Pay It Back, George! Close Waihopai Spybase And Give NZ Taxpayers A Decent Refund

The Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) will be holding a weekend of protest at the Waihopai spybase, from January 19-21. For details of both the protest and the spybase itself, please click on this Link to our Website: http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/Waihop42.html

Waihopai is New Zealand’s most important contribution to all American wars, including the current bloodsoaked disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The protest will have two themes. Firstly, the cost of war, namely how Waihopai, which is an American spybase in all but name, leaves New Zealanders with blood on our hands and our global reputation sullied.

Secondly, as 2007 marks 20 years since Waihopai was announced, the protest will highlight the straight economic cost to New Zealand taxpayers of this never ending waste of money. Waihopai is operated by the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), the country’s biggest Intelligence agency. The GCSB’s annual budget is currently around $40 million, not a sum to be sneezed at.

The cost to the taxpayer becomes even more eye watering when you realise that the accumulated amount spent on Waihopai and the GCSB in the 20 years since the spybase was announced amount to many hundreds of millions of dollars. And what has the New Zealand taxpayer got to show for it? Well, of course, the Government can’t tell us that, because it’s secret. What a convenient cover up for an ongoing and escalating criminal waste of money.

ABC says that not only is Waihopai a white elephant, it’s got the big white balls to prove it!

“Pay it back” is the current rallying cry in Wellington and tax cuts are the hot topic. What better way to save a decent chunk of the taxpayers’ hard earned money than by closing down this spybase, which is a cost to New Zealand in every sense (political, moral and economic), and abolishing the agency which runs it.

As Waihopai is an American spybase in all but name and the GCSB outsourced cheap labour contractors for American Intelligence, then it’s only appropriate that the US should refund NZ the money that has been wasted on it and them for the past 20 years. So, pay it back, George, several hundred million bucks will come in bloody handy. The Government has got much better things to spend it on. Several thousand sick people bumped off hospital waiting lists to cut costs would be better off for a start. And let’s call it for what it is – war reparations.

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