Invercargill mayor and 1960s protest figure Tim Shadbolt and distinguished NZ film-maker Gaylene Preston have added their names to the list of those calling for the administration at Victoria University to lift the two-year trespass ban it imposed recently on Wellington workers’ rights activists Joel Cosgrove and Heleyni Pratley.
Cosgrove, a former students association president, and Pratley, a former student executive member, were trespassed for taking part in a protest against fee increases by the University Council. At the protest Cosgrove threw one egg, which he later cleaned up, and Pratley held a sign calling for free education.
The pair were then arrested and charged with trespass when they tried to deliver a petition signed by academics and trade union figures calling for the trespass order to be lifted.
“It seems that Victoria is keeping up its reputation as the most uptight University in New Zealand. I remember in the late 60s we had a University Arts Festival there and a small group of us went to sleep in the Common Room and were all arrested for trespass. Universities should be the last bastion of free speech and democracy,” said Mayor Shadbolt, in a message of support to the campaign to get the trespass orders lifted.
Cosgrove and Pratley have welcomed the support, saying that the longer the administration maintain the trespass order the more draconian and silly it makes the University appear. END
The SPARK interviews long serving anti-imperialist activist and Workers Party secretary Daphna Whitmore
Spark: It’s been 8 years since New Zealand troops were sent to Afghanistan – why did the Labour-Alliance government send them in the first place?
It needs to be understood in the context of New Zealand’s involvement with US and British imperialism. New Zealand is a partner in this bloc, and Labour enthusiastically signed up to the so-called War on Terror. When it comes to involvement in military adventures Labour governments have been just as warmongering as National.
Daphna Whitmore (left)at May Day march 2009
The Alliance Party split over the issue of support for the invasion of Afghanistan, with the majority of its members rejecting the war. It highlighted the problem of being in government with an outright capitalist party like Labour.
Spark: New Zealand companies aren’t trying to make major sales in Afghanistan – why all the risk and expense over such a long period of time?
In its last term the Labour government did scale back the involvement, recalling the SAS and sending instead “reconstruction” forces. This tended to obscure the reality – that these are military forces, participating in an occupation. It dressed it up to look like it was simply a humanitarian mission. Read the rest of this entry »
The Workers in New Zealand Campaign of Solidarity with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) expresses outrage at the ongoing ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Israeli state against the people of Palestine. The campaign provides an opportunity for New Zealanders to support the PFLP in resisting the racist state of Israel and its policy of house demolitions and settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The “Peace Process” which has seen the conditions for the Palestinian population in the occupied territories deteriorate dramatically, while ignoring the right of return of 5 million Palestinian refugees and the plight of Palestinians living within the racist state of Israel. The “Peace Process” has seen them forced into Bantustans, oppressed by the Palestinian Authority’s co-operation with the occupier, enclosed behind an annexation wall and the continuing lose of land via colonisation through settlement building and forced population transfer. Read the rest of this entry »
On the eve of Halloween there was a carnival atmosphere as people marched up Queen Street Auckland.
The march was part of Unite’s campaign to get 300,000 signatures on our petition for the minimum wage to be raised to $15 an hour. If that target is reached by May next year the government will have to hold a referendum on the question of whether the minimum wage should be lifted to $15 an hour.
A vampire boss effigy was burnt at the stake, to cap off the night.
From 1994 — shortly after the Oslo Declaration of Principles was signed — to 2006, when Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank, international donors gave $8 billion in aid to the Palestinians, making them one of the most subsidized people on Earth. This aid ostensibly had three purposes: to support the peace process leading to a two-state solution, to foster economic and social development, and to promote institution-building. Yet, many years and billions of dollars later, Palestinians are poorer and further from statehood than ever before, and their dysfunctional national institutions face an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy.
In her first monograph, international relations specialist Anne Le More seeks to answer a straightforward question that ought to be of profound import to scholars, activists and decision makers: how and why did this happen? Along the way, International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo, the first in Routledge’s Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict series, provides an important critique of the belief that reconstruction, development and humanitarian aid form essential counterparts to political processes aimed at resolving longstanding violent conflicts. Le More’s study focuses solely on the Occupied Palestinian Territories; the questions it poses, however, could offer a template for exploring the extent to which “aid” has become the means to repackage Western military occupation and dependency as “state-building” and ”independence” in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Kosovo.
In the run up to the last general election the Labour Party enthusiasts who hold so many of the top posts of unions were giving dire predictions that a National government would take NZ back to the dark ages as far as workers’ rights were concerned.
The Workers Party, in constrast, didn’t think Labour had ushered in a golden age, nor did we think National were planning on a major attack on unions. What was likely, we said, was that it would be business as usual.
The month-long lockout of workers at Talleys-owned Open Country Cheese is over after workers have secured their goal of collective employment agreement to cover their jobs.
“The members of our union at Open Country Cheese have stuck together right through this very difficult dispute,” Dairy Workers Union National Secretary James Ritchie said.
“All that these workers wanted was some basic job security through a collective employment agreement and they were illegally locked out for standing up for their rights.”
The company’s restructuring at the plant greatly reduced the number of positions available and a confidential settlement was reached for workers whose jobs have disappeared, he said.
“The workers were buoyed on by the very strong support of the Waharoa and wider Waikato community, and the solidarity of the union movement. Their stand for fairness at work shows that workers are stronger when they act together in unions,” James Ritchie said.
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