One of the objectives of those who promote globalisation and the "free" market, is the diminution of the nation state, central government and local government.

The effects of free-marketising and the change in the role of the state and government has led to a backlash, and a recognition that the extreme agendas currently being pushed around the world have to be moderated.

News to this effect has come from several senior people in different countries around the world in just the last two months. The Canadian Parliament has agreed to support the introduction of an international financial transactions tax, the Tobin Tax, to bring some measure of control to the massive amounts of speculative money which rocket around the world looking for instant profits.

In New Zealand, until recently, the high profile economists and policy people brought here were sponsored by the Business Round Table (BRT), and they promoted the BRT agenda. Recently there have been several high profile overseas speakers touring the country who have taken a much more people centred approach, particularly Canadian Professor Michael Chossudovsky, and American Professor Noam Chomsky. Chomsky's meeting in Wellington was attended by a massive crowd, which would have been unheard of a few years ago.

Underneath this is a movement to rebuild and re-establish our communities, re-establish some boundaries around an area we can be in control of. This is happening in New Zealand the same as it is happening around the world.
 

Some examples: 

• Living Wage Charters - where all publicly funded contractors must pay living wages
• High Road Development Charters - High Road development is about development that creates permanent, full-time jobs that pay good wages and have good ancillary benefits, leave etc. Low Road development is that which creates temporary, part-time or casual, on- call jobs that pay little and have no ancillary benefits (Mc jobs). (Some recent contracts have the person permanently on-call with no guarantee of any hours of work at all)
• Union Cities - where all the unions combine to unionise all workers.
• Community Sustaining Funds - where the money goes into community development and social service projects and organisations, eg from rounding up at the supermarket.
• Quality of Life Indicators - so that the community can determine where it is at and monitor changes (and develop policies to achieve improvements)
• Community Economic Development organisations. In Canada and the United States there is a well-established movement of Credit Unions, which are involved, in community economic development.
• Guardians of Justice - In Mexico there is a group which traces the bribery of the Judiciary and takes the corrupt judges to court.
• United Communities - based on relationships, respect and love for each other, to encourage the exploration of the potential of the individuals within the community. Each activity - literacy, recycling etc is seen as an opportunity to build supportive, creative relationships and community.
• Community Owned Businesses - where the purpose is the benefit of the community and profits from the business activities are used for this. They include social service arms.
• Local currencies
• Green dollars are everywhere in some countries overseas, in each suburb, they work well in 'small' networks where everyone can get to know and trust each other.
• Tradable 'Hours' where the number involved can be greater than is normal with Green Dollars.
• Regional Currencies - at present this is being trialed in two rural areas (two Counties in Ireland and much of non-urban Scotland) and two urban areas (part of Madrid and Amsterdam) in Europe with the support of the European Union.
   

• The establishment of local and regional currencies
• Each local community to work on ways to increase the time money stays in the community - ways to increase the level of trading in the local community, increase the number of locally owned trading points so that the money goes round more times before being spent either outside the community or in a business owned by outsiders.
• Establish a community economic development fund, possibly by pooling the savings of those within the community, to raise the finance for projects that will assist the development of the community - eg flats for older people.
• Make things happen the way you want them to, Buzz the local doctor (at Reefton) wants to establish the Hokianga health model in the district - a comprehensive medical service at no cost to the user. Get in behind 'him' to make it happen.
• Put the local infrastructure together to create a real 'local government'. There will be a school board, a health committee, a business association, and many others. If a representative was taken from each, you have the co-ordinating group which could be the key player in running your community. The 'official' local government is becoming steadily more remote from communities. If the proposed roading reforms go through, the present local government is likely to be decimated. The opportunity is there, and increasingly so to establish local government the way you/we want.
• The final piece I think is to develop an infrastructure to support such initiatives. This gathering is part of that; people are here from all over the country, interested in the same sorts of things, often from a different perspective. In the United States a group has recently been established called Sustainable America. It is an umbrella group for umbrella groups so that there is the opportunity for the way the activities and objectives of the different groups and sectors fit together to be looked at and work of mutual benefit can be done.
   

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