The event to announce the winner of the 2013 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand was held in Nelson on April 15th (it was won by  Rio Tinto; Sky City was second and Chorus was third. There was no Accomplice Award announced this time. The Judges’ Report is online at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Roger/Roger2013.pdf). The winner of the online People’s Choice Poll was Talent2, the Australian company which inflicted Novopay on the country’s long suffering teachers and other education sector workers. It won by a landslide, which led us to believe that some highly pissed off teachers must have dominated the voting. There is no equivalent to the Judges’ Report for that poll.

Not only was this the first time the event had been held in Nelson, it was the first time it had been held outside of the four main centres (and it’s only been held in Dunedin once. Roger Award events have been held annually since 1998). The main organiser was Mary Ellen O’Connor, herself a former Roger Award judge. She and her team did Nelson proud. It was a great night, except for the weather – it poured with rain (as part of the build up to the dirty big storm which hammered the whole country in that week leading up to Easter and into the long weekend). Mary Ellen reckoned the lousy weather kept the crowd down from what it would have otherwise been – but there were still around 80 people at the central city bar where it was held, which is as good a turnout as at any of the events held in a major city.

I and CAFCA Chairperson Jeremy Agar were there in the course of the Top of the South section of my March-July national speaking tour (see my speech elsewhere in this issue). I had spoken in Takaka the night before and we moved on to Blenheim the next day, before braving the storm all the way down the Kaikoura coast to get home for Easter. I spoke at the Roger event, but I didn’t deliver my speaking tour speech (and I didn’t deliver it anywhere else in Nelson – Mary Ellen had advised me that Nelson people wouldn’t come out to hear me speak on two nights in a row. So, sorry Nelson, you didn’t get to learn the answers to the questions “Who’s Running The Show”? And In Whose Interests?”). I gave my annual standard speech on behalf of the Roger Award organisers, and Wayne Hope of Auckland, the Chief Judge of the 2013 judging panel, gave an excellent speech, in the course of which he announced the winners.

“Ugly Pageant”

Just, as at the Wellington event the previous year, there was an “ugly pageant” to decide who was the most evil of the seven finalists (so, not the seven dwarves, or the seven samurai, but the seven bastards). It was hilarious and had the crowd in stitches. Mary Ellen told us later that several of the finalists were family members whom she had roped in – they rose to the occasion and hammed it up outrageously. Mary Ellen herself made a very fetching Chorus girl in blonde wig and sunglasses, flashing a generous portion of leg at the startled Chief Judge as she made her pitch to the crowd. One of her sisters represented Imperial Tobacco, with cigarettes protruding from every visible bodily orifice – the crowd responded with gusto and pelted her with smokes (Wayne and I found ourselves in the firing line. Later in the evening the enthusiastic bar staff started chucking marshmallows at the villains and those of us seated at the front – thankfully they’re soft flying objects).

Rio Tinto, the winner, was represented by the most unconvincing Queen I’ve ever seen, namely Greg Rzesniowiecki. Visualise a middle aged bald man with a broad Aussie accent in a blue dress complete with crown and hand bag (he whispered to me that the shoes were killing him). Why the Queen? The Royal Family is a significant shareholder in Rio Tinto, which is a British transnational corporation. Greg was just at the start of joining my speaking tour, speaking from the floor at every meeting about the campaign to get local governments to come out against the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA – see his article about it, elsewhere in this issue). So, in the weeks to come, right throughout the country, Jeremy and I were to spend a lot of time with Greg (better known as Greg Fullmoon, because of his unpronounceable Polish surname). The three of us became good mates and had a lot of fun together. But he never did his Royal drag act again; thank God (I made sure I mentioned it when I introduced him at every meeting).

But the “ugly pageant” contestant who really brought the house down was the bloke representing Talent2, the Novopay outfit. His main prop was a bag full of shredded paper that he liberally strewed all over the floor (along with play money accidentally on purpose dropped on the Chief Judge) while he vainly searched through the bag crying: “I know there’s a report in here somewhere”. His punch line was to say he’d visited a school where the teachers said: “You must have a really big algorithm. I went back to the office and asked ‘what’s an algorithm?’ That’s when we decided we’d better buy a computer”. He was great. Mary Ellen told us later that he is a local school principal, so I suspect that he was really doing Novopay from the heart. And there were a couple of other villains present too – John Key and local National MP Nick Smith (well, specially made giant puppet heads of them anyway). They were presented with “long service awards”.

Mary Ellen did a good job drumming up local interest in the Roger Award, getting the uniquely ugly actual trophy displayed in the Nelson Library before the event. And she wrote an opinion piece for the Nelson Mail (21/3/14, “Winning Award is An Ugly Business”). There was no Nelson media coverage of the event but there was national media coverage of the 2013 winners – not only about Rio Tinto but also Novopay as the People’s Choice winner. So, thank you Mary Ellen and crew; thank you, Nelson. You proved that the Roger Award belongs to all New Zealand, not just the main cities. We would love the event to be held in other provincial cities and towns, but the key ingredient is a local organiser or organisers. Let’s hear from you.

Next Roger Event: May Day, Christchurch

The next event, however, is coming home to Christchurch. It will be held on the night of Friday May 1, 2015, to be followed the next day by CAFCA’s 40th anniversary celebration. And four of the five 2013 judges have retired (Wayne Hope, John Maynard, Christina Stringer and Sam Mahon), leaving only David Small from that batch. So, the four “new” judges joining David for the 2014 Roger Award are a mixture of old and new – Paul Maunder has resumed his previous role as Chief Judge; Sue Bradford has come back after several years away; the two brand new judges are Dennis Maga and Dean Parker. Nomination forms are included with this Watchdog and, for the first time ever, there is an online nomination form on the CAFCA Website (at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/roger-award-2014-form.html). Get your nomination/s in and come to the Christchurch event on May Day. Make a weekend of it and stay for our 40th anniversary celebration the next day. It will be a once in 40 year event!