Top NZ Labour MP support for global ethical human rights approach to replace neoliberalism.

Anthony Ravlich
Chairperson
Human Rights Council (New Zealand)
10D/15 City Rd.,
Auckland City.
Ph: (0064) (09) 940 9658
www.hrc2001.org.nz

Member of Parliament, David Cunliffe, who recently challenged for the New Zealand Labour Party Leadership, was supportive of my recent article, ‘Increasing dissent, and global ethical human rights truth, taking NZ from a ‘stupid culture’ to a ‘thinking culture’(see anthony ravlich’s blog, guerilla media).

He states: “I really like this piece. Especially,

“Global ethical human rights empowers people from the ‘bottom-up’, usually requiring independence of action and thought, whereas neoliberalism is concerned with ‘top-down’ control, often requiring collective action and collective thought.

In the economic and social sphere the ethical approach can forge new paths into the future while neoliberalism very largely perpetuates the status quo protecting the interests of powerful elites” (email, 13 Feb 2013).

David Cunliffe has a strong academic background, including being a Fulbright Scholar. He was a NZ diplomat from 1987 to 1994 and from 1995 to 1999 Economist/Business Strategy Adviser, The Boston Consulting Group, Auckland. He was first elected to parliament in 1999 and his Ministerial portfolios have been Communications, IT, Immigration, and Health. He recently challenged the Labour Party leadership but lost to David Shearer.

Global ethical human rights is a shortened description of the ethical approach to human rights, development, and globalization for World Peace promoted by our council as a replacement for the world’s dominant ideology, neoliberalism.

Last November at their conference the New Zealand Labour Party decided about two years after the many earthquakes began in Christchurch in September 2010 that the rebuilding should be from the ‘grassroots up not the Beehive down’ (the Beehive is NZ’s center of government).

Previously, the emphasis was on top-down control, which is the neoliberal approach, but it came under mounting criticism e.g. the very slow pace of rebuilding, from residents.

Further information, including increasing high profile support, on the global ethical human rights approach can be found in numerous articles in the blog cited above. The foundations of the ethical approach is described in my book, ‘Freedom from our social prisons: the rise of economic, social and culture’ (Lexington Books, 2008) which was recommended on the UN website for about two years. It can be found in most of the major libraries in NZ.