Committee: Bill Rosenberg, Brian Turner, Colleen Hughes, James Ayers, Jeremy Agar (Chairperson), John Ring, Lynda Boyd, Murray Horton (Secretary/Organiser), Paul Piesse and Warren Brewer. We started 2015 with a Committee of nine but it went back up to ten when Warren Brewer agreed to rejoin it as a “distance” member, meaning that he doesn’t attend meetings Bill Rosenberg, in Wellington, is our other “distance” member but both he and Warren remain actively involved in all major decision making.

Both Warren and Bill did attend our March 2016 strategy meeting, which marked the first time since Bill permanently moved to Wellington in 2009 that we had had 100% of the Committee at a meeting, reinforcing the importance of that strategy meeting (it was also attended by Leigh Cookson, who is not a Committee member but as Layout Editor of Watchdog functions very much as an highly valued extra member. And it featured an external facilitator, well known Christchurch unionist Susan Stewart, who has never been a Committee member or, indeed, a CAFCA member). The Committee is the biggest it has ever been, although it is rare to get all the (non-distance) members together at one time at one place for a meeting. After decades of fortnightly meetings we have changed to meeting every four weeks.

Membership: It is at 440+, which is up from where it was when I wrote my previous annual Report (but this is being written before the annual purge of non-payers). This is the highest it has been in the last few years (460 is the highest it has reached in recent years; it is quite a few years since it threatened 500; 550+ was our absolute zenith, many years ago). Every year we remove non-payers but only after they have ignored two of the dreaded red slips and a final, e-mailed, reminder. And every year we pick up new members, or former members rejoin, so that we make up most, but usually not all, of the number lost. As I’ve said for years now in these Reports, the overall membership trend is stable to declining.

We lose members for a variety of reasons – death, old age, financial reasons, or simply deciding not to renew. That reflects the demographic of our membership -”past our prime” as guest speaker Robert Reid delicately put it at CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration in May 2015. Many members have been with us for decades, some for the full 40+ years. We have a very loyal and generous membership, which more than makes up in quality anything it lacks in quantity.

Gaining new members is a permanent project. We have some wonderfully evangelical members who set out to recruit others – one such recent online exercise led to us picking up some new members after I had satisfied inquiries into how much money CAFCA has in the bank, the financial relationship between that CAFCA money and my pay (none), and how much I get paid ($19.25 per hour, which is the Living Wage Campaign rate). I have no qualms about answering such questions that some may see as intrusive – neither CAFCA nor I have anything to hide. And we also recruit in the real world, at places such as TPPA rallies and various public meetings and events. We insist on a paying membership, because we have no other source of funds. We don’t charge much and haven’t reviewed or increased our sub for a very long time. If we had retained all those who stopped paying, we could claim a “membership” of thousands. We reach a much bigger audience than our actual membership.

Finances: between them, our operating cheque account and three term deposits hold $55,000, in round figures, which is $3,000 less than at the time of my last annual Report (a good chunk of this is accounted for by several major operating expenses falling due at the same time in early 2016; bills that, by themselves, only come around every year or two). We continue to be in a very healthy financial situation. For example, we were able to fund major events out of our own resources, such as our 40th anniversary celebration and the Roger Award event, which were held together over a weekend in May 2015. The Roger event was free admission; all that we charged for at the 40th was a set amount per head for the dinner; for the rest we just asked for a koha. Members and supporters responded so generously that the whole thing only ended up costing CAFCA a few hundred dollars.

We can also afford to give generous donations to worthy causes such as the campaign against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA); to our partner in crime, Greg Rzesniowiecki, who has ceaselessly travelled the country for several years, living in his van Tinkerbell, whilst spearheading the campaign to get local bodies to come out against the TPPA; we gave money to a forthcoming documentary about the Waihopai spy base and Five Eyes; and we also financially helped out Keep Our Assets Canterbury (but less so than in the past. KOA now has its own money and is financially self-sufficient). All up, CAFCA made donations totalling over $3,000 in 2015.

Organiser Account: The Account has held steady since the time of my previous Report, with around 60 regular pledgers and $29,000 in the bank (one account is used to pay me; the other one is a term deposit). Recruiting new pledgers is a permanent project; many of the existing ones are old or getting that way (indeed, a few have died); some have been doing it since the Account started in 1991. I’d like to single out Jim Holdom, whose obituary appears elsewhere in this issue. Jim was one of those founding pledgers from 1991 and he continued to pledge the unique sum of $8.50 per month until he died in late 2015. My relationship with some of those pledgers has been like a marriage, in that we’ve grown old together. And, in one case, death did not, in fact, do us part – the late John Case, uniquely, is still posthumously pledging to the Account nearly two years after he died.

Once again: my thanks to James Ayers for being the Organiser Account Treasurer. Sadly, midway through 2015, James had to abruptly give that up, indefinitely, when he was suddenly confronted with a serious illness that needed lengthy treatment. So I found myself in charge of my own pay, at least in the interim. This was not a new experience for me. When the late Bob Leonard was Organiser Treasurer I used to look after it when he made one of his regular trips back to his native USA. Bob was seriously ill right through 2010, so I looked after things then (I had to take pay cheques to the hospital for him to sign; since those days my pay now goes straight into my bank account). James is better, back at work and regularly attends CAFCA Committee meetings, so hopefully he will resume as Organiser Treasurer in 2016. He does a very good job of it.

In 2013 we launched a project to attract more pledgers and donors in order to be able to increase the Organiser’s pay rate to that set by the Living Wage Campaign. I’m pleased to report that since 2015 I have been paid the current Living Wage rate of $19.25 per hour (the Living Wage is due to increase to $19.80 from July 2016). Any further increase in my pay is dependent on the health of the Organiser Account. We have attracted some new pledgers, plus some existing ones have increased their pledges. Once again I would like to thank the incredibly generous members and supporters who pledge or donate to the Organiser Account (donations range right up to thousands at a time). Without you I literally could not do my job.

Watchdog: I am the Editor; it is our flagship, our “face”, our voice to our members and the world at large. It looks the best it ever has. Thanks to Layout Editor Leigh Cookson and cover artist Ian Dalziel (plus Ron Currie who, while Ian was overseas, fittingly did the cover for the August 2015 issue, commemorating 40 years of CAFCA. Ron had last regularly done cartoons for us in the 1970s). Thanks to my Committee colleagues, Jeremy Agar (Reviews Editor) and James Ayers (who writes up the Overseas Investment Office’s monthly Decisions).

Thanks to our regular writers such as Greg Rzesniowiecki, John Minto and the prolific Dennis Small. The variety and sheer number of writers is very high (for example, we had 14 for that August issue). The quality is very high: some of them are people with a national profile, such as Bryan Gould and Nicky Hager (I finally persuaded the latter to write something for us for the first time, for the December 2015 issue). And none of them get paid. Thanks to Cass Daley who is in charge of the Watchdog Website (our online-only readers receive each issue as a PDF but the actual online edition on the Website is a plain, text-only affair. We get free Web hosting for both Watchdog and CAFCA but the trade-off is that there is a size restriction on the total amount of cyberspace we can have free of charge). Courtesy of Warren Brewer you can read online the most recent issues as PDFs, on Watchblog.

For the past three years we have not had a free hand with Watchdog; we have had to work within a printer’s size limit of 100 pages. But we’ve had a policy of publishing it regardless of how big it is (within that limit) or how small it is. What that meant in 2015 was that I had to withhold a Dennis Small article from the August issue to make it fit within that size limit (and Leigh has always had to leave out some of the graphics in order to make things work in the format we’ve had to use – the printers print it as A3 folded i.e. four sides at a time). But, by contrast, the December issue was the smallest since the one immediately after the February 2011 killer quake (and in 2015 we didn’t have a natural disaster as an excuse).

There were a number of reasons for that – James Ayers had suddenly got seriously ill, so that issue was the first Watchdog since 1990 not to include any writeup of the Decisions of the Overseas Investment Office (and the Overseas Investment Commission before that). James has got back into it with a vengeance in 2016, starting with the backlog that accumulated during his illness. We also had the unique experience of a writer withdrawing, unasked, an already written article that I had edited and which was ready to go. The writer decided, upon reflection, that Watchdog was not the best outlet for the article. Plus another couple of writers did not deliver expected articles. If it had not been for good old Dennis Small and his article which I’d had to hold back from August, the December issue would have been substantially smaller again. But let’s not get carried away – it was still 76 pages. And the printer has now told us that, due to equipment upgrades, the size limit no longer applies (which is just as well).

Watchdog is the sole survivor of the old school Left publications (certainly in hard copy) and I believe this is a big reason why we have no trouble getting people, including big names, to write for us for no pay. It is a journal of analysis; it is not, never has been, and never will be, a newspaper. One of the highlights of CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration event in May 2015 was that, at it, we displayed every single issue going back to the very beginning in the mid 1970s. Participants could see for themselves both the continuity of content, style and information, along with the huge improvements in the layout and look of the publication.

Overseas Investment Office: This naturally follows on from Watchdog, because that is where James’ analyses of the OIO’s Decisions are published (as well as on the CAFCA Website). Our relationship with the OIO (and the OIC before that) is so long – dating back to the 1980s when we waged a five year long campaign just to get any access to its data at all - that it is regarded as part of the furniture and I don’t think I’ve ever singled it out for mention in my annual Reports. But 2015 provided a reminder that it is a campaign in its own right and should not be under-rated or taken for granted.

With almost no exceptions the OIO always withholds some Decisions from its monthly batch (in some cases it is the whole Decision; in the great majority it is just the “consideration” i.e. how much was paid). I routinely appeal all such deletions to the OIO; once again, with very few exceptions, it upholds the deletions. I then appeal those to the Ombudsman, usually three months worth at a time. Those had been piling up and we had received no verdicts from the Ombudsman on any of our appeals for several years. In 2015 the Office of the Ombudsman decided that it wanted to meet this Mr Horton of CAFCA who had put in 100 appeals (I was impressed to learn that) and who was tying up their valuable resources.

So, James and I met with Auckland-based Ombudsman Professor Ron Paterson, when he came to Christchurch (where he has plenty else on his plate to do with all matters earthquake). We had a long and fruitful discussion – James and I made a good team – the outcome of which was that we agreed to review the grounds for deletion before appealing them to the Ombudsman. And he agreed to urge the OIO to release the “considerations” of a large backlog of deleted Decisions which we had appealed. The OIO has duly released to us a great wodge of previously withheld Decisions, complete with the considerations, spanning the period 2012-14 inclusive. That cleared up the backlog but the OIO still routinely withholds all or part of some Decisions every month and we continue to appeal some, but no longer all, of those deletions to the Ombudsman.  Life goes on

That wasn’t our only dealings with the Ombudsman. Several years ago we had requested and received, under the Official Information Act, the OIO’s file on Kim Dotcom. It’s a fascinating read and was written up by James in Watchdog 129, August 2012 (“Kim Dotcom And The Good Character Test: Money Versus Power”, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/30/06.html). Once again, great chunks of that file were withheld. We had appealed that and the Ombudsman had sat on the matter for several years, until we received virtually the whole file, in 2015. The Office of the Ombudsman regarded this as of sufficient significance as to warrant uploading a “case note” about it onto its Website, http://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/newsroom/item/new-case-note-advice-on-kim-dotcom-s-applications-to-invest-in-land-in-new-zealand. In both cases of our dealings with the Ombudsman – the OIO deletions and the Dotcom file – we informed the media and received some coverage as a result. Both of these cases illustrate that CAFCA has the resources and patience to play a long game, spanning years in each of them.

Website & Other Means Of Electronic Communication: The Website is being very well run by Chris Oakley, who has introduced some welcome upgrades (for example, the Roger Award now has an online nomination form. And people attending CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration in 2015 were able register online). He reformatted the Homepage to make it much more attractive and user friendly. This is all much appreciated, because our Website is a vital resource and the first point of contact with CAFCA for many people, including the media.

Warren Brewer does an excellent job at maintaining the Watchblog site, which is separate from the CAFCA and Watchdog ones and which provides a very colourful contrast to both. Watchblog is the only site where you can find Watchdog issues as PDFs, complete with all illustrations. Warren also administers our Twitter account, which has 200 followers. Colleen Hughes administers our Facebook group, which has around 1,200 members (which is many more than our “real” membership) but, of course, they don’t pay membership subs. The issue is how to get any kind of cross-over from “virtual” to “real” membership. We’re far from the only group facing this issue. Warren also administers the Keep Our Assets Canterbury, Roger Award People’s Choice and New Zealand Not For Sale Websites.

40th Anniversary Celebration: this took place on May 2, 2015 combined with the 2014 Roger Award event, which was held the night before (May Day) at the same venue. Both were among our major projects for 2015 and I reported on them in Watchdog 139, August 2015, “Roger Award Event & CAFCA’s 40th Anniversary Celebration: A Big Weekend In Christchurch”, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/39/05.html), so there’s no need to go over it all again. Suffice to say that, individually and jointly, they were both highly successful and made for a weekend which was a highlight of the year for many of those attending (myself included). CAFCA has been around so long that we are now the subject of academic study by one of our own – former Committee member Joe Hendren is writing his Auckland University PhD thesis on us and he found the 40th anniversary event to be an invaluable opportunity to be able to interview a number of veteran members at one time in one place.

Roger Award: For the 2015 Award we lost Paul Maunder (Blackball) as both Chief Judge and judge. He was replaced as Chief Judge by Sue Bradford (Auckland) and as a judge by the only new member of the panel, Deborah Russell (Palmerston North). Apart from Sue, the continuing members of the panel were David Small (Christchurch), Dean Parker and Dennis Maga (both Auckland). Their Judges’ Report accompanies this issue. Thanks to the judges, the Report writers and the event organisers.  We run the online Roger Award People’s Choice poll, administered by Warren Brewer. The 2014 winner of that, for the first time, was the same as the official winner selected by the judges. There is no accompanying Report for the People’s Choice – it is a straight popular vote.

In 2016, for only the second time (the first one was in Nelson in 2014), the event to announce the 2015 Roger Award winners was held outside the four main centres, namely in Palmerston North. That very successful Nelson event 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. And we found just such an excellent provincial organiser, namely Dion Martin (who greatly livened up both the Roger Award and CAFCA 40th celebration events in 2015, specifically by getting all of us to sing – which is not necessarily a good thing in my case. He has been CAFCA’s key contact in Palmy since the 90s, having organised and hosted my visits there during my various national speaking tours since the 90s, most recently in 2014). The event was held on the night of Saturday April 30th as a May Day double banger. A full report will appear in the next issue.

Keep Our Assets Canterbury (KOA): if the 40th anniversary celebration was our major event of 2015, then KOA was our major project. I am the Convenor and a number of other Committee members are also very actively involved with the KOA Committee (Warren Brewer, Paul Piesse, Jeremy Agar and Brian Turner, to a greater or lesser degree). KOA’s work focused on, and will continue to focus on, the move to sell off up to $750 million worth of the Christchurch City Council’s extensive portfolio of publicly-owned assets over three years, to help pay for a beat up of a “shortfall” in finances, needed to pay for the city’s share of the quake rebuild costs share agreement that the previous Council had been bullied into by a Government that has a clear agenda to sell public assets (in 2016 the Council reduced the amount needed from $750 million to $600m and said that it would look for ways to raise that other than by asset sales).

Prior to the 2013 local body election KOA asked all candidates to sign a Public Ownership Pledge, and The People’s Choice (TPC; basically the local body version of the Labour Party) signed up to it en masse, all six of their Councillors and all of their Community Board members. They were happy to accept Public Asset Defender certificates from us at a public event in February 2014. But, when the heat came on, at the very end of that year, TPC buckled and agreed to the disaster capitalism agenda (“shock doctrine”, as Naomi Klein dubbed it when the same thing happened to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005), driven by the Government, Big Business, the Mayor, Councillor Raf Manji (the power behind the throne) and the transnational corporate media beating the tired old “There Is No Alternative” drum.

Fortunately, TPC came to its senses in April 2015 and launched its Common Sense Plan, which provided an alternative to asset sales. The Council’s asset sale plan went to public “consultation” and KOA campaigned hard to get people to make submissions against it. Over 80% of submissions received on asset sales were opposed to them. The Council ignored that and voted 8-6 for asset sales (all of the TPC Councillors voted against asset sales). KOA intends to make this a major issue at the October 2016 local body elections.

In 2015 KOA received a major injection of energy from veteran political activist John Minto and his wife Bronwen Summers. They have moved from Auckland (returning to Bronwen’s home town), John got a teaching job and they built themselves a house here. They hurled themselves into all aspects of the KOA campaign, from pickets to presenting submissions, from speaking to union meetings to writing articles in the Press, and the two of them have personally underwritten bills for things like printing thousands of leaflets and the cost of running a full page ad in the Christchurch Mail (it named and shamed the seven Councillors and the Mayor who voted in favour of asset sales, and pissed some of them right off, in the process. Good). This is not John’s only political involvement in his new Christchurch home – he has been a speaker at all sorts of rallies and marches; he, with others, kicked off the Christchurch Progressive Network, which holds a monthly public forum and other activities. So, welcome, John and Bronwen, you are wonderful assets to have in a campaign to save public assets. Heartfelt thanks are also due to Steve Howard, Denis O’Connor (a CAFCA Committee member himself decades ago), Dot Lovell-Smith and Mike Newlove, for their tireless KOA work.

Once the Council had voted to sell assets, KOA moved up a gear. We produced leaflets, took our banners and leaflets to other people’s rallies and marches, issued press releases, held a public meeting in the Cardboard Cathedral, spoke to union meetings, built a relationship with unions and The People’s Choice Councillors, and presented submissions to both local and central Government. When the Council announced, in late 2015, that its maintenance and infrastructure company, City Care, was the first to be sold, KOA launched a series of well attended pickets outside City Care depots, outside the City Council Building, and right inside the debating chamber during one Council meeting (it was a silent protest where we held up banners). We have picketed in heat, gales and rain.

These activities have been very well covered by the media and I have done a lot of interviews in my KOA capacity. Another encouraging aspect of the pickets has been the overwhelming level of public support expressed by the simple vox pop of rush hour motorists responding to our signs such as “Toot if you oppose asset sales”. From single occupant cars to tradies’ vans, even a cop car, they have tooted with gusto. KOA’s campaign is one which will only continue to grow in 2016. And it is quite likely to become of direct relevance to CAFCA, because a string of transnational corporations have been touted as the potential buyers of City Care (although the Council has “scaled back” the amount it wants to get from asset sales, it is adamant that it will sell City Care).

Relations With Political Parties & Unions:  This flows naturally on from KOA. We used to work closely with the Greens in that but, unfortunately, they withdrew from it in 2015 (you’d have to ask them why). Individual Greens are still very actively involved in KOA. And it is the only campaign on which CAFCA works directly with the Labour Party (in the form of The People’s Choice). CAFCA itself has always been fiercely independent and unaffiliated to any party, whether Parliamentary or extra-Parliamentary. We reserve the right to criticise all of them, and do so. That doesn’t stop us productively working with political parties. We regularly work with people from the Greens, Mana, Labour, the Democrats and Alliance.

I must make clear that there is no bad blood between me and the Greens (just in case you got that impression from the above paragraph). Wearing my Anti-Bases Campaign hat I work closely with both the Party and individual MPs such as Steffan Browning on our shared campaign to close the Waihopai spy base. At the latest (January 2016) Waihopai protest I shared a speaking platform (well, the back of a ute) with Greens Co-Leader Metiria Turei, who told us how happy she was to be marching through Blenheim in the company once more of grassroots activists.

As far as unions go, I have already mentioned KOA building a good working relationship with unions in Christchurch. Both FIRST Union and the Rail and Maritime Transport Union have put money into KOA; in 2015 John Minto was invited to speak to RMTU workers and I was invited to speak to a FIRST Union meeting; we have also met with E Tū, the Public Service Association (PSA) and the Amalgamated Workers’ Union (AWUNZ), the three unions who represent workers in City Care. Officials from several unions have attended KOA’s City Care pickets. CAFCA has had a long and ongoing productive national relationship with a number of unions and individual unionists. We have ongoing very friendly relationships with FIRST Union, whose General Secretary, Robert Reid, was one of the speakers at our 40th anniversary celebration. It should be noted also that FIRST Union, within the past couple of years, has become the only union (so far) to regularly pledge to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account. Not only that, it is the single biggest pledger.

Other unions we work with are the Maritime Union, Rail and Maritime Transport Union, the former Service and Food Workers Union (which has now amalgamated with the EPMU to become E Tū) and Unite. In some cases, such as with the former Seamen’s Union, now the Maritime Union, those relationships go back decades. In 2015 we worked with unionists to jointly organise the Roger Award event and May Day celebration. Of the CAFCA Committee, Paul Piesse is a retired union official; Lynda Boyd is a current one; both Warren Brewer and Colleen Hughes have a long background in grassroots union activism; Jeremy Agar was involved in the teachers’ union during his 30 years in Toronto; and Bill Rosenberg is, of course, the Council of Trade Unions’ Economist and Policy Director. In my own years in a “real” job at the Railways I was both a grassroots delegate and unpaid provincial union official.

Media Profile & Public Speaking: this also flows naturally on from KOA, because the great bulk of my 2015 media interviews and other interactions were in my KOA, not my CAFCA, capacity. I haven’t done a CAFCA TV interview for years but I did a KOA one in 2015. CAFCA has a high reactive media profile (by which I mean that the media contacts us, rather than us proactively contacting them). In 2015 I did several CAFCA media interviews, including with commercial radio networks, major daily papers and community radio. This was in addition to the press releases that we proactively put out about things such as the Roger Award (which generates media coverage in itself).

The most unusual media interaction we had was with an investigative reporter with the New York Times (which is way outside our usual league). He didn’t want anything from us; unsolicited, he sent us (and numerous others) a series of indepth articles about the global problem of exploitation of workers at sea. I think we came onto his radar because we’ve done a bit about that in the past, in the New Zealand context. It was such a unique situation that I initially thought the guy must be some sort of scammer. But, no, he was genuine.

As for public speaking, once again most of it was in my KOA capacity, ranging from via a megaphone on a picket to speaking to a union meeting to presenting submissions to either the City Council or a Parliamentary Select Committee. Apart from my speech to CAFCA’s 40th anniversary event my only other CAFCA (& ABC) speech was at an event organised by the Greens to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of their Co-Leader (and very active CAFCA & ABC member) Rod Donald. I was very pleased to be invited (even if an MP greeted me by saying: “You’re the one speaker whom we’re worried won’t stick to time”. Wherever do they get these ideas from?). I did a lot of work with Rod over many years and his loss is still keenly felt. Researching that speech (which did keep to time, by the way) was a real trip down memory lane. I just used my 2005 obituary of him (Watchdog 110, December 2005, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/10/09.htm).

Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA): this was the big issue and the big campaign of 2015, and continues to be in 2016. CAFCA and I have put a lot of work into this for years but, I’m pleased to say, it is well out of our hands now and has become one of the biggest movements in recent NZ political history. It is a story that still has years to run. CAFCA has played its part in the local and national campaign against the TPPA. We took part, with our banner and leaflets, in the Christchurch marches and rallies during the August and November 2015 and January 2016 National Days of Action (at the latter, Colleen Hughes set up a CAFCA table and we picked up several new members. Good work, Colleen).

We donated thousands to the national campaign and hundreds to Greg Rzesniowiecki for his tireless work on the TPPA local government campaign. We made sure that we invited Jane Kelsey to be one of the speakers at CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration. We still have the New Zealand Not For Sale Website, administered by the ubiquitous Warren Brewer. My big concern is whether the campaign will be able to maintain the previous level of intensity for the next couple of years while the TPPA goes through the decidedly unsexy ratification process in its various signatory countries. In 2013 we saw another mass movement – that against the GCSB Bill - take to the streets with many thousands of marchers around the country. The Bill was passed and what happened to that campaign and all those people?

Already numbers at the two most recent TPPA rallies in Christchurch were well down on what they had been. Personally, I think that’s because they were rallies in the still deserted Cathedral Square rather than marches to where people actually are. People want something to do, rather than standing around listening to a whole lot of speakers. The climate action march in November 2015 proved this brilliantly – bookended by rallies at the beginning and end, it also featured an excellent march where the numbers swelled well into the thousands. I’m optimistic that the TPPA campaign has well and truly developed a life of its own and will run and run for years (or as long as it takes until the wretched thing dies a richly deserved death).

CAFCA’s SIS File: it has been several years since I last mentioned this in my annual Report. It got a couple of outings in 2015. A historian (who also happens to be a member and a good friend for many decades) got a sizeable grant to write a book on a century of State surveillance. So he came to our place (which is where I work) and spent a day going through it. And he confirmed that CAFCA is, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, the only organisation to have received its Security Intelligence Service file on it as an organisation (as opposed to files on individual members of it, such as me). It was also on display at CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration event. I find it invaluable and have used it regularly in recent years – for example, in 2015 I quoted it throughout my 40th anniversary speech on the history of CAFCA. And, more recently, I quoted it in my December 2015 Watchdog obituary of Peter Conway. I have used it as a reference for several obituaries.

We have no plans to publish or upload it – not because CAFCA has anything to hide - but because of the sheer volume of baseless tittle-tattle about named third parties in it. We received our file so early in the piece that the SIS, quite unused to dealing with the real world, had not got its act together and blithely sent us the file full of names (even of one of their workplace informers in one historic report about me and other “Communist unionists” at the Railways). By the time they sent Personal Files to people like me every other name had been expunged. But not in the CAFCA file, which is now regarded as a gold mine of information. I want to place on record my disappointment that more eligible organisations did not apply for their files – by eligible I mean ones with “legal standing” (CAFCA is an incorporated society). I was particularly disappointed that Greenpeace did not agree with my request that it apply. That SIS file would have been absolutely fascinating and of major historic and political significance.

Quake Effects On Committee Members: I’m pleased to report, for the first time in several years, that there aren’t any, in that everyone’s houses have been fixed. Even Becky and I, whose last dealings with the Earthquake Commission was years ago, got more money out of them in 2015. They foolishly rang me to take part in a customer satisfaction survey (I declined, as I was flat out preparing for a CAFCA meeting). But this inspired Becky to rummage through our voluminous EQC file for the first time in years. And she found an invoice which we, and they, had forgotten about for four years. I duly rang them and without further ado we received reimbursement for the outstanding several hundred dollars. The EQC phone surveyor never did ring me back to discuss my “customer satisfaction”.

The one person in my immediate work circle who is still badly affected is my Anti-Bases Campaign Committee colleague Robyn Dann. She had to live in the lounge of her 19th Century Woolston riverside brick cottage for nearly five years because her bedroom was deemed to be too dangerous. Her house lost all ability to keep out wind, rain or cold – poor Robyn nearly got hypothermia at one point during Christchurch’s extremely cold winter of 2015. It wasn’t until early 2016 that the house was demolished and she is living in a caravan while a new home is built on the same land. Beyond the ranks of the CAFCA & ABC Committees there are plenty of members who are still awaiting resolution. I personally know two who are currently living in rentals, paid for by their insurance companies, for anything from six to twelve months, while their homes are being fixed. There is a former CAFCA Committee member who gave up waiting after five years, sold her home “as is where is”, and left Christchurch. Families are affected – James Ayers’ mother-in-law has spent five years living with one or other of her two daughters while waiting for her place to be rebuilt (it will be ready later in 2016). This is a crisis that is nowhere near over yet and the February 2016 big quake and further aftershocks are a violent reminder that geological time and human time are two very different concepts. Indeed there has been further minor damage to already repaired homes, such as that of Committee member Colleen Hughes.

Having said all that I find the whole demolition/rebuild of Christchurch to be completely fascinating to witness and live through. It is a unique period in the life of both the city and the country. The 2015 highlight for Becky and I was to be amongst the crowd which witnessed the demolition by explosives of the Christchurch Police Station. It is an indescribable experience to watch, from close range, a 13 storey building being fatally wounded by deafening explosions and then inexorably come tumbling down in your direction. It evoked so many memories for me – I had been in that building (and its predecessor) in so many capacities, voluntarily and involuntarily, in the 40+ years of its existence. It was exhilarating to watch and gave me a flashback to the young anarchist that I started out as – every city should blow up its police station!

Anti-Bases Campaign. I am, of course, also the Organiser for ABC. I co-edit Peace Researcher, with Warren Thomson (and Becky is the Layout Editor, so it’s a family business). We publish two issues a year (Watchdog comes out three times a year). ABC’s major project in any year is the Waihopai spy base protest. See my report on the 2015 one in PR 49, June 2015, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/49/pr49-002.html. It got extremely good media coverage, which can all be seen at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/waihopai/2015/waihopai15.html. Like CAFCA, ABC gave money (double what CAFCA gave, actually) to a forthcoming documentary about Waihopai and Five Eyes. ABC’s other big project in 2015, which was very much Warren’s baby, was to make people aware of, and make submissions to, the so-called “independent” Intelligence and Security Review. Warren slogged his guts out on this and is owed a big vote of thanks.

Philippines Solidarity Network Of Aotearoa: I work for this on a voluntary basis. For the past several years in this Report I have said: “It is basically just ticking over”. But in 2015 PSNA had a project - helping to organise, fund and publicise a national speaking tour by a Filipino activist (our first such tour since 2010). To quote from the tour report by Auckland Philippines Solidarity (the main organiser): “During a visit to Auckland in mid 2014 Murray Horton of Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (Christchurch) suggested to members of Auckland Philippines Solidarity we should tour an activist from People Surge. People Surge is an alliance of Typhoon Haiyan survivors in the Philippines fighting for a pro-people rebuild and for an end to Government corruption in aid allocation. Murray noted Typhoon Haiyan (which happened in 2013) was the only Philippine issue to gain widespread media attention and public reaction in New Zealand during recent years.  It was a great opportunity to connect New Zealanders with progressive struggle in the Philippines” (this was a spin off of my 2014 CAFCA/ABC national speaking tour. I fitted this meeting in while I was in Auckland on my own tour).

The speaker was Efleda Bautista from People Surge. The tour title (with which I came up) was “In The Eye Of The Storm: Disaster Politics And Climate Change In The Philippines”. PSNA was only directly responsible for her Christchurch visit, which started the week long October tour. We organised a public meeting; got her to meet and share experiences with grassroots earthquake activists (which led to a further invitation to speak to a regular forum on quake-related and rebuild issues); and she was invited to the City Council Building to brief a meeting of several Councillors and  community board members. Efleda was only in town for a couple of days but it was a full on visit.

In Wellington, as well as a public meeting, she met with Opposition MPs and spoke to the CTU Conference; in Auckland she spoke at two public meetings, one in Tagalog for local Filipinos. The best media coverage she got was an extended interview on Radio New Zealand. All in all, it was a successful tour, bringing to the attention of New Zealanders that catastrophic climate change is a reality right now in the Philippines. As for disaster politics, Christchurch people know all about that. That’s why I was keen for local quake activists (with whom I’d had no previous contact; not having needed their services, fortunately) to meet with her, to hear first hand the reality of a huge Third World disaster and its aftermath.

I mentioned PSNA’s previous speaking tour, which was the 2010 one by Luis Jalandoni and his wife Coni Ledesma on behalf of the National Democratic Front (the political wing of the Communist armed struggle. They live in exile in The Netherlands). Luis turned 80 in 2015 and I was invited to contribute a couple of paragraphs to his illustrated biography (like a graphic novel) which marked the occasion. I told him I was pleased that their 2010 NZ tour is mentioned in the book. He replied: “Of course, for Coni and me the NZ Tour 2010 was great, very successful and fruitful. So, it had to be mentioned”. It’s always a pleasure to work on these speaking tours and to meet people like Luis and Coni.

Priorities: Ongoing projects include getting our message out to more people (including building our social media presence) and recruiting new and, hopefully younger, members. Watchdog and the Roger Award are ongoing projects. A major campaign will continue to be CAFCA’s involvement in KOA’s opposition to asset sales in the context of post-quake disaster capitalism in Christchurch. Other issues include the TPPA; privatisation; corporate welfare & tax dodging; and the hardy perennial of rural land sales.

My Ancient Past: There’s always something that comes back to haunt me and in 2015 it was the Vietnam War protest movement, and Canta. I was contacted by two separate North Island high school girls (I’m still not sure why they picked me) to answer questions for their history projects on the former. This made me think about the subject for the first time in years and to send them both a detailed response. I also did, in person, an interview on the same subject with an oral historian. Most amusingly, I was rung late one night by a Radio NZ producer who asked: “Are you aware that tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the first shot fired in anger in the Vietnam War by NZ artillery”? Funnily enough, I wasn’t. But the guy was not easily dissuaded. “You were one of the leaders of the Vietnam War protest movement” (flattering but not exactly true) and insisted I go on air the next morning to counter the continuing complaints of Vietnam veterans that they didn’t get any respect upon their return and still don’t today.

He was drawing a long bow – in 1965 I was a 14 year old schoolboy, and supported the Vietnam War (and that year’s Springbok tour). My conversion to the correct side of history came later in the 60s. However I duly fronted up on air and simply pointed out that, as far as I was concerned, we protesters never had anything personal against the NZ troops that went there and that, furthermore, in the immediate period after the end of that war, I worked in a Railways job side by side with Vietnam vets and other former military personnel. They certainly knew who I was but there were no problems. We worked together and were active in the union together. That job (shifting furniture) also put me in direct personal contact with hundreds of military personnel of all ranks in their own homes, both on and off base, once again without any problems. On the contrary, I had many interesting discussions with officers, soldiers and airmen.

I was the 1974 Editor of Canta, the University of Canterbury student paper. In 2015 a young Canterbury journalism student got fascinated when I showed her my bound volume of that year’s issues (it has survived being flung off my office’s top shelf several times by the more boisterous earthquakes). She photographed lots of pages and asked me to do a video interview, comparing the 1974 edition with its 2015 counterpart. I duly went out to the University (my first visit there since the quakes) and talked to her for about an hour on camera. Some time later, when I’d heard nothing, I asked her what happened and got a very embarrassed reply that she’d forgotten to turn on the sound! So, I’m the star of a silent film. Never mind, she redeemed herself more recently. She went on to get a job with the Marlborough Express and was the only journalist to turn up to report on the January 2016 Waihopai spy base protest (23/1/16, “Waihopai Spy Base Protesters Talk GCSB, Five Eyes And Democracy In Marlborough”, Jennifer Eder, http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/76188890/waihopai-spy-base-protesters-talk-gcsb-five-eyes-and-democracy-in-marlborough).

This Sporting Life: It’s not all work, with no play. Suffice it to say that I most definitely do not agree with my learned friends on the Left who decree that sport is the opiate of the masses. I have but two words in reply to that: Utter bullshit. Apart from anything else, the politics of sport is an absolutely fascinating subject in itself. I’m a child of the 1950s and 60s – I grew up playing rugby and cricket at school, captaining teams in both (not with any great distinction, I hasten to add). At primary school I was also a winning middle distance (barefoot) runner. I went to Lancaster Park to watch rugby and cricket tests (I was a programme seller at one All Blacks test and got a free seat); I saw Peter Snell set a world record there. I went from watching the 1965 Springboks live to fighting the cops outside Lancaster Park in 1981 (but I still ran to my father’s flat to watch the second half of the game on TV). Naturally, I was arrested during that Tour. I followed all of Muhammad Ali’s fights from when he was still Cassius Clay. When I worked at the Railways I always took part in all the work sweepstakes on the big fights. And I always put my money on “the black man”. I never lost.  I watched a Manny Pacquiao fight from the US when I was last in the Philippines. I’ve watched televised Olympics for decades (for the 2008 Beijing opening ceremony we stayed up till 5 a.m. When I looked out the window it was snowing, which was magical).

So, sport has always been a big passion of mine. 2015 was no exception and indeed it was a huge year for New Zealand sport, book ended by the cricket and rugby World Cups. I loved it. For my 64th birthday Becky and I took two deckchairs and sat under the stars in Victoria Square (a wonderful green oasis in a desert of rubble), ate the country’s best ice cream and watched the Black Caps play, on the big screen. I did that several times. I went to rugby games featuring Canterbury and the Crusaders (including the last game of Richie McCaw and Dan Carter for the latter). I was not alone, being joined on occasions by CAFCA Chairperson Jeremy Agar and my ABC colleague Warren Thomson. When my good friend David Robie came to stay we discussed at length not only politics but also his sporting passion, which is French rugby. On a couple of occasions during the Rugby World Cup, including the Final, Becky and I got up before dawn and drove kilometres to join friends in suburban pubs to watch the games live with a  crowd. Wonderful!

And in case you’re thinking: “Poor Becky, she’s married to a rugby oaf”, let me assure you that my Filipino wife (who’d never heard of rugby before arriving in this country in 1991) is a passionate and highly knowledgeable fan (her interest started with the All Blacks’ haka and. grew from there). She actually delayed her departure for the Philippines for her 2015 annual family visit in order to follow the All Blacks all the way through to the Final and then to most enthusiastically participate in their Christchurch victory parade a few days later (the huge crowd was a fascinating cross-section of New Zealand society, from hospital doctors in surgical scrubs with stethoscopes around their necks, to young Muslim girls in hijabs there for a glimpse of Sonny Bill Williams). Becky made many jinking, penetrating runs through the heaving throngs to get photos of every single team member that day and emerged from one such foray triumphantly proclaiming “I shook Ma’a Nonu’s hand”. It was Becky who texted me, from the Philippines, to inform me of Jonah Lomu’s death. He was one of her rugby heroes and she still has a collection of videos of his greatest tries.

Don’t worry; it’s not all brute physicality. We usually go to a movie a week (the city’s premier art house cinema complex has relocated to within easy walking distance from home). One of the perks of being self employed from home is working hours to suit, so we go to day time movies with all the other old crocks. I was into the Art Gallery the weekend it reopened; we checked out the street art exhibition at the YMCA and I visited every single one of the latest street art works on city walls. We go to the Court Theatre at least once a year; we pigged out at the Theatre Royal during the 2015 Film Festival and also went to a live show at that magnificent old venue; most recently we were wowed by Cirque du Soleil (which like the rugby and the Court Theatre was in our suburb of Addington, all within easy walking distance of home. Good old Addington, the saviour of Christchurch). Hagley Park and the Botanic Gardens are just down the road, we walk in them all the time, en route to and from the central city. I ensure that there is plenty of physical and mental stimulation in my life.

Growing Old Disgracefully: In 2016 I am now an old age pensioner (although I definitely don’t feel old). I have no intention of retiring any time soon, so will carry on working (paying secondary tax in the process). I’ve always said that I will do that as long as the members want me to continue, and subject to my health continuing to be good. On the latter, the only thing I have to report is that I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 2004 and spent the next 12 years controlling it with diet and exercise. But in 2016 my killjoy doctor has started me on medication and ordered me to curb my sweet tooth (actually I had a tooth pulled out a week after I saw him but I don’t think that’s what he meant). I must confess to disappointment that I have never received official recognition for my heroic services to the confectionery industry. I’m sure I have singlehandedly kept it in business.  But alas, now I really can’t have my cake and eat it (I’ve always thought that was a bloody silly saying. What else are you supposed to do with it?). So, I shall carry on, growing old disgracefully, albeit on a bread and water diet. Why give up something that is both immensely worthwhile and enjoyable?