Archive

Wailin’

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 29, 2008
in environment, international and national/act government
. 44 Comments

Foreign Minister and Whaling Spokesperson Murray McCully has announced that New Zealand will be breaching international law by not undertaking search and rescue operations if whalers or protesters get into trouble in New Zealand’s zone of responsibility.

Great. So, in a week and a half our new government has abandoned its part in the global effort to combat climate change (even calling into question whether these is a problem to confront), called a close ally’s anti-climate change policy irrational, and, now, we’re going to break the Law of the Sea.

Well, we’re not really going to thumb our nose at the international community. McCully just doesn’t have a handle on his portfolio yet. He can’t have understood the consequences of what he was saying when he said we won’t carry out search and rescue. I’m sure Mfat and Civil Defence will soon be briefing him, pointing out to him that we have a legal obligation to carry out search and rescue when it is required in our zone of responsibility and offering the opinion that violating a fundamental and long-established piece of international law for no apparent reason is not in New Zealand’s interest.

Still, a pity that after nine years in opposition and dealing with whaling issues for years (including last year when New Zealand rescued a gravely ill Japanese whaler) that McCully seems to have no idea about his portfolio. A pity, too, that he didn’t recognise his own ignorance and ask for advise from officials before publicly reneging on our international responsibilities and making us look like fools or rogues in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Just wondering

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 29, 2008
in media and national/act government
. 8 Comments

“National’s honeymoon has to run its course. The public - not Labour or the media - will decide when that honeymoon is over” writes John Armstrong.

I’m just wondering: how does the public gather information on what the Government is up to, to decide if it wants the honeymoon to continue? And, how do we, the public, collectively decide and communicate that the honeymoon is over?

I’m guessing there is some kind of medium, or even media, via which information on what the Government is up to is communicated to us and public opinion is communicated or, rather, created. One would think that it is the people who operate and inform these media who, having the power to decide how they represent both the Government’s actions and the public’s response, actually decide whether or not there is a honeymoon and whether or not it is over.

Could one argue that by pretending the media is a mere conveyor of information, not a shaper of that information, Armstrong is attempting to excuse the failure of the fourth estate to fulfill its duty to ask the hard questions of those with power? I’m just wondering.

Nats scrap citizens’ jury on electoral reform

Published
by
Tane
on November 28, 2008
in election funding
. 41 Comments

Frogblog reports:

The Green Party initiative to have electoral reform reviewed and managed by a citizens’ jury has been scrapped by the National government today. While not surprising, it does mean that electoral reform falls back into the hands of the politicians - putting the wolves back in charge of the hen house. The press release came at the usual “don’t look now” time of 4 pm on a Friday, a trick that both National and Labour use to hide unpopular announcements.

Attack on democracy, eh?

The Standard Week - 21-28 November

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 28, 2008
in standard week
. 1 Comment

The Standard Week has been on hiatus due to a combination of elections, forgetfulness, and binge drinking but it’s back. This week saw our brand-spanking new PM out on his own for the first time, going to APEC and the UK. He blushed and gushed at meeting George Bush and bagged his money-trader mates, then went to met Gordon Brown. He faced his first real test there when the UK Government’s pre-budget tax package announcement included a large carbon-emissions offset departure tax that will hurt New Zealand tourism. Unfortunately, it seems rubbing shoulders with Hu Jintao and Bush had gone to Key’s head - he proceeded to attack the tax as if New Zealand is a major power, calling his host’s new policy a contagion, “not necessarily rational”, and “protectionism”. Yeah, because that’s going to encourage Brown to take our interests into account. Anyhoo, here are our favourite posts of the week:

A plea to National
‘Who does this guy think he is?’ British leaders will be asking themselves, ’some puffed up newbie presuming to tell us how to run our country’….[more]

Small target governing
 I’m hoping now we’re stuck with this lot they make a decent job of running my country. But until I see some detail and get some reassurances the Nat’s understand their five year election campaign is over and they now need to come up with the detail I’m not holding my breath…[more]

Labour’s Lessons
54,982 votes, 2.3% of the total. That was difference in the election…[more]

‘Cos I say so
Following Tony “cos I say so” Ryall’s media success with his plan to cut down waiting lists using the King Canute model of governance, the word around the traps is that several of National’s front bench are planning similar moves…[more]

Do we want to be a world-leader or a global joke?
How embarrassing, then, that we have given up our leadership role on climate change and, instead, become a joke…[more]

If you want to receive this weekly post by email, just flick us an email at thestandardnz@gmail.com to go on the Standardista list. On becoming a Standardista, you will receive your Standardista cloth cap, ‘how-to’ guide for living a PC life, class consciousness, and Notional Party yo-yo that swings from the right to the centre and back again every three years.*

*you won’t actually get these things, except the class consciousness

Basin Reserve flyover

Published
by
Tane
on November 28, 2008
in activism and transport
. 41 Comments

Over the last few weeks I’ve heard the odd grumble in Wellington leftie circles about the proposed Basin Reserve flyover but until now haven’t really paid much attention. Nor, does it seem, have many others. The 3D artists’ projection above shows why we probably should.

According to the Save the Basin Reserve campaign, the NZ Transport Agency and the Greater Wellington Regional Council are planning:

“to build an enormous concrete flyover across the northern face of the Basin Reserve linking the entrance to the Mt Victoria tunnel on the eastern side with Buckle Street on the western side - along with a series of onramps and offramps to enable traffic to flow around the Basin. This huge concrete construction will be around 10 metres tall, will cost (we estimate) more than $50 million, and will completely ruin the Basin Reserve as a sporting and cultural venue.

Following the fiasco that was the Inner-City Bypass, this is yet another kick in the face to Wellington’s urban environment. But it’s not just about the Basin - in an age of peak oil and climate change we should be investing in public transport, not in more roads to fill with cars.

If you want to find out more or get involved in the campaign there’s more info here, And there are a couple more 3D models up on Scoop.

UPDATE: A good piece at NewsWire.co.nz

The slow pols-news day quiz #1

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 28, 2008
in humour
. 34 Comments

Seems there’s so little news today, apart from the Mumbai attacks and the plane crash, that the Herald hasn’t even bothered to update their website. So, I thought we might have a wee quiz instead. 

Who said this, in what context, and are they implying what they seem to be implying?

“If this bill becomes law, I will not be skipping home to my lovely wife and telling her: “Just before I came home tonight I popped into the local brothel, because it is legal now, Honey.” She will have a message for me, and it will not be a very nice one…

I have lived in five countries and visited about 50 during my business career. The sex industry is alive and well”

Brownlee’s blow-out

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 27, 2008
in climate change, flip-flop, media and national/act government
. 45 Comments

National/ACT has only been in power a week, but the flip-flops keep coming. Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee will not confirm that that National/ACT will reversing the new light-bulb standards. This after they campaigned hard against these standards and Key repeatedly promised that under a National government people would not be told which type of light-bulbs they can use. Brownlee hasn’t confirmed that the policy will be dropped, but he is no longer confirming his party’s policy stands and that says it all. 

Campaigning on reserving the standards was a typically hollow vote-grabbing move from National; the kind of politics that encourages you not to think too hard, just be outraged. ‘Don’t let the nanny state take away your lightbulbs’ - it’s enough to stir the brain-dead reactionary in all of us.

Just as predictable as National’s pre-election bluster is their post-election back-down. The fact is there was never anything extreme about the improvement in light-bulb standards that most incandescent bulbs can’t match: the Government sets standards for all kinds of consumer goods for safety and environmental reason among others (that’s why you can’t get CFCs in your refrigerator anymore). We are actually behind the rest of the world in raising our standards and will look positively Luddite if we lower them again. In fact, the choice to buy incandescent bulbs is going to be taken away from us soon enough because China produces 70% of the world’s supply and has already banned their use domestically. So, National will move quickly to get this inevitable flip-flop out of the way so the voters forget.

Now, we can’t blame National too much for cynically exploiting this issue then back-flipping any more than one can blame a polar bear for eating baby seals; it’s just what they do and they’ll do it as long as they can do it successfully. What is disappointing, though, is that they are allowed to get away with, first, the electioneering stunt and, soon, the back-flip.

Only one group has the power to effectively expose and disarm cynical electioneering. But the media’s ping-pong excuse for objectivity failed because it can’t point out that one side of the argument is complete bollocks. Worse, we had excitable columnists comparing the light-bulb standards to the third Labour Government’s public health regulations that (among a whole slew of other things) banned cats from dairies, which National used to whip up the knee-jerk conservatives. In a bizarre reading of history, they claimed banning cats from dairies had cost Labour re-election in 1975 and light-bulbs would do the same in 2008 - they failed to ask whether National’s promise was the right thing for New Zealand or likely to be kept by a National government. The fact that parties are permitted by the way the media reports politics to get away with this kind of dishonest crap is an indictment on the industry that is meant to perform a crucial role in informing us and protecting our democracy*. 

Well, that notwithstanding, it looks like those excitable columnists’ comparison between the incandescent ban and the cat ban was valid but in a way they perhaps didn’t foresee. After all, when was the last time you saw a cat in a dairy?

*[I wonder if the media bigwigs have realised that it is this failure of duty that is driving people away from the mainstream media to the blogs for their political analysis]

‘Become a nation of savers’

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 27, 2008
in bill english, kiwisaver, national/act government and tax
. 34 Comments

That’s Finance Minister Bill English’s message to Kiwis.

So, that would be why he is cutting our Kiwisaver nesteggs in half to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, eh?

A plea to National

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 27, 2008
in climate change, economy, international and john key
. 91 Comments

Don’t let Key go abroad representing us again until he has had some diplomacy training.

I can’t believe, I literally can’t believe, the comments he has made in the UK. In addition to the comments yesterday, where he called the new carbon-offset airport departure tax “protectionism” and said it will lead to a “contagion effect”, he is now reported to have told British Prime Minister (and former Chancellor) Gordon Brown that his new tax policy is “not necessarily rational”.

Think about how this looks to the UK. Key has not actually done the job of Prime Minister for one day and yet here he is in the UK, a guest of the British government, criticising the policies of a government that has been in power eleven years, insulting them in the crudest terms. ‘Who does this guy think he is?’ British leaders will be asking themselves, ’some puffed up newbie presuming to tell us how to run our country’.

This is not how you do diplomacy, and it’s not how you do diplomacy because it doesn’t work. The UK doesn’t have to listen to us, least of all when we want them to change their policy on something as core to sovereignty as tax policy. If we want them to listen, we have to use constructive language (eg. ‘clearly, New Zealand is very concerned about climate change. We are also economically dependent on tourism and every year hundreds of thousands of people from the UK come to experience our beautiful country. We will be working with our British friends closely to see if it is possible to reduce emissions without making tourism from the UK to New Zealand unaffordable). Key’s comments have not been constructive or even nuanced, they have been plain insulting. Leaders are people too, be rude to them, attack their work, especially when you have just met them and have no experience of your own, and they will not look on your cause fondly. 

No, Key won’t a public dressing down from Brown over this, but that’s not how diplomacy works. The consequences will be far more subtle and far more insidious. Key will have helped to deafen the ears of UK leaders to our voice. National should keep him in New Zealand where he can’t do any more harm (to our international relations at least) and get the competent diplomats like Tim Groser out there to repair the damage so far as it can be.

Small-target governing

Published
by
IrishBill
on November 27, 2008
in economy and national/act government
. 28 Comments

Yesterday it was a $7bn rescue package. Today it’s preparing a contingency plan to bail out big business. But do we get details? Of course not.

I’ve got a bad feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that there’s no real plan here, or if there is it’s one that the public wouldn’t like if it was ever presented as a whole.

Much like National’s pre-election “policy” releases such as the broadband policy, these two announcements seem more calculated to create headlines hooked into hot news stories than to provide a coherent plan to deal with reality. A kind of “Look! We can sound like overseas grown-ups too.” approach.

In fact listening to Bill “window dressing” English obfuscating on morning report this morning I got the sense of a finance minister who hasn’t quite realised he’s the finance minister yet.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m hoping now we’re stuck with this lot they make a decent job of running my country. But until I see some detail and get some reassurances the Nat’s understand their five year election campaign is over and they now need to come up with the detail I’m not holding my breath.

After all, they’re going to be expanding our debt to do this. We deserve the chance to get a good look at what they plan to spend our money (and future taxpayers’ money) on.

Another upgrade

Published
by
lprent
on November 27, 2008
in admin
. 7 Comments
Sysop

Sysop

Another upgrade complete. As per usual let me know if any problems (that I didn’t find in testing) show up. Please let me know here. If I don’t know about them then I can’t fix them.

The next upgrade will happen on the weekend. This is a new module designed to make bans more effective and easier for the moderators to operate without expending my time. That is good. At present it looks like the steady-state for the site loading looks like it will settle at about 3 weeks prior to election. Looks like I’ll need the time for the steady enhancements to reduce site loadings before the next election.

BTW: The wingnut emulation project looks pretty good at present. Hopefully I’ll get that tested before the xmas.

Lynn.

Attention turns to local government

Published
by
Dancer
on November 26, 2008
in uncategorized
. 24 Comments

Seems the commentators are definately picking local government as one of the issues to watch in terms of how the new Nationaladministration handles MMP politics (and how the opposition parties handle it as well I guess). Gordon Campbell notes:

Giving the local government portfolio to Rodney Hide creates some management challenges for John Key. Can Key really afford to let Hide loose down the privatising track in local government – which would entail the wholesale contracting out of council services and the privatizing of water and roads, along lines set out in Hide’s private members’ bills on the subject. Only a minuscule number of people in New Zealand voted for this agenda.

Or will Key do the exact opposite – and try to repeat what Kevin Rudd is doing right now in Australia ? Rudd is treating local government as the best, most readily available jobs engine to soak up the unemployment bound to flow next year from the global recession. Which path will Key choose to follow – yesterday’s extremism, or tomorrow’s pragmatism?

While in the NZ Herald Brian Rudman observes:

There are many in local government scratching their heads after the appointment of Act leader Rodney Hide as Minister of Local Government and wondering what on earth they did to upset Prime Minister John Key so much….what does he [Key] do but appoint as Minister of Local Government the leader of a party which is pledged to strip most of its functions over to private operators, confining councillors “to the core activities that produce public benefits, such as regulations, flood controls and roads”.

Top of the scorched earth local government policy list Mr Hide was elected on was that “local government will be required to shed its commercial activity, thereby eliminating the need to separate regulatory and commercial functions between local and regional councils”. Policy number two was that “roads and piped water will be supplied on a fully commercial basis”.

When can we expect to hear what the actual agenda for local government is over the next three years - and what will be the processes by which any change occurs? Local government is often seen as the quiet cousin of central government politics but in actual fact it has a pretty big impact on all of us. I, for one, am feeling a little nervous! I want more than footpaths and rubbish collection as council duties.

Kids set back children’s franchise 100 years

Published
by
Tane
on November 26, 2008
in election 2008 and polls
. 23 Comments

The results are in from the NZ Post-sponsored Kids Voting project, and while it’s a worthy project it nonetheless shows why we don’t allow children the franchise.

More than 13,000 school students nationwide took part in the project aimed at encouraging kids to take an interest in our democracy. The resulting Parliament had Labour and National hold their places as the major parties, but the stand-out winners were the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party with 10.5% and 13 seats, and the joke Bill & Ben Party with 11.7% and 15 seats.

However, due to Bill & Ben only having two candidates on their party list they would lose 13 seats, giving Parliament an ‘underhang’ of only 107 seats. On these numbers Labour, the Greens and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party could easily form a government.

Hmm… come to think of it, why don’t we give kids the franchise?

PPPs? No, please

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 26, 2008
in economy, national/act government and transport
. 23 Comments

I’ve never seen the sense in Public-Private Partnerships. How is it ever going to be cheaper to get a private profit-making company to come on-board and take the risk for developing a piece of public infrastructure? The Government has to give them a good deal so they can make a profit, and the Government has to step in when things do go wrong because you can’t have major pieces of infrastructure vital to your economy going offline every time some company collapses. It’s not cheaper to use PPPs, it’s more expensive, more complicated, and more risky. PPPs have never been more than a tool for getting spending off the books by hiding the immediate capital costs of construction in the long-term payments to the private contractor.

But it turns out they’re not only a bad deal for the taxpayer, businesses are increasingly hesitant about PPPs. Fletcher Construction says that, while it will bid for PPPs if National/ACT puts them up it would prefer to contract in the traditional way, which leads to quicker construction anyway:

If the aim was to bring projects to fruition quickly, making them PPPs would be a retrograde step, as so much time is involved in setting up the legal framework between participants in the project, [Mark Burns CEO of Fletcher's] said. He also questioned whether private sector funding would be viable in the current credit environment without Government guarantees, which nullified the transfer of risk to the private sector.

Some of Fletcher’s biggest roading projects this decade have been building the $300 million Northern Busway and upgrading Grafton Gully and the Central Motorway Junction.

The submission said New Zealand was too small to make the formula work other than in a handful of projects.

“Fletcher Construction formed the view years ago that there were few roading projects in New Zealand that would have the traffic volumes to justify the full transfer of risk to the private sector,” the builder said.

Sometimes benefits of transferring the risk of PPP projects to the private sector were illusory, it said, citing the British Government’s bailout of Metronet, the private operator of the London Underground.

Binns suggested that if the transfer of risk was not complete, the true benefits of PPPs came down to an analysis of the funding costs, and there was a strong argument that the Government would be better off just raising debt, potentially through infrastructure bonds, to do the project using other traditional methods of contracting.

The builder also cited major “upfront paperwork and contractual costs” on PPPs, saying the time and cost involved in this phase was significant and tended to counter any savings in the design and delivery phase.

The departed

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 26, 2008
in climate change, economy, john key and national/act government
. 56 Comments

The UK has announced plans to increase departure tax from its airports for flights outside Europe to pay for offsetting their carbon emissions. This is part of the worldwide response to climate change - countries are making emitters pay and even aviation, which is excluded from Kyoto, is now being targeted (quite rightly too, it is one of the fastest growing emission sources).

Of course, that’s bad news for New Zealand tourism. Over quarter of a million people visit New Zealand from the UK each year. Adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of their ticket will decrease their numbers and leave them with less to spend here.

So, what should we do about it? Our one bargaining chip is a clean, green image. If we could show that we have a strong emissions reduction programme, we could argue that tourism to New Zealand is overall very low on carbon - people might burn a lot of fuel getting here but little once they are here. It’s kind of like our argument against food miles - sure, it means burning some fuel to transport our lamb around the world to Britain but we emit less greenhouse gas producing it than UK farmers and, overall, we’re more environmentally friendly. Of course to make that argument, National/ACT would have to show they are committed to tackling greenhouse gas emissions. Since they are going to have a select committee to investigate whether everyone else is wrong and climate change is (in Key’s words) “a hoax”, that will be a difficult argument to make.

So, our one shot at some kind of exemption from this tax has already been sabotaged by Key’s incompetent handling of climate change; his failure to understand it is now a foreign relations and trade issue, not just a way to shore up support from ACT, the farmers, and business. But then he’s gone and made it worse. When you are a little country and you want a big country to not do something bad to you, you have to remind them what a good little country you are, what good friends you are (like Clark did last year when our special visa status was under threat). What you don’t do is mouth off that you worry it will have a “contagion effect“, as if British policy is a virus that might infect other countries, as if countries responding to climate change is the new communist domino effect. And you don’t have your spokesperson call it “protectionism“, one of the dirtiest words in international relations.

Those inept comments have sunk any slim hope we might have had of getting an exemption from the departure tax.

Test number 2 for Key, fail.

‘Cos I say so

Published
by
IrishBill
on November 26, 2008
in health, humour and national/act government
. 22 Comments

Following Tony “cos I say so” Ryall’s media success with his plan to cut down waiting lists using the King Canute model of governance, the word around the traps is that several of National’s front bench are planning similar moves.

Over the next few days expect the following:

Simon Power will announce plans to tell all criminals to stop committing crime. The Herald will celebrate the new government’s fresh and ambitious approach.

Nick Smith will announce plans to tell carbon to get back into the ground “or else!”. Spokespersons for CO2, CH4 and a variety of other greenhouse gases will not be available for comment. Smith will claim victory.

John Key will announce plans to tell New Zealanders crossing the Tasman to turn back at the gate. He will do this in a photo op with a big red stop sign (or perhaps one of those giant novelty foam hands).

Other frontbench MPs will announce plans to tell sickness beneficiaries to get better, the economy to pull itself up by its bootstraps, workers to work harder (there may be some kind of horsewhip involved in this) and the wage gap to start closing (note this may involve an Australian ‘wage drop’).

If only Labour had realised how easy this governing business is we could all have enjoyed nine years of kicking back and watching the gains roll in. So many wasted years.

Free trade no answer to credit crisis, part 2

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 25, 2008
in economy and international
. 12 Comments

I’m a bit concerned to see people welcoming APEC’s commitment to re-igniting the Doha Round of free trade talks as if they are a solution to the economic mess we are in now. I’ve already noted that more free trade, while desirable if done fairly, will not fix the problems that have lead to this crisis but, just as importantly, there is a not ‘more free trade’ button we can just push and feel the effects of straight away.

The Doha Round has been a mess for years now. Very, very basically, it is meant to open up the developing countries to more first world investment and, in turn, open up the agricultural production of the US, EU, and Japan to competition from the third world (and first world food exporters like us). It would do that by removing subsidies for farmers in the first world, which are absolutely massive.

The problem is, the farmers rather like their subsidies and, as in New Zealand, farmers present a lobby group with power out of all proportion to their numbers in the EU and US*. That barrier to the first world coming through on its side of the basic bargain that Doha is all about. And it is a barrier that has not disappeared.

Yet, let us imagine that somehow the EU and US do manage to overcome resistance from their farmers. Would we then have a massive economic boost from more free trade right away? No. Even if the outline of the deal could be agreed tomorrow, there would still be a months, if not years, long process of sorting out the details. These trade deals are incredibly complex and every element of them needs to get approval by the member countries, all 153 of them. Even once there is a deal signed off, it has to be ratified by a certain number of members before it comes into force, a process that also takes a long time (five years for Kyoto, I think it was). And, even then, reductions in trade barriers do not happen immediately. Typically, there is a lead-in period of several years so businesses can adjust before tariffs and subsidies are cut, and they are gradually cut in steps over periods of up to a decade.

The long and short of it is even if by some miracle they break the deadlock at the next meeting and Doha progresses forthwith, we’re not going to see any economic effect from it for years. To think a free trade deal that is years away can help us now displays the same level of economic understanding as thinking tax cuts can close the wage gap with Australia - ie. an all too common one.

In contrast, much needed reforms of the finance sector, breaking up the ‘too big to fail’ banks and dividing the operators in different markets off from each other, could take place in months and get the markets functioning again without the constant fear of another giant tumbling sending cascading failures through the other finance firms, which is what is paralysing the system now.

But, no, so much easier to turn to the free-trade panacea, instead.

*(ever wondered why we are suddenly all into converting food crops into ethanol for cars, a technology that has been around for decades and may not actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Because George Bush subsidised it to win crucial votes in the rural battleground states in the mid-West)

Ryall: do it or else

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 25, 2008
in health and national/act government
. 32 Comments

Health Minister Tony Ryall’s first policy will be to impose maximum waiting times for hospital emergency departments. No word on extra funding for achieving those goals (the UK achievement in shortening waiting times that Ryall cites came with large health budget increases) or what will happen if they are not met.

Now, it’s great to shorten wait lists. Nobody, least of all the medical professionals, wants people to have to wait any longer than necessary and DHBs are continuously implementing new procedures to make gradual improvements across the range of their activities. But let’s be clear, Ryall’s policy is not a plan to shorten waiting times, it is just a demand that waiting times be shortened. Ryall used to spend most of his time making similar demands to health ministers but, now he is health minister, he’s not developing ways to shorten wait times, he’s just shifted who he is demanding results from. And what will he do if they don’t meet his demands? Will he cut funding? How will that make health providers more able to meet the medical needs of Kiwis?

We have a reasonable expectation that, after years of complaining, National/ACT will improve health outcomes even more than they improved under the Labour-led Governments. It is looking distressingly like Ryall has no plan to meet those expectations, and is already looking for someone else to blame.

But perhaps that is the long game. The word around town is that Ryall has one clear, overriding objective in the health portfolio - cut spending. A failure to meet targets will be just the excuse he needs.

Why is there a media honeymoon?

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on November 25, 2008
in labour, media and national/act government
. 41 Comments

Why do new leaders get honeymoons? When you think about it, there’s no objective reason why a leader should get an easy run at first, not be asked the hard questions, be served lavish praise. So why does it happen?

Well, I asked around a few people who’d been there and done that, and the only credible answer I got was that it’s because the press gallery and the new leader are building relationships. It works like this: gallery journos need access, that means they have to get the new leader and his ministers to trust them, and that means no critical articles. To protect their ability to gain information for writing stories, the media have to only write nice stories. The new government has the power to shut them out, so they’ve got to protect their own arses. The new leaders are also building relationships. Flush with victory they are in an open, welcoming mood and with the media being so nice to them, they are minded to be even more open and friendly toward them. When you’re getting to be friends with people, and when your job prospects depend on good relations with them, it’s easy to have a honeymoon.

It’s not until one of the half-dozen people who essentially control our political discourse starts writing critical articles and others follow them that the honeymoon ends. That never really happened to Key during his time in opposition. Sure the political editors all got in their pro forma critical pieces but all were afraid of getting offside with someone they were certain would soon be PM. Moreover, some of them have a career change to consider. Watch over the next few weeks for at least one, possibly more, of the top political journos to join Key’s office.

Now, I know what you’re thinking - ‘this sucks, the people meant to hold our politicians to account are too busy trying to keep their jobs or get new ones’. Yeah, it does suck but there’s no changing the lay of the land. Instead, the Left, and Labour in particular, needs to do a much better job working with the media than they have done.

There is a tendency for the Left to view the media as an enemy to be fought, which is a big mistake. While the old media still control how the public perceives politics, Labour needs to work with them. In particular, they need to turn away from this paralysing ‘risk avoidance’ model and, instead, work on building personal relationships with the media.

The journos are just people, treat them with distrust and they’ll treat you badly back; be friendly and they’ll be nice back. And it’s not hard - they’re, most of them, genuinely nice people in person - just make friends. That’s something smiling John and National know all too well. It’s something Labour needs to learn, and quick.

TVNZ cancels Agenda

Published
by
Tane
on November 25, 2008
in broadcasting and media
. 27 Comments

No Right Turn reports that TVNZ has cancelled Agenda, New Zealand’s only in-depth political interview and analysis show:

According to Dennis Welch on Radio NZ this morning, TVNZ has cancelled Agenda, New Zealand’s top current affairs show. No word on what, if anything, they plan to replace it with, but it would be interesting to know their reason. Agenda is a successful show, which has been attracting record viewers in the leadup to the election. It is widely regarded as a vital part of our current affairs landscape, and its longer interview format provides a better way of holding our politicians to account than the traditional five-minute slot on Campbell Live. But I guess intelligent political discussion just doesn’t sell advertising; easier just to use recycled reality TV instead.

I have to second that - it’s an unforgivable move on TVNZ’s part and reflects just how far they’ve strayed from their public broadcasting obligations under the Charter. Ironically, the word around the traps is that the privately-owned TV3 is very interested in picking up Agenda if public funding becomes available. Let’s hope they do.