The past year has been very much business as usual, indeed, in some aspects, it has seen a decline – we’ve been less in the media and the public eye; our membership has slightly declined, for the first time in years. On the other hand, our roots go deep and an awful lot of our very productive work goes behind the scenes, in all sorts of areas.

The unglamorous basics of my work don’t change very much, so great chunks of my 2000 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. What has become noticeable in the past few years is that the great majority of our correspondence (and a whole lot of other work) is now done by e-mail or via the Internet. CAFCA’s existence in cyberspace has become every bit as important as that in the real world. The predictions of the world becoming divided between the information rich and the information poor appear to be true (whether that’s a good or a bad thing is another subject altogether).

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 are financially self-sufficient (plus we can usually finance special campaigns largely out of our own funds).

But over the past couple of years, a new pattern has emerged, and we have felt the pinch. The result has been that we have had to ask our members for increased donations just to meet our actual running costs, as opposed to special campaigns and projects. It’s no secret what our increased expenses have been. We depend on a few key pieces of equipment, which get a hard life. In my 2000 Report I mentioned that we’d just had to spend several hundred dollars getting our laser printer fixed. Well, within the past month, it’s given up the ghost and we were advised it was no longer economic to fix it. For the first time ever, we couldn’t even retrieve anything from selling an old machine – it was fit only to be dumped. We have since bought another printer, which will (hopefully) be able to cope better with the sheer volume of paper we churn out. Whoever coined the term "paperless office" needs to be committed. E-mail and publications, reports, etc, that arrive electronically make up most of our printer’s output. And you do need to have a lot of it in hard copy – colleagues of ours have learned the hard way what happens when you keep everything on hard drive only, then a virus comes along and wipes that out. I don’t know about other people but I prefer to read things, on paper, in my hand (not a screen). We’ve been hit by a number of viruses in recent years, although not catastrophically (they’ve been at the bloody nuisance level). Being on the Internet costs CAFCA hundreds of dollars per year, and that’s at rock bottom mates’ rates, with unlimited volume. We owe Plain Communications a big vote of thanks for their very generous support. And we’ll be spending hundreds more per year on making our domain name easier to find and redirecting people to our Website (since done. See elsewhere in this issue for CAFCA’s new Web address. Ed.). Then there are the costs of actual campaigns – for instance, CAFCA paid to fly me to Wellington, in April, to represent the organisers at the first Roger Award event to be held outside Christchurch.

Our regular income has noticeably dropped in the past couple of years. We have a number of theories on why that is so: people are facing hard times (that is a given); we, and groups like us, never do so well under Labour governments; and, finally, the triumph 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 maintained 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 (which is the crucial time after our annual membership renewal mailout), I banked just under $4,000, which is $500 less than the comparable time in 2000, but much better than 1999 and 98. 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 friends in Christchurch Corso have recently gone through a seemingly endless legal war with their national office, in Dunedin, involving battles over their jobs, building, bank accounts, PO Box, phone and fax numbers, etc, etc, not to mention their very existence as an organisation. The tragic Corso situation provides an extremely powerful negative example for us – there are definite disadvantages in running things the way CAFCA does, but I don’t foresee that we will ever have Corso’s sort of problems. Nobody can be sacked or dispossessed – we don’t employ anyone nor do we have a building or a head office to tell us what to do. CAFCA continues to exist and chart our own course – Christchurch Corso, so long a leading player in the local progressive movement, is no more.

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.

For the first time in several years, membership has declined, slightly, to just below 500 (for several years it was steady at 500-550). Contrary to the impression given by the prevalence of obituaries in Watchdog, we don’t believe that our members are dying off. The reasons for membership decline are doubtless linked to the same reasons as why our regular income is down. But we continue to pick up new members and quite a few of our members pay for others to join. To keep things in perspective – that reduced income from our annual membership renewal came from a smaller membership base, yet was nearly as much as that from a bigger membership in the past couple of years. Viewed that way, we are in fact, doing OK, and our income is more than holding its own. And, for the first time, we used the new technology to chase up overdue members. We contacted all of those with e-mail addresses and gave them one last chance to pay up – quite a few did so.

The CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income, is independent of both CAFCA and the Anti-Bases Campaign. It too has fallen somewhat but not so much as to be a major problem. Ironically, one factor has been this Government’s reinstating the annual increase in the minimum wage. The number of pledgers is holding relatively steady – some leave, others join – but it is the donations that are vital. For a decade now I have relied on the generosity of members and supporters – it has not failed me yet. Individuals and organisations continue to send donations of hundreds of dollars at a time – it is very humbling to receive such constant and concrete manifestations of support.

CAFCA can still afford to be (carefully) generous – in the past year, we have donated money to our sister organisation, the Anti-Bases Campaign (for the national speaking tour by Canadian ex-spy, Mike Frost); to the newly launched group, ARENA, for its work on the Hong Kong Free Trade and Investment Agreement (in which Bill Rosenberg has been very prominent); to our friends in the Water Pressure Group, in Auckland, who are fighting those who aim to corporatise and privatise the water services of our biggest city and hock them off to the water transnationals waiting in the wings; and we have offered to put money into the combined campaign against November’s meeting of the World Trade Organisation, in Qatar (the first since the legendary Battle of Seattle).

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. We have now settled on producing three issues per year – in April, August and December. It is now regularly sold in two Christchurch bookshops (in the past year we have lost two Auckland and one Christchurch outlets – two of them because they have closed). 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. So, this is an appeal - if you’ve got cartoons or graphics that are suitable for Watchdog, send them to us.

There has been one practical problem in the past year, and one that is beyond our control. The chaos within Corso, which has led to the wilful destruction of Christchurch Corso (see above) deprived us, and lots of other people, of access to the Corso building, in Barbadoes Street. That has impacted directly on the layout of Watchdog, because that is where it used to be done. No more. For the past year, it has been heroically done by Leigh Cookson, peering into the tiny screen of a laptop, working from home, and running around town several times per issue delivering and collecting drafts and corrected editions, whilst trying to coordinate computers and printers. If you’ve noticed a few more layout errors creeping in, that is the explanation – we have been working in less than ideal circumstances. Hopefully, ARENA will get itself an office soon and this will resolve itself.

Watchdog remains the journal of record on foreign control. The guts of every issue remains Bill Rosenberg’s meticulous chronicling and analysing of the monthly approvals by the Overseas Investment Commission. Plus Bill provides us with his excellent writing and analysis on other subjects - over the past year, his speciality has been the rash of bilateral free trade agreements being foisted on us. He has done cover stories on the Closer Economic Partnership with Singapore and the proposed Free Trade and Investment Agreement with Hong Kong. The current issue (i.e. number 97, August 2001. Ed.) also features his analysis of the decline and fall of the Fletcher empire. Myself, Bill and Dennis Small are the main three regular writers. Dennis is legendary for his book reviews that are usually longer than the book (I know, from the other publications I edit, that Dennis can be a very concise writer when he wants to be, but Watchdog gives him the luxury of being able to expostulate at length, and fully vent his considerable spleen at old enemies such as Mike Moore). This current issue contains an excellent article by Dennis on the new dairy mega-company (now named Fonterra). The current issue is notable also for the couple of articles by Pete Lusk, one of our founding members from the 1970s. Indeed we now receive unsolicited articles from members, but we’re choosy about what we publish.

Watchdog prides itself on being a newsletter, publishing news that you won’t find elsewhere. That tends to be my speciality. Since 1996, we have followed, in great detail, the continuing saga arising out of the bungled SIS break in at Aziz Choudry’s home. Pressure of other work means that I don’t get as much Watchdog writing done as I would like (I do far more actual writing for the ABC’s Peace Researcher and even the Philippines Solidarity Network’s Kapatiran), but I do specialise in subjects like the Suharto assets in this country, which I’ve followed for years. And more latterly, Tranz Rail (I was a Railways worker and union official for my first decade and a half in CAFCA).

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 three issues since the last AGM total over 230 pages. Sometime we have to cut material out of them, because the printers can’t handle anything more than 80 pages. So they could be even bigger.

There haven’t been any other CAFCA publications in the past year. I’ve had no time to update my "Beginner’s Guide To Foreign Control" since mid 2000, and it’s not a top priority. But Bill has produced the definitive study of the proposed Hong Kong Agreement, published by ARENA, and has done an enormous amount of writing and researching on that subject. That booklet alone has been widely circulated throughout Parliament, political parties, all manner of organisations and the general public. We continue to see evidence that it is having an impact. A recent Independent column, by our old mate, Chris Trotter, commented that Bill and Jane Kelsey, and ARENA as a group, constituted the most serious opposition to the Government on the Hong Kong Agreement. The country owes Bill an enormous vote of thanks for this unpaid work, which he fits in around a demanding job and a family.

We are well established as an electronic publisher now – both Foreign Control Watchdog and CAFCA have their own separate (but linked) Websites. Many thanks to Greg Waite for his hard work running the Watchdog site (from Australia, proof that we actively practise internationalism, which should never be confused with globalisation). 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. CAFCA’s Website (maintained by Bill) features his encyclopaedic writeups of the Overseas Investment Commission decisions, various of our Fact Sheets and my "Beginner’s Guide", briefing papers on subjects such as the Suharto assets in NZ and an on line nomination form for the 2001 Roger Award (nominations have since closed. Ed.). Increasingly we get unsolicited comments from strangers who find our Websites of great value – these range from top flight Australian TV current affairs shows to NZ documentary makers; from editors of the likes of New Internationalist to an expatriate Kiwi in France who has linked his personal Website to that of CAFCA so that his family and friends can directly access our material.

I am co-employed by the Anti-Bases Campaign, which usually takes up less of my time than CAFCA. But not in the past year. ABC work has kept me very busy. My main contribution is as co-editor of Peace Researcher, which was not part of my job description when I started as the CAFCA/ABC Organiser, back in 1991. Indeed I did little or no writing for PR back then. I only ended up as co-editor when Warren Thomson headed off to Bangkok, in 1997, and now that he plans to stay there indefinitely, it looks like I’ll be doing it for a while longer. It’s a job that involves me doing much more actual writing than for Watchdog, but I enjoy keeping my hand in on subjects that CAFCA used to, but no longer, specialise in. But something has to give, and Bob Leonard and I can only commit to get out two issues a year (a far cry from PR’s original frequency). PR is a much smaller undertaking than Watchdog, with a smaller mailing list, and a different emphasis (although in some areas we overlap).

ABC has followed CAFCA online, and now has its own Website (complete with PR online). Melanie Thomson did all the hard work setting it up, then had to head off to London, on her Big OE, before getting it uploaded. It sat in suspended animation for months until Joe Davies kindly (foolishly?) agreed to be ABC’s Webmaster. There followed an intensive period of feverish work getting it updated and operational. It has come with more daunting technical challenges than the CAFCA/Watchdog sites, because it includes high quality photos, which caused their own problems. But it’s all up and running now, and is leading to ABC making all sorts of cyberspace contacts – for example, an article of mine (on the US military in the Philippines) has been reproduced on a US Website (of self-proclaimed "libertarian Republicans") and they, in turn, flicked on to the online English edition of Pravda. That’s a first – in all my years as a tool of the Kremlin, I’ve never been published in Pravda.

In January we held another protest at the Waihopai spybase (which involved me in a lot of work over the summer "holiday" period, when CAFCA wasn’t meeting). 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 Spies’ Picnic (featuring a vegetarian sausage sizzle) in central Blenheim, and got a respectable number of Blenheim locals along. In a stroke of genius, local activists made us a "Waihopai cake" (featuring a pair of truly mammarian domes, which we took great delight in eating). We issued everybody with our specially printed "Undemocratic Republic of UKUSA" passports, which were inspected by Uncle Sam (Bob Leonard, in his annual Oscar-worthy performance – he went to the trouble of getting a costume especially made this year) before they were allowed to enter the foreign territory of the base. We were legally allowed up to the spybase’s inner gate to speak and present our demand that the base be closed (and that Uncle Sam go back to Texas – our presence at Waihopai coincided with Bush’s Inauguration). It got excellent national media coverage – TV crews flew in, it featured prominently 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). After years of camping out by the Wairau River (which emphasised our status as outsiders), a Waihopai Valley farmer has happily let us camp on his land – a very short walk from the base – for the past two years.

But my real ABC work has been elsewhere. I reported to last year’s AGM that we were hoping to bring out a former spy on a national speaking tour, subject to finance. Well that’s on, it’s been one of my major projects for the past year (18 months since it was first proposed), and is due to take place in October. Mike Frost, who spent 34 years as a Canadian spy, and is now a writer and speaker, will be ABC’s guest for two weeks, speaking at eight venues from Christchurch to Whangarei. We set ourselves a $5,000 budget, raised it easily, then got another $2,000 from one of the Government–appointed committees which distribute the Rainbow Warrior blood money (very handy too, as extra expenses have inevitably cropped up). We’ve strung together a network of local organisers and activists, publicised it widely, and attracted great interest from the media (both Kim Hill and TVNZ’s 60 Minutes * had booked interviews before I’d even aproached the media. Neither ABC nor CAFCA have attracted their attention before). This is the first time ABC has done this - a previous overseas expert was coming here already on a private holiday, in the late 1990s and we piggybacked on that - but I’ve organised national speaking tours before (and accompanied the speakers, which I’m not doing with Frost), so I knew what I was letting myself in for. It is an extremely labour intensive job, dealing with anything from trying to arrange meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister ** to advising Frost on whether he can get an adaptor here for his wife’s North American hairdryer. It hasn’t all been plain sailing – we have encountered perfectly understandable opposition from some of our closest colleagues on the political morality of paying for former spies to come here. And we’ve had differences with Frost himself, primarily caused by him not being "one of us". * 60 Minutes cancelled, at the 59^th minute. ** A meeting with Jim Anderton couldn’t be arranged. Ed.

Organising a speaking tour by a North American ex-spy brings back many mixed memories for me. Back in the mid 1980s, before ABC existed, when CAFCA was still CAFCINZ and it specialised in Intelligence matters, I spent three years negotiating with Philip Agee, the famous former CIA agent turned author and political activist, to tour NZ and Australia. I’ve got a pile of letters as a souvenir (the way things were organised before e-mail, faxes and cheap international calls; it amazes me when I look back on it now). Agee finally rang me (on my birthday!) to cancel and that left a bitter taste all round. So far we’re doing a lot better with Mike Frost (contact ABC, same postal and e-mail address as CAFCA, for a full report on the Frost tour. Ed.).

The Waihopai protest and the Frost tour organisation have accounted for nearly all of my ABC work in the past year. But we’ve also made submissions on a couple of spy agency Bills; we’ve held a public meeting on one, and picketed the local office of the Security Intelligence Service (which got good media coverage). Plus there’s been ongoing ABC media work, and international networking, from Australia to Britain and Japan.

But ABC is struggling to maintain a committee – we lost Warren Thomson (permanently, it now seems), in 1997; in the past year, we have lost his daughter, Melanie, who is teaching in London, and Greg Jones, who felt a strong and immediate need to get a life. On the other hand we have picked up Robyn Dann (and her five year old whirling Dervish, Aleks) as a direct result of our active campaigning. Robyn has done the unthinkable and volunteered to be treasurer. After the Frost tour, we will hold our first strategy meeting for 18 months and consider our future. I am confident that both ABC and Peace Researcher will continue. At least there’s no Waihopai demo planned for this summer, which means that I can actually have a break over Christmas.

I am on the committee of GATT Watchdog, which keeps on keeping on, although seriously affected by the destruction of Christchurch Corso (see above). It has lost its office and meeting place (we now meet at our place), and has been dragged through the legal system over a prolonged period of months. In the past year ARENA has been launched and it has assumed the high profile role of coordinating research and opposition to the Hong Kong Free Trade and Investment Agreement. As already mentioned, Bill Rosenberg is one of the leading figures in that research and campaign. He has written the definitive booklet on the subject, spoken at public meetings around the country, lobbied MPs and political parties (some of which I’ve done with him), and generally slogged his guts out on this one. I should make clear that I am not involved in ARENA (beyond being one of its sponsors). GATT Watchdog has been in existence for a decade now and has done much excellent work in that time. Currently it is somewhat of an Ugly Sister to ARENA (all three groups – CAFCA, ARENA and GW – met earlier this year to thrash out their relationship to each other. There is quite an overlap of committee personnel, but very different emphases). As well as being a committee member, I sometimes write for its publication, The Big Picture.

Aziz Choudry and Leigh Cookson are the workhorses of GATT Watchdog (with Leigh simultaneously doing all the essential work at ARENA). Aziz is embarking on a major research project on the impact of globalisation on the Pacific; he spends an increasing amount of time speaking at overseas conferences, leaving for another batch of them within weeks.

In the past couple of years, the world has witnessed a massive uprising against "globalisation" (which is just a modern word for imperialism). Millions have marched against it; tens of thousands have fought its enforcers in the streets; thousands have been arrested, beaten and injured; a few have been killed. It is the phenomenon of the age and it’s got the transnationals and their political mouthpieces running scared. Big, militant demos have not been part of the New Zealand movement against globalisation. The advantage is that the debate here has had to focus on the issue, not the extraneous "law and order" hysteria that it has become in many other countries. This year, we celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the massive protests against the 1981 Springbok tour (of which I was one small part). That was a classic example of an issue getting sidetracked into a law and order hysteria. Having said that, often it needs just such a mass mobilisation, with the attendant hysteria, for the core issue to reach critical mass. That hasn’t happened yet with the globalisation debate in this country.

My other involvement is with the Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa, which keeps on ticking over. PSNA has also been seriously affected by the destruction of Christchurch Corso. The Philippines Resource Centre was upstairs in the Corso building, and, at very short notice, we had to move the lot out. Some of it is now in my office at home; the rest is still piled up in our garage (which is far from ideal). Moving out was a sad business – it reminded us that opening that Centre, back in 1996, was the last public PSNA task performed by Father Mark Moesbergen, before his tragic death in a car crash later that year. And moving out was not the end – national Corso dragged PSNA through the courts (along with the building’s other tenants) for several months (unsuccessfully, we’re now pleased to report. Ed.).

PSNA is quietly working away on a major project, for 2002 – we will bring out a leading woman trade unionist from the KMU (May First Movement) to speak on the impact of globalisation on women, specifically Third World women. It will be our contribution to the debate on globalisation in election year (you might be interested to know that Crispin Beltran, the KMU leader whom we toured through NZ in 1999, was elected to Congress this year. His party topped the list vote and provides the first Marxist representation in the Philippines’ House of Representatives for more than 50 years). And we intend to go on line and set up our own Website.

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 six writers, more than write for Watchdog or Peace Researcher (and Kapatiran provides proof that Dennis Small is perfectly capable of writing articles considerably shorter than the 20 page doorstops he contributes to Watchdog).

This has been a year of personal milestones. I turned 50, and had a bloody good party to celebrate it. Becky and I have just celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. On the other hand, I’ve just been prescribed (reading) glasses for the first time in my life, so old age and infirmity is catching up with me. I’m acutely aware of the fact that we haven’t had any sort of break away for 18 months, and that 1998 was the last time we had a holiday of more than a week. Being self-employed and working from home is an attractive lifestyle but getting away from work and the workplace (your own home) is a problem.

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, seeing some scope for progress with the Alliance in Government and the Greens in Parliament, we have devoted more attention to lobbying since the 1999 election. Bill has done a lot of work with the Greens, specifically Rod Donald, which resulted in the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee (on which Rod sits) voting to ask the Auditor-General to conduct a performance review of the Overseas Investment Commission. Rod has done a lot of work on the OIC, using our years of research and expertise on that subject – it’s worth mentioning in passing that, because the Greens pressured the OIC to get a free supply of the latter’s monthly decisions sent to them electronically, we now get the same service (for years we had paid for a hard copy service). Rod has publicly promoted the need for a Corporate Code of Responsibilty, based on the one drawn up by CAFCA. Because Bill was away in Australia (on a work trip), I ended up doing my first ever phone submission to a Parliamentary Select Committee – on Keith Locke’s International Treaties Bill – and had the unalloyed pleasure of speaking to the likes of John Luxton and Max Bradford, who asked the age old questions", such as: "How many members have you got? Are you opposed to everything foreign?".

Bill has put in an enormous effort on the Hong Kong Agreement, and some of that has involved lobbying politicians, both in Christchurch and Wellington. Just recently he and I spent 90 minutes meeting with Alliance MP, Kevin Campbell, on the subject. And we work with the activist grassroots of political parties – both of us spoke to the national conference of Staunch, the Alliance youth group. Bill ran a workshop at the Alliance’s national conference, in late 2000, and was recently a featured speaker at a public meeting organised by the Democrats. This year we have done two mailouts to Alliance branches around the country, and picked up a few as members. For the first time ever, I spoke to a local Labour Party branch a few months ago – the odd one or two didn’t take too kindly to criticism of Clark and Cullen, but the majority were receptive. And obviously our work bears fruit, behind the scenes – the country has just witnessed the brave stand of Paul Swain’s electorate chairman, who publicly attacked his own Government and Labour Party re globalisation in very strong terms, citing Bill, Jane Kelsey, ARENA et al as his inspiration (he’s now the ex-chairman. Ed.).

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 a Labour/Alliance government, plus the Greens, 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 have devoted some attention to unions this year. I have spoken at a seminar of senior delegates of the National Distribution Union, and to a monthly Lyttelton stopwork meeting of the Seafarers Union (which has recently become a generous donor to the Organiser Account, which provides my income). We continue to build links with the trade union movement – when I was in Wellington, in April, I set foot in the CTU building for the first time ever and was invited to join unionists (including Ross Wilson, CTU head) for drinks in a local pub. Bill has been working away on globalisation and the Hong Kong Agreement within the union movement, both in Christchurch and Wellington. We have recently done a mailout to unions, inviting them to join (we do already have some unions as members). We have publicly backed the Rail and Maritime Transport union’s Take Back The Track campaign, offering our help – the fact that Tranz Rail keeps winning the Roger Award makes our message popular among railway workers. I attend the annual International Workers Memorial Day, to commemorate workers (specifically rail and port workers) killed on the job, and have spoken at it more than once.

GATT Watchdog was responsible for the 2000 Roger Award. The event was held in Wellington, the first time it’s been held outside Christchurch. I went up to it, to represent the organisers, and what a great night it was – tremendous music and entertainment, excellently organised by Jim Delahunty and Corpwatch, with a crowd of up to 150 to take part in the fun. Moving it to the capital didn’t get it any better media coverage, and we are basically resigned to the transnational corporate media ignoring it. As promised in my previous annual Report, we did review the Award, and decided to continue with it. CAFCA is responsible for the 2001 Award and it’s going really well – we’re getting the biggest number of nominations ever (a lot of work with the grassroots of political parties has paid off, and both the Greens and Alliance now distribute nomination forms and publicise it, as do a number of other groups); we’ve got the judges and, touch wood, haven’t had the hassles that have arisen in earlier years (there’s not a huge pool of prominent New Zealanders willing to publicly attack the corporate system). We’re moving the event again, to Auckland this time, hosted by our friends in the Water Pressure Group. It’s time the Roger made its debut in the citadel of corporate New Zealand.

Our other major campaign, over the past couple of years, 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. Along with our colleagues in the Auckland-based Indonesia Human Rights Committee, we have been plugging away at this since last year. Things are definitely happening behind the scenes, but that’s way beyond our control. It continues to be the only issue on which the media routinely comes to us, and we continue to get a good run out of it. When Indonesia’s former President Wahid came to Christchurch, my phone ran hot with reporters wanting to know about "the protest" (about which we knew nothing), but I took the opportunity to reiterate that Suharto assets should be on the agenda of his meeting with Helen Clark (Clark has since advised that they weren’t. Ed). By working with Green MP, Keith Locke, and using Parliamentary Questions, we were able to put the issue of the Suharto ownership of Lilybank resort back into the national media. That story has got a long way to run yet. But the ascension to power of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, backed by the military and the old Suharto regime, will put the dampeners on much happening from the Indonesian end for the foreseeable future.

So much of our work is done in conjunction with other groups (such as on the whole free trade and globalisation area) that it’s becoming increasingly harder to differentiate where our campaigns begin and theirs end. Effectively it means that we have a bigger pool of people and expertise to work with. And networking continues to be our priority. This year we decided to devote some attention to other local groups of the Left (who have all, at one time or another, given CAFCA a hard time for various ideological reasons). But we can agree on more than we disagree, so it’s productive. Bill and I have been invited to speak to the anarchist’s national conference, in October; building this coalition to oppose the WTO, in November, has enabled us to work with a whole raft of political activists, who (thank God) are decades younger than us.

2002 is, of course, election year. In the 1993 and 99 election years, CAFCA sent me round the country on speaking tours, to raise the issue of foreign control. We plan to do the same next year. At this stage we can’t tell you any details at all – when, where, for how long, and what I’ll be talking about have all to be worked out. But rest assured that we’ll keep you fully informed (see the letter enclosed with this Watchdog. Ed.).

Our other major responsibility (that we know about, as yet) is that it’s our turn to organise the Roger Award again. As I’ve outlined, we’ve already received a record number of nominations (with more than a month to go before they close); we’ve found excellent quality judges; and the event itself will be held in Auckland, for the first time. The Suharto assets campaign will continue, albeit with a lower profile. We’ve taken it as far as we can, now it’s up to the politicians, in both New Zealand and Indonesia. 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. In fact, as 2002 is election year, we will probably do more of this than usual.

We will continue to be an integral part of GATT Watchdog, and fight all the various manifestations of globalisation, be they the Hong Kong free trade agreement, a new WTO Round (which is our top priority in the next couple of months), or proposals that we become a state of Australia or or the US. "Globalisation" (ie imperialism) goes to the heart of our reason for being. We started as an anti-imperialist organisation, and after more than 25 years of turbulent existence, we remain one today.