A Labour Cell In TVNZ's Vast Castle

Stairway To Hell: Like the decrepit dynasty at the heart of Mervyn Peake's grotesque fantasy novel, Gormenghast, the "Heads" at TVNZ's Auckland sprawling headquarters lost track of what was going on within their immense domain.

GORMENGHAST is one novel of a hell. Imagine J.R.R. Tolkien on acid, C.S. Lewis on speed, and you’ll hardly have made a mental dent in Mervyn Peake’s grotesque trilogy. I won’t spoil the books by giving away the plot in detail. Suffice to say that Gormenghast is an immense castle. So immense that the decrepit dynasty of Groan, to whom it ostensibly belongs, cannot possibly keep track of everything that goes on within its walls.

 

Watching Patrick Gower unfold (with ever increasing glee) the activities of Shane Taurima and his colleagues at TVNZ headquarters in Auckland, I couldn’t help being reminded of Peake’s gothic fantasy.

 

Like Gormenghast Castle, the sprawling TVNZ site had somehow spawned a secret cell of resistance. How was that possible? Because, like the Groans, TVNZ’s bosses appear to have become preoccupied with “the obscure and esoteric tenets” of their governance functions.

 

For the most part this involves large numbers of middle managers running up and down the great staircase that dominates TVNZ’s Auckland headquarters, ducking into tiny offices, and exchanging information with other middle managers who undertake to pass it on to yet more middle managers. Only very occasionally (or by accident) does this information ever trickle down to the people who actually make the television programmes we see on air.

 

Only very rarely do all the various functionaries of TVNZ gather together. And when they do it is almost always to pay homage to something called “The Ratings”. These are collections of viewing data gathered according to specifications laid down at some point in the far distant past but which are now almost completely irrelevant to the way people use their television sets, Sky decoders, PCs and iPhones.

 

The grand interpreters of The Ratings are the “Heads” (Head of Programming, Head of Marketing, Head of Sport, Head of News and Current Affairs). Their job is to advise the CEO who, in his turn, advises “The Board”.

 

TVNZ HQ - The higher you climb the less you know.

 

It is widely acknowledged within the sprawling edifice of TVNZ that the higher you climb in the organisation, the less you know about television. At the level of the Board, for example, virtually nothing is known about the rights and duties of a state broadcaster.

 

The similarities between TVNZ’s top brass, the Groans of Gormenghast, and the peculiar determination of both elites to cling to the “obscure and esoteric tenets” of their respective institutions are quite uncanny.

 

Certainly, it is very difficult to fathom how else Shane Taurima and his colleagues could run what amounted to a Labour Party branch out of the Maori and Pacific Television Unit – practically under the noses of TVNZ’s senior executives – without employing something like the Gormenghast metaphor.

 

And, really, can you blame them? It has been years since TVNZ management demonstrated the slightest respect for the news and current affairs obligations of what is still, officially, the people’s television network. They are required to operate in a culture of contempt for the principles of public service television – an attitude epitomised by the TVNZ CEO who claimed Police Ten-Seven as an example of Maori programming by pointing to the large number of young Maori men and women arrested on the show!

 

The atmosphere broadcasters are required to inhale at TVNZ may not be party political, but it is unquestionably ideological. Since 1989, when Labour removed all references to the public good from the Broadcasting Act, TVNZ has understood that its real (albeit unwritten) charter mandates the relentless promotion to New Zealanders of the virtues of neoliberalism, while rigorously eliminating all those programming options capable of constructing an alternative worldview.

 

Mr Taurima’s and his Maori and Pacific Television Unit colleagues’ biggest mistake – apart from believing that they could ever get away with behaving in such a nakedly party political fashion – was to hang their hats on securing the election of a Labour-led Government.

 

In the nine years that Helen Clark’s Labour Party governed New Zealand no serious effort was made to root-out the pernicious operational culture at TVNZ or, indeed, to address the manifold defects of this country’s recklessly deregulated media industry.

 

Even had TV3’s Patrick Gower not exposed Shane “Steerpike” Taurima’s cell of resistance in the bowels of the TVNZ Gormenghast, a change of government would only have confirmed for him The Who’s immortal line:

 

“Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.”

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 February 2014.

Judgements Written In Blood

By Their Fruits Shall Ye Know Them: To the neoliberal political elite the victims of Pike River and the CTV Building Collapse are simply collateral damage in an unending struggle against those who attempt to restrict the free play of market forces.

 

TWO TRAGEDIES: a mine explosion and an engineering failure: and neither needed to happen. That they did happen is attributable, almost entirely, to the influence of neoliberalism – the most pernicious political ideology to assail the modern world since fascism.

 

In a sane country, Pike River and the collapse of the CTV Building would already have brought the thirty-year-long reign of neoliberalism to an end. But “sane” is no longer an adjective applicable to New Zealand society. Sane societies learn from their mistakes. Have we? Do we still know how?

 

 I say “we”, but the collective entity I’m actually referring to is the very thin layer of politicians, business leaders, top civil servants and public relations experts who “govern” the rest of us. For these people, neoliberalism has taken on the unquestionable character of a religious faith and is, therefore, impervious to evidential refutation.

 

And precisely because it is a faith, neither Pike River nor the CTV Building Collapse will produce anything very much in the way of meaningful change. The neoliberal elite fervently believe that “heavy-handed” regulation is a more profound long-term threat to the public good than gassy mines or badly designed buildings.

 

To this political class, the 29 Pike River miners and the 115 victims of the CTV Building Collapse are simply unfortunate casualties: collateral damage in the never-ending war against those who would constrain the free operation of market forces.

 

New Zealanders could take heart if there was even one major political party that opposed without equivocation the neoliberal policies in which their country is enmeshed. But, think about it: when was the last time you heard a spokesperson for the Labour Party not only condemn the policies and plans of the National-led Government, but also promise that, immediately upon taking office, Labour will repeal the legislation giving effect to those plans and policies?

 

Consider, for example, the formation of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MoBIE). This brain-dead bureaucratic monstrosity is the brain-child of National Cabinet Minister, Steven Joyce, and is the very last organisational model a government would adopt if it was genuinely concerned about the health and safety of workers in dangerous industries like mining and forestry. The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Pike River Disaster, itself, specifically recommended the establishment of a stand-alone health and safety agency. The Prime Minister demurred.

 

A Tragedy Waiting To Happen: The Pike River Coal Company failed comprehensively to ensure the safety of its workforce. Under neoliberalism it is always Money First - People Second.

 

Now it’s true that Labour opposed the formation of MoBIE and voted against the legislation setting it up, but has anyone heard them promise to instantly dismantle it upon taking office? Have they unequivocally endorsed the Royal Commission’s recommendation of a stand-alone agency or, failing that, pledged to rebuild the full regulatory capacity of the Department of Labour?

 

Come to think of it, has Labour ever honestly acknowledged its responsibility for unleashing the fast-talking, hands-off, corner-cutting wide-boys whose feverish appetite for quick and excessive profit-taking led directly to jerry-built tragedies-in-waiting like the CTV building?

 

Now, to be fair, Labour’s organisational wing has attempted to acknowledge the party’s role in unleashing the neoliberal ideology on an unsuspecting New Zealand. In the first chapter of the initial draft of the party’s new policy “platform” its authors state: “[T]he Fourth Labour Government’s programme of extensive economic reform was in breach of Labour’s traditions and values. Without any specific mandate this Labour government ….. gave up a large degree of regulatory control in favour of unrestrained market forces.”

 

That draft has yet to be ratified, and I must confess to being more than a little sceptical of ever hearing David Shearer or David Parker deliver so unequivocal a repudiation of Labour’s neoliberal past. Not while Mr Shearer’s predecessor, Phil Goff, continues to influence Labour’s economic and social policy-making. It was, after all, Mr Goff who told Radio New Zealand’s political editor, Brent Edwards, in July 2009: “a well-functioning market system is the most effective and efficient way of organising an economy.”

 

The tragedies of Pike River and Christchurch’s CTV Building are judgements written in blood against neoliberalism. Grim testimonials to the moral delinquency of a system that puts profit and convenience ahead of human-beings and safety.

 

It’s now up to us, while democracy endures in this country, to dig down to the roots of our national malaise. To wrench out the neoliberal ivy that is relentlessly strangling our institutions – and killing our fellow citizens.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star.

Blood On The Coal

A Disaster Waiting To Happen: Why was it that for nine years the party in power, a party with its roots in the coal mines of the West Coast, failed to introduce the "belt and braces" safety regulations so crucial to a modern mining industry? Why was Labour, of all parties, so slow to repair the deregulatory damage inflicted upon the industry by the National Party in the early 1990s?

 

IT WAS A SPARK igniting lethal levels of methane gas that killed the twenty-nine Pike River miners. But, as the grim report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy makes clear, the immediate cause of the disaster is of less interest than the manifold failures which allowed the spark and the gas to meet.

 

Other New Zealanders will write about the failure of the Pike River Coal Company to adequately care for its employees’ safety. Much will be said about the bureaucratic failings of the Department of Labour. There will be critical scrutiny of the National Government’s decision to disband the Mine Inspectorate.

 

But the name of this column is ‘From the Left’, so my focus will be on the party of the workers; the party whose founders came from the West Coast pits around Blackball; the party of the coal miners’ trade unions; the party which for nine long years did nothing to prevent the tragedy which, in such a criminally deregulated environment, was only ever a matter of time.

 

Labour took control of New Zealand’s state apparatus on 27 November 1999 and relinquished it on 8 November 2008. During that time three Labour MPs held the Labour portfolio: Margaret Wilson (1999-2004); Ruth Dyson (2005-07); and Trevor Mallard (2007-08).

 

All three of these politicians came into Parliament with strong left-wing credentials. And all of them, I’m sure, wanted to do only good things for the people they represented. How, then, are we to explain their inaction? Their failure to impose a state-of-the-art health-and-safety regulatory regime on New Zealand’s coal-mining industry?

 

Throughout the nineteenth century, the dangers facing workers underground, and the disasters which so regularly took their lives, provided a powerful moral impetus for labour movements all over the world – including New Zealand’s. In 2007 workers’ safety campaigner, Hazel Armstrong, wrote: “The 1890s’ West Coast coalfields have been evocatively described as a ‘slough of despond’. They were notoriously hazardous working environments: ‘There’s always blood on the coal’, miners said.” It’s why the story of Paddy Webb’s 1908 fight for the Blackball miners’ rights became as ingrained as coal-dust in the political memory of Labour Party people. How could three successive Labour Ministers have forgotten so much?

 

Roots: The Labour Party traces its origins to the bitter industrial struggles of West Coast coal miners in the early years of the 20th Century.

 

The late Bruce Jesson offers a plausible explanation in his 1999 book Only Their Purpose Is Mad: “Somehow or other, the politicians … had been persuaded that politics is an irrational and harmful activity. This followed from the firmly held Treasury belief that the marketplace is the source of rational behaviour ….. It is assumed that politicians will always bring an irrational influence to bear on events, not just because they are irrational, but simply because they come from outside the marketplace.”

 

This became an article of faith for the “Rogernomes” of the fourth Labour Government, and in spite of the many ideological and electoral challenges of the 1990s (not least from the Alliance and NZ First) it remained the core assumption of most members of Helen Clark’s cabinet. There was no appetite in the Clark-led Labour Government for a return to the so-called “heavy-handed” regulations of the past. As the source of rational behaviour, the market was still considered uniquely capable of regulating itself. Tragically, it has taken the Pike River disaster to expose the fatal falsity of that belief.

 

Following the Royal Commission Report’s release, Labour leader, David Shearer, was asked if he thought the deregulatory pendulum had swung too far. Mr Shearer responded by saying that “the government needs to be much more hands on than it has been”.

 

It is to be hoped that these words reflect a genuine change of heart on Labour’s part, and that the next time they’re in office, Labour politicians will not hesitate to prevent the private sector’s “drive for production” (and profits) from pushing workers’ rights to effective workplace protection off the agenda.

 

Because if there’s “blood on the coal” at Pike River – Labour helped to put it there.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 9 November 2012.