Saturday, December 16, 2017

Dominatrix vs dinosaur

(First published in The Dominion Post, December 15.)

Don Brash made two big mistakes recently.

The first was to think he could criticise a high-profile Radio New Zealand presenter on Facebook and get away with it. The second and much bigger mistake was to accept an invitation to explain himself on Kim Hill’s Saturday morning radio show.

Inevitably, Brash was savaged. It was as close as RNZ will ever get to blood sport as entertainment.

I gave up listening after 15 minutes. By that time Brash had been hanged and drawn and I didn’t care to stick around for the quartering. 

The metaphor is apt because being hanged, drawn and quartered was once the punishment for treason, and Brash had committed an act which was treasonous in the extreme: He had criticised Morning Report host Guyon Espiner for what Brash regarded as his excessive use of the Maori language.

Brash described Espiner’s flaunting of his fluency in te reo as “virtue signalling” – in other words, displaying one’s superior moral and cultural values.

For this offence against the spirit of biculturalism, the former National and ACT leader was summoned for a discipline session with Radio NZ’s resident dominatrix.

The result was entirely predictable. Hill was acerbic and sneering from the outset.

She didn’t bother to conceal her contempt for Brash and neither did she bother to maintain any pretence that this was a routine interview, conducted for the purpose of eliciting information or expanding public understanding of the issue.

It was a demolition job, pure and simple – utu, if you prefer – and I doubt that it was ever intended to be anything else. Its purpose was to expose Brash as a political and cultural dinosaur and to punish him for criticising Hill’s colleague.

Had it been a boxing bout, it would have been declared a mismatch and called off after the first round. Hill was in her natural milieu – home-ground advantage, you might say, in her familiar personal domain with an unseen crowd of adoring fans urging her on. 

Hill doesn’t hesitate to use her command of the medium to chew up and spit out anyone whose political views she doesn’t approve of. Brash didn’t stand a chance.

But being Brash, he was civil. He addressed Hill throughout by her first name, as if hoping they could be mates. He would have had more luck trying to pat the head of a komodo dragon.

What on earth made him go on Hill’s show in the first place? Vanity, perhaps, or the misguided hope that he could appeal to Hill’s better nature. Faint chance.

Of course there will be those who say Brash is a political and cultural dinosaur who deserved everything he got. But the last time I checked, you were allowed to criticise Radio New Zealand in a Facebook post without having to undergo a public disembowelment.

Here’s where we get down to the real issue. RNZ is a public institution.  It belongs to us.

The public who fund the organisation and pay its presenters' salaries are entitled to criticise it. But can we now expect that anyone who has the temerity to do so will be subjected to a mauling by RNZ’s in-house attack dog? Or is this treatment reserved for despised white conservative males such as Brash, to make an example of them and deter others from similar foolishness?

Either way, Hill’s dismemberment of Brash was a brazen abuse of the state broadcaster’s power and showed contemptuous disregard for RNZ’s charter obligation to be impartial and balanced.

This is nothing new, of course. The quaint notion that RNZ exists for all New Zealanders was quietly jettisoned years ago. Without any mandate, the state broadcaster has refashioned itself as a platform for the promotion of favoured causes.

You’re more likely to see an aardvark driving a tractor down The Terrace than to hear a conservative voice, or even a middle-of-the-road one, on smug groupthink fests such as RNZ’s current series of Smart Talk.

Brash has a perfectly valid point. Whatever the benefits of learning te reo, it is not the function of the state broadcaster to engage in social engineering projects for our collective betterment – for example, by encouraging us to refer to Auckland as Tamaki Makaurau and Christchurch as Otautahi, as now seems to be the practice of some RNZ reporters.

RNZ does many things very well and my quality of life would be greatly diminished without it, but no one will ever die wondering about the political leanings of many of its presenters and producers.

And clearly, no one should expect any restraint to be imposed on them by their bosses – in fact probably less so than ever under an indulgent Labour-led government. 

29 comments:

Pdogge said...

Highest quality reporting, commentary etc in the land, a national treasure is RNZ but that's you Karl, the glass can only be half full.....

Barry said...

That's another great post Karl. Thank you for it.

Owen said...

Don Brash is hardly a lamb in the broadcasting abbatoir: as an aspiring Prime Minister he would have been media coached by the best money could buy, and has a good intellect. If he can't get his view across maybe it wasn't all that convincing?

Philob said...

I listened to that interview Karl, and I think that it was not the act of public humiliation that you portray. Kim Hill's questions were aggressive - I agree, but Don Brash had plenty of say too - to advance and defend his views. I think he was OK but could have been better. He was too personal - too much "I", and did not ask Kim how Guyon Espiner's long spiels in Maori advanced RNZ's charter obligations to foster the language, given that no translations are offered?
It is thus clear that the advancement of Maori is a political position, not an educational one.
I wish Kim Hill would do more critical interviews, and not just of conservative white people. I doubt that Don Brash was as hurt as you seem to say.

Philip O'Brien (not Glenys Barton) I don't know what your identity stuff means.

Philob said...

I heard Kim Hill interview Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) this morning. Maybe a look-in for right-wing views is emerging?

David McLoughlin said...

A brave column, Karl, brave as in Yes Minister bravery. The comments under it on Stuff were a fascinating if sad commentary on the mindset of those who reply to items on Stuff.

I thought the Brash interview was quite restrained for Kim, though it was obvious he was only invited on to be savaged. Normally any voice from the right of green-left doesn't get an airing with Kim, Wallace, Jesse and Bryan.

Then bugger me, this morning Kim produced that international treasure, Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple) and gave him a very good trot, with no sarcasm at all. I think she likes his kind of intellect. I once interviewed him for the Dom, when he visited NZ for an Act conference. I have never forgotten the lovely Dom headline, "Mr Grumpy and his bitter pills" :-)

I have listened religiously to National Radio since the very first Morning Report of April 1 1975 and I do enjoy it because I am a tragic for news and current affairs. Its green/left-leaning is as obvious as the right-leaning of talkback radio, except in the case of RNZ I suspect they don't know they are so-leaning, because they are in their own bubble and think almost everyone believes the same as them, and those who don't must be corrected.

Kathryn Ryan is refreshingly different, in that she studiously avoids any party political lean and in all the years since I first met her, I've not seen a hint of her own politics, whatever they are, if she has any. But her producers are from the same green-left barrow as her colleagues, always serving up at least one "We're all doomed because of Global Warming" lecturer a day, and some days more than one. I was not surprised that Anthony Daniels this morning was followed by yet another don't-eat-meat worthy.

I also follow the ABC and BBC news websites daily, and listen to them when in their countries. When we lived in Melbourne from 2009 to 2012 it was three years of paradise, with ABC radio and TV and SBS. But of course, they come from the same green-left mould as RNZ. ABC journalists are so biased that their own board had to order them not to use the airwaves to promote the same-sex marriage bill, but it didn't stop them. I found that such a directive was needed to be astonishing. Today the ABC is back campaigning against the Catholic Church, following the report yesterday of the royal commission, and campaigning against the Australian government in the Bennelong byelection, where Turnbull's government could fall if the Liberals lose the seat. As an aside, an ABC journalist won that seat for Labor from John Howard in 2008! But she lost it at the next election. So it is a marginal seat.

It's also fascinating how the ABC teams with the dying Fairfax papers to wage joint campaigns; not overtly but openly as joint campaigns now. Their long and vicious campaign against Cardinal Pell appalled me, especially their triumph when they secured his arrest. How this broken man can get a fair trial thanks to them eludes me, but I suspect that will be high on the minds of his defence lawyers.

Karl, I have to carry this over to part two, sorry, apparently I have reached a character-count!

David McLoughlin said...

Part two, sorry.

An unforgettable memory of my three years in Melbourne was a column in The Age by former senior Howard minister Peter Costello, to whom Fairfax would grant space occasionally to as a pet conservative to balance their green-left stand.

Let me quote from his column (it was in 2009 but retains its resonance). He was writing about one of his invited appearances on ABC radio:

It was one of those curious occasions when the truth popped out and hung there on the airwaves. I was doing an ABC radio interview last week. A listener sent in a text message - which was read out - suggesting the ABC should engage me as a radio host. I said: "I don't think I have the right political views for the ABC." It was not said with any malice, just an observation of an obvious fact... it didn't provoke any outrage or comment. It just hung there. There was a mild effort by my interlocutor to defend the corporation. He pointed out there is a Liberal employed on ABC local radio in Perth. Which says it all. It is quite an oddity that they know about this man in Melbourne. Out of the 4500 ABC employees, they know there is one Liberal.

A Liberal in Australian politics of course is a member of the Liberal Party, a conservative party not unlike our National Party.

In case you are confused, I listen to RNZ, the ABC, the BBC and Al Jazeera because I like quality news and current affairs. Their obvious leanings apart, they do provide that quality. Most of the rest of the media is frankly appalling today, IMO.

Brendan McNeill said...

Karl, I don't know why you bother with RadioNZ on a Saturday morning. Most of us abandoned that toxic swamp decades ago.

David McLoughlin said...

Aaargh. Not my day. This is the link to the Peter Costello article I cited



http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/left-to-its-devices-its-their-abc-20090825-ey3b.html

Barry said...

I've listened to RNZ National for decades but I think the time has come to stop forcing taxpayers to fund it.

Hilary Taylor said...

Like David, (& handclap to you for the above piece) I thought Kim was trying to restrain herself but failing. It needn't have taken as long as it did to get both points across, if we even needed to know Kim's. Brash had a point, she provided the balance, wrap it up minus the bondage session...but no fun in that I suppose. I sit on the fence...Karl, I hear you but Im keen on hearing tidbits of other languagse dotted about the place so am mildly amused by the tensions that provokes in others. They're trying to not be tokenistic but that's a losing battle I fear.

Unknown said...

Blogger Owen said...

Don Brash is hardly a lamb in the broadcasting abbatoir: as an aspiring Prime Minister he would have been media coached by the best money could buy, and has a good intellect. If he can't get his view across maybe it wasn't all that convincing?
.........
It's in the charter is an appeal to authority.Imagine if the police stopped us on the way to work to give us all a Te Reo lesson?
You are against segregation Don [referring to umpteen Maori speaking TV and radio stations] is a rhetorical argument. Don is pro segregation for some activities.
etc

Philob said...

I heard Kim Hill interview Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) this morning. Maybe a look-in for right-wing views is emerging?
......
Dr Greg Clydesdale is due an interview. He has written The Politically Correct Economy. Kim ended her last interview by throwing peer review at him. A lot of water has flown under the bridge since then.

RNZ are part of "an institutionalisation of public discourse" required to transition us to a multicultural society. Hardly anyone has explained what multiculturalism is. Essentially it requires destruction of the nation as an institution associated with a group the people. It has a higher goal as a model for solving ethnic conflicts but to achieve that the New Zealander identity must be destroyed. No ethnic group has a greater claim to the land than any other - including Maori. I recommend a succinct podcast "We Europeans - Multiculturalism, Decolonization, and Ethnocide". Could this be why journalists attract such low levels of trust?

Unknown said...

Is it drawing a long bow to link opinions at Public Address ("a blog for journalists") with RNZ? If not read posts such as Paul Spoonley's - What Diversity Dividend? and "Are We There Yet". The thinking here aligns with John Key who said (after winning the prior election) "I’d like New Zealanders to feel (after my time as Prime Minister) they have become more confident outward looking nation more multicultural".
Paul Spoonley has had a close association with RNZ (A Slice Of Heaven - Noele McCarthy). He has had a role in formulating thinking around tino rangitiratanga, cultural safety in nursing and a definition of racism which holds that racism arrived with British colonisation. He is also "immigration expert", "demographer", "social cohesion expert", "Distinguished Professor", promoter of globalisation and population growth. He has writtten extensively on the role of the media.
.....
The changing face of New Zealand
From Nine To Noon, 11:28 am on 10 October 2017

The year they are predicting Asians will supercede Maori is 2023. So the recent population growth (immigration) is bringing those tipping points forward.
Ryan: Weve had four years of record high. And that was not anticipated.
Are we pretty much now just about the most diverse country on earth?

Spoonley
Yes and they factor in population ageing. Our fertility, the fertility of the Pakeha population is below replacement level.
Ryan
Especially relative to other ethnicities.
Spoonley
Yes, Maori and Paifica are quite high and the growth in the Asian population is driven by immigration.

Ryan
Let's look at the overall makeupof the population. Pakeha New Zealanders will grow but decline as a proportion of the population. In fact probably not far off being less than 50% of Aucklands population?

Spoonley
No, I think that's quite sad actually, that's one of those tipping points. They'll become what they call a majority minority. So they are still the largest group but they will be less than 50% of the population.

Ryan [jokes] do they have a mandate... no sorry.
Spoonley
Hey it's an interesting discussion. It is dawning on us how diverse we are, and what do we need to do?
Ryan
So that's whats happening in Auckland. Nationwide is it on a similar track?
Spoonley
Yeas
Ryan
Maori and Pacifica growing due to birthrate.
Spoonley
And Maori will hit a million. In the not to distant future. And if you remember back to 1900 when there were 40,000 Nga Moriki (the survivers) so in a century and a bit they are going to hit a million. That's pretty impressive.

Ryan
Any other standout or surprises to the numbers

Spoonley
and the context is that we are growing at 2.1% which is high. If you nlook at the numbers of Asians they are growing at 3.5% , So tha's why the're contributing.Pakeha are growing at less than .5%
So that's why we are seeing this diversification.


Ryan
and it's also in some ways the argument for immigration isn't it
Spoonley
Hmm
because in some ways your gonna need taxpayers, especially as that baby boomer demographic retires. We know there are some big issues coming up there.
……….
Except that credible souces debunk the notion that immigration is a solution to population ageing (UN, Australian Productivity Commision, Julie Fry – Treasury Paper 14-10). So what are the next reasons on the list?

And Ranganui Walker has written of how Maori concerns over immigration were ignored. Is it just coincidence that RNZ has developed a fascination with the Land Wars and is piling on Te Reo? "Espiner admits he enjoys winding those sort up"?

David McLoughlin said...

On Sunday just now, Wallace Chapman interviewed Swedish political scientist Professor Bo Rothstein, because he supports unlimited refugees and says they have made Sweden's economy very strong despite not having jobs and being on welfare. What Wallace didn't expect was the good professor does not support a Universal Basic Income, which was a lovely sting in the tail.

And this morning's Global Warming Homily was some American who said our fight against Climate Change was sexist.

Karl du Fresne said...

In response to some of the above comments:
Pdogge: The fact that RNZ does some things very well (which is true) doesn’t absolve it of the obligation to be impartial and even-handed across all its programmes and to reflect the political and ideological diversity of the society that owns and funds it, which it conspicuously and consistently fails to do.
Owen and philob: I agree that this was not Don Brash’s finest hour. Some of his arguments were weak and he appears to have gone into the interview poorly prepared. His admission that he hadn’t read the RNZ charter was a mark against him, for a start. (If he had, he could have talked about how flawed the charter is, while also making the point that even then, RNZ fails to meet some charter requirements or interprets them to suit its own purposes – for example, the one about reflecting New Zealand’s diversity.) And while Brash would have had media training, I doubt that even the best media training equips you to go up against a veteran hatchet-woman like Hill in her own domain. Until you’ve sat alone in a studio talking down the line to a skilled and highly experienced interviewer whom you can’t see, and knowing it’s being heard live by an audience that’s probably counted in hundreds of thousands, it’s hard to imagine how unsettling it can be.
David: Amen to virtually everything you wrote. I missed the interview with Anthony Daniels/Theodore Dalrymple but hope to catch up with it later. Hill at her best – i.e. when the subject is non-ideological, or when she keeps her prejudices under control – can be excellent
Brendan: It would probably suit people like Hill (and RNZ) if critical listeners gave up, because that would leave her (it) with an uncritically adoring audience. Call me stubborn, but since I’m one of the mugs who pays for RNZ I assert my right to listen to it and to keep asking why it’s not doing the job it’s supposed to do. When people give up listening because they object to the overt personal biases of RNZ presenters and producers, they relinquish any influence they might have over the direction of the state broadcaster. To put it another way, the battle is lost by default.

Brendan McNeill said...

Hi Karl

I have shared your frustration over RNZ, but I hold no expectation that we as ‘listeners’ or tax payers have any influence over the political bias of the institution. The management are happy with the status quo, the board chaired by a former National Party Prime Ministers’ press secretary, is presumably happy with the bias, and during the last nine years of a National Government it exerted zero influence.

What then will be the catalyst for change?

Jim Mora is professional and willing to give time to all sides, and Stephen Franks is an all too rare guest on his program. Few of his other guests are prepared to stray off the reservation, and their contribution is usually predictable and always politically correct.

I favour ignoring her/it, because the only thing she/they care about is ratings. Nothing but irrelevance will prompt change. Until that happens our lives are richer without her/it intruding into our cars and kitchens.

David McLoughlin said...

I hold no expectation that we as ‘listeners’ or tax payers have any influence over the political bias of the institution.

I'm not sure they have a political bias, as in party political.

I see RNZ National as green/left, in lower-case. It is their view of the world, that Global Warming is a massive threat, dams and cows are bad, and we all need to be socially aware and kind and respectful to those who are not affluent, educated middle class liberals like us.

The latter, from "need to be socially aware...etc..." more or less describes me, but I see my views as elitist and actually want to see a representation of society and the world that does not mirror what I think. I suppose I also like RNZ a lot because they do mirror me on most things, but I wish there were a lot more voices.

Brendan McNeill said...

Hi David

I agree with you regarding the question of political bias, it is simply the default worldview of the organization, its producers and presenters that is being expressed, however that doesn’t make it any more palatable.

To be fair however, I was out driving in the car last week and heard an interview with author and professor Alan Jacobs on Jessie’s show. He was a self-described American liberal (progressive) university professor, but also (gasp) an evangelical Christian. The producer clearly failed to perform a sufficiently thorough background check.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018625126/alan-jacobs-we-aren-t-doing-enough-critical-thinking

In his book “How to Think” Jacob dismisses the idea that we should think for ourselves, instead he said we should rather choose whom we ‘think alongside’. He quoted a couple of essays by CS Lewis (mentioned in the above interview) where more than 50 years ago Lewis describes how belonging to the ‘in-group’ stifles thought and free speech. Only correct speech will ensure that you become credentialed, and retain your friendships and status in the group. (Yes, this on RNZ!)

Consequently, what you have at RNZ (and elsewhere) is a soft totalitarian regime that self regulates thought, speech and commentary.

Dr. Jacobs suggested we take time to listen to the most articulate and thoughtful people who oppose our worldview, in order sharpen our thinking. Well, worth listening to. I have ordered his book.

Unknown said...

EMMA ESPINER
I dislike the 'old white men' argument where one simply says those three words and the offending viewpoint is rejected because of its provenance without any further need for debate. So I've been trying to find a way to describe the demographic similarities of the people for whom Te Reo is so deeply offensive which doesn't use those adjectives in that order. Readers might be able to assist me with this, because I haven't yet found a way.
.........
How about Johnathon Haidt and his moral foundations theory?:
Care: cherishing and protecting others; opposite of harm.
Fairness or proportionality: rendering justice according to shared rules; opposite of cheating.
Loyalty or ingroup: standing with your group, family, nation; opposite of betrayal.
Authority or respect: submitting to tradition and legitimate authority; opposite of subversion.
Sanctity or purity: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions; opposite of degradation.
These are cross cultural universals.

Evolutionary psychology [not taught by the old white academics who raised our journalists] would define language as a paramount marker of *our* group. In fact (if I remember), baby's respond to language over race.
..............
"The complaints about Te Reo being used in mainstream media give me great heart looking to the future. This positive response might surprise some, but I believe we can view these people (and they're always the same people) as the rearguard of progress. As society shifts, they will continue to yap at our heels and protest, but the trend for Aotearoa is against bland mono-culturalism and fearful mono-lingualism. A decade ago it was Māori Television. Today, it's using Te Reo on Morning Report and Breakfast TV and putting macrons in newspapers. In ten years time these things will be completely normal and there will be another battle, which the rearguard will again resist and lose."
.........
What can you say about that?: we can; we did; there's nothing you can do about it? Gramsci wrote of a "long march through the institutions" - the cap seems to fit RNZ. You have to go outside the media for other opinions. What's more the political parties reflect the media/bureaucrats/academics. NZ First had a part time soldier in Winston Peters but nothing like a Michael Farange.

On The Nation David Cormack commented: "That isn't a reason to do something. You don't do what the public thinks is right: you do what is right. They don't necessarily mesh up."

Some people's opinions are worth ten times others.

Unknown said...

@ Brendon McNeill that sounds a bit like John Tooby's Coalitional instincts.

"ancestrally, if you had no coalition you were nakedly at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency, preexisting and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership. This is why group beliefs are free to be so weird. Since coalitional programs evolved to promote the self-interest of the coalition’s membership (in dominance, status, legitimacy, resources, moral force, etc.), even coalitions whose organizing ideology originates (ostensibly) to promote human welfare often slide into the most extreme forms of oppression, in complete contradiction to the putative values of the group. "
https://www.edge.org/conversation/john_tooby-coalitional-instincts

Karl du Fresne said...

Emma (I assume the above comment is yours):
You say you don’t like the “old white men” argument but you then immediately resort to precisely those stereotypical caricatures that you profess to reject.
I’m not aware that Don Brash has ever said that he finds te reo “deeply offensive”. All he did was object to your husband using it on a state-funded radio programme whose audience mostly don’t have a clue what he’s talking about.
The message seems to be that if we want to know what Guyon is saying we should follow his example and all learn te reo. But it’s not the function of Radio New Zealand presenters to inculcate us with the social or cultural values that they choose to espouse.
In any case, the main point of my column was not so much the use of te reo on RNZ but the right of a listener to object to it without being eviscerated in an “interview” [sic], the purpose of which seemed to be to punish Brash and therefore send a signal to anyone else who might have the audacity to criticise the state broadcasting organisation.
As for the rest of your comment, I’m afraid I find it hard to follow. You’ve obviously had a university education.

David McLoughlin said...

Kia ora koutou

Some people's opinions are worth ten times others.

Hmmm, it's all relative though. Opinions I like may be worth 10 times more than ones I don't like, but to whom? My opinions are worth nothing at all to people who don't like me or my opinions. Who is right? Can opinions even be "right?"

To return to Dr Brash, IMO his opinions in 2017 on te reo, tikanga Maori and supposed Maori "privilege" seem antediluvian. But in another lifetime, when he was governor of the Reserve Bank, I respected and took note of his opinions on national and international finances (though not home ownership). Back when Muldoon hated him so much he put the harbour bridge tolls up the Monday before the East Coast Bays byelection to stop Brash winning it, I almost loved him!

Some people, likely a declining proportion of the population, dislike hearing Guyon in particular but all RNZ people in general using even a word or two in te reo. I really enjoy hearing te reo used, especially on RNZ. I even understand what they are saying. But that is just my worldview. Others will have a different one.

I can like RNZ while still believing everything it does comes from a (lower-case) green-left stance it probably doesn't realise it holds, because it exists in an echo-chamber where most or all its staff have the same worldview and so do its most loving listeners, the ones RNZ hears. When you believe your worldview is the one everybody should hold, it's instinctive not to give credibility to views outside your belief structure. It's why the political/media elite were so stunned when Trump won. It never occurred to them Hillary could lose to him.

I certainly don't believe Brash is racist. I just think he's wacky and from another time, like, say, Gareth Morgan, who when he was an economist also uttered opinions I took notice of. IMO neither of them realise how ridiculous they now sound -- well, to me, at least.

Ka kite ano

Owen said...

I listened to the Theodore Dalrymple interview and I was a bit disappointed with Kim's lack of bite. It would have been far more interesting if he had been challenged a bit more.

rivoniaboy said...

@Owen
When Theodore Dalrymple talks it generally pays to listen. He is a vastly experienced Physciatrist.
Besides it would be hard to refute his belief that it is modern liberal progressive ideas that are responsible for creating an underclass. Or the part people play in their own downfall. Or his opinion that the British people are the crudest people in the world now.


Keno said...

I lodged a formal complaint with RNZ about Mr Espiner’s te reo delivery speed, no translation on air and his pleasure at infuriating some listeners. The latter was admitted by Espiner during the course of a recent Stuff interview (Article Glenn McConnell 15/9/2017). The nub of my complaint was Espiner’s delivery conflicted with his employer’s te reo promotion, reducing its impact and bringing te reo itself into disrepute and derision. However, I found it impossible to align my complaint with the Standards in the Radio Code of Broadcasting Practice to which RNZ subscribes to. There was no conflict of interest mentioned there. My complaint has accordingly failed. It was sloppily addressed by RNZ, who appeared not to have read it thoroughly. They are, in my opinion, an unresponsive taxpayer-funded silo with a fortress mentality. Hell bent on implementing a repugnant piece of social engineering flowing on from their Next Steps for Maori Strategy.

kjx said...

I still remember Kathryn Ryan calling John Key a Communist - before the 2011 election I think, when National hadn't abolished Working for Families which he'd called "communism by stealth".

Add in the Arabian sheep farm, and the smelter subsidies - no other NZ news outlet had the guts to go after Key from the Right.

Unknown said...

The Treaty Debate 1 (2010)

It was a voice that took the arguments of an international politics of liberation : the Marxism of Gramsci the notion of hegemony the critiques of colonialism offered by Fanon and Césaire the liberation theory and the possibility of a transformative education of Freire and Illich and put them into a New Zealand vernacular.
,,,,,,
For much of the twentieth century it was assumed that the state operated on behalf of a single nation that the two (the nation and the state were indivisible) The state represented all New Zealanders. It deserved their undivided loyalty and in return the state was neutral with respect of the ethnic identity of it's citizens. The identity politics of Maori challenged all of these elements. The nation was made up, it was argued, of two groups and the operation of the state ought to recognise the particular circumstances and the rights of Maori. Something which it had not done previously. In fact the state had seemed to operate in ways that had directly disadvantaged Maori. The state was hardly neutral. According to Ranginui and others the state preserved Pakeha interests even if it continued to claim universality and neutrality. It was a radical rethinking of what the nation state of NZ ought to be. It required a decoupling of the nation now defined as Maori and Pakeha or Maori and the Crown and required the state to operate in new and different ways. A new understanding and a new social contract needed to be established . But of course there was no compulsion for the state to acknowledge these new expectations. It was left to the good sense and sensitivity of some key players: Maori, Pakeha and representatives of the state to explore what this means.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/thetreatydebates/audio/2491827/treaty-debate-1-2010
There is no measurable amount of what needs to be done (eg how much Te reo is enough). It is a can of worms all round.
In a bicultural context we have an ethnic group which has resources devoted specifically to it's advancement. The state seems to have swallowed the neo-marxist project and all it's assumptions?. For the purposes of Pakeha the state is just an area of economic exchange. Hence you have a few individuals fighting a rearguard action such as those who write on NZCPR. Other ethnic groups have their interests protected by well funded bureaucracies on fat salaries with tons of resources. The Heterodox Academy of Johnathon haidt and others have detailed the lack of balance in universities and there is no reason not to think this also applies to bureaucracies and journalism.

Unknown said...

See Maharey has waded in and shown is colours
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/why-does-don-brash-think-it-is-so-important-that-we-are-one-people

David McLoughlin said...

Just an afterthought. Guyon interviewed Justice Joe Williams this morning about the latter's just-announced appointment to the Court of Appeal. I was quietly reminded of how much unsung Maori achievement is happening in this country when Guyon asked Justice Williams about the number of Maori lawyers and got this response:

"When I was a [law] student in the 80s, by the time I got to second-year law, there were two of us at Victoria University in Wellington. In the 40 or so years since then, that's changed massively. There are lots of Maori law students, hundreds in fact, and dozens graduating every year."

He exchanged a “Meri Kirihimete" with Guyon at the end, which I hope didn't spoil Dr Brash's Christmas.

The interview is here for anyone interested:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018627189/first-te-reo-maori-speaker-appointed-to-appeal-court