Crafar Court Decision A Welcome Outbreak 0f Sanity

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"Take the opportunity of this major rebuff to reverse its self-defeating policy of allowing the country to be sold off, farm by farm" 

Justice Miller’s decision to order a review of the decision to approve the sale of the Crafar Farms to the appropriately named Milk NZ, owned by Shanghai Pengxin of China, is a welcome outbreak of sanity in this whole sorry saga. Not to mention a two fingered judicial poke in the eyes of the Government and its Overseas Investment Office rubberstampers.

"a two fingered judicial poke in the eyes
of the Government and its OIO rubberstampers."

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It’s only three weeks ago that the Government was trumpeting the “strict conditions” attached to the approval. They have been swept aside by the judge for the load of piffle that they are. The decision recognises that the would-be foreign owner has no dairy farming experience, thus failing the legislative requirement that it have relevant business expertise. The Chinese company, and the Government, aimed to get around this inconvenient law by contracting Landcorp to manage the Crafar Farms. The appellant’s lawyer pointed out that this would set a precedent for future land sales as any “well-resourced overseas conglomerate could come and buy dairy farms in New Zealand provided it had a contract with Landcorp”. This attempt to sugarcoat the bitter pill of loss of yet more of our land could be described as a policy of phony New Zealandisation. Landcorp would be nothing more than a property manager for the Chinese owners.
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The judge recognised the central fact that the sale would bring no discernible benefit to New Zealand, as required under the Overseas Investment Act, saying that the benefits were likely to accrue regardless of who owns it. “If a given benefit will happen anyway, it cannot easily be described as a substantial consequence of the overseas investment”. Exactly. CAFCA couldn’t have put it better. .

 “any well-resourced overseas conglomerate could come and
 buy dairy farms provided it had a contract with Landcorp”.

CAFCA stresses that the race or nationality of the buyers is irrelevant. Flogging the Crafar Farms overseas is reprehensible regardless of whether the foreign buyers are Chinese, Americans, British or Australians. 
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But CAFCA doesn’t carry a flag for Sir Michael Fay and his merry men. His track record speaks for itself. If his consortium succeeds in buying the Crafar Farms there is nothing to stop it onselling them overseas for a tidy profit. The opportunity to have the Crafar Farms genuinely stay in local hands was lost when the receivers rejected Landcorp’s bid to buy them outright (as opposed to the booby prize of managing them for a foreign owner).
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This decision provides a chance to halt this whole policy of flogging off the country’s agricultural land (of which they ain’t making any more), which is New Zealand’s comparative advantage in the global market. New Zealand is, first and foremost, an agricultural country. And we’re very, very good at it, which is why foreign buyers want to snap it up. As a bare minimum first step, freehold sales of such land to foreign buyers should be stopped ASAP, with them only allowed to lease land, as is common practice overseas. And all such leases should be subject to much stricter conditions and scrutiny than is the case now. 
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CAFCA urges the Government to take the opportunity of this major rebuff to reverse its self-defeating policy of allowing the country to be sold off, farm by farm. Or will it do what it has done in other such judicial defeats and simply change the law in order to get its own way?

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Download the decision 

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.

Christchurch Press Editorial - it has a certain odour to it

The following appeared in the Press today. It is full of inaccurate information and its general tone and politics is revolting. No wonder mainstream media is going to the dogs - if this is the best they can come up with. If nothing else - it is lazy. The inaccaurate information would have been obvious to the writer - they just did not bother to check up on it.

Murray Horton has not yet received his own SIS file - just that of CAFCA - a group he help to found. If the writer of this piece had read the article throughly that appeared in their own paper yesterday they would have been aware of this.

As for the inaccurate and insulting accusations made to Bill Sutch - the writer of this editorial needs to read up on there history. Sutch was acquitted - not found guilty as is most definitley more then implied in this piece.

Anyway after that objective introduction have a read for yourself.

Return of SIS files
A whiff of the musty battles of the Cold War years was recalled this week with news on the release of files held by the Security Intelligence Service on activists and others in Christchurch, writes The Press in an editorial.

Under a policy adopted by the SIS six years ago to allow the release of material that is now only of historical interest, the ageing Left-wing agitator Murray Horton and Bill Rosenberg, the son of the late Marxist economist Wolfgang Rosenberg, have obtained their own SIS files.

According to the director of the SIS, Dr Warren Tucker, 26 people received their personal files last year and they had welcomed the service's greater openness. As the events with which the files deal recede into the past, the SIS's proactive declassification of files and impartial release of the information is to be commended. It not only helps understanding of our recent history, it can increase confidence about the way in which the SIS itself has carried out its functions.

The activities of the security intelligence services have been a particular hobgoblin in Left-wing circles at least since the SIS caught William Ball Sutch passing material to the Soviet Union in the 1970s. It continues to this day with the agitation against the spy base at Waihopai. Horton is inclined to find the old files on him and his Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa organisation sinister. In a wildly hyperbolic flourish, he claims it shows that New Zealand has behaved towards dissidents in much the same way as communist police states.

Horton needs to become better acquainted with how the Soviet KGB (even the present Russian FSB) operate. It is somewhat rougher than the mere collection of snippets of rather dull personal gossip and subscribing to activists' newsletters. In communist countries during the Cold War, dissidents and activists were jailed or exiled, or worse.

As Tucker correctly noted, the SIS files have to be viewed in their historical context. The service's methods and those it is interested in have changed over the years. During the Cold War, its target was foreign attempts at subversion, which have since been well documented, often through legitimate political organisations. The SIS would have been remiss if it had not directed itself at that just as nowadays it would be remiss if it did not pay attention to the activities of religious extremists.

To judge from the file on Cafca that Horton has obtained, the SIS's interest in the organisation does not seem to have been very great and appears to have been at its height during protests and such, when there might have been the possibility of legitimate security concerns. By the mid-1980s the SIS recognised that Cafca was of "minimal security interest" and stopped spying on it.

Rosenberg suggests that the file on his father reflects a McCarthyite mindset and wonders whether it impeded his father's application for a professorship. There is no evidence of that. In fact, far from having his career ruined, as happened to many of the disreputable Senator Joseph McCarthy's victims, Wolfgang Rosenberg, who was for many years an active supporter of the communist autocracies in North Korea and elsewhere, had a long and uninterrupted career as a senior academic at Canterbury University, and was frequently employed by state radio. McCarthyism has never formed much of New Zealand's mindset.

CAFCA's SIS file

CAFCA recently requested and was given it's historical file from the Secret Intelligence Service. Whilst in Christchurch over the summer I was able to read this file from start to finish. What I found to be the most astonishing was the lack of anything that would warrant their on-going surveillance. The interest in the personal lives of those involved and disturbing and comments made about individuals behaviour in meetings or there personal views was predictable from such an organisation - but none the less irritating. It serves as a an example of the constant surveillance anyone will be under who questions government, capitalism or adheres to anything but the status quo. Apart from the obvious 'why on earth were they doing this' reaction I actually found the file fascinating as historical reading. It gave in places almost a day to day account of what activists were up to. Of particular interest to me was the numerous pages committed to the 1975 Resistance Ride, which saw activists congregate from around the country for a tour of the south island stopping off at points of interest and at small towns to talk to local people. I had heard accounts of the Resistance Ride before but it was helpful to read the newspaper articles that were generated at the time. So there we go - our SIS - glorified newspaper clippers.

Here is an article that appeared in the Christchurch Press on Wednesday 28th January regarding the CAFCA SIS file.

SIS reveals secret files
Article 28 Jan 2009
The Press
Martin van Beynen

The release of Security Intelligence Service (SIS) files on individuals has revealed for the first time
how far the shadowy service reached into the lives of activist and non-activist New Zealanders.

In response to the SIS relaxing its approach to redundant files, the word has got out.
A flood of files is reaching the people spied on, with most of the clandestine reporting referring to
legitimate protest and political activity.
In November, Murray Horton, a former railway worker, applied for the file on the Campaign Against
Foreign Control of Aotearoa (Cafca), an organisation he helped found.

He received 400 documents, including a cover letter from SIS head Dr Wayne Tucker. It said the
spying had stopped.

The file presented a ‘‘fascinating and disturbing pattern of systematic covert state surveillance of
many, many organisations and many hundreds, if not thousands, of people over decades’’, Horton said.
He had seen other files. One showed the SIS had started monitoring an activist when she was 10.

An SIS spokesman said the service had adopted an archives policy in 2003 to aid ‘‘the proactive
declassification of historical records’’.

‘‘A key element of the archives policy is that the SIS will deal impartially with information, regardless
of whether it reflects unfavourably on the service or shows the service in a good light,’’ he said.
‘‘Subsequent publicity has led to an increase in requests for access to personal information . . . The
service has made every endeavour to be forthcoming.’’

The greater openness had been well-received, with 26 people being sent their personal files last year.
‘‘Recipients of declassified SIS reports have generally viewed them in their historical context and
realised that the service’s methods and informationcollection priorities have altered over the years as the
nature and perceptions of threats to security have changed.’’

The identity of agents and sources of information was deleted from the files, the spokesman said.
So much for democracy, Horton said.

‘‘Our own little country has been proven to behave towards its dissidents in much the same way as
the Communist police states that it used to rail against,’’ he said.

The worst of it was that the Cafca file and others released indiscreet and personally damaging
material about named third parties who were not the subject of the surveillance but simply caught up in
its net, he said.

‘‘A lot of it is salacious gossip, with analyses of named people’s marriage problems, drinking habits,
etc, etc,’’ Horton said.

‘‘Some of it is laughable, like a report dedicated to the likely impact of feminism and different gender
views on abortion on the marriages of named couples.’’

One report contained this reference to Horton: ‘‘He likes the sound of his own voice and keeps
interrupting the other speakers.’’

Bill Rosenberg, 57, who is a member of Cafca, told the Press he had received his personal file, some
of the file kept on his late father, Canterbury University economist Wolfgang Rosenberg, a refugee from
Nazi Germany, and also the file on his mother.

The deputy director of the centre for teaching and learning at Canterbury University said he had
never been a member of a political party but had been in several anti-war protest groups since his youth.

His father’s file showed he had been followed when he went around the country giving talks to
groups. His mother was also monitored because of her membership of the New Zealand Communist
Party in her youth and her involvement in organisations such as the Housewives Union.

His father’s application for a professorship at Victoria University was noted, and he wondered if the
SIS had intervened to ensure it failed.

The files reflected the paranoia of the McCarthy era but also the particular views of SIS staff,
Rosenberg said. ‘‘The release of the files marks a significant change in that degree of paranoia and that
view of the world.’’

His file contained mainly comments about him by Socialist Unity Party and Communist Party
members at private meetings. Most disturbing was the car registration numbers taken when people
visited his house after he had returned from overseas.

The picture emerging from the files was a ‘‘huge mixture of time-serving stuff’’ and reports about
innocuous events, Rosenberg said.

The lack of sophistication was startling and little analysis was done on why activities were suspicious.
The vast majority of reporting was about ‘‘perfectly legitimate political activity by people who had a
different view to the status quo’’, Rosenberg said.

SIS dossiers detail dalliances, dances and very little drama
Article rank 28 Jan 2009
The Press

Organisations and individuals throughout the country are finding out whythey
attracted the attention of the Security Intelligence Service as files no longer
regarded as live are released. MARTINVANBEYNENblows the dust off two
Christchurch files

Keeping files for the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) must have been a boring job. The file on the
Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (Cafca, formerly Cafcinz, the Campaign Against Foreign
Control in New Zealand) contains about 400 mostly mundane documents, and goes back to its earlier
incarnation in 1965.

It consists mainly of newspaper clippings, Cafca publications and newsletters, press releases and
internal SIS memorandums providing reports on Cafca’s annual meetings. It also contains briefings to
the prime minister on Cafca and notes that some material was passed on to the United States
government.

Much of the information stems from the SIS’s District Office, Christchurch (DOC).

The SIS would not have needed to employ its full resources to garner the information. Most of it
would have been easily obtainable by subscription, and Cafca has always correctly assumed addresses
on its mailing list contained either post office boxes belonging to the SIS or the police Criminal
Intelligence Service.

SIS reports of meetings always identify the attendees, as do reports on pickets and protests. Other
happenings at such protests are recorded, including anti-government statements.

A record of a demonstration in 1980 notes an individual calling the government a ‘‘ripoff’’ and saying
the ‘‘Marxist way of life’’ was better.

Finances are often mentioned as links with other organisations.

By the mid-1980s, the SIS had almost lost interest in Cafca, regarding it as of ‘‘minimal security
interest’’.

A covering letter accompanying the released file by current SIS director Dr Warren Tucker says the
service would have been less interested in the organisation after 1977 if it had not continued with
protests against US bases and naval visits and with protests to abolish the SIS.

The SIS’s interest appears to have peaked in a period between 1975 and 1978 when Cafca or its
predecessor was involved in protests against the visit of US navy secretary J. W. Middendorf, the
berthing of Russian trawler Yunost at Lyttelton and the Pacific Basin Economic Council meeting in
Christchurch.

These followed the involvement of Cafca members in a protest and winning-hearts campaign called
the South Island Resistance Ride in 1975.

The Cafca file included a list of everyone on the ride, with their address and telephone number.
Preparations for the tour, such as ferry bookings, are documented.

The interest cranked up in 1976 when an attempt was made to sabotage a communications mast at
Weedons in Canterbury, and increased again in 1977 when seven .303 bullets were fired into an oil
tanker in protest against the visit of the US Union Oil chairman to the Pacific Basin meeting.
No evidence suggested any link with Cafca, but clearly it was strongly suspected, the file shows.

The prime minister was briefed on the organisation by then SIS director Paul Molineaux.
After skirmishes at the demonstration against the Pacific Basin meeting, the SIS notes on the file
appear to lament a ‘‘well-placed source’’ in Cafca who should have been able to ‘‘forewarn’’ the
authorities.

Although the file suggests a degree of infiltration of Cafca by the SIS by 1978, it did not go to the
trouble of planting a mole.

The main reason for the SIS’s curiosity about Cafca was the organisation’s suspected links and
shared personnel with the New Zealand Communist Party (CP), its youth arm, the Progressive Youth
Movement (PYM), the Socialist Unity Party of New Zealand (SUP) and various offshoots.
From the Cafca file it is clear the SIS had a mole within the Christchurch branch of the CP and as
early as 1975 the party source is reporting how the party regards Cafca as a good testing and recruiting
ground for converts.

The SIS took a much closer interest in CP members, which involved intercepting mail.
In 1986, its source reports on a meeting at which the perilous finances of the Christchurch branch are
discussed and the need to persuade Marion Lesley Hobbs (who later became a Labour Cabinet minister)
to pledge $10.

CP cadres did not always do Cafca any favours. In 1980, B, attending a CP meeting, is reported to
boast when drunk that Cafca had been responsible for the Weedons aerial sabotage on directions from
the CP. Cafca stalwart Murray Horton says the organisation was not involved.

The SIS expresses, in one memo, its satisfaction at the Cafca protest against the Russian trawler
visit, suggesting the protest would create a rift between Cafca and the ‘‘People’s Union’’.

The Cafca file, with its broad compass, contrasts with the file on Christchurch unionist Paul Corliss,
formerly the secretary of the Harbour Workers Union and convener of the Council of Trade Unions in
Canterbury. He is now a part-time union organiser.

He first came to the attention of the SIS in 1974 through his association with Horton and another
Cafca stalwart, Brian Rooney.

He worked with Horton as distribution manager for the Canterbury University student newspaper
Canta, and both men later worked in the traffic branch of New Zealand Railways in Christchurch.
Both are noted in Corliss’s file as ‘‘troublemakers to railways management’’.

Suspicions Corliss might be a member of SUP (he was never a member of the grouping) are also
noted. Corliss’s file tracks his rise up the ranks of the trade union movement and starts with his involvement
in the South Island Resistance Ride, for which he was in charge of food.
In the end, he could not be bothered going, he says.

His file mentions his attendance at a protest in 1980 in Lyttelton against the sale of coal to Japan and
also his arrest in a protest against the Springboks rugby tour in 1981.It records his promotion to Canterbury secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen and his part in a protest against minister of railways George Gair.
It notes his appointment to the executive of the Council of Trade Unions and reports his attendance at a May Day social organised by the CP at the Trade Union Centre in Christchurch on May 2, 1986. The report notes the gathering was entertained by a blind man playing an accordion and a tin
whistle.

Corliss is tracked attending a meeting of SUP in 1986 and in the same year is said not to have turned
up at a Committee for a Worker Front meeting where he was supposed to speak.The committee was trying to come up with a manifesto to provide an alternative to the Roger
Douglas reforms.

His file then notes his invitation to a seminar by SUP and an advertisement giving notice of his
intention to speak at a series of public forums on ‘‘reconquering the Labour Party or a new workers’
party’’.

Corliss, who has never been a member of a political party, says he is not overly perturbed at finding
– to his surprise – that he is the subject of an SIS file.

But he finds it bizarre he should ‘‘feature in some official secret source’’.
‘‘I mean, I wouldn’t feel like that if I had some guilt or something, but this is a bit odd,’’ he says. ‘‘All
I did was belong to legal organisations.’’

He was not a career railwayman, but ‘‘if I had been, it [the note about being a troublemaker] could
have been a major influence on my future’’.

‘‘It seems clear they were talking with senior management about me and Murray, and that would
have leaked like a sieve,’’ he says. ‘‘To say I was causing trouble was a sign I was doing my job as a representative. But there were thousands of union delegates around the country doing what democratic unions are allowed to do.’’