[asia-apec 797] NZ: Second Annual Roger Award

[Gatt Watchdog]

MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE

14 October 1998

SECOND ANNUAL ROGER AWARD FOR WORST TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION IN NZ

For the second year, three organisations - Corso, Campaign Against Foreign
Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), and GATT Watchdog - have combined forces to
organise the annual Roger Award for the worst transnational corporation
operating in New Zealand in 1998.  The winner of the award will be announced
at an event in Christchurch next February.

The winner of the inaugural award, announced in February this year, was
TranzRail, for what the judges called its "calculated, callous attitude" to
people injured in rail accidents, and to the families who lost loved ones.
Coeur Gold (NZ) Ltd and Independent Newspapers Ltd  (INL) were awarded second
equal place. 

The judges for this year's award are the re-elected Mayor of Dunedin, Sukhi
Turner; Ngati Pikiao lawyer and Treaty activist Annette Sykes; President of
the NZ Trade Union Federation, Maxine Gay; and Director of Nga Kaiwhakamarama
I Nga Ture (Maori Legal Service) Moana Jackson.

"Given that the award will be announced during the year that the New Zealand
government hosts the APEC meetings, this year's Roger Award will be
particularly poignant. Just as transnational corporations now dominate all
aspects of the New Zealand economy and our lives, from the food that we eat
to the clothes that we wear to the technology which we use to communicate
with each other, so too has APEC been shaped primarily by and for big business
interests.  Successive New Zealand governments have told us that what is good
for big business is good for the rest of us.  We dispute that. The bottom line
for transnational corporations is profit. These corporations are behind the
push, through free trade and investment arrangements such as APEC, to get
governments to comply with their demands to be able to operate however, and
wherever they like, without any accountability to the communities they affect.
The Roger Award is one way of holding big business accountable and generating
some much-needed debate about the role of transnational corporations in
New Zealand", said David Small, of Corso and spokesperson for the organisers
of this year's Award.

The award will be given to the transnational corporation judged to have had
the most negative impact in each or all of the following fields: unemployment,
monopoly, profiteering, abuse of workers/conditions, political interference,
environmental damage, cultural imperialism, impact on tangata whenua, running
an ideological crusade, impact on women, health and safety of workers and the
public.

Nominations from the public close on October 31 and can be sent to: The Roger
Award, Box 1905, Christchurch. 

Dr David Small
For the organisers
Ph. (03) 3642268 
Email: corso at corso.chch.planet.org.nz