The Residents Action Movement began as an electoral front group in Auckland, formed largely by members of the Socialist Worker organisation. It originally ran only in the Auckland local body elections, and ran eight candidates in 2004. One of it’s candidates, Robyn Hughes, was elected to the Auckland Regional Council.

RAM did not fare so well in the 2007 local body elections, with it’s vote count for the Auckland Regional Council dropping to 76,000. It’s only councilor also lost her seat.

RAM has now made the decision to register for the general elections, and is trying to make the transition to becoming a nationwide political party. It has had limited success with this - while it has recruited a great number of people on the basis of it’s centre-left, liberal politics (it currently claims to have 2,400 paper members), it has yet to expand outside of Auckland in terms of an activist base, barring a handful of supporters in and around Wellington.

RAM’s policies are a mixture of social liberalism, New Zealand nationalism and bourgeois environmentalism, which RAM mashes together under the label “broad left”.

It is calling for the removal of GST from food, while retaining this anti-worker ad anti-poor flat tax on everything else, including other necessities such as petrol, clothes and electricity! So far, no explanation has been given as to why it will not abolish GST in it’s entirety, despite it’s claims to ” Put human beings and our planet before the almighty dollar”.

It is also calling for free and frequent public transport, reducing household rates, and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour (the same level that reactionary parties such as New Zealand First are calling for).

RAM can be viewed essentially as a slightly more vocal version of the Greens. It does not claim to represent any particular class in New Zealand, and as a result inevitably ends up representing the interests of the wealthy, ruling class, as can be seen through it’s centreist policies.

It is surprising (and for radical leftists, saddening) that the once proud Socialist Worker organisation, successor to the Communist Party of New Zealand, has now reduced itself to the point where it openly endorses and has effectively dissolved itself into an electoral vehicle that describes itself as “a broad left coalition, stretching from social liberals, community activists and former National Party members to social democrats, democratic socialists and left-wing radicals.” Any organisation containing former National Party members cannot be especially left wing!

RAM may well receive a reasonable vote in the elections. It has watered down and moderated it’s politics to the extent that it has for just that reason. But the important thing to keep in mind is that these votes are not the votes of working-class people voting for the destruction of the capitalist system and the establishment of a socialist society - they are not even votes for anything radically different to the status quo! No, any votes that RAM recieves will be liberal votes, and any candidates it has elected will be operating within the restraints of a liberal platform.

It is clear that RAM does not represent anything radically different in New Zealand politics, and that it does not intend to make any substantial changes to New Zealand society and the system we live under.

(Taito Philip Fields)

Fields currently plans on running only in Mangere, the seat he currently holds as an independent MP, after being expelled from the Labour Party.

It’s hard to form an exact view of the Pacific Party, as it has not released any policies! But it’s plain to see that it does not represent anything radically new in NZ politics. It’s talk of “Christian and family values” will undoubtedly mean in reality a conservative, reactionary social agenda, and it is likely that it will oppose such things as full rights for gay people, women’s full right to abortion and so on. This can only be speculation, but it’s a safe bet.

Fields has declared his opposition to the legislation put in place by the Labour-led government against physical discipline being applied to children, and cites this as one of the reasons why he left the Labour Party.

The NZ Pacific Party appears to have two main aspects to it. Firstly, a socially conservative Christian party that represents a backlash against some of the socially-liberal policies put in place by successive National and Labour governments since the 1980s.

Secondly, it represents a vehicle for Philip Taito Field’s political ambition and his personal ego, in the same way that “Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party” represents the same for Jim Anderton (obviously).

It is obvious that fundamentally, the Pacific Party is not planning on making any real changes to the society we live in, and is instead happy with communalistic demagoguery and pork barrel politics. Working people in New Zealand, and specifically the poor Pacific Islanders this Party intends to try and solicit votes from, have nothing to gain from supporting Taito Philip Fields and the NZ Pacific Party.

On June 25th, a white jury in Tauranga found Police Sergeant Keith Parsons, Senior Constable Bruce Laing, Constable John Mills and Sergeant Erle Busby not guilt of brutally assaulting Rawiri Falwasser, a young Maori, in October 2006.

Rewi Falwasser suffered a mental breakdown on Labour Day 2006, and was not in control of his own actions. This is accepted by the police. He was arrested after stealing a neighbours car and driving erratically, endangering both himself and other people on the road.

The police took him to Whakatane police station, and put him in a holding cell. When they later came to remove him from the cell and take him to be photographed, he refused to leave the cell. According to Crown Prosecutor Fletcher Pilditch, Mr Falwasser was “stressed, confused and agitated”.

Following Falwasser’s refusal to leave the cell, Sergeant Parsons repeatedly sprayed him in the face with pepper-spray, and when he put up his hands to protect himself from this attack Parsons lashed out at his head with a baton, striking him on the hand and the wrist and leaving him with a 6½-centimetre cut to his arm.

Falwasser tried to flee from the attack, and as he did so Parsons hit him in the back of the head with his baton, leaving a five-centimetre gash.

Sergeant Parson eventually left the cell, which had by this time become filled with pepper spray, making it “intolerable for police officers”. Presumably working-class Maori are more able to tolerate having their cell filled with pepper spray than policemen are!

The cops continued to spray pepper spray through the vents into the room, despite Falwasser’s efforts to block them up with his clothes. He was bleeding profusely, and says that he “feared for his life”. He wrote the word “Jesus” on the wall in his own blood.

(Right: The four attackers)

The victim’s family reacted angrily to the court’s decision. His father Charles Falwasser labelled them “vermin” and “lower than the low”. The victim’s mother Kihi was “shocked and devastated” at the verdict, but said she was “not surprised”, as “We had a white jury in there… we live in a black-and-white world.”

This case proves the existence of racism and class prejudice in the New Zealand judicial system. It is highly unlikely that Rawiri Fulwasser would have been violently attacked in the brutal manner he was subjected to if he had been a white and middle class. The four police officers, all of them white, reacted more violently towards a man with brown skin, and felt more confident that they would get away with it. As this verdict shows, their confidence was well placed.

When violent crimes are committed by young, working class Maori in South Auckland, the response is a frenzy of calls for extended police powers and tougher penalties for violent criminals. Where are those calls now? Why is it that when white police officers brutally assault a young Maori man who doesn’t come from a wealthy background, there is no chorus of angry voices condemning their actions?

It seems that the cops were right to be confident – the New Zealand ruling class protects it’s own. “Safer communities together”? Yeah right.

Sources;
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10518286
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10515396&pnum=2
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4597470a11.html