ANZ wins Roger Award
ANZ WINS
RIO TINTO ALUMINIUM NZ LTD 2ND; TELECOM THIRD
AUCKLAND CITY COUNCIL & ITS OFFICIALS WINNER OF ACCOMPLICE AWARD
Finalists: ANZ, BNZ, Infratil, Newmont, Rio Tinto Aluminium NZ, Rymans, Telecom, Transpacific and Westpac. There were two finalists for the Accomplice Award – the Business Round Table, and the Auckland City Council and its officials (as part of the nomination of Transpacific Industries).
Criteria: the transnational (a corporation which is 25% or more foreign-owned) which is worst in each or all of the following: Economic Dominance - Monopoly, profiteering, tax dodging, cultural imperialism. People - Unemployment, impact on tangata whenua, women, children, abuse of workers/conditions, health and safety of workers and the public, cultural imperialism. Environment - Environmental damage, abuse of animals. Political interference - Cultural imperialism, running an ideological crusade.
Judges: Paul Corliss, from Christchurch, a life member of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union; Christine Dann, from Banks Peninsula, a writer and researcher; Bryan Gould, from Bay of Plenty, a former Waikato University Vice-Chancellor; Joce Jesson, a Senior Lecturer in Critical Studies in Education, University of Auckland and an activist in various community organisations; and Wayne Hope, Associate Professor, Communications Studies, Auckland University of Technology.
The winner was announced at an event in Wellington on March 11th.
The Judges’ Statement says that they had a tough time picking one out of the three banks which made the finalists but that: “ANZ has succeeded in winning the 2009 Roger Award because the ING funds fiasco is simply and plainly ‘pure greed capitalism’ at its worst”. The Financial Analysis of ANZ adds: “If the ING frozen funds fiasco tells us nothing else, it should tell us loud and clear that the days of regarding bankers as trusted advisers are over”.
Rio Tinto Aluminium was runner up (for the second year running) because of its “blithe disregard of the environment and its massive carbon dioxide emissions” (among other reasons) and Telecom, a finalist for every single year of the Roger Award, was third because it “really excelled itself in providing poor service and treating its customers like rubbish” (among other reasons). Auckland City Council and its officials won the Accomplice Award for “helping to contract out Auckland’s waste management to Transpacific and therefore acting as a template for future transference of public assets into private hands”.
The full Judges’ Report is available at www.cafca.org.nz, follow the Roger Award links from the Homepage.
Murray Horton
CAFCA
Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa
Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand
Comments
song
The Cafaca folks asked if I'd come along and do a song for this occasion. It came out like this...
Do like Jesus done
Here we all sit one more time – shafted by the ANZ
Stealing away our futures while we work til we’re dead
Now Sexy John won’t save us – and nor will Biker Phil
Or any other capitalist prick asleep up on that hill
But folks -if we don’t do more than cry into our beer
Our great great great grand children will
still be awarding bastards here
Its up to us to find a way – to spoil the banker’s fun
And the one that makes most sense to me
Is to do like Jesus done
---------------------
He bust straight through security and kicked the tables high
Those speculating bankers could only run and cry
There was no negotiation, no maybes, please or thanks
When Jesus took the workers side
And turned over the banks
______________
Of course there was a price to pay – because then, just as now
The banks were for the ruling class – a very sacred cow
after a scab betrayed him – the cops took Jesus down
and strung him from a macrocarpa – half a mile from town
JC made one big error – he waged his fight alone
Without sufficient back up after he cast the first stone
Just twelve guys in his union – and one of them went sour
It would have been a miracle – if they could have won state power
But anyway, good on him – at least he had a crack
And don’t it make good history – for us now looking back!
Chorus
Well, anyway, so here we are two thousand years on
With banks still in the box seat- and Christians mostly gone
Philosophers just take the shit and deftly rearrange it
The point about this unfair world is that we need to change it
We still can learn from Jesus – direct action’s half the way
The other half is getting up the numbers on the day
So why not lets get positive- get out and spread the word
The capitalist system is dated and absurd
Lets organise resistance while we’re still in the mood
We can make a revolution – with Jesus’s attitude.
Chorus
Nice song!
Nice song!
Yeah someone said to me last
Yeah someone said to me last week they had won it, thought it would be the whole ING fiasco, that was a shocker...