Rod Donald

Rod Donald

Template:TOCnestleft Rod Donald (1956-2005) was a New Zealand Member of Parliament.

70s Head Prefect, St Andrews College & Rotary youth leader. Joined Values in 6th form year & had parliamentary ambitions Star-Times profile 20.3.94

70s while at school founded Ecology Action SST 30.6.96

Early 70s "hung around the radical Resistance Bookshop" Richard Suggate Press 12.11.05

1974-79 Active in Values Party. Joined age 16

81 Rep of Te Whanau Trust, marching against Tour Press 22.6.81

82 Joined Labour Party in Chch

83 Unsuccessfully sought Labour nomination for North Ward inlocal body election Star-Times profile 20.3.94

1982-88 Member of Labour Party. Active in the Labour Electoral Reform Network in 1988, but resigned from NZLP after Palmer renneged on holding a referendum on PR.

1986 Moved to Wgtn to work for VSA as its public affairs officer. Involved in Trade-Aid and Korokoro community where he lived in

1989 with his partner Nicola Shirlaw and their two children.

87 Claimed in Star-Times profile 20.3.94 that became involved in ERC shortly after move to Wgtn in 1987

88 Involved in Labour Electoral Reform Network

89 Resigned from LP when Labour re-neged on PR referendum

89 Signed ERC sponsored ad in Dominion? supporting PR Public Affairs officer, Korokoro. Partners name is Nicola

8.89 Elected Vice Pres ERC

1989 Editor of "VSA Broadsheet" with Rupert Watson.

1989 Sept, elected Vice Pres on ERC. Lives in Wgtn.

1990 April 23, Vice-president of the ERC. Wrote an article on the front page of SUP's Tribune on the need to a PR referendum.

1990 April, contact for ERC. [ERC Newsletter, Apr] An organiser of the ERC 

1990 election Day referendum in the Wgtnarea.

1990 Nov, spoke to Canty Y Nats on PR. Said he was a close personal friend of Harry Duynhoven. Said he was a supporter of Values in '75 election, spent 5 years with party.

1990 Still works for "Trade Aid".

90 Co-ordinator Trade Aid Importers Head Office in ChCh Has been involved with Trade Aid since 1980 serving on the commodities committee, the board of directors, and shop volunteer in Petone Ref: ChCh Star 26.4.90

1990 vice president of the ERC.

91 ERC contact for Chch 92 Signatory to 12.9.92 Ad in Press "Vote for MMP" inserted by ERC, living in Opawa

1992 wrote book review in NZMR on two pro-MMP books: Voters Choice and Making your Vote Count. Quote: "Voter's Choice (an unfortunate name given its similarity to "Voter's Voice" a Citizens Initiative Referendum - CIR - lobby group)"

1992 listed in ERC Ad [Press Sept 12] supporting MMP.

94 In Star-Times profile 20.3.94 said Donald had been involved in a commune, organic farm, tenants protection agitation, CORSO, YHA, Citizens Advive, Access Radio. Said "I,m not a fan of capitalism, but not a fan of socialism either. Fundamentally I'm an anarchist, I guess."

94 Said in Star-Times profile 20.3.94 that he is amazed that a handful of acivists could so profoundly alter the direction of the country.

95 Banks Penin cand, ranked 2nd on GP electoral list

96 No 4 on AP Southern Region Party list Press 18.3.96

July 96 attended Trading With our Lives anti APEC forum in Chch, GATT Watchdog

Jan 97 One of 2 MPs attending Waihopai demos

02 We may be, as Chris Trotter said on the recent Assignment programme, the most red Green party in the world but we value the individual as much as society. We are communitarian, internationalist and libertarian all at the same time. Waipapa Marae, Green AGM, 1st June 2002

2002 CAFCA AGM was held at the Christchurch WEA on September 23. Approximately 20 members were present. Bill Rosenberg chaired. Apologies were accepted from Rod Donald, Maurice Ward, the Sisters of St Joseph, Ray Scott, Martin and Lois Griffiths, Christine Dann, Ann Rosenberg, Helen Kingston, David Zwartz, Bob Leonard, Gillian Southey and Denis O’Connor. A solidarity message was read from Don Ross of the Organisation for Marxist Unity. The 2001 Minutes were read by the secretary, Murray Horton, and accepted

03 A mini-conference on alternatives to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will begin the Week of Action in Wellington, New Zealand, against the WTO and its free trade policies. The international Week of Action will coincide with the WTO Ministerial Conference that will be held in Cancun, Mexico from 10-14 September.

1:10PM The Great Trade Debate including Rod Donald (Green Party), Robert Reid (Alliance), and Suse Reynolds (Trade Liberalisation Network)

5.11.05 Died of heart attack age 48

Speaking at the Wellington memorial meeting: “Author Nicky Hager said Donald did not deserve the strain he was forced to live under at the fringe of mainstream politics. A constant barrage of insults from political foes about being ‘nutty’, having ‘loony ideas’ or being a ‘crank’ took their toll. ‘I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to be struck by the hypocrisy of some of the kinds of words spoken about Rod by other politicians after he died’. Now was a good time for politicians to pause and reconsider their treatment of non-mainstream MPs, he said” (Press, 22/11/05; “Donald’s mates lament attacks”, Haydon Dewes). In her deeply moving speech at the funeral, his partner, Nicola Shirlaw, surprised the nation by revealing that Rod, the consummate political animal, was in despair throughout 2005 at the state of NZ politics and came within an ace of chucking it all in and heading off to another, now never to be known, career. She said that what rekindled the fire in his belly were the lunatic policies and actions of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe and he threw himself into the unsuccessful campaign to stop the NZ cricket team from touring there in 2005. Rod was a hero to the Zimbabwean exile community in this country and they played a leading role at his funeral. Just weeks before the election I found myself sitting next to him at the premiere of the NZ peace movement documentary “Tau Te Mauri: Breath Of Peace” (see Jeremy Agar’s review of it elsewhere in this issue). Poor Rod had to suffer the torture of turning off his cellphone for an hour and a half; he talked on it until the lights went out. Afterwards I teased him that if the polls were correct, Don Brash’s National would win. He didn’t see that as a laughing matter at all and indicated that if it came to pass, he’d quit politics. A close colleague of mine told me that she last had an indepth discussion with Rod in early 2004 and described him as “despondent” about the political situation. All of this would have contributed to getting him down to the extent that a common or garden virus was able to kill him.

And would he have been a good Minister? We’ll never know now, nor would we if he’d still been alive. Personally, I think that Labour did the Greens a backhanded favour by shitting on them. I think that calculated insult of refusing to have them as a coalition partner has, ironically, guaranteed the Greens’ survival as a Parliamentary party, indeed as a political party. The record for junior coalition partners under MMP is not encouraging. They become the lightning rod for everything perceived to be wrong with whatever Government is in power, a perception happily encouraged by the major partner in the interests of its own survival. Look at what happened with New Zealand First during its 1996-98 coalition with National or the Alliance with Labour from 1999-02. And if Rod had become a Minister, he would have been labelled the “loony” one, and undergone the pillorying currently being borne (disastrously) by Winston Peters as Minister of Foreign Affairs. If there’s any justice in the world, similar pillorying will be inflicted on the Minister most responsible for keeping the Greens out of government, namely the odious Peter Dunne (whose name should more appropriately be pronounced dunny). I reckon the Greens are better off out of it. If and when this ramshackle coalition of strange bedfellows falls to bits, the Greens will come out of it smelling of roses. And it gives them vital time to rebuild their seriously eroded support base which saw no particular reason to vote for them rather than Labour in 2005. As for Rod, the national wave of aroha that swept the country after his death means that his memory remains unsullied by the inevitable disappointments and disasters that would have come with a Cabinet post. Rest assured mate, it wouldn’t have been worth it. And it means that you forever remain one of us, not one of them.

Rod literally was one of us. He’d been an ABC member since the late 1990s and a CAFCA member for a similar period. He regularly attended CAFCA Annual General Meetings, making him the only MP (not to mention Party Co-Leader) to do so. In both cases, his active involvement predated his formal membership by years. He donated to CAFCA and contributed more than $800 to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income. He regularly said that he must become a regular pledger to it and asked for the automatic payment forms to be sent to him. But despite the truly heroic efforts of his Parliamentary Executive Secretary, Bronwen Summers, he never got around to filling them in and activating it. This sent him off on a self-inflicted guilt trip every time he saw me.

By contrast with Owen Wilkes, Rod and I were never personal friends, mates or close colleagues. I knew nothing about Rod’s family or great chunks of his life, most of which I learned from the media. It wasn’t until after his death that I knew he was an only child, which must make it devastating for his elderly parents. He’d been to our place a few times (usually to personally sell us tickets for local Green fundraising movie nights. The significance of that is that I am not, and never have been a member of the Greens or any other political party. That didn’t bother Rod). I’d only ever been to his family home once, and that was as recently as August 2005. We’d both been Christchurch-based political activists for 30 years, but we only ever spoke together to a public meeting once, and that was as recently as February 2005 (in Napier). Again, by contrast with Owen, there was no shared background of madcap adventures from decades ago. I can think of only one trip away together before he started regularly coming to the Waihopai spybase protests – a 1980 trip (an extremely uncomfortable one in a van) to Dunedin to take part in activities opposing the proposed transnational aluminium smelter at Aramoana, at the entrance to Otago Harbour (one campaign that was 100% successful). He was a crucial few years younger than me and basically we mixed in different circles, with very different views on whether to work inside or outside of the political system.

A Precocious, Prodigious Talent

Be that as it may, Rod and I went back 30 years together as fellow political activists in Christchurch. On numerous occasions, including in the months before he died, he regaled me and anyone else around with a story of him inviting me to speak at his private boys’ high school, St Andrews College, and the impression that I made, as the longhaired and bearded leader of the notorious Progressive Youth Movement, complete with Army greatcoat (the garment that so got up the nose of the powers that be in those fevered days of Vietnam War and Anzac Day protests). No matter how many times he told that story, I have no memory of it, so I just had to take his word for it (but I do have a crystal clear memory of an identical visit to Christchurch Boys High School, where the Deputy Principal stormed into the packed assembly hall like the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse and loudly demanded to know who had invited me. Told that it was one of the prefects, he retreated in confusion). I think Rod treasured his mental picture of me as the longhaired, bearded protester of his adolescence and seemed almost offended when I ditched both hair and beard three years ago. He struggled to recognise me, to the extent of walking past me in the street, and always commented on my extreme makeover as a shorthaired, cleanshaven, middleaged man.

Rod was a precocious talent. His first protest action was as a 12 year old – he picketed his school’s football team from the sideline, protesting his exclusion on the grounds that he was too fat (he made sure that he was never fat again). He plunged into environmental activism as a St Andrews schoolboy in the early 1970s (it didn’t affect his school career, where he finished as Head Prefect). He opted to not go on to university, on the grounds that there was too much to do. He joined the former Values Party and biked to Nelson to become campaign manager for its local candidate (Gwen Struik, who remains a veteran Green, peace and anti-bases activist to this day). He did a stint on a Nelson organic farm and then returned to Christchurch where he was a founding member of Ecology Action, specialising in recycling. At 18 he was manager of the newly founded Christchurch Environment Centre. Veteran environmentalist, Janet Holm, described him as “full of fire and vigour”. But Rod had a penchant for treading on toes, too (it goes with the territory). “Their relationship became strained as Holm thought Donald ‘became fixated on his own power and influence. He acted on his own bat, seeking publicity’. Holm tried to sack him but he used the group’s constitution to prevent this. When Donald sought a City Council job in recycling and asked Holm for a testimonial, she wrote that he was ‘extremely bright and able and well organised but does only what he wants’. She said he was ‘impossible to control’. To her amazement, he got the job. Also to her amazement, they remained good friends. ‘He was always nice, always innovative and on the go’ (Press, 12/11/05; “Fire And Flair”, Mike Crean).

Rod was the Christchurch City Council’s recycling publicity officer in 1978-79. In the late 70s he was best known in Christchurch as the leader of the Loopies i.e the group of “hippies” who moved into the inner city Avon Loop and set up an alternative community there (which was a very 70s thing to do. In many respects, Rod remained a 70s guy all his life, as evidenced by his love for the Pink Floyd music which featured so prominently at his funeral). This put him at odds not only with the developers who wanted to “develop” the Loop but the formidable Elsie Locke, a renowned author and peace activist for many decades. She headed a group of longterm residents who wanted a different kind of development from that proposed by both the businessmen and the hippies (her son, Keith, became one of Rod’s closest colleagues as a fellow Green MP). Rod’s most enduring legacy from that period is Piko Wholefoods, which is still going strong. Piko led to him becoming involved with Trade Aid, after joining a volunteer committee. In 1981 he plunged into the maelstrom of the protests against the Springbok Tour, being the subject of a TV current affairs profile on anti-tour protestors. In the early 80s he worked for the Tenants Protection Association. It was there that he met his life partner, Nicola Shirlaw. They had three daughters, whose ages range from 13 to 21, and upon whom he absolutely doted (I regularly came upon him biking or walking around town with one or more of them in tow. He loved those kids). He moved on to become national publicity officer for the Youth Hostels Association, and spent the years 1986-90 in Wellington as public affairs manager for Volunteer Service Abroad.

Rod returned to Christchurch in 1990 to become the NZ manager of Trade Aid Importers, the job he held until he entered Parliament in 1996. Trade Aid’s co-founder, Vi Cottrell, said that he “brought absolute passion to the job. He was totally committed. He thought about it all the time. We used to joke that when he went on holiday it was a progression from one Trade Aid shop to another…He was a great strategic thinker. He modernised Trade Aid. Without him, it would have gone down the tube” (Press, 12/11/05; “Fire And Flair”, Mike Crean). This was the period of closest contact between CAFCA and Trade Aid. Rod invited me to the Christchurch national office to speak to the staff; at one point Trade Aid paid for more than a dozen of its shops to stock Foreign Control Watchdog (sadly that didn’t last). Later, as an MP, Rod paid for several copies of Watchdog to be made available in his various offices. MMP: His Greatest Legacy

Since 1989 Rod had been a high profile public figure as national spokesman for the Electoral Reform Commission. This really is his greatest legacy – he threw himself heart and soul into the successful campaign to force a binding referendum to change the voting system from the totally distorted and discredited First Past the Post to MMP. To win that battle, he had to overcome entrenched opposition from the media and leading MPs from both traditional major parties (plenty of whom are still in Parliament today, ironically having survived because of the system they opposed). The “citizens” campaign to retain the old system was lavishly funded by Big Business (which had done very nicely out of it, especially during the Rogernomics years of crony capitalism in the 80s), and headed by Telecom’s Peter Shirtcliffe. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the voting system and it ended in victory at the 1993 referendum and Rod entering Parliament as a new MP after the first MMP election in 1996. He continued to campaign, rather less successfully, to get the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system adopted for local body elections.

Parliamentary politics seemed the logical next step. Those who branded him a careerist expected it to be with Labour. And indeed he had been a member of that party from 1982-88 “when he quit because he didn’t like the party’s direction and because it reneged on the electoral referendum” (Listener, 9/4/94; “Gunning For The Greens”, Bruce Ansley). Instead Rod chose the Greens and didn’t muck around, going straight to the top as Co-Leader. He was refreshingly honest. “Donald likes power. ‘I’m very keen on it. I don’t see why anyone should shy away from it’” (ibid).

That 12 year old Listener profile contains some fascinating insights into both Rod and the Greens. “…But there was a more pressing reason for Donald to turn away from Labour: he is suspicious of the Party’s relationship with unions. ‘I don’t believe in the whole business of the unions affiliating to the Labour Party and holding card votes. Unions have a very important role, but I look for a third alternative, a co-operative model. To some extent unions depend on the continuation of the capitalist system, whereas worker ownership is a completely different path, which doesn’t mean the end of unions. I’ve found it frustrating that unions have opposed the cooperative model because they think it threatens their own future, whereas it’s the best way workers can break their shackles’. Shades of the anarchism that Donald entertained when he lived above the health foods cooperative he started? ‘I still feel quite comfortable with anarchy, in principle. It’s about people taking responsibility for their own lives and being conscious of the needs of other people. But I’m a realist. And a pragmatist’” (ibid). Views such as those were definitely bound to cause problems with the old Labourites and unionists who comprised New Labour, the core party of the Alliance. At that stage, Rod was all in favour of the Greens staying within the Alliance. “Why walk away from a coalition where you’ve already had a significant influence on policy, and then have to form another coalition?” (ibid).

The Greens lasted one term (1996-99) within the Alliance. Shortly before the 1999 election, when they’d taken the gamble to fly solo, I asked Rod why they had left. He replied: “Two words. Jim Anderton”. The gamble nearly didn’t pay off – on election night 1999, when Labour came to power, the Greens had missed out, both in their only electorate hope (Coromandel) and in the party vote. They had to endure an agonising wait in limbo until special votes delivered them both Coromandel (which Co-Leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons, held for one term) and enough party votes to get into Parliament under their own banner (but, by that time, Labour had stitched up a coalition with the Alliance). Then they were thrust into the spotlight of massive media attention as the funky new party (a slot most recently occupied by the Maori Party). Ironically Rod, once the young lion, was now one of the party’s senior statesmen, while the media was transfixed by his younger colleagues, such as Nandor Tanczos. Probably their best chance of getting into Government was in 2002, with Labour unchallenged by an astonishingly feeble National Party campaign. But Corngate definitely stuffed that up and Labour and the Greens went bitterly head to head on a key point of difference, namely genetic engineering. Clark chose United Future and the Greens stayed out in the cold. By the time of the 2005 election, the Greens had ensured that there would be no nasty spats but it was one election too late – National had revved up the “what’s in it for me?” tax cuts issue which set the agenda for the whole campaign, backed up by good old fashioned racism (greed and racism, the old firm). Labour hung on by the skin of Helen Clark’s particularly unattractive teeth and decided that the Greens (who had offered voters no obvious reason to vote for them as opposed to Labour) were dispensable. The rest, as they say, is history (actually it is current reality).

CAFCA’s Key Contact In Parliament

It was during Rod’s years as an MP, i.e. the past decade, that he had the closest relationship with both CAFCA and ABC. Unlike so many others who have become MPs with parties such as Labour and the Alliance, Rod never turned his back on the progressive movement from whence he came. On the contrary, he thrived in his dual role as both MP and extra-Parliamentary activist. He never sold out, and he never forgot where he came from. Starting with CAFCA, that period spanned his leading role in our unsuccessful campaign to stop Westpac taking over TrustBank and went right through to the most recent campaign, namely the 2003-05 one against what is now the new Overseas Investment Act. CAFCA is not affiliated to any party, we’re an independent organisation, and reserve the right to criticise all of them, including the Greens (and have done so). But it’s no secret that we had an extremely good working relationship with the Greens, meaning with Rod. Once they stood on their own two feet in Parliament, it only got stronger. Shortly after that election I went to Wellington and briefed the Green caucus (I started by stating that I was an Alliance voter – by a simple process of elimination, I became a first time Green voter in 2005). Once the Alliance was gone, the Greens were the only game in town for us. Rod was on the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee and persuaded it to inquire into the workings of the Overseas Investment Commission (OIC). He further persuaded the Labour and New Zealand First MPs on it to agree to recommendations for changing the OIC and tightening up its processes – the Government opted to ignore its own Party’s MPs. During the campaign on the Overseas Investment Bill, Rod initiated a Greens petition to stop foreigners being able to buy rural land in NZ and organised public meetings up and down the country on the issue of foreign control (such as the February 2005 one at Napier at which I also spoke). He was always eager to be personally helpful. On one trip to Wellington, he invited me to Parliament and personally took me around the Press Gallery (where he was part of the furniture), introduced me to every journalist and put in a plug for CAFCA with every one of them.

A glimpse at the Greens’ foreign investment policy for the 2005 election shows it to have been heavily influenced by CAFCA, and that was entirely attributable to Rod constantly picking our brains on the subject. Rod worked his charm on both sides of the argument – after his death I received a lot of messages. The most surprising one came from Steven Dawe, the former Chief Executive Officer of the OIC, who is now with the International Monetary Fund in the US. In the more than a decade that he and I had been communicating, on behalf of CAFCA and the OIC, we had never exchanged a personal message. But he e-mailed me, expressing genuine sorrow at Rod’s death and asking me to pass that on to his family. I’ll give the man full credit for that.

Rod was indefatigable and at times I felt like an on-call researcher for him. He rang me once as he laboured up an East Coast hill to join Maori occupying Young Nick’s Head in protest at it being sold to an American; he rang me as he was driving to Comalco’s Tiwai Point smelter for a tour as a guest of the company, and wanted a fast briefing on everything to do with Comalco. Another time he rang, from Australia, minutes before he was due to do a Radio NZ national interview on the whole subject of foreign control and wanted some tips. I loved the breathtaking cheek of the fellow. Some of these calls were on sensitive subjects. It’s less than a year ago that he rang asking my advice on whether the Greens should vote for the Overseas Investment Bill because one of the amendments arising from its Select Committee stage was attractive to the Party and they were tempted by half a loaf being better than none. Fortunately, Rod and the Party saw sense and retained their credibility by voting against the Bill. I doubt that he ever read a Watchdog or a Peace Researcher (he was neither a reader nor a writer), but he had an exceptionally good intuitive grasp of the subject and all its details. He was a wonderful contact to have in Parliament and ensured that we received a steady flow of material and information. He really is a great loss to CAFCA, possibly irreplaceable.

Throughout his whole time in Parliament, he was the Greens’ spokesperson on trade and he ensured that the Party fought all the multitude of free trade agreements being foisted upon the NZ people by both National and Labour. He fought equally hard on the issues of foreign control and free trade. In the latter campaign, I’m basically a foot soldier, so his close working relationships were with colleagues such as Bill Rosenberg and Leigh Cookson.

A Regular Happy Camper At Waihopai

Rod Donald'’s relationship with Anti-Bases Coalition was "much more hands on and sociable". From the time he entered Parliament as an Alliance Party MP in Opposition he plunged into the campaign against the Waihopai spybase. He was elected in 1996; he paid his first visit to Waihopai during ABC’s January 1997 protest.

He later appeared as a defence witness during the Blenheim court case of the 20 people arrested but got short shrift from the local judge who wasn’t going to have his courtroom turned into a “circus”. That first time, Rod came with new Labour MP, Marian Hobbs.

We’re reliably informed that she got her head bitten off by Helen Clark, who so terrified Marian that she has never contacted ABC again, never been near Waihopai again and never mentioned the subject again (even when she was Minister of Disarmament), preferring to stick to platitudes and bask in the glow of New Zealand being nuclear free.

Once the Greens stood on their own two feet in Parliament, and Keith Locke was elected (both happened in 1999), Rod Donald and Keith Locke became a standard feature of all subsequent Waihopai protest camps. In January 2000, the newly-elected Greens were flavour of the month and the media poured across from Wellington to cover it. The last Waihopai protest attended by both was in January 2004.

He plunged into all our activities – I remember him as compere for a Best Dressed Spy contest, held in Blenheim’s central Seymour Square. He loaned us his family tent, he drove people around in his van (quite often having specially driven it from his family’s annual holiday in Golden Bay), and he led the trips to the swimming hole further up the Waihopai Valley. ABC didn’t go to Waihopai in 2005, instead we went to the other “New Zealand” spybase, at Tangimoana on the North Island’s lower west coast. Rod and Keith played a leading role – Rod told me that it was the only time he’d ever been there.

Enthusiastic ABC supporter

Rod Donald never missed a chance to put Waihopai in the spotlight – in August 2005, as part of its election campaign, the Greens toured Andrew Wilkie, an Australian former Intelligence analyst turned Iraq War whistleblower, author and Australian Green candidate. Donald accompanied him through the country, including to the inner gate of Waihopai.

At Wilkie’s Christchurch public meeting, Donald kept plugging the ABC and invited Murray Horton to speak. He had every intention of joining ABC again at the January 2006 Waihopai protest. Days after Donald's death Horton was asked to come into his Christchurch office, where his shellshocked secretary handed him the e-mail Horton sent him inviting him to join the 2006 protests.

On it he’d written, “yes”. And to my rather tongue in cheek query as to whether he would have come if he had been a Cabinet Minister, he’d emphatically written “I sure as Hell would have come!”.

ABC/Greens tribute

In gratitude to his years of work on the Waihopai campaign, the Anti-Bases Coalition dedicated the January 2006 protest to Rod Donald's memory. As master of ceremonies in Blenheim’s Seymour Square, Murray Horton started the proceedings with a minute’s silence.

The Greens organised a memorial planting of native trees at our campsite (they are also dedicated to Owen Wilkes, at ABC’s request). We urged Green Party members, and all the other people who took part in the outpouring of grief after his death, to come to Waihopai as a practical way to honour his memory and continue his work. The Party responded by holding its annual Picnic for the Planet at our campsite, on the Sunday of the protest weekend, complete with bands, and Party Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons delivered her annual State of the Planet Address there. The Greens mounted a major publicity effort among their members and there was a significant increase of people at this year’s protest, boosted by many Greens coming for the first time. That could all be attributed to one thing – the Rod Factor. As an inveterate publicist and seizer of opportunities par excellence, he would have mightily approved. We know that he was with us in spirit. See the lead story in this issue for details of the January 2006 Waihopai protest.

Waihopai protester

In 2011, the Anti-Bases Campaign congratulated Steffan Browning on his election as one of the Green Party’s new MPs.

For the past decade Steffan has been ABC’s key contact in Blenheim during our marathon campaign to have the Waihopai spybase closed down. He has always represented the local Greens at our regular protests in Blenheim and at the base.

Now we’re delighted that he will be speaking at our Waihopai spybase protest on Saturday January 21st in his new capacity as a Green MP.

This continues a long tradition of active Green Party support for our campaign, dating back to when the late Rod Donald started out as an Alliance MP in the 1990s. "Rod unfailingly spoke at every Waihopai protest for the rest of his life and the just retired Keith Locke never missed speaking at one either, most recently in January 2011. The past Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons and present one, Russel Norman, have also spoken at Waihopai protests. And it is particularly appropriate that Steffan, as a Blenheim person, speaks at the January 21st protest."

References

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