We went to the Banksy exhibition. I really like the political commentary in his work, and I wanted to see some of it en masse. Mainly prints, often duplicated several times in different colors. A couple of large works. Good information on the walls and a very good short doco. Not a bad small exhibition.

BUT – the entry price was $38 for everyone over 10. I don’t think I’ve ever paid that for a small exhibition, even in Europe. No concessions for students, seniors, school children.

I may be able to afford it, but what about students, particularly art students? See some Banksy, don’t eat for a couple of days…

Up the road at the Art Gallery you can see the Corsini exhibition for $19 – or $15 for students and seniors. Kids under 12 free.

I never saw myself defending Winston Peters, but I’ve sat in a WINZ office with woman who could have been my mother.

She was lovely. As was the superannuitant who sorted Brian’s some years earlier.

Both of them filled in the forms for us and, although we’re both reasonably literate, we were both very grateful, because forms can confuse.

So I have no difficulty believing that Winston had trust in the officer who processed his application, and that he simply signed this form as we did. Particularly since his partner was with him at the time and there should have been no confusion about his status.

So, like us, he may have assumed that all the details had been checked and accepted by WINZ, since their representative had filled them in.

Just saying.

Being a media trainer is a bit like being a singing teacher.You have to have a very good ear. It’s not merely about being able to correct glaring examples of poor pronunciation, diction or tone. John Key’s tendency to insert a ‘sh’ into certain words usually before a ‘t’, producing a somewhat Germanic ‘sch’ sound (Aushtralia), and Helen Clark’s rather mannish tone and overly forceful delivery both invited derision and had the potential to prematurely end their stellar careers.

I once had the opportunity of giving a few pointers to John Key on his interviewee performance. TVNZ had decided to arrange some interview training for its high-profile newsreaders, including Simon Dallow. Each had to arrive with a guest of their own choosing, whom they would interview under the critical eye of Brian Edwards and Judy Callingham. Simon introduced us to his choice of interviewee, a chap called John Key, whom I had not only never met, but never heard of.

The mysterious Mr Key was pleasant, agreeable, made a few nervous jokes and did a perfectly competent couple of interviews with Simon. When it was over, Judy and I make some helpful suggestions to Mr Key, thanked him for coming and then spent some time chatting to Simon about improving his already proficient interviewing style.

John Key would eventually become Leader of the Opposition. I have to say that neither Judy nor I would have considered, let alone predicted that outcome, as he left the training studios in Shortland Street.

In 1997 Jenny Shipley became the first female prime Minister of New Zealand when Jim Bolger resigned rather than face almost certain defeat in a coup which Shipley had brokered while Bolger was overseas.

Helen Clark deeply resented the fact that Shipley became New Zealand’s first female Prime Minister without ever going to the country. It was, she said, like climbing Everest only to find that your opponent had already got there by helicopter.

Our association with Helen Clark began in 1996 when I was standing in for Kim Hill on her 9am National Radio programme Nine to Noon. The schedule included a longish interview with the Leader of the Opposition. In the course of the interview, I said to Helen that I didn’t think she looked very happy.

Later that day her secretary rang to ask if I could spare the time to come and speak to Helen. We met and she told me that she had been taken aback by my saying that she didn’t look very happy. She wondered if I might be interested in assisting her to improve her personal and Labour’s poll ratings which were then dire. I’m not proud of my response which was to the effect that I thought her situation was “unfixable”.

That is one of the more egregious errors of judgment I have made in my career as a media trainer. Fortunately I had the opportunity to put it right. Helen Clark would eventually win three general elections and a reputation as one of this country’s finest Prime Ministers.

My other egregious error was in writing off John Key in similar fashion. As Helen’s advisors, including Judy and myself, sat around discussing tactics for the first Leaders’ Television Debate of the 2008 election, the general tone was to the effect that the outcome was pretty well a foregone conclusion. Key could not possibly win. Helen was his intellectual and tactical superior. It was no contest.

Key won that debate hands down. It was as if he had changed personality overnight. The quiet, gentlemanly, sometimes humorous Leader of the Opposition was loud, interruptive, aggressive, dismissive and contemptuous of his opponent.

Helen would, in our assessment, score marginal wins in the two remaining debates.But it is extremely difficult to come back from a first debate defeat.

Media trainers are bound to get it wrong one day. The closeness to your clients blinds you to their weaknesses and to your clients’ opponents’ strengths.

I have unbounded admiration for Helen Clark who is today a mover and shaker in the much wider world of international politics.

But though Michelle Boag and I have played political conkers on Jim Mora’s ‘The Panel’ for several years now, I also admire and like John Key. I rate him as a highly successful New Zealand Prime Minister, who, like his predecessor, has done great service for his country. Maybe the best thing you can say about any male politician is, ‘Seems like a nice guy’. John Key seems to me like a nice guy. And his resignation from the top job is manna from heaven for the Opposition.

Is that the stirring of excitement of a frustrated political media trainer that I feel coursing through my veins? Or the horror of thinking that our next PM might just be Paula Bennett?

Check the flights to Belfast for me, would you, Judy dearest!

Two weeks later, bandages gone and sutures removed:

He’s semi-naked, resentful and (mainly) confined to a cage – for another month! But he gets out to sunbathe for a while.  And he still knows what handbasins were designed for:

Which one do you find more compelling?

There have been some rather strange explanations as to why nipples are inappropriate for NZ television viewers. It seems to boil down to time-of-broadcast restrictions, which are in place for several categories of advertisement in New Zealand, including alcohol. This would hardly be a hindrance to the message getting out there, since the target audience for these ads is allowed to stay up past 8:30 or 9:00pm. Thus our children would be protected from being permanently damaged by the sight of an adult female nipple – the only sort of nipple that appears to be a problem.

My question is: are we thelephobic? Or just ridiculously prudish?

*thelephobia: fear of nipples

Marlborough Express 29/4/13

The Press 30/5/13

These cartoons by Al Nisbet were published in The Marlborough Express and The Press. The Race Relations Commissioner, Dame Susan Devoy, asks if the legal threshold for a finding of racism is too high.

Your comments are invited.

‘I just can’t say often enough…’

Paul Holmes

Broadcaster

1950 – 2013

On Monday, 4 February 2013, members of the Labour Caucus will take a confidence vote on the leadership of the parliamentary party. This happens in the middle year of each electoral cycle, and generally passes without note. Not so on this occasion. November’s Labour Party Conference put the cat among the pigeons by deciding that this confidence vote would be held under unique conditions. 

In past electoral cycles Labour Party rules required the leader to gain a simple majority of the mid-term vote  to retain the leadership. That will also be the rule in future. However, this year is a one-off: the leader needs 60% of the vote plus one. That means David Shearer needs 22 of the Caucus of to vote for him on Monday.  Should 13 or more of his colleagues vote against him, it will trigger a leadership contest.

Monday’s vote is a secret ballot. There will be independent scrutineers, usually senior members of the Labour Party such as the General Secretary and the President.

Previously the Caucus alone voted on the leadership, but the party wrested that absolute power out of its hands at the last conference. From now on a Labour Party leadership contest will be decided not by Caucus alone, but by an electoral college which includes the party members and its affiliates.

After the conference last November the Labour Party announced that ‘a copy of the revised Constitution and Rules of the Party will be circulated and on the website by the end of the year.’ So far it has not appeared on the website.

But this is how it will work:

A leadership vote will happen if there is a vacancy for the position, if it is requested by a simple majority of Caucus at any time, or if the Leader fails to obtain the support of 60%-plus-one of the Caucus in a confidence vote held within three months of a General Election.

A candidate for leadership must be a Member of Parliament.

The Electoral College will comprise:

• Labour Party members – 40% of the vote
• Labour Caucus members – 40% of the vote
• Affiliates (the unions) – 20% of the vote

Every party and Caucus member will have a vote; the affiliates will decide on their own voting systems. The administrative rules around the vote have yet to be announced, but it is expected that the Electoral College will publish results as percentages rather than actual numbers of voters in each category. This will allow the public (and the members) to know what the split was in each section of the college.

Labour hopes that these new rules will lead to greater strength and unity within the party. There is a danger, however, that the Parliamentary Party could in future be presented with a leader who gains a majority of Labour Party member support, but little support from within his or her own Caucus. Publication of the percentages will make this clear to both the Caucus and the public. This is likely to trigger a media frenzy that will make last year’s manufactured ‘leadership crisis’ look like a kindergarten picnic.

Back to Monday’s vote: this is the only time a Leader will ever require 60%-plus-one in a mid-term confidence vote. In future, apart from the post-election vote which will always be 60%-plus-one, a leader will be safe with a simple majority. Forty per cent may seem a very low threshold for a leadership spill, but in other countries the threshold can be as low as 20%.  A leader who wins an election should carry the more testing post-election confidence vote with ease; a leader who loses is probably toast and will often jump before being pushed.

The mid-term confidence vote in Opposition is a different animal altogether. Unless the polls and the media are positive, unless victory can be glimpsed on the horizon, a Leader will be vulnerable.  Requiring a 60%-plus-one majority makes the current leader particularly vulnerable. This is not a united Labour Caucus and the 40% required for a spill – just 13 votes – could come from more than one faction. Some MPs favour David Shearer as Leader; some favour Grant Robertson; some favour David Cunliffe.

The media are currently pursuing Labour MPs, wanting (and occasionally demanding) to know how they will vote.  Tempting as it may be, journalists do not have the right do this – it is a secret ballot and no MP should be asked to reveal how s/he will or did vote.

There are several issues for the Labour Caucus to consider in this vote, but these are probably the major ones:

Can Labour under its current leadership win the 2014 election with sufficient party votes to have the strength to control and contain its coalition partners? The Greens are on a roll, and NZ First is looking secure. A weak Labour Party would have to give away too many Cabinet seats to be effective, and ambitious Labour MPs, forced to languish on the back benches, would not make for a happy Caucus. Remember the 1996 National-NZ First coalition and its subsequent disintegration?

Unification of the Caucus and the Party as a whole must be a priority this year; there have been factional and ideological splits since 2008 and the leader must weld these factions together. If this doesn’t happen, if the right and left-wingers within the party continue to do battle, it may be impossible for Labour to deliver on the social and economic platform it’s currently rolling out. That could spell a one-term government and possibly the end of Labour as one of the two major parties.

There is a big job ahead for the Leader of the Labour Party, building bridges and garnering voter support. It’s going to require strength, courage and political skill; it’s going to require the confidence of both the Caucus and the Party; it’s going to require a united front that will quieten the media and reassure the public.

That’s what Monday’s confidence vote will have to address.