COMMITTEE TASKED WITH “OVERSIGHT” OF SPIES REFUSES TO DIVULGE EVEN THE MOST TRIVIAL DETAILS OF ITS MEETINGS

The Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC), which has been campaigning for over 20 years for the closure of the Waihopai spybase, has a keen interest in the alleged ”oversight” of the agency which operates it, namely the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).



One of the few methods of official oversight of the GCSB (and the SIS) is the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is a committee of Government, not Parliament, and is definitely not a Select Committee. It only has five members – the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and three other Party Leaders nominated by either of those two. The other three are: Rodney Hide, Tariana Turia and Russel Norman.



The actual proceedings of the Committee (which only ever meets a couple of times per year) are shrouded in permanent secrecy.



But we thought that the mere facts of its meetings – when it had met, for how long and who attended – should be public knowledge. So we wrote to the Office of the Prime Minister (as the Minister in Charge of the GCSB and SIS), under the Official Information Act, asking for those innocuous details.



The answer we got is that the Committee is not subject to the Official Information Act, as it is neither a “department” nor an “organisation” as defined in the Act. So our request was declined.



This is absurd, rendering any public knowledge of what little “oversight” there is of the spies to be non-existent. How can it possibly threaten the national security for it to be publicly stated when the Committee has met; how long the meeting lasted, and who attended it? That is the sum total of what we asked – not what the Committee actually discussed or decided. We’ve always said that the “oversight” is a farce – this proves it.

LEADING KIWIS SAY NO TO LIBERALISING OVERSEAS INVESTMENT ACT & TO FREE TRADE AGREEMENT WITH US

Thursday’s Budget promises to be a humdinger, maybe in the finest traditions of Ruth Richardson’s infamous “bash the poor” 1991 one. But you can bet that there will be two hoary old myths peddled as a means to get NZ out of our particular corner of the global economic crisis – we’ll be told that the economy needs to be opened up even more to foreign investors, by means of liberalising, yet again, the Overseas Investment Act; and that a Free Trade Agreement with the US is the Holy Grail of the numerous trade deals that the Government is currently pursuing.

The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) says “no” to both and we are not alone. We have asked organisations and well known New Zealanders to endorse our opposition to both proposals. Below is the list of the first to do so. More will be added as they come to hand. We invite others who wish to join the list of endorsers to contact us.

For full details of the proposed liberalisation of the Overseas Investment Act, go to http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/OIReview/OIReview2009.html on the CAFCA Website (address below).

And for full details of the proposed US/NZ Free Trade Agreement and the campaign against it, go to the New Zealand Not For Sale Campaign Website at http://www.nznotforsale.org/
Please regularly check both those Websites for updates, additional signatories, etc.

Unite Union
Matt McCarten, General Secretary, Unite Union
Mike Treen, National Director, Unite Union
Bill Willmott, Emeritus Professor
Dr Robin Gwynn
Reverend Brian Turner, Past President, Methodist Church of NZ
Jeanette Fitzsimons, Green Party Co-Leader, on behalf of the Party
Frances Mountier
Kay Murray, Alliance Party Co-Leader
Prue Hyman, Adjunct professor of Gender and Women's Studies, Victoria University of Wellington
Maire Leadbeater
Matt McCarten, on behalf of Unite Union
Joe Davies, organiser, Unite Union
Simon Oosterman, organiser, National Distribution Union
Paul Corliss
Dion Martin, organiser, National Distribution Union
Trevor Hanson, General Secretary, Maritime Union of NZ, on behalf of the union
Councillor Paul Bruce, Greater Wellington Regional Council
Andrew Campbell
Dr Jane Kelsey
Catherine Delahunty, Green MP
Dr Sue Newberry
Dr Bill Rosenberg

RIP Ray Scott - CAFCA member and former committee member Ray Scott

Ray Scott, who died at the weekend, aged 79, was a CAFCA committee member from 1998-2002 and in that period played a full part in the whole spectrum of CAFCA activities. Ray had a great sense of humour, that innate Irish wit, which made him good fun at meetings and mailouts, etc.



We only ever knew Ray in a wholly secular context but he had previously been a Catholic priest for decades. He was part of that great wave of men who quit the priesthood and got married. By the time he joined us the marriage had ended. We knew him as a superannuitant (he joined CAFCA in his late 60s) who was very active in the Alliance.



Ray came from a Temuka farming family and went from home into the seminary, going on to become a parish priest in various parishes and also a teacher, including in one of the most remote corners of the Marlborough Sounds. He lived most of his life in Canterbury, specifically Christchurch, although as a married man in the early 90s, he also lived in Whangarei.



Ray was actually the second current or former priest to serve on the CAFCA committee (first time around we used to hold meetings in the presbytery, complete with a housekeeper who made us supper. Every time I watch “Father Ted” I remember that). Ray was on the committee at the same time as the late Reg Duder, who was a devout Anglican of the same vintage, so they made a couple of hard case old bookends to the rest of us heathens.



Ray never gave up Catholicism and was very active for years in the Christchurch Catholic Worker movement, running a weekly Scripture discussion group called Ray’s Ramblings. And after he left us he did something very unusual among those who had quit the priesthood – he went back to it, in his 70s. He concluded that the Church was his family and home. His last parish was in Napier, but he was brought back to Christchurch to die (of cancer).



His memorial meeting was held today in my neighbourhood Catholic church (the first time I’ve ever been to anything there, in my 27 years of living in Addington). Speaker after speaker spoke of his great spirituality; of his poetry (he’s the only person who’s ever written me a poem for my birthday); of his active commitment to social justice; of his love of life and specifically of golf and rugby (he died on the stroke of the Eden Park fulltime siren on Saturday night, having seen the Crusaders safely through to the Super 14 semi-finals).



And several speakers, including family members, spoke of his truly heroic snoring. One Catholic Worker activist brought the house down when he reported how he cured Ray of that, at least temporarily. Condemned to sharing a room with Ray overnight, he got out of bed, kissed Ray goodnight smack on the lips and had a sound night’s sleep, while Ray stayed awake all night. If only I’d known of that handy tip before I spent two sleepless nights with Ray when we went to Blackball for May Day 2000!



See you later Ray (but only if you’re right and I’m wrong),

BILL ENGLISH. STOP IMPOTENTLY BEGGING AUSSIE BANKS TO BEHAVE. MAKE THEM DO SO.

First it was Reserve Bank Governor, Alan Bollard, urging the four big Australian-owned banks to play the game, be good chaps, don’t let the side down, and other similar clichés. So now we have the spectacle of the Minister of Finance, Bill English, faced with the politically embarrassing spectacle of those same four banks having piled up $4.5 billion in profits (recession? What recession?), begging them to please pay nice and scale back their flagrant profiteering.



That is likely to meet with the same response – who’s going to make us? It’s time for the Government to pull its finger out and say: “We are”.



NZ taxpayers are now the guarantors of the deposits of the banks. Yet we get no say in their running, let alone ownership. The Australian-owned banks go on their merry way piling up profits as if the crash has never happened, while at the same time turning off credit for their NZ customers, keeping interest rates high, refusing to reimburse mum and dad investors whom they have bilked, laying off staff in their hundreds and outsourcing their jobs to Third World cheap labour. It’s time for the Government to remind the foreign banks of that old saying most favoured by moneymen: “He who pays the piper calls the tune”, and to translate that into action.



The taxpayer needs to be directly represented on the boards of each one of these Aussie banks that we’re underwriting with our money. And, if that doesn’t do the trick, nationalise them. After all, we used to own the BNZ, before it was flogged off to NAB (and PostBank, which was flogged off to ANZ).



Stop begging and start laying down some rules. Less whinging from the sidelines, more big stick.

ANZ, Give Them Back Their Money

The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) fully supports the Frozen Funds Group in its campaign (which now includes pickets of ANZ branches) to get this Australian–owned bank to repay hapless small NZ investors whose money has been frozen due to the collapse of two investment funds run by its subsidiary ING NZ Ltd.



This was the main reason that ANZ was a finalist in the latest (2008) Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand. To quote from the Judges’ Report: “The key charge against ANZ-National in 2008 was its reckless promotion to its banking customers of two investment funds run by its subsidiary ING NZ Ltd, which were then frozen, imprisoning $520 million of small investors’ money. The bank ducked responsibility on all fronts – for giving shonky advice, for misrepresenting ING as ‘low risk’, for failing to bail out its subsidiary to avoid the need to freeze funds, and for continuing to collect advisor fees during the freeze. While keeping the funds frozen, ING then announced a profit of $36 million. As a comprehensive case study of the rapacity and unconscionable behaviour at the expense of ordinary investors that have brought the reputation of Wall Street and its local clones to a new low, the ING saga stacks up well. ANZ has also been a central player in the Opus Prime insolvency in Australia, where again small investors were fleeced while the bank initially concealed crucial information and then looked after itself when the crash came. Only after the Banking Ombudsman became involved did ANZ-National begin paying off a few individual victims caught in the ING affair, ‘on a goodwill basis’. ‘Goodwill’ in this context seems to mean good public relations rather than any real relief for the majority of burned investors”.



And CAFCA supports the campaign by Finsec, the bank worker’s union, to keep bank jobs in NZ. This applies to all four of the Australian-owned banks – ANZ, BNZ, Westpac and ASB - but once again ANZ has “distinguished” itself in this field. To quote, again, from the 2008 Roger Award Judges’ Report: “Buttressing the case against ANZ-National was evidence from Finsec that the bank’s management lied to staff and customers when it promised to increase branch staff numbers while outsourcing 500 back office jobs to India; the bank subsequently announced sweeping cuts in branch staffing. Only truly distinguished performances by two other contenders saved ANZ-National from the Roger this time around” (the Roger Award was won by British American Tobacco NZ Ltd, with Rio Tinto Aluminium NZ Ltd as runner-up).



NZ taxpayers are now the guarantors of the deposits of the banks. Yet we get no say in their running, let alone ownership. The Australian-owned banks go on their merry way piling up profits as if the crash has never happened, while at the same time turning off credit for their NZ customers, refusing to reimburse mum and dad investors whom they have bilked, laying off staff in their hundreds and outsourcing their jobs to Third World cheap labour. It’s time for the Government to remind the foreign banks of that old saying most favoured by moneymen: “He who pays the piper calls the tune”, and to translate that into action.

CAFCA extends support and solidarity to Frozen Funds Group

ANZ, GIVE THEM BACK THEIR MONEY!

The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) fully supports the Frozen Funds Group in its campaign (which now includes pickets of ANZ branches) to get this Australian–owned bank to repay hapless small NZ investors whose money has been frozen due to the collapse of two investment funds run by its subsidiary ING NZ Ltd.

This was the main reason that ANZ was a finalist in the latest (2008) Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand. To quote from the Judges’ Report: “The key charge against ANZ-National in 2008 was its reckless promotion to its banking customers of two investment funds run by its subsidiary ING NZ Ltd, which were then frozen, imprisoning $520 million of small investors’ money. The bank ducked responsibility on all fronts – for giving shonky advice, for misrepresenting ING as ‘low risk’, for failing to bail out its subsidiary to avoid the need to freeze funds, and for continuing to collect advisor fees during the freeze. While keeping the funds frozen, ING then announced a profit of $36 million. As a comprehensive case study of the rapacity and unconscionable behaviour at the expense of ordinary investors that have brought the reputation of Wall Street and its local clones to a new low, the ING saga stacks up well. ANZ has also been a central player in the Opus Prime insolvency in Australia, where again small investors were fleeced while the bank initially concealed crucial information and then looked after itself when the crash came. Only after the Banking Ombudsman became involved did ANZ-National begin paying off a few individual victims caught in the ING affair, ‘on a goodwill basis’. ‘Goodwill’ in this context seems to mean good public relations rather than any real relief for the majority of burned investors”.

And CAFCA supports the campaign by Finsec, the bank worker’s union, to keep bank jobs in NZ. This applies to all four of the Australian-owned banks – ANZ, BNZ, Westpac and ASB - but once again ANZ has “distinguished” itself in this field. To quote, again, from the 2008 Roger Award Judges’ Report: “Buttressing the case against ANZ-National was evidence from Finsec that the bank’s management lied to staff and customers when it promised to increase branch staff numbers while outsourcing 500 back office jobs to India; the bank subsequently announced sweeping cuts in branch staffing. Only truly distinguished performances by two other contenders saved ANZ-National from the Roger this time around” (the Roger Award was won by British American Tobacco NZ Ltd, with Rio Tinto Aluminium NZ Ltd as runner-up).

NZ taxpayers are now the guarantors of the deposits of the banks. Yet we get no say in their running, let alone ownership. The Australian-owned banks go on their merry way piling up profits as if the crash has never happened, while at the same time turning off credit for their NZ customers, refusing to reimburse mum and dad investors whom they have bilked, laying off staff in their hundreds and outsourcing their jobs to Third World cheap labour. It’s time for the Government to remind the foreign banks of that old saying most favoured by moneymen: “He who pays the piper calls the tune”, and to translate that into action.

THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS, FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS & PRIVATISATION

Murray Horton gave this speech to a Workers Rights Campaign Seminar in Christchurch at the weekend.

You don’t need me to tell you that the world is in a once in a century economic crisis right now. As capitalism (which is usually misleadingly labelled as “democracy”) was declared the winner of the nearly 50 year long Cold War, and capitalist triumphalism was the dominant theme of the past two decades, along with American unilateralism, this means that what we are experiencing is a genuine, full blown crisis of capitalism. I should say at the outset that, unfortunately, I do not share the view that this means “the death of capitalism”. It has survived and mutated into new forms throughout all its previous great and small crises, including the Depression, which is the only precedent for what we’re experiencing now. It won’t die unless something kills it. As my old mate Chairman Mao said: “If you don’t hit it, it won’t fall”. But that’s a whole different subject from what we’re discussing today. I do hope, for all our sakes that this crisis does not mutate into fascism and world war as the last one did.

The consensus seems to be that the full force of the tsunami hasn’t yet reached our distant shores and the worst is still to come, that NZ is maybe 12 months behind the rest of the world. It is easy to deny that what has happened in the much bigger and quite different economies of, say, the US and Britain, won’t be replicated here. After all, our banks did not get into the outright criminality of subprime mortgages, nor do we have crippling imperialist wars to finance. So, it is instructive to consider what has happened to a comparable country, namely Ireland, once known as the Celtic Tiger. Ireland has a similar size population, used to rely on agriculture as its mainstay, has always exported people as we do, and had systemic high unemployment. The cure for all of this was supposed to be foreign investment, with all sorts of inducements offered to the transnational corporations (TNCs), particularly those in the manufacturing end of the high tech electronic industry, to get them to set up shop there. For a while there things were rosy indeed and the country boomed, particularly the housing market (does that sound familiar?). Ireland was regularly cited as a model for NZ, an example of a country that had moved to a “new, smart” economy. But now the TNCs like Dell are quitting Ireland for cheaper labour locations such as Poland.

To quote Time (6/4/09): “The good times owed much to the arrival of foreign-owned companies like Dell – such firms account for almost 90% of Irish exports and more than two thirds of the country’s business R&D – so the scaling down of a flagship investor is a real blow. It’s not the only one. After more than decade of rampant growth, Ireland now looks anaemic. A burst property bubble has landed the country in a deep recession. The economy could shrink as much as 6.5% this year, with unemployment set to reach 12%. Irish banks – massively exposed to property – look wobbly, and as tax receipts dwindle, public finances are in a mess”. The parallel is not exact, of course – foreign investors in NZ have tended not to actually set up very much by way of manufacturing plants here, and NZ manufacturers have headed for the cheaper labour of anywhere from Fiji to China in the past two decades. So manufacturing was already buggered before this latest crisis came along. But there is enough commonality there to sound a very loud warning to NZ. If you put all your eggs in the basket marked “foreign investment”, prepare to be left with just a mess of broken eggs.

What the major capitalist countries are doing is throwing unimaginably huge sums of money at the problem in an attempt to “save capitalism” (or, at least, to save the skins of their respective ruling classes who got them into the mess in the first place). Some more excitable commentators have described this as socialism. No such luck, it is simply State capitalism on an enormous scale. But, whatever it is called, it represents a fundamentally different species of capitalism to the completely laissez faire variety that has been globally running amok for the past 30 odd years. The more perceptive of the capitalist leaders have recognised that things can not simply proceed as they did before, or else this whole scenario will be repeated. In short, something has to change.

But not as far as good old New Zealand is concerned. I’ve already said that there is a tsunami coming but our Government is running full tilt towards it, transfixed by the big, shiny wave. While the rest of the capitalist world is now full of born again Keynesians (and Marx is being studied again as the most insightful critic of capitalism). But National and Act, and their strangely silent Maori Party partner, are still living in the recent past, where the patron saints were Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, not to mention Roger Douglas. They are behaving as if nothing has happened or, even worse, that nothing is going to happen.

A distinguishing characteristic of this denial of reality is the Government’s continued fixation on foreign “investment” as the answer to all questions. It got elected as “Labour Lite” (actually Labour was pretty much “Labour Lite” in the first place) but has decided that the already considerably liberalised Overseas Investment Act, which came into force only as recently as 2005 (Michael Cullen’s legacy) is “too tough” on the poor old TNCs and needs to be eased up even further. Bill English has announced a review of the Act, to be completed by the end of June, with new legislation ready by later this year. As the review has not yet been completed, we don’t know the details, but you can bet dollars to doughnuts that it will call for the door to be thrown wide open or, even better, ripped off the hinges. Tories are fond of calling for “locking them up and throwing away the key” in relation to crime; in the case of foreign investment, they call for unlocking the door and throwing away the key so that it can’t be locked again. I see this obsession with foreign investment (what they like to call “an open economy”) as being like a cargo cult, with the Government of the day (and it is a bipartisan obsession, with Labour equally as guilty) frantically cutting landing strips in the jungle and awaiting the arrival of the big shiny planes that will come out of the sky and bring all the cargo that will solve all our problems.

Two other broken down old nags make up this trifecta of losers – privatisation and “free trade”. New Zealand is a heavy backer of both. Privatisation is a very touchy subject for Tory strategists because the New Zealand people have had so much negative experience of it, and don’t want any more of it. It was given free rein here in the 80s and 90s and was a bloody disaster. Key got elected by promising not to privatise any State assets during his first term, including the likes of Kiwi Rail which was only renationalised by Labour in its last few months in power. This election promise is one which will stick in the throat of the National and Act ideologues and they will be working overtime to think up ways to privatise things without actually calling it privatisation. Hence the talk of “opening up ACC to competition” (which will come from the global insurance TNCs – the mates of AIG, the US insurance giant which has come to personify everything that is wrong with the global financial sector) rather than baldly announcing that ACC is to be flogged off. Hence the death by a thousand cuts of TVNZ. To give just the most recent example – if you want to watch the 2011 Rugby World Cup in its entirety, you’ll need to pay for Sky TV, it won’t all be on free to air. So, TVNZ loses more and more of the prizes and its demise becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as viewers feel compelled to switch to Sky. Then the Government will be able to self righteously wring its hands and say that it has no alternative but to sell TVNZ, for a bargain price. Hence the new fashion of Public Private Partnerships in sectors such as roads and other infrastructure, with these PPPs (first championed by Labour) being seen as a more acceptable alternative to outright privatisation, with the added benefit for the TNCs that they don’t have to shoulder all the cost and the risk.

“Free” trade is an absolute item of faith for both National and Labour, who use it to look at the world down the wrong end of the telescope. Jane Kelsey has described the bipartisan approach as being “what is good for Fonterra is good for New Zealand”, meaning there is an absolute obsession with opening up global markets for NZ agricultural products, with no concern whatsoever for the disastrous impacts of the reciprocal opening of the NZ economy (nor for the truly catastrophic effects that “free” trade has on the poor countries who comprise the majority of the world’s people – but that’s a separate subject). New Zealand, who gifted Mike Moore to the world as one of its Directors General, has been monomaniacal in its drive to get the Doha Round of the World Trade Organisation wrapped up. But, despite our best efforts, the talks are hopelessly stalled. Why? Because other countries, including the very biggest capitalist ones, are not as keen as us to jump off the cliff, trusting only in “the market” to ensure a safe landing. All of those other countries quite unashamedly have their own national interests to be protected.

Both National and Labour governments have worked tirelessly to sign NZ up to free trade agreements, any free trade agreements. If the multilateral WTO talks are bogged down, then NZ hares off after other regional or bilateral agreements. It’s worth listing what trade agreements NZ is already in:
Closer Economic Relations with Australia;
multilateral agreements with the Association of South East Asian Nations; the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (with various Pacific countries); the Pacific Four (P4) Agreement with Singapore, Chile and Brunei;
bilateral Free Trade Agreements with China, Singapore and Thailand;
and bilateral investment agreements with Hong Kong and China.

In addition, the following Free Trade Agreements are currently under negotiation by the NZ government:
An expanded P4, now called the Transpacific, involving the US, Singapore, Brunei, Chile, Australia, Peru and perhaps Vietnam and others;
South Korea;
Hong Kong;
Gulf States;
and India.

New Zealand is nothing if not persistent. The proposed Hong Kong Free Trade Agreement stalled in 2002, under Labour, and the restart of negotiations was only announced this year. Of those currently under negotiation the most important is the Transpacific, because its announcement in the final few months of the Labour government was heralded as the means to secure the Holy Grail of a Free Trade Agreement with the US. Fortunately, the Obama Administration has put a fly in the ointment by announcing the indefinite suspension of negotiations while it conducts a review of the trade policy it inherited from George Bush. This doesn’t mean that the deal is off, just that it’s on hold for the meantime, much to the disappointment of both National and Labour.

It is important to realise that these agreements, both current and those under negotiation, are not just about trade. They contain major provisions locking in a heavily tilted playing field for the TNCs. For example, under NZ’s Free Trade Agreement with China any further opening of foreign investment cannot be rolled back by future NZ governments as it applies to Chinese investors without the consent of the Chinese government. Similar provisions apply in the other actual or potential Free Trade Agreements. It is called the National Treatment provision, meaning that companies from the other country must be treated the same as NZ companies, otherwise they can claim that they are being discriminated against and seek legal redress.

Who is driving this whole agenda? Obviously the ideologues in both National and Act (the latter is very much the tail wagging the dog), plus their allies in Labour. Treasury, which was sidelined to some degree under Labour, is back in the driving seat – its officials are conducting the review of the Overseas Investment Act. Treasury makes no secret that it supports no legal differentiation between foreign and NZ companies and that is what it recommended to the Labour government the last time the Act was reviewed – Labour was not prepared to go that far, because of opposition from within its own caucus and from its own voters. As we have recently seen, the OECD has issued a diktat to NZ urging, among many other things, wholesale privatisation, State asset sales, slashing public services and liberalising the foreign investment law. This is richly ironic coming from the mouthpiece of the richest capitalist economies which are themselves doing just the opposite, namely drastically increasing the role of the State (or, at least, taxpayers’ money) in the failed private sector. Obviously the OECD ideologues are as hopelessly out of touch with reality as their NZ counterparts. The agenda is also being driven by interested parties such as major NZ law firm Chapman Tripp, which makes a nice living out of acting for foreign investors. It called for a major review of the Act to sort out what it calls the “muddle”. The Government’s terms of reference for the review bear a strong resemblance to Chapman Tripp’s recommendations. It is driven by foreign investors themselves, such as a gentleman called Farhad Vladi who buys and sells islands around the world (including in NZ) for his super rich clients. He told the media recently that the current law is unfair to, and too tough on, foreign investors. And finally it is driven by the transnational corporate media which campaigned tirelessly to get National back into power and which all too often parrots the party line that “NZ needs to further open our economy”.

I’ve been asked to speak about the consequences of all this for workers, so I’ll conclude with that. I would have thought that they were pretty self evident. I used to be a “real” worker myself, so I’ll speak about where I used to work, namely the Railways. I was made redundant in 1991, just before the former Employment Contracts Act came into force. But I was there, indeed I was a union official, right through the period of “rationalising, restructuring and corporatisation”, all of which led to massive unemployment (including myself). That Act, which was part of the last National government’s drive to “make NZ attractive to foreign investors”, slashed pay and eliminated conditions for all NZ workers and disempowered the great majority of them by deunionising them. The disastrous privatisation of the Railways that followed in 1993, lasting until 2008, led to further mass unemployment and in the case of the criminally negligent TranzRail, deaths and injuries to both its workers and the public. There are very good reasons why TranzRail won three of the first six Roger Awards for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It was a text book example of what happens when a State asset is privatised. Telecom is the other big one, but there are plenty more. I’m sure that there are people here who can provide their own experiences. A policy of untrammelled foreign investment, free trade and privatisation is extremely bad for workers because that policy is a major contributor to what is known as the race to the bottom, to the lowest common denominator.

And finally, we need to dispel some of the pernicious myths peddled by these cultists about foreign “investment” as the One True Path to the Promised Land.

It doesn’t bring in “much needed money”. Quite the opposite, it sucks money out of the country. In the decade 1997-2006 transnational corporations made $50 billion profits in NZ. Only 32% of that was reinvested here; meaning that 2/3 of that enormous sum left the country. That is itself is a major cause of NZ’s Current Account Deficit (the Balance of Payments) being so high.

It doesn’t provide “much needed jobs”. Foreign companies only employ 19% of the NZ workforce, despite owning a disproportionately large chunk of the economy. 81% work for NZ employers. And those very same foreign companies significantly add to the unemployment total, having made tens of thousands of NZ workers jobless in the decades in which we’ve had a “liberalised” foreign investment regime.

It does nothing to improve NZ’s foreign debt problem. This is one area highlighted by the OECD report and it is nonsense. In 1984, when Rogernomics started, NZ’s total private and public foreign debt was $16 billion. By December 2008, it was $248 billion, the vast majority of that held by the corporate sector, not the Government, and totaling 137% of GDP. So, despite all those numerous State asset sales, the foreign debt has just kept on soaring.

Continuing to follow these discredited policies is a recipe for disaster, even on capitalist terms. They lead only to a dead end and in the process it will be ordinary NZ workers who will get badly hurt. It is what has happened in the past, it is happening now and blind adherence to this mumbo jumbo will only make it worse.

The Domebusters - One Year On

CLOSE WAIHOPAI SPYBASE!

It is one year today since the Ploughshares peace activists deflated one of the two domes at the top secret Waihopai spybase (and, in the process, severely deflated the supposed top security of that base). No date has yet been set for the trial of Adrian Leason, Sam Land and Peter Murnane.

Anti-Bases Campaign declared our support for their symbolic action at the time and nothing has happened since to change our view. Indeed, the need to close the Waihopai spybase ASAP is more urgent than ever.

There is a sham debate going on within the Government at present about whether to agree or not to the formal US request to re-commit NZ combat troops, namely the SAS, to help the US wage its worsening war in Afghanistan. New Zealand’s biggest commitment to that, and any other US-led war (Pakistan is next on the list) is not troops or frigates, etc, but Waihopai which, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, is functioning as a vital outpost of US Intelligence on NZ soil. The Bush Administration declared intelligence to be a vital component of its warfighting capacity. The Obama Administration has not changed that emphasis, indeed it relies on it even more in its re-prioritising the war in Afghanistan (and, increasingly, Pakistan) over that in Iraq. Waihopai is part of a global network of US-controlled spybases gathering electronic intelligence and that is what the US military depends on in wars such as in Afghanistan.

April 30 is also the anniversary of the liberation of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), the biggest defeat thus far in the history of the American Empire. That war also spread into the countries neighbouring Vietnam, with disastrous consequences, just as the Afghan war has spread into its neighbour.

The coincidence of these two anniversaries on April 30 is a good time for New Zealand to reflect upon what it is still doing, a generation later and despite being nuclear free and out of ANZUS, loyally serving the US and helping it fight its wars and bully the world by hosting a small but vital cog in the global American network of spybases. We pride ourselves on being independent. That won’t be a fact until we have broken the covert ties that still closely bind us to the US war machine.

Close Waihopai spybase now!

Peace protester arrested at base

Ms Percy was arrested near the American spy base outside Harrogate

A peace campaigner opposed to the activities of an American spy base in North Yorkshire has been arrested outside the site for a bail offence.

Lindis Percy, 64, formerly from Hull, was arrested on Friday evening during a demonstration near Menwith Hill base on the outskirts of Harrogate.

A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said the 67-year-old had been arrested for a breach of bail

conditions.

Ms Percy has been jailed several times for demonstrating outside US bases.