Speech at 2015 Roger Award event, Palmerston North, 30/4/16.

This is an auspicious occasion, as it’s the first time that the Roger Award event has been held in Palmerston North. Indeed it’s only the second time it has been held outside of one of the main cities. So, give yourselves a round of applause. Particular thanks to Dion Martin and all who worked with him to make this possible.

The Roger Award is organised from Christchurch – I’m the Secretary/Organiser of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) - and I’m proud of the fact that, despite the whole earthquakes saga that has gone for nearly six years thus far, the Roger Award organisers have carried on regardless, we haven’t missed a beat. The killer quake was on February 22nd, 2011.  Despite that, the Roger Award was still held, as scheduled, in Auckland at the beginning of April that year.  It has never missed a beat since it started, in 1997.

I have two functions for this event. I am responsible for the plaque engraved with the name of tonight’s winner (joining all the other distinguished Roger Award winners). That will be duly reattached to the uniquely hideous trophy itself when Sue (Bradford, the Chief Judge) does the honours. At that point you will also be given a copy of the Judges’ Report detailing why they selected the winner (that is online at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/pdf/roger-award-2015-judges-report.pdf).

My other function, the here and now of it, is to be the opening act, the warm up act, and speak on behalf of the Roger Award’s organisers (but definitely not to give you any hint as to the winner, that is Sue’s job). To give you a little bit of the history of the Award and everything that has flowed from it.

The Roger Award is for the worst transnational corporation (TNC) operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand in the calendar year in question. So it is awarded for behaviour that is truly, outstandingly bad, the worst of excesses of transnational corporate capitalism, economic imperialism. I need to clarify one aspect – I don’t want to give the impression that if “a few bad apples” cleaned up their act (or went out of business), then all would be well. No, capitalism is a system which is both inherently unstable and criminal; a system which carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.

I don’t subscribe to the view that capitalism will collapse of its own accord and, thus far, the facts have borne that out. Globally, the criminals responsible for the global financial crisis (i.e. the bankers) have gone straight back to their life of crime, leaving the peoples of the world to pay their bills and suffer the consequences of their criminality. It is a culture of impunity. I refer you to the excellent film “The Big Short” for the details (reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Watchdog 141, April 2016, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/41/12.html).

Is There Any Point To Having The Roger Award?

The answer is yes, because the Roger is about evidence and examples. Every year since 1997 it has skewered the lies and bullshit that are sold to us on a daily basis (what should properly be called propaganda). The Roger Award is basically a New Zealand people’s court which hears evidence presented to it by ordinary New Zealanders about the specific corporate crimes committed by specific transnational corporations in a given year. It’s not about rhetoric and slogans, but facts and figures.

The Roger fulfils an invaluable role in proving, time and time again, just why it is such a bad thing to have allowed our country to have been colonised by transnational corporations. And it will continue to be needed in the future. Unstable capitalism goes through endless booms and busts. Every time the global economy comes out of yet another slump, we are told again that capitalism is the best possible system. Once again the answer will be “bullshit” and the Roger Award will keep on doing its invaluable national job of demonstrating why that claim is bullshit.

The Roger Award grew out of a 1996 brainstorm meeting in Christchurch. So, it was in that 90s’ atmosphere of full on class warfare against the working class, unions and beneficiaries that the Roger Award was conceived (the credit for the idea belongs to David Small; I take credit for the name. It is entirely appropriate that David was one of the judges for the 2015 Roger and for the two years before that. He remains a judge for the 2016 Roger).

The idea was simply to fight back in the propaganda war, to point out the obvious fact that these transnational corporations are the most important players in the NZ economy, that what they do affects every one of us in all aspects of our daily lives, and to hold them publicly accountable for the enormous negative impact they have on our country. When we came up with the idea at that brainstorm meeting 20 years ago, we had no idea that it would last this long, become a national institution, and generally be a raging success.

Nominators & Judges

The procedures involved in finding the Roger Award winner every year have remained consistent throughout. We circulate nomination forms to our own members and enlist other groups to help to circulate and publicise them. The criteria are broad and we review them every year. We restrict the eligible companies to those which meet the legal definition of a foreign company, that is, more than 25% foreign owned. Every year we have to reject several nominations as ineligible for this reason – Fonterra has always been the main wannabe (because it is New Zealand-owned).

The Roger Award is not for the worst corporation of the year, but for the worst transnational corporation. We recognise that the blame does not lie exclusively with the transnationals, which is why we instituted the Accomplice Award (that is not an annual one and we only include it if there is a worthy contender. Too often it has been the Government, which becomes like a stuck record. So there are no Accomplice Award finalists for the 2015 Roger).

And the Roger Award also features a People’s Choice Award, determined exclusively by an online poll. Once again, Sue will give you the winner (it was Bunnings). It gets a very good response but the official winner is the one chosen by the judges, complete with a detailed Judges Report. There is no such Report for the People’s Choice; it is a straight popular vote

The nominated corporations are only to be judged on their activities in NZ during the calendar year in question. So, the Roger Award is not for the worst TNC, but for the worst TNC operating in NZ during the previous calendar year. This policy of keeping it strictly focused on NZ here and now is another major reason for the Award’s success. Everyone involved takes it very seriously. The Roger Award is not a joke or a spoof. We play it straight, we play it seriously, and we mean what we say. Serious, of course, does not have to be deadly serious and it sure as hell isn’t boring. The best way to sum it up is that the Roger Award is serious fun.

The nominators are the vital first step in this process. The organisers select the finalists and send them to the judges. The calibre and dedication of these completely unpaid people, who give up part of their summer holiday to cruise through this corporate sewer in a glass bottomed boat makes all the difference to the success of the Award. The organisers and the judges are, very deliberately, quite independent of each other (the 2015 Roger judges come from Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch).

It’s always a total lottery inviting people to be Roger Award judges. There is absolutely nothing in it for them.  We currently have three men and two women, four North Islanders and one South Islander. We’ve had some very high profile people as judges – for example, a former All Blacks’ captain, a legend of New Zealand cricket, and a serving Mayor of Dunedin. Ranginui Walker, who died in 2016, had one of the highest profiles. The 2015 judges are a mixture of activists, academics, artists and union officials. All of them have also had years in the progressive movement.

Let’s hear it for the judges, particularly for Sue Bradford, who has just done her first stint as Chief Judge. And, by the way, we keep the Roger Award independent of any real or perceived political party ties. We didn’t invite Sue to become a judge until after she had resigned as a Green MP, and then not again until after she had quit Mana.

Report Writers & Event Organisers

The people who write the Judges’ Reports every year are different to the writer of the Judges’ Statement, which is the job of the Chief Judge. The Report writers do an excellent job. They have included some well known figures who have always preferred, for a variety of reasons, to keep their names out of the limelight. The 2015 one is a joint production, as it has been for the past few years.

Equally dedicated are the people around the country who every year organise the keenly awaited Roger Award event, the highlight of many people’s social calendar. They are the secret as to why the Roger may be serious but not deadly serious; they are the people who really make it fun. The Roger Award is organised out of Christchurch but it belongs to all of New Zealand – most of the judges have come from outside Christchurch; and the event has been held outside Christchurch more often than in it.

But we insisted on holding the event to announce the 2014 winner in Christchurch. It was held as just one part of a highly memorable weekend in May 2015 that combined the Roger event, May Day and CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration event. Dion played a prominent role in all three (he got everyone singing, which may not be a good idea in my case) and his performance that weekend inspired us to urge him to take on the job of organising the first Roger Award event to be held in Palmy. And here we are! Let’s hear it for Dion!

I’d like to mention the time the event was held in Wellington, in 2010, because it’s directly relevant to tonight. It was part of a memorable week of activities in solidarity with the three Christian peace activists who were on trial that week in Wellington for their 2008 deflation of one of the domes at the Waihopai spy base (even better, they were acquitted). CAFCA deliberately held the Roger event in Wellington that week in 2010 to show the links between the two.

Waihopai is a small but vital cog in a global system of exploitation, intimidation, war and mass destruction that exists to make the world safe and profitable for the transnational corporations, many of whom are an integral part of that global war machine. And tonight, April 30th, is the (8th) anniversary of that action by the Waihopai Domebusters; the son of one of them is performing tonight. Three cheers for the three unlikely heroes who kicked Waihopai in the ball!

And finally, the really big secret of the Roger Award’s success is the truly breathtaking standard of bastardry of the contenders who year after year thrust themselves forward to be picked as the worst in the country. We’ve always been spoilt for choice. 2015 was no exception, as Sue will tell you in detail. Nor is there ever any shortage of contenders for future years. So much so that we, the organisers, have proactively set up a watch list of TNCs that may very well be contenders in future years and which should provide plenty of grist for the Roger Award’s mill.

Does Anyone Care?

Which brings us to the central question about the Roger Award – does anyone care about it, does it matter? Take my word for it, the media certainly care about it, they play it straight, and it gets covered somewhere in the mainstream media every year. To give the most recent example – when ANZ won the 2014 Roger (announced in 2015) the media reported it as a straight piece of business news, complete with quotes from the Judges’ Report.

And the transnationals themselves take it very seriously. There’s no mystery why they do – like all big bullies, not only do they want to be feared, they also want to be loved. And the Roger Award tells them in very detailed terms that they aren’t and why they aren’t – it is an anti-bullshit, demystification exercise. It has a been a regular occurrence  that either they themselves or their hired guns in PR usually try to beg, threaten or cajole as a result of their appearance in the Roger.

When IAG/State Insurance was named as a 2015 finalist (and it won), the head of corporate affairs “responded to the nomination saying it was concerned at the lack of understanding shown by the (Roger Award) organisers of the role insurance played following damaging events…We are proud of our people and their role in helping New Zealanders day in and day out, and we won’t let this distract us in any way from the efforts across our brands to be there for our customers”. Yeah, right. So let’s hear it for the transnationals, without whom none of this would be possible. Let’s give them a resounding boo.

To conclude – the Roger Award is more necessary than ever. We’ve now had 11 years of the 2005 Overseas Investment Act and the “oversight” regime that was introduced with it by the Labour government (and liberalised even further by National). CAFCA said at the time that the new law had only one goal – to make the transnational corporate takeover of New Zealand even easier. Everything that has happened since then in relation to foreign “investment” has proved us right. For “investment” read “takeover”. They get the takeover, we get the hangover.

You don’t need me to tell you about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. The TPPA is misleadingly touted as a “free trade” agreement, but it will only benefit transnational corporations and will have severe negative impacts on New Zealand. All around us is the evidence of the moves that National is taking to “make the New Zealand economy attractive to foreign investment”. Both major parties are equally guilty of blindly promoting this obsessive compulsive belief in foreign “investment” and “free” trade as their major policy. The only difference is one of degree. Having said that, there are hopeful current signs, both at the political and grassroots levels, on the whole issue of the transnational corporate recolonisation of Aotearoa.

 Roger Is A Weapon In the Fightback

When you read the Judges’ Report on the six transnational corporations who were the finalists for the 2015 Award, that will remind you of the huge crime perpetrated on the people of New Zealand by a system that permits our country to be run as one big garage sale for the benefit of the giants which dominate and plunder the global economy. Is it all hopeless? No bloody way. Are we up shit creek? Yes, but not without quite a few paddles and there’s one of them on display here tonight, good old Roger. Look at him; he’s a sharp and prickly beast; all the better for jabbing and poking the bastards that are trying to squeeze the life out of us. So let’s get on with it.