Dear Minister for Primary Industries,

On the 19th of June 2012 you gave a speech announcing an anti-trafficking initiative called "Stop the Traffik Aotearoa".

Here is a link to a speech that you gave at the organization's inauguration:

https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/speec...

It was set up under the Salvation Army. I joined as a board member, migrant labour abuse being a personal and moral issue for me having lived in South East Asia or some time. I also brought onto the board a very effective Indonesian activist, and was in the process of bring on a representative of the Filipinos community shortly before the organization was shut down - all communication infrastructure dismantled, and its Facebook page deleted (https://www.facebook.com/sttnz), with all the - effective - board members let loose.

i would like to know from you why an organization set up with such great fanfare at Parliament as a primary anti-trafficking group was shut down, just as board members were starting to be quite effective in investigating labour or slavery abuses at sea as well as in the viticulture and other industries in which foreign migrant labourers on temporary visas - not to mention students - are routinely exploited. Were they too effective, perhaps? Sorry, I don't mean to be rude at all and suggest that it was meant to be an astroturf organization that got a little bit, well, out of control, in that it started to actually be somewhat effective.

Here's a link to the last newsletter that I and other board members produced before the organization mysteriously disappeared, a newsletter that has otherwise disappeared from the former STT Aotearoa website as well as the website of the Salvation army website: https://www.scribd.com/doc/212170060/STO...

So what happened to STT Aotearoa exactly? Is it still operating in some capacity that I am not aware of, and are there any other organizations of a similar nature that you are currently supporting that aim to stem labour abuse of migrant workers?

Yours faithfully,

Bill