0 Where is the outrage?

Clayton Cosgrove has a reputation of being a bit of a brawler in the House. But there are times when he over-steps the mark.

Yesterday was one such time; check out how he began his speech in the Second Reading debate for the West Coast Wind-Blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill:

Not content with calling Dr Nick Smith "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" once, Cosgrove made sure he hit his target by repeating the slur.

Younger readers may wonder what the fuss is about. This might help:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) is a novel written by Ken Kesey. Set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative serves as a study of the institutional processes and the human mind as well as a critique of behaviorism and a celebration of humanistic principles. Published in 1962, the novel was adapted into a Broadway play by Dale Wasserman in 1963. Bo Goldman adapted the novel for the 1975 film directed by Miloš Forman, which won five Academy Awards.
Time Magazine included the novel in its "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005" list.^[2]

It's no secret that in the past, Dr Smith has had mental health and stress issues. It's also no secret that in the past, he has been the target of personal attacks from a number of MP's who should know better. Claire Trevett from the Herald reported this in 2007:

Ongoing attacks about MP Nick Smith's mental health - including Winston Peters calling him a "loony tune" and to "take your pills before you come down to the House" - have been criticised by mental health advocates, but Dr Smith's opponents say he gets what he asks for.
The Mental Health Foundation says it is disappointed at the attacks over Dr Smith's mental health in Parliament this week - attacks which have been an ongoing theme since he went on stress leave in 2004 after being deposed as newly appointed deputy leader of the National Party following Don Brash's election as leader.
During the exchanges, Mr Peters described Dr Smith as looking "slightly zany and slightly nutty", and, the next day, saying: "Listen, loony tune, take control of yourself. Take your pills before you come down to the House, not halfway through question time."
The exchanges were initially prompted by Dr Smith telling Mr Peters to "stop living in the past, old man" and later asking if NZ First had paid back the money it overspent at the last election.
Such calls have been a repeated refrain since 2004 - but both parties reined in their members' comments after personal comments went overboard in 2005.
However, lately the comments and snipes from Labour MPs have increased again.

Hansard records reveal references since 2005 include Annette King referring to Dr Smith as "cracked", both Ms King and Trevor Mallard telling him to "take his pills", Phil Goff suggesting he take his "medication", Clayton Cosgrove referring to him as "troppo" and Michael Cullen making references such as "long before Dr Smith needed his pills", and "big, brave Dr Smith will take his pills".
Dr Smith did not rise to Mr Peters' bait in Parliament, but when the Herald approached him yesterday said the statements were "personally derogatory and untrue".

Unsurprisingly, there has been no condemnation of Clayton Cosgrove from anyone within Labour. Nor have the Greens bothered to say anything, which IS a surprise; you'd think that someone from the Greens would have risen to Dr Smith's defence.

Of course Mr Cosgrove is no novice in the art of personal abuse. He was one of those Labour members who referred to Christopher Finlayson as "Tinkerbell". On that occasion, Green MP Kevin Hague did publicly condemn Cosgrove:

Labour's Trevor Mallard says he shouldn't have called Attorney-General Chris Finlayson "Tinkerbell'' but denies there is problem with homophobia in the party.
ACT's Wellington central candidate Stephen Whittington yesterday accused openly gay Labour MPs Grant Robertson and Charles Chauvel of covering up prejudice among their caucus.
Hutt South MP Mr Mallard likened Mr Finlayson to the Peter Pan fairy during a parliamentary debate in October 2009. Waimakariri MP Clayton Cosgrove twice called Mr Finlayson Tinkerbell in the House in July 2009.
Mr Mallard said last night: ``I certainly don't think I'm homophobic. It's a comment that was probably unfortunate and if I'd thought carefully I wouldn't have made it.''
But he wouldn't apologise. ``It was part of a series of two way offensive comments and I got quite a lot more than I received.''
It was "ridiculous'' to suggest Mr Cosgrove was anti-gay, he said. Mr Cosgrove did not respond to a request for comment.
The allegations flew after a Rainbow meeting in Wellington on Wednesday night. Mr Whittington believes both Labour MPs were denying the Tinkerbell remarks were ever made.
"I felt that they had questioned my credibility in a public forum and denied there were aspects of their party who criticised and abused MPs for being homosexual,'' he said. "I didn't think that was acceptable.''
Both Mr Robertson and Mr Mallard believe Mr Whittington was trying to divert attention from homophobic comments made by ACT's Epsom candidate John Banks a number of years ago.
"He was asked a question about John Banks. In his response, he said there are homophobic Labour MPs,'' Mr Robertson said. ``I don't believe there are.''
He added: "Of course I don't think it's a good thing for Labour MPs to call Chris Finlayson Tinkerbell. It's silly statement...With all due respect, [to] Stephen, I suspect I know more about homophobia than he does.''
Green MP Kevin Hague, who was also at the meeting, backed Mr Whittington's version of events. "My sense was that Charles and Grant were denying that Mallard and Cosgrove had abused Chris Finlayson in a homophobic way.
"The impression I had was that they were denying that he said it.''

Parliament is a robust place, but there is no excuse for abusive comments such as the one Cosgrove made yesterday. Picking on someone because they have had mental health issues is a form of workplace bullying, and there is no place for it in the Parliament.

This is a personal issue for us. As regular readers are probably aware, we have had our own mental health issues over the years. Everything is good at the moment, but we know from experience that things can change very quickly.

Clayton Cosgrove is a senior Labour MP who, if Labour became the Government, would doubtless become a senior Minister. But he is also a serial offender in the abuse stakes, and we are disappointed (but not surprised) that none of his colleagues told him to pull his head in last evening. His abuse did him and his party little credit.

0 What will the Greens oppose next?

We blogged yesterday about the Green Party having voted against the Vulnerable Children Bill. We do note however that not all Green MP's voted, and wonder if there was dissension in the ranks.

Parliament will go into urgency next week, and once again, the Greens will oppose a Government measure. Nick Smith explains the proposed legislation:

Government to allow recovery of West Coast windfall timber

Special legislation is to be passed by Parliament to enable the recovery of high value native timber blown over in Cyclone Ita on West Coast public conservation land, Dr Nick Smith announced today.
“We need to take a pragmatic approach and enable the timber to be recovered where it can be done so safely and with minimal environmental impact. This initiative will provide welcome jobs and economic opportunities for the West Coast at a difficult time, and will provide a financial return to DOC that can be reinvested in conservation work,” Dr Smith says.
Cyclone Ita hit the West Coast on 17 April this year and caused the worst windfall damage in generations, felling an estimated 20,000 hectares of forest and causing significant damage to a further 200,000 hectares.
The West Coast Windblown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill confines the recovery of useable wood to areas affected by Cyclone Ita and specifically excludes World Heritage Areas, national parks, ecological areas and the white heron sanctuary reserve at Whataroa. Authorisations are only to be issued where the Department’s Director-General is satisfied the proposed method of removing the timber is safe for workers and the public, and minimises environmental impacts. The recovery of timber is limited until 1 July 2019 when the Bill expires. All revenue from royalties will go to the Department of Conservation.
“A law change is needed because the current Conservation Act makes no provision for timber recovery in this sort of extreme event. The Bill will be introduced and passed by Parliament next week under urgency. This is necessary because the large volumes of beech timber will soon deteriorate with sap stain and borer. I am grateful for the common sense support from the United Future and Māori Parties that are enabling Parliament to quickly resolve this issue.
“It is estimated that several million cubic metres of beech, rimu, matai, totara and miro trees have been felled. Stumpage prices for rimu are $250 per cubic metre, and $60 per cubic metre for beech. It is not possible to estimate the volume and value of timber to be extracted because the safety and environmental constraints may require high cost options like the use of helicopters. This law change will enable the detailed work to be done by operators on recovery proposals so as to determine where recovery is viable and safe.
“It may be appropriate to consider a permanent change to the Conservation Act to enable windblown timber in these sorts of situations to be recovered in future, but I am reluctant to do so with urgent legislation of this sort. The Department of Conservation will be commissioning research on the effects on forest regrowth and ecology by comparing similar windblown areas where timber has and has not been recovered to help make a long-term policy decision on this issue.
“It is a tragedy that so much forest has been wrecked by Cyclone Ita but no good purpose is served by leaving it all to rot. The wood will displace some of the $65 million of tropical hardwoods we import each year and give New Zealanders access to our own beautiful native timbers,” Dr Smith concluded.

The TV footage we saw last night showed the level of the cyclone damage on the West Coast. We had no idea how widespread that damage was. Thousands of trees were felled by the storm, and are strewn across thousands of hectares of the West Coast.

Nick Smith already has the support of the Maori Party and United Future to pass this legislation, and we would expect Damien O'Connor to convince his fellow Labour MP's to support the law change. It will, after all, have direct benefits for the people of Mr O'Connor's constituency.

But the Greens have already indicated they will fight this tooth and nail. Eugenie Sage put out this presser yesterday:

A storm is no reason to change our conservation law

Friday, 20 June 2014, 3:04 pm
Press Release: Green Party


New Zealand’s wild conservation land should be protected from logging, the Green Party said today.
National has announced plans to allow logging of native forest on public land on the West Coast damaged in Cyclone Ita.
“It was illegal to log these forests, a storm is no reason to change the law,” Green Party conservation spokesperson Eugenie Sage said today.
“New Zealanders fought for years to end native logging and protect the West Coast’s forests. We shouldn’t turn back the clock.
“It’s a bad precedent to change the law on a case by case, storm by storm basis. The public are not even going to get a say, the law will be pushed through under urgency.
“This is more boom and bust short term thinking from this Government for the West Coast. This proposal isn’t going to create sustainable long term jobs.
“Weakening our conservation law sets a dangerous precedent.
“Nowhere is protected from this Government. National is happy to allow our rivers to be too polluted to swim in, let the Maui’s Dolphin go extinct, and wanted to open up our national parks for mining. We can’t let them weaken our conservation law.
“It doesn’t matter how careful you are. By removing these trees we are taking away precious nutrients that will feed the next forest giants.
“We don’t need to restart the battles of the 1990’s, National needs to leave our protected forests alone.
“National is on the wrong path with this proposal, New Zealanders love our native forests and National needs to leave them alone,” said Ms Sage.
“The Department of Conservation shouldn’t have to allow logging of our native forests to pay for pest control, National needs to fund DOC properly,” said Ms Sage.

We wonder what Green MP Kevin Hague makes of all this. He is West Coast-based, and will understand only too well the need for jobs and income for his fellow Coasters. Will he break ranks and vote in favour of legislation that will provide direct economic benefits to his own community? Would the Greens ever allow that to happen?

Once again though, the Greens are showing why they have never been part of a formal coalition government. Opposing everything a government does is easy; just ask Winston Peters who is the consummate opposition politician, but is a three-time failure in government.

Governing is all about compromise. By placing limits on the areas from which fallen trees can and cannot be extracted, Dr Smith has achieved a compromise between protecting a pristine and unique area of New Zealand, and making something good out of the damage wreaked by Cyclone Ita.

Clearly, the Greens would rather let the trees rot and become bug fodder than have anyone go in and extract high-value native timber which will be in high demand. As recently as March, the Greens were proposing to gift $1m to the first person to build a 10-story skyscraper from wood as they tried to out-bribe Labour for the affections of the forestry industry. We doubt today that the forestry industry will be wanting anything to do with the Greens.

It is telling when the ideological purity of the Greens prevents them from supporting legislation that will directly benefit one of New Zealand's poorer regions. After Jan Logie's comments about child poverty on Thursday, you'd think the Greens would be in favour of a law change that was going to provide jobs to West Coasters, put more money into the community, more food on tables and generally benefit the region. But no; they would clearly prefer that the bugs of the forest get a feed as valuable native trees rot away in the wilderness.

0 Protecting our most vulnerable (Part 2)

We blogged earlier yesterday about the passage of the Vulnerable Children Bill. The Bill had its third and final reading in Parliament yesterday, and passed by 105 votes to ten.

Only the Greens and Hone Harawira voted against the Bill. For some reason, the Greens only recorded nine votes; we guess their other five MP's (more than a third of the party's caucus) must have been otherwise engaged outside Parliament. Either that, or there was a schism within the Greens, and five Green MP's wanted to support the legislation, but were not allowed to break ranks. To the best of our knowledge Hone Harawira did not even attend the Third Reading debate. He certainly did not speak in the debate, and his vote was cast as a proxy by Green MP Kevin Hague.

We were terribly disappointed that the Greens and Harawira could not see past their political noses to support this piece of legislation. The intent of the Vulnerable Children Bill was such that it ought to have enjoyed the unanimous support of the Parliament. After all, what issue, if not protecting our most vulnerable children, could one reasonably expect the Parliament to unite on?

Jan Logie and Kevin Hague spoke on behalf of the Greens. Check out this extract from Ms Logie's speech:

The Green Party wants to ensure all of our children have their basic needs met. We want to address the causes of vulnerability so that all of our children can thrive. That is why we put child poverty on the political agenda last term and we have been continuing that through this term. That is also why we have been working so hard to put domestic and sexual violence back on the political agenda. 

Poverty is created and can be eliminated by Government policy. Child poverty and deprivation escalated in the 1990s due to Government policy. It is not out of our control. We continue to unashamedly call for action every single chance we get on this issue, because it is at the heart of the welfare of our children. Although violence is not quite so easily amenable to Government intervention, and no one thing is going to solve it, we can still significantly reduce it. This bill is not going to do that.

Kevin Hague's speech (and Mr Hague is one Green MP for whom we have considerable respect) was more like an election campaign speech:

KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I guess I agree with a lot of what my colleague Andrew Little has just said, but we disagree on one point. He said that something is better than nothing, and I do not think that is always true. In this case, we do not agree and we are opposing the bills divided from the Vulnerable Children Bill.
My colleague Jan Logie has explained our reasoning behind that. I want to talk a little bit about what the Green Party would do about this situation. If the country gives us a chance later this year we will be looking to address the basic needs of children in New Zealand—those unmet needs that are currently causing the environments that are driving this vulnerability and the problem that we are seeking to address.

Sadly, Kevin Hague's speech was little more than a series of feel-good sound-bites for the child poverty industry. Simply throwing money at societal problems is not going to solve them. Complex problems require changes in mindset and attitude, not a bottomless bucket of money.

National MP Alfred Ngaro nailed that argument in his speech. He quoted Flaxmere resident Henare O'Keefe; the man who could have replaced Ikaroa-Rawhiti MP Parekura Horomia. We have previously blogged about Mr O'Keefe here.

So here's what Alfred Ngaro had to say:

This legislation is about protecting and providing that which is needed. There has been talk about poverty. We know that there are a number of children and families who are in hardship. We do not disagree with that. But can I remind members of this. Henare O’Keefe, who was one of the candidates for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, following the death of the late Hon Parekura Horomia, tells the story at the Whānau Ora conference that when growing up in Ruatōria there were dirt floors, they had very little. They had to boil their water, they had to go outside, they had to hunt for things—they had very little and a large family. But here is the powerful thing that he said at that Whanau Ora conference: poverty is no excuse for abuse, poverty is no excuse for failure. What he was saying is this: you may have hard times, you may have difficulty, but you do have an opportunity to be able to do the best for your family and for the people who are around you.  

Henare O'Keefe (and Alfred Ngaro, quoting his words) are both dead right; poverty (however one defines it) is not an excuse for abuse, be it physical, psychological or sexual. There is no excuse whatsoever for child abuse.

Rather than trying to politicise the issue of child poverty, we reckon the Greens and Hone Harawira ought to have thrown their weight behind a Bill which already enjoyed broad support across the Parliament from both Government and Opposition MP's.

To say that we are disappointed with the stance adopted by the Greens and Harawira is an understatement. We have waited almost 24 hours to commit these words to a blog-post because to have done it in anger last night would probably have been counter-productive.

DPF mirrors our thoughts in a post he put up this morning:

The Herald reports:

A law change aimed at improving the protection of children at risk of abuse or neglect, including stronger vetting of adults who work with children, has passed into law with broad support in Parliament.
The Vulnerable Children Bill passed its final stage by 105 – 10 votes in Parliament on Wednesday afternoon after only the Green Party and Mana Party’s Hone Harawira voted against it.

They voted against???

The bill is the centrepiece of the Government’s ‘Children’s Action Plan’ – developed after Social Development Minister Paula Bennett’s White Paper on Vulnerable Children.
Its measures include changes to the law so that abusive or neglectful parents will have to prove they are safe if they wish to keep any further children they have. In the past, social agencies have had to to prove they were not fit parents to take a child from them.
It also introduces greater screening of those who work with children for government and community agencies, and ban those with serious convictions from working closely with children.

They voted against this? Against screening of those who work with children, against banning convicted offenders working with children?

Green Party MP Jan Logie said Ms Bennett had failed to deal to the main problem of child poverty.

Some on the left think that the solution to every single issue is to tax hard working New Zealanders more, to give to those on welfare. That is their solution to everything. So sad.

The proposals put forward by Paula Bennett and supported by National, Labour, NZ First, the Maori Party, United Future and Brendan Horan were practical in nature, rather than financial. Throwing money at problems simply doesn't work if there is not a change in underlying behaviours and attitudes.

Sometimes you have to step outside your party's ideological bubble in order to make meaningful, lasting change. It is unfortunate and regrettable that the Greens and Mr Harawira were unable to do that yesterday. 

But Hansard will forever record that yesterday, it was more important for them to make a political statement than to support legislation to improve the safety of the children they purport to represent. That alone speaks volumes. 


Footnote: Speech extracts are from the uncorrected Hansard for 19 June 2014.

0 A Green disappointment

Parliament was deprived of a rare opportunity yesterday. The Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill passed through all its stages in Parliament by 107 votes to nil; almost unanimity. However the Green Party's 14 votes were recorded as abstentions.

The Greens have tried to rationalise their decision to abstain from making a decision because of their concern for creating a black market for synthetic cannabis. That, in our ever-humble opinion is an absolute cop-out. Kevin Hague suggested that the legislation should be evidence-based; where has he been for the last few months as the evidence of the harm that the new generation of "legal highs" has been doing has been there for all to see.

We elect a Parliament to lead us, not to opt out of decision-making as the Greens did yesterday. Even John Banks, the only MP to vote against "legal highs" last year because of his opposition to animal testing voted in favour of yesterday's legislation. Even Hone Harawira, who will daily see the harm that legal highs are doing in his electorate, voted with the Government.

If the Greens felt that strongly about the legislation that they could not support it, then they should have voted against it, and had their "no" vote recorded for time immemorial in Hansard. Instead they took the path of less resistance; neither for nor against, and not prepared to make a decision.

This is an issue we feel strongly about. The children of two friends are currently battling addiction to synthetic cannabis, and as well as the damage they drugs have done to the young people involved, the harm caused to the families has been profound. Previously well-behaved teenagers have turned into nightmares for their parents as they do whatever they can to get the coin for their next fix. We won't go into detail but some of the behaviour has even shocked senior police who have been involved.

Parliament could have been united in its desire to rid New Zealand of this insidious menace yesterday. Sadly, the Greens would not come to the party. Their decision to abstain yesterday was deeply disappointing.