First GPJA Forum Of The Year

PPPs - The 'Hidden' Hand

As a special guest, Sue Newberry from Christchurch will explain how financial management systems are manipulated to promote more market reforms and privatisation. She will talk about some of the frightening implications for us as guarantors of all public debt of the latest proposed changes to public sector financial management as well as explaining more about the PPPs about to be imposed on us.

Sue Newberry is a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury, with a research interest in public sector financial management reforms which are an integral part of world trade developments.

She has published research on:

* health-related aspects of the reforms

* the debilitating effects of the accounting and budgeting system operated at central government level

* the many biases and distortions in the system, including those that favour PPPs

* the way in which accounting developments help to conceal those biases

Internationally, she is involved in research on PPPs and public sector developments with colleagues in both Australia and the UK, and was an invited speaker at the University of Sydney's PPPs forum in December 2003.

Where: Trades Hall, 147 Great North Road, Grey Lynn

When: Monday, February 2, 2004 at 7.30pm

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>