James Coe’s Editing the Herald

I think James Coe pens the best blog in New Zealand. Just in case any Life and Politics readers have missed it, I thought i’d remind them where it lay. It’s this one: Editing the Herald.

His posts in the last few weeks have been particularly great. Today he writes on the Herald’s coverage of the Hone stuff. Last week’s best was this little gem on the BNZ’s “closed for good” PR sideshow and the paper’s lackluster coverage of the big-banks fraud cases in general.

He also has a Sunday radio slot on BFM but i haven’t heard it.

Judgement Day

There is a lot of talk about what is going to happen to Hone Harawera today. He is giving his first public interview since he revealed that he took a side trip to Paris with his wife when he was supposed to be at an EU meeting in Brussels, and then didn’t mince his words when responding to an email question from a high-profile Maori Party supporter.

Will Hone simply apologise, or will he go down in a screaming heap? Will he jump parties, force a by-election, or flip the bird at his critics? But, perhaps more importantly…

There’s Something About Hone

I quite like Hone Harawira, and I honestly didn’t expect to when he entered Parliament in 2005. I tarred him with the antics of his mother, but was pleasantly surprised. His ability to engage with and advocate for his constituency, his ‘call a spade a spade’ attitude, and his ability to cut through the crap that politics tends to generate would generally make him a successful politician.

And this week he doesn’t fail to disappoint.

First,  he went off on a Richard Worth camel ride trip to Paris instead of attending official meetings in Brussels, then he responded to an email questioning his actions in less than poetic language. This has really got under the skin of Stuff.co.nz commentors, who are almost unanimously calling on him to be sacked. The Prime Minister has called Harawira’s comments “deeply offensive”, while Tarina Turia has waded into the fold claiming that Harawira’s actions were damaging to the Maori Party’s reputation.

Now, the trip to Paris wasn’t a great idea (worth noting that Labour MP Rajen Prasad stated at the time “what goes on tour, stays on tour”, while Harawira went right ahead and outed the trip in his own newsletter), and an MP responding to correspondence from a member of the public with abuse isn’t a good look. But the thing is, Harawira doesn’t need to appeal to commentors on Stuff.co.nz. Or John Key. Or even Tariana Turia. Harawira has to appeal to the voters in the Te Tai Tokorau electorate. As Harawira said, his own people will judge him – he’s a straight shooter, doesn’t hide a thing, and I think his constituents respect him immensely for that.

Brendan Burns has blogged that Hone looks likely to go. As much as Labour would like to see the Maori Party cull their most effective highest profile MP, I don’t think it’s very likely. Harawira has a huge majority in his electorate – 32% over Labour’s Kelvin Davis – while Labour won the Party Vote. While Turia and Shapples are bullshiting about their “mana enhancing relationship” with John Key and Rodney Hide, Harawira is saying it how it is, and because of that, I’d say he’s staying right where he is.

***

On a related note, I’m informed that Hone turned up to Sue Bradford’s valedictory, but sat in the public gallery wearing a Hawaiian shirt. You got to hand it to him – the man’s got style.

[EDIT: Oh snap, Mr Quinn]

Hone Harawira for Foreign Affairs Minister

My favourite MP has got himself into a little pickle with the Prime Minister calling his comments about white folk “deeply offensive”.

Stuff reports:

In an email exchange released to Radio New Zealand, Mr Harawira accused “white motherf***ers” of “puritanical bullshit” for expecting him to follow the rules.

Most politicians try to be so damn polite all the time, but not Hone, oh no.  He calls a spade a god-damn honkey son of a bitch.

Hone continues:

“White motherf***ers have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries and all of a sudden you want me to play along with their puritanical bullshit.”

Well, I’m no historian, but a casual reading of Michael King’s History of New Zealand has me thinking “the man has a point”.

Mr Harawira then went on to say how much time and energy he put into fighting for Maori and what a big role his wife Hilda played in that.

“And quite frankly I don’t give a shit what you or anyone else thinks about it. OK?”

Then he added a postscript saying he should feel free to go to the media.

“I answer to my people, not to them or to anybody else.”

It’s true, he doesn’t care what the mainstream media, or frankly Pakeha New Zealand, think of him.  He’s been battling this lot his whole life.  He has one target audience and that is far-north Maori of his electorate, Te Tai Tokerau, and they love him.

Unfortunately for him (and those of us who like to hear reports of what he gets up to while overseas) the Speaker and his party leaders probably won’t be signing off on any more overseas trips, which is a bummer.  This kind of political story is much more interesting than constant chitchat of raising GST and all the other waffle coming out of the likes of the Tax Working Group and the Treasury.

Hone for Foreign Affairs Minister? Hell, Winston managed it..

Updates:  [And if i were Tariana i'd be a little bit careful about how I handled Hone on this one, it's not like he was the biggest fan of going into government with the Nats in the first place.]

[Do check out Hone’s press release about his trip to Paris which the standard describes as "a hilarious send up of the medium, including a section starting 'here are your questions' spoofing the slightly sinister habit of governments including Q+As in their press releases on new policies, where they decide not only the answers but the questions too."  Fantastic.]

Bill English’s press secretary deserves a DB

So Bill English’s office changed the words of the dodgy promo ad.  That sounds like ‘political interference’ doesn’t it?  That is, untill you read the embarrassing original script, where it turns out it was more like some well timed ass-saving.

BK Drinkwater is on the mark here saying: “The initial TVNZ script was bad. How bad? I’ve walked in on people having really weird sex and the result was less embarrassing than this ad would have been had it gone to air as drafted.”

He outlines the changes:

• SCRIPT: We can beat those Aussies. Time to back ourselves – kick for the corner then muscle over the line.
• REWRITE: You know, we can beat those Aussies. It’s time to back ourselves. With a bit of old-fashioned Kiwi can-do, we’ll get there.

• SCRIPT: It’s time to give the snip snap to the zip zap plastic fantastic (make finger scissors gesture).
• REWRITE: Lets get investing and back our exporters. That’s where the jobs will come and that’s how we can boost our incomes.

• SCRIPT: Keep a few bob in the bank and Bob will be your uncle. We’ll get there. Bottom line: it’s your economy too.
• REWRITE: We’re nearly through the tough times and things are looking up. We have plenty of work to do. But I’m confident New Zealanders are up for it and together we’ll do it.  (Changed by TVNZ for final cut to: We’re nearly through the tough times and things are looking up. Together us Kiwis can do it.)

The mind-numbing rugby analogies creeping into political discourse are irritating at best (“rolling mauls” and all that) and as Mr BK rightly points out, “In my experience, New Zealanders generally can grasp a point without it first being converted into a rugby metaphor. Besides that, the metaphor’s crap: usually, kicks to the corner result in a try more due to the speed of the wingers than the muscle of the front row.”

I can only assume TVNZ’s “writers” were trying to make him sound like the odd-smelling sheep-farming uncle from the bay that no one wants to sit next to at family functions, who speaks in old-timer quips and that nobody thinks is funny.  ”Bob will be your uncle!”  Jesus.  Thank goodness his office got to run their pencils over this thing.

Putting aside that this promo video achieved two things, neither of which helped Mr English – it embarrassed the government and its finance minister because it walked and quacked like a political advert, and that it probably quadrupled the ratings of the TVNZ7 economy show – Bill would have sounded like an utter moron had he spoken the original lines.

So while he shouldn’t have done the bloody thing in the first place, top marks must go to his press secretary for saving his/her boss further embarrassment.

Key relaxed about accusations of relaxation

NZPA reports:

At the breakfast a reporter heard Mr Hide tell guests that Mr Key received public acclaim while doing little.

All Mr Key had done was the cycleway, Mr Hide said. “It’s amazing.”

He was also amazed at how much he could get through Cabinet, because “you turn up with your papers” and “they are too busy with their own stuff they’re not bothered”.

Approached by the reporter, Mr Hide said the comments were off the record and it would be unethical to report them.

A spokeswoman for Mr Key said the comments were “a bit of light-hearted political banter”.

Mr Hide had spoken to Mr Key who was relaxed about the comments, she said.

So little time, so much to be relaxed about.

Democracy in the Unions

If you ever wanted proof that Unions were democratic beasts, here it is:

Bus drivers reject NZ Bus’s pay offer.

Basically, following negotiations with NZ Bus, leaders of the combined unions agreed to take an offer back to their members with the recommendation that it be accepted and ratified. Despite the recommendation, the members of the combined unions decided to reject the offer.

Asked if he was disappointed by the rejection, Mr Andersen said: “No, that’s democracy”.

Exactly. Doesn’t stop Zane Fulljames of NZ Bus from slagging off the union for doing their job:

“It is immensely disappointing to our customers, our people and the business. The unions agreed to take and recommend the offer to their members. This did not happen,” Mr Fulljames said.

Wrong, Mr Fulljames – that’s exactly what happened. Except the union members disagreed with the union leaders.

NZ Bus deserves to be slapped around after locking workers out for ‘theatening’ work-to-rule industrial action. Any disruption to services will be because of the actions of NZ Bus, not because of underpaid busdrivers.

Models strip off for climate change

This video involving models stripping off to raise climate change awareness while threatening us with their last two remaining items of clothing raises some important questions, such as “are they serious” and “will they really take off their two last items of clothing if we get carbon dioxide down to 350 parts per million?”

But seriously.  This is ridiculous and some of those girls really need to eat, possibly even some carbon-footprint heavy sausages, cheese burgers and the like.

Incidentally, I heard the other day that a vegetarian who drives a Hummer has a smaller carbon footprint than the average meat-eater. Fancy that!

[Hat Tip: The Standard]

Herald’s knives out for Goff’s team

On Saturday, in the words of DimPost, the “New Zealand Herald falls to it’s knees and frantically bobs it’s head up and down to praise the government on it’s one year anniversary – because after all, lavishing praise on politicians is what good journalism is all about”.

While Sunday was Labour’s turn to receive some unabashed praise of similar proportions.  Well, not quite.

In today’s Herald on Sunday Editorial, the knives for Barker’s scalp and possibly Hughes too, are well and truly out:

To outside observers, Barker always appeared to have been promoted far beyond his ability. But in politics’ smoke-filled backrooms, success is sometimes less about brilliance than about blind loyalty. And that, unfortunately, is where Labour’s senior whip Darren Hughes – another former minister – has also disgraced himself.

Hughes is smart. But, like Barker, he has been found willing to insist that black is white if that is what the leadership expects of him. Hughes has fronted the media, insisting that Barker’s fraudulent poll was justifiable, allowing leader Phil Goff to duck for cover.

Barker has acted dishonestly. Hughes has sacrificed principle for patsy-ism. Goff has just cowered and, when confronted by political reporters outside the Labour Caucus room with nowhere to hide, obfuscated.

Labour’s leader must now stand up and take responsibility for the deception that was conducted with funds entrusted to him by Parliament.  Barker should be sacked from all his Caucus responsibilities. Hughes, too, must be left in no doubt about how repugnant his rationalisations are.

These, then, are the simple truths that are demanded of Labour’s tarnished leadership. And these are the truths Labour has forgotten.

Sacking Rick Barker over this would be a public relations disaster, as would chastising and publicly humiliating Labour’s great-ginger-hope and Mr Fix-it, Hughes.  Bowing to petty pressure from scalp hungry journalists would surely push moral and the polls to new lows.

The media loves scalps; that is why they write these editorials.  No one outside of Wellington gives a stuff about this crap.

And frankly, using your parliamentary office to conduct opinion polls, fake names or not, doesn’t remotely compare to changing your financial arrangements to gain tens of thousands of extra dollars in housing allowances, as our pious Finance Minister did so recently.

The issue of course is more about the handling than the supposed ‘crime’ itself.  Barker’s words “i don’t know what you are talking about” were not well chosen.  However, within hours, after gathering the facts, Hughes was fronting.

This is not a hanging offence, and as Farrar points out, the quantity of bad press is probably the result of a rather quiet news week.

So Goff does need to come out swinging but not at his caucus.

Overseas travels have seen him slip from the public’s gaze of late, and now he’s back and having to fight fires he didnt light, and all at time when the Government is providing ample opportunity for him to land some swift jabs.

ACC cuts and levy increases, constant talk of new taxes and GST increases, an ETS that will see average hard-working kiwis hand big money over to big polluters and big business, all while unemployment sits at decade highs.  Oh and where is the cycleway and the ultra fast broadband?

–

As an after thought, I’m rather puzzled about Labour Party President Andrew Little’s role in fuelling this issue from the start.  The day it kicked off Little said he knew nothing about the operation and that it would concern him very deeply.

Andrew Little has a reputation from speaking his mind.  At Labour’s conference this year he announced, one can only assume unilaterally, that the Foreshore and Seabed Act was a failure, that Maori deserved their day in court, and that the Reserve Bank Act and monetary policy was on the next Labour government’s chopping block.

Why would he say “it would concern him very deeply”, thus fertilising the ground for a scandal, and why didn’t he call the Leader’s Office first to check it out?

Political advert?

Imagine, just for a moment, that the TVNZ7 logos in the following ‘advertisement’ are replaced with National Party ones.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, there is a reasonably coherent argument to be made that it might just be.. a duck.

[Update: Check out Lew's excellent content analysis of the ad over at Kiwipolitico]

Time to Move Beyond the Beltway

Labour: English’s homes saga not over

Um, yes, it is. Well, at least in the eyes of voters beyond the beltway.

I earlier posted that Bill English should go. I personally still believe he should be removed, but any legal grounds for him to be removed have now been extinguished by the auditor general’s report. In the eyes of your Joe Bloggs voter, English has paid back the money and the auditor general has vindicated him – this matter is closed. Labour need to face the facts that it has lost this one and move on.

And Labour will continue to lose the wider debate if it insists on focusing on issues which don’t generally affect undecided voters without adequately framing what the implications are. Included in this is the opposition’s obsession with the amount of Urgency being used. Yes, the government is rushing legislation through, riding rough-shod over the legislative process – but for your average voter, this means that our politicians are wasting less time debating ‘innane’ laws and more time actually ‘doing their job’ – win-win in their eyes.

Labour has been handed their opposition agenda on a platter – there is plenty this government is doing that could be used against them:

• Why are motorcyclists being singled out for a massive ACC levy increase?
• Why is John Key’s own school being closed down?
• Why are responsible drivers being criminalised for using cellphones while driving?
• Why are ordinary New Zealand taxpayers going to have to subsidise big business polluters under the Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme?

These are the Government’s equivalent of Labour’s ‘lightbulbs and shower heads’ issues. I’m not saying that these should form the basis for the next election campaign – New Zealand deserves to be offered something a little more comprehensive and strategic than “vote for us, because we’re not them” – but these are issues that get under the skin of voters and could be used to lever support away from the Government.

At the moment, Labour is getting too caught up trying to act like a Government-in-waiting. And there will be a time when this is called for, but first they have to act like an opposition and go after the Government on issues which are important to the voters, not issues that are important to the MPs.

Kind offer of training extended to Labour’s Barker

This does sound like rather sensible advice.  It reminds me of a certain Alanis Morissette song, something to do with irony…

Yee adds that the Labour Party could have easily conducted their research themselves without any of the lies that they chose to make: “We understand that the Labour Party would not have wished to identify themselves before interviewing people because respondents’ answers could then be skewed, but all they had to do was explain to potential respondents that they were a political party surveying the public, and that their identity would be revealed at the end of the interview to avoid skewing the results. This workaround would have provided the Labour Party with unbiased results without misleading the public.”

It is from a somewhat breathless and superlative packed press release issued by the Market Research Society of New Zealand and the Association of Market Research Organisations where they “expressed their extreme concern” (really?) demanding Labour apologise to the nation for their “unethical and misleading activities” around Rick Barker’s phone polling which came to light over the long weekend.

The groups have been kind enough to extend an invite to Mr Barker to attend some of their training, if he so wishes:

“Mr Barker is welcome to join the Market Research Society of New Zealand in order to improve his knowledge of market research and ethical polling. We run regular educational events for our members and it would be good to see Mr Barker attending so that he can conduct his future surveys with a greater degree of professionalism”

How utterly decent of them

But seriously, this whole thing shouldn’t really have been an issue as all political parties conduct in-house polling from time to time, but unfortunately the handling of it didn’t seem to go so swimmingly. I blame Labour weekend hangovers. After all its only reasonable that Labour types would celebrate rather hard on their long weekend!

“Barker, when questioned, initially said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’. When provided with details, including dates, Barker said he would call back,” the Herald on Sunday reported.  Party President Andrew Little noted on the same day that he knew nothing about the operation and that it would concern him very deeply. Whoops.

Technorati research on blogging

Five key points from some recently available research by Technorati on blogging, care of the Online Journalism Blog:

• The blogosphere continues to be dominated by male, affluent and educated bloggers
• Bloggers use Twitter far more than the average person and microblogging is changing blogging habits
• Blogging is becoming more mainstream and influential, but not replacing traditional media
• More bloggers are making money, but most don’t make any
• Most bloggers are “hobbyists” and are driven by personal fulfilment rather than financial gain.

The findings I found most interesting are highlighted below:

While blogging is gaining in popularity and credibility, the blogging demographic doesn’t appear to be widening. The average blogger continues to be male (two-thirds), affluent (a majority have household incomes of an average of $75,000) and educated.

This is a problem, although a predictable one.  The internet has been held up by many over the years as the ‘great democratiser’.  What we see here is that the blogosphere, in particular, is less diverse and more elite than even the mainstream media.

Of course, that is what happens in an anarchic environment; existing power structures are mirrored then exacerbated.  (It is also worth noting that something in the high 90 percent of all internet traffic is controlled through just two companies, Google and Microsoft. Oh can you taste the freedom).

The survey found that contrary to popular belief, many bloggers have had professional media experience, with 35% of all respondents having worked in traditional media as a writer, reporter, producer, or on-air personality, and 27% continue to do so.

Also an interesting finding which again contributes to the view that blogging is a realm for elites and not the unwashed masses.

The journalistic value of blogs

I’ve been approached by a number of researchers in the last few weeks who are conducting studies about blogging or political blogging.  One journalism student in particular wanted to know what bloggers think about the journalistic value of blogs.

This one, in short, thinks very little – about the journalistic value that is.

They can however play other important roles within the political process, such as lobbyists – most of the political blogs in New Zealand are, after all, clearly partisan and act more as message massagers and kite flyers than balanced analysts.

The Britannica Concise Encyclopaedia definition of journalism includes that it is sometimes “used to refer to writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.”

Here political blogs generally fall short. Interpretation is pretty much the modus operandi.

Most rely very heavily on the traditional news media for their content, to which they apply their analysis, interpretation or spin.

Others simply aggregate news, posting stories that catch their interest adding “good point”, “indeed”, “outrageous” or whatever truism springs from their keyboards.

There is nothing wrong with operating a site in this manner – it’s just that it’s not journalism.

Confounding the view that blogging is not a source of competition for serious journalism, recent Technorati research has found that bloggers do not consider other blogs a substitute for other news sources and the majority do not consider online media more important than traditional media.

Blogging and other forms of citizen journalism do not, as of yet, fulfil a journalistic role .  The technorati research, which I will blog on in a moment, seems to support this view.

[For further reading on this topic check out this post on Werner63's Weblog]

I’m Glad I’m not an ACTivist

Labour seems to be getting a little traction with Rodney Hide and Heather Roy’s ‘abuse of power’ surrounding party fundraising breakfasts where they are billed as speaking in their ministerial capacities. Using your Ministerial position for the financial gain of your Party is stupid, and it must be nice to ‘bust’ the perk buster ‘abusing’ the power of his office – much like catching Grammar boys doing something really stupid. But, to be honest, unlike the guys over at The Standard, I find it difficult to get worked up over this one.

Well, at least not over the ‘crime’ itself.

Yes, it’s not a great look, but we’ve seen Hide and Roy squirm for a while and admit what they did was wrong. My reservations are that this seems to be a little bit of a grey area to me. For example, is a Minister speaking as a Minister whenever they speak in public? What happens if a Minister speaks at a fundraiser in their capacity as a constituency MP, but is asked a question about their Ministerial portfolio? What if the function was billed as being a speaking engagement with the Minister, and was free (or at-cost), but there was a collection or a raffle for the local party branch? I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Ministers not to undertake fundraising activities, and I think it’s difficult for a Minister not to draw on their Ministerial portfolios when speaking – it’s often their area of expertise and what they are passionate about.

What annoys me is hearing Heather Roy (parroted by her loyal party hacks) lay the blame on an over-excited (and obviously ill-informed) party activist, as if it were actually the activist’s fault. Since when did party activists determine the diary arrangements of a Minister of the Crown?

It wasn’t the fault of an unpaid activist that Hide and Roy were put into this position – it was the fault of the Minister’s paid staff. All Ministers (even Ministers outside of Cabinet) have advisors whose job it is to make sure the Minister is not put into a position which could potentially embarrass them. I’ve organised events that were attended by then-Labour Ministers, as well as senior National MP’s (and even Rodney Hide) – a good Ministerial advisor or parliamentary staffer will check the details (like, is there a charge to attend the event? Is it public? Who will be there?) before accepting any invitation – Steve Maharey’s office used to even send out a three-page form to fill out, and Bill English’s office used to do a similar check to the n-th degree. I would have thought that any Minister worth their weight would have similar checks and balances.

If I was a member of ACT, I’d be questioning ever offering to help out Roy in future.  Obviously, if she does something which draws flack, she has no hesitation in sacrificing those unpaid activists who worked so hard to put her where she is.