On hatchet jobs and offence archaeology

I read something by Andrea Vance at the weekend. Why? Good question. I think I read Vance to assure myself that I’m not missing anything by not reading her. Figure that out if you can.

Actually, that’s not entirely fair, because she has done some good work. I remember a column of hers from 2021 in which she gave the government a robust and deserved serve for being obsessively secretive.

Regrettably her piece yesterday, which purported to be an analysis of electorates to watch in the 2023 general election, was marred by the familiar Stuff slant. This is now so embedded that you barely notice it.  

Referring to the Maungakiekie seat, Vance wrote that Labour candidate Priyanca Radhakrishnan had name recognition as a minister (oh yes, everyone’s heard of her), while National’s Greg Fleming had “attracted headlines for only the wrong reasons”.

To see what those reasons were, we had to go to another Vance story from April in which she recited a list of National contenders who had made dicks of themselves.

Her chief target then was Taieri candidate Stephen Jack, who revealed himself as an unreconstructed 1970s Neanderthal when he posted a video on Facebook that included the line, “I like my Covid like I like my women – 19 and easy to spread”. Even an after-dinner speaker at a rugby club prizegiving would baulk at that.

Vance then listed others who had similarly distinguished themselves, including Sam Uffindell, Jami-Lee Ross, Andrew Falloon, Hamish Walker and Jake Bezzant.

Fair enough: National does have a serious problem with candidate selection. I was reminded of that when I saw Uffindell standing behind Luxon at a policy announcement on the TV news a few nights ago. Uffindell seems such an unappealing candidate that if I were a National strategist, I’d go to inordinate lengths – possibly even drugging his drink or breaking his legs – to keep him out of the public view. That permanently blank face makes me wonder whether he even has a pulse. He’s a reminder of all that’s wrong with National’s random idiot generator, to use Vance’s witty phrase (credit where credit’s due). But how did Fleming make the list of shame?

For that we had to go back nearly 20 years to when he was chief executive of the Maxim Institute. Yes, you read that correctly: 20 years.

There’s a term for this tactic; it’s called offence archaeology. It involves trawling back through printed and online records – even going back decades, as in this case – in the hope of digging up a statement or event that might be used to smear a political enemy. It’s a tactic that's used almost exclusively against the Right, as on this occasion.

Vance’s story linked to a recent hatchet job on Fleming by Newshub’s Jenna Lynch – yes, that paragon of journalistic excellence – which recalled that while with the Maxim Institute in 2004, he issued a statement opposing the Civil Unions Bill. In it, he said civil unions were same-sex marriage in all but name and suggested the government might as well go the whole hog and formally recognise relations based on polygamy and incest.

Characteristically, Newshub presented the story in the most prejudicial manner possible, using the headline: National candidate Greg Fleming compared civil unions to polygamy and incest – thus neatly ignoring that his statement plainly wasn't meant to be taken literally. Lesson: never give the woke media an excuse to present a flippant or ironic statement as if it were intended seriously. If they can twist it to make you look bad, be sure they will. 

This was hardly surprising, of course, given Lynch's record. But then, like the other half in a tag wrestling team, Vance took up the attack. 

Vance clearly regarded Fleming’s 2004 press release as being on a par, in terms of offensiveness, with sending a pornographic image to a teenager (Falloon), assaulting a boy with a bed-leg (Uffindell) or having sex with staff members (Ross).

She called Fleming’s statement homophobic, a routinely overused word that means hatred or fear of homosexuals. But to oppose civil unions didn’t imply hatred of gays and lesbians. It was a rational and predictable response from a moral conservative to a Bill that profoundly changed the legal status of same-sex relationships, which many Christians regarded as wrong.

Oh, but I forgot: you’re no longer allowed to be a moral conservative, and to be Christian is even riskier. Christians are equated with sexual abuse, patriarchy and fundamentalism; think Gloriavale.

So Fleming’s statement on behalf of a legitimate conservative lobby group is disinterred nearly 20 years later and now results in him being equated with sleazebags and morons like Ross and Jack.

Sorry, make that ultra-conservative lobby group, which is how Vance described both Fleming and the Maxim Institute. I suspect that in the eyes of some press gallery journalists, pretty much anyone to the right of Luxon is ultra-conservative and therefore beyond the pale.

Funny how we never hear the term ultra-Left; presumably, only conservative people are capable of taking scary, extreme positions. (Wellington city councillor Tamatha Paul, who’s standing for the Greens in Wellington Central, got a mention in Vance’s story, but there was nothing to indicate that many Wellingtonians view her as a dangerous zealot. She’s on the right side, after all.)

Perhaps the saddest part about all this is that Fleming has responded exactly as we have come to expect from spineless National politicians when they find themselves in the gun from scalp-hunting journalists. He has given his tormentors the satisfaction of resiling from his statement in 2004 and assuring them he would never say the same thing now.  He’s taking his cue, of course, from his leader, who seems desperate to reassure the media that he won’t interfere with the right to kill unborn babies, regardless of what he might have thought about abortion when he entered Parliament.

It’s worth noting here that not content with impugning Fleming’s credentials, Vance also used her story about potential swing seats to take a snide swipe at former long-serving Nelson MP Nick Smith. “National insiders used to talk about ‘the Nick Smith Effect’ whereby locals stubbornly continue to vote for an incumbent for reasons that seem unfathomable to outsiders,” she sighed exasperatedly.

Those pathetic, benighted voters in Nelson! How could they be so stupid? Why didn’t they ask Vance for her advice about who to vote for? How could the locals possibly know what’s best for them?

She conveniently didn’t mention that the people of Nelson liked Smith enough to elect him as mayor last year with a stonking majority of more than 9000 votes. Here, writ large, is the lethal combination of intellectual arrogance, bigotry and elitism that continues to eat away at the credibility of political journalism.

 

Why journalists' credibility is declining (No. 137 in a series)

In the past few months I’ve got into the habit of watching the Prime TV news at 5.30pm.

The timing is a bit inconvenient, but that’s greatly offset by the benefits. Eric Young has a very agreeable newsreading style, by which I mean he just sits at a desk and reads the news. There’s never any pretence of Walter Cronkite-style moral authority and no cues to viewers as to how they should respond emotionally to what’s on screen.

The bulletin is only 30 minutes long but that’s enough to cover the essentials. In fact the shorter duration is an advantage because it forces Prime to stick to the basics. It’s a no-frills, straight-down-the-middle bulletin that avoids the editorial posturing and embroidery common on the other channels; this, despite the fact that it uses some of the same reporters as Newshub.

Last night I was reminded what a blessed relief it has been to watch Prime. An important phone call meant I missed the 5.30 bulletin, so I took a deep breath and tuned into Newshub at 6pm.

I didn’t last long. I turned off after about a minute, but only after shouting a profanity at the TV set. I’m not sure what that was supposed to achieve.

The lead item – the event that Newshub’s editors selected as the most significant news of the day – concerned a low-profile Opposition MP who had expressed scepticism about the role of human-induced climate change in Cyclone Gabrielle.

So after 10 days or so when the New Zealand media had a real and vital story on their hands – a dramatic story about life, death and devastation on a massive scale (which, to the media’s credit, they generally handled admirably) – we were jolted back to normality with a mischievous sideshow.

Newshub was back to its default setting of political scalp-hunting, contriving to whip up a storm out of an injudicious comment from a relatively minor player whose chief failings appear to be that she’s honest and politically not very astute. It was a reminder of all I despise about television journalism.

The item should have been headlined News Flash: MP says what she thinks. This, of course, is the worst possible thing a politician can do, especially when media assassins are constantly lurking with their daggers poised.

Maureen Pugh’s statement of scepticism about climate change was seized on not because she’s an important figure in the party (far from it; although she’s National’s junior whip, she has retained her seat in Parliament by the skin of her teeth), but because her gaffe presented an opportunity to portray National as at odds with itself over a cause that the media push with totalitarian fervour.

Even watching the opening moments of the item last night, I could see political editor Jenna Lynch’s fingerprints all over it. When I held my nose and viewed it in full later, I confirmed that it bore all her usual trademarks. These included ambushing senior National MPs and demanding to know whether they shared Pugh’s scepticism – the purpose being to see them squirm – then going to government ministers and effectively inviting them to denounce her.  

I guess this is Newshub’s idea of balanced journalism. After all, both Labour and National had their say.

Predictably, Pugh’s colleagues from Christopher Luxon down scuttled for cover. I didn’t hear any of them defend her right to express a dissenting view. A sensible response would have been that National is a broad-church party, open to a variety of ideas and able to cope with minority opinions. But no: deviation from the party line is not permitted and will be punished – in this case, by Luxon giving Pugh some books and ordering her to read them. Does he not realise he risks losing more votes than he wins by throwing her under the bus? It serves only to gratify the witch-hunters in the media and enhance their sense of power.

As is so often the case, the Newshub item was infused with a moralistic tone. Lynch went so far as to imply that to deny the effects of climate change was to betray the thousands of people struggling with the effects of Cyclone Gabrielle. Brazen emotional manipulation is another part of her tool kit.

But she was able to adopt a gloating note at the end when she reported that a suitably chastened Pugh had “walked back” her comments. Job done, then; another scalp to hang on the belt. Journalists always win because they control the rules of the game.

Of course Newshub wasn’t the only media outlet to engage in the pile-on. The  sanctimonious Marc Daalder of Newsroom was in on it too, demonising Pugh as a denier, accusing her of callous disregard for flood victims (as Lynch did) and – get this – saying she should be disqualified from holding office. This from a journalist who has been in New Zealand for roughly five minutes.

Much as he might hate the thought, Pugh has a legitimacy Daalder will never possess. She’s at least answerable to voters, even if only indirectly via our cockeyed electoral system. Daalder, on the other hand, is accountable to no one other than his employers. I’ll take a wild guess and say there would be more sympathy for Pugh on the West Coast, where she comes from, than for the opinions of a privileged product of the American university system.

And even if they don’t specifically agree with her on climate change, I believe most New Zealanders would support Pugh’s right to express a non-conformist opinion. There has to be space in the political eco-system for mavericks. A parliament full of woke-friendly nodding heads, which would be the ultimate result if activist journalists succeeded in eliminating the ideologically non-compliant, would be a travesty of democracy.  

Am I saying these journalists are biased against National? Not necessarily. While overwhelmingly left-leaning, they are indiscriminate predators who, like hyenas, will instinctively seek out those they perceive to be weak and vulnerable. At the moment this means National, but there’s nothing to say that in a couple of years it won’t be the other side’s turn.

Journalism took a fatal wrong turn when it confused itself with activism and assumed the right to hector the public with ideological lectures, often tinged with an ugly spirit of authoritarianism. Journalists are not our moral guardians, and until they grasp that fact their credibility will continue to decline.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back to Prime at 5.30 this afternoon.

 

 

What New Zealanders (that is to say, ordinary New Zealanders) think about the name Aotearoa

The jury has returned its verdict, and it’s emphatic. New Zealanders want the country’s name left as it is.

In a Newshub-Reid Research poll, respondents were asked what they thought New Zealand should be known as.

Fifty-two percent wanted the country to be called New Zealand, pure and simple. Thirty-six percent wanted Aotearoa in the mix, as in the ungainly, bob-each-way formulation Aotearoa-New Zealand.

But here’s the crunch: only 9.6 percent of those polled thought the country should be renamed Aotearoa. This is a resounding rebuff to the political, bureaucratic, academic and media elites who have tried for years to impose Aotearoa by sheer frequency of usage.

Predictably the poll results were buried deep in a Newshub story, despite the network having paid for the research. You can bet it would have been the lead item in the 6pm news if the results had gone the other way.

Newshub’s political editor Jenna Lynch chose to mention the poll almost as an afterthought in a story that was mainly concerned with taking puerile digs at National Party leader Christopher Luxon over his speech at Waitangi. 

There can’t be a sentient being in New Zealand who expects straight journalism from Lynch. She appears incapable of it. I no longer watch the Newshub News but I can imagine her reporting the survey findings through gritted teeth.  

The question now is whether the aforementioned elites, having noted the poll findings, will abandon their campaign to have Aotearoa adopted in popular usage. But of course they won’t, because they have little regard for the will of the people and like all elites, are convinced they know what’s best for the rest of us.

They will explain the survey result to themselves by concluding that their fellow New Zealanders are racists. But objections to the use of Aotearoa as a substitute for New Zealand have less to do with it being a Maori name than with the perception that it has been foisted on us without a mandate – just like Otautahi for Christchurch, Tamaki Makaurau for Auckland, Otepoti for Dunedin and Te Whanganui-a-Tara for Wellington. That the public don’t endorse any of these names is clear from the fact that you never hear them in conversation.

Yes, the name New Zealand is an historical anomaly that, in itself, says nothing about us or our national identity. But it's the name we've been known by since James Cook (there was no Maori name for the country, as was demonstrated by the use of Nu Tireni - a transliteration of the English name - by the Maori chiefs who signed a Declaration of Independence in 1835), and to repudiate it is to erase much of our history.

This is not something to be undertaken without a proper, informed debate. As long as New Zealand purports to be a democracy, voters will assert the right to decide what the country and its major cities are to be called. Any government rash enough to challenge that right will be signing its own death warrant.

When political journalism morphs into crude emotional blackmail

Broadcaster Sean Plunket might have been taken aback to discover he was the subject of the second item on Newshub’s 6pm news bulletin a few nights ago. Then again maybe it was no surprise, given that few people are more keenly aware than Plunket of the mainstream media’s eagerness to marginalise – even demonise – anyone who challenges ideological orthodoxy. His key purpose in setting up his online site The Platform, after all, was to counter the ceaseless barrage of woke indoctrination from media outlets that have abandoned journalism for activism.

On this occasion Newshub not only decided that Plunket’s supposedly heretical opinion about the Christchurch mosque massacres was the second most important news item of the day, but that it was a matter of such gravity and national importance that it justified taking up nearly three and a half minutes of the bulletin.

It didn’t matter that a large number of Newshub’s viewers had probably never heard of Plunket and would have been scratching their heads wondering what the hell political editor Jenna Lynch’s garbled and overheated report was all about. Plunket is well-known in media and political circles but his public profile, especially beyond Wellington, is limited. Moreover, he doesn't hold a position of public responsibility; he's a private-sector media presenter and commentator with a relatively small audience. But the reason this obviously didn’t matter to Newshub was that conventional news judgment didn’t enter the equation. This was not a news story but a carefully orchestrated hit job, the clear purpose of which was to hector politicians into declaring they wouldn’t appear on The Platform again.

In other words the bigger objective was to torpedo one of New Zealand’s few outlets for legitimate voices of dissent. Plunket should take it as a great compliment that he’s considered such a threat that a far bigger, more powerful rival wants to shut him down. He must be getting traction.

And what was the egregious act that justified Plunket being presented as some sort of public enemy – a man whose views are supposedly so offensive that Lynch effectively insisted that politicians shun him?

He said the mosque killer was not a terrorist. While this is an opinion not widely shared, it’s hardly a capital crime. As far as I’m aware Plunket hasn’t sought to excuse, diminish or justify what Brenton Tarrant did. That would justifiably have prompted outrage, but Plunket has acknowledged that Tarrant was a mass murderer and described his crime as heinous.

He just doesn’t think Tarrant meets the definition of a terrorist. It would have been helpful if he had expanded on that by explaining his understanding of the word. But the important point here is that Plunket has said nothing that minimised the enormity of what Tarrant did. It appears to come down to an argument about language: was it an act of terrorism or one of mass murder by someone who, although held to be clinically sane, would be categorised by many people as deranged?

For what it’s worth, I disagree with Plunket on this. But I was curious to understand his reasoning, so I asked him to explain it to me. And while most people might challenge his take on the mosque massacres, his view is one that can be legitimately held.

Plunket sees parallels with the Aramoana massacre perpetrated by David Gray in 1990, which he reported as a 25-year-old journalist. He points out that both crimes were committed by socially isolated men – lone wolves – with access to guns. Another common factor which he thinks is significant is that they had no familial relationships to keep them grounded. (Both of Gray’s parents had died; Tarrant’s had split up).

He says there was no obvious reason for Gray’s actions and while Tarrant wrote a manifesto, it wasn’t a coherent political statement. (Plunket says he hasn’t read the manifesto but has spoken to people who have.)  In his own words, they were both nutters with a gun.

The standard definition of a terrorist is someone who commits violent acts in pursuit of ideological or political goals. Plunket obviously believes Tarrant didn’t match that definition. He prefers the term mass murderer.

More controversially, Plunket asserts that Tarrant wasn’t racist and he wasn’t anti-Muslim. “He just wanted to kill people and create chaos”. The government, he says, made Tarrant a terrorist for political reasons – to justify restrictions on freedom of expression under the guise of preventing hate speech.

The problem I have with that interpretation is that regardless of whether Tarrant’s manifesto was garbled and incoherent (and I haven’t read it either), there appeared to be a clear ideological motivation for the massacres. For all that Tarrant may have had in common with Gray, this vital factor distinguished the mosque killings from Aramoana.

After all, why else would Tarrant have targeted Muslims? For argument’s sake, he could just as easily have killed Mormons, Catholics or members of the Destiny Church – or come to that, spectators at a sporting event or people milling around in an airport terminal. But he carefully sought out Muslim temples; he knew where they were and what time worshippers would be there. That makes him a terrorist.

So I think Plunket is wrong on this. The judge who presided over Tarrant’s trial would doubtless say so too. Justice Mander described the shootings as a terrorist act and said Tarrant’s ideological motivation was readily apparent.

Nonetheless, Plunket is entitled to think otherwise. In a free society we are entitled to get things wrong and to hold opinions that other people vehemently disagree with, just as long as we don’t incite violence or harm.

That brings us to the nub of this issue. The real outrage here is not Plunket’s opinion, but Lynch’s attempt – condoned if not encouraged by her bosses at Newshub – to shut him down. That’s a flagrant misuse of media power and an attack on free speech.

Lynch, who is shaping up to be as malignant as her predecessor, Tova O’Brien, commenced her piece by referring to Plunket as a “shock jock” – woke code for any broadcaster the illiberal left doesn’t approve of. Her item included a brief comment from the sister of a massacre victim who appeared dismayed that anyone could think the shooter wasn’t a terrorist and who said she didn’t want politicians “enabling” voices like Plunket’s. (I immediately wondered whether she had come forward of her own accord or been approached by Lynch. Plunket told me Lynch admitted to him that it was the latter.)

Then Lynch ambushed Chris Hipkins, Christopher Luxon and David Seymour, all of whom have been interviewed by Plunket, effectively challenging them to declare that they wouldn’t appear again on The Platform – the implication being that if they didn’t comply, they would be endorsing someone who was in denial of what happened in Christchurch.  It was a crude form of emotional blackmail, played out in full public view.

Lynch even tried to draw in Jacinda Ardern, clearly hoping for a prime ministerial directive that her ministers should boycott Plunket, but all she got from the prime minister was a snide crack about not wanting to get involved in a “misguided publicity stunt”. Unfortunately this throwaway line was aimed at Plunket when it could have been more accurately applied to Lynch.  

Lynch must have been bitterly disappointed that Plunket refused to back down when confronted with his supposed heresy, and indeed doubled and then tripled down (Lynch’s words) by repeating it, to her apparent astonishment. Plunket obviously hasn’t read the rule book. Ego-driven political journalists with a distorted sense of their own authority aren’t accustomed to their intended victims standing up to them. They prefer to extract a grovelling mea culpa and claim a scalp to hang on their belts – and all too often that’s the outcome. But not on this occasion.

It was an abuse of media power as naked and explicit as any I’ve seen, and a striking demonstration of the threat posed to free speech by activists posing as political journalists. Lynch ended her piece by speaking live to camera with a patronising and vaguely threatening remark that “politicians should proceed with caution here” – in other words, they should think very carefully before dealing with Plunket. But the day our elected representatives take their cue from hubris-afflicted media assassins like Lynch will be the day democracy can be declared irrevocably dead.

Disclosure: The Platform occasionally re-publishes posts from this blog free of charge and I have been interviewed by Plunket and another of his presenters, Rodney Hide. I have no other association with Sean Plunket or The Platform.

The worst of all possible worlds

The following column was first published on The BFD. It has since had a small amount of new material added.

We’re all familiar with the phrase “the worst of all possible worlds”. Well, I think we now know what that world looks like.

We have an all-powerful, increasingly authoritarian government that combines ideological zealotry with ineptitude, profligacy, laziness and contempt for democratic process – surely the most lethal confluence of malignant political forces in living memory.

We have an opposition that should be presenting itself as an alternative to Labour but instead has been busy disembowelling itself. Both Judith Collins and Simon Bridges placed their egos and ambitions ahead of the interests of the country. The primary blame lies with Collins for her clumsy and desperate last-resort survival ploy but Bridges cannot entirely escape culpability, having done little to hose down media speculation about a change of leadership – indeed, appearing at times to revel in it. The voters are likely to punish them, but tragically New Zealand will also pay for their hubris. As long as the National caucus remains fractured by leadership squabbles, Labour has a good chance of squeaking back into power in 2023 and completing its transformational, neo-Marxist agenda.

The smart money is on Christopher Luxon to take over the leadership of the National Party, but it will be a hospital pass. People who know Luxon speak highly of him, but running an international airline is no preparation for the brutal business of top-level politics – and especially not for dealing with destructive and mischievous elements in the media, who will set out to destabilise him from day one.

Speaking of the media, we have a new breed of political journalists whom no one can trust, who regard themselves as players rather than observers, and who treat politics as some sort of entertaining blood sport – one in which all participants risk being maimed with the exception of … the media, who are accountable to no one and are in the uniquely privileged position of ensuring they always come out as winners. I’m reminded of a British journalist’s memorable line about newspaper editorial writers: “They watch from the hills as the fighting rages, then come down and bayonet the wounded.”

That pretty much describes some of today’s Press Gallery journalists, such as Newshub’s political editor Tova O’Brien and her understudy Jenna Lynch, who have no skin in the game and can walk away unscathed from the carnage they helped to orchestrate. Newshub played a key role in National’s leadership crisis, constantly contriving opportunities to undermine the floundering opposition leader while leaving the prime minister – the person actually running the country – untouched within her media-enabled force field. Dirty politics? You have it right there – but don’t expect another book from Nicky Hager. 

We have a rising political star in the person of David Seymour, whom voters clearly see as the most effective alternative to Jacinda Ardern, but who has no experience in government – in fact remains largely an unknown quantity – and who leads a party of absolute greenhorns. Theoretically there’s scope for an electoral arrangement between Act and National, on the assumption that they share at least some political values and might achieve together what they cannot do individually. But my guess is the same petty egos that have torn National apart would sabotage any such proposal. Sharing power and relinquishing control just isn’t in their DNA.

So there it is. Good luck trying to find something optimistic to latch onto in that lot.

Who’s to blame, then, if anyone? Mike Hosking this week fingered John Key as being responsible for the mess we’re in, and I don’t think he was being entirely flippant. If only Key hadn’t stood down, Hosking implied, New Zealand would still be basking in the sunlit uplands.

But I suspect Key regarded the prime ministership as just another box to be ticked off on the career path he had mapped out for himself, and once he tired of the job he could hardly be expected to stick around just for the sake of the country. After all, a bloke like Key likes to quit while he’s ahead.

No, if you want to trace New Zealand’s parlous situation back to its origin, the trail leads inexorably to Winston Raymond Peters. Remember the 2017 election? With just 7 percent of the vote, Peters held the balance of power and exercised it by anointing Ardern as prime minister when, morally, National had earned the right to govern with 44 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 38 per cent.

Had the New Zealand First leader done the honourable thing in 2017, Bill English would have remained prime minister and might have turned out to be a good one. Not only had he done much of the heavy lifting behind the scenes in the Key government, but he had a social conscience that marked him as a politician in the mould of National Party liberals from the Holyoake era – National’s golden age, when it won four consecutive terms.

But Peters gifted Labour with a glittering prize that they didn’t expect and hadn’t earned, and the rest is history. Ardern’s initially assured handling of the Christchurch mosque massacres, the Whakaari-White Island eruption and the Covid-19 crisis won her a cult-like following both at home and abroad – so much so that voters rewarded her with a decisive majority that conferred virtually absolute power, something never envisaged by the architects of the voting system.

Since then, other events have served only to consolidate Ardern’s power. Covid-19 provided a handy distraction from Labour’s agenda, pre-occupying the public and the media while Labour got on with the job of pursuing a programme of radical change that was mostly kept from the voters during the pandemic-dominated 2020 election campaign.

The media have been complicit in this process, for months on end treating the pandemic as if it was the only story of any consequence and ignoring, or at the very least playing down, elements of the government’s agenda that might cause public disquiet. Covid-19 has forced almost everything else off the news pages and the evening bulletins, allowing Labour’s activists to get on with their project virtually unhindered.

Peters, ironically, found himself ousted from Parliament, the voters finally having had enough of his decades of chicanery, so perhaps there’s some justice after all. But with the NZ First leader again hovering balefully around the periphery of politics, no one should forget his ignoble role in all this.

 

A referendum? You mean, like, allowing people to have their say? We can't have that!

It’s fascinating to observe the force with which the government and its protectors in the media have jumped on the National Party’s suggestion that official use of the name “Aotearoa” should be the subject of a referendum.

If this is the most pressing issue Judith Collins can come up with, they scoff, then she’s gone off the road (Ben Thomas’s phrase on Stuff). In any case, they remind us, “Aotearoa” has been around for years. It’s on our passports and banknotes. And guess who was in power when it was put there, as Newshub reminded us last night: why, the National Party! Game, set and match, then. Hell, hasn’t even Judith Collins been heard using the name once or twice?

(As an aside, you almost have to admire the zeal with which Labour’s cheerleaders at Newshub trawl through their old files and video clips looking for anything that might embarrass National. I sometimes wonder whether they get a bit of discreet assistance from the Labour Party research unit. In another example last night, Jenna Lynch, Tova O’Brien’s understudy as chief tormentor of the opposition, portrayed Collins as a hypocrite for criticising a government grant to a Mongrel Mob drug rehab scheme. National had given money to the very same programme in 2017, Lynch sneered. But hang on: National gave $30,000, whereas Labour is giving the gang $2.75 million. Admittedly it’s an infinitesimal difference – like, a mere $2.72 million – but, you know, apples with apples and all that.)   

But back to that suggested Aotearoa referendum. Even David Seymour disses the idea, saying he would have thought New Zealand had more important things to grapple with. (After all, we’re merely talking about the name by which the rest of the world has known us since we first existed as a country. Nothing to see here, folks.) But of course that may just be Seymour seeking to score points over his main rival for the support of the swinging voters whom Jacinda Ardern and her government are doing their best to alienate. I mean, he’s a politician, after all.

What’s interesting here is the sheer weight of the attacks on the referendum idea. This tells us the government and its de facto PR operatives in the media are keen to snuff it out before it gets any traction.

The argument that “Aotearoa” has been around for years is utterly and wilfully disingenuous. Yes, it’s on our passports and banknotes, as an acknowledgment of this country’s bicultural roots. But it has always been secondary to our official name and for that reason, no one could reasonably have objected (and to my knowledge, no one ever has).

But what has happened in recent months is vastly different. With striking suddenness, Aotearoa – which we need to remind ourselves is a name of dubious authenticity – has become the term of choice for politicians, government departments and agencies, academics, teachers, virtue-signalling corporates and the mainstream media. Its use has become routine in government advertising and public statements. In other words, it has officially been adopted as a substitute for New Zealand. And all this has happened without so much as a skerrick of public endorsement.

The absence of a mandate is the issue here, and I suspect National, which otherwise appears bereft of ideas, is correct to latch onto it. Like low-energy light bulbs and cats in dairies, it has the potential to become a focal point for public unease about a barrage of radical government initiatives. That would explain why opponents of a referendum are so eager to kick the ball into the long grass.

They sneer at National’s claim that “Aotearoa” is being promoted by stealth and technically they’re right, since there’s nothing remotely surreptitious about it. “Aotearoa” has been brazenly imposed by a political elite in the hope that we will all adopt it as if by osmosis.  

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that we have nothing to fear from a debate about the country’s name. “New Zealand” has no intrinsic historical or cultural relevance and is almost comically inappropriate, considering our geographical contrast with the flat, low-lying Dutch province that inspired the name. But while it was acquired by historical accident, the name has come to stand for something in the world, as we’ve been reminded during the Olympic Games. It has acquired its own powerful resonance in all manner of spheres: sport, warfare, diplomacy, trade, tourism and the arts, to mention a few. That has to be weighed against the appeal of an alternative that is more distinctively our own.

Other countries (Sri Lanka, Iran, Thailand, Madagascar) have changed their names, but the ramifications are enormous. The only democratic way to determine the issue is by popular vote preceded by a thorough, transparent and informed public discussion of the pros and cons. But the left distrusts democracy, which may explain why the government would prefer that we compliantly adopted Aotearoa “organically” – to use a term favoured by the prime minister – rather than go through the inconvenient business of letting the people have their say.

Mistress Tova's latest discipline session

Sigh. Another day, another discipline session for the National Party caucus from Newshub’s resident dominatrix, Mistress Tova, and her understudy Jenna Lynch.

Last night’s round of punishment took up six minutes of the 6pm bulletin and started with Lynch rapturously reporting that Paul Goldsmith had been thrown to the wolves - my words, not hers, although that was the tone - by his caucus colleagues over his comment that Maori, “on balance”, had benefited from colonisation.

A procession of National MPs, all looking like frightened rabbits, eagerly dissociated themselves from Goldsmith before running for the hills. But not before Lynch had given us the benefit of her own view that colonisation was “brutal” – and as if to substantiate it, wheeled out Professor Margaret Mutu (now there’s a dispassionate judge for you), who equated colonisation with murder, theft, rape and pillage. That was followed by a parade of Labour MPs poking scorn at Goldsmith (who would have thought?), followed by a puerile jibe from Debbie Ngarewa-Packer of the Maori Party.

Then it was back to Lynch, who reminded us that Maori continue to experience poor outcomes in health, housing, justice and education. We were invited to conclude, therefore, that Goldsmith’s comment was clearly that of an unreconstructed racist – and an ignorant one at that, although Goldsmith has an MA in history.

Not content to leave it there, Lynch then seized yet another opportunity to bring up Goldsmith’s unwitting involvement in the media feeding frenzy that erupted last year when the then National deputy leader Nikki Kaye, in a pathetic attempt to fend off media accusations that the party caucus was insufficiently diverse, blurted out that the palpably Pakeha Goldsmith was of Ngati Porou descent.

The point of recalling that episode wasn’t clear, since Kaye dug that hole for herself with no assistance from the hapless Goldsmith. But it served the purpose of implying that Goldsmith was somehow tainted by association with the party’s shameful whiteness.

Newshub then played a clip of Goldsmith explaining at the time that no, he wasn’t Maori, as if that somehow further incriminated him. This provided a cue for Lynch to chime in again, saying “Not Maori himself, but speaking for Maori.” Actually, no: he wasn’t purporting to speak for Maori when he talked about the consequences of colonisation, but it suited Lynch to frame his comment that way.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t journalism. It was a hit job of the type we’ve come to expect from Newshub.

There is scope for a balanced, nuanced debate on the effects of colonisation, but don’t expect to see it in the mainstream media, and least of all in anything Lynch or Tova O’Brien have a hand in. And don’t expect it, either, from Goldsmith’s spineless caucus colleagues, who are so cowed by media bullying and so lacking in political conviction that they appear to have completely lost sight of what a centre-right party is supposed to stand for.

All that needs to be said is that Goldsmith’s opinion that colonisation, on balance, was good for Maori is one that a reasonable, informed, non-racist person can validly hold. Yes, colonisation resulted in the dispossession of Maori land, the loss of their language and the disintegration of their traditional way of life. But it also signalled the end of merciless tribal warfare, slaughter, cannibalism and slavery. It introduced the rule of law and led to the evolution of a society that is admired as one of the world’s freest, safest, most tolerant and open.  Only the most incorrigibly woke zealot (Debbie Ngarewa-Packer springs to mind) can ignore that.

But Newshub wasn’t finished with the National Party. As if in a tag wrestling bout, Lynch vacated the ring and O’Brien stepped in. Her target (yet again): Judith Collins.

Not for the first time, Mistress Tova was pursuing Collins over the recently announced retirement of long-serving National MP Nick Smith. But whatever intrigue lies behind Smith’s departure – if indeed there’s any intrigue at all – is a classic Beltway issue, of interest only to political obsessives and too convoluted for the public to untangle even if they could see any point in doing so.

No matter. It provided another opportunity to torment Collins. And once again, she meekly submitted to the dominatrix’s querulous questioning. Is there no limit to the mortification Collins is prepared to endure? I loathed the style of Robert Muldoon and Winston Peters, but sometimes I find myself wishing for a politician bold enough to put amoral, mischief-making journalists in their place.

Left-wing media academics love to talk about journalists speaking truth to power, but that’s not what’s happening here. Almost nightly, Newshub revels in pummelling a demoralised, fragmented National opposition while allowing the sainted Jacinda Ardern and her ministers a largely free run. (I say “largely” because Newshub reporter Michael Morrah is an honourable exception.) It’s the journalistic equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

To be fair, National’s weak, divided and ineffectual caucus invites derision. We are witnessing a catastrophic failure of the centre-right, and surely the moment is David Seymour’s to seize. But there’s nothing noble or heroic about gloating, power-tripping journalists savaging a politician who appears to have lost the will to fight.