This is why we have juries

Back in October 2022, Restore Passenger Rail hung banners across roads in Wellington to protest against the then-Labour government's weak climate change policy. The police responded by charging them not with the usual public order offences, but with "endangering transport", a crime with a maximum sentence of 14 years in jail. Effectively they were being treated like people who had blown up a bridge or sabotaged a plane, simply for dangling a banner.

It was obvious police over-reach, and today a jury in Wellington told the police to go fuck themselves, acquitting one defendant, and refusing to convict the other three. A retrial has been ordered on the latter, but the question now is whether the police will actually go ahead with it, or give up rather than run the risk of another jury sending a stronger message.

And this is ultimately why we have juries: so we can tell the state where to get off when they go overboard. Because no matter what the law says, we can always simply say "no".

The hikoi

Like everyone else (everyone who wasn't there, anyway), I've spent the morning watching the hikoi march on Parliament. The pictures are astounding: parliament grounds and the surrounding streets are full, and there are still people backed up along Lambton Quay. The police are estimating 35,000 people, and that's a floor rather than a ceiling.

The challenge this poses to the National government is clear. Faced with a crowd half this size at the foreshore and seabed hikoi in 2004, Helen Clark infamously dismissed them as "haters and wreckers". Labour lost the Māori seats as a result, and Clark was denied a majority, forcing her into the arms of NZ First for her last lame duck term. And while ACT's racist hardliners will say that no-one outside parliament today will be voting National, no, they won't be - not any more. But its also not just them. For everyone marching today, there are ten or more who don't live in Wellington and couldn't make it and who think that National's bill is an atrocity. And they're not all on the left. When people like Chris Finlayson and Jenny fucking Shipley are denouncing your bill as divisive and "inviting civil war", then its a sign that you've lost even the most boring of conservatives. Which is what happens when you attack the very foundations on which our state is built.

So what should National do? Simple: kill the bill, and quickly. Don't let Rimmer have his six month racist hate-fest of a select committee process; instead cut it short, vote it down, and tell Rimmer to go fuck himself. And if he threatens the government's confidence, then tell him to bring it on - because National is likely to do better out of an early election in those circumstances than it would otherwise.

But I think we all know that mediocre manager man Chris Luxon is too spineless and chickenshit to do anything. The man never stood up for anything in his life, beyond his own aggrandisement. And sadly, he's unlikely to start now.

A tipping point?

The National Party has been promising Dunedin - and the lower South Island - a new hospital since 2008. Despite those promises, the Key government did nothing during its nine years in office, and it was left to Labour to actually start the process in 2017. National promptly criticised them as moving too slow, and continued to promise Dunedin a new hospital. They repeated the promise during the 2023 election campaign. So it was a bit of a shock when on Thursday, they suddenly declared it was "unaffordable" and announced they weren't going to build it after all. And Dunedinites were Not Impressed: 35,000 of them - a quarter of the city - turned out to show their disagreement:

Dunedin's Octagon packed with people on Saturday calling for the government to keep its promise to build the new Dunedin Hospital with no cuts.

[...]

Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich called it the biggest protest in the city of about 134,000 in years.

"Today up to 35,000 people from across the South have come together on Dunedin's streets to express their outrage at proposed cuts to our new regional hospital," he said in a statement.

Its easy to see why: this is vital infrastructure, which serves half the South Island. Downgrading it will mean a permanent reduction in the quality of health care for people in the South. And since everyone needs hospitals at some stage in their life, this is going to hit very close to home for a huge number of people (including people in "safe" National seats in Otago and Southland). Calling it "unaffordable" while dishing out billions for landlord tax cuts, truck motorways in Auckland, or a mega-tunnel in Wellington solely so Luxon doesn't have to see people giving him the finger when he is driven from the airport is a fundamental misunderstanding of the public's priorities, a failure to read the room.

And its not just about Dunedin. With its mantra of "unaffordable" for everything outside Remuera, what National does to Dunedin could be coming to your city. If you live in Hastings, New Plymouth, or Palmerston North - or their catchment areas - you can just see National sharpening the knives for your local health system. And it will hurt you or someone you love.

This should be a tipping point for the government. When 40,000 people marched down Queen Street to oppose the Key government's plans to mine our national parks, the government got the message and backed down. But the first-term Key government wanted to be re-elected. And I'm not sure that that's actually true of the current government. Quite apart from ACT and NZ First, who do not care about anything other than their corrupt donors, Luxon's National Party is not the Key National Party. Key still had a fair whack of pragmatic conservatives (hence also their desire to seek coalition with Te Pāti Māori and work with them on the foreshore and seabed). But those have now been replaced with crazed ideological glue-sniffers and religious weirdos, who seem to want to wreck our society and burn shit to the ground as quickly as possible. I'm not sure that they will listen, even to mass protest. But if they don't, then they should be a one-term government. The only question is how much damage they will do before being defenestrated by the voters.

This matters

I've been watching the reports of the Māori-led protests all around the country this morning, seeing huge crowds not just in Auckland and Wellington and other major cities, but in much smaller places like Nelson and Whangārei. Its a significant show of opposition to the government, and hopefully they are looking at all this and thinking about what's going to happen when they introduce their racist bill to unilaterally redefine the Treaty and gut it from the law. And while they some of them might be laughing to their mates in the Koru club about how none of this matters because its not their voters protesting, the problem is that we can all see. Their voters can see how unpopular they are, and can see that it will get worse if the current agenda continues. And that's going to have an effect.

They can also see that these are perfectly orderly protests within Aotearoa's strongly democratic tradition, and that government Ministers calling them "absolutely illegal" is authoritarian, bullying, and undemocratic. While National swings that way, I don't think the centrist voters they rely on to win a majority do, so that's going to have an effect as well. The protests have made it clear that the government is nasty, racist, authoritarian, and undemocratic. And hopefully, this will cement the narrative that is already appearing in the polls that this will be a one-term regime.

National: tone deaf on climate change

School kids around the country are going on strike today to demand climate action (and the vote!) So naturally, Judith Collins has taken the opportunity to remind us that National is full of climate deniers who want to burn the planet:

Judith Collins says ending onshore oil and gas exploration would be "madness" - given the amount of coal that's been imported into New Zealand in recent years.

[...]

But Wood's comments outraged veteran Opposition MP, Judith Collins. Her National Party, of which she was the former leader, has promised to reverse the offshore ban.

"This is madness," Collins said. "We're importing all this coal out of Indonesia because we can't actually dig it here, because of you guys and your silly rules," she told Wood.

She said the Government wasn't "helping anybody by… shipping in coal out of Indonesia rather than using New Zealand coal".

[There is in fact no impediment to using New Zealand coal; polluters use imported coal because it is cheaper - I/S]

Judith Collins. Maureen Pugh. Andrew Bayly. And that's just the last couple of weeks. If you look back, you'll find National MPs are climate deniers from top to bottom. And if you search Hansard, you'll find them consistently voting against climate action (or sometimes voting for it, with a promise that they will gut it if ever elected). National is the party of climate arson, and always has been. And in the middle of a climate crisis, they simply cannot be trusted anywhere near government.

User-pays democracy for some, but not for others

Back in September, the Wellington City Council effectively killed the School Strike for Climate march by demanding they pay an unaffordable "traffic management fee" to a council crony. I was curious about the council's practice in this area, so I asked the obvious question about another high-profile protest: Destiny Church's August 23 hate-march. Did the council also demand they pay for "traffic management"? Of course not.

New Zealand Police requested that Fulton Hogan provided a Temporary Traffic Management (TTM). The TTM was then charged back to the Council via the CBD maintenance contract to the amount of $16,577.48. It is important to note that the TTM was requested by Police & in no way was there any request from the protest organisers, nor dialogue between the Council and the protest organisers regarding the TTM.

According to a subsequent email, the fee was then charged back to police. It is unclear if they actually paid.

There's an obvious followup here of how many other protests the council tried to charge fees, or whether they only target socially conscious kids who will be too scared to fight back. Meanwhile, the clear takeaway message is that if you're planning a protest in Wellington, don't talk to the council. Let the police handle traffic management. It's their job, after all, and if they choose to outsource it to a contractor, that's on them.

Wellington's user-pays "democracy"

In the face of a rising tide of climate protest, governments are cracking down. In the UK, the only-partly-elected government has effectivley banned protests, just like they did in the eighteenth century. In Wellington, they're more subtle, simply imposing unaffordable costs for "traffic management fees":

Wellington City Council left school strikers scrambling to raise $5000 for private traffic management services because the students wanted to march against Government climate inaction.

School Strike 4 Climate Wellington – a group of school-aged students – planned to walk to Parliament next Friday, but did not have the money or options to raise the cash. The council covered the costs for two previous marches.

The council’s actions infringe on their civil right to protest, the students argue.

But the council says it covered the costs twice before and explained to the strikers in June that it wouldn’t fund a third march.

It is of course perfectly legal to march without paying vig to the council's cronies (the council of course doesn't charge people itself - that would be too obvious. Instead, they demand protesters pay Fulton-Hogan, effectively giving them a private taxation right over democracy). But the council threatened a bunch of schoolkids with unspecified legal consequences if they exercised that right, and so as a result there won't be a march. Whether the Council's actions are consistent with the right to freedom of assembly afirmed in the BORA, or with its own climate emergency declaration is left as an exercise for the reader.

Meanwhile, if I was in Wellington, I'd be asking candidates for council what they think about this, and what they're going to do to protect democratic rights if they're elected. And if they support the council's decision, vote the bums out.

A howl of ugliness

Farmers are protesting today, invading cities with tractors and utes in protest against water and climate change policy. The core message of their "howl of protest" is meant to be "no farmers, no food" - which rather undermines their own case, given that 80% of the food they produce is exported. We could drive half the farmers in Aotearoa out of business, be massively environmentally better off, and still have more than enough cheese for everyone. But of course, they're also displaying their ugly side, with signs displaying racism, gun nuttery, more racism, and of course sexism, misogyny, and an obsession with dead political ideologies. And we haven't even got to the weird conspiracy theorist stuff yet!

Meanwhile, parts of Germany just received two months' rain in two days, causing massive, unexpected floods which have left 58 people dead. The US and Canada are experiencing another heatwave, and a huge chunk of the US is on fire again. And we may be about to get another freak rain and flooding event in Westland. In these circumstances, protesting against climate change policy is as irresponsible and sociopathic as being an antivaxxer. Oh, wait!

Basicly, this sort of messaging is likely to be... unpersuasive with urban Aotearoa. Where "unpersuasive" equals "as popular as a proverbial unpopular thing". Which means it is unlikely to be persuasive with the government either. Urban Aotearoa is where the votes have been for decades, and the first rule of government is "learn to count". Maybe farmers should learn that too?

Another climate strike

School Strike 4 Climate has announced another climate strike for April 9th, and invited everyone to join them in standing up against climate change. As before there will be events all over the country, and you can find yours on their strike map.

Personally, I'm nervous about protesting during a pandemic, even in level one. But this is important. If you think its worth the risk, and can psychologically stand a crowd, please turn out. The strength of government action may depend on how big a public showing we make.

100 Days 4 Action

School Strike 4 Climate is holding a "100 Days 4 Action" rally outside Parliament on the 26th:

The Youth of NZ will be standing up for climate action once again on January 26th outside of Parliament for School Strike 4 Climate NZ’s 100 Days 4 Action campaign rally.

“We believe it is vital to hold our new Labour-led government to account from the get-go. Like many, we have seen countless promises on policy, actions and goals in the past year - but we often question ourselves, what will they deliver? We are demanding real transformative action during this newly sworn-in government's first 100 days. It is time for real change, to protect our people, whenua & planet, for good.” Says SS4C NZ Coordinator and Media Representative, Ethan Reille

[...]

School Strike 4 Climate NZ will meet outside parliament at 12:00pm on January 26th. We plan to chant, advocate and present the demands we have collated from the voices of the public. We invite the public to arrive at 12:30pm approx, where we then aim to present our demands to Labour MP, Ginny Anderson and other representatives of the Government at 12:45 pm. Then we will finish with an open mic session, catered for the public, to allow all voices to be heard, while there is an opportunity.

The Climate Commission will present its draft emissions budgets and reduction plans on February 1st, so its important to speak up and demand action. That said, things are not exactly normal ATM. So, if you go, stay safe, wear a mask, scan in everywhere, and wash your hands.

Climate Change: Mark the date

Students will be striking for the climate again on Friday, September 4:

Students in Wellington are gearing up to strike from school this September 4th, to protest inaction on climate change. Their demands? That Government invests in a green COVID-19 response; that there is a just transition provided for workers in unsustainable industries, with retraining and new job opportunities made available; and that all who are able to vote, do so with the climate crisis in mind.

“It is so important that the Government’s post-Covid spending is done with a green, sustainable future in mind,” says SS4C Wellington. “We are currently at a crossroads in history; the path we take now will determine whether we have secure futures, or whether our adult lives are marked by a climate crisis, a series of tipping points, and a runaway greenhouse effect beyond human control.”

So far there's a Wellington event in Civic Square , which will be marching on Parliament from noon. No doubt there will be other events around the country. I encourage everyone to show their support for the students. Climate change is the defining issue for the future, and we are going to have to deal with it if we want that future to be liveable. The school strike movement's demands for a green rebuild and a just transition away from fossil fuels are a way to do that. But to get there, we need to convince the politicians to do it, and the way to do that is with numbers. So, back the school strike, and help ensure a decent future for New Zealand and the world.

America burns

Like everyone else, I've spent too much of the weekend watching the protests in America, and the increasingly brutal response to them. The overwhelming impression is of a nationwide police riot, as people speaking out against a murder and demanding change are beaten, gassed and shot by racist, militarised thugs outraged that people would question their unaccountability. And today it has got worse, with President Trump demanding that state governors "dominate" protesters, and now threatening to send in the military.

Let's be clear: using the military against protesters is what tyrants do. Its what China did in Tiananmen Square. Its what Uzbekistan did in Andijan. Its what Britain did at Peterloo. And when the President of the United States behaves like a tyrant, he deserves to be treated like one.

Rebelling in Wellington

Yesterday I went down to Wellington to participate in the Extinction Rebellion protest. Its part of the latest global wave of XR actions, with actions happening all over the world. Some of those protests are massively disruptive: in Canada, XR is blocking major bridges, stopping people from getting to work. In London, they're trying to shut down the centre of government. But New Zealand isn't either of those places, so the protest focused on MBIE, responsible for both energy policy and the promotion of fossil fuel extraction and use. It was a good-natured protest, which blocked off Stout Street (which is mostly empty anyway) and turned it into a street party, while blockading the entrances to MBIE and occasionally going for a little walk elsewhere. When MBIE decided to shut for the day, the protest turned its attention to ANZ - funders of major fossil fuel projects - and oil drilling company OMV, shutting down both. For a finale, they then blocked a major intersection. The only disturbing note was when some angry old white dude stormed into the middle of that, and tried to drag away one of the protesters sitting down in the middle of the road. They were rapidly taken away by police, but it was an unpleasant reminder of the denier demographic that is sadly still around. I had to bail shortly afterwards to catch my train home, so I missed the arrests, but it sounds like they had to work really hard to get the police to arrest them. As for those complaining about the "inconvenience" it all caused, firstly, the fate of the planet is a bit more important than your commute, and secondly, the people it is really inconvenient for are the people who got arrested.

Like the school strike, it was an uplifting experience. But it was definitely more confrontational in tactics. Was it effective? That depends on what you think the goals were. But I think its sent a warning to the government about what to expect if they don't do what is necessary on climate change. And hopefully they will listen and make further rebellion unnecessary.

Climate Change: Join the rebellion

In the wake of last Friday's climate strike, Peter McKenzie had an article in The Spinoff about protest strategies. The school strike movement is "polite" and cooperates with those in power because that's its kaupapa - its led by schoolkids who understandably don't want to risk arrest. But there's more than one way to protest, and as the climate crisis bites, then continued government inaction is likely to push people towards more confrontational styles of protest. The UK got a taste of that earlier in the year, when Extinction Rebellion shut down a chunk of central London just by sitting down and refusing to get up. The shutdown went on for ten days, despite over a thousand arrests (last night the same group sprayed 1800 litres of fake blood over the UK treasury). And on Monday, the same impolite protest tactics are coming to Wellington:

Monday morning commuters could face delays, with climate change activists set to "disrupt Wellington" with protest action in the central city from 7am.

Police, Wellington City Council and NZTA are gearing up in anticipation of the protest, which is part of what has been called a "global rebellion", with Wellington the first of more than 60 cities worldwide targeted for climate activist disruption.

[...]

Extinction Rebellion Wellington spokesperson Dr Sea Rotmann said the New Zealand branch would disrupt Wellington traffic with a street party and expected arrests.

Participants were expected to meet at Midland Park on Lambton Quay at 7am, before moving to "undisclosed locations".

And if you think this is going to be inconvenient, well, climate change is going to be pretty bloody inconvenient too.

If you care about the climate crisis, and want the government to act, join in. You don't need to volunteer to be arrested. I'm hoping to be there, and maybe I'll even have figured out how to live-tweet it by then.

Climate Change: Missing in action

On Friday, I joined 170,000 other New Zealanders and struck for the climate. Palmerston North's protest was an uplifting experience, with lots of adults turning out to support the kids. There's no headcount, but the back of the packed column was still coming round the corner while the front was waiting at the Fitzherbert lights, and its certainly the largest protest I've seen in Palmerston North.

On a national scale, the strikes were the largest protest in a generation, and one of the largest ever. In Wellington, 40,000 marched on Parliament - the only comparable protest I can think of is the foreshore and seabed hikoi. In Auckland, 80,000 marched. And that is simply enormous.

So what has been the response? Climate Change Minister James Shaw was crystal clear: we hear you and we need to do more (the Green Party was even clearer in accepting the strike's demands). Senior Labour MPs Grant Robertson and Andrew Little took a similar line (the Prime Minister was overseas at the time, so gets a pass on this one). As for the opposition? Simon Bridges? Nothing until today, when he's retweeting opposition to the strike. Climate change spokesperson Scott Simpson? Nothing. "Blue-green" Paula Bennett? Nothing. The closest I've seen to a response is agriculture spokesperson Todd Muller complaining about what the strikers were saying about farming. Instead, its wall-to-wall with their petty dispute with the Speaker over misleading use of Parliamentary footage. The biggest protest in a generation, and the opposition has basicly thrown a dead cat on the table to try and distract from the fact that they have nothing useful to say.

But a protest this large - 3.5% of the country - is not something politicians can ignore for long, at least not if they want to gain or retain power. Because for every person who marched, there were many more who agreed but stayed home. National is facing an energised voting bloc who will vote for the climate, and that bloc is only likely to grow. Either they need to accept the need for change, and credibly promise real policy (starting by supporting the Zero Carbon Bill and demanding tougher targets), or they'll end up not just on the wrong side of history, but the wrong side of the electorate.

Climate Change: Why I'm striking tomorrow

Tomorrow is the NZ leg of the global climate strike. Thousands of school students will be walking out of school to demand government action on climate change. They've asked adults to join them. And I'll be doing so.

Why? Because we're cooking the planet. Humanity has spewed enough carbon into the atmosphere to raise CO₂ levels to 408.7 ppm, incresing temperatures by 1.1 Celsius since pre-industrial times. And if we keep doing what we're doing, that will be over 500 ppm by 2050, and 750ppm by 2100, resulting in a temperature increase of 3 degrees or more. And the effects of that are catastrophic: war, famine, disease and death - the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And the more we emit, the worse it will get.

I have no children, so I don't have an animal cruelty metaphor in this fight. Except I do, because this shit will be coming down the pipeline during my expected lifetime. Hell, its already begun to happen. Climate change is going to make my life worse, has already seen me living in a shittier, crueller world. Even if I didn't give a rat's arse about future generations, that's a reason to fight it.

How do we fight it? We cut emissions to zero as quickly as possible, while planting a shitton of trees to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. We have the technology to do this. Old industries are going to have to die as part of this transition. Fuck them, they're killing us. The idea of endless, cancerous "growth" is going to have to die as well. But if we want things to stay the same - if we want the sort of lifestyle we have at present, or some semblance thereof - then things are going to have to change.

How do we get that change, the policy to make it happen? By turning out tomorrow, and the next time, and the next, in greater and greater numbers, until the chickenshits in the Beehive get the message that their political careers and ministerial limos and fat salaries are on the line, and we're not voting for them unless they fix this. And actually fix it, rather than lying about it while pandering to the dairy industry and the fossil fuel industry and the rest of the polluting scum who fund them. We need to threaten them with democratic oblivion until they understand that lip-service isn't enough.

So, I'll be at my local school strike tomorrow, to support the kids and protect their future and my own. I hope you'll be doing the same. We can do this. But only if enough of us stand up for a future.

Climate Change: Another reason to strike on Friday

[With apologies to Murray Ball. Again]

This Friday, thousands of school students all over New Zealand will be striking for government action on climate change. Thousands of adults will be joining them. But Winston Peters thinks they should all stay in school and that they can learn about climate change by "seeing what the Government is doing".

Well, they've watched, and they've seen, and I doubt they're impressed. Because what the government is doing is dragging its feet, chickening out, and grovelling to the sacred cow. The same old bullshit, in other words. And that bullshit is destroying their future. And that's not something they - or anyone - should passively accept.

But hey, if you think the government's actions are adequate to meet this challenge, by all means, stay home. If you don't, or you want them to do more, sooner, and more equitably, if you want them to make farmers pay their fucking way for once, then we'll see you on Friday.

Climate Change: Strike!

Today is the first day of the global climate strike. Led by schoolkids, people all around the world are going to protest to demand action on climate change. New Zealand isn't doing it till next Friday (join us!), but if you want to get active early, there's plenty to do in Wellington over the next week, starting with a climate assembly at the Aro Valley Community Centre at 17:30 tonight. And there'll be plenty to do after that as well. (There may be other stuff happening elsewhere in the country, but I haven't been paying attention to that).

In a democracy, a protest is a threat: a threat to de-elect politicians and make them get real jobs if they don't give in. The bigger the numbers, the bigger the threat. So, please turn up next Friday. The more people who demand action, the greater the push for the government to act, and the stronger its hand against its regressive coalition partner. And who knows: if there are enough people, maybe even National will stop and consider whether denial, foot-dragging, and pandering to polluters is a sensible strategy for political survival.

And in the meantime, the photos from Australia are pretty inspiring. I hope Scott Morrison and the rest of his coal-clique are thinking hard about their future.

People power wins the night

Last night the police dramatically incresed their numbers at Ihumātao, shoving over protestors and threatening them with arrest. Despite police talk about the need to maintain "public order" and prevent a "breach of the peace", there appeared to be absolutely no justification for this: the protest camp is, was, and always has been orderly and peaceful. The only people not being peaceful were the police.

The good news is that it ended happily: the protesters put out the call, people showed up, and the police were forced to leave, their dirty midnight attempt at eviction a failure. People power won.

Questions now need to be asked, not only of the police, but also of the Prime Minister. Does her commitment that the protesters will be allowed to remain mean nothing? Is she dealing in bad faith here? At the moment, it looks like she is - and her continual attempts to imply that the protesters are somehow violent only adds to this perception. She is going to pay a price for that at the ballot box next year.

A climate emergency in the UK

Two weeks ago, protestors from Extinction Rebellion seized four sites in London, causing major traffic disruption. They held those sites for over a week, despite more than a thousand arrests, while demanding that the UK parliament declare a climate emergency. And today, their parliament has done just that, becoming the first country in the world to do so:

MPs have passed a motion making the UK parliament the first in the world to declare an “environment and climate emergency”.

The symbolic move – recognising the urgency needed to combat the climate crisis – follows a wave of protests launched by the Extinction Rebellion strikers in recent weeks.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for the motion to “set off a wave of action from parliaments and governments around the globe”.

He added: “We pledge to work as closely as possible with countries that are serious about ending the climate catastrophe and make clear to US president Donald Trump that he cannot ignore international agreements and action on the climate crisis.”

Which sounds good, but it needs to be followed with concrete action to end fossil fuels, limit air travel, and sharply reduce emissions to zero - otherwise, it is just more hot air. Its do-able, but it requires a WW2-scale mobilisation to decarbonise the economy. Hopefully the UK has taken the first step towards that today.

Meanwhile, where's New Zealand? Wasn't climate change supposed to be "my generation's nuclear free moment"? But as we're seeing from the government's actual actions, that seems to have just been talk.