Here’s a very simple piece of media advice: there is no point in attempting to defend the indefensible and no point in trying to persuade people that the unbelievable is fact. You will look silly,  your credibility will take a hiding and you may not be forgiven for treating the public as fools.

So if you’re the author of an 82-page dossier vilifying your boss and he finds out and you’re unceremoniously demoted and told to take a hike for a couple of weeks and sort yourself out and you defy your boss by coming back early and he isn’t impressed and treats you like a leper…

Well, if all those things happen, then trying to persuade the media that, even though you don’t take back a word of those 82 pages,  everything is rosy in the garden and you totally support your boss and will be working harmoniously with him ‘going forward’….

Well, it’s just not believable, is it? In fact, I’d say that Sisyphus had an easier task trying to get that bloody rock to the top of the mountain, than Heather Roy has trying to persuade us that she and Rodney will live happily ever after. And if you doubt it, check out these interviews from last night’s telly.

Heather Roy on Close Up

Heather Roy on Campbell Live

 UPDATE 27 AUGUST: Heather and Rodney have kissed and made up. [Not an entirely pleasing image.] They were on telly last night exuding mutual affection. Rodney even said he was sorry for having upset Heather. [Ahhhh. Nice] But in the latest Listener we learn from the undisputed queen of columnists, Jane Clifton, that Heather barely got through her previous televised engagement party with Rodney before fleeing in tears from the chaise longue. None of this bodes well for a long and happy five-in-a-bed.

In this Radio New Zealand interview, broadcast on last night’s Checkpoint, New Zealand’s most consistently effective current-affairs  interviewer, Mary Wilson, makes mincemeat of Justice Minister Simon Power’s  unconvincing apologia for the government’s half-hearted, half-baked approach to solving New Zealand’s booze crisis. It’s great stuff. Look for Power’s warning that  next Thursday might not happen.

“Viewed through a parliamentary prism, there is nothing overtly brilliant about the man. He lacks the personal charisma of a Rob Muldoon or a David Lange. He does not have the after-hours bonhomie of a Winston Peters nor the intellectual menace of a Helen Clark.

“Indeed there is a touch of the Chauncey Gardner about him – the Peter Sellars gardener that charmed everyone in the classic movie satire Being There.

“Others graft their aims and aspirations on to the benign countenance of the prime minister and see themselves reflected back.

“This is the first prime minister who is actually liked. Not respected nor admired nor feared. Liked. You would have to go back to Labour’s Walter Nash to find another prime minister so routinely inoffensive.”

Michael Laws in today’s Sunday Star Times

Outed! Dr Key tries to hide stethoscope, but white coat isdead giveaway!

Fortunately, the PM will not have to make that choice. With characteristic modesty he has been hiding his light under a bushel, his stethoscope under a bed sheet. He is a member of a much more respectable profession than foreign exchange trader. He is a doctor, the Rt. Hon. Dr. John Key MD, FRCS, FRCPsych, MP, PM (NZ).

Dr Key’s special field is the little-known ‘Retrospective Diagnosis’.  Still in its infancy, Retrospective Diagnosis has the distinct advantage over more traditional forms of diagnosis that it does not require the patient to make the burdensome journey to the doctor’s surgery or to hospital. No actual examination is required.

The sick person, or a relative or friend, if the sick person is unable to speak, simply rings the surgery and asks to speak to the doctor. Since there are no patients waiting in the surgery to see him, the doctor will usually be free to take the call. Here is a transcript of a classic Retrospective Diagnosis.  Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine this. You’re a public figure. An accusation has been made against you, not of any criminal act, not even of breaching any rule, but of displaying an attitude of entitlement to the perks of office. Others have been as guilty as you, some more guilty. But the world seems largely uninterested in them. Its focus is almost entirely on you.

Imagine that for months you are vilified daily in the press, on radio, on television, on the Internet, to your face, behind your back.  Imagine that this relentless attack goes beyond what you have done to what you are said to be –  a person without integrity, without conscience, egotistical, narcissistic, a sponger on the public purse, a waste of space. Imagine being branded ‘worthless’.

Imagine not being able to open a newspaper, listen to radio, watch television, surf the Net without finding this judgement of your character somewhere expressed. Imagine it happening every hour of every day for months.   Read the rest of this entry »

Q.   Were you surprised by Carter’s  action today?

A.    I think ‘gobsmacked’ is the only word to describe my reaction.

Q.   Why do you think Carter did what he did?

A.    A mixture of two things, I suspect: a genuine belief that Labour cannot win under Goff and bitterness at the humiliation he suffered when Goff forced him to make a second public apology over his travel spending. At the time I described this as Goff ‘taking his pound of flesh”. That is still my view.

Q.   How would you describe Carter’s actions?

A.    Utterly stupid and hugely damaging to his personal reputation.

Q.   Is he right that there is widespread dissatisfaction in the Labour caucus with Goff’s performance as Leader?

A.    My understanding is that there is widespread dissatisfaction with his performance in the polls.

Q.   Is Carter right that a majority of the Labour caucus doubt that Labour can win the next election?

A.    That is my information.

Q. Doesn’t the unanimous caucus vote to suspend Carter indicate that the entire caucus is behind Goff?

A.    Not at all. Anyone who voted not to suspend Carter would effectively have been declaring that they agreed with his view that Goff could not hope to win the election. Anything other than a unanimous vote would have had the Press Gallery hunting to find the disaffected.

Q.   Can Goff win the next election?

A.    Probably not. But the honeymoon is definitely ending. The electorate is beginning to see Key’s shameless, give-them-anything-they-want populism as weak leadership. And the promise of ‘catching up with Australia’ already looks hollow.

Q:   Did Goff do the right thing in sacking Carter?

A.   Yes, it was the only thing he could do.  Carter’s action was disloyal to the party and intended to be damaging to  its leader.

Q.   Will these events be damaging to Goff’s leadership?

A.    On the contrary, they will probably strengthen his position as Leader and his image in the eyes of the public. He will be seen as decisive and strong.

Q.   What chance has Carter of winning Te Atatu as an Independent or Independent Labour candidate?

A.    None. Labour voters are Labour voters. Their loyalty is first and foremost to the Party.

Trailer of the next big Australian feature. Worth a quick look!

With more than 100 comments posted , I am putting a full stop to this debate. I will not publish any more comments. Too many contain little more than abuse of one party or the other.

The incontrovertible facts are as follows:

*Garner and Carter had a confrontation in the Auckland Koru Club roughly 11 months ago.

*Carter claims that later, on the plane, Garner said to him: I am going to fucking get you, Carter. If it takes me to Christmas I am going to fucking destroy you.

*Garner responds:  I ’swear’ I did not say to Chris, “I am going to fucking get you, if it takes me to Christmas I am going to destroy you.”

*Whatever the actual words used by Garner, they were overheard by Dame Margaret Bazley who was seated directly behind Carter.  Dame Margaret was appalled by whatever it was she heard and said to Carter:  What a disgraceful man. You don’t have to put up with rubbish like that on a plane, Mr Carter.

We will leave it there.

Picture: NZPA

Picture: TV3

It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that I am no fan of TV3′s Political Editor, Duncan Garner. I have written several posts about him. They include a post on April 7 in which I raised the question: Should TV3 be considering  whether their Political Editor is fit to hold the job?  I headed the post Duncan Garner on Chris Carter – Journalism or Personal Campaign?  I believe I now have the answer to that question and it comes from Garner’s own lips. 

But first a little history. It is no secret around Parliament  that, roughly 11 months ago,  Garner and Carter had a verbal stoush in the Auckland Koru Club.  Following the release of the report detailing the 2008 travel expenses of Labour Ministers, Garner had run a TV3 story alleging that Carter was a big-spending Minister whose travel could not be justified in what was essentially a domestic portfolio – Education. The story also referred to Carter’s long-time partner and travelling companion, Peter Kaiser, and included the name of the primary school of which Kaiser is principal.  

Not surprisingly, there was bad blood between the two men. Carter and Darren Hughes were in the Koru Club waiting for their flight to Wellington to be called when Garner approached them. He is reported as having said, ‘Travelling on the fucking taxpayer again, Chris.’ Carter told him to ‘fuck off!’  Read the rest of this entry »

Herald/Paul Escourt

Either Phil Goff is getting appalling advice from his media advisers or he is ignoring good advice. Either way, his recent handling of Chris Carter would suggest that he has totally lost the plot.

One of the most basic tenets of public relations and of politics is that the ultimate goal in handling any problem is to make it go away. Our training mantra – be straightforward, tell the truth, admit your mistakes – is undoubtedly the best way to achieve that result. But however you handle the problem, the silliest thing you can do is to prolong bad media coverage by giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dying issue. That is precisely what Goff is doing by demanding that Carter front the media on the issue of his alleged abuse of his ministerial expenses, if and when he is allowed to return to parliament.

The biggest news story in New Zealand at the moment is the good news story about the All Whites’ stunning performances in South Africa. The country is in a feel-good mood and the ministerial expenses issue has faded in the print media and been largely absent from our television screens for a few days. Goff ought to be breathing a sigh of relief, more especially since his disciplining of Carter,  which the pundits said would win  him brownie points, has had no positive effect on his personal ratings as preferred Prime Minister. He is barely above the non-candidate Helen Clark.

In summary, publicity around the Carter affair has damaged Labour, and Goff’s handling of the affair has not done him or the party any good. So, with the country obsessed with soccer and the Carter issue moribund, if not actually dead, the smart thing to do would have been to get back to business as usual. Goff, however, appears to want his pound of flesh. Why?  Read the rest of this entry »

In what can only be described as an egregious piece of bloody cheek, the $50 million man, our Prime Minister John Key, has told those who can expect to be better off by between 85c and $5 a week after Thursday’s budget,  that they should not be envious of the rich because the rich are crucial to the economy.

‘We can be envious about these things but without those people in our economy all the rest of us will either have less people paying tax or fundamentally less services that they provide… But those who pay the top personal rate fit into some core and critical categories for our economy. They include doctors, entrepreneurs often, scientists, engineers, lawyers, accountants, school principals, nurses…’

This will come as distressing news to the nation’s wage and salary earners, whose median annual income is $30,200 but who may nonetheless have considered themselves as fitting into ‘some core and critical category for our economy’. They now know better. Read the rest of this entry »

Pic: NZPA

Pic: Maggie Tait

Pic: Maggie Tait

 More than 20 years ago Judy and I ran a 2-day media training seminar for 150 business executives in Wellington.  The final session took the form of a panel discussion, which included former Prime Minister Rob Muldoon. During the discussion Sir Robert referred to the diffiiculty cabinet ministers often faced in responding to what he called ‘television’s forceful visual images’.

From memory, he used the example of an elderly woman complaining about the inadequacy of the pension. The pleasant looking woman is interviewed in her little pensioner flat. She is seated in an armchair with a blanket around her shoulders. A raggedy looking moggy is asleep in her lap. She complains of the cold and of not being able to afford to keep a heater running in the flat. She often stays in bed to keep warm. It’s impossible for her to afford anything but the barest necessities. She regards a banana once a week as a luxury. She’d love to get out a bit more, but could not possibly afford the expense of owning a car. It’s heartrending stuff and there’s more, much more.

After the film has been shown, the Minister of Social Welfare is interviewed in the television studio. He expresses sympathy for the elderly woman and outlines a number of services and special benefits that are available to someone in her situation. But he might as well not bother. His coolly rational responses, delivered in the hostile and sterile atmosphere of the television studio, cannot match the emotionally charged scene which the viewer has just watched. Television’s ‘forceful visual images’ almost invariably take the day.  Read the rest of this entry »

WWE WrestleMania

Watched the second episode of The Nation. Two fairly simple conclusions: Stephen Parker can’t  chair; Duncan Garner can’t interview.

Parker was completely unable to rein in Radio Live’s  Mitch Harris, who seemed to think that the best form of interview is where the interviewee  is not allowed  to answer the question.

Garner’s interview with Gerry Brownlee exemplified the scattergun approach to cross-examination where you fire at random in the hope that one of your projectiles will hit the mark.

Duncan’s interview philosophy appears to have three  aims: to demonstrate that he is a fearsome interrogator; to show that he is a mate and the equal of the person he is interviewing;  and to score a few headlines in tomorrow’s papers. Read the rest of this entry »

I assume Phil Goff would like to be Prime Minister of New Zealand. He has every reason to think he deserves the job. He’s served a lengthy apprenticeship, having come into Parliament in 1981, the same year as Helen Clark. And he’s had a distinguished career as an MP and Cabinet Minister. He’s highly intelligent and well-informed on a whole range of portfolios from Justice to Foreign Affairs. And he comes from good Labour stock.

Goff and his party are languishing in the polls at the moment, but their figures are actually better than Helen Clark’s and Labour’s were in early-mid 1996. Both the party and its leader then looked like dog-tucker. In my book, Helen, Portrait of a Prime Minister, she takes up the story:  Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Herald makes interesting reading for anyone who thinks that, despite his Wall Street millions, John Key’s state house background makes him more sympathetic to those on lower incomes. GST is to rise by up to 2.5%. Such an increase disproportionately penalises those at the bottom of the economic heap – lower income earners and beneficiaries – since a much greater proportion of their income is spent on essential items such as food, power and rent. They are to be compensated by an unspecified decrease in personal taxation and an unspecified increase in benefits and Working for Families.

On last night’s Campbell Live, the Prime Minister gave Campbell a guarantee that lower income earners or beneficiaries would be no worse off after the changes in the budget. ‘No worse off’, but not necessarily ‘any better off’. Middle and higher income earners, on the other hand,  will of course be better off as a result of any decrease in income tax, since that is an economic truism. So, in a nutshell, the rich will get richer and the poor stay where they are, which in real terms means ‘go backwards’. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s general agreement that Lockwood Smith has been an excellent Speaker. His quiet, natural authority has allowed him to control the House without getting to his feet every few seconds to call for order. He has refused to allow Ministers to get away with non-answers to questions. If any party is unhappy with him, it is considerably more likely to be the National Party than anyone in opposition, perhaps the ultimate tribute to his impartiality.

But yesterday the Speaker seemed to lose the plot when he warned the media that their coverage of MPs’ expenses bordered on lobbying and that, if it continued, he would treat them as lobbyists. The media, he said, should ‘stop parroting a view’.

He then issues this threat:

‘If the newspapers do want to have a view and want to lobby on it, I’m very happy to issue them with a lobbyist card and relieve them of their [Press Gallery] offices here, and if they want to be lobbyists – fine.’ Read the rest of this entry »

I recently re-read Sir Robin Day’s autobiography, Grand Inquisitor.  Robin Day, who died nine years ago,  was the doyen of political interviewers in Britain for more than 40 years. Rejecting the idea that interviewers should be deferential to those in power, he was the first to put probing questions to his subjects on behalf of the viewers and listeners.  His autobiography includes this  Code for Television Interviewers, which I recommend as required reading to Paul Henry, John Campbell, Mike Hosking, Sean Plunkett, Larry Williams, Mary Wilson and one or two others of our interviewing glitterati. In particular they might like to pay attention to items 7 to 10.

Sir Robin Day’s Code for Television Interviewers

1. The television interviewer must do his duty as a journalist, probing for facts and opinions.

 2. He should set his own prejudices aside and put questions which reflect various opinions, disregarding probable accusations of bias.

 3. He should not allow himself to be overawed in the presence of a powerful person.

 4. He should not compromise the honesty of the interview by omitting awkward topics or by rigging questions in advance.

 5. He should resist any inclination in those employing him to soften or rig an interview, so as to secure a “prestige” appearance or to please authority; if, after making his protest, the interviewer feels he cannot honestly accept the arrangements, he should withdraw.

 6. He should not submit his questions in advance, but it is reasonable to state the main areas of questioning. If he submits specific questions beforehand, he is powerless to put any supplementary questions which may be vitally needed to clarify or challenge an answer.

 7. He should give fair opportunity to answer questions, subject to the time-limits imposed by television.

 8. He should never take advantage of his professional experience to trap or embarrass someone unused to television appearances.

 9. He should press his questions firmly and persistently, but not tediously, offensively, or merely in order to sound tough.

 10. He should remember that a television interviewer is not employed as a debater, prosecutor, inquisitor, psychiatrist or third-degree expert, but as a journalist seeking information on behalf of the public. 

Photo: Michael Field

Recently I bumped into Paul Henry having coffee with his daughter in trendy Herne Bay. He’s really very nice when you meet him in person off the box. Or maybe it was the civilising presence of his very nice daughter.

Anyway, we got to talking politics, as you do. He was enthusing about John Key whom he’d interviewed that morning. ‘The thing about him,’ he said, ‘is that he just answers the question. You ask him a question and he just answers it. ‘

I’d formed precisely the same impression watching Key on television. He seems natural, unaffected, nice. There’s no sense of the wheels going round in his head as he searches for a clever, stay-out-of-trouble answer. Nothing obviously  Machiavellian. No evident side. ‘He just answers the question.’

Read the rest of this entry »

Herald on Sunday

Dear Sir Douglas

In more than 40 years observing New Zealand politics there have been few Ministers of the Crown I could say I truly admired, and fewer still in the National Party. You were one of those very few.

Your comments, reported in this morning’s Herald, on the international travel subsidy granted in perpetuity to retired long-term members of parliament, caused me for the first time to question my assessment. They were, in a word, shameless. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night’s Close Up and Campbell Live both debated Social Welfare Minister Paula Bennett’s decision to publish details of the benefits received by two women who have gone public with their criticisms of the government’s cuts to the Training Incentive Allowance.

There are two issues here: Was it appropriate for a Minister of the Crown to publish personal details relating to the benefits paid to clients of her department without first seeking  their permission or informing them of her intention? And did her action amount to a breach of the Privacy Act? Read the rest of this entry »