Socialist media project based in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia
Annette Sykes, Mana President: asset sales and tangata whenua
Ian Anderson, Chair of Mana Rangatahi ki Poneke: public control of assets
Asset sales legislation has passed despite opposition from some 80% of those polled, and up to 88% of tangata whenua. Kai and korero on the fightback at Wellington Library Mezzanine.
Editorial, Byron Clark
The cover of every issue of The Spark contains the slogan ‘For workers power and international socialism’ this issue contains several articles that show how the class struggle is unfolding today. New Zealand has been condemned for the seaborne sweatshops that fish in New Zealand waters. It’s not much better for migrant workers on land either. Two Fijian woman have been exploited as domestic workers in Wellington, an International student was murdered on his first day at work, and it’s possible that the company who contracted him will not face any penalties. There is some good news too though, a victimised union delegate at Southern Paprika Ltd has been reinstated.
There is struggle within the workers movement too. We defend socialist involvement in the struggle to keep assets in public hands, against sectarian criticism levelled at the Workers Party recently. Ian Anderson looks at the issue of equal marriage which is connected to the discussion about recognising the importance of queer rights currently taking place within the Mana Party.
We also look at last month’s budget and publish a follow up to last issues ‘science under capitalism’ article, this time looking at the possibilities for science under a socialist system.
Mike Kay
In the first half of 2012 we have seen the bosses attack New Zealand workers in some of their strongest bastions: the Ports of Auckland and the freezing works. In this talk I want to focus on a single aspect of both disputes, namely, the role of iwi in assisting the workers.
This was most pronounced in the Talley’s/ AFFCO dispute, where up to 90% of the union membership is Māori. Also, quite crucially, 40% of beef production at AFFCO comes from Māori trusts. Talley’s must have perceived the defeat suffered by unionists at ANZCO/ CMP in Martin last year as a signal that they too could finish off the union in their plants. After a mere ten hours at the negotiating table Talley’s locked out hundreds of workers who refused to sign Individual Employment Agreements that gave away terms and conditions that had been built up over years.
Now it’s no secret that the leadership of Meat Workers Union struggled to organise the dispute. After 20 years without a major “blue”, they were caught on the hop by Talley’s full frontal assault. They turned to the CTU for help. But it was the involvement of the CTU’s Māori representative body, the Rūnanga, and its Vice President Māori Syd Keepa in particular, that were decisive in turning around the fortunes of the meatworkers. [Read more…]
Jonas Salk, pioneer of the polio vaccine, who released it free of charge.
In this follow-up to “Science under Capitalism” published in the June issue of The Spark, laboratory technician and Workers Party member Josh Glue considers the possibilities for scientific progress in a future run along socialist lines.
Socialism is the period of movement toward a classless stateless society run through democratic workers control of the means of production, distribution and exchange, coupled with a high level of democratic involvement from all people in decision making at a community level. Science has been driven, efficiently but single-mindedly, by the capitalist system since that system’s beginnings in the wake of the French revolution and the industrial revolution throughout Europe.
We live in a world where poor Indian people die because they can’t afford treatment for the under-studied black fever disease. We live in a world where the millions of sub-saharan Africans with HIV-AIDS can’t afford the life-saving HAART medicine available in the West. We live in a world where a pesticide company’s plant vented toxic gas over a Bhopal slum, killing thousands and leaving thousands more with lung cancer and those victims can’t even get chemotherapy.
But what if profit didn’t motivate scientific research? What if new avenues of research were funded by a free society, without a ruling class to exploit their wealth and with the knowledge that the profits of that research would benefit all equally in that society? [Read more…]
Byron Clark
The recent Australian census revealed that 483,000 New Zealanders are currently living in Australia. 130,000 of them are Maori. The figures have provoked some coverage in the media, including a number of articles quoting William Bourke, the founder and director of the Stable Population Party, which wants an end to the Trans-Tasman Travel agreement that allows New Zealanders to live and work in Australia. The party, with a level of support that sees it lumped in the ‘others’ statistic in polls, represents the most reactionary wing of the environmental movement, those that see the problem as one of ‘too many people’. Another policy is ending parental leave for women having more than two children.
Australian recruitment firms are looking for workers in New Zealand to fill a supposed labour shortage in Western Australia. Over a thousand people have registered for a “fly in, fly out” scheme that would see New Zealanders spend five weeks in Western Australia and then two weeks back home. They would be paid in New Zealand dollars to New Zealand bank accounts. In Kaikohe, an impoverished town in the far North with a population of 4100, one in every six people have signed up to work in Australian mines. 2499 people in and around Kaikohe are receiving an unemployment benefit, so earning prospects of NZ$127,000 to NZ$180,000pa are a huge draw card.
Salaries are well in excess of even what a skilled miner would earn locally, NZ$85,000 and NZ$90,000pa. The work is not easy though- Twelve-hour days, seven days a week in 40 to 50 degree Celsius heat in the middle of the dusty outback. This is the definition of the Australian expression “hard yakka”. Hamilton builder Tim Bennett, 24, who went to work in Western Australia to pay off debt working in exploration drilling told TVNZ that the lifestyle was “miserable”.
“We were lucky if we got to stay in a caravan park. Sometimes it was just tents and a caravan out in the desert.” [Read more…]
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