Iron In Her Soul.

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

TELEVISION NEW ZEALAND is to be congratulated for inviting Chloe Swarbrick onto its Q+A current affairs show. The Green MP for Auckland Central is the odds-on favourite to become the next co-leader of the Green Party, making her a vital player in the trio of left-wing parties (the other two being Labour and Te Pāti Māori) that together constitute our alternative government. Allowing the public to get to know Swarbrick a little better was a sensible editorial decision.

There will be many Green members and supporters, however, who, having watched Q+A’s Jack Tame interrogate Swarbrick, may be wondering whether accepting TVNZ’s invitation to be interviewed was as shrewd as issuing it.

Tame is an exceptionally talented broadcaster whose boyish good-looks mask a daunting interrogative talent. If there are weaknesses in any given political persona, Tame may be relied upon to find them. Last Sunday (11/2/24) he found Swarbrick’s – and goaded her into revealing them, live, on free-to-air public television.

The weakness Tame homed in on was Swarbrick’s political inflexibility – a flaw which has only grown as her time in Parliament has lengthened.

When she first burst upon the political scene, as an independent candidate for the Auckland mayoralty in the 2016 local body elections, the clarity of her thought and expression was Swarbrick’s greatest asset. Here was a young woman who was capable of presenting her ideas forcefully, without prevarication, and then supporting them with a truly intimidating army of facts and figures.

Swarbrick’s campaign may have been run on a shoestring, and mostly on social media, but it made sufficient political impact to leave her the third-highest-polling candidate for Mayor. Clearly, this diminutive, articulate and courageous young woman was destined for great things. That Labour and the Greens set out immediately to recruit her, surprised nobody.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to observe that Swarbrick’s choice of the Greens may not have been the best one. While, on paper, the Greens’ determination to arm their politics with the weaponry of reason and science made it a perfect fit for the serious, almost scholarly, Swarbrick, there were risks. The currents of unreason that were flowing with ever-increasing force beneath the surface of Green Party politics were bound to end up battering her core intellectual and political principles.

Swarbrick’s candidacy for the Greens’ co-leadership was prompted by the departure of James Shaw. In spite of an impressive record of political wins – most obviously the Zero Carbon Act – Shaw has found it increasingly difficult to make his colleagues understand that their electoral success depends on voters seeing them as the only party dedicated to combatting global warming effectively. Shaw’s implied warning: that a Green Party which cares less about climate change than it does about fighting the culture wars will end up bleeding away its support (a proposition confirmed by the latest Curia poll) went unheeded.

The politician who emerged from Tame’s interview with Swarbrick cannot replace the qualities the Greens are losing with Shaw. Her six years in Parliament appear to have diminished her faith in democracy as the most effective political system. Swarbrick has observed politicians of all colours tapping into the raw emotional power of ignorance and prejudice, and it appears to have hardened her and made her brittle. There no longer seems to be as much “give” in the Swarbrick of 2024, as there was in the Swarbrick who entered Parliament in 2017. Iron has entered her soul.

Swarbrick’s declining faith in representative democracy is reflected in her conviction that “the people” possess a power that overmatches the tawdry compromises of professional politicians. In her pitch to Green members Swarbrick hints that this power may be sufficient to bring the whole rotten, planet-destroying system crashing down. That, with the masses at their back, the Greens can build a new and better Aotearoa.

How many times has revolutionary zealotry offered this millenarian mirage to an angry and despairing world? How many times has it all gone horribly wrong? And how sad is it that a politician as talented as Chloe Swarbrick now finds herself wandering this arid trail?

Many have praised/condemned Jack Tame for identifying Swarbrick’s unflinching defence of the Palestinian cause as the most effective means of exposing her zealotry. But, to those who once saluted Swarbrick’s political promise, Tame’s uncompromising interview proved profoundly depressing.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 February 2024.

The Angry Majority.

The People's Champion vs The People's Prosecutor: It is the news media’s job to elicit information from politicians – not to prosecute them. Peters’ promise to sort out TVNZ should be believed. If he finds himself in a position to carry out his threat, then it will only be because the angry majority has had enough – and voted accordingly.

THERE IS ANGER OUT THERE in the electorate. At least one Labour candidate has been assaulted, and the home of a Te Pāti Māori candidate has been broken into repeatedly and a politically-inspired threatening letter left behind. Questioned by journalists, the Leader of the Opposition, Christopher Luxon, has confirmed that the National Party is in a heightened state of vigilance. Several examples of what the party believes to be credible threats of violence have been sent to the Police.

The key question in relation to actual or threatened violence on the campaign trail is its prevalence. Are we witnessing no more than a tiny number of anti-vax diehards lashing-out at the mainstream politicians they love to hate? Or, is the anger and frustration more extensive? Are people venting their rage against a system they no longer see as demonstrating any real understanding of, or empathy for, the concerns of the population?

Expressed most forcefully on social media, there is certainly a view abroad in the electorate that if citizens do not adhere to a particular view of the world, then their opinions will be dismissed by the Powers That Be as, at best, worthless, or, at worst, dangerous.

As the election campaign has unfolded, the number of entities challenged in this way has grown to include not only heretical individuals and fringe groups, but also political parties attracting mass support. Act and NZ First have been decried as racist, and even the ideological acceptability of the National Party has been challenged. Given that all the most recent opinion polling indicates that, between them, these parties encompass a majority of the electorate, their characterisation as political deplorables is alarming.

Over the course of the last half-century a curious reversal has taken place. Back in the 1970s a small minority of the population (most of them university students and trade unionists) lamented the fact that their “progressive” views on everything from foreign policy to women’s rights; the environment to Apartheid sport; were rejected by a substantial majority of New Zealanders. Since then, however, the political evolution of the nation has reached a point where the causes of minorities have become the convictions of the majority.

Over the course of the same half-century, the young idealists and activists, who once revelled in their status as the moral and political vanguard of the nation, have moved into positions of authority and influence. In the universities, the public service, the legal profession, the major political parties, and the news media, the heretical rebels of yesterday have become the orthodox mandarins of today. Unfortunately, as they made what Rudi Dutschke, student revolutionary of the 1960s, called “the long march through the institutions”, their conviction that “we”, the enlightened minority, are right, and “they”, the unenlightened majority, are wrong, has congealed into an unassailable truth.

As individuals and groups espousing ideas and causes endorsed by only the tiniest sliver of the population make their pitch for official recognition, they have every reason to anticipate success. The assumption, in nearly every case, is that the minority viewpoints of the present, like the minority viewpoints of the past, stand an equal chance of graduating into majority acceptance. Only their residual wariness of the democratic process, and the crushing power of the majority it embodies, has prevented the key state and private institutions from letting themselves get pushed too far ahead of public opinion.

The best guess as to what made society’s key institutions suddenly feel powerful enough to challenge – and even to overrule – such deeply embedded cultural and political concepts as science and democracy, is the Covid-19 Pandemic. In responding to their global and national crises, the governments of the Western nations rediscovered the ease with which emergencies can be used to “persuade” their populations to accept policies which, in normal circumstances, they would stoutly resist.

Although speaking of the US experience, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi’s remarks may also mutatis mutandis be applied to New Zealand’s. Assessing the contribution of Dr Anthony Fauci, the USA’s Covid Czar, Taibbi writes:

Anthony Fauci showed proof-of-concept for the whole authoritarian package. He convinced the monied classes to embrace the idea of lying to the ignorant public for its own good, green-lit powerful mechanical tools for suppressing critics, engendered fevered blame campaigns … Only pandemic truths that eventually became too obvious to ignore prevented this story from having a worse ending. We’d better hope the door closes before the next emergency’s Answer Man tries the same playbook.

The re-election of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government not only reassured the progressive mandarins that, eventually, the majority can be relied upon to accept the judgements of the minority, but also, that the majority’s failure to be convinced no longer poses an insurmountable obstacle to progressive policy implementation. With the universities, the public service, the legal profession and the news media on side, a progressive political party can safely advance well ahead of public opinion. And, if they fail, there is always – as the occupation of Parliament grounds by anti-vaccination mandate protesters demonstrated – the Police.

Reassured of its apparent invulnerability, the post-2020 Labour Government threw caution to the winds. On matters pertaining to ethnic and gender politics it created an ideological salient positively begging to be attacked from all sides. Fatally underestimating the ability of social media to challenge the formerly unassailable influence of the mainstream media, Labour soon found itself confronted by a sizeable portion of the public which had not only stopped believing in them, but was also bloody angry with them.

Predictably, Labour’s political enemies moved swiftly to harness the electoral power unleashed by the public’s falling-out-of-love with, first, Jacinda Ardern, and then, after a brief period of hope that her successor might haul Labour back into line with public opinion, Chris Hipkins. By the opening of the 2023 election campaign, the polls were showing that Labour’s 2020 Party Vote of 50.01 percent had nearly halved. And Labour candidates were being assaulted.

True to their instincts, the “enlightened” minority struck back against the “racist” and “transphobic” majority, scolding their electoral representatives – especially Act and NZ First – for daring to align themselves with majority opinion on ethnic and transgender rights.

Nowhere was this elite disdain for populism more vividly displayed than on the weekend current-affairs shows, Newshub Nation and Q+A. The spectacle of two “progressive” young Pakeha journalists hectoring and pouring scorn on the Māori leader of NZ First, Winston Peters, was proof of just how little they understood the electorate they were doing their best to punish by proxy.

It is the news media’s job to elicit information from politicians – not to prosecute them. Peters’ promise to sort out TVNZ should be believed. If he finds himself in a position to carry out his threat, then it will only be because the angry majority has had enough – and voted accordingly.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 3 October 2023.

Debating Debating.

Arguments-To-Go: Trained to espouse only the “correct” version of reality, the idea of giving “incorrect” ideas access to the mass media, must strike a large number of young journalists as just plain wrong.

THAT TELEVISION NEW ZEALAND saw fit to run a news item on the subject of political debate tells us something. Unfortunately, it is that we have a very big problem on our hands.

A generation has grown to adulthood for whom the idea that all important issues have at least two sides has acquired a counterintuitive aspect. It is a generation raised to believe that all the great questions that formerly divided society have been resolved.

To indicate otherwise, by affirming ideas that have been consigned, with extreme prejudice, to the dustbin of history, is to signal a form of individual and social pathology. Such persons may merit treatment, but what they absolutely must not be given is an audience.

What was it, then, that prompted TVNZ’s Laura Frykberg to pull together an item on political debate? The answer would appear to be the events surrounding the visit to New Zealand of the controversial women’s-rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull – also known as “Posie Parker”. Those events have clearly caused a number of journalists to re-examine the way New Zealand’s mainstream news media responded to Keen-Minshull’s visit. A much smaller number may even have asked themselves whether the media’s response played a part in stoking the violence which Keen-Minshull’s presence unleashed.

Frykberg’s framing of the item was, however, rather curious. Viewers were introduced to a clutch of high-school debaters – as if their highly formulaic “sport” in any way resembles genuine political debate. Skilled debaters are expected to acquit themselves effectively regardless of the subject matter. Being on the “Affirmative”, or the “Negative”, team should be a matter of supreme indifference to these “sporting” debaters. They expect to be judged solely on the organisation and delivery of their team’s arguments.

Genuine political debate could hardly be more different from this argumentative cleverness. When real human passions are engaged, debates can become extremely fraught affairs. One has only to encounter the fiercely committed protagonists and antagonists of abortion in the United States to gain some appreciation of the powerful emotions that are all-too-easily aroused by profound differences of opinion.

It is possible that the increasing disinclination to debate contentious issues, a trend already evident in the nation’s universities, is a reflection of the emotional frailty of many younger New Zealanders. More and more we hear the argument that free speech causes real harm to persons of a sensitive disposition. Certainly, hearing one’s cherished beliefs trashed by someone in possession of finely-honed rhetorical skills can be a devastating experience. Especially so, if one’s personal identity has been, to a large extent, constructed out of those beliefs.

In order to avoid upsetting their paying customers, universities have begun to downplay the idea that there are multiple ways of looking at contentious issues, in favour of the notion that there is only one “correct” viewpoint which, if not acknowledged by students, may severely limit their academic success. From this position it is but a short step to denying those with “incorrect” views a “platform”, or to the shouting-down of any dissenters who make it as far as the stage.

Emerging from this environment, it is easy to see why university graduates – especially those from the liberal arts and communications studies – might find it both strange and intolerable to end up in institutions where the tradition of allowing all sides of an issue to be aired remains deeply entrenched. Trained to espouse only the “correct” version of reality, the idea of giving “incorrect” ideas access to the “bully pulpit” of the mass media, can only strike a large number of these youngsters as just plain wrong.

But, what to do about it? The experience, both overseas and here in New Zealand, is for younger journalists to stage in-house uprisings against what they see as excessive editorial tolerance of incorrect ideas and practices. Rather than defend the tradition of ideological diversity in journalism, most editors, publishers and broadcasters are opting to bow to the will of the young people destined to replace them.

Thanks to the events surrounding Keen-Minshull’s visit, however, at least some journalists have been given cause to re-think their attitudes. The news-media’s repetition of the charge that Keen-Minshull was an “anti-trans activist” – rather than a “women’s-rights campaigner” – contributed significantly to the aggressive temper of her opponents. Educated to regard the exercise of the “Heckler’s Veto” as an entirely legitimate tactic, trans-gender activists felt morally entitled to monster Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull off her stage and out of the public square.

That this led directly to serious assaults against those who had gathered to hear Keen-Minshull speak (much of it captured on video) only made it harder for mainstream journalists to square their consciences with the behaviour a growing chorus of critics has condemned as overtly partisan media incitement.

Frykberg is to be congratulated for addressing the pros and cons of political debate on the Six O’clock News. Traditionalists might quibble that it would have been more enlightening to examine the way in which Members of Parliament deal with the passions aroused by genuine political debate, rather than the amoral artifice of school debaters. She might also have touched upon the highly contestable claims of Sarah Hendrica Bickerton of Tohatoha – a not-for-profit outfit dedicated to a “just and equitable Internet” – and Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s discombobulation at social media’s subversive mobilisation of non-elite opinion.

Taken as a whole, however, Frykberg’s item constitutes a welcome indication that the mainstream media is finally engaging in a little self-reflection. And it’s catching, at least within Television New Zealand. Frykberg’s Saturday item was followed the next morning by the Q+A programme’s decision to interview the former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, Professor Nadine Strossen, whose forthright defence of freedom of expression – even Keen-Minshull’s – left the host, Jack Tame, looking ever-so-slightly (and uncharacteristically) contrite.

Back in the 1970s, the Right used to joke that a liberal was a conservative who had yet to be mugged by reality. Both Frykberg and Tame, while not exactly the victims of a mugging, show signs of having, at the very least, witnessed something uncomfortably close to one.

As an old lefty, I can attest to the emotional wrench involved in having to own-up to the wrongs of people you once believed were doing the right thing. It took me a long time to realise that exposing bad behaviour – especially by those who purport to share your values – is by far the best way to ensure the survival of those values. Journalists, in particular, must never play favourites. There will always be two sides to an important story – usually more than two. The trick is to give every side the opportunity to present its case – and then allow the audience to make up its own mind.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 17 April 2023.

Willie Jackson’s New Network Will Go Fishing For a New Audience.

Train Wreck: Perhaps the easiest way to describe what Willie Jackson’s new public broadcaster will be like, is to set out clearly what it will not be like. It will not be fair. It will not be balanced. It will not perceive itself as a platform upon which all New Zealanders, espousing all manner of ideas and opinions, will be made to feel welcome. 

WHY CAN’T WILLIE JACKSON make a case for the merger of Radio NZ and TVNZ?

Last Sunday, on the Q+A current affairs show, he told his host, Jack Tame, that he wanted an “entity” to match Britain’s BBC and Australia’s ABC. Great! Were New Zealanders to be treated to a new public broadcaster modelled on the BBC and the ABC, the country would forever be in the Minister of Broadcasting’s debt.

Unfortunately, Jackson was just blowing smoke. The entity he is in the process of creating will not be the least bit like the BBC or ABC. So unlike them will it be, in fact, that it is actually safer for the Minister to give New Zealanders as few details as possible. Hence his unwillingness to make the case.

So, what will this “entity”: this Frankenstein broadcaster, cobbled together from the dead bodies of New Zealanders’ existing public radio and television networks; actually be like?

Perhaps the easiest way to describe what Jackson’s new public broadcaster will be like, is to set out clearly what it will not be like.

It will not be fair. It will not be balanced. It will not perceive itself as a platform upon which all New Zealanders, espousing all manner of ideas and opinions, will be made to feel welcome. That sort of public broadcaster – of which the BBC is undoubtedly the exemplar – strives to present itself as a mirror: an institution in whose productions the nation expects to see itself reflected – warts and all – and is not disappointed.

But surely, that must be what Jackson and his colleagues have in mind? One would hope so. But if that was indeed the sort of public broadcaster Labour is planning, then, just like the BBC and the ABC, it would be steadfastly non-commercial. More bluntly, it wouldn’t be supported in any way, shape, or form – by advertising.

From the very beginning, however, Labour’s made it plain that the merged entity will rely for a goodly chunk of its income on the sale of advertising. That decision, alone, shows that, regardless of the Minister’s protestations, the entity he has planned will be nothing like the BBC or the ABC – which rely upon a broadcasting licence fee, and direct state funding, respectively. Insert advertisers into the broadcasting equation, and pretty soon all your left with is a schedule dedicated to attracting the highest number of eyeballs, by catering to the lowest common cultural denominators.

That is why Radio NZ is the only real public broadcaster left in New Zealand. Its National and Concert Programmes are rigorously non-commercial – a status they enjoy by virtue of the fact that the entire network is funded by the taxpayer. It is this complete independence from advertisers and sponsors that makes Radio NZ’s diverse selection of programmes, catering to all manner of tastes, possible.

Television NZ, by way of contrast, is utterly dependent on the advertisers’ dollars. It’s programming is dictated by the ratings. If not enough people are watching, then advertisers demand a discount, and the network’s revenues fall. If more viewers are keen to watch FBoy Island than an historical drama, then it’s the reality TV show that gets the prime-time slot. Which is why there are so few historical dramas, and so many reality TV shows, on prime-time NZ television.

Forty years ago, New Zealand’s public television networks, heavily subsidised by a broadcasting licence-fee, and with the amount of advertising strictly regulated, was as dedicated to producing the broadest possible range of high-quality programmes as public radio still is today. The full commercialisation of TVNZ – yet another gift of the Rogernomics era – would undoubtedly have been Radio NZ’s fate had it not been for its huge, highly-educated, and politically-engaged audience’s ability to keep it out of the private sector’s withering grip.

Which brings us back to the original question: Why can’t Willie Jackson defend the merger of RNZ and TVNZ? The answer is brutally simple: Radio NZ currently broadcasts to the wrong demographic. It’s listeners are too old, too white, too well-educated, and insufficiently “woke” to be herded in the direction Labour favours.

That is why Willie Jackson is so determined to merge Radio NZ with TVNZ. He needs a new net with which to go fishing for a new audience.

He neither needs, nor wants, RNZ’s existing listeners.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 9 December 2022.

A Smooth Performance.

In A Word: The new Leader of the Opposition, Christopher Luxon, has very clearly chosen to reject the option of presenting a “flinty-faced” National Party to an electorate grown accustomed to the rhetoric of “kindness”. If the message of National’s new leader could be compressed into a single word, then that word would be: Moderation.

COVID HAS A LOT to answer for. Todd Muller, in particular, has good cause to feel aggrieved. How much more smoothly his induction to “the hardest job in politics” might have gone if he had been able to sit down, in familiar surroundings, and answer his inquisitors calmly and with due consideration.

What New Zealanders saw, instead, was Muller standing all alone in the echoing darkness of the Old Legislative Chamber. Starkly lit, and filmed from a low angle, he was forced to respond to questions directed at him from hundreds of kilometres away. Fixed to his position in front of the camera, he attempted to enliven the strained encounter by raising his voice and gesticulating energetically. The effect was unsettling: a big, shouty man, waving his arms about randomly it the dark. In short, a performance most unlikely to inspire either confidence in, or affection for, the National Party and its new leader.

The contrast with Christopher Luxon could hardly be sharper. Interviewed by Jack Tame for TVNZ’s Q+A current affairs show on Sunday, 5 December, the new National leader was seated comfortably in what one must assume was his own (very stylish) Auckland residence. The interview set-up was so much more conducive to useful communication than the desperately uncomfortable environment inflicted upon Muller. The lighting was flattering, the camera-angles professionally determined. With both men seated comfortably, eye-to-eye, Tame’s questions, and Luxon’s answers, resulted in the sort of unforced, self-revelatory dialogue that permits the voters to get a good measure of the Opposition’s new leader.

One can only speculate about the to-ing and fro-ing between TVNZ, the Q+A team, and Luxon’s people, that presumably preceded the interview. What seems clear, however, is that the advice being tendered to the new National leader is several orders of magnitude superior to that supplied to his hapless predecessors. This is important.

For most of her term as Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern has had at her disposal the formidable expertise of, initially, Mike Munro (Helen Clark’s superb media manager) and then the equally competent Andrew Campbell. Combined with her own not inconsiderable talents as a communicator, the highly professional media management of Ardern’s Government has contributed significantly to its political success.

There is a story (possibly apocryphal) which illustrates the vital importance of what would now be called the “situational awareness” of a good media manager. It harks back to a post-election period when Winston Peters was, not untypically, denying all interest in the “baubles of office”. When, however, it became clear that his support would be needed to keep Helen Clark’s Labour-led Government in power, Peters’ disinterest began to slacken.

Waylaid at one of the country’s larger airports by a scrum of journalists, Peters was repeatedly challenged to explain his sudden change of heart vis-à-vis said baubles. It was then that Mike Munro, who fortuitously happened to be present, noticed that Peters was standing in front of a Christmas display featuring a plethora of – you guessed it – baubles. Understanding immediately how damaging this “Winston with Baubles” image would be: Munro gently nudged the NZ First leader in front of a less compromising backdrop.

Silly? Petty? Well, yes, of course. But one has only to recall the images of Don Brash attempting (unsuccessfully) to climb in and out of a racing car, or “walking the plank” from a speed-boat to the jetty, to grasp just how much careful thinking and planning needs to go into how a political leader is presented. Even in 2021, one picture is still worth a thousand words.

It should, therefore, be a source of real satisfaction to National’s backers and strategists that Luxon has around him a team capable of setting up something as politically constructive as the Q+A dialogue with Tame. Quite apart from all the non-verbal communications: the sophisticated and stylish surroundings; the subject’s relaxed demeanour; Luxon was able to deliver his pitch without any of the weird distractions that prevented Muller from communicating effectively with his audience.

What, then, was the substance of Luxon’s pitch and how effectively did he present it? If the message of National’s new leader could be compressed into a single word, then that word would be: Moderation.

Luxon made it clear that he will be making full strategic use of Bill English’s “Social Investment” policy – “surging” resources to where they can do the most good for those deemed likely to make a prolonged call upon the state’s resources. While declining to offer a full endorsement of former National Prime Minister Jim Bolger’s call for a “reimagining of capitalism”, Luxon made it clear he was no hard-line adherent of the laissez-faire policies of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson. (Not to mention Act’s David Seymour.) Nor was he prepared to put a cap on state indebtedness as a percentage of GDP. (As both Labour and the Greens did in 2017.) Lower taxes: while something he would “love” to do, is not something he’s committing National to – just yet.

All this will be music to the ears of the 400,000 National “deserters” of 2020. Luxon has, very clearly, chosen to reject the option of presenting a “flinty-faced” National Party to an electorate grown accustomed to the rhetoric of “kindness”. There are simply too many women voters the party needs to win back from Labour.

Conservative males will likely interpret Luxon’s pitch in slightly different terms. The priority for these voters is a National leader capable of restoring the New Zealand ship of state to an even keel. Radicalism of all kinds: be it of the Right or the Left; is unsettling. Moderation is exactly what they are seeking: a return to business as usual.

Perhaps the most important of Luxon’s answers to Tame’s questions were the ones he gave on Māori-Pakeha relations. After displaying an impressively succinct understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi’s three articles – an understanding conspicuously lacking in the Prime Minister when similarly questioned in 2018 – Luxon drew a very clear line in the sand on the issue of Māori co-governance.

Foreshadowed here, is what, for many New Zealanders, will be a welcome rejection by National of what is fast becoming the “official” version of the Crown’s Treaty obligations. Members of the political class have been given a thoroughly polite, but timely, warning that a change of government will bring with it a considerably less radical interpretation of the Treaty’s meaning. Those senior public servants anticipating an inexorable, bi-partisan advance towards the full realisation of Māori co-governance, in time for the Treaty’s bicentennial in 2040, should think again.

Naturally, not every one of Luxon’s replies were as polished, or filled with political heft, as his response to Tame’s questioning on the Treaty. Indeed, it would be astonishing if they were. National’s new leader has been in Parliament for barely a year, and there is still a lot of polishing to do. Labour’s problem, however, is that Luxon is not a rough-hewn work-in-progress, still bearing the marks of the chisel. On the contrary, the man already offers a remarkably smooth surface to the camera’s gaze.

Two more years of polishing. Two more years of coming to grips with the insatiable hunger of the 24-hour news cycle. Two more years of drawing the best from a caucus team already buoyed by the palpable change of mood across both party and country. Two more years of favourable poll numbers. Two more years of rising donations from the fabled “big end of town”. Two more years of refining National’s message and upgrading the means of delivering it – and Labour will be in a world of pain.

How eagerly the Prime Minister must be awaiting medical science’s final judgement on the Omicron Variant. The worse, the better.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 6 December 2021.

Government of the Media, by the Media, for The Media.

Ambush! The leader of a political party – precariously poised on the edge of political oblivion – is invited to appear on a television programme whose producers’ and host’s intention is to ambush and embarrass him. Not, it is important to note at this point, to question him on evidence gathered by its own journalists, and about which he, having been given fair warning, will be invited to make comment. No, no, no: that would be what honest-to-God professional journalists would do.

I MUST HAVE MISSED the news bulletin in which the appointment of Jack Tame as  People’s Prosecutor was announced. I guess Winston Peters missed it, too. Otherwise, why would he have put himself in the dock on Q+A last Sunday morning? (6/9/20) Not that Winston was ever in real trouble, not from “James” – as the NZ First leader kept calling him. Winston’s been around too long to be seriously discommoded by an ambitious young journalist less than half his age. But, as he angrily told Tame and his producer, he had plenty of other things to be going on with, 40 days out from a general election in which he is fighting for his political life and legacy, than to submit himself to the inquisitorial fury of People’s Prosecutor Tame.

 Anyone who knows anything about the way current affairs shows like Q+A are put together will share Winston’s outrage. Securing the appearance of a prominent politician on such shows is always a delicate exercise. The person, or, more likely, his or her minders, will want to know what the programme intends to talk to their boss about. And believe me, if they are told that the programme intends to ambush him with a whole series of questions of the “Are you still beating your wife?” variety, then the show’s producers will be told, very politely, to fuck right off.

 So, you can bet your bottom dollar that Winston and his minders weren’t told anything remotely like that. He’d made himself available for an interview on the understanding it would mostly be about the tragic loss of the live-cattle-carrier capsized by a typhoon in the East China Sea. He did this believing, perhaps naively, that he was dealing with honest broadcasting professionals, not media bushwhackers.

 You can also lay down a fairly heavy bet that Tame and his producers talked through the interview with considerable care, deciding exactly when the ugly shift from friendly interviewer Jack, to pitiless inquisitor Jack, would take place. Equally likely is the encouragement Tame would have been receiving through his earpiece from the control room as the interview unfolded. Were it a case of an interviewer gone rogue, Tame would have been shut down immediately. So, the Tame-Peters interview didn’t just happen – it was organised.

 Just think about that for a moment. The leader of a political party – precariously poised on the edge of political oblivion – is invited to appear on a television programme whose producers’ and host’s intention is to ambush and embarrass him. Not, it is important to note at this point, to question him on evidence gathered by its own journalists, and about which he, having been given fair warning, will be invited to make comment. No, no, no: that would be what honest-to-God professional journalists would do.

 I’ll never forget my old boss at The Independent Business Weekly, Warren Berryman, drumming it into me that real journalists don’t do ambushes. The subject of a story must always be offered the opportunity to respond to its content. It’s called “fairness” and there was time when TVNZ understood the meaning of the word.

 Not anymore it would seem. If Tame had anything solid in the way of evidence of Winston’s and NZ First’s wrongdoing, then he and his producers kept it to themselves. All we got to hear was a series of quick-fire questions cleverly constructed to leave their guest with nowhere safe to go. Maybe they really did have the goods on Winston, and what they were trying to winkle out of him was a flat denial, which they could then expose as a lie – as the cameras rolled. Then again, maybe they didn’t.

 Which leaves me – and I’m pretty sure a pretty large chunk of the Q+A audience – wondering what TVNZ’s game is. This is, after all, a public broadcaster. That should mean, at the very least, that the highest possible standards, not just of journalism, but also of common human decency, are drummed into every single staff member. Because, you know what, they used to be. Back in the days when news and current affairs constituted a sort of holy order, separated and secured from Hunter S Thompson’s “cruel and shallow money trench where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs for no good reason” – i.e. the rest of the television industry.

 For what it’s worth, this is what I think their game is. I think it’s about the substitution of the news media (young journalists in particular) for the people. And since democracy itself is about “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, what we’re actually looking at is a bunch of journalists who no longer put much faith in democracy. Because, you know, there are so many people out there who are racists, misogynists and homophobes. As such, they shouldn’t really be allowed to govern the country – should they?

 What we’ve got is a bunch of journalists who, wittingly or unwittingly, are dragging us all in the direction of government of the media, by the media, for the media. They’re doing it for us – of course they are – because, you know, most of us really aren’t up to the job of doing it ourselves.

 Joining a political party, earning the trust and confidence of its members, being selected as a parliamentary candidate, getting elected. It’s all so tedious, so demeaning. Having to listen to ordinary citizens, secure their votes, stay on their good side. So much easier to cast the cloak of the media’s protection over the weak and stupid. So much more satisfying to slay the monsters – like Winston Peters – who, these journalists are pretty sure, are cheats and misleaders, live on the people’s airways, or luridly on private-sector newsprint.

 Because, you must know that if the media doesn’t take on the role of the People’s Champion; the People’s Prosecutor; if charlatans and extremists aren’t lured in front of the cameras and microphones to be ambushed and politically executed; then there’s every possibility that the people – idiots that they are – will re-elect them.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 8 September 2020.