Committee

It remains unchanged, with the same five members: Colleen Hughes, James Ayers, Murray Horton, Paul Piesse and Terry Moon. In 2024 we took active steps to try and recruit one new, and decades younger, person to get actively involved with CAFCA. But unfortunately, that didn't happen. It is a reality that our membership is aging (if not aged) and it is my experience over many decades that nobody is queuing up to join committees.

We will keep working with what we've got and will keep scratching our heads as to how to get one or two more Committee members. We continue to work with former Committee members - from both recent and long-ago times - in other campaigns. For example, Brian Turner and Denis O'Connor are very actively involved in Keep Our Assets (KOA). Indeed, Brian came to CAFCA's first 2025 Committee meeting, with a request that CAFCA get involved with a newly-formed Canterbury Tax Coalition (we did, and James Ayers is our representative on it).

Incorporated Society: Compulsory Rules' Rewrite & Reregistration

CAFCA has been an incorporated society since 1989. However, the 1908 Incorporated Societies Act has been replaced by the 2022 Incorporated Societies Act, and some key provisions have changed (I won't go into the details). Meaning that every incorporated society in NZ has to reregister under the new Act and rewrite their sets of rules (constitution). The reregistration period runs from October 2023 until April 2026. Any societies not reregistered by that deadline will legally cease to exist. Incorporation has advantages - it makes a society a separate legal entity from its members and gives the members limited liability.

CAFCA put a lot of work into this in 2024, setting up a sub-committee of myself, James Ayers and Paul Piesse to deal with it. Particular thanks are owed to Marty Braithwaite, who has been a member going back to the early 1980s. Marty has done valuable work for us before e.g. he was Watchdog's Layout Editor in the 1990s, before Leigh Cookson began her two decades in that role. When I got an employment contract a few years ago, Marty played a key role in writing that.

And now Marty has been of invaluable assistance to us again. When he retired, he followed the classic stereotype and joined a bowls club. When we were at a Crusaders' game in 2023, I mentioned that CAFCA had to rewrite our rules. He told me that he had done that for his bowls club and handled getting them electronically delivered to the Companies Office. He volunteered to do the same for CAFCA.

Marty duly did the heavy lifting of rewriting our decades-old rules and he came along to our September 2024 Annual General Meeting to speak to them and answer any questions (of which there were a few). The new rules were duly passed at the AGM (prior to that, they had been sent to all members). Then began the not straightforward process of getting them to the Companies Office for CAFCA Inc to be re-registered.

The first hurdle we encountered was that, as the submitter, I had to have a Real Me verified identity, which is a form of ID required for dealing with Government departments and official agencies. I didn't have one, having never previously needed it. It needed a photo of me and not just any old one. Marty tried doing it with the Webcam on the CAFCA computer.

"Needs plain background" was the refusal given. I hung a white sheet across my office wall of file boxes but to no avail. I had to find an approved photographer (where I get my passport photos done is not on the list). I'm a lifelong non-driver, so it's ironic that I had to go to the nearest AA office and queue for 30 minutes among motorists doing things like renewing their licences, etc. The actual photo took only a few seconds.

Marty and I then had another go. The second hurdle was that to gain electronic access to the Companies Office site to upload the rules and accompanying documents, I first had to have an electronic letter of authorisation to act on CAFCA's behalf. This applied also to the existing (1989 vintage) CAFCA file on the Companies Office site. I had never got one of those letters of authorisation and had not needed one, as the Companies Office had provision for the mandatory annual financial returns to be done manually and sent to it by good old snail mail. Which is what I had done for many years. But now it wants everything electronically. It duly approved my authority to electronically access the CAFCA file.

And, hallelujah, on the third attempt, we got it done. Electronic re-registration of CAFCA Inc, including a certificate, came through in lightning speed once we'd uploaded what was required. Marty and I celebrated with a slap-up meal of a pie apiece, which he was kind enough to supply. No half-pie measures when it comes to getting CAFCA work done.

Membership

It is in the 260s, which is down from the 270s of my previous Report (and this is being written before the annual removal of long-overdue non-payers). It has definitely dropped over the last few years (460 is the highest it has reached in recent years; it is quite a few years since it threatened 500; 550+ was our absolute zenith, many years ago). 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 re-join, 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 one in their area). Or, they can post us cash - at their own risk. Some members have done that for years. A few give me cash in person. So, I still have to make occasional trips to Kiwibank to physically deposit cash. This will not be straightforward in future, as the Kiwibank branch where I've always done cash deposits (their main one, in the CBD) closed in April 2025.

Gaining new members is a permanent project. We have some wonderfully evangelical members who set out to recruit others. Some members pay gift subs for new members. 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.

Finances

Between them, our operating account and three term deposits hold $115,000, in round figures. There is one explanation for this - the very substantial bequests we received from veteran Committee members Jeremy Agar and John Ring in 2024. My article about Jeremy's bequest is in Watchdog 165, April 2024 and my one on John's bequest is in 166, August 2024.

Despite our membership gradually dropping year after year, CAFCA's bank balance has held steady, even increased a bit (even without taking those bequests into account) due to regular donations. Most recently, a very regular benefactor donated $5,000 and entrusted us to decide whether to keep it or give all or some of it to either or both of the Anti-Bases Campaign and the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income (we split it between the two of them and kept none for CAFCA).

There are plenty of small organisations like ours who would give their eye teeth to have $115,000 in the bank. By contrast, the other group for which I am the Organiser - Anti-Bases Campaign - has $10,000 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.

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.

Expenses & Donations

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 2024 we bought several thousand dollars' worth of envelopes, which will last us until well into 2025 (when the price will doubtless go up again). 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 around 10% of them do).

We can afford to be generous - in 2024 we donated $5,000 to the Living Wage Movement (of which we are a paying member). And 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 the $5,000 given to us by a member who entrusted us what to do with it.

CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account

The trend, for several years now, has been of a steady decline. So, in 2021, for the first time, my paid hours were cut from 40 to 30 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. I won't starve - I get the pension as well (for which I pay a higher tax rate)

To quote from the latest monthly bank statement, at the time of writing (March 2025): the Account held $6,196.16 (up by $2,000 on previous month, because of a $3,500 donation). In addition to the monthly pledges (one of which is a quarterly one), there was one other donation, of $100. $5,489.82 came in and $3,478 went out. So, the Account doesn't lack for support from pledgers and donors. Usually there is more going out of the Account than coming in on a month-by-month basis. 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 2024 to $27.80 per hour and will go up to $28.95 in 2025).

And secondly because of the drop in the number of pledgers and donors - for the same reason that CAFCA membership is dropping. People die (two pledgers died in 2024). People 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 - two new pledgers have started recently.

It is remarkable that it has lasted continuously for more than three decades 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. Apart from that, CAFCA's only regular contribution had been to donate the interest from our three term deposits to the Organiser Account (which it has done for many, many years).

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.

Watchdog

It had its own incorporated society since 1997, separate from CAFCA. Watchdog Inc had its own members, held its own meetings and AGM and produced its own annual accounts. In 2024 it was decided to wrap that up, primarily because of the hassle of having to rewrite two sets of rules and re-register two incorporated societies. So, CAFCA is, once again, the publisher, as it was prior to 1997. The publication itself is unaffected by this.

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. The three 2024 issues were, respectively, 84, 84 and 120 pages. The first two were smaller than the norm; the last one was the biggest issue for many, many years. As in 2023, reviews comprised a very big chunk of each issue (they were the biggest chunk of that 120-page December 2024 issue). Reviews are split between Greg Waite and Linda Hill, who also regularly write articles. Other reviewers in 2024 were Dick Keller, Paul Maunder, Makareta Tawaroa and myself.

Watchdog will always be a niche publication - we now have only one retail outlet, with the current possibility of a second (plus one Christchurch cinema lets us put a few copies there as giveaways). We don't have the resources to compete with mainstream magazines. Nor the intention (indeed, they've got their own problems). Watchdog is a journal of analysis, not a newspaper. But you will find plenty of news in it that can't be found elsewhere.

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. Apart from any other articles that I might write, I'm also responsible for writing up one Decision from each batch of monthly Decisions from the Overseas Investment Office. We've never yet managed to find a replacement for Linda Hill, who wrote up every Decision for five years.

So, I do one per month as a token sample, plus a list of all the Decisions for that month. Sometimes I do a few more, if they're related to each other. Thanks are due to Layout Editor Marney Brosnan. She does a very professional job and it's a lot of work, including two lots of corrections. Ian Dalziel has provided the wonderfully quirky cover graphics for many years now.

Watchdog attracts high-quality, high-profile writers. In the three 2024 issues, those writing for us were (in addition to myself and the reviewers and regular writers whom I've already mentioned): Bryan Gould, Jane Kelsey, Catherine Delahunty, Marilyn Yurjevich, Tor Orme, Brian Turner, Nathaniel Herz-Edinger, Mike Treen, Niki Gladding, Manu Caddie, Robert Ireland, Sue Newberry, Harry Robson, Ed Miller, Eugenie Sage, Marie Venning and Glenn Barclay.

The number of writers was most evident in the August 2024 issue - 14 in all. In 2024 we had writers on behalf of campaigns such as Coromandel Watchdog, the Living Wage Movement, Aotearoa Water Action, Pathway for Survival, Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti, Why Waste Waimate, West Papua Action and Tax Justice Aotearoa. And none of them gets paid anything.

CAFCA is a pakeha organisation, so it is great that Watchdog can attract a Māori writer such as Makareta Tawaroa, with her fascinating articles about the successful campaign to get legal personhood for the Whanganui River. Watchdog always gets a response, positive or negative. That's what we want - it shows that people are reading it and care enough to tell us they agree or disagree with it (my December 2024 lead article about the Government's pro-tobacco industry policies, and smoking in general, being the most recent example).

Online Watchdog

Terry Moon is in charge of this. She does a very good job and has introduced some innovations. 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.

Key Facts & CAFCA Updates

Our Key Facts are a vital CAFCA resource and one which has led to mainstream media articles in the past. Most recently, they had been researched and produced by Edward Miller, who was the Researcher and Policy Analyst with FIRST Union, which is a long-standing union supporter of CAFCA. But sadly, Ed became too busy to do it anymore.

However, he found us a replacement, Elliot Crossan, who completed the task in early 2025, just in time to be distributed at the same time as PM Luxon's Investment Summit. This was the first time that the Key Facts had been updated since 2022. You can access them online here. I can only do the CAFCA Updates as time allows, which means that they didn't get done at all in 2024. Let's see if 2025 is any better.

Website & Other Digital Outlets

In addition to the Watchdog site, Terry Moon is also in charge of the CAFCA site and does 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).

In my previous Report I said that it had become a seemingly never-ending story. But after several years of nothing happening, we actually have some progress to report. In 2024 Terry found somebody to sort out our new Website and get it operating. Three cheers to Terry for slogging her guts out on this. I spent significant time checking it to find things that needed fixing before it could go live.

In addition to the CAFCA site, we have the separate Watchdog one and the Historic Watchdog site, 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 site 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. And CAFCA has an X account (formerly Twitter), with a very small number of followers (it's not worth the time and effort to keep tending to it). You can follow us on X @CAFCA_NZ.

Overseas Investment Office

This is a continuous CAFCA campaign that dates back to the 1980s (when the relevant body was called the Overseas Investment Commission). We never did manage to find a replacement for Linda Hill to write up the monthly Decisions of the OIO. We get a regular trickle of inquiries from would-be volunteers, but we never hear from them again once we tell them what's involved. As a purely token gesture, CAFCA has decided to highlight one Decision (occasionally a few more) from each month of Decisions plus a list of all the Decisions for that month. I'm doing that.

About a decade ago, the Office of the Ombudsman brokered a deal between CAFCA and the OIO, which removed the need for us to appeal every bit of withheld information in every Decision (invariably the price paid). The OIO agreed to release that material after an agreed period of time - usually one year. But, in 2024, I realised that we hadn't received any such material for some considerable time. I sent a "please explain" to the OIO and, lo and behold, we started to regularly receive a trove of previously withheld material.

Keep Our Assets

I am the Convenor, and three current or former CAFCA Committee members are also very actively involved with the KOA Committee - namely, Paul Piesse, Brian Turner and Denis O'Connor. The other KOA Committee members are John Minto, Kay Robertson, Dot Lovell-Smith and Mike Newlove (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.

2024 was a big year for KOA. In my previous Report I mentioned that KOA had built a close working relationship with the newly-created Campaign for Public Infrastructure (I was KOA's representative on its Committee). Between us the two groups held a very successful public meeting in November 2023. Then, at incredibly short notice, both groups had to mobilise supporters to attend a December 2023 City Council meeting, which was debating whether to proceed down a path that would have led to asset sales. As I previously reported, we won - the Council voted not to proceed down that path.

Since then, we have gone onto the front foot. In 2024 the Campaign for Public Infrastructure held a series of public meetings and workshops to develop ideas for how the city's publicly-owned assets can be grown and better managed. KOA organised one of those public meetings, in September 2024, with Wellington economist Ganesh Nana (former head of the former Productivity Commission, which this Government abolished) as the speaker. It was very well attended and extremely successful.

Shortly after that, the Campaign for Public Infrastructure, sadly, ground to a halt. But KOA is full steam ahead, with the October 2025 local body elections in mind. Particularly now that asset sales are creeping back onto the Christchurch political agenda, with the Mayor, Phil Mauger, saying "he's open to a discussion" on the subject. In the second half of 2024 KOA hosted, at our monthly meetings, both a key union leader and the (thus far only other) candidate for the Mayoralty.

KOA worked with Lyttelton port unions to get a good crowd along to the Annual General Meeting of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL), which manages the city's publicly-owned commercial trading companies, a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of strategic assets (we've had it from the CCHL Chief Executive Officer (CEO), in person, that was the biggest ever crowd at one of their AGMs). At that we put the heads of CCHL and the heads of the individual trading companies on the spot about asset sales.

Thus far in 2025 I've headed KOA delegations to meet both the Mayor (a follow up to meeting him in 2023) and the CCHL Chair. In both cases, those two also invited their respective CEOs to join the meetings with us. We hadn't asked to meet the CEOs but we take their presence as a sign that both the City Council and CCHL leadership take KOA very seriously. They know that we represent the majority of Christchurch's population on the issue of asset sales.

It is election year - in 2016 and 2019 KOA ran John Minto for Mayor and, in each case, he got many thousands of votes. We're not running a candidate in 2025 but we will be actively involved in the campaign. We're reviving something from KOA's very first foray into Christchurch local body elections (which was in 2013) - we're going to ask candidates to sign a pledge not to sell assets. It was very successful first time around.

KOA's message is not just "stop" or "don't". We took a positive message to both our meetings with the Mayor and CCHL leaders - we asked for a "no surprises" policy on asset sales and if the issue is to come up, 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).

The other message we took to the Mayor and CCHL was to break the whole subject of public assets away from the three-year election cycle and do some long term, multi-generational planning to develop and nurture those assets for the public good (not just monetary return). The example we gave them was Christchurch's most famous public asset - Hagley Park, a gift from our 19th Century forebears that keeps on giving in the 21st Century. It's hard to imagine Christchurch without it.

Relations With Other Groups

Since 2018 we have developed a productive working relationship with Aotearoa Water Action (AWA), which started off by fighting the 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 this 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 2024 issue. In the December 2024 issue we ran an article from Why Waste Waimate, a group campaigning against a Chinese transnational corporation's plan to build a giant rubbish incinerator in Waimate. 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.

The December 2024 Watchdog had an article from Tax Justice Aotearoa, which was 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 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. This issue of Watchdog includes an article from the Postal Workers Union.

Media Work

I no longer write press releases. But that doesn't stop the mainstream media from seeking me out. In January 2025 TVNZ interviewed me about CAFCA's response to PM Luxon's policy of pushing for more foreign investment (which both National and Labour governments have been pushing throughout the 50 years of CAFCA's existence, so it's very old "news"). TV news may be now be disparaged as "heritage" media but people still watch it. I had neighbours and strangers say "I saw you on TV". One or two even remembered what I was talking about.

The funniest response came from a pharmacist at my local chemist shop. Not only had she watched it but her son had recorded it, which she proceeded to show me, on her phone. I also did a radio interview on the same day about that same subject. I've written a KOA opinion piece for the Press (which published it online only). I have written for Covert Action, an excellent online American magazine and had several articles published by it in 2024.

CAFCA Priorities

We have a very special project in 2025, namely our 50th anniversary celebration (which is on Saturday October 25 - Labour Weekend). We have booked a Christchurch venue for the day time event and a separate venue for the meal that night. At the time of writing, we are about to kick off publicity and call for registrations (both venues have a capacity limit). We've drafted the programme and have secured six very good speakers, including some much younger activists, so that it's not all just CAFCA veterans swapping war stories from the good old days.

Both Watchdog and our OIO work are major and ongoing long-term projects in their own right. We need to get our message out to more people, using both traditional media and social media We have an aging, indeed aged, membership, so recruiting new - hopefully, younger - members is a constant project. We need to get younger people actively involved to take CAFCA into the future.

CAFCA has always worked best in partnership with likeminded groups, for example, Keep Our Assets (see the KOA section, above). On the other hand, money is not a problem. We have received generous bequests from Jeremy Agar and John Ring, veteran Committee members who died in the past couple of years. What to do with their money is a good problem to have. We will ensure that it is put to the best possible use. Plus, we have a very generous and supportive (living) membership.

Anti-Bases Campaign

I am, of course, also the Organiser for ABC. And I am the Editor of ABC's Peace Researcher. The most recent issue (68, November 2024) was laid out by Leigh Cookson. Leigh, of course, was Watchdog's Layout Editor for 20 years. 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. And PR covers events and issues that don't appear in Watchdog. You can read the most recent issue (November 2024) here.

ABC didn't organise a Waihopai spy base protest in 2024 or 2025 (the most recent one was in 2023). I put out a brief announcement in 2024: "It is a major commitment of time, energy, resources and money, and the Committee has decided that it does not have the energy at present to do it justice. We are considering other projects as a use for our resources and money. We welcome suggestions about the best way to communicate our core message. This doesn't alter our decades-long demand that Waihopai be closed. Nor does it necessarily mean that ABC won't organise Waihopai spy base protests again in future".

The spy base is certainly still there, as it has been since the late 1980s, although its distinctive domes and obsolete satellite dishes have gone. Indeed, 2024 brought fresh revelations about Waihopai: "The operation - that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) did not tell Government ministers about - ran from 2013-20, but was only exposed by an official watchdog (in March 2024)".

"Intelligence documents strongly suggest the Bureau hosted - but exercised virtually no oversight over - a system run by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to help acquire targets classified as terrorists for killer drones, bombs and raids using GCSB data" (RNZ, 25/4/24).

As I wrote, in Peace Researcher 67 (June 2024, "We Told You So. Waihopai Is A US Spy Base And A Warfighting One"): "So, there we have it. While the GCSB spy bosses have been making reassuring noises all along, the reality is that for nearly a decade (and a very recent decade at that) the GCSB was hosting, at Waihopai, a US NSA system over which the GCSB had no control - by choice - and which was not known to the various Ministers who were nominally 'in charge' of the GCSB. This period spanned both the Key National government and the Ardern Labour government, so both major parties were equally ignorant and culpable".

"Furthermore, this NSA system was not only for spying but for capturing and/or killing targets via drones, missiles, bombs or attacks by special forces in countries far removed from NZ. Such military strikes inevitably kill family members, neighbours, bystanders and innocent civilians in general. This means that New Zealand very much has blood on our hands. As ABC has said from the outset, Waihopai is a US spy base and a warfighting one. The GCSB is a willingly complicit junior partner of the NSA. This is the proof. And it makes even more urgent the case for shutting down both Waihopai and the GCSB".

Aerospace; AUKUS; SIS; West Coast

I undertook various ABC projects in 2024. A small number of us attended the protest actions at the annual NZ Aerospace Summit, held in Christchurch's Te Pae (the convention centre. Canterbury is billing itself as NZ's aerospace province). We were there to support a bigger, younger and very energetic group that kept up non-stop protest activity (what the Filipino people's movement calls a noise barrage) outside and inside the venue for two solid days. They were great and have formed a new group, Peace Action Ōtautahi, with whom ABC hopes to work.

In November 2024 I was the New Zealand speaker on an international Webinar about AUKUS. You can watch it here. I've already mentioned that I wrote a few articles for US online magazine Covert Action in 2024 - they asked me to review a new Australian book about AUKUS. And having seen my PR article about Waihopai, they asked me to write about that.

Maire Leadbeater invited me to speak at the November Christchurch launch of her book "The Enemy Within: The Human Cost Of State Surveillance In Aotearoa/ New Zealand". Just days later I took along the book to accompany my speech at the funeral of Joan Hazlehurst (who was Owen Wilkes' wife half a century ago). Joan - with my assistance - was one of those (including me) to have secured her Security Intelligence Service file. My obituary of Joan is elsewhere in this issue, as is Greg Waite's review of the book and an extract from it.

Other ABC work was more personal - the family of Keith Locke invited me to be one of those to write a tribute to him for his 80th birthday in 2024. Keith was dying and that tribute formed the core of my obituary for him. He was a great friend of ABC for decades and a Waihopai protest stalwart. We put him on the cover of PR 68 (November 2024). My obituary of him is in Watchdog 167 (December 2024).

I've been regularly attending most (not all) of Christchurch's weekly rallies and marches in 2023/24/25 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 was invited to speak at two rallies on behalf of ABC (I turned down a third invitation because of its short notice). And I've been literally flying the flag at those rallies. In 2024 ABC got a pennant made and I take that on the marches.

The Gaza 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. 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 February 2025 I went to the West Coast. I was invited there, in my ABC capacity, to be one of the facilitators at a session of a weekend-long small workshop of half a dozen activists (I had gone to another, larger, one of these in March 2024). My session was to build a timeline of activism and discuss the lessons arising. That was a real trip down memory lane. It was held in the middle of nowhere in a restored historic school and it was something of a reunion.

It was organised and run by West Coaster Paul Maunder, who was actively involved with the Roger Award for years, as both a judge and report writer. Our driver was Leigh Cookson, who was Watchdog's Layout Editor for 20 years and is one of the key figures in the group running both the series of workshops and the venue where they are held.

Another key participant was Gillian Southey. For decades I worked closely with Leigh and Gillian on the Roger Award, and we all served on the Committee of the former GATT Watchdog, plus Leigh and I were on the Committee of the former Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa. The workshop also included Paul's 80th birthday party, which was attended by people from all over the Coast and further afield. It was all a lot of fun.

My Ancient Past

In my 2022 Report I said that I'd met that year with an old friend and colleague who wanted access to my Security Intelligence Service Personal File, as part of research for a book on State surveillance. That friend was Maire Leadbeater, who spent hours studying my file. Then there was a long pause because of difficulty finding a publisher. But, finally, her excellent book "The Enemy Within" was published in 2024 and, as I mentioned above, she invited me to speak at its Christchurch launch in November. I was one of the examples of SIS spying detailed in the book and I won't say more about it here, because the relevant extract is reprinted elsewhere in this issue.

I have previously mentioned my involvement with the biography of famous painter Tony Fomison (the first one ever, which is amazing when you consider that he has been dead since 1990). Tony was a personal friend and a CAFCA member for years. The author originally contacted me in 2012 (that almost qualifies as the ancient past) to access my collection of personal letters from Tony from the 1970s and 80s.

Much later, in 2023, I responded to the author's appeal to put him in touch with an old friend who had taken the photos of Tony to illustrate a major feature I'd written about him (published in 1974 in Canta, the University of Canterbury paper, when I was its Editor that year). This biography was nearly a decade and a half in gestation but it finally came out in 2025, complete with numerous references from the material I supplied to the author. You can read my most recent Watchdog article about Tony Fomison in issue 146, (December 2017).

In my previous Report I mentioned that I'd been contacted by a man writing a biography of Wolfgang Rosenberg. He wrote to me: "I found your obituary a great introduction to the man many years ago, and have recently come to the conclusion that he needed and deserved a full-length bio". In 2024 he asked me to send him material on Wolf which I had gathered while researching that obituary, which you can read in in Watchdog 114 (May 2007).

Mount John Project

Also, in my previous Report, I mentioned that I'd been approached, in 2023, by a University of Canterbury Fine Arts lecturer who was keen to mount an art project centring on the 1972 protest at the former US Air Force observatory atop Mount John in the Mackenzie Country (I was one of the organisers of that protest. The connection to the University is that Canterbury has its observatory there and that, back in the 60s and 70s, it was the US military's landlord).

The lecturer worked on this in 2024 and assembled a team, who met with me and Richard Suggate, an old friend dating back to high school years, a veteran CAFCA member and, more importantly, the most prominent victim of police violence at the Mount John protest, having been bitten on the penis by a police dog (which caused so much uproar that the cops have never again used dogs against protesters in the half-century since).

A date was set in March 2025 for a bus trip to Mount John, and funding was secured. But, in February 2025, the lecturer told us that the necessary preparatory work had not been completed and that the trip would be postponed until December. I'm used to playing a long game in the business of political activism but I did gently remind the lecturer that she is dealing with old men and who knows what might happen in that time (I've inherited that trait from my late father. Whenever I asked him what he thought about some forthcoming event - "who do you think will win the election/World Cup/whatever?" - his answer was always: "I'll be dead by then". He was eventually right).

In the meantime, on the original scheduled date in March, she invited me to come and meet with a few of her students and talk about that 1972 Mt John protest and related issues, past and present. It was a mutually beneficial meeting and, as the University has permanently re-established a presence at the Arts Centre (which used to be its original campus), I was back at where I spent my student days.

I even briefly plunged back into the world of earthquake repairs in 2024 (the quakes seem like ancient history to me now). Just before Christmas I had some very belated repairs done (in response to a leaflet in our letter box, offering to inspect our sewer pipe for quake damage). The result was that it was dug out and replaced. The cost was $16,000+ but it was free to us - the State paid, namely the Natural Hazards Commission (i.e. the former EQC, with whom I'd last had dealings more than a decade ago). For two days I had several guys and a digger working here, with a big truck blocking the drive and I couldn't flush the toilet or drain water down the pipes while they were working. That gave me a flashback to the whole period of quakes and repairs, which were all done at our place in 2011 and 12.

Death In The Family

I don't have kids, by choice, a decision I have never regretted. But I do have a family, actually three of them. There is the extensive whanau in Manila, with whom I keep in touch; there is the family of former de facto in-laws in Sydney, from my previous long-term relationship (I get on perfectly well with them); and then there's my New Zealand family. I'm an only child but I had a much older half-sister by Mum's first marriage (she died in 2003, aged 68. You can read my tribute to my sister June in Watchdog 102, May 2003).

June was 17 years older than me, married at 19 and had four kids in quick time. So, I was only a few years older than my two nephews and two nieces (all four of them are older than Becky, my wife). Colin Tennant, my oldest nephew, features in some of my earliest memories. He was only four years younger than me. Colin and I were actually christened together, at an Anglican church in Wellington (although, I have to say, it didn't do much for any subsequent churchgoing by either of us. In my case I'm a doubly lapsed Christian - first Anglican, then Presbyterian). I was four and he was a baby. I vaguely remember it. Family legend has it that he behaved when the vicar lifted him up in the air but bawled every time he was brought down.

Bawling was a recurring theme among my early memories of Colin. I was entrusted to take him to his first ever movie one afternoon in Taihape (in those days you went to "the pictures" at "the picture theatre" - today we go to a movie at the cinema). All went well until the lights were turned off - then he screamed his head off. I had to take him back home, which pissed me off, because I wanted to see the film.

Being only a few years older than all of my nephews and nieces meant that I spent plenty of my childhood with them. When my family lived in Wellington in the 50s, we spent school holidays with their family in Taihape, travelling by train. I can remember going to the Christmas party for railway workers' kids there (my late brother-in-law, Cliff, was a railway worker for 40+ years). I have to say that Taihape in winter was good practice for Christchurch winters.

Our families moved in opposite directions - we moved south, they moved north up the Main Trunk Line, firstly to what was then called Frankton Junction in Hamilton (oh, how I remember the all-night shunting directly across the road from their railway house), and then to Auckland (specifically Manurewa and Weymouth). As Colin and I grew up, we saw less of each other, other than on special occasions such as his wedding to Lia in Hamilton in the 80s. He was a foreman at one of Auckland's giant breweries for years; then he and Lia and their two kids moved to Tauranga, where he worked as a lawn mowing contractor.

I had last seen him in 2014 when I was in Tauranga on my last national speaking tour. I was pleasantly surprised when Colin contacted me out of the blue in late 2023 to say that he and Lia were coming to Christchurch soon and hoped to see me. We'd had no contact for nearly ten years. I was deeply moved when he told me, whilst here, that the main reason he'd made the trip was to see me. The explanation became clear when I asked him the standard question: "How are you"? He said he'd had liver cancer. When he told me, I jokingly said: "So I'm on your bucket list"?

The three of us had a great few hours together, doing a tiki tour of Christchurch. Even the weather cooperated. It was wonderful to see him again (even if the bugger did give me covid in the process). He told me that he was in remission but we all know that there are no guarantees. Lia got him onto e-mail (which he'd never used before) and we had more contact in the next few months than we had had for many decades. Things moved fast. One minute he was on the waiting list for a liver transplant; then he was told the cancer was back and it was terminal. Within a very short period of time, he was dead, in mid- 2024. He was 69.

Sobering

It is sobering when younger close relatives die before you. So, I really appreciate that he reached out to me and kept in touch for his final few months. I knew why and so did he. Colin and I knew each other for our entire lives. He was a good bloke but more importantly, he was a good man. We didn't see each other often but when we did, it was always enjoyable. Workers like Colin don't get memorialised because they are "ordinary people". That's why I'm singling him out for this brief tribute.

I enjoy being an uncle (although it's bloody strange to have an old age pensioner address you as "uncle", which is what Colin always did). I'm not much of a hands-on uncle but I was proud to be one to Colin (and to Laraine, Brian and Pam. Those three are now my last links to my sister and our mother. And they are the last links to my 1950s' childhood). Rest in peace, Colin, from your old mate Uncle Murray.

My Health

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. My doctor told me, in early 2025, that my latest blood tests show "diabetes marker is a bit higher than we'd ideally have it" but his recommendation sticks to a diet and exercise approach, not further medication or insulin.

In my previous Report I mentioned that I'd had a monthlong bout of asthma in 2023. It happened again in late 2024 and lasted about three weeks, from memory. It manifested as an annoying persistent cough, which was at its worst when I lay down to try and sleep. I spent several sleepless nights propped up on pillows. I used a strong steroid inhaler but it needed more than that to kill it.

I paid two visits to the doctor, and was prescribed a course of steroids, followed by a course of antibiotics. That fixed it. I don't use the inhaler on a regular basis, just as required. To see the doctor the first time, I had to do a negative covid test at home, then go to the medical centre's back door and ring them to be let in (so I didn't cough over people in the waiting room). Asthma never interferes with my ability to work - one of the advantages of working from home - or leading normal daily life, including going out. As for covid shots - I've had eight of them so far.

The other problem area are my knees, which are past their use by date. They first flared up several years ago and required physiotherapy. The problem recurred in 2024 and they played up for months. My doctor diagnosed arthritis, said that I don't meet the pain threshold for going onto a surgical waiting list, and prescribed anti-inflammatory painkillers (which I ended up using when my lower back flared up and joined the aching club for a while). I rub stuff onto my knees every day and that works. At its worst, I briefly needed a stick.

I got back to walking daily (slower and more stiffly than previously, a bit like old Genocide Joe Biden. Going down stairs is more ponderous than previously, definitely so if there is no hand rail). I don't do the long walks of the not-too-distant past. I've made more use of my e-bike, which comes with its own adventures. In midwinter I crashed it, due to a combination of speeding and low sun in my eyes. In a split second I was sprawling on the ground. I thought: "What's that noise I just heard?", then realised it had been the sound of my head hitting the ground.

But I was wearing my helmet, plus, you know, no brain, no pain. The heavy bike landed on top of me. I hauled myself up, regained my dignity, straightened the twisted handlebars, and resumed my journey. Remarkably, I didn't have a scratch on me (I know three friends who have sustained serious injuries in single person bike crashes - broken jaws, knocked unconscious, hospitalisation, the full monty).

One positive thing to report is that I don't have bowel cancer. When I first received the DIY poo test home kit a couple of years previously, I ignored it. But, second time around, in 2024, I (literally) held my nose and did it, even though it felt faintly subversive to be sending shit through the mail. To my pleasant surprise it came back negative.

No Plans To Retire Yet

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 (or, should I say, good enough for a 74-year old). 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).

And 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%, so I have more free time and I have retired from various other aspects of my life, ranging from international solidarity work to mowing my own lawns, so yet more free time.

In 2024 and early 2025 I used that free time to do things like: go to a movie virtually every week (mainly on Cheap Tuesdays); make my last visit to the Court Theatre in its temporary Addington base, walking distance from home (I look forward to going to its brand-new central city building - I've been going to the Court Theatre since it really was in the former Magistrates' Court building in the early 70s); go to outdoor Shakespeare for the first time in decades; and go to exhibitions at the Art Gallery and the pop up Museum (Canterbury Museum is closed for several years for quake repairs and rebuild).

I helped friends celebrate life's milestones. In 2024 I went to two 70th birthday parties and two 80ths (one of the latter died a few months later, so I also attended her funeral). So far in 2025 I've been to one 80th and one 70th. Plus, a surprise 78th celebration, which was such a surprise that I was the only person to turn up. I was just about to go home when the birthday boy himself turned up. He was definitely surprised to see me.

I didn't go to any Crusaders' games in 2024 - they had a lousy season and I'm a fair-weather fan. Plus, my dodgy knees are an issue in clambering up and down grandstands. But I have gone to one live game in 2025, with my old mate Marty Braithwaite. Never underestimate the valuable CAFCA business that can get done at the rugby. It was at a 2023 Crusaders' game that Marty offered to help with rewriting CAFCA Inc's rules (which he duly did). 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?

Watchdog - 168 April 2025