ATTENTION ALL WORKING PEOPLE
DANGER AHEAD!
Stadium and Road Tolls only the beginning!
Big Business wants a total restructure of Local Government so rates and taxes can be further loaded onto our backs
through more user charges, flat levies, etc. So corporations can make more mega-profits out of Privatised Public
Services and civic projects.
Deadline December before Parliament
drafts legislation with no Public Input
WE MUST ORGANISE TO STOP THIS NOW!
PUBLIC MEETINGS
Te Atatu Community Centre
Thursday 23 Nov 7.30pm
Te Atatu Roundabout. (Edmonton Rd)
Behind Foodtown / ASB
Sandringham Community Centre
Wed 29th Nov 7.30pm
Kitchener Rd
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Twenty years ago the Lange Labour Government
bowed to corporate pressure.
Big business was the driving force behind Rogernomics - slashing business taxes - selling off public assets for
capitalists' private profit. Introducing GST which really thumps the working class, etc, etc..
"Wealthy New Zealanders continue to race ahead, while the average wage
has decreased in real terms by 20 percent in 20 years."
- J Minto - Christchurch Press 26/7/06
Now big business is speeding up their drive to
complete the same model at local government level.
Auckland Region TARGETED !
The Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, and the Local Government Forum have singled out the Auckland region for
drastic local body "reforms" that would clobber every working class family from Franklin to Rodney.
Super City, MetroProject, Greater Ak Everything - whatever they call it, the facts show that again the corporates are at
the steering wheel.
With great speed and secrecy they expect to steamroll through road tolling and radically restructure local government -
and its funding - in the whole Auckland region. Since Oct 3, the CEOs of the seven Councils are in a think-tank with the
Labour Government, alongside 70 anonymous so-called Champions of big business, and supported by the National Opposition.
Their plans go direct to Cabinet for approval by Nov 27, and are supposed to be cemented into law before local body
elections next year.
This, linked with the current rates review, would make the future for ordinary working people even bleaker - more
user-pays, flat taxes, even poll taxes are in sight.
These anti-social measures transfer costs to the low/average majority while providing huge tax cuts for the wealthy -
who have big plans.
And the less they pay, the more they want.
Business rates and rates on high valued properties would further decrease and business differentials could be scrapped.
But our living costs, rates and rents would further increase to further subsidise private enterprise.
Privatisation (in any of its forms) of water, roads and other essential services are on the agenda and would invite
parasites to plunder our services for profit, leaving the public to clean up the mess.
IT'S TIME FOR A U-TURN !
Twenty years ago the general public hadn't yet experienced the full implications of the new right agenda. The Lange
Government was able to plow ahead by adopting a Œblitzkrieg' strategy. They moved so rapidly on such a wide front any
chances of organised resistance were extremely limited. Roger Douglas later boasted about these methods and personally
sold them around the world.
Not so this time! We're not possums caught in the headlights of this upcoming disaster. We're awake to a phoney crisis
like the Rugby World Cup 2011. It's obvious that this local government restructuring is a blueprint for even greater
exploitation of working people, less democracy, and more power and influence, more cheaply, for big business. And a
prototype for the whole of New Zealand.
Un-elected so-called business leaders may be appointed to run our city. Again, working class families would be the
losers.
WE CANNOT ALLOW BIG BUSINESS TO RUN
RAMPANT OVER OUR LIVES .
WE CAN ORGANISE TO RESIST !
Demand our respective Councils oppose these joint Govt/Councils plans before they are submitted in December.
Only public pressure can make this happen !
A phoney crisis always precedes market "reform". This time the Rugby World Cup Is being used as a smoke screen, a red
herring, an excuse for an extended corporate agenda regionally and nationwide. But it reveals the method the government
uses to serve big business - treating the proposed stadium as a panic situation and bustling the pubic into a spurious
exercise of "choices".
Meanwhile, the public are being kept in the dark about the deeper agenda while Government is clearly in breach of Local
Government Act requirements for formal consultation before major strategic changes are implemented.
Is Labour sucking up to big business in a pathetic attempt at
re-election? Working people will once again be the sacrificial lambs.
These proposals will mean less democracy and more power and influence for big business. Make no mistake corporate
interests are driving this agenda.
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Citizens Against Privatisation calls on all those who are ready and able to oppose this latest outrage to get organised.
We are holding public meetings and house forums in all areas of the region to build a movement against these local
government "reforms".
Get involved - contact us! Organise a section of CAP in your area now. We can help get you started. Citizens Against
Privatisation (CAP) is a non-hierarchical citizens' democratic movement and is not affiliated to any political party.
ENDS