Socialist media project based in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia
The Spark December 2010 – January 2011
Joel Cosgrove (Wellington Workers Party branch organiser and former president of Victoria University Students’ Association).
The Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill is making its way through parliament to make student union membership voluntary. Most people will be totally unaware of the bill and what it means, and may be thinking, “Anyway Freedom of Association is a good thing, isn’t it?” [Read more…]
All the registered parties got the following email a few weeks ago:
Dear Parties,
I am an 18 year old female. I would really like to be interested in politics, but I don’t know anything about it! I graduated high school 1 year ago, and for a few years political representitives have making sure I am enrolled to vote for the coming election. However no party has ever come forward to us to explain how everything works. I don’t know anyone my age who has a reasonable knowledge about politics. Probably, in the 2011 general election, most of my classmates will be making uninformed desicions about their choice of vote.I understand that I can read your views on most of your websites but none of this makes any sense to me- there needs to some kind of 101 handbook ‘for dummies’ about what you are offering.
On Facebook, there is a tab on your profile called “Political Views”. All of my friends have things like “boring”, “what?!” or “none” written as theirs. You should be concerned!
Please explain!
Here’s what Jason Froch, a Workers Party member replied to her:
Many thanks,
I’m actually rather delighted by your e-mail, it’s good to know that I’m not alone. I too have problems trying to make sense of that parliamentary sideshow that consists of bourgeois politics.
In 2008 we had before us:
v An economic system which requires continued and rising levels of unemployment
v State legislation that ensures the continuing fall of real wages derived from work, already down 25% since 1982.
v A predatory war in Afghanistan where New Zealand soldiers assist in the slaughter of civilians, all to assure US military and economic interests
v The continuation of an exploitative relationship with environment which will see a number of pacific islands underwater in the near future and cause massive social costs
v Violence against women who are often unable to leave their abusers because of an inability to support themselves and their children
v The spread of third-world diseases in our communities because of inadequate housing and an inability to afford a doctor visit
v Not to mention disproportionate magnification of all the above if you happen to be born Maori, Pacific Islander, or are an immigrant
And yet this reality did not connect with those politicians whose happy smiles asked to be our representatives once again in 2008 (the only difference between them being marginal differences in the rate of tax cuts—43% of which have gone to the top 12% of taxpayers). [Read more…]
Every year it’s the same – a fucking big pain
For no personal gain, giving millions of things away
It gives me the blues – squeezing down dirty flues
An obese old guy shouldn’t have to be slaving this way
So – thank god for the atheists
The muslims and buddists
The jews and the communists
Who don’t do Christmas day
Its only those Christian pricks
Who’re making me tired and sick
I just wish I could run over all the bastards with me sleigh
Me yard’s full of reindeer shit
And me helpers don’t help a bit
they’ve joined Unite and want fifteen dollars an hour
and now there’s a carbon tax
on me sooty old chimney daks
and global warming is softening up me pole
So – thank god for the atheists
The muslims and buddists
The jews and the communists
Who don’t do Christmas day
Its only those Christian pricks
Who’re making me tired and sick
I just wish I could run over all the bastards with me sleigh.
Don Franks
The Spark December 2010 – January 2011
In Nepal and India, the people are rising up in revolution. Millions of people are arguing, marching in the streets and burning down police stations as they struggle to imagine and bring into existence a whole new world.
Nepal is a country where the government has almost no power. The working people of the cities and the poor peasants of the countryside have lost faith in the ability of the state to meet their needs – they have realised that the purpose of the state, its soldiers and its police, is to actively prevent their needs from being met. They have realised that the state is an enormous weapon created by a rich, parasitical elite which lives by exploiting and oppressing ordinary people.
The people of Nepal, having come to this conclusion, have decided they need to destroy the state and the ruling elite that hides behind it. They have built a radical movement for freedom and equality, and they have organised it into a powerful force – the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The UCPN (M) is the strongest political party in the country, and it is fighting to build a new Nepal where everyone is equal and where starvation, poverty and discrimination become things of the past. The Maoists won by far the largest vote in elections in 2008, and they have overwhelming mass support.
Revolution at a crossroads
The Maoist party has just concluded a very important meeting. In an area of Nepal called Gorkha, 6000 revolutionary delegates travelled to represent the millions of poor people who have put their hopes in the Maoist party. They came to discuss a question – has the time come to rise up and finish the war? Is now the time for us to bring down the government, dismantle the state and build something better in its place? [Read more…]
The Spark December 2010 – January 2011
Mike Kay, an editor of The Spark, caught up with Mike Treen, National Director of Unite just after its first national delegates conference on 25-26 November, which was followed by a one day political conference.
The Spark: This was the first national Unite conference. Why did you decide to take that step now?
MT: From our point of view it’s a bit of a coming of age of Unite. The Auckland project was started 5-6 years ago based on the transformation of an already existing union with a small membership of 100-200 members, a place where, on a voluntary basis, some union officials were giving support to workers who were unable to get representation through traditional union structures. The structure of that organisation no longer fits Unite today. We now have 8000 financial members, broad industry representation and membership engagement and involvement is through the delegates. Given the character of the industries we work in, with a high turnover, we depend all the more on the delegates for communication, mobilisation and so on. We were unsuccessful in general membership meetings, except for a few workplaces. So the most democratic aspect of membership input is through the delegates, so we decided to base the democratic decision-making structure through a national delegates conference, and even, ambitiously, to project doing that every year. [Read more…]
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