The Roger Award
The Roger Award For The Worst Transnational Corporation operating in New Zealand has run annually since 1997. There are no prizes for guessing whom it is named after. It is organised by CAFCA and GATT Watchdog, both Christchurch-based groups, who rotate the annual organisation.
Nominations for the 2008 award are now open. The nomination form, which includes criteria and details of how to make a nomination, is available here in Word (52 KB) or PDF format (65KB).
You may have noticed that New Zealand has a general election this year. For election year only, there is a new Meddler’s Award for the transnational corporation which, judged on the same criteria as for the Roger Award itself, has the most negative impact on the direction or electoral process of the election campaign.
The judges for 2008 are: Geoff Bertram, from Wellington, a Victoria University economist; Brian Turner, from Christchurch, President of the Methodist Church and social justice activist; Paul Corliss, from Christchurch, a life member of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union; Cee Payne-Harker, from Dunedin, Industrial Services Manager for the NZ Nurses' Organisation and health issues activist; Christine Dann, from Banks Peninsula, a writer and researcher; and Bryan Gould, from Bay of Plenty, a former Waikato University Vice-Chancellor. They will be given a shortlist of finalists. The winner(s) will be announced at an Auckland event in early 2009.
Criteria and details of previous winners are below.
The winner of the 2007 award was announced in March 2008. Read the media release by the organisers announcing the winner and the Judges' Statement, report and financial analysis of the winner.
See also the speech given by Murray Horton of CAFCA for the organisers of the event.
The finalists were Telecom, Spotless, Pike River Coal, ANZ, British American Tobacco (BAT), Independent Liquor, APN News & Media (ANM), and GlaxoSmithKline.
New for 2007 was an Accomplice Award. It was won by the Whanganui DHB.
The winners of all awards since its inauguration in 1997 are:
Telecom (2007)
Progressive Enterprises (2006)
Bank of New Zealand and Westpac (2005)
Telecom (2004)
Juken Nissho (2003)
Tranz Rail (2002)
Carter Holt Harvey (2001)
Tranz Rail (2000)
TransAlta (1999)
Monsanto (1998)
Tranz Rail (1997)
Plus the judges have awarded prizes for runners up, continuity and collaborators over the years. The Award has attracted considerable interest since its inception (even from the corporate media), and has had a succession of distinguished and completely voluntary judges. The events to announce the winners have become highly memorable in their own right.
Details of winners and judges' decisions since 2000 are below.
The criteria for judging are by assessing the transnational (a corporation with 25% or more foreign ownership) that has the most negative impact in each or all of the following categories:
Economic Dominance - Monopoly, profiteering, tax dodging, cultural imperialism
People - Unemployment, impact on tangata whenua, impact on women, impact on children, abuse of workers/conditions, health and safety of workers and the public, cultural imperialism
Environment - Environmental damage, abuse of animals
Political interference - Cultural imperialism, running an ideological crusade
There is also an Accomplice Award for an organisation (not an individual) which was the worst Accomplice during the year in aiding and abetting transnational corporations in New Zealand to behave as described in the criteria. The Accomplice’s award is in addition to the Worst Transnational Corporation award and will not necessarily be awarded every year.
Because Tranz Rail won three times, it was installed as the first occupant of the Hall of Shame. It thus became ineligible to be nominated again for the Roger Award. However under its new owner, Toll Holdings, the rail company is again eligible, but only for events related to the current year.
2007 Award
The 2007 winners are detailed in the Judges’ Statement, report and financial analysis of the winner (a 261KB PDF – Acrobat – file).
2006 Award
The 2006 winners are detailed in the Judges’ Statement, report and financial analysis of the winner (a 152KB PDF – Acrobat – file).
2005 Award
The 2005 winners are detailed in the Judges’ Statement, Roger Report, and Financial Analysis of the winners (a 214KB PDF – Acrobat – file).
2004 Award
The 2004 winners are detailed in the Judges’ Statement and Report, and financial analysis of Telecom (a 167KB PDF – Acrobat – file).
2003 Award
The 2003 winners are detailed in the Judges’ Statement and Report (a 54KB PDF – Acrobat – file), which for the first time provides a financial report on the winner.
2002 Award
The 2002 award winners are detailed in the Judges’ Statement (for a summary) and the Judges’ Report (a 118KB PDF – Acrobat – file) for a detailed backgrounder.
2001 Award
The 2001 award winners are detailed in the Judges’ Statement (for a summary) and the Judges’ Report (a 308KB PDF – Acrobat – file) for a detailed backgrounder.
2000 Award
The 2000 Roger Award for the worst Transnational operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand – Judges’ Report . (A 58KB PDF – Acrobat – file.)
Showing posts with label rogernomics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rogernomics. Show all posts
Government Buys Back the Rail - Bout Bloody Time
This is a little delayed as I was distracted with the goings on in Blenheim over the last week so did not have regular internet access.
The news that the Government had bought back the railways was welcomed with a sense of irony considering the railways were orginally sold off, albiet by National, in an environment created by the radical Labour reforms of the 1980's. It's a wierd world we live in when Roger Douglas reappears on the political landscape. Is it even wierder when we buy back a national asset for $665 million?
Below is a CAFCA's response to the (re) purchasing of the Railways
CAFCA CONGRATULATES GOVERNMENT FOR RENATIONALISING RAILWAYS
But Says $2 Would Have Been Fair Price
The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) congratulates the Government for renationalising the railways from Toll. This restores to public ownership a vital part of the national infrastructure that should never have been sold in the first place.
But we think that the $665 million price paid is scandalously high. It is double what the woeful Wisconsin Central and its local collaborators paid to buy the whole lot (including the track network) from the National government in 1993. It is two thirds higher than what this Government could have bought the whole lot back for, in 2003, except that Labour got cold feet and let Toll buy the trains and ferries, while the Government simply renationalised the track network. Now the whole railways has been belatedly, and very expensively, repossessed from its foreign owners - who no longer want it and who couldn’t make a go of it, because that would mean spending money, rather than simply asset stripping and profit skimming.
CAFCA notes that the Government paid $1 to buy back the entire track network in 2003. Allowing a very generous 100% for inflation, we say that the Government should pay Toll $2 to buy back the trains and ferries. Why should the New Zealand taxpayers fork out hundreds of millions of dollars for something that should never have been taken from us in the first place? Rather than lining the pockets of an Australian transnational corporation, that $665 million would do a lot more good alleviating the poverty in which more than 180,000 New Zealand kids have to live, to give just one example.
We’ve regularly said that the bipartisan sell off policy pursued by both Labour and National governments has turned New Zealand into the $2 Shop of the South Pacific. Therefore, we can’t think of a more appropriate price than $2 to pay to buy back one of the key parts of the national infrastructure. We’re even prepared to put up the money.
And the Government once again stands accused of inconsistency in its policy towards foreign control of New Zealand. Just last week Dr Cullen said that it won’t intervene to stop the sale of Vector’s Wellington retail lines network to a Hong Kong transnational because it had already been in foreign ownership twice before. Hello – so why has it, a week later, bought back the railways from its second lot of (hopeless) foreign owners? Electricity is a sector that is crying out for direction and planning, in the national interest. The pending sale of Contact Energy, to yet another foreign owner, as a byproduct of the takeover of its Australian parent, is a further illustration of how this most strategic of infrastructure assets has become the plaything of transnational corporations. All this while the long suffering public is being warned, yet again, of the possibility of blackouts this winter because of the unplanned, profit-driven structure of the electricity sector.
The Government has correctly blocked foreign ownership of Auckland Airport and renationalised the railways from foreign ownership, but it must keep up the good work and act decisively to restore the electricity industry to being one which operates in the national interest.
The news that the Government had bought back the railways was welcomed with a sense of irony considering the railways were orginally sold off, albiet by National, in an environment created by the radical Labour reforms of the 1980's. It's a wierd world we live in when Roger Douglas reappears on the political landscape. Is it even wierder when we buy back a national asset for $665 million?
Below is a CAFCA's response to the (re) purchasing of the Railways
CAFCA CONGRATULATES GOVERNMENT FOR RENATIONALISING RAILWAYS
But Says $2 Would Have Been Fair Price
The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) congratulates the Government for renationalising the railways from Toll. This restores to public ownership a vital part of the national infrastructure that should never have been sold in the first place.
But we think that the $665 million price paid is scandalously high. It is double what the woeful Wisconsin Central and its local collaborators paid to buy the whole lot (including the track network) from the National government in 1993. It is two thirds higher than what this Government could have bought the whole lot back for, in 2003, except that Labour got cold feet and let Toll buy the trains and ferries, while the Government simply renationalised the track network. Now the whole railways has been belatedly, and very expensively, repossessed from its foreign owners - who no longer want it and who couldn’t make a go of it, because that would mean spending money, rather than simply asset stripping and profit skimming.
CAFCA notes that the Government paid $1 to buy back the entire track network in 2003. Allowing a very generous 100% for inflation, we say that the Government should pay Toll $2 to buy back the trains and ferries. Why should the New Zealand taxpayers fork out hundreds of millions of dollars for something that should never have been taken from us in the first place? Rather than lining the pockets of an Australian transnational corporation, that $665 million would do a lot more good alleviating the poverty in which more than 180,000 New Zealand kids have to live, to give just one example.
We’ve regularly said that the bipartisan sell off policy pursued by both Labour and National governments has turned New Zealand into the $2 Shop of the South Pacific. Therefore, we can’t think of a more appropriate price than $2 to pay to buy back one of the key parts of the national infrastructure. We’re even prepared to put up the money.
And the Government once again stands accused of inconsistency in its policy towards foreign control of New Zealand. Just last week Dr Cullen said that it won’t intervene to stop the sale of Vector’s Wellington retail lines network to a Hong Kong transnational because it had already been in foreign ownership twice before. Hello – so why has it, a week later, bought back the railways from its second lot of (hopeless) foreign owners? Electricity is a sector that is crying out for direction and planning, in the national interest. The pending sale of Contact Energy, to yet another foreign owner, as a byproduct of the takeover of its Australian parent, is a further illustration of how this most strategic of infrastructure assets has become the plaything of transnational corporations. All this while the long suffering public is being warned, yet again, of the possibility of blackouts this winter because of the unplanned, profit-driven structure of the electricity sector.
The Government has correctly blocked foreign ownership of Auckland Airport and renationalised the railways from foreign ownership, but it must keep up the good work and act decisively to restore the electricity industry to being one which operates in the national interest.
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