To the People of Auckland and New Zealand; we of Occupy Auckland present for your consideration our view of the concerns felt by the 99% that we all share.
We assert that our government is required to serve the public interest. Because it has been serving vested interests ahead of the public, we demand instead ethical conduct and full accountability above and beyond the 3-year electoral cycle. We are acting on behalf of the oppressed. The old ideas, entrenched systems and traditional ways of thinking put our society on an unsustainable path. We need to set a new course that ensures a future for us and our children. We cannot defer decisive action any longer, we must move forward!
Those in Occupation live with the risk of arrest. They have put their bodies, reputations, careers, property and relationships in jeopardy. They are enduring hardship to devote a significant part of their lives as an expression of determination to serve this common cause. Consequently, in Solidarity with all other peaceful Occupiers around the world, we declare our intention to replace business as usual with a better alternative.
We do not accept that 1% of the population have any right to own and control most of the wealth in our country. We understand that the situation is caused by an exploitation and control system emanating from overseas that uses the US Federal Reserve, corporations, and the apparatus of democracy to make dupes of our politicians. We reject the traditional assumption that everyone else must suffer the consequences of the decisions of these people and pay the price they impose on us.
We will not tolerate that more than 200,000 of our children live every day in hopeless poverty. The shameless exploitation and manipulation of our young people for profit by companies selling them unhealthy foods and damaging products must stop. As parents, we cannot accept that our children's health and well-being is threatened by these outside influences as part of business as usual. All legislation that permits chemical poisons to be put in our foods must be eliminated.
We reject the current policy that young New Zealanders must pay more for a University education than past generations; the quality of our democracy depends on the universal education of citizens. Nor will we accept that our elderly parents, who worked and paid taxes all of their lives, should now live in fear that their pensions and their access to quality medical care should be threatened. When governments use fear to reduce the quality of life of old people it demeans us all. Provision of intergenerational equity must be a foundational principle of future governance.
We denounce the practice whereby young people are expected to work for nothing as "interns", or languish in dead-end jobs because companies refuse to pay for vocational training. Paying the cost of job training was the traditional norm in business and legislation must impose penalties on delinquent employers. Artificially high levels of unemployment and reduced working conditions have been forced upon us by the architects of globalisation, due to the out-sourcing of jobs to foreign countries, so we need to replace this status quo with a suitable alternative economy. It is imperative that this country becomes self-sufficient before the global trading system collapses.
Our society is sick and riddled with institutions acting in breach of the principles of natural justice, so we intend to create one that is just and healthy. The free-market experiment has produced widespread pollution and the promise of a trickle-down of wealth has failed to be delivered in reality. It is time the experiment ended. Free trade is a valid principle but has had too many negative consequences in practice. It must be replaced by fair trade.
We acknowledge the widespread harm done by the lack of corporate ethics, so we require a fundamental change to business as usual. Companies must be required by law to serve both public and stakeholder interests. Many of our young families cannot afford to buy a home. Those that can are allowed to be trapped by unscrupulous lenders into a lifetime of debt slavery. The government must accept it's moral responsibility to provide a better alternative. We believe that ownership and control of land and natural resources is invested in the citizens of Aotearoa by right. Any privatisation by business must be conditional upon public approval of mutual benefits.
We abhor the disproportionate control of our political institutions and our media by the 1%: from this malignant social control system a multitude of injustices proceeds. To provide social justice we must eliminate it. We assert as a governance principle that all legislation that recognises companies and corporations as natural persons be removed; that they shall not be entitled to protection under our Bill of Rights (part 3, sec. 29), and they may not act to influence our political processes for their own ends. We allow that restructuring and relegislating corporations could transform them from agents of evil to organisations that provide for the common good, in which case their right to lobby governments should be restored.
We trust you will endorse our prescription for a better alternative to business as usual, and we appeal to you to demonstrate your solidarity with the Occupy movement.
Join us. Come add your voice to ours, help us find a better way.
In solidarity, the General Assembly of the Occupation of Auckland
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Endorsed by: Bill Watson, Dennis Frank, Vanessa York, Tim Lynch, Bera MacClement, David Holden, Eva Naylor, Jenny Campbell, Patricia Kane, Joy Sadler, Diego Sonderegger, Paul Bruce, Lydia Mair, Christine Ellen Henderson, Steve Goldthorpe, Deborah Yates
