Posts by Dennis Frank
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Hard News: That escalated quickly ..., in reply to BenWilson,
Winston is still a basically this huge random element
Only random if you can't see that he's operating from the political center. Think of it as a binary switch (left/right). Winston discovered that occupancy of the middle ground allows you to choose the next govt. Since Dunne failed in his attempt to do the same thing, Winston's switch-controller position has been unassailable apart from when NZF failed to reach the MMP threshold. To give him credit for consistency, he's told us that the election outcome would determine whether he flicks the switch to left or right since MMP started. Thus operating as the agent of the majority of voters, he can seem principled in the trad democratic respect to many voters. And I'm not even a supporter of his...
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to Alfie,
Could just be incompetence, but don't forget Labour is part of our establishment. They've spent a century co-creating our governance structure with National. Their traditional function makes them part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I suspect the PCA supported the police decision on the basis that there was no available evidence to charge the MP with committing the crime. That's only credible if they both decided his confession could not be used in court as evidence. If their legal advisors gave them this opinion, fair enough eh?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but all these public servants are not contracted to serve the public. They serve the government, who don't want the offender to be made into a criminal by the system. That he confessed to committing the crime is irrelevant. Voters are mostly too thick to link cause & effect, so our sham democracy will persist. The moral corruptions spans the political divide. If this were not the truth, political parties would adopt a policy proposing public servants to be contracted to serve the public interest.
It's in our common interests for public servants to be constrained to make ethical decisions. So a clause in their employment contract that binds them into doing so also seems a good idea.
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There are WINZ employees who do a good job, then there are some who stuff up the lives of their clients due to their incompetence (normally blame the system), and those who get a reputation as Welfare Nazis may even be using the bureaucracy to discriminate against their clients. The whole department ought to be disestablished via switching to a suitable UBI. No leftist party with sufficient courage currently.
Re giving the rich an unnecessary payment, a suitable design for UBI could negate that criticism by defining it as a universal entitlement based on citizenship and adulthood, but including the right for the government to withold it from those who don't actually need it. The deciding criterion would be income from paid employment above the current cost of living, utilising the currently popular concept of a living wage. A bureaucracy would still be necessary to administer it, but smaller, and with a simpler job to do.
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Good question, with no apparent easy answers (no to your second & third questions).
Since the harm done is bringing parliament into disrepute, a rule that triggers an immediate parliamentary debate on whether an MP has done so could be an effective sanction - with a sufficiently high activation threshold to deter frivolous use by other MPs! I doubt the existing rule is suitable.
Since the Speaker appears to be part of the problem in our current instance, we can't rely on an impartial decision from that office - nor can we rely on the Parliamentary Service to function as a suitable trigger by means of a non-partisan decision. Would the Ombudsman have sufficient independent mana? Perhaps another public official with a track record in criminal law would be more authoritative -Solicitor General?
The rule could be best written to specify activation only on the basis of a complaint by a party leader to the decision-maker (Ombudsman or SG), followed by the published agreement of the official. I think that design would generate sufficient consensus that any published evidence merits activation (ie the resulting parliamentary debate won't be seen as a waste of time)...
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to BenWilson,
A change of government makes the problem seem irrelevant, doesn't solve it. When the structure of our government allows a member of parliament to retain their seat after breaking the law and lying to their local party colleagues to deny having done so, and lying to the media about what they told the Parliamentary Service, there's something fundamentally rotten in our democracy. That problem requires a permanent fix.
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to nzlemming,
Thanks for the in-depth clarification. Very helpful. My concern is the extent to which the public interest is being served by our governmental structure, and if it isn't (which appears proven in this case), then what law change or constitutional reform do we need to fix the problem.
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to nzlemming,
Yeah but the thing that isn't there is what I'm getting at. They were actually called public servants originally to propound the delusion that left/right governments operate to serve the public (rather than their own interests). Or do you have some other rationale for the name??
So are you saying a clause in their contract requires them to serve the government of the day? Just curious - I've never seen one. Because that would make them political partisans, whereas the public think they are being served by them. It's quite a popular delusion. It would make you quite correct to imply that PS did what they did to serve the Nats (because their employment contract requires that).
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to nzlemming,
Hmm. Your case for the PS seems plausible. Public servants aren't actually contracted to serve the public, right? I mean there's no clause in the employment contract they sign that requires them to do so. They just do so to the extent that they feel like it.
So I presume Palmer, on behalf of the Lange govt, designed a law that allows PS the discretion you describe. Thus left/right collusion facilitating cover-up of a crime by an MP. Colleagues of Palmer averse to melodrama may prefer we see it as a sin of omission. To a liberal, pretence of accountability suffices - no need to enforce it. To anti-establishment folks left/right doesn't matter when their political behaviour renders them sinners all.
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Blinglish keeps trying to frame the scandal as an employment dispute. Does this frame really separate it from the Nats, as he keeps suggesting? Notice how careful he has been to avoid specifying the complainant's employer. Notice how most of our media have yet to hone in on this crux of the issue.
Leftists have been accusing him of a cover-up as if he was her employer, because he cites the confidentiality agreement as the reason he's not involved, and indeed it seems to be why nobody can explore all the details of what happened - so it is an effective cover-up device. Note this from Melanie Reid: "A few days later she heard Barclay had bugged her office. A friend urged her to consult employment lawyer Kathryn Dalziel. Dickson says the Parliamentary Service (her employer) confirmed to Dalziel that Barclay had recordings of her conversations — conversations he was not a party to." So she's employed by PS, not by the National Party.
That also informs us that Barclay's recordings were illegal - the law only allows you to record conversations in which you participate. Newsroom reports that Dalziel negotiated the confidentiality agreement on behalf of Dickson with PS, so Jane Clifton writes "The Gore agent’s ensuing severance was arranged through the Parliamentary Service, with a sneaky top-up from the Prime Minister’s discretionary (and handily confidential) fund to atone for the taping. All perfectly legal – but arranged with continued secrecy in mind." So public funding of the cover-up was officially authorised by Parliamentary Services, to the relief of all Nats involved.
The government website informs us that the "Parliamentary Service, established in 1985, is headed by the General Manager who is accountable to the Speaker for the running of the Service." Since the beast was created by Labour, and the Labour leader this morning waxed eloquent about taking moral responsibility, how fast will the left force accountability for the moral corruption of PS upon the GM and Speaker? Given their track record I expect the historical left/right collusion to maintain the status quo - usually corruption in the public service has been covered up by punishing whistle-blowers. But maybe we'll get a pleasant surprise..
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Yeah but our media don't seem to have quite got their heads around the implications of the situation yet. The media reported Parliamentary Services denying that Barclay had informed them of something when he had already told the media he had told PS. Thus, official proof that Barclay is a liar is out there. Jacinda's assertion of the fact is entirely appropriate and I haven't noticed any other leftist leaders backing her with the same assertion. Slow learners.
Newsroom reported that Barclay told the Gore branch AGM that he hadn't done it, and told Bill English that he had done it. So now all those Nats present at the AGM know he's a proven liar. Blinglish thinks they can get away with keeping a proven liar on as MP until the election. One that had admitted committing a crime. Jane Clifton thinks he can get off the hook by claiming the recording was accidental.
The law operates via legal precedent. You can imagine this notion catching on in the criminal fraternity: "Didn't mean to shoot him, yer honour, I just happened to be pointing a gun at him with my finger on the trigger when it accidentally fired." If your research establishes that this defense has actually succeeded in court then you can take Jane seriously.
Can Blinglish keep a self-confessed criminal and twice-proven liar in parliament until the election? Only if folks in Aotearoa tolerate their parliament being brought into disrepute. This farce will only continue until the penny drops. Public pressure ought to be put on the four non-Nat MPs propping this govt up. It takes only the two Maori Party MPs or the other two to agree that an ethical stance in support of the public interest will save their political reputation, and the government will fall. Could happen next week. When his colleagues get a whiff of this likelihood, they'll force him to hit the eject button.