Activists from Matt McCarten’s by-election campaign in Mana have been involved in a symbolic protest to highlight the crisis in housing faced by working class people in the area and New Zealand as a whole. 3 News reported that the vacant state house in Cannon’s Creek had been occupied by protestors in order for a family currently living in a garage to move in. Shortly after the news item was aired, police arrived at the house and arrested four people, including two Workers Party members who were visiting the house to provide their campaign comrades with food. The police demanded that the four signed non-association orders as a condition of bail. The activists face court on Tuesday at 9am.
The campaign will be hosting a block party outside the property in Calliope Crescent this Saturday from 12-3pm. Matt McCarten has commented that: “The State will let working class people wait on housing lists for seven years. Occupy an empty house and they’ll arrest you in seven minutes.”
The Workers Party demand the charges against the activists are dropped immediately, and that the anti-democratic non-association orders are quashed.
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The last two evenings television programes have made one thing abundantly clear, TV 3 are gunning for Matt McCarten.
The other night there is a TV3 beat up about food prices. Cut to some poor bastard in Porirua who “knows the price of everything in his fridge”. And is struggling to fill the thing each week. Cut to the National and Labour candidates. Ask them quickly how much does bread and milk cost? Labour guy fluffs around a bit, National lady knows.
So far, so polite. Now cut to Matt.
He’s not in a neutral situation like the others, he’s having a meal in a cafe. Zoom in on the union bosses meal. How much does bread cost? A bit rattled, Matt says he doesn’t eat bread. Close up on the piece of toast under his bacon and eggs. Tv3 rub it in.
Demanding to know if a candidates knows the price of stuff is an old bourgeois election debating trick which TV3 have revived. It actually proves very little.
Of course the real question is, how can workers be better able to pay for bread and milk – with a minimum of $15 an hour of course. That’s what should have been thrown back at TV 3 and only one candidate could have said so. Easy for me to say that now. When I was a Wellington central WP candidate I used to always think of such brilliant comebacks half an hour later.
I felt that clip was a TV 3 setup and my suspicions were confirmed tonight after the second one.
This time the great TV 3 campaign is exposing Carpet Baggers. Candidates who lie outside the electorate. In various ways, they’re all carpet baggers. What’s featured is some angry guy giving Matt stick about that in the mall. “You don’t live here!” ” The other night on TV you didn’t know what bread cost!” What the guy is really angry about I don’t know, but Matt not living in the area or knowing the price of a grocery item is unlikely to be the root cause of the fellow’s unhappiness. Matt took the sustained attack with dignity – and it was sustained, the TV3 clip repeated, to rub it in again. The other two carpet baggers just had another nice innocuous matey encounter.
As someone with criticisms of Matt’s campaign I would like to make two observations.
The top candidate in the election actively helping pay workers pay their food bills is Matt.
The top candidate for calculated cowardly attacks on that candidate and therebye on workers rights is TV 3.