Public Address - Hard News (Home)

What the people want to hear | Feb 25, 2008 11:19

This morning Michael Cullen's office emailed out this clipping from the Northern Advocate newspaper, whose sister paper originally quoted John Key as saying "we would love to see wages drop" in response to a question from the local business association president about relative wage disparity between Australia and New Zealand.

Key has given a variety of explanations for the comment -- he can't recall, it never happened, he was talking about Australian wages, it was just a joke -- and questioned the professionalism of the reporter (or "young guy taking notes") who was present.

The paper has responded with what it says is "the question and answer as recorded and transcribed":

Carolyne Brooks-Quan: There's been a lot surrounding the exodus of people to Australia that are lured by higher wages. There's some calls here for employers to pay more. What's your take on that?

John Key: We would love to see wages drop.

The way we want to see wages increase is because productivity is greater. So people can afford more.

Not just inflationary reasons, otherwise it's a bit of a vicious circle as it comes back to you in higher interest rates. We really want to drive that out.

I don't for a moment think that National will campaign on a policy of wage reductions, but I think this is an example of Key doing what has served him wonderfully well in the past six months: saying what he thinks people want to hear. The "people [who] can afford more" in this case are employers, because he's talking to the representative of a business association.

He may well genuinely not recall what he said, but some of his subsequent evasion about it has been quite distasteful. After a week when the Labour government tied itself in knots over what people did and didn't recall about Owen Glenn, it seems fair that a little pressure should go on Key.

Cullen also published this release last week, subsequent to Key's weekly chat with Wammo Wallace Chapman on Kiwi FM. I don't have a transcript, but Key is quoted as saying, in response to a question about the likely level of tax cuts under his government "That sort of 2 - 3 hundred dollars a month that we would be delivering to them will make a real difference."

As No Right Turn points out, if Key is promising that level of tax relief to the majority of income-earners, this is just crazy talk.

$3,600 a year is actually more tax than almost half of us even pay … And if it was distributed evenly in that fashion, the cost would be utterly staggering: $11.5 billion - almost half of core output expenses (that's your basic government ministries in Wellington), or more than the entire health budget. Not even ACT would be that insane. So what's Key playing at?

Just this: keeping the people, whoever they happen to be at the time, happy. The Southland Times carried another striking example on February 15, after Key's visit to talk to meat producers in the region:

While the rain, albeit minimal, would have been welcomed by farmers, they would no doubt be even more heartened by Mr Key's promise of a financial umbrella to kick-start the Alliance Group's proposed mega meat company.

Standing in a parched paddock at Rohan Horrell's Ardlussa farm, north of Riversdale, Mr Key said it was obvious the status quo, even in a good year, was unsustainable.

"I think everyone sees the need for change." National would look at a suspensory loan to provide capital for the establishment of the new company, Mr Key said.

When National Party finance spokesman Bill English ambled across the paddock, Mr Key quickly told him "I've just committed you to a suspensory loan".

Apparently unfazed, Mr English replied: "As long as it's under $200 million I don't mind".

As Jim Anderton was quite to point out, this sounds a lot like an export subsidy. Weren't we supposed to be over all that?

Labour's problem is that, as its ears ring from a fusillade of deadly poll results, the time may well be past when advantage can be gained from attacking Key's credibility like this. There is no indication that Glenn was actually offended by the silly game of hide and seek at the Auckland University business school opening last week, but the attempt to manage the news and avoid a potentially troublesome photo-op backfired into another round of unflattering headlines. If these people really do want another term in government, they may have to recognise that business-as-usual is no longer appropriate.

It was Richard Griffin on Morning Report today who said that they need to start highlighting vision and talent -- Cunliffe's assertive ownership of his new Health portfolio was the example he gave -- rather than simply trying to reduce risk.

Will they get the press onside? Probably not, Colin Espiner's call to turn the blowtorch on National over its own, hidden donors notwithstanding, the narrative is not running that way. There are similarities to the last, can't-take-a-trick year of the Shipley government, although I'd argue that the present outfit is doing vastly better at the business of government.

But it might actually serve the public to simply and pointedly get on with governing. Tom Frewen has a good column in the current NBR in which he rails against the Parliamentary press gallery's obsession with "The Race" and its consequent lack of attention to what is actually being done in government, which matters. It's a familiar complaint from Tom, but I think he's right. The it's-all-a-game school of Parliamentary coverage isn't just irritating, its corrosive.

Who knows? Maybe we can get shot of the year's most fatuous meme: that John Key is Barack Obama. Yes, they both represent change and a feel-good factor. That's where it ends. Obama's vision is but the summary of a notable career in law, community organising and politics. He has written (and well, too) a memoir and a book outlining his ideas, and has an impressive legislative record. Would that we knew as much about Mr Key.

(133 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Networking takes a back seat | Feb 22, 2008 10:23

Even before the kookaburra, Leo and I agreed it was the best trip to the Zoo ever. We'd taken the left-hand option to the Kiwi House on entry. Quite often you can go in there and not see a damn thing, but yesterday morning there were two fat, sleek, symbolic birds -- one the size of a rugby ball -- busily poking their way through the litter. It was very cool.

From there, we moved on to the new tiger enclosure, where one beast was reclining right up against the glass, a centimetre away from some cooing toddlers. It was quite an amazing sight, especially when the big cat yawned and exposed those fearsome incisors. There were visible harblz. (I'd post a picture, but my phone won't mount via USB and I can't be arsed bluetoothing the files over right now.)

Next was the Aussie zone, where it turned out to be lorikeet brunch time. We held little pottles of Complan in our hands and the brightly-coloured birds swooped down and perched on our hands to scoff and push each other around.

We thought that was great. And then, as we tarried briefly in front of the kookaburra's cage, a zookeeper came in with a young, slightly nervous-looking trainee. She handed him a dead white mouse, by the tail.

"Just hold it out at arm's length," she said.

In the blink of an eye, the kookaburra swept from its perch at the back of the cage and, in one blinding arc, snatched the mouse and landed again, announcing its haul with a wild fanfare of hooting.

We cheered and clapped. That was choice.

The zoo trip had been a spur of the moment thing. I realised that I've spent so much time rushing away to talk to interesting people lately that it was time Leo and I had some time together.

That meant passing up the chance for more lively conversation at an impromptu lunch in Westhaven, where a fun group had assembled to shoot the breeze. But sometimes, networking takes a back seat …

Among those people I didn't catch up with at lunch was Julie Starr, who I met last week at Webstock. She returned home to New Zealand last year after a high-profile role as "chief change agent" for the Telegraph Media Group's multimedia newsroom in London. She was closely involved with the development of the award-winning My Telegraph service, which allows readers to have their own blogs on the newspaper's website. She is now teaching at AUT (good catch!) has a really interesting blog on future-of-news issues called The Evolving Newsroom.

Also blogging on the news, albeit in a rather different style, is a person unknown at TVNewsNews. The blog is busy and energetic and it's in my feeds now -- but some spellchecking would be an enhancement.

Also new: a whole cluster of blogs on GayNZ, including those by longtime commentator Craig Young and my friend David Herkt.

And it just keeps coming: I've thought for a long time that the libraries and archives sector needed to find some blogging voices, and it turns out that the National Library has launched several of them. Courtney Johnston sent me this list:

LibraryTechNZ

This is run by our web development / tech people (including me). We write about things we're doing / looking at / interested in. we have quite a diverse range of people, so it runs the gamut, from web writing to metadata. There's also a weekly feature called The Source: one of our Information Advisors posts a weekly round-up of interesting-for-libraries news on the web that gets posted to our staff intranet, so we decided it would be great it we could share that love with the people.

Create Readers

This is (secretly) the blog I'm proudest of, because the staff who work on it have upskilled so fast and are so passionate about it. The Library has 14 School Services centres around NZ (many of which are only 1 or 2 people). They work with teachers and school librarians, providing advice and training and resources. On Create Readers they write short reviews of books for various age groups, curriculum areas etc, and also post ideas to get - and keep - kids reading, on- and off-line.

NZ Poet Laureate

This is our newest blog, and while we run it, the content is written by Michele Leggott, the recently-appointed Poet Laureate. I'm really thrilled she's doing this with us - I think it adds a new dimension to the way she can communicate with the public, plus hooking into the wider national and international poetry blogging community. The blog was launched just before the death of Hone Tuwhare, and Michele was able to collect and post poems and tributes to Hone from many other writers.

Also, a couple of blogs that have been around for a while, but you may not have seen them: departing APN Digital dude Gordon White has SmallScreens ("helping screenwriters navigate new media") and Ryan Sproull's Born on State Highway One, because it's unofficially the 84th most popular blog in New Zealand and that has to mean something.

Takeaway message: that there's a lot more to the form than ideologically binary political commentary.

And finally, Leo is back with some more YouTube clips that have taken his fancy lately. Feel free to say hi.

(53 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

A thing that rarely ends well | Feb 20, 2008 07:46

Ideally, in TV news bulletins, adjectives should be used sparingly, to bring certain things alive for the viewer, to describe what cannot be shown. But last night One News had Owen Glenn celebrating his birthday at a "swanky" Auckland restaurant (actually, Soul bar) and being considered for a "glamorous" job in Monaco.

We'll get to the glamour of the post in a moment, but in a week when news media organisations have been rushing to "reveal" and "confirm" Glenn's interest in an honorary post in the principality, it does seem relevant to note that Glenn himself reported it fully six weeks ago in an interview with the Herald, and no one turned a hair. We're used to some news outlets not being able to remember back a year: but last month?

Okay. Here's the job description for a New Zealand honorary consul:

The functions of NZ Honorary Consuls include helping facilitate contacts and friendly relations between NZ and its countries of accreditation; assisting the Embassy in its tasks with official visitors, representing NZ in their area - including offering advice for those in "distress situations" as well as acting as a liaison point for NZ posts; providing information on general enquiries and visas ( NOTE: they do not accept applications for, or issue, visas, passports, or emergency travel documents) and assisting with fostering NZ's trade overseas

It's basically a local on the ground, should one be needed. We have them in places like Malta and Cyprus, associated (as Glenn would be) with the New Zealand Embassy in Rome.

It's voluntary and the system is not comprehensive: if Glenn doesn't take up the honorary post, we simply won't have one (which would be a little bit rude, given that the dynamic National MP Richard Worth has been Monaco's man on the ground here for the past few years).

Is it a vanity post? Possibly: Glenn has been frank about enjoying seeing his name on the new Auckland University Business School. Ironically, it's possible that although he spends part of his year in the principality, he may not meet Foreign Affairs' residency requirements for the gig.

As very successful businessmen can be, Glenn is clearly a bit random: the present clamour was sparked last week when he said things in an interview that were either demonstrably untrue (the timing of his donations to Labour, which were declared, accounted and reported in the Herald months before the Brethren's role became evident) or spectacularly unlikely (that Helen Clark had offered him the post of Minister of Transport).

The nub of the story is the interest free loan of $100,000 he revealed he had made to Labour after the last election. Actually, not even the loan: but the fact that Labour Party president Mike Williams did not mention it when questioned by reporters last month.

The fact that the part of the loan that could be considered a donation -- the $7000 or so interest foregone -- fell below the declaration threshold under the old electoral laws does not matter. Williams misled journalists, and that very rarely ends well.

David Farrar has compared the current flap to the furore around Jenny Shipley's dinner-or-not with Saatchis' Kevin Roberts, and that's correct in the sense that it's largely about someone not being able to get their story straight. (Although the Shipley business did have the advantage of dispatching Saatchi's stupid million-dollar idea for a Tourism website.)

Williams could have said in the first place: "We have not had a donation from Owen since the election, but he did loan us $100,000 to set up a better fund-raising organisation. That's in the accounts, and like all Owen's contributions, no secret. Perhaps you could ask National who's been giving it money since the election."

Given the hasty flushing of National's anonymous trusts in December, before the Electoral Finance Act came into force, there would have been some moral high ground there.

Now, Bill English is demanding an inquiry into internal loans noted by Williams -- where the more solvent party branches lend the party money at times. English knows there's very little in that: I'd be surprised if National hasn't done the same thing. But at the moment, it's time to sling mud on the off-chance that some of it sticks. Mike Williams should rue his role in that state of affairs.

PS: Philip Matthews has an interesting story on the state of political blogging, quoting David Farrar, Jordan Carter and myself.

(203 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Recreations | Feb 19, 2008 09:30

I had a disorientating feeling on Saturday evening: I was watching a game of rugby, from Eden Park's ASB Stand, and it occurred to me that I didn't know the rules. I can't recall the last time that was the case.

I have not closely studied the Experimental Law Variations under which this year's Super 14 is being played -- it's summer, for God's sake -- and while some of them are easy enough to grasp (the backline must now assemble five metres back from the scrum, rather than crowd up at the last feet, for example), Lyndon Bray whistled a series of free kicks at the breakdown that were a mystery to me.

I'm sure that if I'd been watching the game on TV, those modern sages, the commentators, would have been all over it. But not knowing was … odd.

The Blues v Chiefs game certainly was fast, especially in the second half. Although it is clearly not a given that the ELVs reduce the number of scrums in a game. A team with a clear advantage at scrum time, as the Blues had, will clearly opt to pack down rather than scramble a free kick, much of the time.

Other observations: they're trying very hard this year with the trains at the upgraded Eden Park station. And is Danny Lee really our best halfback?

Earlier in the day, with the morning to kill in Wellington, I had popped across the road to Te Papa to encounter what turned out to be its 10th anniversary weekend. I made a special effort and visited the pats I usually skip on my way up to commune with the "Polynesian tat" (cf: Duncan Fallowell) in the Level 4 gallery. I still came away a bit dissatisfied and confused. I know the kids love it, but could we also have some comprehensive, well-lit exhibitions for grown-ups?

Props to the owner of the Museum Hotel, Chris Parkin, who noticed my complaint about the collapse of paid internet service at his hotel last week. He was onto it very quickly, and got back to me to explain what had happened:

Interestingly, the problem seems to have arisen through lack of communication between techos and lay people (often the case in this rapidly changing environment).

Our system is an in-house system developed in conjunction with a firm of software engineers. What we were not aware of, is that the system only caters for 45 users at a time. We have a large American film crew (50 rooms) in house at the moment, who make heavy use of the system, and at odd times of the day, and with the additional load from the Webstock group, many users either missed out, or found the system very slow.

This will be corrected tomorrow (2 weeks too late unfortunately) and sufficient lines allocated so all rooms are guaranteed service and full speed.

I guess it is just Murphy's law that if something can go wrong, not only will it, but at the worst possible time. However, at least you have helped us identify a problem of which we might otherwise have remained unaware.

Happy to help. It wasn't the first time I've felt embarrassed about guest geeks' experience of our internet service in Wellington, the most broadband-minded of our cities. (The film crew, by the way, is in town for Avatar.)

Chris also responded to my question about the remarkable art collection on display at the hotel, which includes a McCahon and couple of Brent Wongs: "The art collection is mine. I treat the hotel as 'my large house' and like to share my taste in art with our guests. Glad you enjoyed it."

I think Audrey Young and John Armstrong are pretty much on the mark on the Owen Glenn story, although Audrey is far too kind to her colleague Fran O'Sullivan, whose swivel-eyed, poorly-written column on Saturday was just a bit sad.

And just for a change of pace, MIT's John Tirman has a fascinating piece for Editor & Publisher about the media war on the Lancet studies of mortality in Iraq, and in particular what he describes as the "hatchet job" in the National Journal. His annotated version of the Journal story, linked from the article, is an interesting read:

The topic of the war's exceptional human costs, now inflamed by these calumnies, appears to be too hot to handle. Even with all this fuss in January, no explorations of the Iraqi mortality from the war have appeared in the major dailies. No editorials, no examination of the methods (or the danger and difficulty of collecting data), no sense that the scale of killing might affect the American position, or might shed some light on U.S. war strategy, or might point to honorable exits and reconstruction obligations. Remarkably, no curiosity at all about the dead of Iraq, and what they can tell us.

The graph below, from a recent Pew Research report, bears out the idea that while a significant number of Americans want to stay abreast of the situation in Iraq, their news media have all but abandoned reporting on the war:

Scary.

PS: Happy fifth birthday to No Right Turn, and fourth birthday to Blogging it Real.

(49 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Not so much ironic as outrageous | Feb 18, 2008 08:42

Note: I've made the decision to redact significant parts of today's post because they may breach a suppression order relating to an earlier case. This seriously vexes me, because it has the effect of protecting some people -- most notably Family First's Bob McCoskrie -- who have been dishonest about their role in what happened.

Goodbye then, Barbara Bishop. Until such time as you receive the help you need -- and sadly, I don't really think your nine-month prison sentence for your role in a beating with "unjustified, excessive and brutal force" will provide that -- your children are safer in your absence.

But I think it's time for some apologies: from all the people who depicted Bishop as a victim of the state, and who demonised Child Youth and Family for intervening and the police for bringing charges against her.

Barbara Bishop's sentence follows a court hearing in which she and her then husband were accused of hogtying, kicking and beating her 17 year-old son.

This is from the Sunday Star Times story:

The judge said Bishop appeared unremorseful and believed she had done nothing wrong. He noted Bishop had previous convictions for violence, including one for attempting to procure the murder of a former husband.

Kiro said Bishop had spoken publicly about her violent past and the violence of her previous partners, which had been witnessed by her children. "She doesn't seem to make the connection that violence breeds violence."

Bishop has claimed that it was her right as a good parent to discipline her children

And perhaps if so many people had not indulged her delusions and told her she was a hero, it might not have come to this.

Just don't blame Bob McCoskrie or Family First. Oh no, Bob McCoskrie told the Sunday Star Times, Family First had never held up Bishop as its poster girl: "The children's commissioner has misrepresented us."

Not as much as you've misrepresented your own role, Bob. It's a damn shame I've removed a large part of this post, because I think it very clearly demonstrates what a hypocrite you have been in the case of Barbara Bishop. You, a man who touts a website named stoptheabuse.org.nz. It's not so much ironic as outrageous.

While we're at it, perhaps the other news media could forswear from fanning cheap outrage every time one of these "smacking" cases becomes news. Jimmy Mason's recent account of having "flicked" his son on the ear was almost universally reported as fact, for example, when it would have been wise to avoid treating the defendant's characterisation of events as gospel until his two consequent child assault charges have been heard in court.

And I would hope that internet commenters and uploaders who have acted as enablers for Bishop will now remove or annotate material which relates to her, because leaving it intact is tantamount to continuing that enablement.

I wonder if Dave Crampton has already realised quite how marginal some of those people are. A recent post on his blog covers some IP sleuthing that led Cameron "Whaleoil" Slater to suggest that the "People Power" group chucking bricks through windows as an EFA protest is linked to the people behind the horrible CYFSWatch site.

The subsequent discussion in comments, from memory, briefly included what read like a threat against Slater's young son. The thread as it stands is deranged.

Dave concludes:

Finally Henk van Helmond, the man behind all the sites, says he did not know who threw the bricks at Clark's office. He has said he doesn't know them, nor has he met them - just had "contact" with them. He says he doesnt know the people who post on his sites either - that includes Bryn Rodda. But he certainly knows a lot about the brick chucking. And he knows Bryn Rodda more than he makes out. Both have had contact with the woman who used the riding crop on her son. They're all connected.

I know that.

I write a while ago that I thought that the anti-EFA protest movement would suffer the same fate as the anti-GE movement -- it would be undermined and destabilised by its own lunatic fringe. And some of these people seem far worse.

(98 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!