Kiwiblog

The Herald reports:

They entered the hotel shouting slogans against the Government’s changes, which include making it easier to fire workers, extending the 90-day trial for new staff and tightening union access to workplaces.

Despite protesters repeatedly charging the police line, shift commander Wayne Kitcher said there were no arrests or injuries to officers.

Politicians including Prime Minister John Key were actually next door at the convention centre but Unite union general secretary Matt McCarten said he was pleased with the 300-strong turnout.

Matt needs to visit Sky City more often. The convention centre is not the same as the hotel.

Incidentally while I am a total supporter of the right to peacefully protest – charging Police lines is not a peaceful protest.  It is by definition a violent protest.

I’m not sure what they have in the walls, but in the convention centre one couldn’t hear any noise at all from outside. When the conference finished at midday or so, the only protester there was a men’s rights nutter (I understand he has been in court over possessing a knife in an MPs office).

“I think today was a declaration of war by John Key – a lot of workers voted for him because they thought he was moderate and would do what was best for the country. Well, the mask has come off.”

Umm these changes are incredibly moderate. They were mainly in the 2008 election manifesto.

Former Green MP Sue Bradford was one who broke through security with about 40 protesters. She said she had been “belted in the face” by police.

“I’m sure I will end up with a few bruises.”

You physically charge at the Police (which is actually an assault) and complain that they do their job and stop you getting through.

Sue should just be glad that the Police were not allowed to use tasers!

Wellington is not all urban markets and fine dining though it is certainly heading in the right direction.  There are number of natural hazards here including the umbrella-shredding wind, a saturation of Wishbone stores and constant protest marches.  I bumped into one of the latter today. 

It wasn’t a big protest – maybe fifty people – and was led by a man I had thoroughly believed would be in Parliament by now, Mr Andrew Little.   Judging by the placards and the chanting, some EPMU members were very unhappy with Telecom and were loudly comparing the company to a number of bodily waste products.

The protest may have been small but Mr Andrew Little’s considerable organisational skills were certainly in evidence.  There were a number of professionally designed EPMU banners being waved and most of the protesters had hand-written signs – albeit all in the same handwriting. 

More media (1) were visible than Police (0).  When the solitary photographer got ahead of the pack to take some front-on snaps, the marchers made sure to form two solid lines eight abreast at the front so that their group would appear much larger in any pictures.  Once past those bristling front rows, the protestors walked more casually in twos or threes, many discussing the weekend’s sports results.  It resembled some form of snake with a giant, puffed up head obscuring a thin, frail body.

It’s a political cliché to say that protests in New Zealand are not what they used to be but that does not mean its not true.  I still recall the marches on Parliament in the 1990s by 1,000 Police and then 1,000 fire fighters thanks to the unique Ministerial skills of Jack Elder.  These were hugely impressive protests though in retrospect I wonder who, if anyone, was policing them.

Conversely, a few weeks after the Police and Fire Service protests, students from Victoria University marched through town.  From a pub, we generously estimated perhaps three hundred souls, several of whom have now beaten Mr Andrew Little into Parliament.  The local newspaper optimistically reported 500.  Encouraged, the Victoria student association immediately claimed there had been 1,000.  Not to be outdone, the national student association put out a press release stating there were 2,000 students on the march. 

I guess the other 1,700 or so must have either popped into the pub before ours or joined the march by car at the very last minute.  Don’t laugh – that is exactly what happened on the Hikoi…

First we have some nice photos from the Auckland protest, equating Israel with Nazi Germany.

Oh a nice professional sign comparing Israel’s response to 10,000 rockets to Nazi death camps where Jews were gassed, and their possessions looted.

While this protester gets marks for his home made sign.

Ironically I suspect that if WWII was occuring today, they would be demanding Churchill be placed on trial, for an unacceptably high civilian death toll in Germany.

Anyway once again I am pleased to quote Chris Trotter. Chris explains why so many on the left support liberation movements:

A fairly substantial chunk of the New Zealand Left would echo Keith’s view. In part this is because a great many leftists see Israel as the primary instrument of “US imperialism” in the Middle East – making the Palestinian cause one of the World’s last great unresolved struggles for national liberation.

For leftists of Keith’s generation, people who came of age in the early-1960s, when the empires of the European powers were being challenged by a multitude of national liberation movements, the anti-colonial struggle was something to be supported wholeheartedly and unequivocally.

Even more exciting for these young leftists was the fact that most liberation movements espoused some variant of the socialist ideology, and many enjoyed the backing (overt or covert) of the Soviet Union and/or the Peoples Republic of China.

National liberation struggles and the socialist revolution seemed inextricably linked.

Hamas is anything but secular and quasi-socialist, and its dedication to the elimination not only of Israel, but of the entire Jewish people, is unequivocal. In the words of its own charter:

“The Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree.”

The last time people talked about the Jews in this way, they were wearing brown shirts and jackboots. And the fate they had planned for the Jewish people gave new meaning to the word “disproportionate”.

Which is why I find it so hard to respond with any degree of positivity to Keith Locke’s call for New Zealand to stand up and be counted among the outspoken opponents of what is happening in Gaza.

Were Hamas a secular and socialist organisation dedicated to the creation of a secular and socialist state of Palestine: a state where all those with an historical and/or religious attachment to the Holy Land; Jews and Arabs, the followers of Judaism, Islam and Christianity – all the people of the Book – could live together in peace and harmony; well, then I might feel differently.

But it isn’t.

There was twit-nit Catholic priest Gerard Burns daubing his blood over a peace monument, bizarro MP Keith Locke accusing Israel of war crimes, and sundry radio commentators giving full voice to anti-Semitic outrage.

All followed a simple maxim, straight out of Animal Farm: Israel wrong, Palestinians right.

Indeed.

Almost without exception, liberals accept that the Israelis are the baddies. They are the ones with the fighter planes, helicopter gunships and tanks tearing through the ghettoes of Gaza. As John Minto opined this past week they are the primary aggressor. Ipso facto, they are morally inferior.

The truth is considerably different. The Gaza Strip is a territory controlled by an Islamic fundamentalist faction that has sworn to wipe Israel from the planet. It has been doing its best by launching rockets at Jewish settlements, arming and directing suicide bombers, and ending the uneasy ceasefire.

Yep, they are delighted that they finally got Israel to respond.

The only problem is that Hamas are not freedom fighters. In fact, they are not even sane. They are religious fanatics. Fundamentalist nutters armed with guns, rocket-propelled grenades and rockets. Their idea of a Palestinian state is one that eradicates Israel. They emerged victors after a bloody civil war with the Fatah party in 2006 killing plenty of innocent civilians themselves and now consider that Hamas is the frontline in the fight against the infidel.

Yet these are the people that Minto, the Greens, the Catholic fringe and Kiwi liberals seek to embrace.

The UN has got it right (this time). They have called for both sides to stop fighting. But the Greens and Minto want Israel to unilaterally stop, and nothing to be done about the rocket attacks from Hamas.

This is not to suggest that Israeli actions over these past 60 years meet any antipodean morality test either. There have been inhumane actions and outrageous abuses. But not this time: not in Gaza in 2009. Israel is responding as any nation would were it under continual military harassment.

This is quite right. Israel bashers can’t tell the difference between the times when their actions have been outrageous, and legitimately responding to Hamas and their rocket attacks.

The death of innocents in Gaza is regrettable it is sad and it is wrong. But all the more so for being orchestrated by Hamas, in pursuit of their despicable ends.

And this could all end is Hamas will agree to cease the rocket attacks.

The Herald reports on an anti-EFA protest march in Auckland. Helen shows her empathy:

But Prime Minister Helen Clark dismissed yesterday’s march, saying: “The problem with silent protests is that no one listens to them.”

The issue is that Helen didn’t listen to anyone at all in ramming this through.

March co-organiser Jim Bagnall estimated about 500 people marched from the Auckland Town Hall to QE Square at the bottom of Queen St where Auckland University law lecturer Bill Hodge spoke.

“Essentially what the act will deny voters is the freedom to be informed, so that they vote intelligently,” Dr Hodge told the protesters.

This is a very key point. They have deliberately set the spending limits so low that the effect is to actually deny candidates and third parties the ability to effectively communicate.

“The law is just bad legislation, and I feel Dr [Michael] Cullen has failed in his role as Attorney-General and should not continue in that office.”

Dr Hodge, a constitutional law expert who had not participated in any protests in Queen St since 1977, said he felt compelled to this time because he didn’t want New Zealand to have elections that were won in court rather than the ballot box – like American President George W. Bush did in his victory over Al Gore in 2000.

It is worth recalling that Dr Cullen told Parliament that the original EFB (the one which would have regulated people who took a position on any issue a party had a position on) was not a breach of the Bill of Rights. It defied both common sense and the opinion of almost every lawyer in NZ.

Protester Ramesh Kunagaran, an immigrant from Malaysia, said waking up to the news that the Malaysian Government had had its worst result since independence at the country’s general elections last Saturday made him come to the march.

“I am a Labour supporter and I am worried that if they do not repeal this law, it could be the single issue that would bring them down,” he said.

“I come from a country where free speech and even the media are controlled, and I don’t want the same thing to happen in my new country – and from the Malaysian election results, I hope Labour can see that gagging is not the way to win elections.”

Clark still thinks that opposition to the EFA is just from the right, when in fact it has been condemned and opposed by people from all over the spectrum.

The protest march was organiser John Boscawen’s fifth against the legislation, but his first since it took effect on January 1.

“Free speech is an issue that concerns all New Zealanders and the Electoral Finance Act is a profound betrayal of trust by the people whom we have voted to represent us,” he said. “I intend to continue protesting throughout this year until such time as the act is repealed.”

John has devoted an amazing amount of his time to this issue, and it is great to see he is going to carry on.  It is no coincidence that the massive gap in the polls has happened since the public started to be informed about the EFB and now EFA.
Personally I would have rather the EFB had been defeated, even if it meant the gap in the polls was less.  The main reason for that is the damage to the constitution conventions of having had such a major electoral change pushed through without even an attempt at bipartisan consultation.  It is one of those genies that when is let out, is very hard to get back in.

Above is a shrunken version of the ad (pdf) by John Boscawen for a march in Auckland on Sunday (gather Queen Street at 2pm) to continue the protest over the Electoral Finance Act.

It is important to keep up activities like this to keep the Act in the news.  In the first two months of the year there has been a plethora of negative stories about the Act. And the Owen Glenn affair would have had far less potency if it were not for the hypocrisy of Labour and NZ First contrasting their rhetoric with the EFA with their actions.

And again on the hypocrisy, yesterday Bill English revealed that Labour has been breaking its own Act, by listing a work address instead of a home address on their campaign material. The Greens have also broken this aspect of the law with their “Date Green” t-shirts.  I previously blogged on this issue of needing home address of financial agents for parties. Labour’s response to this problem was to scoff – and now it appears they are breaching it themselves.