The Hobbit strikes back! Huge win for NZ Actors & workers
And it has come to pass…
…let’s remind ourselves what the hell happened 7 years ago because a vast majority of New Zealanders still don’t seem to appreciate how horrible this all was.
Confronted by actors who no longer wished to be taken advantage of, Peter Jackson co-ordinated with National to throw a tantrum over Union demands for better conditions. National saw this as a plum opportunity to turn public sentiment against the union movement as a whole and jumped in on Jackson’s side to whip up union hate.
The moment Key sided with Jackson, Warner Bros knew they had the NZ Government over a barrel and they strong armed Key into not only giving them more corporate welfare to film here, they also forced National into passing employment legislation that hurt NZ actors while helping a fucking multi-national corporation.
Let’s get this clear – there was NO risk to the Hobbit being filmed in NZ, that was a bullshit lie and National manipulated the situation for political capital. It cost us tens of millions in corporate welfare and we passed employment law that actually hurt NZ workers.
I don’t begrudge the cash stumped up to help make the Hobbit trilogy. It’s nice to have NZ actors on screen, the booootiful scenery and all those design geeks getting employment. Who doesn’t want that? Chuck in a few academy awards, Peter Jackson able to afford a private jet and Wellington feeling self important and the $200million in taxpayer subsidies seemed like a steal didn’t it?
What I did detest was the $32.5million we had to give Warner Bros while changing our employment law to give them that $200million. Allowing Key to manufacture a crisis with The Hobbit so he could bash the Unions and blame them seems like one hell of a cost for 3 mediocre films.
The irony was that the legislation they passed ended up making the process more difficult for actors and films being filmed here by demanding a judicial review of each case which left open production costs.
Labour’s changes will make the process more administrative than judicial and the quickness of that process will give film makers budget certainty while ensuring Actors get a fair wage and conditions.
This wasn’t going to make the list of things to do in the first 100 days but the symbolism of telling a multi-national corporation that we won’t write our laws for their benefit was too compelling for NZ First.
The Hobbit fight was nasty, needless and spiteful. Rectifying it isn’t just symbolic, it is righteous and will actually help the industry and strengthen it.
Helen Kelly who had to take so much shit for this will be smiling down from heaven that it will be wiped.
PS – It was a shit yawn fest of a trilogy Peter with too many stone giants.
The films were rubbish as well.
A great two finger salute to power, corrupt power at that.
That whole ugly mess turned me off Peter Jackson and his dull films forever.
Talk about taking a giant shit on your fellow kiwis all the while enriching himself and enabling that duplicitous arse, Key, to rub it in.
One of the many low lights of the Sir John Key era!
Ditto, Xray.
When I watched the media coverage of this whole episode, it stuck out like a sore thumb that there was some kind of agenda at work here. We were being taken for a ride by a film producer skilled at manipulating emotions.
This time he had an audience of 4 million to manipulate.
No Oscar for him. Just a big Thumbs Down.
… ” What I did detest was the $32.5million we had to give Warner Bros while changing our employment law to give them that $200million. Allowing Key to manufacture a crisis with The Hobbit so he could bash the Unions and blame them seems like one hell of a cost for 3 mediocre films”…
It is also ironic that the whole theme behind the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was a titanic battled between good and evil , – and that very evil empire of Mordor was setting to enslave the known world,… using its corrupted minions.
And here was John Key ,… the epitome of the corrupted Ring-wraith , acting against Middle Earth and the Shire ,… right here in New Zealand. However ,.. it now transpires that the battle is now won and the ring was dropped into the fires of Mordor at last , during the general election with the Labour , Green and NZ First party’s having now taken power…. on Saturday 23 September 2017,…
And I hate to say , … or maybe I don’t,… but Winston Peters could well of been our very own Gandalf.
‘it now transpires that the battle is now won and the ring was dropped into the fires of Mordor at last’
Unfortunately that is not so. As long as private banks can conjure money into existence via mortgages, loans and [in the case of central banks] bonds, and charge interest on the money they created out of thin air, and as long as corporations exist, then the war between good and evil is not won. Ordinary folk remain debt slaves, largely dependent on corporations for their ‘daily bread’.
100%AKTT
The racket of NZ and other states giving the power to private banks to enslave and eventually own the majority of land and assets while denying social legislation and support through their powerful money based control of Govt – is appallingly stupid.
http://www.positivemoney.org.nz/
Hone and MANA are the only political voices on this crime.
But it has been raised before in the 1930 and some progress made in cutting the chains of British bankers but all that progress has been circumvented since.
As debt salve we need to rise from the shackles.
“Hone and MANA are the only political voices on this crime.”
Quite correct Johnw.
Which really grows my concern on why Kelvin TwoFace was so determined to keep Hone from Parliament.
If it looks like a rat, smells like a rat, etc etc…
Yes a low point in NZs history and the media sucked it up with glee, and yes the movies were too long, too noisy, too violent and too boring. The king really was in the all together.
Yes a low point in NZs history and the media sucked it up with glee, and yes the movies were too long, too noisy, too violent and too boring. The king really was in the all together.
But, but, but, that nice Mr Hosking said this Labour govt has made a huge mistake and no Hollywood film company will ever make a film in N.Z. again. Oh fuck off you big lamp!
Indeed. Perhaps Mike should go and have another perm and ease his worry about all those plebians breaching the fortress by shoving another couple of Yales on the front door – then go and get utterly pissed with daddy in law’s vinegar.
At least that’d put paid to that abomination called 7 Sharp
This was a very dark day in NZ labour relations.
Corporate corruption and worker abuse at its worst, aided and abetted by a brown nosing, finance fiddling PM. Wouldn’t mind betting Key supplied his own Vaseline, to make the greasy deal more comfortable for himself!
It’s taken seven long years, but this is a big win for Kiwi workers. Great news.
And don’t forget it was Peter Dunne responsible for the legislation deeming kids delivering junk mail self-employed independent contractors running their own businesses. I, ultimately successfully, took a case to the then Labour Dept about workers deemed self-employed; the Labour Dept advanced it to the ERA, and we won, but it took nearly 3 years, reaching settlement at mediation the day before the ERA hearing.At the invitation of Caritas , I submitted to a Select Committee on the exploitation of so called self-employed workers, memorable mainly for Leanne Dalzeil and Peter Brown appearing to be the only people particularly interested.
The junk mail self-employed decision came originally from a ruling from the IRD, bad law, contrary to its own guidelines, but no-one could ever afford to test it in a court of law before Parliament passed Dunne’s law.
JOHN KEY LEGACY = SWINDLING THE PUBLIC OF NZ.
“What I did detest was the $32.5million we had to give Warner Bros while changing our employment law to give them that $200million. Allowing Key to manufacture a crisis with The Hobbit so he could bash the Unions and blame them seems like one hell of a cost for 3 mediocre films.”
Key is a sick man.
“The Hobbit fight was nasty, needless and spiteful. Rectifying it isn’t just symbolic, it is righteous and will actually help the industry and strengthen it.”
Amen to that. Yay For the scrapping of the hobbit law! The mills of god grind slow and all that….
…they should of just taken the eagles from the start – could of saved themselves a Lot of bother.
The more ‘up yours’ fingers this new government gives to the old the better.
Fantastic news. It was a disgraceful episode and I felt ashamed of the way in which Helen Kelly and Robyn Malcolm were publicly vilified and hounded. It was one of the first episodes in which the public could see the true colours of John Key’s national party. Not that anyone took any notice, but it was all there without the mask.
9 years of these arseholes……but that would b the single thing that disgusted me more then anything else….can’t watch any Jackson film now.
The manufactured ‘hobbit’ crisis is in my opinion among the most shameful things done by the last government, and the MSM’s untrammeled support of what the government did is even more shameful. What is also shameful is that although this crisis was largely by the making of the greedy Sir Peter Jackson, the MSM has never called him out on it, as if he is some kind of national saint that must never be criticized. Interestingly none of the MSM outlets reporting on the incoming governments change of these laws makes any mention of Sir Peter. I also just made the above comment in response to Stuff’s article, followed by the remark ‘I bet this comment never gets past moderation’.
“Helen Kelly who had to take so much shit for this will be smiling down from heaven that it will be wiped.”
That says for it me too Martyn. I read a tweet from her son who said she would be so proud and pleased.
I never saw ‘the hobbit’ and never will. Jackson’s attack on the trade union movement would’ve made Sauron a happy Chappy. Screw Jackson and the goat he rode in on.
I wonder if the Hobbit series’ poor results from the Academy Awards was the result of the US film unions getting their utu….
More likely because Harvey Wienstien prefers meek and desperate woman. Not a bunch of male hobbit actors.