A Puff of Smoke

Everybody knows that multi-national corporations can be vile, disgusting creatures. Arms manufacturers, pharmaceuticals and finance companies toe a very fine line between right and wrong. But surely the worst are tobacco companies: they sell a deadly product which is extremely addictive and yet completely legal.

Across the western world they are facing increasing restrictions on their products and in turn their profits.

In New Zealand the major issues facing tobacco companies are increased tax, outdoor smoking bans, retail display bans and plain packaging.

And here in New Zealand Philip Morris Tobacco is fighting back. They have launched a website

https://www.myopinioncounts.co.nz/

to gather opinions from smokers on these key issues and use them to lobby the government to stop and roll back regulation.

The great thing is that anybody can register. So why not share with them your views on the disgusting products they manufacture and the harm they do to our society!

Note: I am often loathe to see governments restrict the personal freedoms of their citizens. I mean why shouldn't a grown adult, responsible for their own choices and actions be allowed to smoke tobacco. But in this case I feel the negative effects of smoking outweighs this, particularly the effect on children.

I don't know if I support an outright ban as the best solution. I would probably prefer to see a ban on nicotine first and see how many people kept smoking. We probably wouldn't even need a ban after that.

New Monbiot

George Monbiot's latest column is available at Guardian.co.uk. It is a cracker, enjoy!

Modern government could be interpreted as a device for projecting corporate power. Since the 1980s, in Britain, the US and other nations, the primary mission of governments has been to grant their sponsors in the private sector ever greater access to public money and public life.

Follow the Money Drei

The New Zealand Institute has launched it's new website which can be found here. It says:

the New Zealand Initiative, an independent public policy think tank supported by chief executives of major New Zealand businesses.

We will see how independent it really is.

Hi, My name is ***** and I am doing some research into New Zealand think tanks and transparency. I was wondering if you could provide a list of your members/donors/funders and the amounts they have contributed. Any help you can give would be appreciated. Thanks, *****

I await their reply with interest.

Follow the Money Zwei

In the course of today I have come across this opinion piece on stuff.co.nz by Patrick Smellie.

It looks at the rationalisation of Finance Industry Lobby Groups and includes some interesting points, including:

The Roundtable struggles not to get noticed, and suffers from its every utterance being automatically pigeon-holed as a daft fancy of the extreme right. Shaking off that image would make the Roundtable a more powerfully influential body, but reputations die hard.

Which suggests that the New Zealand Initiative may be as I feared a lobby group to advocate for the needs of corporations over people.

Follow the Money

The National Business Review reports on the formation of a new "libertarian think tank". It will be a merger of the Business Roundtable and the New Zealand Institute to form the New Zealand Initiative.

It appears to be styling itself as a "libertarian think tank" and let us hope that is what it is rather than a lobby group to advocate for the needs of corporations over people. With this in mind I am going to take a leaf out of George Monbiot's book and see if I can get to the sources of their funding.

I asked David Farrar earlier if they were likely to be releasing a full list of donors, his response as follows:

I'm not on the Board but the NZBR used to publish a list of all its members, and my expectation is that NZI will do the same. As far as I know they have members, not donors.

I have had a look on both the NZBR and NZI websites and they do publish a list of members. However this doesn't give an indication of how much membership costs or what they receive in corporate donations so it will be interesting to see if we can get our hands on this information.

Interestingly the NZBR has photos of quite a number of their members. Perhaps unsurprisingly it is not what I would call a particularly diverse group.