquiry to be finalised before briefing a journalist over the GCSB’s urgent warning. This made for a great Herald scoop and revealed material that should have been in the public domain earlier. But in my view, it has the capacity to taint the inquiry as Makhlouf is under an obligation of confidence while Ombler’s probe continues.”

Of course, it’s still possible that the whole scandal could be both a cockup and a conspiracy – which is nicely conveyed in Steve Braunias’ Secret diary of the Budget hack (paywalled).

Finally, for anyone who still thinks that the Government’s handling of the “Budget hack” is a non-story, Danyl Mclauchlan thinks this is probably because you’re a partisan hack yourself, and he implores the left to take seriously issues of accountability and ethics, rather than mindlessly cheering on your own side – see: Why calling the Treasury data scandal a ‘beltway issue’ is basically bollocks.

I made the case yesterday in my column, The Budget ‘hack’ scandal reveals big accountability problems, that there are some vitally important issues at stake involving the integrity of the political system. These boil down to the idea that we need a properly functioning democracy in which manipulation and deception are kept to a minimum, and government departments don’t become the politicised attack weapons of the Beehive used to undermine dissent or opposition.

Others feel the “Budget hack” saga is more of a distraction from the bread and butter issues that voters really care about. As John Key used to say in the storm of controversies about the GCSB misusing their powers, the Saudi Sheep scandal, or even Nicky Hager’s revelations about dirty politics, he was “relaxed” about these problems because his government focused instead on the “issues that matter” to ordinary people.

Some media and Government-partisans are now making the same sort of arguments about the difficulties that the Government is in over their handling of the so-called “Budget hack”. After all, the issues are rather abstract, high-level, and murky, in contrast to more “substantial” policy issues that have a more direct impact on peoples’ lives.

For the best argument in favour of ignoring the “Budget hack” story, see Bernard Hickey’s Newsroom column, in which he argues that “the ‘scandal’ is symptomatic of an accelerating and more extremist form of politics in a social media-driven age of snap judgments and tribal barracking” – see: Our political metabolic rate is way, way too fast.

Hickey’s column is a plea for people – including his own colleagues in the media – to focus less on the latest controversial “drama of ‘he said, he said’ and who was right and wrong, and who should resign” and instead concentrate on the substantial issues that are of immediate interest to voters. In this case, he wants less attention on the “Budget hack” and more on the details of housing, transport, and incomes in Grant Robertson’s Budget.

He makes the case that “news and commentary have ramped up into a blur of headlines, memes, click-bait, extreme views, abuse and a desperate game of trying to grab the attention of a distracted media and whip their own social media bubbles into a frenzy”.

This has been bad for democracy: “The end result is a disengaged public, policy paralysis, a lot of noise and not much light. I understand how it happened and I’ve been living in it now for a decade. A political firmament driven by social media, sound bites, cheap shots and one-day-wonder stories is not going to solve the problems of South Auckland or Tamaki. Everyone should take a chill pill, stop jumping to conclusions for a quick political hit and instead think beyond the beltway to the real world and long term concerns of citizens.”

Hickey’s column has identified valid concerns. There’s certainly an argument to be made that an “increased metabolic rate of politics has warped the public debate”. This point was also made by the new Sunday Star Times editor Tracy Watkins in her feature story, Madness on Molesworth Street – has politics reached peak crazy?

Watkins, who has just stepped down as Stuff’s political editor, describes the increased pace that she has observed working from Parliament: “Chaos is the new normal. Politics has turned into a crazy, churning roller coaster that no one seems to know how to stop. When press gallery journalists and others try to trace back the start of the madness, there is disagreement on the exact turning point. Was it the Kim Dotcom showdown, the teapot tapes election? Or was it when former prime minister John Key up-ended convention and everything we thought we knew about politics when he suddenly announced his intention to retire, while still at the height of his powers?”

I’m also referred to in her story, in terms of the difficulties the rapid churn of political news poses in putting together this Political Roundup column, the fact that the sheer volume of information makes it harder for the public to engage deeply with stories, and the danger of the “Budget hack” scandal appearing as just another example of deception, manipulation and game playing on both sides that will drive voters to be further alienated from the political process.

Similarly, Massey University political commentator Claire Robinson says: “It’s that gotcha politics that amuses people in Wellington but it doesn’t necessarily go beyond that.”

In a blog post, former Cabinet Minister Wyatt Creech declared that “The debate over Budgets in Wellington is the ultimate in beltway-ness” and the leak/hack story would get “little cut through to sentient beings outside the political realm” – see: Treasury troubles, strike money & growing grains of salt for polls. He says “The beltway game is of little importance to Joe or Jane Citizen waiting for an operation.”

Reportage of the scandal is also critiqued by RNZ’s Mediawatch specialist Colin Peacock who complains that “political reporters were making hyped-up claims of their own” to match those of the intensity of the politicians involved – see: Budget leak draws media away from our wellbeing.

For the must-read rejoinder to all of this – and particularly to Bernard Hickey’s piece – see Liam Hehir’s argument for taking the Budget “hack” and other such “beltway” scandals seriously: Sometimes with politics, you should sweat the small stuff.

Hehir begins by acknowledging the merits of the idea that Government scandals don’t necessarily make a big difference, and that some of the same points could have been made during the last National Government’s term: “For years during the Key era, I wrote about the way the dozens of little contretemps touted as ‘game changers’ were anything but since they didn’t really touch on people’s overall confidence in the government’s economic management. Those pieces were never heralded for their wisdom, quite naturally, since they argued against the always prophesied Watergating of John Key.”

But Hehir is careful to point out that just because something might seem “beltway” and not directly important to the average voter doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be covered. He draws a parallel with much of the opposition to Donald Trump’s integrity and governance in the US, and suggests that the likes of the Washington Post shouldn’t just “call off scrutinising the potential administrative sins of the Trump administration” because many in wider America aren’t interested in “Attorney-General William Barr’s refusal to release the full, unredacted Mueller report to Congress”.

Instead, Hehir argues, we need the media to focus on the minutiae of governance in order to keep the system clean: “Those who engage with political minutiae are a bit like the timberwolves of the political eco-system. Few people in the town think about what happens in the wooded hills on a day-to-day basis and when they do pay attention, pack-hunting might not be the prettiest thing to watch. Take the wolves out the food-chain, however, and the cascading effects will be felt soon enough. It won’t be long before you have deer stripping the bark from the trees in your backyard. If the smaller fiascos and debacles (over which reporters and commentators actually have some influence) are set to one side to allow more focus on the big, substantive issues (over which they really have none) then an invitation to vice into the country will occur.”

Similarly, for Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan this issue is an important one in determining whether Jacinda Ardern’s Government really is “the most open and transparent government in the history of New Zealand” – see: Jacinda Ardern’s Govt as brutal as any (paywalled).

Today’s Dominion Post editorial also makes the case for the importance of the issue, pointing out that the whole scandal involved Finance Minister Grant Robertson issuing “one of the most remarkable statements in recent New Zealand politics” when he backed up Treasury’s statement about “deliberately and systematically hacked” and linked his to National – see: Time for truth in the ‘hacking’ saga.

Most of the above debate is about how the Government and Treasury have handled the “Budget hack”. However, there are still questions about whether National should have even released the Budget information that it obtained in the first place.

For one of the best challenges to National’s decision, see Mark Longley’s Budget leak shows how shamefully out of touch modern politicians are. Here’s his main point: “While the Budget leak saga played out like a schoolyard argument over who kicked the ball through the window, did any of the taxpayer-paid politicians involved wonder what was best for New Zealand? Did Simon Bridges, who had details on Labour’s landmark Wellbeing Budget in his excited little hands, wonder if leaking those details was best for the voters who elected him? Or did he just spot the opportunity to land one on the opposition and screw the consequences?”

Not surprisingly, Government-aligned blog, The Standard also disapproved, saying “We see arguably the most important day of the year for the Government and thus for the public being hijacked and overshadowed by slanderous accusation and wild speculation, a Government in apparent disarray, and overall chaos that turns off most people from showing any interest in politics whatsoever. What is worse, the turmoil most likely will cause people to distrust politicians even more than before. A sad day for democracy in New Zealand and thank you again, National” – see: Same old dirty National.

For a similar critique, see Oscar Kightley’s Urban Dictionary’s apt noun to sum up National’s actions. He says “I can’t see what National really gained from it. They would have had a bigger hit, and held the moral high ground, if they’d just exposed the weakness in the Treasury security systems, but not released the information they had.”

But such “pontifications” don’t carry much weight with political journalist Stacey Kirk, who says: “The Treasury website is a public website. It exists for transparency’s sake, so to claim as the Government has, that National’s information on it was ‘unauthorised’ is grasping at straws. Whether it was a good move politically is a valid question and will likely be decided by a voter’s personal politics, but a few points bear considering. Budget day is notoriously difficult for any Opposition to be heard, and whether coverage of National in the days leading up to it was negative or positive, their strategy served them extremely well on the day” – see: Smartest men in the room? Pffft! Treasury stands alone on Budget bungle.

Finally, there are still some experts who maintain that National taking Budget secrets from the Treasury website was indeed still a “hack”, and for the best of these accounts, see Keith Ng’s Treasury hacking: The time I hacked WINZ, Lyndon Hood’s J’Hackuse, and Alexander Stronach’s The 2019 NZ Budget Leak: what actually happened.