The Rogering Was Jolly

The event to announce the winner of the 2014 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand was held in Christchurch on the night of Friday May 1st (it was won by ANZ, with IAG [Insurance Australia Group] as runner up; the Accomplice Award was won by the Food and Grocery Council). The Judges’ Report is online at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/pdf/roger-award-2014.pdf. The winner of the online People’s Choice poll was also ANZ, which means that 2014 was the first time that the People’s Choice voters have picked the same winner as the judges. There is no equivalent to the Judges’ Report for that poll. Most pleasingly, there was good coverage of ANZ winning the Roger Award in the national media (e.g. Press, 5/5/15, “Roger Award For 2014 Goes To…”, Richard Meadows,  http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/68240693/anz-branded-worst-transnational-by-antiforeign-investment-group).

This was the first time that the event had been held in Christchurch, the home of the Roger Award, since 2012. It was held on May 1st so as to combine with Unions Canterbury’s annual May Day celebration (the Roger Award/May Day double banger was last done in Wellington in 2013). And CAFCA decided to make a weekend of it by holding our 40th anniversary celebration the next day, Saturday May 2nd (both events were held in the same venue, namely Knox Presbyterian Church Hall, next door to the rebuilt Knox Church. The Roger event has been held at Knox several times in its nearly 20 years’ history).

I won’t report on the May Day celebration programme, but just on the Roger Award event, which took place first. The hard working organising team consisted of Lynda Boyd, Leigh Cookson and Gillian Southey (together with Christina Couling of the Nurses Organisation and Lorraine Marshall of the Service and Food Workers Union they also organised the May Day celebration, so they had a lot of work to do. Lynda Boyd was representing both CAFCA, of which she is a Committee member, and the Nurses Organisation, for which she works as an organiser). It was a great night, attended by around 80-100 people, made up of union officials, workers, and CAFCA members and supporters (many of the latter had come from around the country to attend the events on both days). There was a simple programme, with Leigh Cookson as MC and David Small, the only Christchurch judge, announcing the winners (the Chief Judge, Paul Maunder, was unavailable as he has a standing annual commitment to organising May Day at home in Blackball). This was very fitting, as the Roger Award was originally David’s idea, at a Christchurch brainstorm meeting way back in 1996 (I take credit for the name).

All of this was done against the backdrop of the fantastically ugly Roger Award trophy (which lives in its crate in our garage for the other 364 days of the year) and a wonderful display of historic union and progressive movement posters and T shirts. Special mention must be made of the inimitable Dion Martin, who works for First Union in Palmerston North and is a veteran CAFCA member. Dion, who organised the nationally renowned May Day concert in Palmy for 20 straight years, injected the vital ingredient of song (good old working class and revolutionary standards) into the Roger event, the May Day celebration which followed straight after, and at CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration the next day. Many thanks to all those who slogged away in the kitchen - namely the aforementioned organisers, plus John Miller, of the Nurses Organisation.

The previous Roger Award event (in 2014) was held in Nelson, the first time it had been held outside the four main centres (and it’s only been held in Dunedin once). That proved that the Roger Award belongs to all New Zealand, not just the main cities. We said at the time that we would love the event to be held in other provincial cities and towns, but the key ingredient is a local organiser or organisers. I’m delighted to announce that we’ve found just such an excellent provincial organiser, none other than the self-same Dion Martin (who better? He has been CAFCA’s key contact there since the 90s, having organised and hosted my Palmerston North visits during my various national speaking tours, most recently in 2014). It will be held in Palmerston North on the night of Saturday April 30th, 2016 – so it looks like it will be a May Day double banger again.

We’ve lost Paul Maunder as both Chief Judge and judge. He has been replaced as Chief Judge by Sue Bradford and as a judge by the only new member of the panel, Deborah Russell. Apart from Sue, the continuing members of the panel are David Small, Dean Parker and Dennis Maga. There is an online nomination form on the CAFCA Website (at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/roger-award-2015-form.html). Get your nomination/s in and we’ll see you in Palmy at the event to name the winner/s.

40th Was Great Success

But wait, there’s more. The Roger Award event on the Friday night was only the entrée; the main course was CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration all day long on Saturday May 2nd. This had been a year in the organising which, because it was a solely CAFCA affair, was done in-house by Committee members Lynda Boyd, Colleen Hughes, Jeremy Agar and me. When we started out we had no idea how many people would attend; we thought maybe a few dozen. We were wildly off the mark – by the time the event rolled around, more than 100 people had registered (not all actually turned up, but we had 80-90 there all day). I was fielding frantic upcountry registrations late on the day beforehand.

Members came from Christchurch and around the country (from Whangarei to Dunedin). Christine Bird and Tony Currie, the two founder (and still current) members who flew over from Australia for the weekend deserve special mention. There were veterans of the New Zealand contingent on the 1974 Long March (actually a bus trip) across Australia, to the former US military base at North West Cape, which inspired the creation of what started off as CAFCINZ; there were veterans of the 1975 South Island Resistance Ride, CAFCINZ’s original activity; there were former Committee members; there were supporters who have never actually been members.

The programme for the day was straightforward and high calibre. It featured five speakers, all of them members; in order, they were me, Bill Rosenberg, Warren Thomson, Jane Kelsey and Robert Reid. I won’t give any details of the speeches because you can read four of them elsewhere in this issue. The only one not here is Jane Kelsey’s (I think because her brilliant speech was delivered entirely off the cuff). But all is not lost – if you want to see/hear Jane’s speech, the whole day was filmed by Sam Miller and you can contact him at smfilms@smfilms.com to buy a DVD. Each spoke for 30 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of questions. Amazingly, all speakers stuck to time (even me) and the whole day ran to schedule. Special thanks to CAFCA Chairperson Jeremy Agar who expertly chaired the whole day. I started my speech by reading a list of members who had died since our last anniversary (our 25th, in 2000) - that sobering list ran to a page of names – and asking everyone to stand for a minute’s silence.

We, the organisers, were delighted to secure speakers of that calibre (the only one who initially said yes, and then had to withdraw, was Nicky Hager, because he had a conflicting overseas commitment). Needless to say, speakers of that calibre had no trouble retaining the active interest and engagement of the audience all day; the crowd was buzzing. It was a celebration, not a conference, so there were no workshops, plenary sessions, panels or resolutions. But there were a number of unique props; it was a very rare opportunity to see some of CAFCINZ/CAFCA’s rich history all in one place at one time. Along with things left in situ from the Roger Award event the night before (the Roger trophy itself and the CAFCA banner), every single issue of Watchdog was on display, dating back 40 years. Plus the Security Intelligence Service file on CAFCINZ/CAFCA – this is definitely a rarity, because we have deliberately not uploaded it to our Website or made it otherwise publicly available. Not because we have anything to hide but to protect the innocent named third parties who are the subject of baseless SIS tittle tattle in it.

Such Fun We Should Do It Again

In recognition of our history, we finished the day’s proceedings by going right back to the beginning by screening the film about the 1974 Long March (which had only been finally finished in 2014; we were contacted by an Australian expatriate in the US who asked for financial help to finish it. We obliged with a small donation in $US). You can view that 25 minute film at Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTP145MPoIg. Having watched that black and white time capsule from 40 years ago, Dion Martin finished the day off on a high note with another mass singalong. As you can imagine, feeding such a large crowd was a major exercise in catering and logistics – heartfelt thanks go to Committee member Lynda Boyd who worked her fingers to the bone at both the Roger event and the 40th, being involved in organising both, and being in charge of food for the latter. She was ably helped all day on the Saturday by a crew that included Colleen Hughes, Pam Hughes and Ron Currie.

The celebration ended on the Saturday night with nearly 70 attending a meal in a suburban pub. This was purely social (no more speeches) and gave people a chance to catch up with old friends, make new ones, have a drink (and even sneak next door to the bar to watch the rugby). That was the only thing people had to pay for (good value at $25 a head); we only asked people to pay a koha for the actual 40th celebration. They responded generously and, in the end, the whole thing (i.e. both the Roger event and the 40th) only ended up costing CAFCA a few hundred dollars. Money well spent. It was a marvellous couple of days, the highlight of the year for CAFCA. We should do it all again some time; we don’t do enough celebrating and socialising (let alone singing, although that might be a blessing in my case). Maybe we’ll do it all again for the 50th. Now there’s an incentive to stay alive, all you old buggers.