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 On yesterday’s Q&A there was widespread agreement that the voters of Epsom –  the Auckland suburb colourfully described in the programme as ‘home to champagne wishes and caviar dreams’ – were nobody’s fools.  According to former National Party Chairman, John Slater, Epsom voters were ‘intelligent people, politically astute and smart’.

Former Auckland mayoral candidate Colin Craig, leader of the newly formed Conservative Party of New Zealand, agreed:

‘Epsom voters are actually relatively intelligent voters. And I’m not sure they enjoy being taken for granted.’

Christine Fletcher, who won the  seat for National in 1996 with a massive majority, wasn’t sure either. ‘The people of Epsom,’ she said, ‘won’t be told what to do.’

What the people of Epsom are being told to do – by John Key, Don Brash, John Banks and, though not in so many words, by the  National Party candidate, Paul Goldsmith, is to give their electorate vote to ACT’s Mr Banks  and not to Mr Goldsmith, who will get in on the National Party list anyway. That’s if they want to ensure that National stays the Government in November and John Key the Prime Minister.

The polite term for this is ‘strategic voting’. True-blue Epsom voters were reasonably willing to do it in 2008, sending Rodney Hide and ACT back into Parliament with five MPs but only 3.5 percent of the party vote. But a recent Herald poll suggests that for many the ‘champagne wishes and caviar dreams’ may no longer include Mr Banks or ACT.  Read the rest of this entry »

One should welcome the arrival of a second real current affairs show, and I do. It is probably kinder not to review the first episode of any new programme, but TV3’s The Nation made a proficient start on Saturday. Host Stephen Parker was understandably nervous and can be expected to relax into his role in coming weeks.

I have grown to respect Duncan Garner’s down-to-earth, no-nonsense analysis of politics, but his interview with Steven Joyce suggested he was more interested in prospecting for headlines than in cross-examining his guest in any detail. He had too many topics and too few supplementary questions, so that the effect was of someone saying, “Try this on for size then!” in the hope of scoring a newsworthy answer. There were none, and when Garner did persist, he ended up flogging several dead horses. It was clear, for example,  that Joyce was not going to say whether Jim Bolger was going to be sacked from his job as Chairman of KiwiRail, and there was very little point in returning to the question again and again. Joyce is not merely unflappable, he appears to have graduated from the Winston Peters School of Advanced Non-Answering.  Read the rest of this entry »

OK, there are interviewers, there are interruptive interviewers and there is Guyon Espiner. This morning on Q+A  the wee fox terrier of politics produced the most appalling exhibition of interruptive interviewing in years .

 The joy was that his guest, Metiria Turei, had him on toast.  She handled the endless, non-stop, verbal diarrhoea of interruptions with humour, grace and steely determination.  She waited him out, and she finished what she was going to say. In terms of handling interruptive interviewers, this is a master class!

 Respec’, Metiria!

Late in 1990 Judy and I were approached by members of the then fledgling Green Party. They wanted to know if we could provide them with media advice during the coming general election. We were not then involved with Labour and said that, yes, this was certainly something we could consider. They were delighted and invited us out to dinner to discuss the matter.

The restaurant we were taken to was, perhaps not surprisingly, modest. But the mainly young people who were our hosts were simply charming and their naïve enthusiasm was infectious. It was agreed that we would provide them with media training and direct their television opening and closing. They were over the moon. Read the rest of this entry »

TV One’s Q&A not only continues to provide discursive and intelligent  coverage of New Zealand politics but is making much of the political news itself. Check out the metropolitan press any Monday and you’ll find two or three stories credited to the previous morning’s programme. Journalistically Q&A is putting the papers to shame.

Yesterday’s programme featured Paul Holmes interviewing Wanganui MP Chester Burrows and Wanganui mayor Michael Laws on the legislation brokered by Burrows to ban the wearing of gang patches in the city’s CBD and public areas.  Both are articulate and persuasive advocates of  the new law, but the really interesting thing about the debate was that it revealed an entirely different Michael Laws to the frequently irrational, often hysterical and occasionally crazed columnist in the Sunday Star Times. This Michael Laws was both temperate and rational in his opinions and much the better for it.

What this may demonstrate is a point I make in an earlier blog that balanced opinion is the last thing newspaper editors want from their columnists. Getting up the noses of the hoi polloi sufficiently to provoke them into penning irate letters to the editor is the order of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

I spend most of Q+A with my eyes closed.  It’s not that the people are exceptionally ugly, or pull hideous faces, or have annoying tics. It’s just that the moving lines on the background drive me nuts.  I can’t concentrate on what anyone is saying; my eyes are riveted on those hypnotic orange stripes. Read the rest of this entry »

The past two weeks have seen the welcome return of Agenda, now renamed Q & A and fronted by Paul Holmes. Holmes is a considerable improvement on previous host Rawdon Christie, who was fine on Dragons’ Den, but completely out of his depth as a political interviewer. But Paul will have to remember that Q & A is not Holmes and not an appropriate vehicle for his personal opinions. His role on our only significant political programme should be as a facilitator – a role in which he is unsurpassed – and not as a contributor to the debate. Read the rest of this entry »