Watchdog no. 171 (May 2026)
It had remained unchanged for the previous three years, with the same five members: Colleen Hughes, James Ayers, Murray Horton, Paul Piesse and Terry Moon (the last changes were brought about by the 2022 and 2023 deaths of veteran Committee members Jeremy Agar and John Ring). Sadly, in late 2025, Terry Moon resigned. She originally joined CAFCA in 1980 and her first stint on the Committee was for several years in the 80s, when she was our Treasurer. She got back into it nearly 30 years later, came to our 2017 Annual General Meeting and got elected to her second stint on the Committee, which lasted until her 2025 resignation.
During her most recent eight-year stint on the Committee, Terry became a key figure. In 2025 she spent months working with me as co-organiser of CAFCA’s 50th anniversary celebration (see subsection below). For several years she was Webmaster of both of the separate CAFCA and Watchdog Websites (also see subsections below on each of them). In the case of the CAFCA site, she spent years working on updating it, a task that was finally completed within the last couple of years. So, Terry will be missed.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’ve got two new Committee members – Harry Robson and Kevin Foster – and, what’s more, they’re decades younger than the rest of us. In Harry’s case, he’s in his 20s. It has been a long time since we had any Committee members in that age bracket (Lynda Boyd, Joe Hendren and Quentin Findlay were the most recent youngsters and they’ve all been gone from the Committee for many years now).
Harry is a keen young activist who played a leading role in recently setting up New Zealanders for a Democratic Economy, which has joined Keep Our Assets in the years-long campaign to (thus far successfully) retain public ownership of Christchurch City Council’s major commercial assets. Kevin is an expatriate American (which puts the lie to anyone who thinks that CAFCA hates foreigners), who has got involved with the broader Christchurch progressive movement. I’ve heard him speak at rallies about Gaza and Venezuela. Welcome aboard, Harry and Kevin.
This was CAFCA’s biggest event for 2025 (and the biggest since our 40th celebration, back in 2015). Held on the October Saturday of Labour Weekend, it was a high-quality affair, with six very good speakers. They were, in order, myself, Bill Rosenberg, Nicky Hager, Byron Clark, Joseph Bray and Josephine Varghese. I’m not going to go into any detail about the speeches, because they’re all online on the Home page at the CAFCA site https://www.cafca.org.nz/
I’d like to single out Josephine Varghese for special thanks. One of our original speakers cancelled only about ten days out from the event and I had to scramble to find a replacement at extremely short notice. The only downside was that Josephine’s speech was not on the original topic of NZ climate change activism (we tried, but failed, to find a replacement speaker about that, which was not surprising given the very short time factor).
Proof that the speeches were of interest far beyond CAFCA’s members and supporters came immediately after I had distributed and publicised the December 2025 Watchdog containing all six speeches. I promptly received a request for Nicky Hager’s email address from the Managing Editor of US online publication Covert Action Magazine (which I have written for several times in recent years). He wrote: “It would be great if he could write an article on the Snowden revelations and role of Waihopai base in US global military operations and also New Zealand’s role in the US preparation for war with China, building off what he has written in the article”.
Nicky replied to him: “Do you know that it was Covert Action publishing an article I wrote in 1996 that set off the Echelon issue? I am in the midst of other projects and telling myself not to take on extra work. But it would be good to publicise the contents of that speech I did for CAFCA more widely”. You can read Nicky’s speech here.1 His February 2026 Covert Action article is here.2
Both parts of the anniversary event were a great success – the daytime session with the six speakers, followed by a dinner that night at a Christchurch club. We had about 80 people register for the day time event (inevitably, some didn’t turn up, for a variety of reasons, not least of which was a high-winds weather emergency just days beforehand, which caused widespread damage and disrupted travel nationwide). Dozens came to the dinner. People came from all around the country (although none from Australia this time, unlike the 40th) and not all of them were members. Some were former members or current supporters. CAFCA has both a long history and a wide reach. Only two of the six speakers (myself and Bill Rosenberg) are CAFCA members.
The feedback we got was that attendees found it fascinating, informative, inspiring and a great social occasion. It is worth noting that the whole thing was free, including the dinner. CAFCA paid for everyone. In the past three years we have received two bequests, totalling tens of thousands of dollars, from our late Committee colleagues Jeremy Agar and John Ring. We thought that hosting the 50th as CAFCA’s shout was a highly appropriate use of just a few thousands of those dollars. Another point I’d stress is that, although we were celebrating 50 continuous years of CAFCA, it wasn’t an occasion to bask in nostalgia for the good old days. It was strictly about the present and future. The youngest speaker, peace activist Joseph Bray, was the only one to get a standing ovation.
The closer it got the more of my time it took up, which meant that my regular CAFCA work was impacted (it was a miracle that the December Watchdog got out on time – just. See subsection below). I’ve been organising big events for decades, including many years in a row of Anti-Bases Campaign’s Waihopai spy base protests and accompanying activities in Blenheim. Organising the CAFCA 50th felt like that, except I was doing it at home, rather than hundreds of kilometres away in Marlborough.
One thing I’ve learned from lifelong experience in organising events is that what can go wrong will go wrong. I’ve already mentioned one speaker cancelling at very short notice and Mother Nature buggering things up with hurricane force winds just days out from it. Terry Moon’s resignation from the Committee also had an impact, as she was the co-organiser, meaning I was flying solo for the last few weeks.
Terry was also in charge of the catering but she arranged her replacement, and I give heartfelt thanks to veteran members Pam Hughes and Ron Currie, and their team of helpers, who stepped in at such short notice and did such a great job of feeding everyone throughout the day. Actually, Pam and Ron have form – for several years they fed the masses at Waihopai spy base protests, both in Blenheim and at ABC’s camp. That earned them the title of the Waihopai Catering Corps.
Will there be another CAFCA anniversary celebration? God knows. As I said in my speech at the 50th: “My co-organiser of this event asked if I thought if CAFCA will have a 60th. We both thought not. Mind you, at the time of our 40th, I didn’t think we’d have a 50th, and yet here we are”. One enthusiastic attendee wrote to me afterwards saying that she can’t wait for the 100th. That will definitely need several new generations of members.
It is in the 240s, down from the 260s of my previous Report. For any number of years now, the numerical trend has been gradually but steadily downwards. Every year we remove non-payers but only after they have ignored two of the dreaded red slips and final, e-mailed, reminders. And every year we pick up new members, or former members rejoin, so that we make up some, but by no means all, of the number lost. We lose members for a variety of reasons - death, old age, retirement, financial reasons, or simply deciding not to renew. That reflects the aging demographic of our membership.
Nearly 100% of subs and donations come to us via online banking. People can still deposit cash into our account at a Kiwibank branch (if there is still one in their area). Or, they can post us cash – at their own risk (we never received cash posted to us in 2025 by one member). Some members have done that for years. A few give me cash in person, including the member whose cash vanished in the mail.
Gaining new members is a permanent project. Members are very generous - falling membership does not equal falling finances. Quite the opposite. We insist on a paying membership, because we have no other source of funds. We don’t charge much and – except in the case of our one remaining overseas member who gets a hard copy Watchdog via snail mail - haven’t reviewed or increased our sub for a very long time (not since the 20th Century).
We do have several other overseas members but they all get Watchdog electronically, for which we charge the standard sub (it’s the overseas hard copy postage rates that are the killer). 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.
Between them, our operating account and three term deposits hold nearly $100,000, in round figures. There is one explanation for this – the very substantial bequests we received from veteran Committee members Jeremy Agar and John Ring. Despite our membership gradually dropping year after year, CAFCA’s bank balance has held steady, even after we spent several thousand dollars on our 50th anniversary celebration in 2025. We have very generous members and supporters, some of whom made donations specifically towards the costs of the 50th.
There are plenty of small organisations like ours who would give their eye teeth to have nearly $100,000 in the bank. By contrast, the other group for which I am the Organiser – Anti-Bases Campaign – has $8,000 in round figures. So, this is a very good position to be in for the future, considering that we’re not a business seeking to make a profit. Basically, CAFCA is financially independent. Indeed, we can afford to give money away. We have a member who regularly sends us big donations and asks us to decide who is the most deserving between CAFCA, ABC and the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account. We gave her most recent (2026) $500 donation to the Organiser Account, which needed it far more than CAFCA.
We continue to be in a very healthy financial situation and don’t have to devote any energy or time to fundraising beyond our own ranks, being entirely financed by the annual subs and donations of our members. And, as I’ve already pointed out, we haven’t increased our modest $20 sub (except for a grand total of one overseas member) since the 20th Century. In fact, the sub is only $15 for unwaged members.
CAFCA has routine office expenses. But our single biggest cost every year is the postage for Watchdog. Every year NZ Post increases the price of the pre-paid big envelopes we use, so we stockpile a large quantity and lock in the current price, to keep our costs down for as long as possible. In 2025 we bought several thousand dollars’ worth of envelopes, which will last us until well into 2026 (when the price will doubtless go up again). We bought more than usual, because NZ Post has discontinued the boxes of 250 envelopes that we’ve been buying for many years, meaning that we will have to buy packets of 50, at a higher price per envelope.
We have no plans to change Watchdog to an online-only publication (although the option is there for members to get it that way and between 10% and 15% of them do). But we receive plenty of donations. Some people donate hundreds at a time; some donate more than that. This is on top of the aforementioned bequests from Jeremy and John.
And CAFCA makes donations to others. In 2025 we responded to an urgent appeal from New Zealanders for a Democratic Economy to cover the printing cost of a flyer to be put in letter boxes informing local body election voters about keeping assets in public ownership and listing which candidates had committed to that. They were asking supporters for $3,000. CAFCA decided to cover the lot by ourselves.
The trend, for several years now, has been of a steady decline. Since 2021 I’ve been paid for 30 hours per week, with a matching reduction in pay (but not the Living Wage hourly rate). Plus, the Organiser Account still pays, as it has done for decades, my monthly mobile phone and landline rentals, plus the bulk of my monthly Internet rental. And CAFCA donates the interest from its three term deposits to the Organiser Account, plus it sometimes makes a direct donation when the Account needs topping up (most recently, in early 2026, CAFCA put in $3,000). I won’t starve – I get the pension as well (for which I pay a higher tax rate).
The long-term trend is down or no better than holding its own and there are two reasons for this – firstly, the commitment to pay the Organiser (me) the Living Wage (which increased in 2025 to $28.95 per hour). And because of the drop in the number of pledgers and donors – for the same reason that CAFCA membership is dropping. People die; they retire and can no longer afford it. In some cases, regular pledgers have been doing it since the Organiser Account first started, back in 1991. I never cease to be amazed by their generosity. It’s not all one-way downwards traffic – we’ve picked up some new pledgers.
It is remarkable that it has lasted continuously for 35 years without having been a drain on CAFCA’s finances, until the last few years when CAFCA has topped it up more than once, and will do so again if required. For nearly 30 years the Organiser Account was entirely dependent on the generosity of pledgers and donors. Recruiting new pledgers and soliciting more donations is a permanent project. I’ve written the Account off more than once in the past and it just keeps going. Once again, I thank James Ayers who does a very good job of looking after the Organiser Account.
I am the Editor; it is our flagship, our “face”, our voice to our members and the world at large. To use the jargon, it is our “brand”. It looks the best it ever has, which is courtesy of our Layout Editor, Marney Brosnan. She does a very professional job and it’s a lot of work, including two lots of corrections. Sadly, late 2025 saw the resignation of our veteran cover artist Ian Dalziel.
He provided the wonderfully quirky, pun-strewn cover graphics for every issue since 2007 (at first, his graphic shared the cover with article text; then, from 2013, they became full page graphics). He offered his services and did it voluntarily, declining all offers of money. Ian’s last cover for us was for the August 2025 issue; for the December issue I had to do it, highlighting a group photo from CAFCA’s 50th anniversary celebration in October.
Ian is a big loss. Not only was he the Watchdog cover artist, he also did that for my other magazine, Anti-Bases Campaign’s Peace Researcher. Ian had been doing PR covers since 2012 (not continuously). Plus, he did a whole lot of other graphic work for ABC - many big poster placards for Waihopai and Rocket Lab demos; a giant cheque for one Waihopai protest (remember cheques?). And, as with CAFCA, all of it free of charge. Ian’s final cover for me was for the December PR, ending nearly 20 years of collaboration. Heartfelt thanks, Ian.
Fortunately, we seamlessly got a replacement cover artist (for both publications). Ian recommended Ron Currie as his replacement and he was also my first choice. Ron is a talented cartoonist (with a very different drawing style to Ian, and not as pun-heavy). Ron has done graphics for us in the past (he did a Watchdog cover for one issue when Ian was overseas once). I’ve worked with Ron for more than 50 years – for example, in 1974 I was the Editor of Canta (the University of Canterbury student paper) and Ron was the Layout Editor. Ron did all the art work for CAFCINZ’s famous 1980s’ Comalco comic3. This issue marks his start as Watchdog’s new cover artist. Welcome aboard, Ron.
The three 2025 issues were all 100 pages. Reviews comprised a very big chunk of each issue. Reviews are split between Greg Waite and Linda Hill, who also regularly write articles. Other reviewers in 2025 were Stuart Payne, Richard Keller and myself. Those reviews receive a positive response from readers. One Buller member wrote to me: “The book reviews of late have been particularly interesting and the Westport library has got in a few new good books as a result!”
Watchdog will always be a niche publication – we only have one retail outlet, (plus one Christchurch cinema lets us put a few copies there as giveaways. The owner tells me they are snapped up within days). We don’t have the resources, nor the intention, to compete with mainstream magazines. Watchdog is a journal of analysis, not a newspaper. But you will find plenty of news in it that can’t be found elsewhere.
And - good news – after four years of not having a regular person to write up the monthly Decisions of the Overseas Investment Office (OIO), we now do. I had been doing a fill in job of writing up a token one Decision for each month. We advertised on Volunteering Canterbury for several years (they gave us a free listing) and we got a regular trickle of inquiries from would-be volunteers, but we never heard from them again once we told them what was involved.
However, in 2025, we hit the jackpot. Regina Balbalosa – a stranger, who lives in Auckland – approached us through Volunteering Canterbury and undertook to do the full write up (i.e. of four months of Decisions in each Watchdog, for the foreseeable future). Her first appearance was in the August issue. The best thing is that she is in her 20s.
Editing Watchdog takes plenty of my time but I also write some of each issue, usually the lead article. I’ve written obituaries for decades and continue to do so. Watchdog attracts high-quality, high-profile writers. In the three 2025 issues, those writing for us were (in addition to myself and the reviewers and Regina): Bill Rosenberg, Bryan Gould, Jane Kelsey, Catherine Delahunty, Tor Orme, Niki Gladding, Sue Newberry, Ed Miller, Mike Treen, Susan Arthur, Makareta Tawaroa, John Maynard, Maire Leadbeater, Elliot Crossan, Nicky Hager, Byron Clark, Joseph Bray, Josephine Varghese, Rosemary Penwarden, Gen de Spa, Dave Evans, Graham Townsend, Si Brown, Felicity Drace and Marilyn Yurjevich.
The December issue had 21 writers, the other two had 11 each, with an even balance of male and female. Those three issues had writers on behalf of Coromandel Watchdog, Aotearoa Water Action and the Postal Workers Union of Aotearoa. And none of them gets paid anything. Producing the April 2025 issue presented a unique challenge, because the CAFCA computer died, right in the thick of it (naturally, it happened on the morning of Good Friday, meaning it was several days before I could even contact our computer company). I was suddenly unable to do anything for the foreseeable future. And with impeccable timing this coincided with the arrival of the 100-page draft for proofreading.
I was only aware of this because I get email on my phone. By phone I forwarded that draft to Terry Moon, who got a hard copy printed and hand delivered it to my letterbox. I went real old school and proofread it with a pen, jumped on my e-bike and delivered that to the letterbox of Marney Brosnan, our Layout Editor (at least we both live not too far from each other in the same city). She was left with the hapless task of reading my handwriting (I can’t, I barely use it these days).
While she dealt with that, I had to sort out a new computer. We managed to do that, get it installed, everything copied into the new one (fortunately, we lost nothing from the crash), and I had to work out how to use it while getting that issue of Watchdog finished. All that was accomplished in the shortest work week of the year – three days, bookended by two long weekends. We were going to have to replace the computer anyway, because Microsoft was shutting down Windows 10 and Windows 11 wouldn’t run on our old computer. So, we’ve ended up with new hardware and new software (plus a new modem – the old one had died a few weeks before the computer, cutting me off from email and the Internet for a short period). Bloody technology, eh.
As I’ve already mentioned, it was a miracle that we got the December issue out in time (because, in the months leading up to it, my priority was the CAFCA 50th anniversary celebration and everything arising from it). It did come out in time (just) because of the heroic effort by both Marney Brosnan, the Layout Editor and myself to get it ready for the printer.
He was closing on the Wednesday for a several weeks long Christmas break; he received the 100-page Watchdog on the Monday. Despite a delay caused by a machine problem, he not only got it printed but personally delivered it to our home on the Tuesday. That wasn’t the end of it. I spent several hours on Christmas Day sticking copies into envelopes (stopping for Christmas dinner) so that we could get it to New Zealand Post during the short week between Christmas and New Year. If we’d missed the printer’s deadline, it wouldn’t have got out before late January.
(Link to online Watchdog.]4 Terry Moon was in charge of this for several years. She did a very good job and introduced some innovations. However, her late 2025 resignation from the CAFCA Committee also meant her resignation from this position. I’m indebted to Terry for staying on after her resignation to do the online edition of the December 2025 issue. We swung into action to find a replacement Watchdog Webmaster and I’m pleased to report that we’ve got one, namely Kevin Foster, our newest Committee member. This issue of Watchdog is his first.
Our online-only members are sent the PDF of each issue and our Layout Editor ensures that it is the same quality that we send to the printer for the hard copy edition. 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. The reach of the online edition is much greater than the hard copy one. For historical reasons that no longer apply, CAFCA and Watchdog have two separate (but linked) Websites. We’ve thought about rolling them into one but were advised that would take a lot of time and work so we’ll leave things as they are.
(Link to Key Facts).5 After hitting a dead end, we got a new writer. As with our new OIO Decisions writer, Elliot Crossan was an outsider and to make it happen, we paid him the Living Wage for an agreed number of hours. Elliot took a lot longer than he/we expected but he got it done in 2025 and to the same high standard as Bill Rosenberg and Ed Miller, the two previous Key Facts writers. This was the first time that the Key Facts had been updated since 2022 and the good news is that Elliot is happy to continue updating them. In 2026 we have received (and uploaded and publicised) his second update. They are a vital CAFCA resource and one which has led to mainstream media articles in the past.
(Link to CAFCA website.)6 In addition to the Watchdog site, Terry Moon was also in charge of the CAFCA site for years and did a meticulous and very thorough job. In my previous several annual Reports l said that CAFCA was taking steps to upgrade and modernise our Website. This was done, up to a certain point, by our Webhost (a small local company, the only Webhost we’ve had since we first went online in the 1990s). It had become a seemingly never-ending story.
After a painstaking marathon, lasting years, it is finally alive and updated. Only because Terry found Byron Clark and we paid him for his work. The site was live but still not the finished item. That wasn’t the case until after a tremendous amount of remedial work by Terry (and me – I spent the 2024/25 summer basically proofreading the whole site). Three cheers to Terry for slogging her guts out on this.
Her next suggestion was that we find a new Webmaster, a volunteer, and one with more Website skills than her. That quest was successful and Terry’s replacement is CAFCA member Peter Hall-Jones, who has made further improvements to the site (it is worth noting that Terry’s resignation from this role pre-dated her resignation from the CAFCA Committee and as Watchdog Webmaster).
In addition to the CAFCA site, we have the separate Watchdog one and the Historic Watchdog site7 set up by former Committee member Lynda Boyd, which stores online all issues from the mid 1970s until 1999, when the actual Watchdog site was created by Bill Rosenberg. Sadly though, these historic issues are no longer accessible free of charge. The site host now requires visitors to it to open an account.
Colleen Hughes has done a very good job of running the CAFCA Facebook site8 for years now. It has more than 1350 members, which is considerably more than our “real world” membership. But the trick is to get any of those Facebook members to become actual CAFCA members, let alone paying ones. It’s the same issue faced by innumerable other organisations.
I am the Convenor, and three current or former CAFCA Committee members are also very actively involved with the KOA Committee - namely, Paul Piesse, Harry Robson and Denis O’Connor (Brian Turner, another former CAFCA Committee member, resigned from the KOA Committee in 2025). The other KOA Committee members are John Minto, Kay Robertson, Dot Lovell-Smith, Mike Newlove and Marney Ainsworth (Paul Broady is a distance member i.e. he stays involved but doesn’t come to meetings). It is the biggest Committee with which I’m involved. KOA meetings at the home of John Minto and Bronwen Summers are very social and I can highly recommend John’s scones which he makes for every meeting.
KOA and its mates made sure that asset sales were front and centre among the issues (we didn’t run a Mayoral candidate this time). There were public meetings (I spoke at one or two); an opinion poll that established that 75% of Christchurch people are against asset sales; KOA revived a tactic that we originally used in the 2013 election – we called on candidates to sign a pledge not to sell assets. They queued up to sign. KOA has credibility and a proven track record and those in charge of this city, New Zealand’s second biggest, know it. You can read the pledge and its explanatory notes here.9
At the beginning of 2025 we met with the Mayor and CEO of the City Council and, separately, with the Chair and CEO of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL), which is the holding company of the City Council’s multi-billion-dollar asset portfolio. In March 2026 we met again with the Mayor. These city leaders are happy to talk and to listen to what we have to say. As the Mayor eloquently told us, he was happy to talk to us because “every three years you fellows put a rocket up us”.
The campaign to keep our assets has been greatly boosted by the creation of another group, New Zealanders for a Democratic Economy (NZDE), from which has spun off the specialist group Keep Our Port Public (KOPP), which is dedicated to stopping any attempt to sell Lyttelton Port, fully or partly, or lease it out. And if the name of that group sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. Twenty years ago, when Christchurch’s then-Mayor and City Council tried to flog off Lyttelton Port in a lightning move, CAFCA took the initiative on setting up Keep Our Port Public, along with other groups, to successfully fight it.
KOA has worked alongside NZDE and KOPP (indeed, one of their leading activists, Harry Robson, has joined the KOA Committee – as well as the CAFCA Committee). In 2025 they mounted a full-on campaign focussed on Lyttelton Port but also taking in the broader issue of asset sales. They organised well attended public meetings, in Lyttelton (at which I spoke) and in town – KOA’s John Minto spoke at both places. They raised thousands of dollars to pay a polling company to conduct a public opinion poll which showed that 75% of Christchurch people oppose asset sales.
All of this pressure has paid off. We took a positive message to both of our early 2025 meetings with the Mayor and CCHL leaders – we asked for a “no surprises” policy on asset sales and for the issue to be debated openly as part of the election campaign (in stark contrast to the 2022 campaign, where asset sales were never mentioned by anyone; then a previously-secret report recommending just that was sprung on the public shortly after that election). That happened in 2025, with the Mayor changing his tune from what he was saying earlier in the year. And the issue was front and centre in the election campaign, with candidates – and not just ones from the Left – queuing up to say they oppose asset sales.
As a result of the local body election in October 2025, the Left bloc on the Council (The People’s Choice) increased its seats by one, meaning that with Left independents, it is the majority, and committed to keeping assets. The day after the election, its campaign manager wrote to KOA to thank us and to assure us that the Christchurch City Council won’t be selling assets. That is a huge victory for both KOA and CAFCA.
No sooner was the election over than the Government announced its proposed rates cap on all councils, meaning that they will have to find other ways to finance themselves, with asset sales being seen as the easy option. In Christchurch, pro-sales Councillors and their media mouthpieces started calling for the sale of Enable, the City Council-owned fibre broadband company. So, KOA prepared for another battle.
It was then announced that CCHL would conduct a formal review of Enable, which is a necessary precursor to any recommendation to the City Council on whether to sell (the Council has the final say). Hence our 2026 visit to see the Mayor. And it was KOA which revealed that Australian media were reporting who was conducting that review, which had not been made public in NZ. I wrote to all Councillors, demanding to know what was going on and reminding those that had signed KOA’s 2025 election pledge that we would be holding them to it. This led to media coverage10.
Why is CAFCA so heavily involved in this campaign? Because we support public ownership of utilities, services and infrastructure. And because we know who would buy the assets if they were sold – transnational corporations. It was a French company that was interested in buying Citycare when that was on offer last decade; 20 years ago, it was a Hong Kong company that was after Lyttelton Port Company; most recently, there were persistent rumours that a Dubai company was after Lyttelton.
Keep Our Assets is a group and a campaign that CAFCA has backed for years with people, time and money (we were the single biggest donor to one of John Minto’s Mayoral campaigns on behalf of KOA). In 2025 we donated several thousand dollars to NZDE for its public ownership campaigning during the local body election. It has been a big battle that has gone on for years but we have won victory after victory and CAFCA can claim its share of the credit for that.
Since 2018 we have developed a productive working relationship with Aotearoa Water Action (AWA), which started off by fighting the proposed Chinese-owned water bottling plant in Christchurch and has branched out into looking at the whole spectrum of water issues, not only in Canterbury but nationally. They have provided regular updates in Watchdog for several years now, most recently in the April 2025 issue.
Since the 1980s we have been friends with Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki and they usually provide an annual update in (our) Watchdog. Written by Catherine Delahunty, (a former Green MP), it appeared in the August 2025 issue. We invited the people campaigning against Bathurst’s Buller coal mine to write for us and they duly did so, in the December 2025 Watchdog. All these campaigns have one thing in common – the involvement of transnational corporations or foreign owners, actively aided and abetted by this Government that is the most craven servant of the transnationals.
CAFCA is now represented by James Ayers on the local branch of Tax Justice Aotearoa, which is very timely, as this is a Government of tax cuts and lowering the business tax rate to attract the transnationals. CAFCA has had a long and ongoing productive national relationship with a number of unions and individual unionists. We have an ongoing very friendly relationship with what is now called Workers First Union (formerly FIRST Union), which is the only union to regularly pledge to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account (it is the second biggest pledger). Through our active membership of KOA we have worked closely with the Rail and Maritime Transport Union and other unions. The April 2025 issue of Watchdog included an article from the Postal Workers Union.
We appealed for a press secretary and got one (Christchurch member Paul Titus, with Gillian Southey as assistant/back up). He consults with me by phone and I send him the suggested topic and any reference material relating to it. I tweak and distribute his writing, which goes out under my name. So far, we have done several press releases which, although they haven’t got any mainstream major media coverage, have appeared on other news sites.
So, it’s working. Occasionally the mainstream media seeks me out for a comment, which happened most recently in March 202611. It would still be good to get someone to manage social media for us (our new press secretary arrangement is strictly old school).
2026 will be a more “normal” year for CAFCA, without the highlight of something like our 50th anniversary celebration. It is a general election year and, courtesy of this Government, foreign control will feature prominently. So, I’ve got no doubt that CAFCA will get involved in campaigns highlighting that. Looking ahead and taking our recent accomplishments into account, we have plenty on our plate. I think that CAFCA is currently in good shape. CAFCA has always worked best as part of other groups. We have been centrally involved in KOA for a decade and a half, so KOA is a key ongoing project. It is very high profile, very active and successful. Asset sales are one issue in which CAFCA can claim to be winning, at least in Christchurch.
What is the future of CAFCA? We discussed this – as we often do – at our 2025 AGM. We concluded that, as we have one Organiser (currently me) who is a contractor, when the time comes, we will contract another one. We operate a model that is a transferable work from home one, we have none of the costs or real estate issues of running an office. Money is not a problem.
But obviously, the Committee has got smaller (currently six; it was seven not long ago and it was as many as ten some years ago). As an organisation we are old and white, whereas the future of Aotearoa is young and brown (which I personally think is fantastic). Where are the young people (the hardy perennial question)? We have some involved – Harry Robson, our youngest Committee member, is in his 20s, as is our new OIO writer; Joseph Bray, who was one of the speakers at our 50th, is younger than either of them; Byron Clark, who also spoke at that, and Elliot Crossan, the guy who updates CAFCA’s Key Facts on our Website, are both young or, at least, youngish. Kevin Foster, our newest Committee member, describes himself as middle aged.
But CAFCA, as we are, is unlikely to appeal to young people and their different ways of doing activism. That’s why I’m relaxed about “succession”. I doubt that younger people would want to take over CAFCA as it is. We are definitely old school. I doubt that young activists would read, let alone publish a 100-page hard copy magazine. Any new equivalent will have to organically evolve, reflecting a younger generation’s slant on the issue of foreign control. I think our main contribution is to stand aside when the time is right (which is not yet, by the way) and offer practical help, in the form of experience, knowledge and money.
I am, of course, also the Organiser for ABC. And I am the Editor of ABC’s Peace Researcher, which is published twice a year (Watchdog publishes three times a year. It’s a delicate balancing act being Editor of two publications). PR is not a mini-Watchdog, there is plenty of material that only appears in it, such as Warren Thomson’s regular Spooky Bits series. It has some other different writers than Watchdog - for example, the most recent issue included a lengthy article by Kay Weir. PR has much more international material than Watchdog. It is the nature of ABC’s issue.
PR covers events and issues that don’t appear in Watchdog – for example, the most recent issue (December 2025) included a very good article by Joe Hendren (a former CAFCA Committee member) about the connection between the Australian arms industry and Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. This attracted the attention of the Australian anti-war movement. In recent years, PR’s Layout Editor has been Leigh Cookson, who was Watchdog’s Layout Editor for 20 years.
I’ve already mentioned the resignation of Ian Dalziel as PR’s cover artist, which he’d done (not continuously) since 2012. Ian has been replaced by Ron Currie, who has history as a regular attendee at ABC’s Waihopai spy base protests and as the producer of great art work for us (such as Rocket Lab and AUKUS cartoons and the eagle and kiwi logo that appears on the ABC pennant that I fly at nearly every Gaza rally that I attend). You can read the most recent PR (issue 70, December 2025) here.12
ABC hasn’t held a protest at the Waihopai spy base since 2023 but we’re still active in a supporting role at other groups’ activities. For example, in 2025, we took part in the wonderfully energetic and militant protest against the annual New Zealand Aerospace Summit at Te Pae (Christchurch’s Convention Centre). A handful of ABC members kicked off this protest in 2022 and it has just grown and grown, capturing national attention in 2025 when hundreds took part and more than 30 people got arrested.
I was asked if I wanted to be one of them, but I said no. However, my old friend and fellow ABC founder, Warren Thomson, was dead keen. But, try as he might, he couldn’t get himself arrested, having to settle for being served with a trespass order (which spelled his name wrong). This was all organised by a new group of young people, Peace Action Ōtautahi, with whom ABC is building links. ABC’s interest in all of this is Rocket Lab and the growing militarisation of NZ’s aerospace industry.
CAFCA is also very interested in Rocket Lab, as it’s an NZ subsidiary of a US transnational corporation, operating a privately-owned foreign military facility on NZ soil, which is used to aid and abet the US military and spy agencies, not to mention helping Israel’s genocide in Gaza. CAFCA was among the very earliest groups to call out Rocket Lab.
Dennis Small first wrote about it in Watchdog in 2017, sounding the alarm and putting the boot into the Green Party which was among those bedazzled by little old New Zealand joining the space race (I’m pleased to say that the Greens have long since seen the error of their ways). CAFCA is also building links with Peace Action Ōtautahi. One of their leading lights, Joseph Bray, spoke at CAFCA’s 50th and was the only speaker to get a standing ovation.
I’ve been regularly attending most (not all) of Christchurch’s weekly rallies and marches in 2023/24/25/26 against the US/Israeli genocide on the civilians of Gaza. I’ve been attending just as a foot soldier; I’m not involved in organising them. I have spoken at a couple of rallies on behalf of ABC (you can see one of those speeches here13). And I’ve been flying ABC’s flag at those rallies.
The Gaza (and now, Iran) campaign is the biggest anti-war, anti-imperialist campaign for years and it is easily the most sustained series of demos I’ve ever been on. It is great to see old and new faces, Palestinian and Kiwis, taking part week after week, through Christchurch’s cold, wind, rain and heat. And that campaign has rekindled interest in the elephant in the room – US imperialism, which manifests in Christchurch as the US military transport base at the airport, which has been there since 1955.
I’ve been an activist since 1969 and some of the first demos I attended were there. It has been neglected by the peace movement in recent decades but, in February 2026, was once again the target of a protest, one at which I was invited to speak (there was even an arrest – Becky got shoved around in the accompanying melee – which took me back to the good old days of big, militant protests at Christchurch Airport).
Things were scheduled to go up a notch at Easter 2026 when Christchurch Airport was supposed to host two US Air Force F22 advanced jet fighters, while they were in the country for Warbirds Over Wanaka. But they chickened out and didn’t come. On behalf of ABC, I wrote to all City Councillors asking why these American machines of mass death and destruction were being hosted by Christchurch, which is proud to be designated A Peace City, and whose airport is 75% owned by the City Council (the Government owns the other 25%). When I met the Mayor (in my KOA capacity) I told him to his face what I thought about it. His only reply was: “I wondered when you were going to bring that up”. For the record, no Councillors replied to my letter.
The global spread of good old naked US imperialism and war has led to more interest in what ABC has to say. I was invited to speak at a Hands Off Cuba rally, which rapidly morphed into a Hands Off Iran rally, held in freezing rain (Christchurch protesters are a hardy lot). I should also mention that I always attend the annual Christchurch event to commemorate the 1945 US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were, without a doubt, two of the greatest war crimes ever committed. And not ones that can be comfortably confined to history - the threatened use of nuclear weapons is still very current.
In 2025 I was invited to Blackball, on the West Coast, on behalf of ABC, to be the speaker at the annual May Day dinner (I had last spoken at that – on behalf of CAFCA – in 2000). You can read my 2025 May Day speech in Peace Researcher 69, July 2025.14 The West Coast, specifically its’ miners, was the birthplace of the NZ union movement, the Labour Party and the former Communist Party. Blackball is the home of the newly created Museum of Working Class History (when that opened, the local paper ran a story, presumably tongue in cheek, headlined “Commies Take Over Blackball”).
My hosts put me up in the old miners’ hotel. But today’s Blackball is not so progressive. Mining is out of fashion but is being championed by New Zealand First. So, at the 2023 general election, Blackball was the only polling booth in the country won by that party. Becky and I saw the movie “Pike River”. One key takeaway – no union. Times have changed and not for the better.
ABC is also mindful of its history, which dates back to the late 1980s. My friend and colleague Warren Thomson has painstakingly put together a scrap book of our first dozen or so years (when we specialised in mass arrests at Waihopai protests). I was able to help him, because I hold files on all of those protests, with plenty of photos (real physical ones). A chance meeting in my local café with a photographer from the old days led to us being gifted a trove of photos from the late 80s/early 90s, including a classic one of Warren and I being arrested inside the US base at Christchurch Airport. This is intended to be a two-part project. You can view Part 1 online.15
This was brought into sharp focus in April 2026 when I was invited to be the speaker at a meeting of the Canterbury Socialist Society (my first dealings with them). My topic was: “60 Years Of Political Activism” (fact check: it has actually been 57 years, thus far. I started in 1969). That was the first time I’ve been invited to publicly tell my life story, as opposed to speaking about issues (I’ve done a couple of oral histories, but have no plans, or time, to write a memoir). So, it felt a bit like giving the eulogy at my own funeral.
Inevitably, I could not cover more than about half of the topic in the time available but what I did get through was well received. I’ve offered to speak there again, specifically about CAFCA and that suggestion was received positively. My hosts kindly gave me a gift token, which I used to buy Tame It’s autobiography (I knew Tame when he lived in Christchurch in the early 70s).
My past comes up at unexpected times. In March 2026 we went to a funeral. Afterwards I was approached by a stranger. Having confirmed my identity, he asked: “Do you remember speaking on behalf of PYM (Progressive Youth Movement) at Christchurch Boys’ High in 1971? I was 14. We planned to hold your talk in a room but so many boys wanted to come that we transferred it to the hall. There were 700 boys there”. I told him I did remember it, particularly when the hall’s back doors flew open and the headmaster came charging in, his gown billowing behind him like Dracula’s cloak. He strode up to the front and demanded to know who had invited me. The prefects tremulously replied: “We did, sir”, and he eventually strode off, leaving me to continue.
Back in my PYM days I spoke at quite a few high schools (Rod Donald reminded me that he got me to speak at his one. I also spoke at my own old school). In those days, schoolkids, like today, were actively engaged with the hot issues and wanted to catch a glimpse of another world. I obviously made an impression on the guy who approached me at the funeral, 55 years after I spoke at his school.
In June 2025 I spoke at the launch of a biography of an old mate, Tony Fomison, one of NZs most famous painters of the second half of the 20th Century (he drank himself to death at 50, dying in 1990, so it took 35 years for his first ever biography). I was involved because he gave his most extensive and candid interview ever, to me, in the early 70s for Canta, the University of Canterbury student newspaper. It is quoted throughout the book.
I have a collection of personal letters from him spanning the 80s, which are fascinating. He was a CAFCA member throughout the 80s, a mate of CAFCA & ABC founder Owen Wilkes, came on all the anti-bases demos of the early 70s, got his ribs broken fighting the cops in the streets of Auckland during the 81 Springbok tour (not before he’d kicked one cop in the balls), got so involved with the Samoan community that they awarded him a chieftainship and he got a full body traditional tattoo.
That book launch was a very long time coming. The biographer, a stranger, interviewed me in 2012 and I next heard from him in 2023. The sting in the tail was that the painter’s family did not approve of the project and refused permission for any of their brother’s paintings to be included in it (or in any subsequent mainstream media reviews and articles). So, a book about a painter with no paintings.
That really pissed off an old friend of mine who was one of the photographers I’d arranged to take photos to accompany my early 70s’ profile of Tony. My photographer friend went to extraordinary lengths to locate 50-year-old negatives, get them digitised and supply them to the biographer. All to no avail, because they showed Tony’s paintings. My review of the Fomison biography is in Watchdog 169, August 2025.16,
This whole situation led to me being interviewed by an arts writer for the Listener for a feature on “who owns art?”. She came to the house and perused my collection of those personal letters and was fascinated that the students’ association and printers of that early 70s issue of Canta wouldn’t publish my article without Tony signing a legally binding waiver saying he wouldn’t sue anyone for what was in it (which he did and I published the waiver with the article). In it he came out as gay (which was a crime at the time) and talked about his use of hard drugs (which is still a crime - he went to prison for it). So, my mainstream media appearance in 2025 was in a magazine feature article about art – that is unique in my nearly 60 years of media interviews.
My second 2025 highlight was more unusual. In December I went on a bus trip with University of Canterbury students. Some were international students; we left from the Arts Centre (i.e. my old campus in the central city). We went to the university’s observatory on top of Mt John, near Tekapo in the Mackenzie Country, a setting overlooking a beautiful glacial lake and framed by the snowcapped Southern Alps. It was a whole day trip there and back.
So, what was this all about? In 2023 I was contacted by a stranger, an academic from the university (Fine Arts, no less). She had just been up to that observatory and learned that it had been the scene of a major militant protest in 1972, which she’d never heard of. Here’s the back story: the university had sublet land next to its observatory to the US Air Force for a military observatory. I was one of the organisers of the national protest there.
It was a full-on affair - 300 people came from around the country; we climbed the mountain in the dark on the Saturday night; the cops attacked us - a couple of people were bitten by police dogs (including an old friend bitten on the cock) and a schoolboy had his jaw broken by a cop’s boot. We climbed back up the mountain on the Sunday and, in retaliation, wrecked the only access road, stranding the Yanks and cops on top. Damage was estimated at $30,000 (more than I paid for my house a decade later) and, although nobody was ever charged with the damage, national uproar ensued.
The demo worked as the university promptly cancelled the USAF’s sublease (the Labour government took it over and the US military observatory was there for another decade until it closed). A couple of those injured sued the Government; my cockbitten friend won some damages and got a personal apology from the Minister of Police - he sustained no lasting effect and went on to father a son.
This is all ancient history to me, just one of many adventures, albeit one in a unique setting. But it’s obviously a fascinating story to a younger generation who have never heard of it. So, the academic tracked me down and said she’d like to organise an art event based on what happened. It took two years, I and other demo veterans – CAFCA founders Richard Suggate, John Christie and Bill Rosenberg - attended meetings with students and academics and eventually the trip took place in December.
I was accompanied by Richard Suggate - the students were suitably aghast when he told them what happened and where he’d been bitten by the police dog. Unlike me, he has kept a whole file on that demo - including witness statements from both cops and protesters. In April 2026 I met up with an old friend from PYM, who was visiting from London, where she has lived since 1973.
She was surprised and delighted to be given her Mt John witness statement, written when she was 20. The art event consisted of two actors performing a play on the bus while we were en route to Mt John. The last time I was up there was in 1983, being interviewed by Vanguard Films for their documentary “Islands Of The Empire”.17
It was a bus trip with a difference and made me think about that period of my life. It was a very intense few weeks in 1972. There was that demo, with attendant media interviews and general uproar; days later I turned 21; a month later PYM, of which I was a leading light. had our most militant Anzac Day demo, with fighting with cops, soldiers and war veterans; the day after that my mother died (poor old Mum, she was only 60 and only lasted a month after her cancer diagnosis).
Over the 2025/26 summer I visited Christchurch’s recently opened Rewi Alley Museum. He was NZ’s most famous communist and lived in China from 1927 until his death in 1987. He was a legend in NZ up until 1949 (he told me he was offered a knighthood, which he declined). But then he stayed in Communist China, so he was regarded as a traitor. He moved freely among the highest levels of China’s national leadership - the museum has photos of him with Mao and Zhou Enlai. When NZ reopened relations with China he became very useful to the NZ government and businesses, so he became a hero again.
Christchurch was his home town (hence the museum) and, when he made his last NZ trip, in 1971/72, I interviewed him for Canta. He gave me his number and said to give him a ring if I was ever in Peking (as it was then called), an idea I regarded as far-fetched. But, in 1973, I was there, as part of an NZ student delegation - my first ever overseas trip - and I did give him a ring. Sadly, he was away, spending the summer at a beach resort with the national leadership (me and a couple of others from our party had dinner with another “old friend of China’, an American woman). You can read Jeremy Agar’s review of Elspeth Sandys’”A Communist In The Family: Searching For Rewi Alley" in Watchdog 152, December 2019.18
I always include a section on this, because I believe that members are entitled to know about the state of health of the Organiser. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes more than 20 years ago and take several pills a day for that. In 2025 my doctor sent me to a dietitian (who was rather bemused when I asked: “So you’re the food police?”). As a result, I have made more changes to my diet and that, along with the pills and exercise, seems to be working. I was told years ago by the medical profession that it is a progressive disease and so it is proving to be. I now have a degree of neuropathy (loss of feeling) in both feet, which is due to diabetes’ effect on blood circulation to my extremities.
In previous Reports I have mentioned that I get intermittent asthma, which can sometimes get away on me and lead to bouts of all day/all night coughing for weeks (not great for sleep). I didn’t have any of those in 2025. I thought I was going to have another one when I was woken up by asthmatic coughing on the first morning of a long weekend at the beginning of winter. I only use my inhaler when required and discovered that it was virtually empty.
So, I jumped on my e-bike and went to the city’s 24-hour medical centre, taking plenty of reading. I spent six hours there, squashed alongside large numbers of coughing, sneezing adults and kids (it was the only time I’ve worn a mask in recent years). When I finally saw a doctor, I had a quite unique interaction with a medical professional. We talked about the Waihopai Domebusters, the Pine Gap spy base and how any criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is denounced as “anti-Semitism” (we were on the same side in all of those issues, several of which he raised). Oh, and he prescribed what I needed for asthma, which did not get away on me that time.
I have arthritis in both knees, which are stiff and slow me down when walking. My only uniquely 2025 health issue was that I sprained a muscle in my back (which kept me awake for several nights) and I was referred to a physiotherapist for ACC partly subsidised treatment. She sorted it out with several sessions of massage and a course of exercises to do at home.
I’ve only recently realised the role that luck has played in saving me from injury or even death, specifically in a series of incidents in the past 15 years. Let’s start with the most recent. In February 2026 I came home one evening from my daily walk and coffee break to be greeted by the sight of the neighbour’s cat (our place is his territory and he spends most of his time here). He was rooted to the spot staring incredulously in the direction of one of his favourite all-day sleeping spots. I assumed he was looking at one of the rivals trying to muscle into his territory.
But, no, when I got closer, I saw that a big gnarly branch had snapped off our pear tree (the biggest of our many trees) and crashed down, right onto his sleeping spot. More concerningly, it landed very close to where I had been working on the hedge just three hours before. It broke without warning; there was no wind. It was a lucky escape for both cat and man. When I advised the neighbour about her cat, she texted me that “he did come home looking a little miffed by it all”.
My most spectacular lucky escape was on February 22, 2011, when I went into the CTV Building that morning, went upstairs to do an interview that had just been arranged, then left the building a couple of hours before the killer quake pancaked the building, killing 115 people – including the 20 something reporter who had just interviewed me, and told me about his life in a chat afterwards as we sat around upstairs.
There have been a couple of other incidents, both post-quakes. In one I went for a walk into the recently reopened but still ruined central city, where spectacular demolitions were in full swing (watching demolitions was a major spectator sport in Christchurch at that time. Our favourite was watching, from close range, the bringing down, by controlled explosions, of the multi-storey central police station. Oh, how we cheered).
I arrived in Victoria Square and came across the spectacle of a ruined hotel which had just come down in the middle, leaving its end walls standing. I thought that was an unorthodox demolition method, then set off across the Square to my intended destination. Whereupon a cop sprinted to intercept me and told me to get out of the area, explaining that the demolition had gone wrong and that the collapse had not been planned, leaving the remains of a highly unstable structure still standing. When I got back home, I went online and watched video of the building’s collapse into a pile of dust and rubble, with people running away screaming.
The other incident also involved a walk into the central city to get something to eat at my favourite food truck at the post-quakes’ container mall (which was the best thing about that period. I miss it). It was raining and blowing, so I sat at an outdoor table under a big umbrella. A sudden gust of wind lifted it and its’ sturdy pole straight up into the air, leaving me out in the heavy rain. I was about to leave but thought I’d just check where that umbrella and pole had gone, so looked up.
And there they were, stuck in a cable a few metres up, with the pole being stretched like an arrow in a bow – aimed at my head. Twang, the bow fired the arrow at me and I instinctively swatted it away with one arm. It flew away to one side, taking down a string of party lights in the process. When I went back a week later, in more clement weather, the food truck worker said to the owner: “Here’s that guy that could have got killed last week”. That incident could have led to a great punch line on my tombstone: “He was dying for a falafel. And he did”.
I’ve always said that I will keep on as the Organiser as long as the members want me to continue, and subject to my health continuing to be good. I’m 75 now, a significant life milestone but still feel that I have something to offer. I actually got involuntarily “retired” (via redundancy) in 1991 and have been getting paid to do what I love ever since. I’m both a worker and an old age pensioner (who pays a higher tax rate).
What I do is exactly the sort of thing that a lot of people say that they’d like to do if they had the time. It’s not physically demanding; it gives my brain a good work out. My paid hours have been cut by 25%, which is good because I definitely don’t have the energy that I had when I was younger, not surprisingly (I routinely fall asleep at the movies and in front of the TV. At least I don’t snore. The good thing about Netflix is that you can rewind it to where you fell asleep and then re-run it). So, I pace myself, with lots of breaks and down time. I take a daily walk, including a coffee at a café, where I read the paper or a magazine and catch up with friends.
In 2025 and early 2026 I saw a movie virtually every week (mainly on Cheap Tuesdays); went to friends’ parties; and went to one Crusaders’ game in 2025, plus my first ever women’s rugby match (a Black Ferns’ test). In 2026, thus far, I’ve been to one Crusaders’ game. They got comprehensively defeated but I didn’t go there primarily for the game. It was the 15th anniversary of the killer quake and it seemed like the most fitting way to mark it.
I went there to say goodbye and thanks to Christchurch’s rickety old “temporary” stadium that served the city so well for nearly a decade and a half – and it was easy walking distance from our Addington home. As I sat there in the summer sunshine I reflected on the times I went there on midwinter nights, in heavy rain or freezing cold or howling winds. I reflected on the great afternoons and nights there with Becky or with good friends (one of whom, Jeremy Agar, is no longer with us); those were the only circumstances in which I’ve ever joined crowd singalongs of cheesy Neil Diamond songs.
The cultural highlight was definitely when a helicopter landed on the field before one afternoon game and Colonel Sanders got out. The “temporary” stadium was emblematic of the critical role that Addington played in saving and reviving the city after the quakes. That gold rush is now over, as businesses and facilities steadily move back into the central city.
If and when I next go to a game, it will be in the new stadium, that looks very much like a cruise ship that has been dumped into the central city by a tsunami. The suburb that has been my home for 44 years will no longer be the centre of attention, until once again the call goes out to Make Addington Great Again. Life and work remain both stimulating and interesting. And the work is very important. So, I have no plans to quit in the foreseeable future. Why give up something that is both immensely worthwhile and enjoyable?
https://www.cafca.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/hager-3.pdf↩︎
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2026/02/03/the-snowden-leaks-and-new-zealand-military-and-intelligence-officials/↩︎
https://www.cafca.org.nz/foreign-direct-investment-figures/2020/02/cafca-key-facts/↩︎
https://www.facebook.com/groups/CampaignAgainstForeignControlofAotearoa/↩︎
https://www.cafca.org.nz/uncategorised/2025/07/keep-our-assets-pledge/↩︎
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/04/13/review-of-900m-council-owned-firm-lacks-democratic-mandate/↩︎
https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360965534/golden-visa-holders-go-house-hunting↩︎
https://www.facebook.com/liz.odell.50/videos/1477368956640490/↩︎
https://www.converge.org.nz/abc/resources/ABC-protest-action-scrapbook-1982-99.pdf↩︎
Watchdog 171 -- May 2026
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