Taejin Fisheries wins

Rio Tinto & King Salmon equal runners up

Government & United Fisheries share the accomplice award

The nominators of Taejin Fisheries also nominated United Fisheries Ltd and the NZ Government for the Accomplice Award.

The winners were announced at an event in Wellington on May 1st.

Roger Award 2012 Winner

Taejin Fisheries won because, in the words of the judges: “The formula is simple: You’ve got a resource, turn to the Third World for cheap, unorganised ‘slave labour’ in order to process that resource. In this case you lease your fishing quota to foreign charter vessels owned by a South Korean company about whom information is non-existent, which employs Indonesian crew on their two trawlers, Melilla 201 and Mellila 203”. The judges cite a seminal report into the NZ fishing industry which itemises foreign companies using “fraudulent documentation, exploitation, intimidation, coercion, blacklisting, inhumane working conditions, brutal beatings, sexual assault and even murder”.

2012 Accomplice Award
.

Indonesian crewmen protest at United Fisheries'
Christchurch head office in support of 89 crew
members who they say are owed a year's wages.

United Fisheries Ltd and the Government shared the Accomplice Award. “The Christchurch firm United Fisheries happily continued to charter vessels from Taejin Fisheries with no apparent serious effort to ensure decent living conditions, pay, and working hours, for the crews on the boats. The Government continued to issue work permits for new crew to be employed offshore without regard to press reports of ill-treatment… There is no solid financial information available about Taejin Fisheries, which is not registered in New Zealand. United Fisheries is a closely held family-owned New Zealand company. New Zealand’s financial reporting regime allows such companies to keep their financial affairs private … United Fisheries’ role in the appalling treatment of foreign fishing crews damages New Zealand’s international reputation in the fishing industry, and undermines the clean and green image New Zealand likes to project in foreign markets… The fact that United Fisheries is a family-owned company is not a valid reason for exempting it or other economically significant companies from filing on the public record audited financial reports”.

Roger Award 2012 Runner Up

Rio Tinto, the equal runner-up, is the majority owner of the Bluff aluminium smelter. It has been a regular finalist. It was the defending champion, having won the 2011 Roger Award and was runner up in both 2009 and 08. The Judges’ Report succinctly summarised its 50 year history in NZ as: “Once the deal was done, it had us by the balls and has continued to squeeze ever since… In 2012, it cried wolf because of the drop in world aluminium prices and tried to insist on rewriting its’ contract with Meridian (which already had some slack in terms of world aluminium prices), sacked some workers and once again threatened to close” (behaviour which it has ramped up in 2013).

King Salmon is the other equal runner-up. “Marine farms are problematic in an area like the Sounds, as they are an industrial activity, generating noise, odour, traffic, lighting, damaging habitat, affecting water quality, and they constitute a privatising of public water space”. Locals objected to its major expansion plans, which were prohibited by the Marlborough District Council; the Government sent the case to the newly created Environmental Protection Agency as a matter of “national significance”, and it gave the go ahead for half the requested new salmon farms. “This move to sabotage local democratic processes is a particularly insidious one”.

Read the full Judges’ Report

Finalists were

the Australian-owned banks (ANZ/ASB/BNZ/Westpac) collectively)
BAT (British American Tobacco)
IAG (Insurance Australia Group)
King Salmon
Newmont Waihi Gold
Rio Tinto
Taejin Fisheries Co. Ltd
Vodafone

Judging Criteria

The Judges

Checkout some of the background on the slave ships

September- October (2011) issue of
Professional Skipper magazine covered
the practices of Foriegn Charter Vessels
fishing in NZ territorial waters.
Click Here

Not in New Zealand´s waters, surely?
Labour and human rights abuses
aboard foreign fishing vessels
(University of Auckland 2011)
Click Here

Let The “Too Big To Fail” Smelter Fail

Too big to fail: Rio Tinto’s Bluff smelter was decades ahead of the fashion

“Too big to fail” was the mantra of the robber banks and other transnational financial sharks during the Global Financial Crisis, which remains ongoing. This left the victims to pay for the costs of the crime, while the corporate criminals walked away scotfree and kept their loot. The people of Cyprus are the latest to experience firsthand just how this works.

In this country, Rio Tinto’s Bluff smelter was decades ahead of the fashion. Every time that Rio Tinto feels that its charmed existence in New Zealand is going to become less cushy, it threatens to pull the plug, close the smelter and walk away. It does so in the knowledge that it has always been deemed “too big to fail” by the succession of Governments, both National and Labour, that it has effortlessly outmanoeuvred for more than 40 years. This time it is trying it on as a tactic to try to pressure Meridian over its power price contract, on which the ink is barely dry and which only took effect in January.

Stop crying wolf, stop using your New Zealand workers
as disposable pawns in your cynical game,
stop holding Southland and the country to ransom

Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) calls Rio Tinto’s bluff (pun intended). Stop crying wolf, stop using your New Zealand workers as disposable pawns in your cynical game, stop holding Southland and the country to ransom. Go ahead and close the smelter and bugger off. See if we care, the country will be much better off without you. The smelter is the country’s single biggest user of electricity, consuming one sixth of the total, 24/7 for more than 40 years. It pays a top secret super cheap price that is not available for any other user and all it does is export electricity from NZ in the form of alumina, while being subsidised by all other electricity users. The smelter is the textbook example of corporate welfare in New Zealand. It is the biggest bludger in the country.

How ironic that Rio Tinto has rejected the Government’s offer of a short term subsidy. It wants a long term one, preferably indefinitely. Presumably, this is in addition to the massive taxpayer subsidy it has been receiving continuously for more than 40 years, in the form of the Manapouri power station built with public money for its exclusive use (and let’s never forget that men died building that); and the cheapest and most secret power price rate in the country bar none. Not good enough apparently, it still wants more.
Rio Tinto won the 2011 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating In Aotearoa/New Zealand (and was runner up in both 2009 and 08). It was nominated for lobbying two Governments “over several years to secure excessive allocations of free emissions units under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme”.

The Roger Award judges agreed, concluding: “It appears therefore, that the New Zealand taxpayer is subsidising a transnational corporate rort of the emissions trading scheme… The significance of this stance cannot be underestimated; a major transnational player within New Zealand materially benefits from its non-compliance with a strategy to reduce global climate change and its ecological effects”.

“It appears therefore, that the New Zealand taxpayer
is subsidising a transnational corporate rort of the
emissions trading scheme

The Judges’ Report concludes that the company has a 50 year history of “suborning, blackmailing and conning successive New Zealand governments into paying massive subsidies on the smelter’s electricity; dodging tax, and running a brilliantly effective PR machine to present a friendly, socially responsible and thoroughly greenwashed face to the media and the public. Its milking of the Emissions Trading Scheme is entirely in character”.

The extremely detailed Financial Analysis reveals that the smelter’s claimed benefits to NZ, namely annual export earnings of “around $1 billion” are, in fact, overstated by four fifths.

The full, damning, 2011 Roger Award Judges’ Report can be read at here

Rio Tinto is, once again, a finalist in the 2012 Roger Award, the winner of which will be announced in Wellington on May 1 ()

In short, it is a liability to New Zealand, not an asset.

What about the people who work for the smelter, directly or indirectly? Indisputably, the smelter closing would have a negative impact on Invercargill and Southland. But let’s keep a sense of proportion – in disaster terms it doesn’t compete with Christchurch having lost 185 lives, 50,000 jobs, and sustained $30 billion worth of damage in a matter of seconds on February 22, 2011. If Christchurch can get back in the saddle after that, Invercargill should be able to handle the smelter closure and its attendant job losses. As a plus, the city will be able to shake off its unhealthily dependent situation as a company town with its local government at the beck and call of this transnational bludger.

The tobacco industry used to employ a lot of people here, but that was deemed to be no longer in the public interest. Lacing lollywater with booze and selling it to kids supports a lot of jobs too but there’s plenty of public demand to get rid of that particular industry as well. The P industry provides an income for thousands of people too, but we don’t hear any demand for that insidious trade to be kept going to keep them in a job. History is full of examples of horrible industries that kept people in jobs (such as the slave trade) but which were banned and/or abolished for the greater good.

This smelter constitutes a crime against the people of New Zealand and has done for its entire existence.

In the national interest, it must be closed and the sooner the better.

It would be a great bonus to have 15% of the country’s electricity suddenly available and no longer committed to one smelter. There would no excuse for the moneygrabbing power companies not to cut their prices (we’ve been falsely promised lower power prices since the “electricity reforms” of the 1990s). And, we’re told, it would drive down Meridian’s attractiveness to would be buyers as part of the Government’s assets sale process. How ironic that the selfishness and ruthlessness of one transnational corporation could bugger up the plans to flog off more of our public assets to transnational corporations.

Also see

Tracing the history of Tiwai Pt

Roger Award venue announced

The Roger Award Ceremony for the worst worst transnational corporation operating in Aotearoa - New Zealand in 2012 will be held:

6.00 pm

.

May 1st 2013

.

Level 6, PSA House

.

11 Aurora Terrace

.

Wellington Central

map

Don’t forget to take part in the inaugural 'Peoples Choice' Award VOTE HERE

Announcing the 2012 Roger "People’s Choice Award "

Who is the Worst

Transnational Corporation

Operating in Aotearoa - New Zealand?

For the first time, the organisers of the Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand are inviting the public to have their say by voting online for the People’s Choice winner.

This is an online poll only; the field is restricted to the eight finalists from the 2102 Roger Award listed at the People’s Choice Website, along with brief information about why each of them was selected; the People’s Choice winner will be announced at the same May Day event in Wellington at which the Roger Award judges announce their winner.

The judges’ choice is the actual winner of the Roger Award and, as always, will be accompanied by a detailed Judges’ Report and Financial Analysis. There will be no equivalent reports about the People’s Choice winner.

VOTE NOW!

Lest We Forget

Warner Brothers Won 2010 Roger Award For “Hobbit” Affair

Amidst all the hype and hysteria of today’s world premiere of “The Hobbit”, let’s refresh our memories about its ugly beginnings a couple of years ago.

Warner Brothers won the 2010 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand despite being a first time nominee (in racing terms, it was “the bolter” of the field). The Judges’ Statement said: ''The ‘Hobbit’ affair was an extraordinary example of transnational capital interfering in local politics, and overtly influencing the actions of the NZ Government (which richly deserves its Accomplice Award). It was an overt display of bullying that humiliated every New Zealander, and deliberately set out to do that… such interference in New Zealand politics sets a precedent for all future negotiations between the New Zealand government and transnational corporations”. It won because of its interference in NZ politics and governance and treatment of employees and contractors.

John Key and his Government won the Accomplice Award for their ignoble role in the whole Warner Brothers/”Hobbit” affair. “It has apparently given rise to a whole new men’s fashion garment in Hollywood – Warners of Wellington trousers. They have an arrow printed on the seat, and the words ‘kiss here’”. The judges announced a special Quisling Award for Sir Peter Jackson (to be awarded to the individual New Zealander who does the most to facilitate foreign control of New Zealand), once again for his role in the Warner Brothers/”Hobbit” affair. “Sir Peter Jackson – you are fully worthy of joining that other blackened knight, that other exemplar in selling out your country to foreign corporations, the one for whom this award is named – Sir Roger Douglas”. So, a triple sweep for the movie industry – the Roger, the Accomplice and the Quisling. Says it all really, doesn’t it.

The full 2010 Roger Award Judges’ Report can be downloaded here

And, to quote from Foreign Control Watchdog 125, December 2010:

The sorry spectacle of the Prime Minister falling over himself to appease Warner Brothers to ensure that the giant American transnational corporation would condescend to continue to film “The Hobbit” in New Zealand was a perfect illustration of the global modus operandi of such corporations, aided and abetted by their local collaborators, and facilitated by craven and wilfully naïve politicians. How appropriate that a film about an imaginary feudal society should be made possible by such a textbook example of modern day corporate feudalism in action, complete with forelock tugging grovelling from the powers that be, mass hysteria from the media, and some Oscar-worthy prima donna behaviour by the knights of the shire, Sir Peter Jackson and Sir Richard Taylor. The American studio bosses must have been falling over themselves with laughter when they realised that all they had to do to get their own way was to threaten to take their bat and ball and go elsewhere (a standard threat from transnational corporations, sometimes enacted, but much more often used as a bargaining ploy to extract concessions. It has been a standard tactic for decades from the transnational owners of the Bluff aluminium smelter, to cite the most high profile example).

Quisling Award winner

So John Key made himself personally available when the Hollywood moguls flew into Wellington and proceeded to give them even more tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars (isn’t it interesting how politicians and the media never wax indignant about these subsidies to Big Business or demand that something be done about these beneficiaries of such massive corporate welfare, surely the biggest bludgers in the country?). And just for good measure Key got the labour laws changed so that anyone working in the film industry is now classified as a self-employed contractor, not an employee, which makes things a lot easier for the film industry employer, who now has no responsibility for things such as tax, annual leave, sick leave, ACC levies, etc, etc. All of that becomes the responsibility of the worker. The hysteria and political overkill was in reaction to one Supreme Court case where a film industry worker had been ruled to be an employee, not a contractor. In fact, so sweeping was the scope of the political gutlessness that even kneejerk backers of National and the bosses felt uneasy enough to express doubts about it in editorials and columns.

Divide And Rule

There was something extremely ugly about the anti-union and anti-worker hysteria which was very rapidly whipped up, including heaping personal abuse and threats on Helen Kelly, the head of the Council of Trade Unions (always disparagingly referred to by the media as “union boss”) and high profile Actors’ Equity spokespeople such as TV star Robyn Malcolm. Particular venom was reserved for the Australian representative of the union which was invited by Actors’ Equity to help them with their industrial campaign for better conditions and security of employment – how ironic that foreign-owned media crusading on behalf of a gigantic American film company should attack an Australian union and its staff for practising international workers’ solidarity. It’s easy to see how fascism can get going –“your problems are all the fault of those immigrants/gypsies/Jews/Australian unions”. Sir Peter Jackson, especially, revealed a very unattractive side of his carefully cultivated avuncular personality (watching him on TV reminded me of his old mate Gollum, fixated about “my precious”). Whenever high achievers such as Jackson are criticised, the standard response from their media apologists is that “this is the tall poppy syndrome”. Bullshit. In this case Jackson’s behaviour was reprehensible and he showed clearly whose side he is on in the faceoff between “his” workers and the studio boss.

Divide and conquer has always been a standard, and well proven, tactic of colonisers and this nasty little exercise in corporate colonisation proved no exception. So there were “we want to work” rallies by film workers stampeded into being frightened about their jobs. All par for the course – local collaborators and their stooges have played a vital, if ignoble, role throughout history. They were in the slave trade; Aotearoa would not have been colonised by the British if not for the help of “loyal Maori”. Once again, how appropriate that a film about an imaginary feudal society should feature the loyal serfs being mobilised to fight the rebellious ones and being misled by their knightly lords and masters (with the help of the Government and media) into seeing those nasty Australian-backed “union bosses” as being their enemy, rather than the huge American film company which demanded that their pay, conditions, job security and union protections be reduced or eradicated before withdrawing its threat to find cheaper and more servile labour elsewhere. Obviously Warner Brothers is now satisfied that the NZ film industry can offer suitably cheap and docile workers. The whole ”Hobbit” fiasco shows very clearly that this is a Government that will go to any lengths to grovel to the transnationals and trample on NZ workers and unions in the process (not to mention blithely giving those transnationals tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars as unabashed corporate welfare).

Text CAFCA Media Release

Cartoon Ian Dalziel

Blistering CNN report calls Kiwis 'desperate' over Hobbit

Out of the Shadows

The Trans-Pacific Partnership

.
&.

What they won't tell us and why we should be worried about it

Monday 26th November

5.30 pm

Knox Presbyterian Church Lounge

28 Bealey Avenue

Christchurch
map

Two of the world's foremost critical voices on international free trade and investment agreements — Lori Wallach and Jane Kelsey — will deliver presentations and take questions on the Trans- Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a treaty being negotiated between the United States, New Zealand, and 9 other countries on the Asia-Pacific rim.

The TPPA is one the biggest political issues facing New Zealand, but one of the least publicized and least understood.

It involves eleven Asian and P
acific-rim countries — including the United States — and it being negotiated in secret with no possibility of public oversight. If it goes ahead, we risk major damage to our economy, our environment, our health, and the ability to shape our own future.

Download the flyer Email for more information

Rio Tinto, Tell The Truth

The World Price For Aluminium Is Already Included In Your New Power Contract With Meridian

Stop crying wolf shut the smelter and bugger off

Every time that Rio Tinto, the gargantuan mining and processing transnational which owns 80% of the Bluff smelter, feels that its charmed existence in New Zealand is going to become less cushy, it threatens to pull the plug, close the smelter and walk away. Last time it did so (in 2008) was because of the Labour Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme. This time it is trying it on as a tactic to try to pressure Meridian over its power price contract, which has already been negotiated and is due to take effect in January. It has succeeded in whipping up a storm of uncertainty among its workers, the union representing some of them, the Southland public and their local body politicians.

Rio Tinto has relentlessly peddled the line that its new power price from Meridian – which hasn’t even taken effect yet – must come down, because of the falling world price for aluminium. But what it hasn’t said is that: “The agreed base price is subject to escalation with reference to a multi-year average market price for electricity in New Zealand, the world price for aluminium (as determined by an independent benchmark), and a component as proxy for price inflation”. The quote – with our emphasis added – is from Meridian’s latest financial reports. In plain English, the world price of aluminium is already factored into its new power contract with Meridian.

Once again, Rio Tinto is just trying it on, with every expectation that Meridian will fold. And why wouldn’t Rio Tinto expect that? For the past nearly 50 years it has twisted every New Zealand government and State-owned electricity supplier around its little finger. The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) calls upon Meridian to break the mould and surprise us all by sticking to its guns.

And we call Rio Tinto’s bluff (pun intended). Stop crying wolf, stop using your New Zealand workers as disposable pawns in your cynical game, stop holding Southland and the country to ransom. Go ahead and close the smelter and bugger off. See if we care, the country will be much better off without you.

Don’t take our word for that. Transpower’s Chief Executive, Patrick Strange, told the media this month that if the smelter closes, the surplus power would go to the rest of the grid, meaning lower prices for consumers. CAFCA says bring on the lower prices for long suffering consumers who have been waiting since the 1990s for any tangible benefits from the “electricity reforms”. All we’ve seen is ever increasing power prices.

The smelter closes = lower prices for consumers

The smelter is the country’s single biggest user of electricity, consuming one sixth of the total, 24/7 for more than 40 years. It pays a top secret super cheap price that is not available for any other user and all it does is export electricity from NZ in the form of alumina, while being subsidised by all other electricity users. The smelter is the textbook example of corporate welfare in New Zealand. It is the biggest bludger in the country. Those who extol the bracing discipline of market forces for everybody else are strangely coy when it comes to this corporate recidivist.

Rio Tinto won the 2011 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating In Aotearoa/New Zealand. It was nominated for lobbying two Governments “over several years to secure excessive allocations of free emissions units under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme”.

The Roger Award judges agreed, concluding: “It appears therefore, that the New Zealand taxpayer is subsidising a transnational corporate rort of the emissions trading scheme… The significance of this stance cannot be underestimated; a major transnational player within New Zealand materially benefits from its non-compliance with a strategy to reduce global climate change and its ecological effects”.

The Judges’ Report concludes that the company has a 50 year history of “suborning, blackmailing and conning successive New Zealand governments into paying massive subsidies on the smelter’s electricity; dodging tax, and running a brilliantly effective PR machine to present a friendly, socially responsible and thoroughly greenwashed face to the media and the public. Its milking of the Emissions Trading Scheme is entirely in character”.

The extremely detailed Financial Analysis reveals that the smelter’s claimed benefits to NZ, namely annual export earnings of “around $1 billion” are, in fact, overstated by four fifths.

The full, damning, 2011 Roger Award Judges’ Report can be read here

In short, it is a liability to New Zealand, not an asset.

Equally undeniably, it has been good for Southland, in terms of jobs, etc. So what about the people who work for the smelter, directly or indirectly? The tobacco industry used to employ a lot of people here, but that was deemed to be no longer in the public interest. Lacing lollywater with booze and selling it to kids supports a lot of jobs too but there’s plenty of public demand to get rid of that particular industry as well. The P industry provides an income for thousands of people too, but we don’t hear any demand for that insidious trade to be kept going to keep them in a job. History is full of examples of horrible industries that kept people in jobs (such as the slave trade) but which were banned and/or abolished for the greater good.

This smelter constitutes a crime against the people of New Zealand and has done for its entire existence.
In the national interest, it must be closed and the sooner the better.

Who Owns The South Island Power Grid?

Good Question. Don’t Assume It Is Transpower

The Government’s proposed partial privatisation of Mighty River Power, Meridian and Genesis Energy has focused attention on the ownership of our State-owned electricity generation companies. The majority of New Zealanders oppose the likelihood of such vital national infrastructure going into foreign ownership.

But what about the State-owned company which “owns” the South Island power grid? Does Transpower actually own that? Members of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) will be asking that at

Transpower’s Annual Public Meeting

George Hotel, Christchurch,

4 p.m.

Thursday October 18th

(the CAFCA banner will be displayed outside the venue from 3.30 p.m.)

Here’s what we know about the ownership of the South Island grid. Excuse us if the explanation is complex; that’s because the deal was deliberately structured to be complex.

In 2003 Transpower sold the South Island grid and leased it back.

The buyer of the grid was the US-based Wachovia Bank;

The leaseback of the grid runs through the Cayman Islands, a tax haven;

The leaseback of the grid runs for about 100 years, but Transpower has the option to repurchase the grid after about 25 years;

The deal was tax-driven. At the time, it was being arranged, an inquiry into abusive tax avoidance schemes was underway in the United States. A ban on this particular type of deal (lease to service) took effect from just days after this deal was signed;

Transpower delayed for a year showing the one-off profit effect in its financial report because of uncertainties related to the tax inquiry.

That meant that Transpower is the operator (not the owner) of the South Island grid.

During the early days of the current global financial crisis, Wachovia was taken over by Wells Fargo, another American bank.

Transpower’s 2012 Financial Report states that, in November 2009, Transpower partially terminated the cross-border lease over the South Island grid. However, that same Financial Report contains material which suggests that the cross-border lease is continuing.

The effect of the cross border lease was to duplicate ownership of the grid, so that ownership could be claimed in the United States as well as in New Zealand.

We call upon Transpower to explain:

What is meant by partial termination of the lease?

Can any US organisation still claim today that it owns the South Island grid? Yes or no?

Download this flyer

Dotcom Snooping

More Evidence that the Government Communications Security Bureau Is Not Under Control

Yet again Kim Dotcom bites the government on the bum

Prime Minister Key is extremely naïve, or lying, when he says he is “shocked” by allegations that the GCSB intervened in the Dotcom case on behalf of the United States. No Prime Minister has full control over the Government Communications Security Bureau, as David Lange acknowledged (in his foreword to Nicky Hager’s seminal 1996 book on the GCSB and its Waihopai spy base, “Secret Power”).

The Government must rue the day they ever heard of Kim Dotcom, because everything about his action packed few years of presence in New Zealand so far has come back to bite them in the bum.

But the fact of the matter is that they gave him New Zealand permanent residence and the GCSB is supposedly prohibited from domestic spying on NZ citizens and residents.

New Zealand has just hosted its first visit by a US Defense Secretary in 30 years and the only surprise is that Key didn’t put his back out with all the bowing and scraping he did. Secretary Panetta made it clear that everything about the US/NZ military and political relationship is on course to revert to the good old days of ANZUS, so why should anyone be surprised that “our” spooks should be doing the bidding of the US Government and its law enforcement agencies in the Dotcom case?

That’s what the GCSB exists to do – to work as local sub-contractors of US intelligence.

The staff at the Waihopai spy base routinely intercept communications for their US and UK big brothers with few questions asked. The spy base does not operate in the interests of New Zealand and should be closed down.

As former whistleblowers have revealed, neither laws nor ethics bother the spooks. Politicians have little idea about what the spies do. In Britain the Government Communications Headquarters, which is responsible for massive interception of international business and private communications, is increasingly involved in domestic spying. At a minimum the GCSB should be put under proper control by a Parliamentary Select Committee before the same thing happens in New Zealand - not the current sham “oversight” regime of the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security and the Intelligence and Security Committee, which operates in non-accountable secrecy and is a committee of Government, not a Parliamentary Select Committee. Better still, it should be shut down, a snot being in the national interest. Let the Yanks do their own dirty work rather than hiding behind a so-called “New Zealand” spy agency.

Just Close and Bugger Off

RIO TINTO, STOP CRYING WOLF

Here we go again. Every time that Rio Tinto, the gargantuan mining and processing transnational which owns 80% of they Bluff smelter, feels that its charmed existence in New Zealand is going to become less cushy, it threatens to pull the plug, close the smelter and walk away. Last time it did so (in 2008) was because of the Labour Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme. This time it is trying it on as a tactic to try to pressure Meridian over its power price contract, which has already been negotiated and is due to take effect in January.

Just close the smelter & bugger off, you're a liability not an asset

Rio Tinto Alcan won the 2011 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating In Aotearoa/New Zealand. It was nominated for lobbying two Governments “over several years to secure excessive allocations of free emissions units under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme”.

The Roger Award judges agreed, concluding: “It appears therefore, that the New Zealand taxpayer is subsidising a transnational corporate rort of the emissions trading scheme… The significance of this stance cannot be underestimated; a major transnational player within New Zealand materially benefits from its non-compliance with a strategy to reduce global climate change and its ecological effects”.

The extremely detailed Financial Analysis reveals that the smelter’s claimed benefits to NZ, namely annual export earnings of “around $1 billion” are, in fact, overstated by four fifths.

The full, damning, 2011 Roger Award Judges’ Report can be read here

In short, it is a liability to New Zealand, not an asset.

What about the people who work for the smelter, directly or indirectly? The tobacco industry used to employ a lot of people here, but that was deemed to be no longer in the public interest. Lacing lollywater with booze and selling it to kids supports a lot of jobs too but there’s plenty of public demand to get rid of that particular industry as well. The P industry provides an income for thousands of people too, but we don’t hear any demand for that insidious trade to be kept going to keep them in a job. History is full of examples of horrible industries that kept people in jobs (such as the slave trade) but which were banned and/or abolished for the greater good.

This smelter constitutes a crime against the people of New Zealand and has done for its entire existence.

In the national interest, it must be closed and the sooner the better.

Posted with Blogsy

Because he told them so!

Overseas Investment Office says Rupert Murdoch of good character

In May the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) wrote to the Overseas Investment Office: “In light of the recent finding by a British Parliament Select Committee that Rupert Murdoch is “not fit” to lead a major international company, and in light of the fact that Murdoch’s News Ltd owns 43.65% of the shares of Sky Network Television Ltd, when is the OIO going to review, in terms of the Overseas Investment Act and accompanying Regulations, whether all of those in control of Sky are of good character and, if not, require Sky either to divest or Rupert Murdoch to relinquish any control of News Ltd?”.

This week we received the OIO’s considered decision from Annelies McClure, OIO Manager. Basically it boils down to saying that the OIO is not bothered about a British Parliament cross-party Select Committee finding that Murdoch is not fit to lead a major international company. The most extraordinary reason given for the OIO being satisfied with the “good character” of Murdoch and the other individuals exercising control over News Corporation is that he and they told the OIO that they are of good character, in the form of statutory declarations to that effect. In other words, the OIO takes his and their word for it, with no independent checking required. What a bloody joke!

CAFCA has documented the OIO’s long history of going to extraordinary lengths to rubberstamp the “good character” of all sorts of dubious characters in control of overseas companies whom it approved.

OIO’s Rupert Murdoch decision is just the latest proof of its role as a ... doormat

And the latest example namely an article by my colleague James Ayers in the forthcoming August issue of Foreign Control Watchdog, which analyses in great detail the OIO’s truly heroic efforts to vouch for the good character of Kim Dotcom, based entirely on the OIO’s own file on the subject. In that case the OIO was overruled by one Cabinet Minister (the since retired Simon Power), who persuaded his colleague Maurice Williamson to reverse his previous approval of Dotcom’s application.

It was a hopeful sign that the OIO, backed by Ministers, turned down the original bid by Natural Dairy (fronted by May Wang) to buy the Crafar Farms, because it wasn’t satisfied as to the good character of the people involved. CAFCA is also very pleased that the OIO has, very belatedly, taken our advice and is taking court action to divest May Wang’s company UBNZ of the four Crafar Farms that it bought without OIO permission in 2010. But this is the only case we’ve ever seen where the OIO has actually declared prospective foreign investors to not be of good character and therefore ineligible to join the garage sale that passes for foreign investment policy in this country.

The OIO’s Rupert Murdoch decision is just the latest proof of its role as a doorman (actually a doormat would be more accurate) for the transnational corporations and overseas individuals inexorably buying up, and profiting from, New Zealand companies and land. What we need is a bouncer. And, more fundamentally, we need a foreign investment law with teeth, one that states that these people are guests in our home and are here on our terms, a law that needs to be backed up by politicians who put the national interest ahead of their starry eyed infatuation with “globalisation and the open economy

CAFCA Media Release

The Privatisation Agenda

Keep Our Assets <>Public Meeting Christchurch

Keep Our Assets-Christchurch is a recently formed coalition of political parties, unions and activist groups (the members are listed here), which is campaigning to keep publicly owned assets in public ownership, both at the national and Christchurch level. This public meeting is part of that campaign. The speakers will be:

Bill Rosenberg, from Wellington, the Economist and Policy Director for the NZ Council of Trade Unions (CTU). He will be speaking about privatisation and asset sales at the national level

Marty Braithwaite, the CTU’s Christchurch spokesperson on earthquake-related matters. He will be speaking about the threat to Christchurch’s publicly owned assets.

Sharna Butcher, who organised the July march and rally in Christchurch against asset sales. She will be speaking on behalf of Keep Our Assets-Christchurch.

THURSDAY AUGUST 30th 7.30 P.M.KNOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH HALL

28 BEALEY AVENUE

The Government is brazenly stealing public assets and laughing
in our faces by urging “mum and dad” to buy back a little.

A person who takes something that doesn’t belong to him is a thief; and a person who tries to sell you something that is not his to sell is a con man. Even more so if he is trying to sell you back a little bit of your own property which he has stolen from you. That really is adding insult to injury. The Government is brazenly stealing public assets, namely five State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) - all sugar coated as “the mixed ownership model”, because it is only stealing 49% of them - and laughing in our faces by urging “mum and dad” to buy back a little bit of this stolen property in the form of shares. Forget Nigerian scams; this is the much worse New Zealand scam.

No matter how much the Government tarts it up; the glaringly obvious fact is that “mum and dad” already own these five SOEs, and all other public assets, because that’s what public ownership is. You don’t need a Harvard MBA to work that out. We have paid for them by our taxes, why should we be expected to pay for them again by buying a few shares in them? That’s simple enough for even a Treasury official or a Cabinet Minister to understand – which is why they’re going to such lengths to disguise that fact. We will be dazzled by 24 carat bullshit to persuade us to “look over there while we pick your pocket”.

In the finest traditions of disaster capitalism the political and Big Business cheerleaders of privatisation are demanding that Christchurch’s Council-owned assets be flogged off to pay for the huge cost of quake recovery and, not coincidentally, to line their pockets. If they’re flogged off, the city will be left without the major income stream generated by these assets and ratepayers will be left to shoulder the disproportionate burden of greatly increased rates. Christchurch provides a very clear warning of the perils of privatisation. Some things are just too big and important to be left to “the market”, and disaster recovery must be a core function of the State. For all EQC’s shortcomings, the situation would be a damned sight more dire without it; imagine if we were entirely at the mercy of the insurance transnational corporations, who are playing hardball and holding the city, and the whole country, to ransom.

Our message is clear. Keep our assets, both those that belong to the people of New Zealand and those which belong to the people of Christchurch!

Strength Through Unity

It is time for the people of Christchurch to stand up and have their voices heard

United we stand divided we fall. As people continue to suffer in our City & the Government turn their backs and say nothing is wrong.

Checkout the Organisers

Facebook Event page

Facebook Group page

One Hundred

100 days to build the temporary stadium

100 days to plan the whole of the new central business district
100 weeks (23 months) and 28,000 TC3 homeowners have had only a trickle of repairs made to the most damaged homes in the city.

Time to Demand Action!

12 noon August 8th - Meet at the corner of Clarence & Pricess St

Time To Put The Boot Into Insurance Companies

When insurance TNCs hold a whole city and country to ransom, this Tory government simply says “leave it to the market"

The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) congratulates Gerry Brownlee for “losing patience” with the insurance companies who are restricting Christchurch’s earthquake recovery to a snail’s pace. We are pleased that he has finally been forced to admit that these companies, most of whom are transnational corporations, are part of the problem and not part of the solution. But Brownlee than said that he didn’t intend to do anything about it, sticking to his mantra of leaving it to the market. Sorry, Gerry, that’s not good enough. It’s time you put the boot into the insurance companies, who have shamelessly charged hundreds of thousands of Cantabrians premiums for generations and are now finding every excuse in the book, plus making up some new ones, to delay paying out or not paying out at all.

The legal term is breach of contract.

They are playing hardball with the people of Christchurch, holding the country to ransom and slowing the post-quake rebuild of the city to a crawl, indeed, they are stopping it altogether. In the good old days, when wharfies or freezing workers or inter-island ferry cooks and stewards or seamen were deemed to be “holding the country to ransom“, there was major hysteria from the media and lots of big stick wielding by Tory governments. But when insurance TNCs hold a whole city and country to ransom, this Tory government simply says “leave it to the market”.

The present situation in Christchurch provides a very clear warning of the perils of privatisation. Some things are just too big and important to be left to “the market”, and disaster recovery must be a core function of the State. New Zealand’s Earthquake Commission is unique and a model for the rest of the world (as is ACC). Every Christchurch quake claimant, me included, has at least one horror story about their dealings with EQC But imagine if there was no EQC – even with all its faults – and disaster recovery was entirely the responsibility of insurance companies, as it is in plenty of other countries.

This Government is a big fan of public private partnerships (PPPs), which come complete with performance-related penalties (Serco, the transnational corporation running Auckland’s private prison has been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars by the State for breaches of its’ key performance indicators). So, if the Government is pigheadedly committed to letting “the market” i.e. insurance companies dictate the terms of the Christchurch recovery, then how about applying some market regulatory principles to EQC’s private sector partner. Prosecute the insurance companies for their tardiness and obstructionism; compel them to honour their policies to the letter.

And if that still doesn’t work in a timely manner, then the State needs to step in and nationalise those insurance companies which prove to be terminally negligent in their duties. If necessary, the State should become the insurer of last resort. Unusual circumstances call for unusual measures.

This is not just a Christchurch problem. Insurance companies have reassessed the threat posed to the profits by New Zealand being a “risky” country” and ramped up their premiums right across the country. And these are the same insurance companies that stand to directly benefit from the Government “opening to competition” ACC’s lucrative workplace compensation account. They will apply exactly the same delaying and cost-cutting tactics to New Zealanders injured in accidents as they are currently deploying against Christchurch homeowners and businesses. Yet another good reason to keep ACC and other State assets in public ownership.

Roger Award Finalist in trouble yet again

Peru Declares State of Emergency as 5 Die in Protest Against Gold Mine Owned by U.S. Firm, Newmont

The Peruvian government has declared a state of emergency in the mountain region of Cajamarca where thousands have gathered in recent days to protest the expansion of a gold mine owned by the U.S.-based Newmont Mining that is already the largest in South America. Using live ammunition against the protesters, police have killed five people this week alone.

The Parliament of the Streets <> Taking back Power

Concerted Drive To Put The “NZ” Back Into ANZUS

The 25th anniversary of NZ’s Nuclear Free law is a worthy cause for celebration for what was, and is, a fantastic achievement. It is also timely to remember that it was accomplished by hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders who were prepared to confront the State and its pro-nuclear, pro-war, pro-ANZUS status quo. They directly confronted the US nuclear machine and its New Zealand enforcers on the water; on land they confronted and defeated a colonial mentality that swapped from gutlessly hiding behind Mother England’s skirts to gutlessly hanging onto Uncle Sam’s coat tails. The victory belongs to the New Zealand people; the headline hogging politicians only surfed the tsunami of public opinion. To see Richard Prebble on TV last week undeservedly basking in the limelight was seriously sick-making.

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders
who were prepared to confront the State

But New Zealanders can ill afford to rest on our nuclear free laurels. Much remains to be done. For nearly 60 years Christchurch Airport has been the site for a US military base, albeit one that is a medium level transport base. How many New Zealanders know that US military planes using it operate under exactly the same “neither confirm nor deny” policy that has seen US warships banned from New Zealand since 1987? Christchurch remains the only city in Australasia to host a US military base.

This country still operates two “New Zealand” spy bases – at Waihopai and Tangimoana. In the case of Waihopai, it is a US spy base in all but name, operating as an outpost of the US National Security Agency in rural Marlborough.

In the 25 years since New Zealand became nuclear free by law, our Governments, whether National or Labour, have continued to help the US fight its seemingly endless wars. Currently NZ has troops in Afghanistan, effectively acting as mercenaries helping the US to prop up a corrupt regime of opium barons, warlords, murderers and misogynists, in a totally meaningless war.

Within the past couple of months NZ has sent troops to train on US soil; hosted US combat troops here; and sent NZ warships to take part in US naval war exercises – all of these for the first time since NZ was unceremoniously kicked out of ANZUS in 1986 for having the unmitigated gall to put our own national interests first.

Source

Wikileaks reveals that full intelligence relations between NZ and the US were covertly resumed in 2009; plus revealing a whole lot more details about the extent of that cosy covert relationship, right through key organs of the NZ government.

All in all it adds up to a concerted drive to putting the “NZ” back into ANZUS and turning back the clock to the good old days when NZ was a loyal satellite of the American Empire.

The nuclear free movement in this country did a great job but it’s not finished by any means. And the powers that be in both Washington and Wellington are doing their level best to completely undo it. They need to be forcefully reminded of the successful campaign of the New Zealand people for an independent foreign policy, of which the Nuclear Free law was an important part; a policy which rightly earned this country both international admiration and self-respect.

Instead of restoring military and intelligence ties with the US, NZ needs to be breaking the chains that bind us to the world’s biggest warmonger.