MANA Leader Hone Harawira
1st March 2012
“I think it’s time we had a cuppa tea with Len” said MANA leader Hone Harawira who is proposing that party leaders who
have expressed their support for workers involved in the Auckland Waterfront dispute, get together and go and see
Auckland Mayor Len Brown.
“I’d like David Shearer, Metiria Turei, Russel Norman and Winston Peters, as the respective leaders of their political
parties, to come along with me to let Mayor Brown know just how we feel about what’s happening down at the Ports of
Auckland.”
“Len’s the mayor so he has a big influence on decisions down at the Ports”.
“He should be telling people that when times are tough, double-dipping directors and overpaid CEO’s shouldn’t be trying
to force their workers to accept working conditions that they wouldn’t accept themselves”.
Harawira said that workers were being asked to accept a regime where they would be told by phone whether or not they had
work every day.
“How can a man with a mortgage to pay, cupboards to fill, and children to clothe, live with that kind of insecurity?”
“Len needs to tell the Board that Auckland is a thriving and wonderful city that values good workers and that he won’t
stand by and watch a highly qualified workforce jump a plane to Australia so private investors can make a bucketload of
money in Auckland”.
“ACT appointed the Board to fast-track their privatisation agenda, but Len actually won the mayoralty as the guy who
wouldn’t be bought off by the rich brigade. He won it as the man of the people.”
“A cuppa tea and a korero might help jog his memory”.
“The workers are going through some pretty tough times right now and its important they see that we’re with them all the
way”.
ENDS