Dunedin: finger-wagging capital of the world

(First published in The Dominion Post, December 27.)

WHAT ON EARTH has happened to Dunedin?

I’ve always thought of it as a city of hard-working, practical, no-nonsense people, reflecting its Scottish Presbyterian heritage.

It was the home of Sir James Fletcher, founder of a construction empire, Henry Ely Shacklock, who made the country’s first electric ranges, and Bendix Hallenstein, whose name lives on in the menswear chain he established.

I wonder what such men would make of Dunedin today. Once a southern bastion of industry and commerce, it’s now chiefly known for the torrent of shrill, moralistic scare-mongering emanating from Otago University.

It seems hardly a week passes without someone from Otago University, or one of its satellites in Christchurch and Wellington, warning us that our drinking and eating habits are leading us to moral and physical ruin.

Granted, one of the functions of health academics is to undertake research and to pass on their findings. But the constant diet (pardon the pun) of doom-laden messages from Otago has all the overtones of a moral crusade.  Dunedin has become the finger-wagging capital of the world.

The Otago researchers’ findings always paint the blackest picture imaginable. And the message is invariably the same: our consumption habits are out of control and the government must act.

Underlying that is another message again: we are all at the mercy of greedy purveyors of booze and high-risk foods whose wickedness must be curbed by advertising bans and punitive taxes.  Hostility to capitalism is never far from the surface.

Doubtless the academic wowsers are buoyed by the success of the campaign against smoking and hope to replicate its success by similarly stigmatising the consumption of alcohol and fast food.

Significantly, Otago University was the source of a recent report that called for smoking to be banned within a ten-metre radius of doors and windows to buildings used by the public.

That’s the thing about zealots and control freaks. They never let up. I shudder at the thought of the joyless, buttoned-down society that would result if we gave way to their demands.

* * *

ON A RELATED note, some academics are reportedly fretting that their role as the “conscience and critics” of society is under threat.

They are alarmed because they perceive that under the Key government, the emphasis in tertiary education is shifting away from the arts – which supposedly stimulate critical thinking – to subjects such as science and engineering, which the academic hand-wringers deem to be far less useful.

The rest of us should lose no sleep over this. The notion that universities function as the conscience and critics of society is self-serving cant.

The phrase once meant something, and still would if all academics genuinely respected intellectual freedom. But the truth is that many university faculties slavishly observe a narrow ideological orthodoxy.

What most academics really mean when they talk about their duty to serve as the conscience and critics of society is their right to promote a left-wing agenda. In their fixed view of the world it’s inconceivable that anyone not on the Left could even possess a conscience.

Conservative thinkers do exist in universities, but they are as rare as rocking horse droppings. The few renegades who defy the approved line tend to keep their heads down because it’s safer that way.

It’s a curious fact that while Marxism in the economic sense is dead and buried, and no one promoting it can expect to be taken seriously, a mutant offshoot called cultural Marxism is alive and well.  

Cultural Marxism seeks to undermine traditional Western values such as individualism, small government, the family and traditional morality.

Its proponents are nowhere more active than in what are grandiosely known as the humanities and social sciences faculties of universities. And it’s a fair bet these are the people most fearful that they might no longer be able to masquerade as the conscience and critics of the rest of us.

* * *

ONE OF THE most depressing news items in 2013 was the announcement that the Monty Python team was to reform. I can see no good coming of this.

Monty Python was a creature of its time, like the Beatles, and no matter how much John Cleese and his comrades might wish to recapture the magic, some things are better left undisturbed.

They are old men now. The mad energy that inspired the Ministry of Silly Walks, the dead parrot sketch and the Argument Clinic has long subsided.

Problem is, their ageing fans don’t want to let go. They are like the tragics who yearn for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin to reform.

Sadly, the Pythons appear to have succumbed to the conceit that they can do it all again. But the best tribute they can pay themselves is to leave us with memories of their inspired lunacy in its full-blooded prime.

Everyone's a friend of Mandela now

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, December 18.)

It was hard not to feel a little cynical as the tributes flowed for Nelson Mandela last week.

It seemed we were all friends now with the man once widely denounced in the West as a terrorist (and who, to the embarrassment of the American government, remained on a US terror watch list until 2008).

The world leaders who gathered in Soweto were ostensibly there to pay homage, but being politicians they were also keen to bathe in Mr Mandela’s reflected glory.

Rarely has any international statesman acquired such sainted status. Only the Dalai Lama comes close, but then the Tibetan spiritual leader has the huge advantage of never actually having had to engage in the messy business of governing.

New Zealanders, meanwhile, were almost falling over each other in their eagerness to flaunt their anti-apartheid credentials.

John Key had the good sense to keep his mouth firmly shut on that score. He could hardly do otherwise, having famously said in a televised election debate in 2008 that he couldn’t recall how he felt about the 1981 Springbok tour.

Mr Key aside, reticence was in short supply. If you didn’t have a story to tell about actually meeting Mr Mandela, the next best thing was to recall the heroic role you played in the 1981 anti-tour protests. The moral high ground has rarely been so crowded.

There were times during the past week when it seemed no South African whites were willing to admit ever having been supporters of the racist minority regime than ran the country for nearly 50 years. Even formerly staunch members and supporters of the white government spoke of their fondness for Mandela.

What a pity they didn’t feel so favourably disposed toward him in the 27 years he was banged up on Robben Island.

In New Zealand, it seemed people were equally unprepared to admit they had been pro-tour in 1981. But we know that at least half the population was.

The majority of New Zealanders, although uncomfortable with the idea of apartheid, didn’t feel strongly enough to do much about it. The love of rugby, and the desire to see the All Blacks prevail over their strongest rivals, trumped concerns about morality and justice.

The truth was that New Zealanders identified more closely with South Africans than with any of our other rival rugby nations. New Zealand apologists for South Africa said you had to go there to understand why it was in everyone’s interests for the whites to run the show.

If you hadn’t been there, the argument ran, you had no right to judge. This always seemed a specious argument to me – rather like saying you had to personally experience Nazi Germany to know that Hitler was a monster.

Prime minister Robert Muldoon, a shrewd judge of the national mood, cleverly played on the theme that New Zealand was not going to be pushed around by other countries, many of them corrupt and undemocratic, telling us who we could play sport with.

He deliberately provoked antagonism from black Africa and delighted in baiting Abraham Ordia, admittedly not the most endearing of men, of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa. African countries – 26 of them, including strong sporting nations such as Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia – retaliated by boycotting the 1976 Montreal Olympics in protest at the All Blacks’ tour of South Africa earlier that year.

Mr Muldoon managed the issue so adroitly that most New Zealanders believed we were in the right. It was us against a bunch of African tyrants and their leftist sympathisers in the West.

The tide eventually ran out for Mr Muldoon in the 1984 general election, when the rebellious baby-boomer generation that had marched against apartheid and the Vietnam War graduated from the streets into politics.

I believe the 1981 protests were as much a defiant reaction against Muldoonist authoritarianism and the stifling conservatism of the time as they were about the injustice of apartheid. But the protesters were on the right side of history, as attested by the paucity of people now willing to admit they were pro-tour.

The principal defenders of the tour, of course, have passed on. Sir Robert Muldoon died in 1992. Ces Blazey, the Rugby Union chairman at the time – a man who commanded respect by his unfailing civility in the face of abuse and provocation – went in 1998. Ron Don, the rugby union firebrand whom the protesters loved to hate, lived till 2011. 

Of those still living who supported the tour, a cynical view is that they have suffered a convenient collective memory lapse. But a more charitable interpretation is that Mr Mandela succeeded in changing their minds.

What no one can take away from him is that he achieved a peaceful and bloodless transition from a brutally oppressive white regime to a democracy – albeit a flawed one – where whites and blacks mostly live in relative harmony.

Many people would not have thought that possible. Things could have gone catastrophically wrong had Mr Mandela not been able, through his charisma and personal example, to restrain the natural desire for retribution.

Unfortunately it seems that’s as far as his achievements went. His successors in office have largely betrayed whatever vision and idealism he may have embodied. South Africa today is governed by a corrupt, incompetent black elite where previously it was ruled by an oppressive but generally efficient white one.

I have a feeling Mr Mandela knew this. Television footage of him in his last months showed a man who looked as if he had lost heart. And who could blame him, when his family was being torn apart in an ugly feud and South African police were shooting down black miners in scenes remarkably reminiscent of the worst days of apartheid?

I cringed at the frequently replayed scene of President Jacob Zuma visiting him – eager, no doubt, to portray himself as the natural inheritor of Mr Mandela’s mantle – and clutching his hand while he (Zuma) played to the cameras.

Mr Mandela was powerless to say or do anything, but his expression suggested he would just as soon have had a cobra dropped in his lap.

Tampering with the democracy that attracted them here

(First published in The Dominion Post, December 13.)

THE LATEST census confirms what was already obvious: New Zealand has quietly undergone a profound demographic revolution. From being one of the world’s most homogeneous societies, it has become one of the most diverse.

One in four New Zealanders was born overseas – an astonishing statistic that makes us one of the world’s most immigrant-friendly societies. Asian ethnic groups have almost doubled in size since 2001.

The change is most dramatic in Auckland, where a 2011 study found that 40 percent of the population was born in another country.

What’s even more remarkable is that, in contrast with Britain and Australia, this has been accomplished without any obvious social or racial tension.

Apart from the pressure on housing prices, New Zealand has painlessly absorbed the new arrivals. Our embrace of ethnic diversity confirms that we are essentially a liberal, tolerant and easy-going society.

Yet that social harmony is potentially under threat – and the great irony is that the threat comes not from conservative New Zealanders, but from people purporting to represent immigrant groups.

On Jim Mora’s Afternoons programme on Radio New Zealand this week, Dr Camille Nakhid, chairwoman of Auckland Council’s ethnic people’s advisory panel (to which Bevan Chuang, erstwhile paramour of mayor Len Brown, was also appointed), talked about the need for ethnic groups to have more say in local government.

No one could object to such groups having an advisory function, but Dr Nakhid, an academic who lectures in something called social sciences (no surprises there), was talking about much more than that.

She believes ethnic representatives should be given a statutory role in decision-making – just like Auckland Council’s non-elected Maori statutory board, whose two members recently exercised a casting vote in favour of a living wage for council employees.

Dr Nakhid talked airily about not compromising democratic principles, but in fact was advocating exactly that. She seemed to draw a self-serving distinction between democratic “principles”, which she believes justify special rights for ethnic groups, and something less important called the democratic “process”.

Apparently the tired old idea of one person having one vote doesn’t quite cut it anymore.

She talked about the need for ethnic minorities to have “separate but equal” representation with Maori in Auckland – in other words, compounding what is already an abuse of democracy. And she didn’t really answer Mora’s question about how ethnic representation could be arranged when Auckland has an estimated 200 ethnic groups. A minor technicality, no doubt.

If Dr Nakhid had deliberately set out to create friction where currently there is none, she couldn’t have found a better way to go about it. Nothing is more likely to arouse resentment of immigrant groups than demands for privileged treatment.

And here’s another thing. We can safely assume one of the reasons so many people immigrate to New Zealand is that it’s an infinitely more democratic society than the ones they left behind. To then call for a change in the way our governance is organised seems downright perverse.

* * *

OUTRAGE is the defining mood of our time. Upset by the way you’ve been treated by a bus driver or an airport security officer? Go to the media and your grievance will be on tonight’s news bulletin and tomorrow’s front page.

Offended by a throwaway line from Bob Dylan in a year-old interview about the way some Croatians behaved in World War Two? If you’re fortunate enough to live in France, you can get the state to prosecute him on your behalf under laws governing “hate speech” – one of the most chilling phrases in the language.

Spotted an opportunity to kneecap a couple of talkback hosts you don’t like? Orchestrate a social media campaign to frighten weak-kneed companies into withdrawing their advertising and intimidate the station into taking the hosts off the air.

Avowed Marxist Giovanni Tiso did just that in his campaign against RadioLive hosts John Tamihere and Willy Jackson, and must have been thrilled at how easily he was able to make capitalism look gutless. Mass bullying has never been easier than in the era of Facebook and Twitter.

* * *

A LATE CONTENDER has come to hand in the quest for the most flatulent public relations statement of the year. It’s always a hotly contested category, but I think we have a clear winner.

Congratulating itself on being named PR Agency of the Year 2013, Professional Public Relations said in a press release: “The award follows a transformational year at PPR. The agency has rolled out an innovative channel agnostic client experience across the company’s seven Australian and New Zealand offices with account teams now providing a mix of owned, earned and bought strategies, services and channels to help brands tell and share their stories.”

You almost have to admire a firm that can display such magnificent contempt for the English language.

 

 

Redoubtable nuns and men who get in the way

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, December 4.)

When I was a boy growing up in a small Hawke’s Bay town, every household would receive a free weekly guide to the films showing at the local picture theatre.

There was a mini-review of each film and it became a standing joke in our family that they were almost invariably described as “heart-warming”.

As a result, I’ve never been able to use the term “heart-warming” without a slightly derisive sneer. But a couple of days ago I watched a film that really was heart-warming, in the sense that you left the theatre feeling better about life and your fellow human beings than you might have been when you walked in.

Gardening with Soul is a feature-length documentary about Sister Loyola Galvin, who looks after the gardens at the Home of Compassion in the Wellington suburb of Island Bay – surely a challenging environment for even the greenest of fingers, given that the soil is not naturally fertile (Sr Loyola’s garden survives only with copious applications of home-made compost) and the climate often punishing.

Film maker Jess Feast spent a year observing Sister Loyola and clearly formed a close and mutually affectionate bond with her. It’s a simple film, beautifully shot and recorded. Every frame is impeccably composed, yet there’s nothing arty or pretentious about it. Like the character at its centre, it’s a no-nonsense piece of work.

Sister Loyola joined the Catholic order known as the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion in her mid-20s, after the man she expected to marry went away to the Second World War and never came back. It can’t have been an easy decision; her father, a Taranaki farmer to whom she was very devoted, was firmly set against her entering the convent and took years to come around. 

Now 90, Sister Loyola is slowed by age but mentally as sharp as a new pin, with bright, bird-like eyes. She radiates wisdom and practical, common-sense spirituality. Compassion, too, as you might expect, given the name of the order she joined.  She says – and I hope I’m quoting her more or less accurately – that it’s possible to see God in everyone, even the most unlikely people, if you look hard enough. If you could bottle that attitude, you’d call it Essence of Christianity.

She’s also quite frank, and jokes that she’s safely past the age when she risked being fired for speaking out of turn. She doesn’t hesitate to say what she thinks, for example, about the scandal of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.

I have encountered nuns like Sr Loyola before. The Catholic Church, which I grew up in, has a tradition of strong – you might even say stroppy – women. There’s no better example than Mother Suzanne Aubert, the doughty Frenchwoman who founded the order to which Sr Loyola belongs.

Arriving in New Zealand in 1860, Aubert decided she hadn’t come halfway around the world to teach French and embroidery to the daughters of wealthy Aucklanders. Instead, she devoted herself to Maori and later to the care of the orphaned, the unwanted, the destitute and the disabled.

In many cases, formidable women such as Aubert had to overcome obstacles placed in their path by the male hierarchy of the Church. You get the feeling that the nuns had a very clear idea of what needed to be done and their male superiors often just got in the way. (For example, nuns working in the backblocks were told they should ride their horses side-saddle, in the interests of decorum – an instruction they sensibly ignored.)

There’s a moment in Gardening with Soul when Sister Loyola, reflecting on the Catholic hierarchy, talks about the nature of power. She doesn’t develop the idea but I wonder whether she was gently suggesting that men, and more specifically the male fondness for power, are problems for the Catholic Church.

If that’s indeed what she was talking about, it’s not just Catholicism that has a problem with authoritarian male hierarchies.

I believe that most organised religion is largely about the exercise of power and control, and these are usually – if not exclusively – male preoccupations.

This is certainly true of faiths that are organised hierarchically, whether it’s Catholicism, Judaism, Islam or Mormonism. In all such religions, power is exercised by men – a striking anachronism in the modern Western world, where women have otherwise rejected the notion of male control.

Only days ago I read that an Israeli woman had been ordered by a religious court to have her son circumcised, against her will, or face fines of nearly $200 a day for every day the procedure was not carried out.

It astonished me to learn that in Israel, which otherwise gives the impression of being a modern, liberal democracy, rabbinical courts have legal jurisdiction on religious issues. It almost goes without saying that the rabbis involved are men, and that their edicts, if translated from religious mumbo-jumbo, would read: “This is the way things must be done because, er, because they’ve always been done this way. And besides, we say so.”

In fact, reading between the lines of the rabbinical court’s ruling, what’s clear is that the rabbis were terrified that if one defiant soul succeeded in breaking ranks, the power they have exercised unchallenged for centuries might begin to crumble.

The article was accompanied by a photo showing a circumcision ceremony taking place in a crowded synagogue. What was noticeable was that virtually all the faces were male. Barely visible, at the very back of the room, were a handful of women straining for a view of the proceedings. No prizes for guessing who calls the shots, then.

In this respect, Judaism has much in common with Islam. The blokes rule there, too, albeit in an even more repressive fashion.

Can Catholicism claim to be any better? Well, yes. Women do have a say in the Church (as they do, no doubt, in the more liberal strands of Judaism), but it’s extremely limited. Even amid the welcome winds of change blowing through the Catholic Church since the election of the new pope, you still get the impression it would be a cold day in Hell before the cardinals and the bishops relinquished their hold on power.

But what a different Church it might be if the male hierarchy were flattened and good, sensible women were allowed to get on with things unimpeded.

Downton Abbey, Wilsons Parking and Te Radar. Talk soon.

(First published in The Dominion Post, November 29.)

More pressing questions for our troubled times:

Should parents who give their kids weird, unpronounceable and unspellable names be charged with child abuse?

Commodore Frank Bainimarama – a Mugabe in the making, right in our own backyard?

We’ve had Dancing with the Stars hysteria, Masterchef hysteria, The Block hysteria and New Zealand’s Got Talent hysteria – what other ordeals has television got up its sleeve?

Shouldn’t political commentators who double as media trainers be required to disclose who they work for?

Has Coro St become the most relentlessly miserable, depressing, downbeat programme on television?

Cliches are an occupational hazard in sports journalism, but is “riding the pine” – meaning sitting on the reserves’ bench – one of the silliest ever?

Has John Key finally woken up to the fact that his smirk is an electoral liability?

How much more prosperous would New Zealand be if all the time wasted on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube was spent working?

Has the blogosphere become a forum in which frustrated Leftists impotently let off steam while the rest of the country calmly gets on with things?

Is Radio New Zealand’s Kim Hill capable of reading a mildly critical email from a listener without delivering a dismissive rejoinder?

How many Fulton Hogan trucks does it take to protect a single worker mowing a motorway verge?

Had enough of the haka?

When will someone admit that Downton Abbey is really just a glorious spoof, never meant to be taken seriously?

Is Wilsons Parking the most rapacious company in the land?

Closely followed by Wellington International Airport?

How hard can it be for One News to put captions on screen so that viewers can identify the people talking?

Why have so many mature, educated New Zealand women taken to talking with silly schoolgirl voices?

Who do so many slow drivers speed up when they come to a passing lane?

Man-Booker Prize winners excepted, do the media make too much fuss of New Zealand writers?

Had enough of Air New Zealand’s gimmicky safety videos?

Given that National MP Tau Henare seems to spend much of his time sending inane messages on Twitter (for example, boasting about his prowess in the gym), isn’t it time he considered a change of career?

Te Radar is described as a comedian, but can anyone remember him ever saying anything funny?

Shouldn’t TVNZ’s Q+A require viewers tweeting comments to the programme to identify themselves, just as newspapers insist with letters to the editor?

Given up trying to remember all your computer passwords?

Household disinfectants claim to eliminate 99.9 per cent of germs, but what if it’s the other 0.1 per cent that kills people?

Since virtually all politicians cheerfully ignored the 87 per cent “no” vote in the 2009 smacking referendum, why should Labour and the Greens expect anyone to take notice of the asset sales poll?

Has the phrase “systemic failure” (as in the Labour Department’s blind eye to problems at Pike River) become a routine excuse for not holding anyone responsible when things go tragically wrong?

Has television prime time been pushed back from 7.30 to 9.30 pm, given that almost no programme worth watching starts until then?

Now that they’ve taken a caning over the overcooked Urewera raids and the ludicrous swoop on the Kim Dotcom mansion, will the police ease off on the heavy-handed, American Swat-style tactics?

Puzzled by all the media hype over the recent death of the singer Lou Reed, whose existence barely registered with 99 per cent of the population?

When will advertising agencies admit that a lot of TV commercials are made primarily to impress other advertising agencies?

Given their propensity for committing illegal acts in full view of referees and TV cameras, is it possible that rugby league players have the lowest average IQ of any sport?

Will John Banks finally realise his time is up and bow out of public life with whatever little dignity he still has left?

What peculiar conceit motivates people to post a comment on a blog when there are already hundreds there? Do they seriously think anyone’s going to read it?

When did it become fashionable for men to wear suits two sizes too small?

Given the striking resemblance between them, could US Secretary of State John Kerry be the love child of Herman Munster?

Given up trying to make sense of the self-service checkout at the supermarket?

Irritated by emails signed “Talk soon” from people you’ve never met and are unlikely ever to have any verbal contact with?

Regime change at Radio New Zealand

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 20.)

There’s an “under new management” sign, figuratively speaking, outside Radio New Zealand’s head office in Wellington.

Paul Thompson, former editorial chief of the Fairfax media group, recently took over as RNZ’s chief executive.

Thompson is a stranger to the public broadcasting culture from which RNZ’s bosses have traditionally been recruited. His predecessor, Peter Cavanagh, came from Australia’s state-owned ABC. The incumbent before that, Sharon Crosbie, had been a high-profile RNZ broadcaster, though she had also done time in private radio.

A former editor of the Christchurch Press, Thompson was well-regarded in the newspaper business. I have misgivings about the editorial course Fairfax charted under his leadership, but a former editor whose opinion I respect once described him to me as the most complete journalist, in terms of ability, that she had ever worked with.

As an outsider, he is likely to be regarded with suspicion by some of his new employees. Not only does he come from a print journalism background, but he previously worked in the private sector.

Public broadcasting has its own culture and ethos. Some of the people who work at RNZ consider the private sector to be intrinsically tainted by the profit motive. Many wouldn’t dream of working for a commercial broadcaster, and the appointment of a CEO from outside the public broadcasting culture will have come as something of a shock.

But we can only assume RNZ’s board of governors wanted an infusion of new blood, and I think they’re probably right. (In fact I’ve been wondering recently whether it would be good for the police too, but that’s another story.)

Thompson is accustomed to working in a difficult environment, having spent several years grappling with the crisis in the newspaper industry. He will face different challenges at RNZ, the first of which will be winning the confidence of staff.

I would be very surprised if alarm bells had not rung internally over his arrival. Consider the following.

The board of governors, chaired by former prime ministerial PR man (and Nelson resident) Richard Griffin, has a strong private-sector bias. Griffin was RNZ’s political editor for many years but later worked for Jim Bolger and is seen as close to the National government.

The deputy chair is a former boss of Radio Hauraki, the Auckland rock station that challenged the state monopoly on broadcasting in the 1960s and opened the way for private radio. Another board seat is held by former National cabinet minister Paul East.

National is not favourably disposed to RNZ and has kept its funding capped since 2008. Steven Joyce, one of the most influential figures in Cabinet, made his money in private radio and is not thought to be warmly sympathetic to public broadcasting.

Moreover, RNZ employees could be excused for feeling increasingly isolated, having seen state-owned Television New Zealand stripped of its public service obligations and reduced to a wholly ratings-driven operation. RNZ is the last standard-bearer for commercial-free public broadcasting.

Put all these factors together and you can understand why many in RNZ might be feeling nervous. Yet the time has probably come for a few changes.

They don’t need to be radical. RNZ National claimed to be New Zealand’s highest-rating station last year, with a nationwide audience share of 10 per cent. Morning Report is the country’s highest-rating radio show, with an average audience of 342,000. Obviously it’s doing something right.

In fact I would argue that RNZ does most things pretty well. A stocktake would find much to be positive about, especially considering that its funding has been static for five years.

The government would risk a fierce backlash – and not just from Labour voters – if it tried to hobble the broadcaster, as I suspect some ministers would secretly like to do. Most people I know have their radios permanently tuned to RNZ National.

I would go further and suggest RNZ has never been more important, especially as a source of news and information. At a time when the newspaper industry is in a state of disarray, the state broadcaster has gone some way toward filling the vacuum left by the killing off of the New Zealand Press Association. In doing so it has become the national newspaper we never had.

Still, I get the sense that a degree of institutional inertia has set in. Under Cavanagh’s watch RNZ lost some of its forward momentum. He was known as the invisible man by some RNZ employees and seemed content to take a hands-off approach – hardly adequate at a time of upheaval in the media.

Many of RNZ’s senior managers have been with the organisation a long time. Thompson may encounter resistance to change – but as an outsider, he’s unlikely to be persuaded by the age-old argument that “this is the way we’ve always done things”.

RNZ has come a long way since the stuffy era when its programming department depended heavily on BBC hand-me-downs, the presenters were stiff and formal and the music played was mainly of the bland, light orchestral variety, but some of its programmes have begun to sound a little tired. It could do with some rejuvenation.

Coming from a background in journalism, where editorial balance is a core principle, Thompson might also want to tackle the pronounced left-wing bias that persists in parts of RNZ.

I have no idea what his own political views are, and certainly don’t think he was a political appointment. But he needs to point out firmly to some RNZ employees that the organisation is owned by the taxpayer and has an obligation to be even-handed in its treatment of political issues.

The announcement that Sunday morning host Chris Laidlaw is retiring at the end of this year is a good start, although RNZ insists the decision was entirely Laidlaw’s own.

A less partisan approach by other hosts such as Kim Hill might even soften the government’s antipathy towards the organisation, though that’s not why it needs to be done. 

Songs to remember Kennedy by

Here’s an esoteric music trivia question: what do the songs The Sounds of Silence (Simon and Garfunkel), Sunny (Bobby Hebb) and The Warmth of the Sun (the Beach Boys) have in common?

Answer: although none of them refer to it overtly, all three were inspired, at least partly, by the assassination of John F Kennedy, which happened 50 years ago this week.

As it happens, they’re also three great songs. Though it was never a hit (it was the flip side of the rather less impressive Dance, Dance, Dance, which went to No 8 in the US), The Warmth of the Sun is an early example of Brian Wilson’s genius, marking the point at which he raised his sights from songs about hot rods and surfing to more ambitious, melodically complex stuff. Wilson and fellow band member Mike Love began writing the song before learning of Kennedy’s death, but it has a melancholy, elegiac quality that captures the mood of the moment. (Incidentally, that’s not the Beach Boys you hear playing on the record; it’s the fabulous Los Angeles session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, one of whom was Glen Campbell.)

Black singer Bobby Hebb’s Sunny sounds like a love song but was written as a response to two tragedies: Kennedy’s death and the fatal stabbing of Hebb’s brother outside a Nashville nightclub. Paradoxically, it’s an optimistic song that draws hope from the restorative quality of love. Although written in 1963, it didn’t become a hit till nearly three years later. It rose to No 2 in the US and No 16 in New Zealand in mid-1966 and went on to earn enduring popularity as a staple in both easy-listening and soul repertoires. Hebb, who died in 2010, never had another major hit, but it’s worth checking out his follow-up to Sunny, a sublime soul treatment of the much-recorded country song A Satisfied Mind. (I never found out who the bass player was, but he was hot. Sunny and A Satisfied Mind were two of the first pop songs I can recall in which the bass insisted on being heard.)

Like Sunny, The Sounds of Silence took its time becoming a hit. In fact it attracted little attention when Simon and Garfunkel first recorded it as an acoustic folk song for the 1964 album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. It was only after their producer, Tom Wilson, decided to soup the song up with electric guitars, bass and drums – provided by New York session musicians who had just finished working on Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone – that The Sounds of Silence took off. Astonishingly, the overdubbing was done without the knowledge of Paul Simon, who wrote the song. But it did the trick: the new version, released in September 1965, went to No 1 in New Zealand as well as the US, and set S & G on their way.

Anyway, give the songs a whirl. It’s as good a way as any of marking Friday's anniversary.