Protesters occupy Queen Street in Aotearoa Auckland New Zealand 1 Oct 2011
we are here to show the railroad on new zealand that there are many issues affecting us in this little this little country of ours and then we want to show you the rural new zealand the royal altar or new zealand cure everybody there's a tribe of people in this nation who are living in abject poverty we have half a million people on benefits are out of work we also have another half a million people workers who earn less than 15 an hour and many of those people are working on this street of wealth in every starbucks in every mcdonald's in every kfc in this city people who want to work hard but he can't pay high prices he can't afford gst increases that junkie lied about people who are trying to feed their children 300 000 children in this country living in poverty and this is a crime this is a crime because the 150 richest people in this country last year between them got an extra an extra seven billion dollars if we took that money off them and one day we will we could give every worker in new zealand a job at 30 hours a week on 35 an hour that's what we have to start demanding in our country and finally as we walk up this street of wealth and the street of poverty and you look at the banks and you look at the fast food outlets that exploit our people think about one thing all over the united states of america today in every city from chicago to los angeles to miami small groups of people like us are occupying the cbd and occupying the financial districts we need to bring this war to john king in the middle of this swampy world cup we should occupy queen street in solidarity with this people's movement against capitalism what are occ gonna do we do solemnly declare that the salivating and celebrating jaws of the commonwealth have been the causal link connecting iron fisted crown clauses to our lands waterways and resources ripped and torn asunder we the native down under now confined to the spaces hammered between the lines or worse to save from the sun as living in australia must inevitably one day become okay everybody well we've got the we've got a lot of organizations out here raising a lot of really important issues today and this is the best place to be in new zealand today so let's have a big cheer for everybody on this hikoi well done people you all made a really good decision today to come here because you're representing the many people in new zealand who are having not just a hard go not just a hard time but are suffering acutely in a land of plenty so yeah this is the real new zealand represented here on this march we're representing the people who are living in poverty in new zealand we've got 200 000 children plus living in poverty and what is the wealthiest country certainly in this part of the world we've got many people living on benefits as has been said before and this country is in crisis it's in crisis because for a past generation we have allowed a tiny number of people to gain extreme wealth at the expense of the majority and as joe said last year just 150 people in new zealand just 150 had an increase in wealth of 7 billion dollars and some of those people actually think they deserve it they actually think they earned it but we've got these parasitic bludgers at the top and the majority of people struggling well we are going to change that we are going to change that and one of the ways that i'm personally involved in helping to change that is looking at what's happening in parliament you know a generation ago parliamentarians were paid about the same wage as or the same income as a deputy principal of a of a primary school now at the moment a deputy principal of a primary school now earns about seventy thousand what does a back bench mpu 120 130 000 so mps have leveraged themselves into the top two percent of income earners in the country and so they're not interested in putting taxes on people on high incomes even labor is talking about putting taxes on people who are earning over 150 000 so that all the mps in his party won't have to pay any extra tax and if you look at mps also you find 70 of mps own more than one property mps are not interested in capital gains taxes that are going to take away their wealth so we've got mps pushing themselves up into that tiny group at the top that are incredibly wealthy so what we've got to do i'm standing for mana this year and i think mana is going to bring some real change to that system kill all you mana supporters out there okay so it's really good to see you all here it's good to see you taking part in the sequoia as i said this is the most important thing that's happening in new zealand today forget about the bloody rugby matches because what we're talking about are policies that don't that don't look at people just for the extent of a rugby match but look at the whole lives of people and the whole lives of people in new zealand are being crushed and destroyed by this extreme separation between rich and poor because of policies which are being followed by this government so good on you for being here give yourselves another big round of applause and this have a few chance to really rock the street okay when people's rights are under attack stand up fight back when people's rights are under attack but women's rights are under attack a woman's workers rights people's rights are under attack but people's rights are under attack thank you very much the issue i'm going to raise is child poverty in our country we have a beautiful land full of food and resources but about 20 of our children are living in poverty child poverty action has been campaigning for years and so many other organizations the wealth of this country needs to be shared so our children can live with a decent standard of living housing health so they can access the resources in schools so they have a chance in life and so should they right to then they're taking away our strength this street named queen street does not belong to the queen but it's really not the colonization that has never ended in this country it started out with the colonization of european coming over now it's just economic colonization and the colonization of maori people and indigenous people everywhere will not end as long as we live under the system of capitalism that put profit over people this is not the queen street this is not john k street this is owl street we work with people who are so impoverished that they don't even know that a lettuce grows in the garden they think it comes out of the new world supermarket or pack and save so when we talk about our people being in poverty we are in poverty we are starving in terms of food we are starving in terms of knowledge everything that used to be ours has been taken from us capitalized and globalized i just want to mention the significance of this location for this rugby world cup our council has paid private security companies to clear homeless people that they have been put into their paying private security companies to clear them off the streets these people live here they have nowhere else to go so now they're being prosecuted by having nothing on monday we have to fight the business school because we know the university is the place that is financializing the world it's where poverty is born and it's where we can start to overcome it we believe that the student body needs to be politicized that the student movement needs to be joined with the workers movement with the indigenous movement and with all social justice movements in this country i'm here today to burn the food bill the proposed food bill when i was growing up and that was way up in the hook yanga my mother we had a big garden we're out there every day i actually used to be quite pissed off because i thought it was very hard work and i didn't understand really what she was doing but when it came time to harvest we fed all our queer our ko matua we fed our hospital we fed everybody that came to our house and they all enjoyed the produce that we that came out of our garden if this food bill goes through they intend to stop that they tell you they tell you that they're not going to do that that that won't stop us from sharing our kai from sharing our seeds but a natural fact it is a start to that process so we must be proactive and we must be activists and stand up for our needs to rights strongly opposed to this build we all know where the real cameras need to go which is in our corporate board rooms that's where the cameras need to go retrospective legislation is not a good look for any country one minute what the police are doing is illegal next minute it isn't the search and surveillance bill is not good for any new zealanders we're on our way to a police state to fascism that we do not want all new zealanders need to stand strong against this bill and don't give in to the scare mongering that is telling you that we need this bill for 40 or 50 plus criminal cases that are currently in the line there are already criminal acts of law that can help that process as per normal don't listen to the scaremongering which says your livelihood depends on having these cameras to be unreasonable looking at what reasonably looking at what you are doing let's burn it see these tall banks that asb up there a tsb there that national down there that chase manhattan down the bottom of the road in america they can have 10 reserves they have to have 10 of what they loan you that means if they make a loan to you eight percent they're really making eighty percent in new zealand they need a zero percent lending ratio zero they have to have nothing behind them to load hundreds of billions of dollars out if you owe more money than you have how do you ever pay them back if i owe six dollars on this five dollars how the hell can i pay them back it's not about people have a job it's about mathematical and that's why the whole world is in debt that's why the whole world has more debt than more currency than more liquidity than liquidity how can you have the whole world out of balance a shop over there has to balance the perks of the balance how can we have more debt than credit in a whole planet we could have 40 planets working fully employed and we still would not pay back the debt we have to change the system we have to have nations that issue their own money supply this is why america went to war against the brits this is why they killed the red coats people need to learn this stuff they can't tax us into prosperity they can't keep stealing from us the rich avoid the taxes the poor need to do the same we need to take the banks back we need to own our own credit otherwise we're a company not a nation thank you