Kiri Allan and her Claytons apology

Justice Minister Kiri Allan has made a public apology for comments made at an RNZ farewell function in honour of her fiancée, Mani Dunlop.

RNZ reports that Allan criticised RNZ’s treatment of Maori journalists and “urged the public broadcaster to have a look at its culture”. This came after Dunlop, a Maori, was passed over for the position of co-host on Morning Report - a job she had obviously pinned her hopes on. Allan's comments will inevitably be seen as a rebuke to RNZ for not promoting her partner.

She reportedly prefaced her remarks by saying she wasn’t speaking as a minister. In her apology yesterday she said she attended the function as Dunlop’s partner and was speaking on behalf of Dunlop’s family, but she accepted her comments could be interpreted as telling RNZ how to manage its affairs.

Oh, come on. Allan is a senior minister. She has been in Parliament since 2017. She knows the rules. She knows that her actions as a private individual and as a minister are not easily separated. In fact she admits there is no delineation in terms of public perception. That’s why there’s a cabinet manual advising ministers how to conduct themselves.

I think Allan understood perfectly well what she was doing, and moreover that she knows that what she said at the function can’t be unsaid by going through the motions of a ritual apology.

She would have known her words would register with RNZ, which has a crucial interest in maintaining good relations with the government. It may or may not be significant that RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson subsequently made a conciliatory statement liberally laced with te reo Maori. It looked ingratiating.

The matter was seen as serious enough for Chris Hipkins to weigh in with a statement accepting Allan’s apology but adding that it would have been better had she not accepted the opportunity to speak. It was the lightest of raps over the knuckles for an action that could be interpreted as ministerial interference in the affairs of an organisation that's supposed to be statutorily independent.

Allan's comments and subsequent Claytons retraction will have done nothing to ease public concerns about uncomfortably close relationships within the Wellington Beltway and their potential to compromise government integrity.

Neither will anyone be reassured by the fact that RNZ took several days to report the story. We can only conclude RNZ decided its interests were better served by keeping Allan’s interference quiet.

 

 

 

 

RNZ made the right decision

Mani Dunlop finished up last week after 12 years at RNZ.

The state broadcaster published a tribute to the Midday Report presenter but didn’t go into the circumstances of her departure.

For that, you had to read a report of Dunlop's last broadcast in the New Zealand Herald, in which she made it clear that she quit after being passed over for “the top job” – an obvious reference to the co-presenter’s chair on RNZ’s flagship programme, Morning Report. "When you don't get the top job," she's quoted as saying, "it's time to go elsewhere."

I speculated on this blog in December that Dunlop was a prime contender for the Morning Report position after Susie Ferguson quit mid-year. I acknowledged that Dunlop ticked a lot of boxes (capable, young-ish and Maori) but I also said it would be wrong to appoint her.

That’s because she’s the fiancée of a cabinet minister, Kiri Allan. Even if Dunlop bent over backwards to be fair and neutral as a presenter and interviewer, the programme’s credibility would be compromised by the public knowledge that she was the partner of a senior government politician, especially in an election year.

In the event, RNZ surprised everyone by making an appointment from outside the organisation: former TV journalist Ingrid Hipkiss. She’s expected to join Corin Dann on the show this month.

We don’t know whether Dunlop was passed over because of her relationship with Allan, but I think RNZ made the right decision. To appoint her would have been provocative, at the very least.

Suspicion of mainstream media bias is rampant enough already. Trust in RNZ, which as a publicly owned broadcaster has a special obligation to be even-handed, would have been further undermined.  

There was a hint of bitterness in Dunlop’s parting remarks to the Herald and a cryptic reference to haters. “To the haters, and there’s plenty of them, come on the journey,” Dunlop is quoted as saying. Who the supposed haters are wasn’t explained.  

Dunlop said she had no idea what she would do next and would be taking her time to decide.

Correction: The original version of this post said Dunlop made her comments in an interview with the New Zealand Herald. In fact she made them on air and was reported in the Herald. 

Why Mani Dunlop is wrong for Morning Report

It’s now more than four months since it was announced that Susie Ferguson was leaving RNZ’s Morning Report after co-hosting the programme since 2014.

RNZ has been playing musical chairs in the meantime, with Kim Hill, Mani Dunlop and Guyon Espiner all sharing the presenting role with Corin Dann.

No replacement for Ferguson has been announced, but unless RNZ has someone else waiting in the wings, an obvious candidate – I would guess the most likely one – is Dunlop, who is back in the studio with Dann this week. Dunlop became RNZ’s Maori News director in 2019 and is best known as the host of Midday Report. 

Morning Report is RNZ’s flagship programme and the appointment is therefore crucial. For years the programme has been locked in a ratings duel with Mike Hosking’s breakfast show on Newstalk ZB, with a ratings survey earlier this year showing Hosking opening up a comfortable lead over his state-owned competitor. 

Whoever is eventually named to succeed Ferguson will be sitting in a chair previously occupied by some formidable names: Geoff Robinson, Lindsay Perigo, Hill, Maggie Barry, Sean Plunket and the aforementioned Hosking, to name a few.

It follows that RNZ will want to be sure it makes the right choice, which may explain the extraordinary time being taken to make an announcement. But there are potential political fish-hooks to be considered too.

Dunlop ticks a lot of boxes. She’s smart, capable and articulate, with a pleasant on-air manner and the important attribute (one not possessed by all former Morning Report presenters) of a good radio voice.

In an interview last year, she came across as open, frank and personable. She’s also relatively young, which should count in her favour if RNZ wants to break its dependence on a predominantly older (and ageing) audience.

And of course she’s Maori.  I think I’m right in saying Morning Report has never had a Maori presenter before, which is surprising given RNZ’s commitment to woke virtues.

Notwithstanding those qualities, Dunlop would come with a couple of flashing warning lights attached, at least from a traditionalist perspective.  First, she represents a generation of journalists that has been encouraged to disregard the principle of objectivity. This frees journalists to regard the promotion of favoured causes as legitimate.

A related risk is that as a Maori journalist, she may see it as her function to advocate for Maori. Identity politics has permeated journalism to the point where the line separating it from activism has been dangerously blurred.  

But in Dunlop’s case, there’s a far more glaring issue that RNZ can’t ignore. She’s the fiancée of a senior cabinet minister, Kiri Allan.

In a blog post in October, I cited the relationship between Allan and Dunlop as an example of “cosyism” – a term used by commentator Max Rashbrooke to describe overly close relationships between people in power.

Some people would go further and cite the fact that a senior RNZ journalist dealing with sensitive political issues is in an intimate relationship with a cabinet minister as further evidence of a cabal dominating national affairs. In a blog post last year I defined “cabal” in this context as “a group wielding power and influence disproportionate to its numbers, characterised by a common ideology and constantly reinforcing itself through mutual support”.

Needless to say, the situation becomes far more serious when there’s a strong prospect that Dunlop will become co-presenter of Morning Report, a job in which she would be required to interview political opponents of the woman she plans to marry.

Even if Dunlop bent over backwards to be fair and neutral, as her defenders insist she would, the programme’s credibility would unavoidably be compromised by the public knowledge that she’s the partner of a senior government politician. Perception is everything, and the problem would become even more acute in the white-hot intensity of an election year. It would be hard, if not impossible, to avoid doubt in some listeners' minds as to whether Dunlop was approaching issues from a strictly non-partisan standpoint. 

The political optics are not improved by the fact that Labour is clumsily ramming through legislation to merge RNZ with TVNZ, the purpose of which can only be – in the absence of any other compelling argument – to make the state an even more dominant force in the media. Government influence over the flow of information has never been a touchier issue.

Someone perceptively noted a few weeks ago that in an interview with Christopher Luxon on Morning Report about the Hamilton West by-election, Dunlop asked whether the National leader might be prone to unconscious bias in the selection of his party’s candidate. The point was made that Dunlop might be guilty of exactly the same fault in the way she conducted the interview. There’s RNZ’s problem, right there.

In a recent email exchange with RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson, I asked whether Dunlop was likely to replace Ferguson and if so, whether he was concerned about public perceptions regarding her neutrality. He kicked for touch in his reply, saying only that the recruitment of a new presenter was still underway and he would answer my questions once an announcement was made.

I believe Dunlop’s appointment, assuming it’s being considered, is a risk RNZ can’t afford to take – not if it places any weight on public perception and potential damage to the state broadcaster’s credibility. It would be a statement of contempt for traditional norms of journalistic neutrality – or to put it more bluntly, an “up you” gesture to New Zealanders who expect RNZ to demonstrate strict political independence.

RNZ is already seen as leaning sharply to the left. Many people to the right of the political centre have given up on it for that reason. Remarkably, we have come to regard this as a natural and acceptable state of affairs, but it’s not. A broadcasting organisation that all New Zealanders are obliged to support with their taxes has a corresponding moral and ethical obligation to serve people of every political shade.

Dunlop’s appointment to Morning Report would magnify the perception that RNZ reflects and serves the interests of a privileged and tight-knit political elite. Regardless of her credentials, Thompson should find someone else.

 

The problem with Luxon

Three days ago I heard Christopher Luxon being interviewed by Mani Dunlop on Morning Report. It was profoundly depressing.

Dunlop introduced the item by saying that with a by-election approaching in Hamilton West, the National Party was under pressure – she didn’t say from whom, but we can assume she meant media commentators – to “add diversity” to a “largely male” caucus.

RNZ had done the sums and calculated that National’s caucus was 33 percent female, 6 percent Maori, 3 percent Asian and “zero percent” Pasifika – a statistical breakdown that would have looked pretty good a few years ago, but which clearly doesn’t meet RNZ’s diversity threshold.

Dunlop (and I won’t even begin to discuss the ethics of National’s leader being interrogated on state-owned radio’s flagship news programme by the partner of a Labour cabinet minister) accusingly threw these figures at Luxon and demanded to know what he was going to do about it.

You can imagine how Winston Peters or Robert Muldoon would have responded to a question like that, but Luxon is cut from different cloth. He appears desperately eager to convince the media that he’s sympathetic to the woke agenda.

This is known as pushing shit uphill with a fork, since the media are fundamentally hostile to the centre-right and will correctly interpret Luxon’s attempts to ingratiate himself with them as a sign of weakness.

Luxon has yet to grasp this, so proceeded to humour Dunlop – you might even say kowtow to her – by assuring her that National was determined to build a more diverse party and to overcome any “unconscious bias”. To this end the party was re-educating (my word, not Luxon’s, but that was the thrust of what he said) its electorate chairs.

Here was the leader of the country’s principal conservative party – or perhaps I should use the initials CINO, as in Conservative In Name Only – adopting the terminology of the woke Left in a pathetic attempt to persuade the public that he’s no right-wing ogre, as if anyone could be in danger of having thought that in the first place.

(It didn’t help that Luxon’s answers to Dunlop’s questions were laced with wretched corporate jargon presumably brought from Air New Zealand, such as the need to do better “in this space” and to be “more competitive in our offerings”. God spare us.)

Dunlop must have struggled to conceal her glee at the satisfaction of having the leader of the National Party dancing so obligingly to her tune. The tone of his responses was essentially submissive.

Someone should explain to Luxon that every time he indulges in these appeasement games in an attempt to persuade the Left that he’s no threat – a strategy that won’t win him a single vote, since they won’t vote National anyway – he alienates more of the people whose support he should be seeking.

In fact he gives conservative voters another reason to find a different party to support. ACT stands to be the major beneficiary, but it’s also likely that right-of-centre voters will gravitate to smaller parties such as New Zealand First or former National MP Matt King’s DemocracyNZ – and by splitting the anti-Labour vote, allow an incompetent and destructive far-Left coalition to squeak back into power.

No one should quibble with Luxon’s aim of making National more diverse. Not only is it desirable as a matter of democratic principle for the party to reflect more accurately the demographic makeup of the country; it makes sense politically too.  Certainly National should have learned a lesson from its disastrous propensity for choosing egotistical, entitled young Anglo-Saxon males as candidates, which seemed to be the pattern under the party’s previous president.

The problem with Luxon is essentially one of tone. In his eagerness to come across as unthreatening - a nice guy - he sounds weak. He needs to be more assertive in promoting and defending conservative values and less deferential in the way he allows the media to dictate the agenda.

He’s no longer a corporate chief executive who needs to be careful to protect the brand and not upset customers. Politics calls for a tougher approach and a realisation that to be effective, he must occasionally offend some people. He also needs to grasp – as Muldoon and his protégé Peters did – that there’s little political downside in taking on the media, because the public generally don't like journalists any more than they like politicians.

The bigger issue here is that National has an identity crisis. In two perceptive columns today, Josie Pagani and Matthew Hooton consider what it means to be a conservative party and the risks of abandoning the values that once defined conservatism. National has lost sight of what it means to be a true conservative party and lacks the confidence to uphold honourable conservative values.

I believe the party has been intimidated by the media into behaving as if conservatism is somehow shameful, and I can’t see it rediscovering, still less re-asserting, its ideological roots with Luxon as its leader. At least, not unless he radically changes gear.

 

 

 

Is this what we've come to?

What sort of country have we become?

The New Zealand Herald broke the news this week that former cabinet minister Kris Faafoi, who resigned only 12 weeks ago, has set himself up as a lobbyist. It’s already an overcrowded field, but he should have a distinct advantage over all the other political hustlers who infest Wellington because of his inside knowledge and contacts. “We know how the government works at the highest level,” his company’s website boasts. Translation: Faafoi’s mates in the cabinet and his former underlings in the bureaucracy are only a phone call away.

The pseudonymous Thomas Cranmer – the same blogger who blew open the Nanaia Mahuta nepotism scandal – points out that Faafoi’s new gig wouldn’t be allowed in most comparable democracies. Australia, Britain and Canada all impose stand-down periods before former ministers and other public figures can profit as lobbyists from their connections and inside knowledge. In Canada it’s five years.

But here? Go for your life, mate. Fill your boots. We’re cool with it. No worries.

And it gets worse. Cranmer reveals that Faafoi will be working for Dialogue 22, a company set up by an Auckland ad man named Greg Partington. Dialogue 22 will presumably come under the umbrella of Partington’s Waitapu Group, which also includes the “cultural consultancy” Tatou. And Tatou’s CEO is Skye Kimura, who just happens to be the wife of Faafoi’s former cabinet colleague Peeni Henare, the Minister of Defence.

It all starts to look uncomfortably cosy. In fact cosyism is the word used by leftist commentator Max Rashbrooke, in a courageous column last week, to describe what he called a chronic problem in New Zealand public life. Rashbrooke wrote: “We are largely spared, thankfully, the envelopes-stuffed with-cash-corruption that infects other countries. [Editor’s note: Not necessarily, but we’ll come to that shortly.] But we’re suffused with overly close relationships: nepotism, jobs for the boys, all that jazz.”

He described cosyism as “those insidious processes by which public positions, jobs and contracts sometimes go not to the best-qualified applicants but to the friends, contacts and family members of people in power”. A cosy society, he went on, “tolerates the most colossal conflicts of interest”.

Rashbrooke cited several examples, but it seemed that what finally prodded him to sound the alarm was the Mahuta-Gannin Ormsby affair – a seething morass of nepotism and conflicting interests that Mahuta herself seemed to think was magically rendered acceptable because she met technical disclosure requirements so wide open you could paddle a double-hulled waka through them.

When even Labour’s friends start spitting the dummy – and I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that Rashbrooke’s natural inclination would be to support a social-democratic party such as Labour – then you know Jacinda Ardern has a serious integrity issue on her hands, even if she won’t admit it.

Cosyism is an appropriate word to describe relationships between people in power which, while not necessarily breaking any rules, nonetheless cause unease about the possibility of improper influence being brought to bear behind the scenes. Another example was back in the public spotlight recently when Justice Minister Kiri Allan and RNZ presenter Mani Dunlop proudly announced their engagement.

When I wrote about their relationship in June, I said many people would feel uncomfortable that a senior government politician was in an intimate relationship with RNZ’s director of Maori news, but I could put it no more strongly than that. I’ve had a rethink since then and come to a more emphatic position. I think it’s plain wrong that the partner of a minister holds a key editorial position – and a politically sensitive one at that – in a major state-owned news organisation. The only honourable remedy, though I don’t expect it to happen, would be for Dunlop to stand down and take another job within RNZ where there could be no suspicion of improper influence being exercised on news and current affairs.

Nepotism and cosyism, however, are not the only threats to the integrity of public life in New Zealand, nor are they necessarily the most worrying ones. We were reminded of another this week by the guilty verdicts in the trial of three Chinese businessmen charged with fraud in relation to political donations.

For me, by far the most significant revelation from the trial was the degree to which some New Zealand party officials seemed prepared to ingratiate themselves with potential foreign donors whose generosity, we can safely assume, wasn’t motivated by an altruistic desire to enhance New Zealand democracy.

Simon Bridges and the disgraced Jami-Lee Ross were both implicated in this scandal. Bridges was not charged with any offence and Ross was found not guilty, but both were tainted by their apparent eagerness to court potential foreign donors about whom they apparently knew little.

The groveller-in-chief, however, appears to have been former National Party president Peter Goodfellow, whose hunger for donations was such that he wrote a glowing testimonial for one of the defendants, Yikun Zhang, whom Tim Murphy of Newsroom has identified as a key figure in organisations that serve as a front for the Chinese Communist Party.

In a reference written on National Party note paper, Goodfellow wrote: “It gives me great pleasure to support the nomination of Yikun Zhang for a New Zealand royal honour, in respect of business, philanthropy, community services and NZ-China relations.”

Goodfellow went on: “Throughout the time I have known him, Yikun has been one of the most highly regarded members of the Chinese community in New Zealand, or in China. Yikun is well known for his genuineness, aptitude and generosity.”

The extravagant endorsement appears to have worked. Zhang was subsequently made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours. Now he’s a convicted criminal facing a possible prison term of seven years.

Was it pure gullibility, desperation for funds or a combination of the two that persuaded Goodfellow – who was reportedly admired by some within National for his fund-raising ability, though no other talent was publicly evident – to compromise his party by seeking Zhang’s patronage?

Whatever the explanation, the donations scandal - even though it was exposed - is a hugely damaging blow to New Zealand’s reputation as a country immune from the curses of bribery and corruption. The apparent readiness of New Zealand political parties - Labour as well as National - to snuggle up (almost literally) to donors of dubious repute was a signal that we’re available to the highest bidders, no questions asked (other than a polite request to break the money down into small amounts so they don't have to be disclosed).

Is this what we’ve come to?

Footnote: As an afterthought, I've inserted a link to the Waitapu Group. Readers can form their own conclusions about what sort of organisation it is.

 

 

The cabinet minister and the RNZ editorial executive

A couple of updates:

Last week I posted complimentary remarks about cabinet minister Kiritapu Allan. Today I read that her partner for the past three years has been RNZ’s Maori News director Mani Dunlop. Presumably this was common knowledge around Parliament and in media circles but it was the first time I’d learned of it.

Why mention it? After all, Allan’s private life should be her own affair. Who can begrudge her the freedom to enter relationships with whomever she chooses?

I see no reason to revise my assessment of Allan. But at the same time, the disclosure of the relationship will have consequences. Politicians lead public lives and they inescapably invite the judgment of voters – not in this case because it’s a lesbian relationship (I would like to think New Zealand has passed the point where people object to the idea of a cabinet minister being lesbian, although doubtless many do), but because of who the other party happens to be.

Many people (I’m one) will feel uncomfortable that Allan is in an intimate relationship with an influential figure in one of the country’s major news organisations – one that happens to be state-owned.

I can’t put it any more strongly than that: just “uncomfortable”. I’ve always believed journalists and politicians should remain at arm’s length from each other, but that seems a futile ideal in a hothouse like Parliament where they mingle every day and are often on chummy terms socially (witness the Press Gallery Christmas party, a highlight of the politicians’ social calendar).  

Many journalists get a buzz from being on first-name terms with powerful people and are not beyond having their egos stroked by politicians eager to burnish their public image. The danger is that journalists’ credibility is fatally compromised if they choose to remain on good terms with a politician rather than risk damaging the relationship by reporting something that reflects badly on them.

Does it happen? You bet it does. Better to avoid that hazard by not getting too close to them in the first place. The old adage about supping with the devil comes to mind.

The picture is complicated in Allan’s case because RNZ seems untroubled by the unfashionable notion that it’s obliged, as a state-owned media organisation, to observe political impartiality. While many RNZ journalists conscientiously observe traditional principles of fairness and balance, the overall tone of the institution is overwhelmingly leftist and therefore sympathetic to the government. Dunlop herself has sometimes caused me to doubt her journalistic objectivity and accuse her of using her position to promote an ideological position.

The issue, then, is this: while in one respect the relationship between Allan and Dunlop is their own business, they must accept there are unavoidable wider implications.

One consequence is that sceptical RNZ listeners now have an additional reason to wonder whether, given the nature of the relationship between a senior editorial executive and a cabinet minister, the state broadcasting organisation can be relied on to observe strict neutrality in the way it reports politics, and especially in the way it presents and interprets news and opinion involving Maori. This applies no matter how conscientiously Dunlop tries to do her job, because it’s a matter of public perception, and public perception is impossible to control.  

The other inevitable upshot is that the large body of disaffected New Zealanders who already suspect their country is under the control of an elite cohort that calls the shots in vital areas of national life, notably politics and the media, will treat the Allan-Dunlop hookup as further evidence that they’re right.

Supporters of the couple’s right to decide how they live their private lives, free of judgment or interference by outsiders, may complain that this isn’t fair; but such is the febrile quality of New Zealand politics in 2022, for which the woke Left can largely take responsibility, that appeals to fairness don’t necessarily cut it anymore.

Oh, that other update: a reader of this blog has pointed out the latest development in the Judge Callinicos affair, which I’d missed (thanks Steve). To their great credit, some lawyers are refusing to let this scandal be buried.