Leighton Smith Podcast #244 - June 19th 2024 - Jodie Bruning

me quote. CBDCs have not been pushed into policy space by the citizens of nations, but by the big global central banks and the fintech industry. There is compelling evidence that power and interoperability of the digital infrastructure will not only enhance government control and surveillance, but that it presents

a real risk to civil, constitutional, and human rights. This tech is scalable, and it's out of sight because of the mixture of interests involved, from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to allied government agencies, to the fintech sector and RB and z's Central Bank colleagues, the decision making processes and authorities will be difficult to track and assess

should something go wrong. Now, may I suggest that you listen to this interview from beginning to end and then look up a couple of the papers that she has produced. But more details on all of that very shortly, but just a note on this week's podcast. It is shorter than normal. We are covering the interview and then we do a shortish mail room. The reason for it is that there has been a bit of sickness in the house over the last week and hopefully you won't be

exposed to much of it. Due to the ability to edit things, it's been a full time job, let me tell you. Doing the interview, I had my microphone closed most of the time. However, I think that it all come out right in the end. Jr. Running is very very good. Now. I wanted to mention that because it's been a case of spending more time in bed, particularly in the morning, and the other morning I heard the news I think it was at about six point thirty

or something. Usually i'd be up by then. There was the story of Jasindra Dern and her latest well whatever you want to call it, and I immediately started rolling words around of my head about what I would say about it, and then I thought, no, let it go. It's gone now who cares? And then reality set in.

Of course, reality set in because it's fine to forgive, but when people are not repentant, when people carry on in the same manner of what as to what they have in the past, then there's no forgiveness to be had. And I think the best way to cover this is to read a letter to you that came in that same morning at five point thirty three from Liz just when we thought it was safe to go back into the water exclamation mark. The extrag below is from just

sindro Render's Facebook page. It details how she has started an excite quote an exciting new initiative called Field. It's all about humanizing leadership with empathy and kindness. She also says she's focused on unity without using fear to divide people. For those of us who lived through her tyranny, who lost their jobs, had loved ones locked out of New Zealand or die alone. Her lack of self awareness and

blatant stupidity astounds me. Liz goes on, this is another of her attempts to remain relevant and to suck the ill informed and bewildered into supporting her socialist idealist agenda. She is not and never will be remembered as a kind and empathetic leader. She was driven by her ego and vanity projects, and she almost single handedly destroyed New Zealand. I sincerely hope that field is not her way of

working her way back onto the global political stage. Her influence is dangerous, and the potential outcome of that influence on the ill informed and those who are not aware of what she did to our society would be devastating. Extract below largely waffle with no substance, no change there best wishes Liz. Now. Anybody who doesn't understand that's most who doesn't understand what the word progressive actually means in political terms, is at a loss to describe what her

politics are. Is very simple. Progressive progressivism is the road to Marxism, to communism. If you like, I'm not making it up. There's plenty of reference to it, but that's the way that it is. And I think that what's going on, what has been going on since her flight from office, indicates that that is much the case, and in just a moment, Jody Brunning. There are essential fat nutrients that we need in our diet as the body can't manufacture them. These are Omega three and Amiga six

fatty acids. Equism is a combination of fish oil and virgin evening primrose oil, a formula that provides an excellent source of Amiga three and Amiga six fatty acids in their naturally existing ratios. The Omega six from evening primrose oil assists the Omega three fish oil to be more effective. Equisine is a high quality fish oil supplement enriched with evening primrose oil that works synergistically for comprehensive health support.

Source from the deep sea sardines Anchovisa magril provide essential Amega three fatty acids in their purest form without any internal organs or toxins. Every batch is tested for its purity before it's allowed to be sold. Equisine supports cells to be flexible, so important to support healthy blood flow and overall cardiovascular health. Equisine can support mood, balance and mental clarity and focus in children, all the way to supporting stiff joints, mental focus, brain health and healthy eyes

as we get older. Equisine is a premium high grade fish and evening primrose oil to be taken in addition to a healthy diet and is only available from pharmacies and health stores. Always read the label and users directed and if symptoms persist. Seainguid healthcare professional farmer Broker Auckland Leighton Smith j R. Brunning is a consultant sociologist. Her work explores governance, cultures, policy and the production of scientific

and technical knowledge. Brunning is a trustee of the Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility New Zealand or. The address is PSGR dot org dot enz.

but there is a safety net. A nine page that is one tenth size of the Monster report. A nine page reduced version which is much easier for most of us to grasp, is available. Details to follow shortly. Jr. Jody Brunning, it's great to have you on the Latensmith podcast, and I thank you.

Melbourne Tech. He and two others had had written a book that was on digitization and it was going to be the release of freedom amongst the community in the world, and got I got quite a bit of hefty feedback on it, saying that this is a con they're not they're not working on something to This was the suggestion, they're not working on something to give us freedom, They're working on something who's going to do exactly the opposite.

And I could see the point of the people who were saying that, do you run into any of that, Well, I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

or whatever. They normally like three or four, and so I think it's pretty natural for powerful interests to want to consolidate their interest and sort of the game of monopoly, you know, is an ancient sort of concept, and we're used to sort of the oligopolies or the oligarchs in you know, old societies ruling and so it's not a it's a very human thing to concentrate power.

at the silicon, we're looking at digital technologies. And so the difference that we have now and this is why I think PSDR we're happy to take this paper on is its scalability potential, so we can use tech for good to help us in our everyday lives. But the trick is powerful interests. Also we'll see that that technology is is very able to be scaled up and we can get into how it can be scaled up for

their own interests. So it's the scalability potential. And we put this together with the programmability of the digital currencies that we're going to be talking about, and that changes the game.

rolling the car at every fast corner. So it's, you know, scaling things up creates all these you know, it's the no known, it's the unknowns, unown unknowns, it's you know, it's it's we just cannot And this is why it's a very much a governance issue, and y p SR are hoping that, you know, people from the school of governors, legal experts in public law, constitutional and administrative law, will become interested in this. It's it's a very big issue because of the scalable potential.

And it's very clear that all internationally. When you see, for example, the CBDC, you know, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, take go and have a look on CBDC website and it will show you how many countries are involved. And of course the cbd website is controlled and overseen by the Boston Consulting Group, so we see that all the main Wow Aunt, CBDC is awesome. All those and

this is where PSR are talking. All those sort of policy papers, those white papers have all been produced by the organizations with the financial and dare I say political conflicts of interest. So because most of the and we can call that propaganda as well that has been produced that they hope that will be adopted about by our governments and then pushed through really quickly, is by these

organizations with the conflicts of interest. The people of New Zealand, you know, they can say we don't actually want to do this anymore. It is possible.

will not critically analyze this. And one of the big, the big takeaways that we want people to understand from our paper is that there is not a single academic expert or an expert that is lacking you know, the financial conflicts of interest, the complex of interests having worked with a management consultancy firm or you know, a big

global bank. There is not a single expert in New Zealand talking about cpdc's critically and the potential for these technologies and the risk of what might happen should there be what's called unified ledger in time. So there's a there's a policy creep that can happen that can further, you know, push policy into the arms of the big

big banks. So this is the this is the and this is what I've observed in my work looking at policy and regulation and new technologies is the information supporting the safety and efficacy of these technologies is produced by the very institutions with the conflicts of interest and and part of that real problem later and this is what my masters looked at, is the difficulty scientists and researchers have in accessing funding to research issues that is contrary

or that might contradict the position of the government of the day. And so it's very difficult for any scientist or researcher to get long term funding that is not aligned with the interests of the ministry that is responsible for funding science. That's the Ministry for Business and Innovation and Employment. So mb is responsible for funding science. And

that is a really big problem. So that scientists are cought and researchers are caught by the short and curlyes because they're financial because their funding is so precarious today, does.

Then if you think that, if you think about the scientists researchers that can't independently research, who do judges go to when there's a decision to be made or when people are calling for advice. So we see that the judiciary are always going to be a little bit captured by the executive, by the ministries and the agencies because they're producing the information inverted commas, evidence, the policy papers,

the risk assessments. Then you add to the fact that there's an economic downturn, and the economic downturn provides if we lack sort of that information about how we make cash or the potential about of fiscal policy and the appropriations process. If we just only default and think that we need a UBI and that can only be made through the retail the seed, you know, sorry, the central bank, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand having the power to

retail currencies. People think that's the only way we can actually solve financial problems. And we're in deep doo dooos, you know, So that the economic downturn is an antecedent I think, excuse my pronunciation, it's sort of alongside these other problems, but it's not the biggest problem, you know.

And one of the interesting things I think is that we need to understand that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has gone through, as Christian Hawksby stayed in twenty twenty two, the most significant changes since the Reserve Bank of New Zealand reforms of the nineteen eighties. In twenty twenty four at the he said to the Financial and Expenditure Committee, you know, they're going through this massive process

of transformation and modernization. So the Reserve Bank has, interestingly, during the depths of COVID, when we have been really distracted with COVID, we've been very distracted. The people that are interested in politics or interested in justice and sort of civil constitutional human rights have been busy looking at what has been happening in terms of COVID legislation. Several acts, several bills have been passed that have been part of

the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's transformation process. You know, one of the bills had the Monetary Policy Amendment Act had only fourteen submissions. The Financial Market Infrastructures Act in twenty twenty one had nine submissions to it, The Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act thirty one submissions, the Deposit

Takers Act twenty forty three submissions. So the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has gone through the most significant transformation process through all this new legislation, and you look at how few people have sort of known about it, ormitted

to it. And so we look, we again turned to the conventional legacy media that there's only been sort of reporting of this is what the Reserve Bank's you know, doing in a happy, little puffy, puffy pand you know, there's there's nothing critical critically looking at all this legislation and picking it apart. So, you know, Michael Riddell has

been on poaking. Cassandra been doing quite a bit of work criticizing the RB and Z, but it's we've had such an amazing time and it's really surprising that that in particular has occurred over COVID.

big issues. So when you talk about them being woke, being woke means they're taking on this is what I aren't My understanding is they're taking on political issues or values that might not represent the average key way. And of course, the reason people have historically trusted central banks or the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is because they don't. They don't they're very constrained in what they can politically do because they can print money. They've been very construing.

So if all of a sudden their powers in encompass climate change, which this has happened, that is a political shift and I think people need to understand that. So the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has actually more powers than the average and we discussed this in our paper. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has more powers than

the average central bank. So it's not only responsible for monetary policy, so you know, the ocr the central Bank is a financial markets regulator responsible for oversight of the financial system and prudential regulation of banks, deposit takers and insurance companies. As well as that the Reserve Bank engaged in large scale asset purchases and over COVID. And that's interesting because we think there's been about eleven billion dollars

in losses there. And then interesting with this Financial Market Infrastructures Act in twenty twenty one, they introduced into this legislation the concept of the systemically important financial institution so they si they and that's the too big to Fail clauses that you're seeing coming through America that were introduced after the global financial crisis. So they're really broad powers

are not just all those responsibilities. But we're seeing sort of we're seeing the political things come in the DEI, the climate change, and their budgets doubled as well. So this is extremely worrying because when you listen to the Select Committee February twenty twenty four, people are sort of asking the Bank's questions as if they're an organization that

should make political decisions. I think people do not understand how important it is that that is the role of parliament, not unelected bureaucrats sitting in their own office, you know, sitting in offices that can't actually get voted out of office.

States where where basically it saw its birth. But here the best example that I can utilize is Auckland Transport, who have taken on roles that they were never they were never associated with, not supposed to be associated with extended their powers and during the period specifically that you refer to the COVID period, they were they had free

hand to just do what they want. And we know, we know that they're under inspection because various people, starting with I suppose the latest mayor of Auckland, have been in assaulting them. Not to forget one or two podcasters, but the point being that that is one example, but there are lots of others, including I think the medical field.

will only grow bigger, then that doesn't work. So, you know, we have this is why we have the problem that science is now controlled by the Ministry for Business and Innovation. This is why we have the problem that agriculture is you know, funding for agricultural research is controlled by the agency who likes innovation and patents. So we're not going to solve drought problems when the only money that they want to spend on research has got to be tied

to a patent. And you look at for example, education, you know, education has been you know, the curriculum development is core core, and that's I think, I believe in NGO. So if you had, if you had teachers being responsible for example, for their own you know, for improving and upskilling the curriculum, you would actually have more fighting more. It would be slower, it would be difficult, but it would be the people who are who have the most

expertise doing it. This is the same so science, but right now you're getting these agencies creating their own agendas and so Jeffrey Palmer has talked about this recently and he said, what happens is the parliamentarians they've got no funding, they've got no research resources, so they must, you know, divert genuflect to the big agencies because that's where all the information and the knowledge is coming from. This is a very big problem in a democracy.

actually talking about all these different issues. And this is why you know, pstr and Zena have released this paper, because if we don't talk about the issues, this is China, this is you know, Russia in its darkest days. It's an authoritarian state does not let the people you know chat and debate, and neither does it let they're elected members debate and challenge each other. And we're moving, I believe,

into a very polarized environment. And when we're polarized, we go into our corners, and we've got to come out of those corners and know that even if it's really difficult, we've we've got to keep talking to each other. And the problems of governance are never black and white. They're complex, they're nebulous. You know, they involve going upstream into you know, into I guess environments that often have lots of political

and financial conflicts where you'll see large, powerful interests. And that's a little bit why you know, often you get when you start asking questions about sort of technologies you know from nanotech to GM to to pesticides to the

tech we're talking about today. It's very easy for people to call you are you're a team foil where you're a conspiracy theorists like, well, actually, I think it's incumbent upon us ever since, ever since they put spikes on you know, heels to make horses go faster, to say, what what what is this tech achieving? Is it going to make the horse go faster or they're going to get some you know, saws in the sides of their flanks?

You know, So we actually always have to ask how how is the tech going to support us and make human you know, society, tribe, and perhaps we're actually the tech we're seeing today, we're not thriving more so maybe we can ask what is going wrong here?

guess my question, Laighton, I am. You know, like I didn't grow up you know, in that happy family with the mummy and you know, and everything been great. So I was lucky enough to be an at home mum and you know, then started working when they were younger. And on this my situation always is, you know, how can a woman that is working, probably a little few more hours because she's got to do the cleaning, do this, do that? How can she be as informed as a man?

How can she access you know, if bitcoin? Bitcoin has to work whatever social strata you're on, whatever education level you're on, it has to actually work similarly for females and males. And right now I don't see like how bitcoin is equally as accessible, you know. And and this is I guess this is my point why I see governments as being really important. It's the single woman, you know, in the supermarket. Can she afford good quality meat, good

quality of veggies? How do we create a social structure that means we're going to thrive and that our young people are going to grow up healthy and strong. And so I guess I keep coming back to the Bitcoin seems to be the really great if you're a guy and you can do a ton of research and you know a lot about it. But that's sort of that's a that's my kind of thought for bitcoin really at the moment.

monetary standard based on bitcoin. And then the author of this short article says, realize what Kruger is saying here, and I'm going to take a gamble here and reach the next five lines. The global M two money supplies currently around one hundred and three trillion. The market capitalization of bitcoin is one point three trillion. This means for bitcoin to become the global monetary standard, it needs to

go up by one hundred times one hundred. Is this possible Since the famous pizza incident, I don't know what that is. In twenty ten, bitcoin has risen one million times. Krueger knows of no other asset that has done this. His message is simple. This is a make or break moment for a lot of people. If you want to accumulate wealth by bitcoin now you could argue that that's a promotion if you like, or even propaganda. But I'm

seeing more and more confidence in bitcoin now. The connection between the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's CBDC and bitcoin or the differences, take that approach whichever way you prefer, what is it?

So at the moment they're not on the blockchain, they're just basically going to be sort of controlled and overseen by reserve banks, central banks. But of course the etiology, if you look at the design, how how CBDs c's have come about. They've come about by a lot of policy work by the financial, tech, finance and technology industries who have also you know, being involved with the establishment

of bitcoin. But so whereas you know bitcoin has you know, the doubling and the production or the reduction of coin is is a mathematical formulation, CBDCs can be produced at will and at whim by central banks. This is where they're very dangerous because they can be and they will

likely be a political tool. And when I say a political tool, this is because the Bank of International Settlements and the large global banks are very much seeing them as a as a way of achieving policy, you know, the desire of what sort of policy might be achieved, and so we can we can provide those financial incentives. And it's carrot, it's carrot and stick stuff. We know that.

For example, so if a reserve bank was going and I think it's a terrible idea, they can if they were designing a CBDC, they can choose to have a negative interest rate, they can choose to have a you know, positive interest rate. They can choose, you know, all the

program the payments will be programmable. So the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and its current consultation says, oh, we won't make the money program But the problem is the payments will be programmable, they will be revocable because they have to be revocable in case the mistake is made. So we know that all this program these programmability functions,

which is not there with bitcoin. So a third party locks can be put in place where so, for example, the Health Ministry might decide that, you know, this group of welfare benefit beneficiaries can get this much money if they get their kids injected with the latest vaccine and get their teeth scene too, and then they tend them

to school, they'll get this extra money, you know. So the Ministry for Health can instruct that through to the Central Bank of New Zealand, who could then send that advice out to whatever fintech industry is contracted to then design the smart contract. Sorry that is a smart contract that would be third party processes. It would be involved with the financial and tech industries will be contracting and designing the software perhaps, so this is how disaggregated it

will be. And this is this is part of the problem. So like the blockchain is, you know, you can see your ID code wherever you want. It's quite transparent, whereas this stuff is all black boxed like in an aircraft. You can't see what's happening when you can't know. And there's a term they use called composability. So smart contracts which are let's let's they are self little self executing programmed, self executing applications of programmable platforms that can trigger an

action if some pre specified condition is met. And that's that's a Bank of International Settlements. That's the way they see smart contracts. So they can be composable. Smart contracts

can be bundleable. So that's so you're you know, you were talking about not being able to you know, your your bank account could be frozen if you go outside the region of the Bay of Plenty, so it could you know, the smart contract could be applicable to all people in the Bay of Plenty, so they don't have any you know, they can't fill up with petrol outside that region, and of course.

So we might learn about World War Two, we might learn about and Frank, we might learn about the concentration camps, but when we're at high school, we don't actually learn about the extent which there was a massive propaganda campaign be fleeting up to that with Russia, with the Chinese Revolution, how now gained young students? You know, the history of propaganda and gaining the youth to to to jump on board without the nuances the experiences of older generations, and

so younger people can achieve really powerful, important things. But we need to I think as older people you know listening to this podcast, and I know you know, young tradees will be listening to this as well, with you know, common sense people will be listening to them. It's exactly it's learning to speak up when it's a little bit uncomfortable, because if you don't speak up now, there's a very big chance in hell that that is not going to

get any easier. And so I have two there's two reasons why I believe democracy is the most at risk. And one is because we keep sort of delegating authority, whether it's through trade agreements or through other agreements such as you know agreement you know, tacit agreements with UN agencies such as WHO. So when we delegate authorities to them, we lose a little bit of our you know, sovereignty,

our democratic strength. And the other way we're losing is through the fact that the as I said, the information is controlled by those big agencies, and when those big agencies need an extra portion and they need an extra they want to follow a little bit more of this you know, digitizing government stuff they get in the big management consultancies. And so people need to understand how bad

this situation is. So the Reserve Bank of New Zealand are the only people right now producing the evidence for how marvelous and wonderful CBDCs are. So there's no you know, like I said, there's no expert lawyers out there, no expert governance people out there, no one there's kids, you not PSDR and SRE. This is why we've come into this space because no one else is here. It's not

our dream. And so we need to understand that if the governments are only looking at the agencies doing this, and I'm probably going on about this too much, we are fully ignorant and we are victims to that policy. So the question at the dinner table is should the RBNZ be the only agency providing all the evidence for the safety and efficacy of central bank digital currencies? And this is when we stop being tinfoil hat wearers, because we're actually saying this is a reasonable question.

answers to that? So, Jody, what are the risks from adopting cbdc's which are tied to your digital ID, your digital twin as.

so they have your biometric data. And the issue here is so the Department of Internal Affairs controls all this information and so the Department of Internal Affairs is sort of has information sharing agreements across the whole of government, so they can share your data and we don't know how much this is shared or shareable because of course it's black boxed. So the DEA administers the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Act and the Electronic Identity Verification Actors.

So that's the back end management of our personal data. So then you add that, you toddle that to for example, if CBDCs where your main money account of retail CBDCs, then we have the capacity for a surprising amount of control acrosshole of government. And so you know, psgr And said, we've always looked at the fact that often you know, it's a round up the Glacious eight trials. It was what came out in that was that the formulation was

so much more toxic than the active ingredient. So when the Reserve Bank only talks about CBDCs, the formulation is more toxic than the active ingredient. When they're combined with digital ideas, that's when i've got the capacity to survalue when you're walking down the street and know where you are, then they've got the capacity to understand your transactions because you're using your CBDC and you're transacting, transacting on your real may identity, so that, like we keep talking, the

scalability of this is significant. And so it's when all this is linked together that harm happens. That's the problem. And so this is normally if you have your and this is the other problem. And we have the same problem when we have retail banks operating in an oligopoly. So this is why sort of Richard Werner, who's an international economist, he says, we need to do a heck of a lot of work, and this is government policy. Governments can turn around do this tomorrow to let small

local banks establish themselves and serve small local communities. The minute you get oligopolies, you get the government and the oligopolies naturally working together to shape regulation to make sure it's virtually agreeable. And often this is a way of not just it's a strategic way of the large corporations reinforcing their position because it makes it harder for the little guys to get going. So you know, this is

a this is a very good industry tactic. It's done across big food, it's done across pesticize regulation, it's you know, it's it's it's a common thing to do. So you know, when these things are linked, you know when digital ideas linked to cbdc's harm happens.

I'm aware that if teachers need if they have something that's been contested and they need to get it resolved or envy, they need to have I believe, a digital identity. So the digital identity creep is happening. So all the students now they're devaulting to digital identities to the real May identities to apply for tertiary education because it's just easier and quicker. So they've got a definite creep of

people onto digital identities. So if we look at China, China, in China, they're paying wages of people through CBDCs, and we know that the Chinese are quickly getting rid of their CBDC money. They don't trust it, they quickly truncefer that. But we know that this is you know, say, the public sector will use the power of the public sector

to force people onto this. So when and I guess I became a lursi and started getting really into this when I saw that ad for the trial project the cbdc's and when I saw that ad, I directly put in an official Information at request. I wanted to understand where the cabinet, the Prime Minister, where the ministers had to what extent have they been briefed on CBDCs, to what extent did they understand the risks? Now that was a December in December official Information at Requests. I heard

back from that two weeks ago. That's how long it took me to get that.

speaking up. You know, Members of payment have no idea and this is the biggest transformation in in you know, money potentially.

a minister gets moves out into a different portfolio. They don't have to answer question official information, actual quests from their previous portfolio. But I don't you know there has has Nikola been briefed to what extent does she know? But and the truth is she will only know as much as she knows from the RB and ZAT and accenture. So you know, this is we can talk about eccentia in a bit. This is this is a major problem.

is when you're at the barbecue. How many laws have been pushed through using emergency rational emergency excuses, And then COVID that all the all the the mandates came through using what's called delegated or secondary legislation. It came through with perhaps only two ministers, maybe three ministers making those decisions for the mandates to go through without any reviews

of the scientific literature. That's remember, that's a game being played, is they don't actually look at the published scientific literature and they say that this is the evidence. But the evidence only involves the evidence that the industry involves. You know,

during COVID that was that was Spiza gives them. So we need to understand that when agencies are making decisions that do not involve using independent, impartial researchers and actors, then we cannot trust the decisions being made of those agencies. So that I have nothing to hide means that you're sitting dark when things are that when things go wrong or they become unfair.

the point exactly. I just don't get. I don't understand how otherwise intelligent people, and I can think of two prominent people still still argue that now you included, you included. Did you want to say more?

from lawfully implementing its chosen policy. Now, remember, lawful lawfully implementing means it can just go bang bang bang through emergency powers or secondary legislation. But we have a big problem because Judith Collins is the Attorney General. I have never seen an Attorney General with the extent of ministerial portfolios that Collins had. She's the Minister for start you know, just breathing deeply everyone, because this is a long list,

Minister for digitizing content. She's the Minister for Defense. She's the Minister for the GC s B. She's the Minister for the nz SIS. She's the minister who is leading the coordination of the government's response to the Royal Commission's report into the terrorist attack on the christ Church Mosques. She's the Minister for Space, and she's the Minister for Science,

Innovation and Technology. And if you remember, Science and Innovation and Technology is caught under MB and will not do any research that is contrary to that of the Government of the day. Should the Attorney General, who is that the Minister for responsible for good law also have those ministerial portfolios?

At twenty twenty two, paper paving a Digital Road to Hell question Mark by the Center for Human Rights in Global Justice New York University School of Law heavily criticized the models of digital ideas that have been propagated by these large organizations. The policy development that followed the World bank initial efforts have reflected the concern in this New

York University School of Law paper. Key issues include privileges economic identity is disconnected from legal status and steers attention away from civil registration, threatens a range of fundamental rights, from the right to social security to the rights to privacy. And that's the big one for me. The surported benefits remain mostly unsubstantiated in the absence of serious baseline studies, cost benefit and value for money analysis and impact assessments.

I'll stop there because I don't want to take up too much time. But the authors the authors just went on to note all too often digital ID systems are mired in a lack of transparency. Even the legislation underlying digital ID where it exists often does not provide adequate information about what the system will entail you go.

of International International Settlements the BIS. Look at how they've set the policy, the language, the framing, the principles, the risks, and so what we have is these big, global, powerful banks that have legal indemnity that are outside the purview of any democratic nation, setting the language, the risk framing,

all that sort of stuff. And so that's why those those academics looked at that background, and then they came down and they looked at how the risks and so there's a there's an image that we've reproduced in the latter later sort of twentieth fifth of our paper, and it's there. They're they're showing how digital identity stretches into

every single part of society. So when you overlay digital identity stretching into every single part of society, how we pay your access, Every single stratu of society is overlaid with that. So that's a really important paper to consider. And we've cited that and yeah, yeah, we've that's that's highlighted in a chapter in our paper. It's really important to understand.

potential for erosion of parliamentary oversight. So what will happen is that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will basically take on more powers relating to money for production, and that will be outside of the appropriations process that normally is our democratic way of you know, creating ways which say poorer communities might have a little bit of a more access to resources or better access to health and education.

That helps, you know, results in less inequalities. So for example, then the fourth one is the continued increase in oversight and delegation of the production of policy, strategy and rules to the BIS, that Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund. So what happens is these guys, with all their big white papers and all their big expertise, they become the go to institution for the Reserve Bank.

Now we've already seen that following this massive, big consultation with the IMF and twenty sixteen that resulted in all this changing, including building in those too big to fail clauses in the financial markets infrastructures at So we've got those four risks and as well as that which we didn't obviously I should have put in, is the financial like this, the Reserve Bank has oversighted financial market. If they enter as a player, they're saying, oh, no, it'll

be good because there'll just be another player. And I'm like, so another player that can't go bust and is too big to fail. That's not an equal playing field. So you know, they're the main sort of risks because you know, and then and then you've got that other risk that they could there could be a digital run to foreigns. So that our bank our central banks think that there could be a digital run to foreign CBDCs if other

CBDCs are doing this, and it's unlikely. I think the biggest, the biggest people aren't wanting to get on CBDCs because they fundamentally don't trust the expanded oversight and powers of the government. The only way governments right now getting people into c bydcs is through regulatory or mission creep, where they force people onto them.

be taken by Parliament at all of people's vote. And this is after we see a heck of a lot of information and data produced by independent people. I also we've also recommended that that digital ideas, digital IDs, a real mey identity should never ever be the only form of identity that is accepted by any government agency in any form, and that passports and driver's licenses are equally acceptable, and we know that passports and driver's license in Australia

have a historically low rate of fraud. And then the fourth one is that the DA, with their expansion of powers and their capacity to control real meat, we should be really examining the context of information sharing cross government behind the scenes. So they were just before recommendations and I'd love to come back on it, mat.

And ENDZ is on the end because that is the only like, the only handle I could get that is consistent. So if you search for PSCR and Z on subset, Twitter or Instagram, you'll find a link to us, and you'll find a link to the paper or ps TR dot org dot.