Posts by Jan Rivers
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David Rutherford the Human Rights Commissioner last week spoke at a meeting at St Andrews in Wellington and he made an interesting point about proportionality related to surveillance and public safety.
I don't have his exact words but essentially his idea was that the government don't protect children from violence by having cameras in every home, nor does the government protect people from traffic accidents by having a 30kph traffic limit nationwide where there are dozens and hundreds of deaths each year respectively.
In contrast we have a situation where there have been no deaths of New Zealanders from home grown terrorism and yet we are faced with unspecified levels of data collection and surveillance.
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Speaker: David Fisher: The OIA arms race, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Needs
The kind of additional outsourcing the government appears to be planning using in the first place the Productivity Commission to investigate the 'market in social care' makes for an urgent need that not only government but those delivering government contracts should be funded (as well as mandated) to respond to OIA requests when using government funds to deliver public services.
(Bill English has said that he wants to see public services outsourced to private actors using a kind of Dragon's Den approach to cut costs and to 'target' delivery. )I'm confused here though because I have heard it said that in the care home sector that there is no transparency between DHB funding and care home costs (allowing care homes to plead poverty & get off the hook on paying above minimum wages) even though DHB's are in the register of organisations expected to comply.
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OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance, in reply to Sacha,
suggest adding how journalistic ethics are being acted out, reflected on and maintained in newsrooms.
Thanks. Good idea. There is some interesting information in the Transparency International 2013 report chapter on the media related to the lack of ethics training, a lack of clarity about codes of conduct, and the routine lack of disclosure of payments and in kind benefits by most journalists.
The recommendations state:Industry self-regulatory and regulatory bodies need to be more proactive in reviewing and promoting adherence to their integrity frameworks. The capacity for investigative journalism is lacking, and diversity is limited in terms of media
industry ownership and content -
OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Thanks Rob. I'll add this into the mix.
I'm unsure whether this could be a conventional research project. Wouldn't the polling methods, advisory organisations and spending be a closely guarded secret for all parties?
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OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Thanks Katharine,
I'm in touch with Action Station and we worked together on their democracy campaign before the election and we are in touch about this initiative but it's at a preliminary stage yet and I wanted to test the water on this to see whether it was an attractive idea. Similarly with ECO. ECO members were involved in the recent conference as organisers and speakers.
Thanks for your helpful thoughts on this.
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I was involved in a conference in early August. Democracy, ethics and the public good was held at St Andrews on the Terrace in Wellington.
The conference report is being finalised but conference delegates identified three topics as crucial for future work to re-strengthen our democracy. One is the quality of our media. http://www.publicgood.org.nz/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/securing-our-democracy.png
The intention is for St Andrews Trust and Public Good to be part of the work with others to scope a plan to improve our democracy. One small but useful initiative, signalled at the conference would be to crowdfund for summer research scholarships to investigate some of the issues that have arisen in the light of Dirty Politics. This would also need to find a sympathetic academic(s) to supervise the work and to frame up some ideas that would convert ideas into suitable research questions. Off the top of my head I had thought of the following topics but I’d welcome other suggestions.
Researching the relationship between right wing bloggers and the appearance of mainstream media stories.
The coverage by the media of parties and third parties investing significant amounts of money in the lead-up to the 2014 election. (In particular the contrast between the privately funded parties Conservatives and Internet-Mana whose treatment by the media was significantly different).
The coverage of stories that address collaborative action by citizens whether in coops, charities, NGOs or unions. These seem to be presented with increasing levels of disdain.I’d love to know the thoughts of commenters on whether this is the right approach but if you’d be interested in supporting this (or a similar effort) (crowd funding Keith perhaps!) I can be contacted on jan[dot]rivers<at>publicgood<dot>org{dot}nz
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I support the view that the real makers of meaningful news are at the margins notwithstanding the efforts of the Press and Campbell Live's coverage of Christchurch. This need not have been the case but the shape and texture of our media landscape is at least as much a result of political aseconomic decision making. In fact the quality of information available for all citizen's is a core democratic issue. Alain de Botton's The News: A users guide made a really good point that the news media ought to help us decide who we want to be as a nation and that far too much time is spent of trivia and simplistic solutions.
If a government were to close the public interest TV channel, fix the income of the publicly funded radio station for 6 years so that a re-organisation forces it to make the head of news redundant and subsume the news function into a 'content directorate' you might wonder about its commitment to hearing a variety of voices.
If it sold ALL of the available digital, wireless and analogue capacity into the private market so that there is no ability for low cost community or public broadcasting to broadcast nationwide causing the marginalisation of the community television network as a form you might wonder about its commitment to an informed democracy.
If it then made a big deal about the importance of content however delivered but refused to make any meaningful commitment to net neutrality you might wonder whether the government's marketisating of almost every aspect of our media landscape is entirely accidental.
When you notice that the head of the public radio station hasn't ruled out philanthropy but the government provides millions of dollars in a non-transparent way to one media outlet and provides all of New Zealand's publicly funded content to another you wonder whether it really values any role for a public news and information domain at all.
Christchurch is bearing the brunt of this marginalisation of the public voice and denigration of community activism. Hey but to echo Stephen's comment above we were advised by our PM that in WE ARE ALL OUR BROTHER'S KEEPER IN NEW ZEALAND. So hey. I guess we can all be relaxed about that.
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Speaker: TPP: Error Correction, in reply to Daniel Kalderimis,
"But the point Patrick was making is that Australia and New Zealand already have several such treaties in place."
To be fair Patrick didn't make this point in his article which was part of the problem with it.
He said that prosecutions could occur without the TPP already which is quite a different statement. The impression was that companies can somehow sue governments as of right and so we don't need to be unduly worried about a trade agreement that contains these provisions. -
I too was concerned at the inaccuracies in the opinion piece, and the plain lack of research.
Here are a few other points
Pattrick’s allegation that people concerned about the legislation are saying the TPP is a done deal. It was in fact the Minister himself who gave the strong impression late last year that the negotiations would be heading towards closure early in the New Year 2014. Commentators including both Jane Kelsey and Gordon Campbell were much more circumspect. Gordon’s article in late 2013 summarised earlier articles and provided numerous reasons why the deal was far from complete. Jane Kelsey wrote an Herald oped as early March 2013 identifying the uphill battle facing the USA in pulling together such an enormous agreement when President Obama’s democratic congress members do not want to provide fast track powers.
There is another important aspect to the lack of transparency. We are unaware of the domestic legislation that has possibly already been passed to bring New Zealand into alignment with the TPP’s provisions. Speculation about this might include the Fonterra trading in shares legislation, the GCSB and TICS legislation, legislation limiting the role of local government.( Interestingly the recent changes to shark-finning rules corresponded to an item in the leaked text for example) and so on but we will never know until the impacts hit. Under current government direction New Zealand is also becoming a signatory to international convention opening up government and local government tendering to full international competition which may be a likely precursor action. There has been little coverage of this but it is mentioned in a link: CTU briefing.
He also takes a swipe at the Labour shadow cabinet, alleging internal disagreements but fails to mention that Labour unsuccessfully sought a parliamentary motion, seeking the release of the text before it is signed. Labour’s press release related to the motion said
_“There may be benefits for New Zealand exporters in the agreement but without the release of the full text, we have no way of knowing their extent and nature”_
_“The Government must also reveal whether or not the text makes it more likely New Zealand could be sued by multi-national corporations”. _
Finally and this is in stark contrast to the TPP a sister EU/US trade negotiations (the TTIP) is currently taking place where 350 civil society representatives were involved in a recent round of the negotiations and the EU says it will release its draft investment chapter for consultation because of ‘unprecedented public concern’. Link: EU Commissioner Statement