OPINION: MickeySavage
This is a bit of a slow burner of an issue and relates back to the time that Luxon’s reign was in turmoil.
Last month the news broke that Luxon had ghosted senior National Party whip Stuart Smith after Smith wanted to tell him how disgruntled the National Party Caucus was with his leadership.
This Thomas Coughlan article set out all of the details.
This occurred shortly after the cabinet reshuffle that was not originally planned that put the boot into Chris Bishop.
Then there was the release of diabolical polling and talk about a group of five National MPs wanting a change of leadership.
And the story fermented for days because Smith refused to say anything. The Senior Whip even missed the Caucus meeting where Luxon put his position on the line because he had something else that he had to do.
And it took Smith days to deny that he wanted to talk to Luxon about Luxon’s flagging support as claimed in the Coughlan article and supported by others.
Maybe he wanted to talk to Luxon about the weather or rugby or something else. But taking four days to say this suggests either gross incompetence of the reinvention of history.
Then there was the Ani O’Brien attack on Maiki Sherman who had just been suspended from Parliament for seven days for knocking on Smith’s door and wanting to ask him questions.
O’Brien blogged about a drinks session around budget time LAST YEAR where Sherman allegedly used the f* bomb in response in response to something said to her by something said to her by Lloyd Burr. I am not aware what he said but clearly she was upset by it.
This was an interesting thing for a member of the Free Speech Union executive member to blog about. After all you would expect a FSU adherant to support and celebrate the exercise of free speech, even if it involved an empthet.
A timeline helps focus the mind however on what happened here.
March 31 – reshuffle announced
April 9 – Smith tries to talk to Luxon
April 17 – Coughlan reports on failure to meet
April 21 – Luxon calls leadership vote. Smith denies the Coughlan report
April 23 – Sherman tries to interview Smith
April 24 – Brown complains about Sherman to Brownlee
April 28 – O’Brien publishes her Substack article on Sherman
And fast forward to Friday of last week when Sherman announced her resignation as TVNZ’s chief political reporter.
To add to the sense of unease David Seymour has recently made threats against John Campbell and the head of Radio New Zealand for apparently not being right wing enough.
From Laura Crimp at Radio New Zealand:
The deputy Prime Minister and ACT party leader spoke to The Platform last week, taking swings at both state broadcasters’ management.
He criticised the appointment of RNZ’s Morning Report host John Campbell and suggested RNZ’s chief executive Paul Thompson could lose his job, adding “it’s really critical that we are ensuring that we get better people on the board, and those people will change the management.”
He also accused TVNZ of being “politically motivated”.
Seymour is a shareholding minister in both RNZ and TVNZ, and the law says ministers cannot give direction to the state broadcasters.
Seymour told RNZ he had not done that.
“Decisions around staffing, presenter line-ups, and editorial matters are for boards and management. Anyone who thinks RNZ is taking editorial instructions from me clearly does not listen to RNZ.”
He said editorial independence did not, however, mean “freedom from accountability”, adding ministers are entitled to comment “when publicly owned media organisations are losing audience, relevance, or public confidence”.
Seymour’s statement clearly breaches Ministerial obligations not to give directives. And his desire to stack the RNZ board is terrifying. Imagine Sean Plunkett being appointed to the board.
And Paul Goldsmith announced plans to disestablish the Broadcasting Standards Authority the very authority that the Platform’s Sean POlunkett has railed against because it wanted to make him comply with the BSA’s rather modest standards
This is all pretty terrifying, especially in an election year.
As said by Richard Harman:
The Maiki Sherman lynch mob is frightening. This is the most hostile environment within which to be a political journalist I have known in my 55 years as a journo. The mob is ruling at the moment. They have tasted blood. Who will they turn on next?
And there is talk that Jason Walls is being lined up as the next Chief Political reporter. If he achieves this role then there will be some quite back slapping in the Government’s ranks.
This is Trumpian culture wars style attacks on the media clearly with the intent of moving the narrative to the right. They do not want a media that seeks the truth. They want a weakened report both sides media that will faithfully trumpet their spin without questioning it.
These are dangerous times. As Harman notes the mob is currently ruling.
This Opinion Piece was first published in The Standard.
