Let democracy never go out of print

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One of these days there’s going to be a debate about electronic publication of official records. Things like the Gazette, Hansard, the Statutes of New Zealand (and Reprinted Statutes and Bound Reprinted Statutes and Assent Legislation - see, I did pay attention in LAW 299). Because it’s a debate that will inevitably come, I’m going to put my opinion on record now so hopefully it’s still around when I’m old and changed.

Something is lost when information is digitised. Sure a lot is gained (CTRL+F is one of the greatest achievements of mankind), but there is still loss. There’s something about walking down a library aisle looking for a particular volume number, figuring out how the indexing and page numbering works, and then eventually tracking down the piece of text you need to find.

There’s also more data on offer in printed form. You can get an idea about the text by the condition of the spine of the volume; by the notes people have scribbled in the margins; by the stains and the tears in the pages. Here’s the Journals of the House of Representatives from around the War Years (1914-30) in the University of Auckland General Library:

Tonight I went looking for the records of the last time a New Zealand government was defeated on a no-confidence motion in the House. Thanks to Idiot/Savant (@norightturn on twitter) I already knew it’d happened in 1912. So I started with the Journals of the House of Representatives for 1912 and found this:

That led me to the Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) volume 158, which looks like this:

And in that volume, entered under 5 June 1912, I found the following. The words of a defeated Prime Minister, uttered just before 5am on Saturday 6 June 1912, at the conclusion of a lost confidence motion that had been debated throughout the night (indeed, for several days). They are gracious, but tired words:

I didn’t have time to read any of the debate other than the last few entries (it’s several hundred pages long), but that’s not the point of this post. The point is simply that the print medium is a wonderful thing. It should be celebrated.

The answer should be a simple one

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This is an email I sent to Maggie Barry, my local MP, asking for her position on marriage equality and how she would vote were the question to come before the House.

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Good evening Ms Barry,

In light of the increased attention that the issue of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples (“marriage equality”) has been receiving over the past week or so, I am writing to inquire as to your position on the matter. If the question does come before the House during this parliamentary term it will certainly be dealt with as a conscience matter, so I would very much appreciate it if you could share some of your thinking about how you would vote.

I appreciate there is a feeling amongst some that this is in some way a complicated question, so for the sake of clarity I will try for a moment to define with somewhat more precision exactly what I mean when I say “marriage equality.” To my mind, the issue is really a very simple one: it is nothing more or less than a redefinition of ‘marriage’ to include couples of any gender combination. Unless additional changes were made to adoption legislation, it follows that a redefinition of marriage in this way would open the door for same-sex couples (if married) to adopt children.

As for churches and the performance of marriage ceremonies, the change described above would have no effect. Churches already have the right to refuse to perform marriage ceremonies where appropriate, and I do not anticipate a move to equal availability of marriage having any immediate impact on that right.

Having asked for your position on this question, it is only polite of me to offer an explanation of mine (inasmuch as it is not already quite clear).

You will be familiar with the difficulties that many LGBTQ youth face as they begin to come to terms with their sexuality in a world in which heteronormativity is everywhere. If you have not already been introduced to them, I would encourage you to take a moment to take a look at some of the excellent work that the Trevor Project does in the United States, and the worldwide It Gets Better campaign. They are just a few of the initiatives aimed at helping LBGTQ youth feel like their lives have value; that they are a part of society and that they have just as much of a right to be happy as their straight peers. I’m sure you can appreciate how much harder this task is made when one of the dominant institutions of social order remains closed to them.

Civil Unions were a great step towards recognition of full legal rights for same-sex couples. But in the campaign for equality and dignity they are a dismal failure. The civil rights movement has taught us that separate but equal is an offensive impossibility. LGBTQ members of our society are entitled to sit at the front of the bus.

There are of course individuals in our society who, for whatever reason, don’t support equal rights for same-sex couples to marry. They are entitled to their opinion, but they are not entitled to deny the rights of LGBTQ individuals to the dignity and respect they deserve. Reduced to its consequentialist core, that is what this issue is about. The status quo denies same-sex couples the dignity of their heterosexual counterparts. Granting equal marriage rights to same-sex couples denies heterosexual couples nothing. The answer should be a simple one.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your reply.

Brendon Steen
Forrest Hill, North Shore

Student Loan & Allowance Changes – Questions

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Following Steven Joyce’s announcement (video) last week of changes to Student Loan repayment rates and Student Allowance eligibility, a number of important questions remain unanswered. Hayden (@h_yd_n), on his blog Brown Town, read Joyce’s speech notes and figured out that the minister apparently can’t do simple maths.

It seems that student allowances will not be cut to four years, as Joyce said in his announcement, but rather that the existing 200 weeks of allowance will only be available for the first 200 weeks of study.

While this clearly means availability of student allowances for postgraduate study is very much reduced, Joyce went further in his response to a question from Grant Robertson in the House yesterday, where he said: “The master’s and PhD degrees are no longer eligible” (third supplementary). He also confirmed that availability remains at 200 weeks, not the four years as he said in the original announcement (primary answer).

As for the changes to loan repayment rates, Joyce was interviewed (mp3 audio) last Thursday on Radio New Zealand’s Checkpoint programme, during which the following exchange took place:

MW: Why not start making people pay it back when they’re earning a lot more, but start at a much higher percentage?

SJ: Well I think you could make that judgement, and I know people make the comparison about Australia, and some people are saying we should follow the Australia example. Well the Australians of course have CPI interest on student loans as well, and we don’t have that here. But the point is that we are getting to reinvest that money into the system which I think is important in terms of actually continuing to strengthen our tertiary system going forward.

MW: Reinvesting where?

As far as I can tell, the minister has still not responded to this question in any subsequent interview. Holly Walker put it to the Minister in her third supplementary to Question 10 in the House yesterday, getting this response:

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The difficulty with just cherry-picking one part of another country’s scheme is that you say “Well, on the one hand we want to keep all the good parts of our scheme, and on the other hand we want to keep the other country’s scheme.”

Hon Trevor Mallard: What’s wrong with that?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, if you have got limitless money, of course that is a very good idea, but if you have not got limitless money, that is not a good idea. If the member wanted to copy the Australian scheme, then you would have to actually CPI-adjust the value of the student loans for every student each year by 3 percent. You also would have to ban borrowing for living costs. My understanding is the member wants to make the current scheme here even more generous, and I would say that would just be fiscally irresponsible in the current climate.

That, of course, is hardly an answer to the question.

Holly Walker also has three questions for written answer (here, here and here) to the minister addressing this. Responses are due by 16 May.

Update: Answers to those written questions won’t be online until Monday, but here they are from Holly Walker:

Unhelpful and, I would say, downright rude from the Minister.

To set a precedent for international justice

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I didn’t really want to blog about this. I’m still not sure this is a good idea. But people have started inviting me to #KONY2012 events on facebook, and I think that necessitates some sort of response. This is aimed at those people, and is a very brief outline of some of the questions that I think we should be asking.

(1) White people cannot save Africa. Moreover, white people should not save Africa. Blame for the state of the developing world can be laid almost exclusively at the feet of white colonialist empires. We have done enough damage. Yes, we should assist where called upon to do so. But if a lasting African solution is to be found it must be a truly African solution. Not a guns-blazing white-knight western crusade to civilise the savages.

(2) Most things are complicated, and this is probably one of them. There are valid questions to be asked about exactly how one goes about removing a figure like Joseph Kony. His greatest crime is his use of child soliders – but that is also his greatest protection. If taking him out puts the lives of children at risk, then we open the door to an immensely complicated question of political morality. One can ask what will be gained from the exercise, but to do so one first must establish what the motivations for it are. Are we trying to punish Kony for what he has done, or are we trying to prevent atrocities from continuing? If punishment is the goal, then the solution is probably a simple one. But if prevention is the prevailing consideration then there is surely a lot more to the issue than simply removing a figurehead – what will come next? Until we know, or can make reasonable guesses at, the answers to that question, we should wait.

(3) Having said that; some things can be simple. Kony is an evil man. What he does deserves to be reviled by anyone who considers themselves an enlightened member of humanity (whether by virtue of the colour of their skin or otherwise). If removing him will not make the situation any worse, then by all means go ahead. The risk of course is that any action risks a multitude of unforseen consequences.

(4) It’s good that we’re talking about this. People deride social media causes as being ineffectual shadows of real political action, but I disagree. Sure, it’d be great if we all downed tools, jumped on boats and sailed off to the far reaches of the world to bring harmony to all peoples. But we’re not going to do that. Talking and sharing and learning and conversing are all actions with their own power. To know and to understand is to be powerful in and of itself.

(5) Sharing a video on facebook, twitter, tumblr or whatever is one thing. Engaging in a conversation inspired by that video is a further thing. But giving money to the people who made the video is something else. I’m not going to tell you what you do with your money – but I will tell you to think about it. When you buy a pair of shoes, there are a lot of styles on offer and you pick the one you like the most. Do the same with charities.

(6) Be careful what you wish for. I understand the Invisible Children video calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony. But what will that entail? Do you want to see another African country playing host to a Western military force? What level of force is acceptable to you? Will it stop at his arrest? Should it? As with all things, the question of what to do about a problem must be preceded by a consideration of what the problem itself actually is, and what the desirable alternative should look like. Only then can you measure the merits of the proposed action.

Having said all of that, the most important thing to say is: respect the rights of others to care. We are all moral agents and we all have the right to make up our own minds and have our decisions respected. I’m not trying to tell you what to think – merely trying to increase the respect owed to your decision.

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Further Reading:

  • The KONY 2012 video, produced by Invisible Children.
  • The Joseph Kony Wikipedia page.
  • A blog post by New Zealand’s very own Henry Cooke of stuff.co.nz fame.
  • A blog post by Grant Oyston, of visiblechildren.tumblr.com, based in Canada.
  • A blog post by Daniel Solomon, director of STAND (a student political organisation at Georgetown).
  • The USAID country profile for Uganda.
  • A blog post by Siena Anstis, a law student/researcher from Canada.
  • This article from the Guardian about concerns surrounding Invisible Children and their work.
  • This article by Cord Jefferson, senior editor at Good magazine about the “moral ambiguity of the modern world.”

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The title to this post comes from the introductory blurb provided by Invisible Children for their video KONY 2012.

Disclaimer: I own an Invisible Children t-shirt. I bought it years ago ’cause it looks cool.

All images in this post (including the banner at the top of the page) are screenshots from the KONY 2012 video.

An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods

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The title to this post is a quote attributed to Ambrose Bierce, a turn-of-the-century American journalist/writer. It popped up on my twitter feed just now courtesy of David Farrar (@dpfdpf). As articulated in my intricately sophisticated reply, it’s clearly wrong:

It is precisely this misconception of elections by both voters and politicians as what I have previously called ombibus referenda (specifically on tax and transfer policy) that contributes to the feeling of malaise that many have towards the less than inspiring political discursive process in this country (and many others, for that matter).

Yes, elections are about how much tax should be levied and what it should be applied to. But they are also about so much more than that.

They are about culture and identity and foreign policy. Issues like our nuclear policy; our role in foreign wars (Vietnam, Iraq, for example); our diplomatic relationship with countries like Fiji; our policies on diversity and civil rights. These all contribute to the culture of our nation and whether or not it accurately reflects the values and aspirations of its people.

They are about race relations and the character of Government in a country which is now said to have been founded on partnership and is increasingly becoming home to a wide variety of people from any number of quite different cultural backgrounds.

They are about the power struggle between sovereign governments and international economic forces. They are about the power struggle between sovereign governments and international legal frameworks. They are about the power struggle between us and them and to what extent we want to be a part of the greater them or stand apart as a unique us.

They are about the right to marriage equality. Yes, who you vote for in an election could determine who you have a recognised right to love.*

They are about the way we order our society down to the deepest level. Right now the Law Commission is discussing the role of juries in our legal system. Anyone who thinks that such a debate boils down to the way the Government spends tax revenue is fundamentally missing the point.

That point of course is that elections, in a country like ours, are supposed to be about representative democracy: the idea that once every three years we as a people elect a group of representatives to govern as we would govern, had we the time or capacity. To see that simply as a choice of allocation of tax revenue is deeply saddening.

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* Yes, I know I’m pushing it a bit here. Couldn’t help it though.

Every means of interesting subscribers

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Amidst all the Christchurch memorial conversation doing the rounds on the internet today, a retweet by Russell Brown caught my attention and led me to discover that Christchurch City Libraries have a Flickr account.

The tributes and memorials album (shown above) is a lovely example of the role of libraries.

In a world where the quantity of information is increasing at an unimaginable rate, the task of collating, categorising and archiving that information becomes more important by the day.

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The title to this post comes from an account of plans to develop the Public Library by newly-appointed librarian Ernest John Bell, published in The Press, 24 June 1913, page 2. Found using the supremely excellent Papers Past database managed by the National Library of New Zealand.

Taxpayers provide a lot of support

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I’m not going to link to a media report about the issue around funding for Mojo Mathers MP’s need for additional assistance in order to fully participate in the business of the House to which she has been democratically elected. Because they’re all rubbish. Instead I’ll link to a few primary sources: first the audio of Speaker Lockwood Smith’s press conference this afternoon, promptly uploaded by Scoop. And second a segment on Close Up featuring interviews with Ms Mathers and the Speaker.

I’m going to deal with this a bit differently to the commentary I’ve been hearing so far. I’ll start with what I think is a rational (but largely baseless) argument as to why the Speaker is wrong, and then I’ll talk about the principles involved and what I think of them.

First up, some important facts that we need to get straight. The first two are the most critical, because they are being actively misrepresented by the media who should know better (see particularly the ridiculous poll question in the Close Up show linked above).

  1. Mojo Mathers is not being asked to pay for anything. The Green Party is not being asked to pay for anything. What is being suggested by the Speaker is that Ms Mathers should fund the support that she requires using existing funds made available to members.
  2. The issue is not about technology. Parliamentary Services and the Office of the Clerk are doing everything they can to make the necessary technology available. What Ms Mathers requires is a human being to take real-time notes during sittings of the House and Select Committees.
  3. According to the Speaker, the provision of technology poses no financial difficulties because it can be funded by Parliamentary Services and the Clerk out of their existing budgets. It appears that he considers such spending to be comparable to the modifications that would presumably be required were a physically disabled member to be elected to the House.
  4. The distinction, again according to the Speaker, is between physical and technological expenditure, and labour expenditure. It is the Speaker’s view that physical/technological requirements are to be funded centrally, while labour costs  are part of “member support” and therefore must come out of existing budgets provided for that purpose.

I think, from those four points alone, that the issue is very clear. I don’t know what the definitions of the “member support” and (in the absence of a better term) “capital expenditure” appropriations are. But if the basis of the latter has something to do with ensuring the ability of members to actively and constructively participate in the business of the House (which, if it doesn’t, it should), then clearly the Speaker has failed to categorise the required expenditure correctly.

The line between “member support” costs and the costs that are met by Parliamentary Services and the Office of the Clerk is clearly a difficult one. After all, the roles of Parliamentary Services and the Office of the Clerk are of course to support members. Te Reo translation is provided to support members. Whoever refills the water jugs does so in order to support members. Photocopying, bell ringing, message carrying, and so on are all undertaken to support members in their participation in the business of the House.

It seems to me that what separates those forms of support and the service that Ms Mathers requires is their level of particularity. That is to say, how many members benefit from the service. However this distinction collapses when we see that Parliamentary Services and the Office of the Clerk are happy to fund significant projects that benefit only one member. All that appears to be left is an arbitrary distinction between what could be called capex and opex.

All of that is of course a very roundabout way of saying simply that Parliamentary Services and/or the Office of the Clerk are probably quite free to fund the service that Ms Mathers requires. There is no essential distinction between paying someone to type into a laptop, and buying that laptop in the first place.

Even if that I’m wrong about all of that (and I probably am – it’s not like I bothered to research any of it), then I’m pretty sure I’m right when it comes to the principle of the matter. Considering basically everyone I’ve been hearing from agrees with me, I’m going to go ahead and say I’m definitely right.

First, I support everything Ms Mathers said in the interview linked to above.

Second, there is no defensible reason why this issue hasn’t been addressed long before today. Ms Mathers was comfortably elected on the Green Party list on the evening of the general election of 26 November 2011. It’s now half way through February 2012. It doesn’t take three months to sit down and discuss this stuff. I don’t know who we should blame for this, but someone definitely needs blaming.

Third, we’re talking about a maximum cost of $30,000. I’m not going to tell you how many rugby fields or Olympic swimming pools that’s equivalent to, but it’s certainly not very many. Democracy and equality and compassion and fairness and good old human decency are worth a damn lot more than that.

Fourth, Ms Mathers did a phenomenally brave thing on the day she put her name forward as a candidate for Parliament. I’m sure she knew that it wouldn’t be easy, and that her disability would lead her always down the hardest path. But I hope she didn’t think that the first major obstacle she would face would be the very House she was elected to. I hope she thought that they at least, her Parliamentary colleagues, would do all they could to allow her to take her place among them. I hope she was not so cynical as to expect this reception. I certainly wasn’t.

And finally, this:

We’re simply saying the sensible thing to do, where this involves a separate appropriation, is see if there are enough resources within Parliament supporting Members of Parliament – enough tax payers’ money – to provide the support Mojo needs.

Not from Dr Smith the National Party MP, but from Dr The Rt Hon Lockwood Smith, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

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The title to this post comes from the Speaker’s comments in the Close Up interview above, shortly after the passage quoted.

In this day and age

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I occasionally wonder what my online existence must look like from the point of view of someone who ‘doesn’t get it’. What with talk of potential employers snooping around Facebook and Google to find out everything they can about you, who doesn’t pause and think about it every now and then. Of course I soon get over it. I figure if they’re smart enough to know where to look then they’re smart enough to understand the context.

But just now someone posted this story on facebook about an Irish guy who was denied entry into America after Homeland Security found what were, to them, some alarming tweets about his intentions while in their fine country. Of principal concern to the defenders of the realm appear to be tweets about the man’s plan to “destroy” America and “dig up” Marilyn Monroe.

Anyone with even an inkling of intelligence could see immediately from the context that he was being far from literal when he tweeted those things. The Marilyn Monroe comment is apparently a Family Guy reference, of all things (one which I’m happy to report I don’t understand).

What concerns me is that clearly the kinds of people doing the snooping have absolutely no interest in understanding the context of messages like these. Which means that, really, they have no interest in understanding the messages themselves. It is quite simply impossible to glean any meaningful understanding from most tweets without some knowledge of the way the technology works, and the culture that exists within it. The fact that Homeland Security apparently don’t understand this suggests a dangerous level of incompetence on their part.

Intelligence gathering is all these people do. They gather data and interpret it in order to establish intentions, motivations, etc. If even they are so objectively bad at it, then one can only imagine what the average person who ‘doesn’t get it’ sees when they start snooping around on the internet.

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The title to this post comes from this comment on the San Francisco Chroncile‘s blog about the story. Truly frightening.

We’re still here

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The following is an email I sent to Mayor Len Brown’s office this evening expressing my support for the Auckland Council’s attempts to have the Occupy Auckland protesters removed from Aotea Square:

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Len Brown, Mayor of Auckland
len.brown@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Re: The Occupation of Aotea Square

Mr Brown,

I write in support of your Council’s efforts to have the protesters currently occupying Aotea Square in the CBD (“the occupiers”) peacefully and reasonably removed from the Square.

The original march on 15 October 2011 was inspiring, as was the General Assembly held in Aotea Square that afternoon attended by (reportedly) over 2,000 citizens of Auckland. The issues that many members of the movement sought to highlight are all very real. Concerns including the increasing power of financial institutions over people and governments; the increasing levels of economic inequality throughout the capitalist democracies; and the apparent inability of our elected representatives to effectively address these issues are all concerns that I share with many of the occupiers.

I was also very interested in the way in which the Council would balance the rights of the occupiers accorded to them by the Bill of Rights Act, and the interests and concerns of members of the community who did not support the occupation. It is for this reason that I took a keen interest in the Council’s injunction application in the District Court, the outcome of which I thought (at the time) to be somewhat disappointing.

It has been my belief from the beginning that as long as the occupiers could credibly demonstrate that a meaningful nexus between occupation and expression existed, the Bill of Rights Act, notwithstanding Council bylaws or trespass notices, protected their activities. It appears that the Police to some extent shared my view (and perhaps continue to do so).

For the first month or so of the occupation that nexus remained strong. The occupiers established a welcome tent for liaising with the public, they had a media tent for facilitating communication, “learn@occupyauckland” sessions were held to discuss a range of issues relevant to the occupier’s concerns, and various other events and activities were arranged utilising the location of the occupation to attract maximum attention. Following the instigation of court proceedings, however, these activities have waned to the point where nothing of any note at all has happened at the occupation for weeks now. The act of occupation has ceased to be relevant to the exercise of any right to expression.

More significantly, there has been precious little expression of any form at all for the past few weeks. The occupation has become consumed by its desire to persist and in the process has forgotten what it was supposed to be all about: driving a wider discussion about income inequality, financial market regulation, and so on. To put it rather bluntly, one has to have something to say if one expects others to protect their right to say it. The only thing the occupation has had to say of late is “we’re still here.” Frankly, that doesn’t cut it.

From the beginning it was unrealistic to expect the occupation to “achieve anything” in the sense of actual policy outcomes. Instead, the measure of success of the occupation has been its ability to raise awareness of the issues that it seeks to address and influence a wider discourse about the role of governments, financial institutions and finance capital in our society. In that respect, anything that was going to be achieved has been achieved already. From this point on, the continued presence of the occupation in Aotea Square serves only to detract from its past achievements.

It is for these reasons that I support the Council’s intention to remove the occupiers as soon as reasonably possible.

However I stress that any action taken by the Council must continue to carefully consider the rights of the occupiers accorded to them by the Bill of Rights Act. Wherever there is doubt, I would urge caution on the part of the Council and its officers. I have been impressed by the approach taken by the Police in relation to the occupation so far, and would strongly encourage your Council to follow their lead and adopt a measured and restrained approach.

Yours sincerely,

Brendon Steen

This guy’s not going to harm anyone else

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The Herald and Stuff have both picked up this AP story today about a US man who has been sentenced to 560 years in prison for child abuse:

People are going to read this and think well done, the police have done their jobs and society is now safe from this dangerous predator.

But this isn’t well done. Eight boys were abused by this man. This doesn’t change that (whatever Detective Steve Berry might have to say about “closure”). Hundreds more boys and girls will be abused by men (and women) just like this one in the year to come. This doesn’t change that.

This is not a mark of how good we are as a society at protecting our communities and our children from abuse – it is exactly the opposite.

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The title to this post comes from the final line in the article linked above and is a comment from Detective Steve Berry, Mesa Police.