Press Release June 12th
 

Happy Jacks “consultative forum”
 

John Key had a “consultative forum” in Christchurch on Wednesday evening.

It was neither consultative nor a forum. Key sought no information and no advice from the audience, and there was no public discussion. That would be the hallmark of a genuine consultative forum. Besides, what kind of consultative forum charges admittance!

Prepared questions were put by a very few carefully selected representatives of the ruling élite and filtered by the Editor of the Press who chaired the farce.

No representatives of ordinary working people – those on the sharp end of capitalism’s latest skewer – were invited to ask questions, and precious few were in the audience, which seemed mostly to consist of Fendaltons and Merivales.

But not all, thankfully. Members of the Workers Rights Campaign – moved by officious functionaries from the outside shelter of the Town Hall to the footpath – were pleased at the number of attendees who signed the Unite petition to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour and index it.

Signers included several prominent local citizens. Gerry Brownlee, in at least one respect the most prominent, refused. To no-one's surprise. He isn’t on the minimum wage after all.

The freedom of speech exercised by WRC members outside the hall was in stark contrast the limitation on it inside. The only way they could inform or advise – consult, that is - was to unfurl a banner which read:

We won’t pay for the failure of their system

Workers Rights Campaign

After a brief struggle over their banner, they were evicted from the hall and issued with a three year trespass order from the Town Hall premises by the police – who claimed they had been given that authority in advance by the City Council. The police also recorded their names, addresses and places of employment. And, together with their colleagues who had been obtaining signatures outside the premises, police took their photographs.

The WRC will continue publicly to identify the inherent instability of the capitalist system. Every time it has one of its periodic crises it makes the most vulnerable pay. Its immoral basis of greed, its frequent wars over resources, its cultural degeneration and its environmental despoliation indicate that it is a profoundly corrupt system for any society with pretentions to be civilised.

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