The 2004 CAFCA AGM was held at the Christchurch WEA on September 20. 16 members were present. Bill Rosenberg chaired. Apologies were accepted from Reg Duder, Helen Kingston, Lois Griffiths, Gillian Southey, Jim Stuart, Dean Hyde, Don Archer, Kane O’Connell, Luke Trainor and Will Foote. The 2003 Minutes were read by the secretary, Murray Horton, and accepted.

The 2003/04 audited accounts were presented by Liz Griffiths, the bookkeeper (these had been posted to members with Watchdog 106, August 2004). She pointed out that CAFCA basically had financial parity with previous years, with donations down a bit. One source of income has been lost – we no longer have any paying media clients for the Overseas Investment Commission material that Bill writes up (but, on the other hand, we no longer have to pay to get that material from the OIC).

The meeting accepted the accounts and thanked Liz Griffiths for her essential work as bookkeeper, and Bruce Finnerty for his work as the honorary auditor.

Bob Leonard reported on the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which pays Murray Horton. The Account had risen (as of 31/3/04) to $23,900 per year, most of which is used to pay Murray. There was a phenomenal response to the Special Appeal earlier in 2004, which was necessary because of the bank balance hitting a record low, and the Account has improved much more since the start of the current financial year.

As of March, donations accounted for 49% and pledges 51%. There are now 43 pledgers (previously it was about 30), with more promised. Due to this response, Murray’s pay has been increased twice since March, rising from $8.50 per hour to the present $10. The bulk of the Account has now been put into an interest earning Kiwibank term deposit (the Account proper, with Westpac, earned the princely sum of $1.26 interest in the 2003/04 year).

The meeting passed a vote of thanks for Bob Leonard, who has now been in charge of the Organiser Account for more than a decade.

Election of officers. Murray Horton was re-elected as secretary. The committee was re-elected - Bill Rosenberg, John Ring, Reg Duder, Joe Hendren. Dennis Small had to resign, in January, when he got a job away from Christchurch. Liz Griffiths is bookkeeper; Bruce Finnerty the honorary auditor. The meeting passed a vote of thanks (moved from the floor, by Liz Grifiths) for Murray and Bill.

Murray Horton presented his annual Organiser’s Report.

General Business. There was a discussion of the pending Overseas Investment Bill and the ongoing sales of rural land to foreigners.

At the conclusion of business we screened the documentary:"Whose News?", about the ownership of NZ’s news media by a handful of transnational corporations, and featuring Bill Rosenberg.

Balance on 31/3/03 $3,581.29

Balance on 31/3/04 7,659.50

Net change +4,078.21

Expenses

Murray's pay 18,224.10

Cash to Murray 1,450.25

Other cheques 214.00

TOTAL 19,888.35

Income

One-off donations 10,245.17 Donations 49%

Cash to Murray 1,450.25

Pledges 12,269.88 Pledges 51%

Interest 1.26

TOTAL 23, 966.56

43 pledgers as of August 2nd 2004 bank statement

Once a fortnight I present my invoice for payment. It itemises what I’ve done in those two weeks and, as such, constitutes a de facto diary (I last kept a personal diary in 1969). As part of researching this annual report, that invoice book is essential reading. It is fascinating to be reminded of just what I’ve done, and what has happened, in the preceding 12 months. 2003/04 has been a very busy year, with CAFCA having campaigned on one central issue throughout the whole time, the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) ran another successful Waihopai spybase action, and, wearing my Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA) hat, I am about to accompany a visiting speaker on a national tour (which has since happened).

The unglamorous basics of my work don’t change very much, so great chunks of my 2003 report and those of earlier years can be repeated verbatim. I am CAFCA secretary, and it is routine administrative work that takes up a lot of my time. That is the pitfall of having just one fulltime worker. The great majority of our correspondence (and a whole lot of other work) is now done by e-mail or via the Internet (postage went up to 45c many months ago – CAFCA took a very long time to work its way through our pile of 40c stamps that we bought earlier this year. Less and less of our communicating is done by good old fashioned snail mail). CAFCA’s existence in cyberspace has become every bit as important as that in the real world. About 50% of our members have supplied us with their e-mail addresses, so they hear from us more often than the other half. I hasten to add that the other 50% are not missing out, they still get exactly the same material, but in hard copy only. But more and more of our communications are done by e-mail now. One keystroke instantly sends our information to several hundred members simultaneously. It’s considerably less personal but much more time-efficient.

A small but growing number of our members and allied organisations have asked to be online members only. As it still costs us money to produce the online Watchdog, we charge them the same as everybody else. Cyberspace has brought us into contact with a whole world of people whom we wouldn’t otherwise reach. The majority of media-initiated contacts with us come via e-mail, as a result of the journalist having checked out our Website. There are pitfalls in this method of communication – because people are buried in e-mail, it is easy to ignore or forget one message among hundreds. The turnout at our 2003 Annual General Meeting was the lowest on record. For this AGM, we decided to revive our Christchurch phone tree (with many thanks to our committee colleague, Reg Duder, who did the ringing around. But there was only a minimal increase in turnout, unfortunately).

I regularly set up e-mail lists for a whole variety of other categories of people, the most recent example being for contacts in the Maori Party, plus CAFCA runs the Taking Control list. Once again, I stress that we are very lucky indeed to have two computer whizzes on call and free of charge – namely Bill Rosenberg and my wife Becky – to sort out the inevitable disasters and to update the software as necessary. Being on the Internet costs CAFCA hundreds of dollars per year, and that’s at rock bottom mates’ rates, with unlimited volume. We owe Plain Communications a big vote of thanks for their very generous support.

Every August we conduct our annual membership renewal, so, at this time of year, a disproportionate amount of my time has been spent updating the membership list and banking the loot. Not that I'm complaining. Membership fees and donations are the backbone of our finances. Unlike so many other small groups we don't have to ask for loans or grants, and we are financially self-sufficient. We don’t carry non-payers, simply because we can’t afford to. We send out one reminder to the overdue and we give them one last chance - we contact all of those with e-mail addresses and give them one last chance to pay up (and, in the case of overdue Christchurch members without e-mail addresses, we ring them up). Quite a few do then pay up. Every year we purge our mailing list, this year it was around 60 people, which is usual (and it’s worth pointing out that, in any given year, a number of those so removed do rejoin. Indeed, some are serial rejoiners). I am famous/infamous for getting overdue subs out of people, usually by the time honoured method of public embarrassment.

At the time of writing, it is nearly four weeks since we mailed out the Membership Due slips to the great majority of our members. In that time, I have banked $5,015, which is an excellent response (with several hundreds more waiting to be banked). At the comparable time last year, I had banked $100 more, and that was well up on some previous years. Over recent years, our annual income had slowly but surely declined. 2003/04 reversed that, it increased and Liz Griffiths, our heroic bookkeeper, pronounced it a "good year". One Nelson member needs to be singled out for mention – she sent a $1,000 donation. Thanks to all of you who have sent donations both large and small. Our strength is our independence from all funding agencies, the State, or anybody else that can pull strings, call tunes, or cut us off without a penny. Our financial base is our membership. We have zero debt, we pay all our bills in full and on time, we have very low overheads – none of CAFCA’s money goes on wages or office rental, power, rates, etc, etc. We run a lean and efficient operation, using a few thousand dollars a year for our operating expenses, and with the bulk of our money earning interest in a couple of term deposit accounts. That means that we can finance things like our campaign on the Government’s review of the Overseas Investment Act, which has consumed our time over the past year. We have distributed thousands of copies of our regularly updated leaflet on the subject to individuals and organisations throughout the country, basically free of charge. And we can finance things like the 2003 Roger Award event, which was held in Dunedin for the first time.

We are Christchurch-based, but we have a national reach, in terms of members, money and influence (indeed, the bulk of our members are in the North Island). Membership is steady at just below 500 (the highest it has ever been was around 550). We continue to pick up new members and quite a few of our members pay for others to join. One final thing about CAFCA money. In my 2003 annual report, I mentioned some of our hassles with Kiwibank when we transferred to that bank. Those continued unabated this year. Having promised that it would not charge service fees to non-profit organisations, it then proceeded to do so, specifically 50c for every cheque deposited above a limit of three at a time. This wasn’t a big deal for ABC or PSNA but would have cost CAFCA serious money. We ask our several hundred members to all pay up at the same time and the overwhelming majority of them do so by cheque. So we hit the roof, and seriously considered taking our business elsewhere (we had kept our old ANZ account open in case we ever needed it again). The words "Kiwibank" and "service" are not synonymous, so this took several months of my time to get this decision reversed, the fees stopped and the money refunded. I became the nemesis of Kiwibank’s Customer Services Manager in Wellington (he started one conversation by asking me: "How did you get this number?"). But they picked the wrong group to try that sort of thing. We are not going to sit idly by and see hundreds of dollars of our members’ money wasted on bank fees, particularly ones that we had been specifically told would not be applied to us. We won.

Usually the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income, rates a brief mention in my annual report. Not this year. It had been noticeably declining for several years and hit crisis point at the beginning of 2004. Some time ago CAFCA had decided that once that account (which is independent of both CAFCA and ABC) dropped below $2,000, we would have to do something about it. It actually dipped just below $1,000, which meant that, if left unchecked, it would very soon have run dry. Faced with the terrifying prospect of my having to get a real job, both groups sprang into action. We had run a narrowly targeted direct mail appeal a couple of years earlier when the Organiser Account had last run into trouble, but this year, for the first time ever, we sent an appeal letter and a partly pre-filled in automatic payment form (which was Becky’s idea and she created the form) to all members of both organisations. In the past, all costs incurred by the Organiser Account, such as printing, copying, etc, have been paid by that Account. This time, the crisis was deemed so serious that CAFCA and ABC paid the costs of that mailout.

The response was astonishing. Donations poured in from members all around the country and even overseas. They totalled more than $10,000 (which was double the highest amount which the Account had previously held, and that was years ago). They’re still coming in months later – one supportive organisation has sent two $1,000 cheques. More importantly, for the long term sustainability of the Account, people responded to having the automatic payment forms placed in front of them. The number of regular pledgers increased from the 20s to the 40s, with more promising to join and some existing pledgers increasing their payments. For example, there are now four payments per month of $100 or more. What was deeply encouraging was the outpouring of support from members and supporters, who wanted to say just how much they support the work done by myself and the two organisations for whom I work. This special appeal was actually an important campaign in its own right. For several months at the beginning of the year it took up a lot of my time, but it put our support to the test and we came through with flying colours.

That astonishing response has transformed the Organiser Account, putting it onto a very sound footing. At the time of the appeal, my hourly rate was the $8.50 minimum wage. We were able to match the minimum wage increase to $9, and then, for the first time ever, pay me more than the minimum wage. I now get $10 per hour, which (believe it or not) is the highest pay rate I’ve ever had (in my last "real" job, as a Railways labourer, in 1991, I got $9 per hour). The Account has been able to break some of its ties to Westpac and put the bulk of the money into a term deposit with Kiwibank, thus earning interest, which it wasn’t previously doing (true to form, Kiwibank initially stuffed us around. You need the patience of a saint to deal with them). I hasten to add that the Organiser Account still needs donations and welcomes new pledgers.

There was a downside to this (isn’t there always?). I’ve crossed a fatal earnings threshold and now have to pay provisional tax (in advance, estimated on previous earnings). This means that, in the first year, my tax bill doubles. I have to pay for the previous year, as usual, plus for the year to come, at the same time. Hence, I need to pay $5,500, in regular installments, by March. And if you’re superstitious, it’s worth knowing that this is my 13^th year in the job.

Watchdog is our flagship, it is our point of contact with members and the world at large. We are very satisfied by it, and get a lot of positive feedback. We publish three issues per year – in April, August and December. We don’t pursue shop sales, apart from three Christchurch ones, because it’s a lot of hassle for very little return – just getting paid when such piddly little sums are involved can be a very time consuming and frustrating exercise. Small publishers like us get sent to the bottom of their "to pay" list. Indeed I regard those bookshops as our compulsory savings scheme. If my stock of spares of the latest issue runs out, I can always count on getting back their unsold copies, for which we can always find a good use.

The other reason that we don’t pursue bookshop sales is because Watchdog is never going to look or read like the multitude of magazines available (therein lies its charm). It is now the best looking and most extensively illustrated that it’s ever been. But foreign control is not an easy subject to illustrate. As you may have noticed, graphics and even photos tend to get recycled a lot (particularly when used to break up that great indigestible lump of Overseas Investment Commission material that provides up to half of every issue). Otherwise it really would just be page upon page of text. So, this is our annual appeal: if you’ve got cartoons, graphics or photos that you think are suitable for Watchdog, then send them to us and we’ll have a look at them. Several members have done so in the past but not all have been suitable. We’ve actually had cartoonists working specifically for us in the past and we had a new offer this year (nothing happened, unfortunately). I’ve been reduced to running the same cartoon to illustrate the cover story on the same subject in a couple of this year’s issues.

Once again, thanks are due to Leigh Cookson, our layout artist. It’s a very tedious and fiddly job and she often goes way beyond the call of duty. For example, when she came to print out the August issue, she discovered that she had a computer problem and not one syllable of 72 sides could be printed. She was up until the wee small hours, and I’m reliably informed that the air was blue, because she had to start at her regular job at 8 a.m. She couldn’t fix it and had to start the whole layout again, painstakingly printing each article individually. She deserves our heartfelt thanks for having now done this vital job for several years.

Watchdog remains the journal of record on foreign control. A substantial chunk of every issue remains Bill Rosenberg’s meticulous chronicling and analysing of the monthly approvals by the Overseas Investment Commission. But basically that’s all that Bill has had time to write for us this year. He has been very busy in his second and final (thank God) year as the President of the Association of University Staff, which he fits in around his "real" job and family (along with his completely unpaid CAFCA work). That union job takes him to Wellington virtually every week, usually for a couple of days at a time. And it has taken him much further afield. For example, in winter he had a fortnight in Brazil (it’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it). All this means that he’s had no time to write anything for us beyond the OIC stuff (sometimes he hasn’t even been able to make it to our fortnightly committee meetings). And we completely lost, at short notice, another Watchdog stalwart, namely Dennis Small. He got a job out of town, and no longer has the time to write the wonderful discursive essays that were his trademark for nearly a decade and a half. He never wrote a book review that was shorter than the book in question. Dennis had a fan club all of his own. When he, Bill and I were Watchdog’s mainstays, readers got three very distinct but complementary writing styles.

But one door shuts and another door opens (you heard it here first). In Joe Hendren, we’ve gained not only a new committee member but a new regular Watchdog writer as well. Joe has written extremely good articles analysing subjects as disparate as the Iraqi occupation and Toll’s takeover of Tranz Rail. Jeremy Agar is now a regular writer and has become extremely prolific as our resident book reviewer, threatening Dennis’ record in terms of output and length. Sue Newberry, who has shot to national prominence from the Slough of Despond that is accountancy, has also started writing for us, which is excellent news. She is eagle eyed at uncovering the neverending attempts to push through the Rogernomics agenda hidden in eyeglazingly technical legislation. Christine Dann is a founder member and a wellknown writer and activist who has written for us in the past year. Another pleasing development is the number of articles we’ve run from people who are in the frontline of local struggles against the transnationals, in places such as Waihi and Cape Kidnappers.

Watchdog prides itself on being a newsletter, publishing news and analysis that you won’t find elsewhere. Pressure of other work means that I don’t get as much Watchdog writing done as I would like (I do far more actual writing for the ABC’s Peace Researcher). Add to that the fact that we’ve lost Dennis, and Bill is on semi-sabbatical from Watchdog, and I’ve had to run more material from other publications. It’s not something we’ve made a habit of in the past but you can rest assured that I only select the best and most relevant from the tsunami of material we receive by e-mail.

We decided, in 2003, that we would return to our anti-imperialist, anti-war roots and run material on those subjects in every issue. This is in response to the grave threat to world peace posed by the American Empire on the rampage. Hence the articles on Iraq. Sometimes, by pure coincidence, they have been not only timely but also newsworthy. My article on modern mercenaries in the August issue, focusing on the utterly obscure West African state of Equatorial Guinea, appeared at the same time as the mainstream media was full of coverage of the abortive attempt by mercenaries to overthrow its government, with the hook being the arrest, in South Africa, of Margaret Thatcher’s woebegotten son.

It’s not all depressing facts, table of figures, and heavy analysis (within the past week a stranger described it to me as "dense". I’m afraid I couldn’t resist replying that it is intended for dense readers). Watchdog prides itself on the personal touch, and readers respond very warmly to that. The obituaries (written by myself and others) always get a warm response. They humanise what can be a daunting and impersonal subject. And Watchdog is absolutely value for money, on sheer weight alone - the three issues since the last AGM total 224 pages. 80 pages are the printers’ limit, so sometimes I have to leave articles out

We are well established as an electronic publisher now – both Foreign Control Watchdog and CAFCA have their own separate (but linked) Websites. Many thanks to Greg Waite for his hard work running the Watchdog site (from Australia, proof that we actively practise internationalism, which should never be confused with globalisation). It's a no frills site - all text, no illustrations. As editor, I am responsible for overseeing the site and have to prepare, proofread and edit every issue that goes online.

CAFCA’s Website (maintained by Bill) has been critical this year for publicising widely the regularly updated online version of our leaflet on the Government’s overseas investment review (written by Joe Hendren, proof that he can write short as well as long, a legacy of his previous career as a Parliamentary researcher). The site also features Bill’s encyclopaedic writeups of the Overseas Investment Commission Decisions, various of our Fact Sheets, briefing papers and submissions and a section on the Roger Award. It has an excellent selection of Links, which take you to a fascinating array of groups and publications all around the world. And the Search facility that Bill has added to it is wonderful. Type in the name of your favourite foreign land buyer (Shania Twain, for example) and in an instant you can access everything on our two sites on that person/company. The Websites reach an audience far in excess of our actual membership and attract feedback from all around the country and the world. Journalists routinely use them, and contact us as a result of visiting the sites first. The CAFCA site is regularly and favourably publicised in the mainstream media.

I am co-employed by the Anti-Bases Campaign, which takes up less of my time than CAFCA. The busiest part of my ABC work occurred in January when ABC held its annual Waihopai spybase protest. We hired a van and trailer and drove up on the Friday. We camp out in a private vineyard, which is walking distance from the base. The owner was so relaxed that he went away for a week and left us in charge. We had about 30 camping out and for the first time in years we had a Wellington contingent in attendance. These are young people who got active during the 2003 Iraq War protests. People came from all over, from Auckland to Dunedin.

We got good media beforehand – I did four radio interviews in 24 hours. For the first time ever we had a Friday night activity in Blenheim – a public meeting, attended by up to 70 people, of whom about half were locals. The speakers were a Marlborough District Councillor (our first ever local speaker); Green MP Keith Locke, and me. In the blazing heat of Saturday morning we held a rally in Blenheim’s central Seymour Square, with the speakers being ABC’s Bob Leonard, Green Co-Leader Rod Donald and Mike Treen of the Alliance. Plus some street theatre. In 2003, a combination of the impending Iraq War, the District Councillor’s organising work among locals, and free frontpage publicity in the Marlborough Express, led to it being described as the biggest protest in Blenheim since the 1981 Springbok Tour. No such factors applied this year and we were down to our usual numbers of 50-60. Following our ever popular vegetarian sausage sizzle (we hire a barbecue), we held a noisy and colourful march through Blenheim.

In the afternoon, about 50 or so people convened at the base and were allowed to march to the inner gate, after Uncle Sam (aka Bob Leonard) had checked and stamped our Undemocratic Republic of UKUSA* passports (they remain very popular, real collectors’ items). I MCed both events on the Saturday and there were more speakers at the base. Some of the Wellington contingent stripped off and formed a naked peace sign on the boiling hot asphalt. That got the media’s attention (but as I was on the phone to a reporter at exactly that moment, I couldn’t see or describe to her what was happening). There must be something in the tropical climate of Wellington – some of those same people held a naked anti-GE action in Parliament grounds in 2003. We had a national strategy session on the Sunday morning (which agreed to incorporate Waihopai into the national anti-war movement). After we were on our way home, some of the younger folk drove up to the outer gate and dumped off a symbolic trailer load of rocks and logs, to blockade it. I did newspaper, radio and private TV interviews during the weekend and continued to do media interviews after I got home. * The 1940s’ UKUSA Agreement is New Zealand’s most important, and secret, international intelligence agreement. It divides the world up for signals and electronic intelligence gathering purposes, between the relevant agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ.

My Waihopai work is primarily organisational, handling all aspects (right down to booking the Portaloos) and ensuring that it happens. Plus I did extensive media work before, during and after. For several years now, Waihopai protests have run to a formula (one which works very well) but, for 2005, we’ve decided to take a break from the same old same old and try something different. At this stage, planning is purely embryonic but we have some ideas worked out. We hope to hold several days of action in Wellington, over Easter. Probably a seminar on the bases, a field trip to Tangimoana (the neglected spybase), a protest at the Government Communications Security Bureau’s HQ, and Nicky Hager has agreed to train somebody to run one of his famous Tours of Secret Wellington. Our first step is to try to get a Wellington organising committee set up. Kane O’Connell, who spent a year on the ABC committee, has permanently moved up there and is our local coordinator. This proposal has now translated into fact. Read the details at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/Welly.html.

Wearing my ABC hat, I made my first visit to the North Island for more than a year. It was my shortest ever visit to Wellington, I was away from home for less than 12 hours, up and back on a Sunday. I spoke at an anti-war forum, along with Nicky Hager, on American Independence Day, in July. This year, I produced a new ABC generic leaflet, pulling together material from various other one off leaflets and our Website (I had done the same for CAFCA in 2003). We have distributed that extensively with publications such as Red and Green, and The Big Picture, plus to the Alliance. We have a mailout booked in with an early 2005 issue of New Internationalist. I am responsible for our international links, such as with anti-bases groups. And I do the ABC’s regular media work, such as it is (there is a bit, in addition to the Waihopai coverage).

As the Iraqi war of national liberation drags on (with increasingly disastrous consequences for the Americans and their local collaborators – I get no great pleasure from saying "I told you so"), the huge 2003 anti-war protests have dwindled away. But there was one, in March, through the central city. ABC was there with banner and leaflets and Bob was one of the speakers. Plus ABC was on the streets again during the November 2003 militant protest against the Labour Party Conference. I spoke on that occasion. We had the peculiar experience of one of our committee colleagues, Yani Johanson, being inside as a delegate while we were outside protesting. And ABC has taken part in various marches and pickets protesting the shameful imprisonment without trial of Ahmed Zaoui (I also met with his lawyer when she visited Christchurch). We continue to work with the local anti-war movement – we floated the idea of them campaigning against a Christchurch company, which is profiting from supplying the US military in Iraq – and we have picked up young committee members from that movement, firstly Kane O’Connell and now Claire Dann. ABC transcerds political differences – of our three sub-30 committee members, Yani is an activist for Labour, Kane for the Alliance and Claire for the Greens.

My regular ABC work is as editor of Peace Researcher. I can only commit to get out two issues a year (a far cry from PR’s original frequency) and even that is a struggle. It’s a job that involves me doing much more actual writing than for Watchdog. PR is a much smaller undertaking than Watchdog, with a smaller mailing list. The two publications used to have different emphases but there is much more overlap now, what with the Iraq War and the "war on terror". PR has come to specialise in intelligence matters and we have the luxury of time to follow a story for years. We followed the Choudry/SIS & Small/Police cases right through their many twists and turns. Now we have one of the protagonists, David Small, writing up the Zaoui case for us as it weaves its tortuous way through the courts and the Intelligence "oversight" system. PR is online and Yani Johanson does an excellent job as ABC’s Webmaster. Check out www.converge.org.nz/abc. Unlike the CAFCA/Watchdog sites, it has lots of photos and he.has added more attractive features to it in the past year.

I am on the committee of GATT Watchdog. Its two main activities are publishing The Big Picture (Leigh Cookson does an excellent job of basically producing that by herself; I haven’t written anything for it for quite a while, although I do supply it with articles) and being responsible for the 2004 Roger Award. In a related field, I occasionally help out with ARENA mailouts. There is no shortage of things to be done in the "free trade" field – the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round has lurched back into life; the Labour government is frantically running around looking to sign bilateral free trade agreements with anyone who will bat an eyelid at them. Thailand is the one closest to fruition – there has been a national speaking tour opposing it just in the past week (CAFCA helped it, with a donation and publicity); China is the big one on the horizon; the US remains the shimmering mirage of free trade deals. See the article in this issue for details on the NZ-Thailand Free Trade Agreement.

My other involvement is with the Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa, which organises a national speaking tour every few years. In October we toured Marie Hilao-Enriquez, a human rights leader. I accompanied her for the full fortnight of her tour, from Dunedin to Whangarei (the last time I did that was in 1995, with academic and debt activist, Leonor Briones). We comfortably raised more than the necessary $5,000 and for several months of this year organising the myriad of things involved with this tour took up more and more of my time (at least, unlike our 2002 Filipino speaker, we had no hassles with Immigration this time. Unionist Emilia Dapulang was refused a visa, about a month before her arrival, and I had to go into overdrive to get that refusal reversed). There is a family connection to this latest tour – Marie is a maternal aunt of my wife, Becky, so she had a few days of family holiday with us at the end of the trip. It was a highly enjoyable and memorable three weeks, even though the weather was lousy for nearly the whole time. You can read about Marie at http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/activity2.htm.

I am PSNA secretary and editor of its newsletter Kapatiran (Solidarity), which comes third behind Watchdog and Peace Researcher in my editorial priorities. I aim to get out two issues per year but, frankly, am lucky to get out one. Once again, I do more actual writing for Kapatiran than I do for Watchdog. It can be read online, Becky is the Webmaster. Check out www.converge.org.nz/psna.

I have been the Organiser for nearly 13 years now, which is an extremely long time for a job funded entirely by the regular pledges and donations of CAFCA and ABC members and supporters. It is remarkable and I didn’t envisage it holding out this long when I embarked on it as a 40 year old redundant Railways labourer, back in 1991. I have already reported on the astonishing response we received to our Special Appeal at the beginning of 2004 when the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account hit its lowest ever level. Once again, I take the opportunity to thank you for your generosity. My pay is $400 per week gross. This continuing financial support is a most gratifying vote of confidence in the work that we, and I, do. I particularly thank all the donors (some who have given thousands of dollars over the years), because it is the donations which make a vital difference. I want to single out one pair of pledgers for special mention, a couple in the eastern Bay of Plenty. When I studied the media coverage of that region’s killer storm in July, I realised, with horror, that their home – in which I had stayed on my 2002 speaking tour – was now teetering on the edge of a precipitous drop. Indeed, the room in which I had stayed, and the outdoor spa pool in which I had relaxed after the house meeting in their lounge, was now right on the very edge. They had taken the initiative to get me to that part of the country, it wasn’t on my original itinerary, and they had gone to considerable trouble to get me there, arranging for one of their neighbours (another CAFCA member) to meet me off the bus in Rotorua and drive me to Ohiwa Harbour. Now their place is gone, so is the neighbour’s, and they’re all lucky to be alive. Compared to that, I have nothing to moan about.

There is one personal health matter to report. In April I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes (it’s a very fashionable but rather boring disease). My doctor – whom I hadn’t gone to see in two years – told me it is mature life onset diabetes and added "Isn’t it good that you’ve got something mature in your life?" 53 years on a glorious sugar high had to come to an end (if I told you that my nickname in my first, and longest, job at the Railways was Cake, you’d get the picture. At my second, and last job there, my nickname was Pol Pot). I made the necessary drastic changes to my diet and have lost up to 15 kgs in those few months since (which means that I had to buy a whole new set of clothes, as my bloody pants suddenly started to fall off). I reported in my 2003 annual report that I had changed my personal appearance by shaving off my beard and cutting my hair. Well, I’ve added to that by losing the fat guts that had become a distinguishing characteristic of my relentless advance into middle age. I am now heading back to being the skinny bugger that I was as a young man. I don’t have to have any medication, injections, or anything, just keep it under control with diet and exercise, plus regular checkups to see that my feet haven’t dropped off or that I’ve haven’t gone blind.

There is one other personal matter that is taking up more of my time. All of my contemporaries (Bill faces this same situation) have aged parents. In the past few weeks, I have had to devote a lot of time and attention to my 86 year old father (who has lived alone and fiercely independent since Mum died more than 30 years ago). He recently fell very seriously ill, we had to get him rushed to hospital where he spent several weeks. He’s now back home, but we need to set up a number of support systems for him. Plus Becky and I are now responsible for his affairs, which is time consuming. He is taking all this "interference" in his usual way, which means that we fight like cat and dog. It’s great, it reminds me of my teenage years, except that he’s now the truculent adolescent who won’t do as he’s told. As of December, his health remains precarious, and is the principal reason that I did not go with Becky on her five week long Christmas holiday with her family, in the Philippines. Think of all the typhoons I could have enjoyed!

For the first time in a long time, there has been one central theme and activity to CAFCA’s work in the past year. In November 2003, the Government announced a review of all aspects of the overseas investment regime. This was conducted behind closed doors by officials, headed by Treasury, with their own distinct ideological agenda. There was token consultation – a Treasury official holidaying in Christchurch over Christmas condescended to visit Bill Rosenberg at his home to solicit our views (and then he complained about having to break his holiday, at an officials’ meeting in Wellington). The Government tried to keep the review secret but we thwarted that, courtesy of a patriotic whistleblower who leaked the details to us. The stated purpose of the review was to bring in a new Overseas Investment Act to further liberalise that regime. For details of the new Bill, which was introduced to Parliament in November, see the cover story and following article in this issue, plus the leaflet and model submission. The latter can be found at www.cafca.org.nz where there is a whole Webpage devoted to the Bill.

From the outset CAFCA has warned that this review contained more threats than opportunities. The latter lies in its recognition of strong public opposition to the relentless sale of prime rural land to foreigners, and we have played no small part in that opposition. So it proposes to make some land purchases a bit harder. Not to actually stop them, just make them a bit harder. The former lies in its proposals to make transnational corporate takeovers even easier and subject to less official scrutiny.

For the past year, our campaigning on this has consisted of getting out information, and lobbying. Not only via Watchdog but also through a regularly updated leaflet, written by our newest (and youngest) committee member, Joe Hendren. We have made this available both in hard copy and online. Thousands of hard copies have been distributed to a wide variety of other groups – ranging from the Alliance to the Deerstalkers Federation – and inserted in the mailouts of a number of publications including New Internationalist and Catholic social justice newsletters. All year I have been regularly publicising our analysis of this review, by fax, e-mail and hard copy mailouts. We have done our most political lobbying for several years – I personally briefed one Labour MP, and he has asked for another session. We have regularly dealt with the Greens on this, and, indirectly, our material has obviously been got to New Zealand First, because, suddenly, Winston Peters has started making speeches on the subject. That is significant because he has said nothing about it since before he joined National in their illfated 1996-98 Coalition. That was the last time we had any contact with him or his party. And we still don’t have direct contact today, which is fine by us. Most recently we have contacted the Maori Party about it, where the response has been positive.

This long campaign has meant plenty of media coverage over the past year for CAFCA. Just to give the most recent examples - when the Minister of Finance, Michael Cullen, announced the review’s recommendations (in July), I did a whole series of media interviews in one day, starting with Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report and finishing with Newstalk ZB (the Auckland reporter introduced himself to me as the 30 year old son of a CAFCA founder member, his parents were on the Resistance Ride, so we had a long, off-air talk). TV3 came to the house to film an interview on the back lawn (one question: "How do you respond to Dr Cullen’s statement that CAFCA is a one-man band verging on xenophobia?" I cracked up, and said that at least he could have called us a two-man band). Our best coverage was in the Independent, a business weekly. And we have been successful in getting our material directly into the media. In recent years, Bill has established an excellent track record in getting his Op-Ed features on a variety of subjects published in mainstream papers throughout the country. Just today he has a lengthy article in the Press, on CAFCA’s behalf, about the overseas investment review.

When those proposals were announced, it became clear that the sustained opposition had had some effect. To give one example, all through the Treasury papers the figure of $250 million was given as the new threshold for any official scrutiny of transnational corporate takeovers (it’s currently $50 m). At the very last minute, that was scaled back to $100m, because Cullen admitted that there were misgivings in Cabinet and caucus. But these are only small mercies and the proposed Bill is a very nasty piece of work

As soon as the Bill was introduced we stepped up our campaigning. For example, we held a public meeting in Christchurch, in December. Last time the (National) Government liberalised the Overseas Investment Act, back in the mid 90s, we held a very high profile public meeting in the Christchurch Town Hall, starring Jim Anderton and Winston Peters. We had no plans for a repeat – Jim is now firmly on the other side of the fence, and we have no wish to provide a platform for Peters. Indeed, that meeting didn’t feature any politicians as speakers, by quite deliberate choice. Our other tactics are still being nutted out, but will obviously include organising as many submissions as possible to oppose the Bill. That’s all I can say on this subject right now – it’s a fluid situation, and this is a story that still has a ways to run.

It was CAFCA’s turn to organise the 2003 Roger Award, so I spent months distributing nomination forms, selecting finalists, dealing with the judges, the writer of the Judges’ Report, and the organiser of the event (which was held in Dunedin for the first time; indeed it was the first time in the South Island since 2000). This is very intensive work, but it all went very smoothly – which is just as well because there was only a few weeks between the January Waihopai spybase protest and the February Roger Award event (Christmas and January is one of the busiest times of my year; I last had anything resembling a holiday nearly five years ago, although my three weeks with Marie Hilo-Enriquez did include a few highly enjoyable days of holiday).

I went down to Dunedin (for the first time since my 1999 CAFCA speaking tour and my first road trip there for longer than I can remember). It was cold and wet but 50+ people turned up to hear Dunedin’s very feisty then Mayor, Sukhi Turner (who had been a Roger judge several times in its first seven years) announce the winners. I asked her to speak for ten minutes but she was so fired up that she spoke for nearly an hour and really put the boot into transnational corporations and the media (as a result, the Press, which sent a business reporter down especially to cover the event, ran a lengthy piece on the Roger). It was a bloody good night – I was one of the speakers, there was music, and a video clip from Alister Barry’s seminal 1990s’ documentary "Someone Else’s Country". I did several radio interviews (by phone or in the studio; one from the car while parked in the main street of Oamaru) and one live regional TV interview. The fact that a Japanese company, Juken Nissho, won for the first time was obviously noticed – I was rung by the Japanese Embassy with a whole string of questions about the Roger. No embassy has ever rung us before (North American companies won it the first six times). The Roger was extremely successful, it got the best media it’s had for several years – two major papers sent reporters to cover the event, it was reported in papers the length of the country, and attracted all sorts of media attention, before, during and after the announcement of the winners. Both runners up sent us a letter and glossy PR bumf to indignantly explain why they shouldn’t be in the Roger. The Roger Award has entered the national consciousness – for example, it was casually mentioned in a TV2 home renovation programme that Juken Nissho had won the 2003 Roger (their item was about Kaitaia homeowners adversely affected by the company’s mill). It is GATT Watchdog’s turn to organise the 2004 Roger and CAFCA is actively involved in helping with that.

The other issue that has seen us very much in the spotlight in the past year has been that of the sale of rural land to foreigners. This is not a new one, and it is one where there is a broad spectrum of concern and opposition. I regularly do media interviews on this subject, with journalists from one end of the country to the other. Just last week, I was on the front page of the Press which, along with the Otago Daily Times and the New Zealand Herald, rang for CAFCA’s comments about the Government’s approval of singing superstar Shania Twain’s $21m purchase of prime South Island high country land. Not only the media – Green Co-Leader Rod Donald regularly rings me when he needs information on rural land purchases or needs information for media interviews that he’s about to do on the subject (and I do mean "about to do" – in one case he rang me from Australia to say that he was due to be interviewed by Radio NZ in 15 minutes and needed some stuff fast). We regularly receive inquiries and unsolicited information from our members and supporters (which include farmers), members of the public and even insiders with fascinating information on rural land purchases in their region). That demonstrates the level of public concern about this subject.

We get sought out by all kinds of people. For example, Bill features prominently in the excellent IndyMedia documentary "Whose News?" which details the ownership of New Zeaalnd’s news media by a handful of transnational corporations. He was interviewed when he was in Auckland in 2003. This has been shown several times on regional TV channels around the country (and we screened it at this year’s AGM). Most recently, Bill and I were (separately) interviewed by a couple of young Wellington independent documentary makers for a film on land ownership by foreigners.

So much of our work is done in conjunction with other groups (such as on the whole free trade and globalisation area) that it’s increasingly harder to differentiate where our campaigns end and theirs begin. Effectively it means that we have a bigger pool of people and expertise to work with. And networking continues to be our priority. We don’t just offer moral support either – in the past year we have made donations, big and small, to groups ranging from ARENA (for its booklet on the World Trade Organisation) to the Whangapoua Environmental Protection Society (for its fight against the Malaysian-owned sawmill being built in its part of the Coromandel Peninsula). We actively foster links with all sorts of groups and that is repaid in many ways – there were some very generous organisational donations to the Organiser Account’s Special Appeal. Trade Aid invited me to speak to its head office staff; CAFCA was singled out for special praise at Christian World Service and Green Party functions to which I was invited.

Networking is one of our strengths, and it can spin off all sorts of positive developments. I’ll give one example. In February, I was contacted by Chris Richards, the Australasian editor of the UK-based global monthly, New Internationalist. We met and she interviewed me about the Roger Award (the article appeared in the June issue). We met in the context of a protest march and picket of the Security Intelligence Service office against the imprisonment without charge of Ahmed Zaoui – so Chris wrote an article about that as well. Wearing my PSNA hat, I took the opportunity to tell her about the October speaking tour by Marie Hilao-Enriquez. That got her interested and led to a profile on Marie in the September NI. All from the one meeting, over a coffee.

Plus CAFCA has done some actual marching through the streets for the first time in years. I rummaged around in our garage and found the generic CAFCA banner, which hadn’t seen the light of day for many a long year (take a bow, Don Murray). It took part in the militant protest against the Labour Party Conference, in November 2003, and it went to Blenheim and Waihopai for the spybase protest.

All this was on top of our usual CAFCA work, which is itself on top of humdrum administrative work. Our fortnightly committee meetings tend to be long (because we’re both thorough and democratic). My fellow committee members - Bill Rosenberg, Joe Hendren, John Ring and Reg Duder - all work very hard. Liz Griffiths continues to do the thankless but absolutely vital job of bookkeeping. And remember, I’m the only one who gets paid. Everyone is very busy, with lots of things going on in their lives – I’ve already mentioned the demands of Bill’s national union leadership job, which takes him out of town every week and overseas on a regular basis. This year, we also lost, at very short notice, Dennis Small, who had been an invaluable committee member and Watchdog writer for a decade and a half.

We will step up our campaign against the proposed new Overseas Investment Bill, as it represents the biggest liberalisation in the country’s foreign investment regime since National did its bit for economic recolonisation back in the mid 90s. This will be our primary focus until further notice. The Roger Award goes from strength to strength with each passing year. It has become well established, not only within the movement but also in the general public consciousness. We will continue to be an integral part of GATT Watchdog (and ARENA, in Bill’s case), and fight all the various manifestations of globalisation, from the World Trade Organisation to the bewildering array of bilateral free trade deals being solicited by the Government.

"Globalisation" = "corporate globalisation" = imperialism and that goes to the heart of our reason for being. The major global issue of the past year, and stretching into the future, is the resurgence of nakedly violent American imperialism and warmongering. They are discovering how easy it is to "liberate" a country and how hard it is to occupy it, let alone manage to extricate themselves. With every passing day Iraq becomes more and more like Vietnam, the last great debacle for US imperialism. Even Afghanistan, which should have been a pushover, is proving too difficult for them. New Zealand has managed to stay out of the worst excesses in both those countries, but the Government still compromised itself by sending small numbers of troops to both, for essentially public relations purposes. In the case of Iraq, they cut their losses and quietly sneaked back home before things got any worse.

We cannot ignore the biggest issue facing the world. CAFCA actively supports the anti-imperialist struggle in a number of practical ways. 30 years ago we grew out of the anti-war, anti-bases movement, and we maintain that continuity. This year, we put money into ABC’s protest action at Waihopai. We also put money into Philippines Solidarity’s speaking tour by Marie Hilao-Enriquez. Her topic was "The Philippines In The Firing Line: America’s ‘Second Front In The War On Terror’ And The Impact On Human Rights" (you can read her speech online at http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/MESpeech.htm. That’s right up our alley. We are an internationalist organisation and that is international solidarity in action.