Bugs Bunny poses last night with the notorious Roger Award for New Zealand's worst transnational corporation: 2010 winners were the Warners Brothers. Photo: Nigel Moffiet/PMC

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Nigel Moffiet

It was a clean sweep at awards night for Warner Brothers and key players in the “Hobbit bill” movies last night – but the Rogers are nothing quite as glitzy as the Oscars.

Warner Brothers claimed the top award for the worst transnational corporation operating in New Zealand.

Prime Minister John Key and government won the “accomplice” award, while Peter Jackson won the “special quisling award” – both for their involvement in the Employment Relations (Film Production Work) Amendment Bill, or the so-called Hobbit bill.

Murray Horton, awards organiser and secretary of Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), said the finalists in the 2010 awards “were all worthy contenders” but the judges decided that Warner Brothers – “a spectacular late entrant” – came out on top.

Chief judge Christine Dann (right) with another critic of foreign ownership in New Zealand, professor Jane Kelsey. Photo: NZ Not for sale.com

Chief judge Christine Dann said Warner Brothers came out on top “for the way it threw its financial and political muscle around Wellington at the end of 2010”.

“Warner Brothers humiliated every New Zealander by being able to change the law to disadvantage workers in their own country.”

Dann said Warner Brothers and the government “let us down as a nation”.

‘Financial coup’
“[Warner Brothers] pulled off a financial coup against our country,” she said.

“The $100 million tax break and publicity subsidy going to Warner Brothers represents around $25 for every man, women and child in New Zealand.”

Green Party MP Keith Locke told Pacific Scoop that Warner Brothers was “a deserving winner of this year’s horrendous award.”

Locke said that as a person who represented the Greens in opposition to the Hobbit Bill, he was upset with the way in which the Key government “pandered to the financial and political pressure” of Warner Brothers to change the country’s employment law.

“The bill was rushed through in urgency — a bill we didn’t see until it was rushed through.”

Horton admitted some might be surprised that Sir Peter Jackson had picked up the “special quisling award” yet he added Jackson’s handling of the dispute did not seem to be in the interests of New Zealand.

“Watching him through the media, he reminded me of nothing, but one of his own characters – Gollum.”

Other finalists on the night included British health care corporation BUPA, which were runners up for the worst transnational corporation operating in New Zealand and Imperial Tobacco took third place.

‘Deceitful PR’
Dann says despite obvious reasons, Imperial Tobacco were also “richly deserving” of their third place in the Roger Awards due to their “despicable” and “deceitful” use of PR  “for influencing public opinion and public policy”.

“They couldn’t care less if you die,” said Dann

Perhaps less known were BUPA, a company that owns 44 rest homes and hospitals and 16 retirement villages around New Zealand.

Dann said BUPA were runners up on merit of “poorly paid and frequently overworked staff”.

She said in these conditions BUPA had created an environment where elderly New Zealanders were being “so badly neglected or mistreated that they end up in a public hospital requiring acute care – where some of them die”.

“BUPA are farming old people in New Zealand for profit”, said Dann.

Horton said that despite the bantering, the “Roger Award is not a joke or a spoof – it’s serious fun.”

“The transnationals themselves take it very seriously. They too want to be loved – the Roger Awards tell them why they aren’t.”

Last night’s Roger Awards were attended by one special guest as Bugs Bunny made a surprise visit, graciously accepting the award for Warner Brothers and asking the transnationals, on behalf of many New Zealanders: “What’s up, Doc?”

* The Roger Award is named after former Labour government Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas who initiated free market reforms in New Zealand in the 1980s.

Nigel Moffiet is a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies student journalist at AUT University.

Warner Brothers take out Roger Award for ‘worst multinational’