21st January 2016

An open letter to Rachael Le Mesurier, Executive director of Oxfam New Zealand

Dear Rachael,

We recently read your opinion piece ‘Rich/poor gap has risen dramatically’ in the NZ Herald with interest and admittedly, some confusion.

There’s no doubt that financial inequality is a serious global problem which needs to be addressed. In our view however, we must assess which potential solutions are the most realistic.

You concluded your piece by referring to the World Economic Forum and their ability in their forthcoming meeting in Davos to put into action ‘good tax systems’ to help us build a better world.

However, the World Economic Forum does not have this ability at all. They are a not-for-profit foundation which does not hold any direct power to direct taxation policy in any region. And given the makeup of this foundation, it is unrealistic to believe that they would have any interest in this solution – 16 of the 24 board members are from corporate backgrounds and half the board are currently corporate executives (many of whom have clear conflicts of interest). Membership of the foundation consists of 1000 of the world’s biggest multinational corporations.

Given this, we find the conclusion that the meeting in Davos is an ‘opportunity’ to be perplexing. Especially as in the same article, you hinted at your knowledge of the WEF’s inability and conflicts, citing the 109 partners that indulge in tax havens and your exasperated opening of ‘Here we go again’ in reference to the meetings.

Additionally, you stated earlier in your piece that ‘Things are starting to change. But not fast enough’, before going on in the next sentence to illustrate the worsening of the situation from Oxfam’s own statistics. Did you mean to say ‘Things are getting worse’?

You’ve cited as evidence of positive change the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, but how excited about these goals can we really be, given the UN’s own inherently compromised structure and their litany of past failures?

You’ve also stated that at the meetings there was ‘a very welcome engagement from business’.

We would be interested to know whether this engagement was anything more than talk, or if it was simply a case of ‘saying the right things’. You mentioned the need for cooperation of business also in the previous paragraph. We would like to know how you can envision business, whose primary objective is to increase profit/value for stakeholders, to get behind policies which work against these interests?

You may be interested to know what our solutions are – we propose that the solution is more holistic than focusing on single issues. Given the structures that society is currently operating under, namely corporate rule, we see that all of our battles for what is right and fair (be they against climate change, the TPPA etc.) are interlinked.

Therefore we see the need for a comprehensive overhaul of how we as people organise ourselves in relation to each other and our environment, and this can be achieved by working towards a Resource Based Economy (RBE). If you would like to find out more about this please visit our website www.rbe.org.nz and additionally groups such as the Venus Project, the Zeitgeist Movement and the Free World Charter.

We apologise if our writing comes across as being overly critical – we believe that we are fundamentally on the same page in wanting an end to this crisis. You can contact us both via email at rbe4nz@gmail.com – we do intend to publish this as an open letter, and we would be thrilled to hear your thoughts and engage in a constructive conversation.

Yours sincerely,

Phill Spear & Sam Mentink

ends

© Scoop Media