This report covers slightly less than 12 months and it provides a contrast to 1999, which had enough action to do us for a decade. There was no big CAFCA speaking tour this year (we tend to time those for election years) and no yearlong APEC campaign. Indeed, APEC itself (which is hosted by Brunei this year) has been quiet to the point of invisibility, nor are we aware of any protest activities or counter-conferences being held during the Leaders’ Summit there in November.

The unglamorous basics of my work don’t change very much, so great chunks of my 1999 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.

Because we have recently conducted our annual membership renewal, a disproportionate amount of 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 can substantially finance major undertakings, such as the launch of our campaign to seize the Suhartos’ NZ assets - which involved paying for Indonesian expert, George Aditjondro, to be flown from Sydney to Auckland, and myself to be flown from Christchurch - largely out of our own resources.

But this year, for the first time, we have felt the pinch, and have had to ask our members for increased donations just to meet our actual running costs, as opposed to special campaigns and projects. There’s no crisis – yet. But there could well be in the future, as our expenses have exceeded our regular income for some time. We have increased our (waged) membership fee to $20 per year (and the institutional and overseas rates to $30), but that, in itself, will not bring in enough. For a number of years we had spare money in a term deposit with the Taranaki Savings Bank. Not any more – we had to close that, as we needed the money (not helped by them not wanting customers with less than $5,000).

It’s no secret what our increased expenses have been. In late 1999, we bought a brand new computer – it’s the key piece of our equipment. Everything, including this report, is produced on it (we got a few hundred bucks from selling the old one). Within the past few weeks, we’ve had to spend several hundred dollars to get our laser printer repaired – it’s several years old and gets a fair old thrashing. We’ve been more active lately in campaigning and lobbying – the Suharto assets campaign for example. We’ve paid for Bill Rosenberg to fly to Wellington to brief the Alliance caucus. We paid for Maxine Gay, Trade Union Federation president, to come to Christchurch to announce the winner of the 1999 Roger Award, and to speak at our 25th birthday party. These are some examples of unusual expenses.

Our regular income has noticeably dropped in the past year. We have a number of theories on why that is so: people are facing hard times (that is a given); people are reassured by the change of Government and don’t feel the same need to support a group such as CAFCA (all we can do is refer you to the cover story in Watchdog 94 for an analysis of how little things have changed under the new Government); and, finally, the advent of e-mail means that the great bulk of our mail comes that way now (it’s not uncommon for there to be no mail for us for days on end at our PO Box – that used to be extremely rare) and so we don’t get good old letters with donations enclosed.

I’m pleased to report that members have increased their financial support, despite times being tough for many. We appealed for more donations and you responded splendidly. After the first fortnight of membership renewals, I banked $4,500, which is $500 better than the comparable time in 1999, and $1,500 better than 1998. Many thanks for your generous response. Hopefully we won’t become one of those pain in the arse organisations which are forever asking their members for more money. 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 – that just means that sometimes we have to come to you with cap in hand. 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. Membership remains steady, at 500-550, with a constant supply of new ones to replace those who don’t renew or who are removed as non-payers. Quite a few of our members pay for others to join.

The CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income, is independent of both CAFCA and the Anti-Bases Campaign. It too has fallen but not so much as to be a major problem. Ironically, one factor in this has been the Government’s increasing the minimum wage by $22 per week, the first increase for years. The number of pledgers is holding relatively steady – some leave, others join – but it is the donations that are vital. Earlier this year we appealed for increased donations – one member (who is already a pledger) sent a magnificent $1,000. Another octogenarian came to the house, by bus and on foot, to personally give me $100 cash. I’m deeply touched by that sort of generosity.

One effect of this financial squeeze is that CAFCA has ceased (temporarily) to be generous - we are no longer making substantial donations to the campaigns of other groups. We have spent money on CAFCA travel, be it getting me to Auckland to launch our Suharto assets campaign, or Bill to Wellington to brief the Alliance caucus. To use business jargon, those are our core activities. We are a Christchurch-based group, so now and then we have to travel to get our message across. And we have received welcome help for those travel costs – the Auckland East Timor Independence Committee folded up in 1999, its work done, and sent us an unsolicited $700 towards launching our Suharto assets campaign. The Greens, once again unsolicited, reimbursed us for my airfare to brief their caucus, in Wellington.

My daily routines haven't changed - collecting and processing mail six days a week (including e-mail and Internet); correspondence; reading and analysing publications for fortnightly committee meetings; banking; handling orders for CAFCA material; clipping papers and gathering material for our files and as research for articles. This stuff has to be done daily, otherwise it can easily get away on me, and become a major headache. After the annual membership renewal, I have to spend a lot of time updating the mailing list and banking the money. If I go away for a week or two, there’s an awful lot of catching up to be done upon return. Then there are the spontaneous approachs from members, the public and the media for information or statements on a whole raft of subjects.

Watchdog

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. It is now regularly sold in three Christchurch bookshops and two Auckland shops (one of which has since closed. See obituary for One World Books, elsewhere in this issue. Ed.). We don’t pursue shop sales, because it’s a lot of hassle for very little return, and 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 it’s still not an easy subject to illustrate. As you may have noticed, graphics and even photos tend to get recycled a lot. Otherwise it really would just be page upon page of text. As part of our annual review, we solicited some outside advice, which was constructively critical of Watchdog’s appearance and layout. We are thinking about jazzing it up, including the cover, but nothing is definite as yet.

Watchdog remains the journal of record on foreign control. The guts of every issue is Bill Rosenberg’s meticulous chronicling and analysing of the monthly approvals by the Overseas Investment Commission. The amount of OIC approvals appearing in Watchdog has decreased, due to circumstances beyond our control. The National government, in its very last few days in office, increased, from $10 million to $50m, the amount at which OIC approval is needed for a non-land takeover (it started at $500,00 in the 1970s). We have lobbied the Labour/Alliance government to roll this back, but nothing has been done.

This has (theoretically) freed up Bill for more of his excellent writing and analysis on other subjects - over the past couple of years, his speciality has been the electricity deforms. His work on free trade led to him being invited to the AGM of Marlborough Federated Farmers to debate the subject with the former national President of that aggressively pro-free trade organisation. Most recently, he has written a comprehensive briefing paper on the proposed "Closer Economic Partnership" with Singapore, focusing on its foreign investment impacts, and Watchdog has published his submissions on subjects such as the drive for a common currency with Australia. Number 94 featured another of Dennis Small’s monumental book reviews (which are rarely much shorter than the actual book), plus some video reviews, for the first time. Liz Griffiths is not only our invaluable bookkeeper, but a regular writer and reviewer (isn’t it significant that the only woman writing for Watchdog is concise and to the point).

Watchdog prides itself on being a newsletter, publishing news that you won’t find elsewhere. That tends to be my speciality. For four years, we have followed, in great detail, the court cases arising out of the bungled Security Intelligence Service (SIS) break in at Aziz Choudry’s home. In the course of that, I spent nearly three solid days in the Christchurch High Court this year, observing David Small’s successful damages case against the Police. Pressure of other work means that I don’t get as much Watchdog writing done as I would like, but I do specialise in subjects like Waste Management or the Suharto assets in this country, both subjects that I’ve followed for years. In my 1999 annual report, I announced Wolfgang Rosenberg’s retirement as a regular writer, due to ill health. That was somewhat premature, and Wolf continued to do a bit of much appreciated writing for us, albeit with great difficulty.

It’s not all depressing facts, table of figures, and heavy analysis. Watchdog prides itself on the personal touch, and readers respond very warmly to that. My obituaries always get a warm response. Over the years, I have been told how much people value those obituaries, and it has been suggested (only half jokingly) that we should publish a collected edition. Judging from the demographic fact of our aging membership, there won’t be any shortage of obituaries in the foreseeable future. Perhaps I’d better write my own in advance to ensure nobody else gets to pass posthumous judgement on me. And Watchdog is absolutely value for money, on sheer weight alone - the two 2000 issues so far total over 150 pages. Sometime we have to cut material out of them, because the printer can’t handle anything more than 80 pages. So they could be even bigger.

Our involvement in other publications is low key. We keep updating our Fact Sheets (or, rather, Bill updates his ones. I never find time to do mine). We produce special flyers and backgrounders on subjects such as the Singapore agreement or the impact of the World Trade Organisation on agriculture. I regularly update my "Beginner’s Guide To Foreign Control", which now stands at a gargantuan 50 pages, and there is a steady demand for it. At $10, it’s definitely cheap at the price. We have gone electronic too – both Foreign Control Watchdog and CAFCA have their own separate Webpages. Many thanks to Greg Waite for his hard work setting up and running the Watchdog site. Greg is living proof of the changes in the way things are published. A decade ago, he used to, singlehandedly, print Watchdog on an old press in a Christchurch garage. Now he is our Webmaster, and he doesn’t even live in New Zealand. It's a no frills site - all text, no illustrations. What you see is how it goes to layout (complete with the odd layout instruction), not as it finally appears in Watchdog. We have neither the time, nor the expertise to make it look better. Maybe in the future. CAFCA’s separate Website (maintained by Bill) features his writeup of the Overseas Investment Commission decisions, my "Beginner’s Guide" and our submissions (to the Inquiries on electricity and telecommunications, for example), briefing papers and press releases.

The Taking Contol Electronic List Server (named after our 1998 Taking Control: The Fightback Against Transnational Corporate Power Conference) has a small but growing number of subscribers (right now we’re doing a roaring trade in nuns), and is a very lively and informative electronic discussion group. CAFCA material continues to crop up in all manner of publications, some of them very unlikely (such as the specialist hunting, shooting, fishing magazines that you can buy in supermarkets, or the business weeklies of our ideological foes), because of the range of facts and analysis that we offer that they can’t get anywhere else. And CAFCA material is cropping up more and more in the mainstream media - Bill has had several articles published in the Press and other major dailies.

I am co-employed by the Anti-Bases Campaign, (ABC) but it is no secret that CAFCA work takes up the great bulk of my time. My main contribution is as co-editor of Peace Researcher - Bob Leonard and I aim to get out three issues a year (although we only achieved that in 1999 by christening one as a double issue, and this year isn’t looking any different). PR is a much smaller undertaking than Watchdog, with a much smaller mailing list, and a different emphasis (in some areas we overlap, such as David Small’s court case against the Police).

ABC has had its most active year for a while – in January, for the first time in three years, we held an actual protest at the Waihopai spybase. It was planned to be peaceful, non-arrestable, and something that families could come to. It worked brilliantly on all counts. People came from around the country and it was attended by two MPs - the Greens’ Rod Donald and Keith Locke. We ran a Best Dressed Spies contest in central Blenheim, complete with a Spies’ Picnic (featuring a vegetarian sausage sizzle), and got a respectable number of Blenheim locals along. We issued everybody with our specially printed "Undemocratic Republic of UKUSA" passports, which were inspected by Uncle Sam (Bob Leonard, in an Oscar-worthy performance) before they were allowed to enter the foreign territory of the base (NZ is part of the top secret UKUSA international spying agreement. Ed.). We were legally allowed up to the spybase’s inner gate to speak and present our signed papier mache dome (made by Melanie Thomson) to Uncle Sam. It got excellent national media coverage – TV crews flew in, for the first time in years (they usually use local stringers or ignore it); it was the lead item on that night’s TVNZ One News; plus there was extensive coverage on radio and in the print media (the Marlborough Express really covers this issue, plus the broader context of Echelon {the code name for the global spying project, sweeping billions of electronic messages for "key words". Ed.} and global electronic spying, of which Waihopai is but a small part). In another first, a local farmer let us camp on his land, only about a kilometre from the base. We’re going back there – to the base and that farm – in January 2001.

That has not been the only ABC activity this year, although a Waihopai protest certainly takes a lot of organising, especially from long distance (it was my first time to do it; up until 1997, it was the domain of Waihopai Warren Thomson, who remains in Thailand). ABC has been fully involved in the campaign arising from Aziz and David’s court cases. CAFCA and ABC have both joined the call for a Select Committee Inquiry into Police spying. In September, ABC held a fundraiser entitled "An Evening With The Spycatchers", featuring Aziz and David, plus the excellent 1999 Australian TV documentary on the global electronic spy network (we had a great video evening, in Blenheim, during the Waihopai protest). We are working on lobbying, within the Labour caucus, on Waihopai and related inteligence matters, building on the productive relationship we’ve built in recent years. Further out, we are looking on bringing an overseas speaker, an ex-spy, here, towards the end of 2001 on a national speaking tour. That is entirely subject to finance. I am responsible for building international anti-bases links, in Australia, Britain, and Japan, to give some examples. So, ABC is alive and kicking.

I am on the committee of GATT Watchdog, which has had a (mercifully) quieter year, after the madness of New Zealand being the 1999 APEC host nation. But it has not been idle. In August, it organised a very successful protest outside the Christchurch venue for a speech by Mike Moore, the World Trade Organisation’s Director-General. That was Mad Mike’s only public appearance during his New Zealand trip, and we made sure that his return to his hometown was not unopposed. There has been a lot of work put in behind the scenes, by Jane Kelsey, Bill, Aziz and Leigh Cookson, to build opposition to this nasty little free trade agreement with Singapore (which is an attempt to achieve bilaterally what the proposed 1990s Multilateral Agreement on Investment {MAI} failed to do multilaterally). They deserve our thanks for that hard slog, not helped by our "Centre-Left" government proving just as secretive and pro-free trade as its Tory predecessor. Aziz has been to overseas conferences, due to GATT Watchdog’s credibility and hard work. GATT Watchdog was in at the start of the Aziz/David/SIS saga – David caught the SIS breaking into Aziz’s house during a 1996 GATT Watchdog conference and anti-APEC protest activity – and we were in at the end of it, after David won his case, reminding the politicians, media and public that it wasn’t just a funny story of cops and spies. It took place in the context of State spying on those who oppose the free trade, unrestricted foreign investment cult.

GATT Watchdog has ongoing money problems, primarily because it is so active and because it needs to find a regular income to keep paying Aziz. As well as being a committee member, I regularly write for its publication, The Big Picture. The expertise available in Christchurch on the whole trade and investment issues is among the best in the world - Bill has done a lot of research and writing on the subject for us, and has built an invaluable bridge to farmers. For the first time ever, this past year, I have done major media work for GATT Watchdog, firstly during the 1999 Battle of Seattle, and much more intensively, for the Mike Moore protest.

Nor must we forget our victories - since our last AGM, there has been a major, global, seachange in public opinion, which is now vocally opposed to "globalisation" (which is just a tarted up name for imperialism). One of the biggest global campaigns in years saw the ignominious defeat of the World Trade Organisation’s proposed Millennium Round, in the legendary Battle of Seattle. That momentum has been built on throughout 2000, with huge protests anywhere in the world where the globalisation cultists meet (most recently in Melbourne). We (in the broadest definition, ie we the movement) tend not to celebrate our victories. We should - Seattle was a stunner. For the second time, (defeating the MAI was the first) one of the cornerstones of globalisation was defeated by ordinary people, in the streets, despite quite incredible State violence, and in the heartland of capitalism. That was a victory in one battle only, not the whole war. But what a victory. Remember, the will of the Americans in the Vietnam War was broken by one battle – the 1968 Tet offensive (and that wasn’t even a victory for the Vietnamese). Seattle, and the other huge protests that have followed, will reverberate around the world for years to come.

My other involvement is with the Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa. As with GATT Watchdog, PSNA has also had a quieter year (in 1999, as our contribution to the APEC campaign, we brought out a high profile union leader on a national speaking tour). This year, we put up $1,000 towards the cost of getting Michael Gilchrist, then secretary of the Trade Union Federation, to the Philippines for the KMU‘s (May First Movement) annual May Day activities. I had gone to that myself, back in 1991, when I was still a unionist. He had a great time, describing it to me as a "life changing experience". Links between Philippine and NZ unions had been defunct, to all intents and purposes, throughout the grim 1990s.

I continue to edit PSNA’s newsletter Kapatiran (Solidarity), which comes third behind Watchdog and Peace Researcher in my editorial priorities. So I’m only aiming at a modest two issues per year. But it’s all good solid stuff, as big as (if not bigger than) PR, and we always aim to be relevant to Kiwis. The last issue featured eight writers, many more than write for Watchdog or Peace Researcher. Three were first hand accounts of 2000 visits to the Philippines (including an MP).

We even managed a holiday this year. Immediately prior to the launch of our Suharto assets campaign, in Auckland, Becky and I toured Northland (it was her first time north of Auckland). We did all the tourist things (although I was an abject failure at surfing down the giant sandhills at Ninety Mile Beach), enjoyed great weather in an extremely beautiful part of the country and visited friends. CAFCA has extremely capable and exceptionally hospitable members in the North – my deepest thanks to Jon Field, Lance Bullock, Don Ross and Tim Howard for looking after us so well.

I have been the Organiser for nearly nine 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. Once again, I take the opportunity to thank you for your generosity. The Organiser Account is steady at a regular $4,500 - $5,500+ but is still healthy and viable. My pay is $302 per week gross, which is the minimum wage. Some pledgers have left; others have joined, we can always do with more. 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 many hundreds of dollars), because it is the donations which make the vital difference. And I must give hearty thanks to my wife Becky, because if it wasn’t for the fact that she’s had a real job for seven years none of this would be possible.

As I’ve already said, the last year has not been as actionpacked as 1999. No APEC. But there has still been the campaign arising directly out of that, namely the court cases brought against the State by, first, Aziz, and then David. I personally, and CAFCA, were in there from the outset. I doubted the value of mounting court cases, seeing more pitfalls than prizes - I was delighted to be proven wrong, twice. Both Aziz and David won their cases; the SIS and the Police got bloodied noses; for once, the media did a good job on the subject. The whole SIS/Police campaign has been one of the most conciousness raising politicisation events of recent history, reinvigorating the widely based and wellfounded dislike of the SIS. Aziz and David deserve our thanks for risking financial ruin and years of stress by taking their cases; they deserve our congratulations for winning them. Once again, we need to celebrate our victories, and, in fact, there were thoroughly enjoyable victory parties for each.

The major political event in the country in the past year was, of course, the election of the Labour/Alliance government. Prior to the election, we wrote to all Labour, Alliance and Green candidates. We gave them information and urged them to adopt policies to reverse the tide of transnational takeovers. We got good feedback from that.

CAFCA does not have a long track record of being a political lobbyist. Primarily, because it has not been our style, and because, as a Christchurch-based group, we are away from the Parliamentary circus. However, recognising the significance of the first change of government in a decade, and seeing some scope for progress with the Alliance in government and the Greens in Parliament, we have devoted some attention to lobbying since the 1999 election. We have written to Labour, Alliance and Green MPs on various issues; I went to Wellington to brief the Greens caucus; Bill Rosenberg went to Vogel House to brief the Alliance caucus. Bill and I have had meetings with Labour and Alliance MPs. We have offered a CAFCA speaker to all Christchurch Alliance and Green branches – so far, Bill has spoken to the Ilam Alliance, a northern South Island Divisional Meeting of the Democrats and the Christchurch East Democrats. I have spoken to Staunch (the Alliance youth group) and a local Greens forum. More speaking engagements are in line with the Alliance. Bill’s biggest coup was to be invited to run a workshop at the Alliance’s 2000 national conference, in Wellington, in October. Some meetings have been purely informal – I spent a weekend with Alliance Minister, Phillida Bunkle and her partner, Alliance economist, John Lepper, plus Green MP, Sue Bradford, in the splendid old West Coast pub, Formerly The Blackball Hilton, where we were all featured speakers at the annual May Day knees up. We believe that talking to, and building links with, the parties’ grassroots (and that includes Labour – we’re working on that) are just as important, if not more important, than building links with Ministers, MPs and Parliamentary staff.

CAFCA is independent of all parties, we endorse none, and you won’t find much about elections or party politics in Watchdog (the issue goes on, regardless of who’s in office) but we recognise the significance of the change of government and the opportunity to get the most sympathetic politicians (I exclude Labour’s leadership from that) to focus on the issue of foreign control. As a lobby group, it’s the least we can do. And it’s well worth it.

We continue to publicise and promote our Corporate Code of Responsibility. CAFCA was responsible for the 1999 Roger Award. The winner, TransAlta, was announced in Christchurch, in February. Our chief judge, Maxine Gay, made the announcement outside the deserted former Southpower building. It was a prescient choice, of both company and venue. Recently, the Press has been running a daily campaign on TransAlta’s arrogance, inaccessibility to its customers, and its power price hikes. Tim Barnett, Labour MP for Christchurch Central, is campaigning for a community trust to supply retail electricity in Christchurch. GATT Watchdog is running the 2000 Roger Award, with active assistance from CAFCA. It is slow and hard going this year – to get judges (we had one resign on us last year, because of a conflict of interest); to get in plenty of nominations (that has since improved considerably. Ed.); and to get the Award out to the public via a hostile and/or uninterested transnational corporate media. We’ve changed the format for the 2000 Award – the event announcing the winner will be held outside Christchurch, for the first time. It will be in Wellington, to see if that will drum up more interest. We will be reviewing the whole Roger concept, in 2001. It was a great idea, but we’re not committed to it indefinitely.

Our local body work has taken a back seat to our lobbying work with central government politicians and parties. It had centred on opposing the involvement of garbage transnational, Waste Management, in the proposed regional landfill. It led to oddities such as Reg Duder and I dutifully listening to the local MP, Jenny Shipley (while she was still PM) speaking at a rally on the site of the proposed dump site, in the foothills near Darfield. That whole scheme came to a graunching halt earlier this year with the discovery of a faultline through the site, and its subsequent abandonment. The issue has only just resurfaced with the purchase of a new site, in north Canterbury. But the solid work that we put in with local rural communities in the past couple of years has paid dividends – in September I was the speaker at the monthly meeting of one of the branches of Rural Women of NZ in those same foothills near Darfield.

One idea we have promoted is the American precedent of "Good Character" or "Bad Boy" laws. Waste Management has regularly fallen afoul of such laws in various US states. Just recently we have written to Alliance and Green MPs urging the adoption of something similar in NZ.

Our other major campaign has been the call for the seizure of Suharto family and crony assets in New Zealand, as our contribution to the peoples of Indonesia and East Timor. It’s not a new call, we’ve been making it for years. The difference is that now we’re actually being listened to, it’s regarded as an idea whose time has come, and it gets good coverage in the mainstream media. As soon as the election was over, we wrote to all Labour, Alliance, Green and New Zealand First MPs, urging a Select Committee Inquiry into, and the seizure of, those assets. We launched the campaign at an Auckland conference, which we co-organised with the newly formed Indonesia Human Rights Committee. Our key partner in all this was Maire Leadbeater, a tireless campaigner for East Timorese independence, who is now working on solidarity with Indonesia. Our contribution was to supply me as speaker, and to pay for the trans-Tasman fare of George Aditjondro, the Australian-based Indonesian academic who is the world’s leading expert on Suharto wealth. The conference was high powered, featuring the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Labour), his Associate (Alliance), and the Greens foreign policy spokesperson.

We have been pleasantly surprised at how fast the Government (specifically Phil Goff) has moved on this issue, offering to the Indonesian government to seize NZ assets, if the Indonesians request it. We haven’t got the dedicated Inquiry that we sought, but we have made a submission on the subject to a Select Committee, in the context of an Inquiry into the Role of Human Rights in NZ’s Foreign Policy. Patient media work led to the country’s biggest paper, the New Zealand Herald, doing a major feature on the subject. Even Australian journalists contacted us, as NZ is seen as being far in advance of Australia on this. Most recently, Aziz Choudry, whilst in Jakarta representing GATT Watchdog at an international conference, met with the Indonesian Attorney-General to inform him of those NZ assets, and publicised them at a very well attended press conference. The Indonesian media were fascinated by it all, and the NZ media picked up the story and ran with it again. This was a perfect example of international networking. Robert Reid, of the Jubilee 2000 campaign (Third World debt relief), attended the activities in Okinawa protesting the G8 Summit there. Indonesian NGOs present expressed great interest when told that Aziz was going to Jakarta and had access to information on the NZ assets of the Suhartos and their cronies. We owe Aziz a big vote of thanks, for doing our work for us, both in Indonesia and NZ. Events such as the murder and mutilation of the Kiwi soldier in East Timor, and the butchering of UN workers in West Timor, have helped convince the NZ media and public that our call is an eminently reasonable one, particularly as its backs up the Indonesian government’s prosecution of the Suhartos for massive corruption. This campaign will run for some time yet, and accounts for most of our appearances in the media (our press releases on other subjects tend to disappear into the ether). It is too specialist a subject, too narrow, for us to devote all our energy on it. Our best contribution is information, and to leave the actual nuts and bolts of the campaigning to others (see article elsewhere in this issue for the latest on the Suharto assets campaign. Ed.).

The committee has an annual strategy meeting. Arising from this year’s one, we have resolved to build better links with Maori (starting with Maori media), and other sectors, ranging from Grey Power to unions, youth groups to farmers. We’re working on all of them. And we decided to invite to our committee meetings a roster of half a dozen sympathetic "allies and outsiders", to frankly assess our effectiveness, and to discuss improvements, ranging from Watchdog layout to tactics. Those meetings have been both stimulating and productive. The majority of these visiting speakers are women, which is a vital counter-balance to our all male committee.

Nor have we forgotten how to enjoy ourselves. In February, we marked CAFCA’s 25th anniversary with a bloody good party. Around 100 people attended, ranging from members and supporters past and present, to current politicians. Bill and I spoke, along with Maxine Gay (it was timed to follow on from the Roger Award). There were many spontaneous speeches from the floor, praising CAFCA (so Bill and I don’t need to write our own obituaries for Watchdog now; we’ve already heard the eulogies). It was such good fun that I hope that we don’t have wait another quarter of a century for the next one.

All this was on top of our usual CAFCA work, which is itself on top of humdrum administrative work. It has been one very busy year, with media appearances ranging from national TV network news to regional TV studio interviews and metropolitan and provincial papers. I’ve done plenty of public and private speaking, both in Christchurch and out of town (ranging from Auckland to Wellington to Blackball to Glenroy). The difference is that Bill now does just as much, if not more, public and private speaking than I do. We have done submissions on various subjects, ranging from NZ’s relationship with Australia to the need to renationalise Telecom. Bill has written briefing papers and fact sheets on subjects such as the Singapore free trade agreement and the impact of the WTO on agriculture. Plus there’s the ongoing behind the scenes work with the media on particular stories, such as the Herald on the Suhartos. Our fortnightly committee meetings very rarely finish before midnight. My fellow committee members - Bill Rosenberg, Dennis Small, John Ring, Reg Duder and Ray Scott - 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.

The coming year is going to be, basically, more of the same. At this stage, we don’t have major events planned. But anything can happen, and we have some ability to mount spontaneous campaigns. The committee has an annual strategy session, in the first quarter of the year, and that plans our campaigns and themes for the year.

We will continue to lobby selected politicians and parties, and we will continue to work with the grassroots of those parties, because that is where the real progress is made.

We will continue to be an integral part of GATT Watchdog, and fight all the various manifestations of globalisation, be they the Singapore free trade agreement, a new WTO Round, or proposals to have a common Australian/New Zealand currency. "Globalisation" (ie imperialism) goes to the heart of our reason for being. We started as an anti-imperialist organisation, and after 25 years of turbulent existence, we remain one today. CAFCA is helping to run the 2000 Roger Award. The winner will be announced at a Wellington function in 2001.

Our Suharto assets campaigns has developed a life of its own, one which has been actively picked up by other groups – exactly as we had hoped. This is one campaign that still has a long way to go. It works because, like all our previous successful campaigns, it is a specific example of what we’re on about, not an abstract theory. It’s very easy to understand, has major international implications, and attracts support from New Zealanders who would not otherwise be interested in the broader issue of foreign control.

This year, CAFCA marked quarter of a century. Looking at Ann Currie’s excellent display, on the night of our birthday party, the old photos convinced me that I’m balder and fatter, a living monument to a diet of pies and icecream, but still wearing the same denim jacket. So, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Like many such groups, we have a possible problem of succession. The upside of that is that we’re not ready to throw in the towel and join the bowls club just yet. We have an aging committee, and an aged membership. The upside of that is that the committee is alert and alive, and sharper than its ever been – the membership is the most responsive and generous of any group with which I’ve been involved. Hopefully, we’ve all got many more years to go together.

I’ll finish by repeating the conclusion to my last few annual reports, because it’s still relevant. The future offers us more of the same. New Zealand has had its first change of Government in a decade (the first since I became the paid Organiser, actually), but the reality is that TNCs control the economy, so this is not a problem that will solved through Parliamentary means. It needs grassroots organisations to educate and mobilise people to take back what has been stolen from us. That is the role of CAFCA. And we're more necessary than ever, because our issue is centre stage. Nor is it only a single issue as it permeates all aspects of people's daily lives. So there's no shortage of things to be done. The only problem is prioritising them. We intend to continue giving it our all, and we know that we can count on your continued active support. Morale is high, tempered with realism. We know what we're up against. But the bigger they are, the harder they fall.