The finalists have been chosen for the 2004 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand. There are seven transnational corporations (TNCs), the second highest number ever (2003 set the record, with eight). They are (in no particular order of preference): Ernslaw One, McDonalds, Telecom, Westpac, Toll, Mitsubishi, and Contact Energy. It is a wide open field in the sense that it contains no previous winner. Toll is making its first appearance, as it only took over ownership of the railways in mid 2004, so its’ Roger career is off to a flying start. The previous, inglorious, owner – TranzRail – won three out of the first six Roger Awards and was declared ineligible for nomination, being shunted permanently into the Hall of Shame. It no longer exists, but there have still been so many scandals about it in the past year (such as previous owners and senior executives facing historic – in every sense of the word - charges of insider trading), that, if it had been eligible, it probably would have made the finalists again. What a company! Telecom has been a virtually permanent fixture in the finalists since the Roger started, in 1997, and has won all sorts of special awards from the judges (such as the 2003 one for Monopoly Profiteering) but never the big one. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Westpac, too, has been a finalist before. McDonalds and Contact Energy are high profile TNCs and have been nominated in previous years. Mitsubishi is a newcomer, the first time a car TNC has featured.

The judges are: John Minto, veteran Auckland activist and National Chairperson of the Quality Public Education Coalition; Alister Barry, renowned documentary maker, of Wellington; Maire Leadbeater, a veteran peace and social justice activist, from Auckland; and Edwina Hughes, the coordinator of Peace Movement Aotearoa, in Wellington.

The criteria for judging are by assessing the transnational that has the most negative impact in New Zealand in each or all of the following fields: unemployment, monopoly, profiteering, abuse of workers/conditions, political interference, environmental damage, cultural imperialism, impact on tangata whenua, running an ideological crusade, tax dodging, impact on women, impact on health and safety of workers, and the public. The winner(s) will be declared at an event, details of which have yet to be finalised, in the first few months of 2005.

The Roger Award is more necessary than ever, in light of the Government’s review of the foreign investment regime, culminating in the new Overseas Investment Bill (see the articles and flyers about it in this issue). The aim of that exercise is to make the transnational corporate takeover of New Zealand that much easier. Just reading the criteria why the above seven TNCs have been selected as finalists for the 2004 Roger Award reminds us of the huge crime perpetrated on the people of New Zealand by a system that permits our country to be converted into a backwater branch office of the corporations that rule the world.