A ‘liveable’ Auckland?

Auckland Sky City Casino Capitalism

Much hot air has been generated by the promoters of Auckland City as a ‘liveable’ global city. But hot air cannot disguise the reality that the working class has always paid for the city which exists only to serve the interests of the capitalist class. ‘Liveable’ ultimately means living standards. The truth is that its population only ‘lives’ in the city to exploit or be exploited.

Fred Engels wrote about how capitalist cities worked nearly two centuries ago. Industry is concentrated along with finance and services in urban areas to maximise profits. Workers are housed in the cheapest housing, transported the shortest distances, and worked for the longest hours under the most exploitative conditions to serve profits. Everything else is bullshit.

Democratic reforms, local body elections, City ‘visions’, public consultation on planning, and so on, are a cheap veneer pasted over the bottom line of accumulating profits. They are no more than the pretence that urban living is has more ‘human’ value than that of labour creating value for capitalists. Even leisure activities in parks, playgrounds, beaches and art galleries, are no more than the replenishment of workers physical and mental capacity to produce profits. Auckland is no exception.

From its founding by British settlers in the 1840s Auckland was constructed around the port, cheap housing for workers in the valleys and colonial mansions for the rich on the hills, and public transportation between home and work. Later as NZ capitalism developed, Auckland reflected these changes and went through several distinct stages, as the national economy went from a colony in the 19th century, through the period of economic nationalism from the mid 30s to 1980s, to the open, deregulated re-colonised semi-colonial neo-liberal Super City of today.

What distinguishes the Super City from its earlier forms is SkyCity.com. The Super City concentrates city government in one big bureaucracy to rule over the people on behalf of Sky City the high point of Casino capitalism. Auckland gambles its future on the speculative bubbles of property, banking and the stock market parasitic on the production of value.

Today, Auckland is ‘liveable’ for the parasitic ruling class and the middle class that services it, and increasingly ‘unliveable’ for the exploited, taxed, tolled and otherwise oppressed working class. The fate of Auckland cannot be separated from the crisis-ridden global economy. It will be ruined by the plunder of Casino Capital, or it will be re-invented by the power of the working class to expropriate Capital and plan Auckland to meet the needs of the proletariat.

Auckland Supercity fight is class war

John Banks, prospective NACT- backed candidate for mayor of Auckland Supercity with his NACT mate, Prime Minister, bankster John Key.


NACT government forcing workers to pay for their big profits

The NACTs [National Party and ACT party - with Maori party in tow] are using the election for the Supercity Council as a test bed for their agenda to make the workers pay for their crisis in the 2011 General Election. The new unified Supercity will have around half the population in NZ so it is the dynamo around which the whole country spins. The bosses want to win over Auckland as a step to winning over the whole country to their new right 'austerity' agenda.

This so-called 'austerity' means that workers suffer a cut in their living standards so that the bosses can improve theirs. It is a gigantic redistribution of income from poor to rich on top of the fact that workers ultimately create all of the nation's wealth.

The global capitalist crisis has hit the profits of the business class hard, and the capitalists want workers to bail them out by working harder in worse conditions. Not only does their system fail as the big banks go bust but they prove that they also control the state in forcing the state bailouts to rescue big business. All of this puts the cost of the bosses' crisis on to the backs of workers for as long as they are prepared to put up with it.

The NACT Government  has already introduced a number of austerity measures including cuts in employer contribution to Kiwisaver, introduction of legal temporary work, keeping the minimum wage and wages in general below the rate of inflation, tax cuts to the rich and GST (consumption tax) rises for the poor etc. Accompanying the tax cuts for the bosses is cuts in funding for the welfare state including caps on health and education spending. This will turn public health and public education into the private perks of the rich. This will mean a cut in living standards to most workers and a further widening of the income gap.

Privatising social welfare

The NACTs plan to go down to the next level such as cutting benefits and driving beneficiaries into shitty jobs to force down wages further. Invalids will be redefined as sick or preferably workshy and work tested to force them to take these shitty jobs. Solo parents will have to look for part-time work when their youngest child reaches the age of six years.

The Minister of Social Development has said she wants to privatise welfare by making workers set up their own social insurance schemes. She says that work is good for beneficiaries health.  Perhaps she has rediscovered that work makes you free. She has created a task force to cut welfare which includes rightwingnuts and private contractors to welfare services. We can see where this is headed with the funding of Whanau Ora to farm out welfare services for Maori to private contractors, and the $5 million contracted to the Pacific Economic Development Agency run by National Party cronies.

This will kill two birds with one stone, getting people to work for less pay and less benefits, and creating new profits for NACTs contract provider mates. Cuts in social welfare will mean workers facing poverty and misery and increased sickness as spending cuts in health services leading to early deaths and less of a drain on the bosses' profits. Health Boards are already closing important services like youth psychiatric care to balance their budgets, and those denied access to ACC couselling for sexual abuse are driven to suicide.

All of this is 'austerity' to balance the budget is dressed up as the fight against welfare 'dependency' and dole bludging. The working class is being divided into a supposed 'undeserving underclass' that lives off the taxes of hard working 'deserving' kiwis. The bosses hope that if we fight among ourselves to scramble out of the junk heap we will not notice that they are real welfare dependents.

Bosses the biggest bludgers

If we look harder we don't see an 'underclass' living it up on its welfare 'entitlements', we see an 'overclass' living it up on its 'entitlement' to expenses and profits in blind trusts flowing from NACT policies. What is more all of business profits come from the labour of the working class in the first place. This fact never seems to enter into the bosses calculations because to admit it would be to identify themselves are the real bludgers on the nation.

This is what this charade about the underclass is all about. It tries to hide the fact that the corporate welfare cheats are laughing all the way to the bank with their millions. John Key the NZ Prime Minister is a classic case. A multimillionaire from illgained earnings from currency speculation. An investor in dairying, winemaking, mining, property development, and formerly Tranz Rail. He and his business mates run the NACTs in the interest of making more profits from public asset grabs and insider trading. Meanwhile the sideshow of Benie bashing is designed to force them into shitty work to lower labour costs and encourage profitable investment in 'new jobs' and 'economic growth' in the 'national interest' of the NACTs.

In what 'national interest' you might ask? Well there's plenty of scope. Just ask the NACT PM and cabinet ministers who all seem to have blind trusts in potential pots of gold in them there Conservation estates, Canterbury water, agriculture and horticulture, not to mention property deals and ministerial expense rorts. For example, Key, Creech, Carter and the like all have interests in Canterbury dairying and are like a new squatter class grabbing water rights and polluting the drinking water of Canterbury workers, while PM Key fatuously brags about his JK brand of wine.

Push to Privatise

Like the NACTs abolition of the democratically elected Canterbury Regional Council to allow the thousands of dairy farmers to squat on scarce water rights, the new Auckland Supercity will open the way to grab its public resources and distribute them to the parasitic cabinet ministers and their mates in big business and property development.

NACTs plans to privatise the remaining state assets in this country, starting with Auckland assets, all $28 Billion of water, transport, port, Airport etc that remain in public hands. While the NACTs claim to be putting off privatisation until a second term after the 2011 election, they are already signing up private corporations to run Auckland water for 35 years and talking of private sharholding in Kiwi Bank and SEOs like Energy.

They say this will allow the 'mums and dads' to invest in public assets and so put demands on the management to be more efficient and so make more profits in order to pay good dividends. The same thinking underlies the deal on the Foreshore and Seabed that will allow Iwi Corporations to launch business ventures in the name of 'customary ownership'. The NACTS say this has just got to be good for NZ. Well, yes, NZ Inc owned and controlled by big business.

But in reality opening up shares in SEOs or contracting out provision of state funded services is just the Trojan horse approach to a wholesale sell-off of public assets to international bankers and pension funds or Multinational providers who already own and control most of the former public assets.

Unlike Rogernomics of the 1980s and 1990s however, when the working class was caught out by a Labour Government rushing through a massive privatisation agenda, this time round workers are less gullible. The NACTs arrogance in openly ripping off these assets has already drawn big protests over the theft of Auckland, mining and water rights.

Working people must mobilise and dump NACT

Working people have to put up a huge fight to stop NACT from winning the Supercity and easing their way to a 2011 election victory. But to do this we have to know what is at stake and why a class war is the only solution.

Its easy to see how the NACTs are lining up to grab Auckland. John Banks heads a list of rightwing NACT candidates for the new Council. The left is as yet not putting up a serious fight. Len Brown has come out in opposition to the sale of public assets but only because there has been no referendum on the sales. But even this poses a threat to a NACT victory, so the dirty tricks brigade is in full swing to destroy Len Brown. That is not helped by Len Brown's naivety and his weak campaign organisers.


Brown's campaign is pissweak. The polls since the 1980s have shown that the majority of NZers, most of whom work for a living, do not want further asset sales. In fact they opposed the earlier sales and would probably favour re-nationalisation. The polls also show that a majority are angry at the theft of Auckland.

Brown needs to have the courage to stand on this popular discontent over assets and the huge resentment that the NACTs are taking over Auckland in an anti-democratic coup.

Unfortunately Brown's weakness is a reflection of the compromised Labour Party that got defeated at the last election because it had forgotten its South and West Auckland working class heartland. They didnt vote for Key, they stayed home.

Working class campaign to win the Supercity

Brown will not win the Supercity unless the working class fighters in the Labour ranks, in particular the unions,  take over the campaign and rally these working class stalwarts behind a fighting campaign for democracy and public ownership and control of Auckland assets.

The working class majority in Auckland need to rally around a strong left campaign to defeat the NACTs and the profiteers and banksters who run this  government.

They need a working class agenda. Not only opposition to all public asset sales, but the return of all privatised assets to public ownership. The private multinational hucksters like Infratil, Veolia, etc etc need to be thrown out, and transport, energy, roading, water, etc all put under a new Regional Council to which the Community Committees elect their representatives.

These local representatives would would be elected to act on strict mandates from their voters and be thrown out if they vote against their mandates, so that the working class majority in Auckland would control the running of the city.

A victory for the working class in Auckland would provide a big boost to democracy and a platform for a strong campaign behind a revived Labour Party that openly stands for the interests of the working class.

Failing a victory in Auckland, the task of defeating the NACTs will be that much more difficult, but at least a layer of political fighters will be already mobilised to take on the NACTs and their ruling class backers.

Socialise Tamaki Makaurau (Auckland)!

The Auckland Supercity which will come into existence in October this year unites the four former urban cities of Auckland (Auckland, Waitakere, Manukau and North Shore) along with the rural Rodney and Franklin counties. It has been imposed with extreme urgency by the National-Act-Maori Party (NACTMP) government in the hope of preventing opposition to its coup from organising. Government threw out the Royal Commission report commissioned by the previous Labour Government and rushed through parliamentary legislation under urgency setting up a Transitional Agency to create the new Supercity by October this year. Auckland's services will be put under new Council Controlled Organisations that are like SEOs run from Wellington largely independent of the Auckland Council. 

The National and Act candidates for Mayor and Council in the October election have already been selected to provide the figleaf of regional democracy. Right winger John Banks is standing for Mayor and a number of National and Act members for the Citizens and Ratepayers ticket for the City Council. Against them the current Labourite Mayor of Manukau Len Brown along with a number of Labour-aligned candidates for council will stand for the centre-left City Vision. But whether left or right controls the Council it will make little difference to the Nat Act coup to privatise Auckland's assets since most of the decisions required will be taken by central Government and not Auckland city itself. The leaves no option for Aucklanders but to organise and fight this takeover of the city by the big capitalists and property speculators through mobilising working people's democratic opposition to make the plans of big capital to highjack Auckland unworkable. The toothless Community Committees must become organs of working class democracy.

The Banksters coup

The Nat-Act government’s plan for a supercity in Auckland run on the corporate snout-in-the trough governmental model ‘by business, for business’ was greeted when announced by massive protest rallies of Aucklanders outraged at the breech of all it’s legal obligations to consult the citizens and by Tangata Whenua angered by the lack of provision for Iwi representation. Undeterred by demonstrations bigger than any seen in Auckland for many years, the government has revealed its true intentions by appointing to the unelected Auckland Transitional Agency such corporate hitmen as Graham Wood. Wood is an ex-managing director of United Water South Australia, now being taken to court by the SA government for enlisting accounting multinational Price Waterhouse Coopers to misrepresent its profits in order to justify its inflated water prices. This corporate ‘citizen’ is now trusted with ‘integration of Auckland regional water services.’

The corporates are lining up to screw big profits out of working class Aucklanders. United Water (Papakura) is owned by Veolia, which as well as monopolising Auckland’s passenger rail services happens to be the world’s largest water multinational and has as such been siphoning the water rates of Papakura residents since 1997. The capitalist Veolia has built-in legal protection in its contract with Papakura council against its water services operation being taken back into council ownership. It is the only private owned water service in Auckland.

The scenario is being repeated in Christchurch, where the government has ridden roughshod over democratic representation, sacked the Canterbury Regional Council and appointed Margaret Bazeley to oversee the establishment of water distribution in a manner more in line with the interests of agribusiness. It was Bazeley, hatchet-for-hire, who was used to rationalise the Fire Service more than a decade ago. She sat on the last Labour government’s rates enquiry that so nonchalantly sidelined the submissions of civic minded working class citizens.

Auckland already softened up

Historically over the last few years it is easy to see the direction that the Auckland City Council hierarchy have been heading towards. It is virtually impossible to get any information from ACC over which companies have been contracted by the ACC, to carry out the various Council services, and the tendering processes involved. Since Council Services were handed over to the private sector, there hasn't been one cost benefit analysis as to the savings and benefit, if any, to the major stake holder or consumer. The massive 100% increase in rates in recent years has not only been used by the Auckland City Council (ACC) to pay for their own mistakes, such as repairing leaky homes and funding motorways etc, but has also been designed to rate people out of their homes, especially the poorer people living on larger sections, allowing the developers to move in to speculate in rising property values.  

We can safely assume that contracting out to the private sector, actually costs more since it must make a profit, as well as building and maintaining its own empire of machinery and plant. Examples of the stupidity of contracting out are plentiful. Waiheke Island's recycling system which was being successfully run by local workers, was axed, with the Auckland City Council contract going in favour of a large Australian Corporation which just ships everything out as rubbish to dump. Similarly Waitakere City Council's Tech Scape, it's own successfully operated Landscape, Parks and Gardens division, has been replaced by a large German Company. 

It is not difficult to see that we are in the midst of a large corporate grab of $28 billion public assets and privatisation of the region's services such as water, ports, transport, airports etc. This is part of a world wide trend of multinational service corporates, including NZ's Infratil which took over Auckland's Yellow Buses and has a share in Auckland International Airport. The capitalist crisis demands the working poor subsidise private owners and restore their profits, by paying increased charges for services through our rates, rents, tolls and water bills.

Case: The Metrowater rort

The Metrowater model reflects how ACC policy is now driven by what is best for the market (capitalist class). The setting up of Metrowater to separate all it's revenue gathering services from the ACC, is obviously a preparation for Metrowater's eventual privatisation. Given that there would be no cost savings in the duplication of a separate computer system, and new office space to house Metrowater. The ACC is to eventually own and have the responsibility for all storm water related infrastructure, because there is no means it can be used to gather revenue. Metrowater's eventual shareholders will not want to finance something it is unable to charge for.

This has now been entrenched by the engineering works adopted by the ACC and Metrowater, in the quest to separate it's joint network of combined sewer-stormwater pipe lines, in the Inner Auckland area. The existing combined sewer-stormwater pipes are to be re-routed from the Mangere treatment plant to Motions Creek, and become stormwater only pipes. There will be a brand new pipeline installed to take sewage and grey water to the Mangere treatment centre. Obviously it would be far cheaper to make the old existing combined line, a sewer only line without having to re-route it from Mangere, and to just install the new pipeline to go the far shorter distance to Motions Creek as the stormwater only line. But this would impact on the value which Metrowater can extract from charging for the construction and maintenance of these services separately. 

Auckland global capital city

When we view the Supercity as part of the ongoing worldwide privatisation grab of the international capitalist imperialist class and its long history of assaults on the working class and such democratic gains it has won in more than a century of struggle, we can understand why the power of the working class to stop this hijack has been weakened and appeals for a rates revolt are being made. The once-mighty union movement has long been leg-ironed by industrial legislation that criminalizes the political strikes that could smash any such antidemocratic assaults such as the Supercity as well as halt all the other current attacks on workers such as the Search and Surveillance Bill.

The Labour and left opposition to the NACTMP capitalist privatisation agenda is pathetic. With the decimation of the militant unions the Labour left has lost any fighting spirit, they are too busy avoiding offending any voter with petty capitalist delusions of getting rich. Len Brown (currently Manukau’s Mayor) doesn’t even “come out” as a Labour or left candidate. Regardless of offending a voter here or there the new council is as relevant as a soap opera. The real leaders to rule Auckland have already been picked by this bankster government.

Demand a working class platform that takes control of Auckland

• No vote for any candidates without them agreeing to a workers platform.We can select our own candidates, union members and leaders who are willing to run on a working class platform. Workers built this city, we have to claim it as ours.
• No privatisation of Council or public property such as the ports, roads, rail, the airport, parks, water, wastewater and sewage reticulation.Commit to defending these assets not only in the courts but by mobilising popular resistance to stop their privatisation.
• Take back all water services under full council control and ownership – squash the metro water, water care and united water monopolies. Lock out the monopolies and throw away the key. Abolish water rates– fully fund clean water by raising rates based on property valuation. For urgent works to improve water quality and stormwater management (create jobs and cleaner harbours).  
• Put road maintenance and development back into public works and create jobs for all. If any council work is contracted out then both quality and workers conditions must be measured; workers should be paid at council workers rates, i.e. contractors must pay no less then council wages rates.
• Free public transport for all at all times of day. Stop subsidising private owners - take back public transport without compensation and under workers control.
• Keep our libraries open and keep them free - no closures of Libraries.
• Keep our swimming pools open and keep them free.  Build public pools in every community.
• Quality housing – Councils are complicit in allowing the building industry to make big profits from inferior building standards. For council buy back of leaky buildings for repair, or replacement. For crash program of Council owned public housing. If any council work is contracted out then both quality and workers conditions must be measured; workers should be paid at council workers rates, i.e. contractors must pay no less then council wages rates.
• Make the bosses pay. End subsidies for businesses. Rate property at its improved value. 100% capital gains tax on all profits of property speculation.
• Fight the capitalist coup. Defeat their bid to seize power in Tamaki Makaurau. Build workers democracy to replace the toothless community boards that will have no money and no power. 

While the Communist Workers Group supports voting for workers candidates, we have no confidence that a vote can change the system. Capitalism is the dominant economic force in the city and this sort of democracy cannot tame capitalism. The roles of councillors are so restricted that their ability to stop the capitalist privatisation plans is next to nothing. We support workers candidates only to prove that parliamentary democracy is the rule of the bosses against the workers. Against such boss class power we have to build organs of workers power. One way is to mobilise workers to take control of industry, transport and services. This can also include a consumers strike as one method of building workers democracy. Consumers strikes however, unless backed by workers organisations, cannot take control of production which is the only basis of workers power.  Lets look at the example of the rates revolt proposed by the Water Pressure Group (WPG).

Critical Support for Rates Revolt

The Water-Pressure Group(WPG) which is one of the few groups that has organised against the Supercity, is adamant that the supercity steamroller cannot be halted without a Rates Revolt. WPG says that the Supercity has flouted all democratic laws and rights of Aucklanders so only a Rates Revolt will stop it succeeding. It is currently lobbying councillors who profess to oppose the Supercity for their support of rates strikers. Yet it will need more than Council lawyers to stop evictions and morgage sales. WPG fails to argue for working class community support to back those who don't pay their rates in case the council tries to repossess the house to pay for rates arrears. WPG appears to be relying on the capitalists own legal system to protect rates revolters – we belief this faith is misguided and the risk is that people will be isolated and victimised.

While we call on workers and their organizations to support the Rates Revolt initiative, we do so on the proviso that workers are organised to defend those who may be victimised. It is essential that WPG prepares for direct action against mortgagee sales, by preparing groups of supporters available at short notice to set up picketlines. Only those candidates to municipal office who pledge democratisation and unwavering opposition to privatisations should be given electoral support, and that support should be vigilant and critical. We must prepare for the wave of privatisations that will follow the Supercity’s inauguration and fight them with occupations of worksites backed up with mass pickets. To ensure these are strong enough we must redouble the effort to build fighting democratic unions powerful enough to stop the capitalist coupsters in their tracks.

Support waterside workers – no jobs losses no casualisation. No sale of the ports – no part privatised.

Currently the ports are owned by the Auckland Regional Council (ARC). However the Supercity will swallow up the ARC, and the ports are to be run as a ‘Council Controlled Organisation’ (CCO). That is just one step away from being privatised – they will be run and managed like a capitalist company, losing any potential benefits of Council ownership for the people Tamaki Makaurau, that is profits potentially used to meet social needs, and the managment of an essential asset to balance efficiency (Auckland is one of the most efficient in the world) with social emenities (public access to the harbor unpolluted by private penhouses and profiteering etc). 

Only workers democracy based on working class community committees can mobilise the working class to defeat the capitalist class plans for Auckland Supercity, and take control of all assets (public and ‘private’) and plan the economy to meet the needs of workers rather than the profits of the bosses.  Socialise Tamaki Makaurau!

Support unions who fight redundancies and privatisation in the Supercity 

• Fight redundancy with occupations of sites and take workers control.
• For Workers’ Community Committees and a Workers Council of Tamaki Makaurau.
• For a Socialist Super City and a Socialist Aotearoa!

Join the struggle against the capitalist super city with all the struggles around the world to make the bosses pay for their crisis!

For a Workers’ Tamaki Makaurau!

The Royal Commission Report on Auckland [Tamaki Makaurau] has come and gone. After 18 months of deliberation its conclusions have been binned by the National Government. Its proposals for a single city remain, but all the existing councils are abolished. The single city will have no more than 30 elected councilors, a number elected at large. The real power will be in the hands of the Mayor. The model is a corporate Board of Directors. By abolishing the urban and rural councils and creating a new Super City, the NZ capitalist class is set to privatise $28 Billion of Auckland assets.

The bosses’agenda

The campaign for one city has been driven by business interests for years. Their target has always been to get local government out of business and confined to provision of basic services. It wants to remove all local body legislative controls on investment, particularly property speculation. The new city will extend from Pukekohe to Warkworth, encompassing three harbours, a Gulf and the most valuable coastal property in the country. Corporates have always opposed the Auckland Regional Council [ARC] which has statutory authority over much of this land and which owns the major asset of the port of Auckland. The first great land theft was from Maori in the nineteenth century, the second is from all the working people of Auckland today.

Rodney Hide the new Minister of Local Government is the leader of the ACT Party whichs says that local government will be required to “shed its commercial activities”. Hide is now overseeing the Grand Theft of Auckland. A Transitional Agency headed by Hide with a few of his cronies will take charge of all the local authorities on the 14th of May for a period of 18 months to prepare the transfer of all their assets so they can be sold off when the Auckland City Council is elected in October 2010. The new Auckland City is therefore the bosses’ way of abolishing the ARC, divesting it of its business assets such as Ports of Auckland, and dispensing with the ARC role in providing subsidized services such as public transport.

Bosses’ abolish the ARC

On the same day as the Royal Commission released its report, Alastair Thompson, chief executive of the Employers and Manufacturers Association of the Auckland region, published an article in the NZ Herald “ARC swimming against the tide with its port holdings”.

Thompson makes the business case for the ARC to sell its majority shareholding of the Ports of Auckland because it makes a profit and uses the money to pay social subsidies to public services. Thompson is saying that state owned assets should not make a profit, or better still sell these assets so that private business can make the profits. Nothing galls the capitalists more than seeing the ARC actually taking profits from the private sector and spending it on workers.

It is clear that the National government is a government of the capitalist class in crisis and that they will impose the costs of their crisis onto ordinary workers without any concern for “democracy” or for our welfare. The seizure of power in Auckland and stripping of its $28 billion worth of assets will increase the costs of basic services and amenities to workers.

Workers Fight Back

The National ACT asset grab in Auckland is a repeat of Rogernomics, imitating the “shock treatment” used by Roger Douglas in the 1980s. Douglas said then that his neo-liberal reforms could only work if they were introduced quickly before there was time for organize resistance. The result was the defeat of the unions and of all other workers organisations, including the desertion of the Labour Left that split from the Labour Party to form New Labour in 1989.

We have to learn the lessons of the defeats we suffered under Rogernomics Mark 1. First we must reject the abolition of the existing councils and their elected representatives. This means junking the feudal institution of the Royal Commission used by the Labour Government to decide on Auckland’s future. Second, we have to fight the plans of the National ACT regime to use this feudal process to seize power and privatise Auckland as a Super City council dominated by councilors elected by the corporate class under a Super-Mayor.

We have to demand that any Auckland Super City should be elected by proportional representation on the basis of democratically formed local and existing city wards, including constituencies that represent Maori iwi in the Auckland region.

Second, to mobilise our forces to stop this coup against democracy we have to organize the unions and community organisations to put bans on the actions of the NACTs Transitional Agency as it usurps the role of the local bodies so as to prepare Auckland’s publicly owned assets and provision of services for privatization or abolition. This will mean stopping the Transitional Agency from preparing public assets and services for privatization by sacking workers and cutting spending.

Wharfies first in the gun

We can start by backing the Wharfies who are facing big job losses as the Ports of Auckland prepares for privatization. While it is owned by the ARC, the Port is run like a capitalist corporation. The threat to jobs today is only the start of the cutbacks in jobs and conditions under a fully privatized Port Company.

While the Port is the main prize of the privatisers there are a number of other “commercial” activities in their sights. The ARC uses its profits from the Port to subsidise its social services such as public transport. Other local body functions such as provision of amenities like swimming pools and libraries will be targets for the Hide axe. Auckland rail which is potentially profitable is likely to be also prepared for privatisation, as with the provision of water.

The resistance to the corporate grab of Auckland has to be on the ground. Those whose lives will be trampled by the capitalist plan to turn Auckland into a capitalist speculators paradise at their expense must mobilise locally, regionally, nationally and internationally to stop it.

What we need instead of a bosses' supercity for superprofits is a socialist supercity to socialise the provision of housing, transport, water, health, education and all social amenities that a are needed by the workers who make all the wealth.


Back the Iwi Have Influence campaign!

Back the unions fighting jobs and services cuts!

Back proposals for mass actions such as a Rate Revolt!

For a Workers’Tamaki Makaurau!

For a Socialist Super City, in a socialist Aotearoa, in a Socialist Federation of the South Pacific!