Telecom: bastard offspring of the market
The story of Telecom is the story of New Zealand.
I’m not just talking about events of the past month but the tale of the company and the country since Telecom was privatised in 1990. Telecom is struggling for the same reason our national economy is struggling. Market values have replaced the values of service and citizenship.
It might seem strange to people under 35 that the government ever ran a telecommunications network. But it did, and it did so competently. The service wasn’t flashy but it was brilliant compared to what Telecom has offered. Accountability came through elected ministers who knew service breakdown meant their heads were on the block.
20 years ago the failures of the past month would have seen politicians grilled mercilessly on radio and TV. Not now. Who knows the name of the minister responsible for telecommunications? The government has been all but invisible and we are left with the bereft figure of an unelected Scotsman apologising repeatedly to the public for the multiple failures of a major communications network and the collapse of the 111 emergency call system.
Democratic accountability through the rights of citizenship has been replaced by the rights of consumers in the marketplace. If we don’t like the service we can change providers. Except for 111…
Telecom’s present troubles go back to its inception and the running of the company for shareholders rather than phone users.
Writing in 2004 economist Bill Rosenberg summed up the main issues:
Telecom’s overseas owners have failed to live up to the promise of making new technology available to New Zealanders… They have sacked thousands of employees and have extracted billions from New Zealand in profits and capital, while over-charging for services (such as broadband networking to the home) …using every possible means to keep out the competitors who would not have been necessary had it been providing a decent service. From 1995 to 2004 it paid out more than its net earnings in dividends (reported earnings of NZ$6,464 million and dividends paid out of NZ$6,698 million), for most of that time, its capital expenditure barely covering reported depreciation. It was running down its assets.
The same problem continues today.
The company has worked hard to keep out competition and New Zealanders were slow to get new technological developments and when they arrived they were expensive. Former Board member Rod Deane explained in a biography how the company employed over 90 lawyers. Don’t think these bods were there to keep the phones running. They were there to fight any attempts at government regulation and to thereby maintain what until recently has been a private monopoly.
It’s also worth remembering the revealing words of former Telecom CEO Theresa Gattung who admitted deliberately deceiving Telecom customers while speaking to a meeting of financial analysts in early 2006:
“Think about pricing. What has every telco in the world done in the past? It’s used confusion as its chief marketing tool. And that’s fine,” she said. “You could argue that that’s how all of us keep calling prices up and get those revenues, high-margin businesses, keep them going for a lot longer than would have been the case.
But at some level, whether they consciously articulate it or not, customers know that’s what the game has been. They know we’re not being straight up.”
Knowing you’ve been screwed by Telecom is a familiar feeling for New Zealanders.
Just last year the company forced its maintenance employees to become dependent contractors. These workers now pay for their own tools and vans and must rely totally on calls from Telecom to attend maintenance callouts. The workers are now on much lower incomes while the company is absolved from the provisions of the Employment Relations Act such as providing sick leave and annual leave. Meanwhile the Telecom CEO is the highest paid person in the country – $7 million last year.
The national economy has suffered the same hollowing out as Telecom. The private sector has cannibalised the profitable parts of the economy and left us heavily in debt. Workers are on low wages, facing higher taxes and lower levels of government-provided services while the country searches for capital for investment.
If Telecom was still publicly owned we’d have politicians baying for blood and the likes of Rodney Hide squealing like a stuck pig and demanding accountability.
The disgruntled workers at the Philippines call centre who texted “f**k you” to New Zealand Telecom customers a couple of weeks back missed their target. They should have been communicating with the hapless Scotsman and our free market cheerleaders in Wellington.
Defend SOEs from ravages of corporate capitalism
If we ever wanted a measure of the failure of the free markets we could use last week’s release of the Capital Markets Development Taskforce report.
The taskforce had its genesis under the previous Labour government following the economic carnage from the collapse of half New Zealand’s finance companies leaving investors hundreds of millions out of pocket. One of the highest profile collapses was of Bridgecorp whose senior executives appeared in court last week for a depositions hearing on charges of issuing false prospectuses. The company collapsed in 2007 owing 14,500 investors a total of $459 million.
One staff member responsible for answering calls from irate shareholders told the court her supervisor emerged from a meeting with company director Rod Petricevich to say “OK, ladies, here’s the line.” The “lines” were variously given as “computer problems” or “banking glitches” to explain why payments to investors were late. When the case comes to court we will hear the full tawdry reality behind the glossy brochures and rich resonant voices reassuring prospective investors their money would be in a rock solid investment.
It’s not surprising investment in property continues to be the preferred place for the middle class to put their money while avoiding investment in the financial sector.
Stock Exchange executive and taskforce member Mark Weldon laments the lack of investment in the sharemarket. He argues we need more kiwi money invested to boost the value of shares. Another commentator bemoaned the fact “we are buying our homes but leaving foreigners to buy our companies.”
Hence the taskforce proposals aimed at restoring public confidence in private investment and arguing for the government to provide more opportunities for such investment.
To improve confidence their report suggests regulations insisting on “plain English” in investment statements and prospectuses; warnings on risky or complex products; improving New Zealanders’ financial literacy; providing clarity and enforcement for the duties of fund managers and supervisors and the creation of a new market regulator to police financial markets.
To provide new investment opportunities for “mum and dad” investors the taskforce predictably wants partial privatisation of our remaining state assets. Prime Minister John Key has ruled this out “in National’s first term of government” but we can be assured this will be on the agenda after the 2011 election.
Translating this it means New Zealanders as a whole giving up our shareholding in State Owned Enterprises so wealthy “mums and dads” in Fendalton and Remuera can get a government guaranteed, unearned financial return. Confidence in the private sector is so low the taskforce wants taxpayer guaranteed returns to bolster the confidence of nervous investors.
Remember these champions of private enterprise are from the same group which has already trashed so many of our privatised SOEs. Think Air New Zealand and New Zealand Rail which have needed repeated government bailouts and Telecom which seems headed in the same direction.
What the taskforce has turned its blind eye towards is the spectacular failure of deregulated capitalism which has been at the heart of our national economy and politics for 26 years. They should concentrate on cleaning up their own messes and leave our public assets alone.
We need to ringfence our public institutions from such reckless privateers which have led to so much economic woe and social breakdown. And yet successive governments stumble on in the same direction clearing away the corpses with taxpayer dollars as they go.
Also aiming to bolster the private sector at the expense of the state was Finance Minister Bill English who last week said a decision would be made mid-year about the use of so-called public-private partnerships for the building of new schools.
Again more opportunities for government guaranteed income streams so loved by the private sector. Think early childhood education, private tertiary education, the retirement industry and upcoming private prisons.
Capping it off in the last few days we’re seen the debacle over the privatisation of retirement savings through the shenanigans at Huljich. The company which topped the list for the best returns in 2008 – 2009 is revealed to have artificially bolstered its returns and misled investors. Auckland Mayor John Banks, an executive director of Huljich, is desperately trying to distance himself from the debacle.
Do we want to let private sector values, which have delivered so much misery these past 26 years in particular, anywhere near our remaining state assets?
Just as dairy farmers have so far successfully defended their industry from the perils of the sharemarket so we must defend our remaining SOEs from the ravages of corporate capitalism.
ENDS
Name suppression for the few
I have little in common with Cameron Slater but I have sympathy for his campaign to have the law changed to make it harder for those convicted to avoid the public glare from their offending.
There has been a long history of name suppression given for high-profile pillars of the community and public humiliation for everyone else. The justification usually given by judges is that because a person has a high profile the negative effect of public exposure would outweigh the gravity of the offence. The other common reason given is to protect the victim or the family members of the offender.
Arguing these points of course is much easier for the community pillars who can usually afford an experienced barrister to present their case for them.
Two weeks ago Judge Grant Fraser awarded permanent name suppression to a Manawatu man convicted after 300,000 pornographic images, including child pornography and pictures of sexual abuse, were found on his computer. He had been charged with possession and distribution of illegal images after a criminal investigation in the US found one of the trails led to Palmerston North.
One of the reasons the judge gave for granting permanent name suppression was because he felt the man was not a threat in New Zealand because the pictures were of abuse victims from overseas. How the judge made that illogical connection is unclear but he evidently saw it as offending on the light side. So it was permanent name suppression and four months home detention as the penalty.
But in December the same judge refused name suppression to a 25-year-old convicted of having objectionable images of child pornography in his possession. At that time the judge said the images “invite the abuse and exploitation of children, who are defenceless, for the gratification of you and other like-minded people”.
Is there a double standard here? Of course.
The bulk of our judges come from a small coterie who attended private schools or state schools in high income areas. Their empathy extends more easily to their own while less well connected offenders get the full force of community contempt expressed through the judiciary. So often it smacks of the boys club looking after each other.
Justifications for suppression are understandable but usually unjustified. If a person has a high profile there will be a greater impact on them and their family but isn’t this justice being seen to be done? If they suffer more as a result then tough.
Adding to the problem is that name suppression in a country as small as New Zealand for high-profile offenders is close to meaningless.
Recently it was reported a former MP from the top half of the South Island was charged with sexual assault on a teenager. I wasn’t particularly interested to know who but a couple of nights ago the man’s name emerged in a dinner conversation with a visitor. Anyone wanting to find out has surely done so by now.
When a person charged doesn’t have a high profile another insidious effect can occur. Name suppression can cast a pall over an entire group such as recently when a teacher on Auckland’s North Shore appeared in court on sexual offences. Most male teachers in the area will feel uncomfortable till name suppression is lifted.
So what is the point of suppression anyway? High profile offenders such as sportspeople or celebrities these days hire public relations agents who advise the staging of a fulsome public apology, preferably with a few tears or at least a choking voice, and public absolution will follow – as it does. Witness Tony Veitch.
If I had a reservation about removing name suppression for high-profile offenders it would be that important news would be further subverted by tabloid trivia. Just look at the braindead decision at Television New Zealand to cancel an interview with the Prime Minister on Close Up last week in favour of a fulsome televised apology by a former All Black for groping a teenager in Fiji. This was despite John Key’s major announcement to parliament of far-reaching tax reforms.
Name suppression to protect the victims or family members of an offender are more worthy of consideration and can only be judged on their individual merits. Convictions for incest without name suppression for example would inevitably rebound heavily on the victim. It is surely cases such as these that the suppression guidelines were designed to fit rather than protecting sensitivities in an old boys network.
Most of the Manawatu will now know the name of the Palmerston North community pillar. His wife and family are already suffering. Name suppression will not save them hurt and embarrassment. They too are victims of crime and deserve support and assistance to help cope.
ENDS
Government fails national standards in honesty
We all expect politicians to bend the truth as they spin their policies to the public but Prime Minister John Key and Education Minister Anne Tolley went a step further last week when they defended the policy of national standards. They told some porkies.
Emeritus Professor of Education from Massey University Ivan Snook has drawn attention to a government release which he politely described as containing “four major errors, and a serious dishonesty”.
It’s worth recording the Professor’s points because the media, which has been strongly supportive of national standards, has reported the government at its word rather than the reality. Professor Snook says:
“The (government) statement claims that the ERO report (2009) found that (1) “two thirds of school leaders were not properly managing assessment.” It did not: it found that “some” leaders “trusted their junior school teachers or leaders who knew the students well.” This is perfectly reasonable. (2) “30% of teachers were not doing a good job of teaching reading and writing.” It did not: it found that 10% of teachers were less than adequate. (3) “Many principals aren’t adequately sharing their school’s achievement information with their communities.” It did not: it found that they reported to the school community about their own school but did not always give comparative data from other schools: why should they if the point is to inform parents as to how their children are performing? (4) ERO gave 30% of teachers a “pretty damning” verdict on their performance. It did not: it found that 90% of teachers were performing adequately or better. (5) “The ERO report found in 2007 that more than half of schools were not using assessment data well.” It did. BUT the 2009 report found that two-thirds are now using it well and mentions this as an enormous improvement (without any national standards!)”
While misuse of statistics and reports is nothing new it’s a dereliction of public duty that the media have not held the government to account for this misinformation – which Education Minister Anne Tolley repeated on TVNZ’s Q & A programme on Sunday morning.
The public and parents in particular are the losers in this important debate.
For the first time since the election John Key is not charming his way through a difficult problem. He ploughed into a direct attack on teachers and principals last week as he picked up the pieces from widespread concern from principals, teachers and educational professionals that the national standards policy has dangerous pitfalls.
Instead of emphasising the supposed aim of improving student achievement, the gloves came off. John Key assailed the teacher unions saying they were defending poor teachers and did not want to face public accountability for themselves or their schools. It was back to what National does well – teacher bashing – and in this case the blatant misuse of an ERO report to promote unpopular policy.
We are in a battle for the hearts and minds of parents who are largely confused about the policy. A New Zealand Herald readers’ poll backed the idea of national standards but most said they knew very little about what it was and the effects it would have on their kids.
The group which has been largely invisible in the debate are educational academics and this is a serious lacking. These are the people with no axe to grind but who know the most about what works and what doesn’t in assessing children. They also have widespread knowledge of successful and unsuccessful assessment policies from around the world. Almost to a person they are strongly opposed to the government plans for national standards. They say that not only will the objective of raising educational achievement not be realised but that the collateral damage to children and schools makes it unacceptable.
There is no disagreement that every parent has a right to know how their child is progressing and how they compare to other children of the same age. This information also needs to be presented plainly and honestly to parents. In reality this is what most schools are doing well and ERO can bring others up to the mark.
Schools already know which students are struggling. These kids don’t deserve being labelled failures at the age of five. Instead they need resources so practical help can give them their best chance at education. As national standards become more important for schools with the publication of league tables the focus of teachers will shift to “teaching to the tests” with other areas of the curriculum neglected. Schools will more resemble sausage factories than inspiring beacons of educational achievement.
This unfortunate impact of similar policies overseas is being ignored by the government which is pursuing another agenda altogether. John Key and Anne Tolley want to create a “market” in schooling where parents can move their children between private and state schools and where the quality of education will depend on how much a parent can afford to top up what the government provides. Then we will see the gaps widen even further as the children of the poor pay more heavily for the selfishness of others.
Shortly to arrive in our letterboxes, at a taxpayer cost of $200,000, will be a government leaflet promoting national standards. It’s appropriate John Key has put the National Party logo on every page because this is an ideological political programme, not a policy to improve our kids’ education.
ENDS
Thirteen well-paid men favour tax cuts for the rich
“We believe the thirteen highly paid men on the group have prioritised and aligned the interests of business and the well paid over the interests of ordinary New Zealanders.”
This is the best summary I’ve seen of last week’s report from the government’s Tax Working Group. The savage criticism was delivered by the bank employees’ union spokesperson Andrew Campbell and it’s an accurate rundown because whichever way you look at it the TWG proposals would shift the tax burden further onto those least able to bear it.
Added credence is given to this view with the revelation that an Inland Revenue sampling of 100 of our wealthiest citizens found only about half paid the highest tax rate of 38%. What’s more, according to Mark Weldon from the New Zealand Stock Exchange Association who sits on the group, these wealthy tax avoiders include “some on the government’s own Tax Working Group”. He should have named and shamed them outright.
Surely tax abuse should have been a key focus for the TWG but instead the government appointed some tax cheats themselves to the group with the inevitable outcome.
Most income earners have no way of avoiding tax. Wage and Salary earners, the majority of workers, face PAYE tax on everything they earn and GST on everything they buy while the well off, including members of the TWG itself, can use trusts and other mechanisms to disguise their real income and then, for example, line up to collect the benefits of Working for Families.
Finance Minister Bill English has made it clear the overall tax changes in the budget will be neutral. If cuts are made in one place then tax must increase elsewhere so that if the government follows the TWG recipe and cuts the top personal and company tax rates then the rest of us must pay more. Increasing GST is the suggestion so that any small personal tax cuts for middle and low income earners would be swamped by a hike in GST to 15% to leave most of us worse off. It’s a shameful suggestion.
I’m not one to quote Roger Douglas favourably but even the Act MP says “We may get lower personal income taxes, but if those reductions are funded by increasing GST, then we are merely pushing more of the burden onto lower income New Zealanders.” It’s a pity Douglas didn’t use the same reasoning when he introduced GST in the first place as Finance Minister back in the 1980s with precisely the outcome he now acknowledges.
Much has been made of how “broken” our tax system is to pave the way for public acceptance of reform. The TWG claims the current system is unfair, does not encourage economic growth and is not sustainable. But looking at the report it’s difficult to see the justification for any of the major recommendations.
For example the proposal to lower the top levels of personal and company tax is no less than a reward for wealthy individuals who manipulate the system to avoid paying tax. The evidence of this is clear from the IRD survey and in any case the TWG says our 38% top tax rate is not high by OECD standards. So there is no argument here for decreasing the top personal tax rate. A much better case could be made for an increase.
Similarly for the proposal to drop the company tax rate by 10%. We only have to look at the big Australian-owned banks to see companies which tried to diddle New Zealand taxpayers out of $2 billion through illegal tax avoidance in recent years.
As Andrew Campbell puts it “Australian banks, which make millions in profits, should not receive further tax cuts while their workers have to pay more on GST at the supermarket.”
In fact the major beneficiaries of lowering the top company tax rates will be foreign-owned companies which include most of our big corporations. The TWG’s pious hope is that this money will be reinvested but where is the evidence? The most likely outcome is more of our country’s wealth repatriated overseas in dividends to be invested elsewhere while our current accounts deficit soars.
The issue which should have been at the heart of TWG concern is our high level of income inequality and the escalating social problems which are a direct result. The tax system is one way of helping to level the opportunity field for all families and give everyone the chance to get ahead. Instead the TWG has played to a selfish corporate audience.
The 13 well-off men on the TWG should have been required to prepare a budget for a family living below the poverty line. That would have been a good starting point.
ENDS
Keeping the lid on democracy in Haiti
It’s encouraging to see the big humanitarian response to the plight of the Haitian people following last week’s devastating earthquake. Here in New Zealand relief organisations have set up special appeals and wide coverage has been given on New Zealanders caught up in the disaster.
The international reaction included high profile comments from US President Barack Obama: “You will not be forsaken. You will not be forgotten. In this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton abandoned her visit here on the strength of her desire to oversee the US relief effort. But there’s another reason for swift US action in Haiti supported by its Secretary of State.
The US is worried the power vacuum created by the devastation will give opportunity for political forces to develop which are hostile to US interests. Unfortunately the Haitian people have the disturbing habit of voting for politicians who put local needs ahead of the empire’s interests.
According to Wikipedia there have been no less than 32 coups in Haiti and from the outside one might think this is a country riven by factional fighting where there is no respect for democracy. A closer look however shows almost all these coups were instigated by imperial powers to exploit the wealth of the territory for their traders and merchants in earlier times and for today’s multi-national companies.
Early on the territory was overrun variously by the Spanish and French. African slaves were introduced and intermarried with the local people and Haiti today is the only country in the world to have emerged from a slave revolt.
But after independence is has never been left alone as the 32 coups testify.
In recent decades the United States has taken the lead in “overseeing” Haiti. From 1957 to 1986 the country was ruled by the brutal and corrupt Duvalier family backed by the military. Death squads were set up to eliminate any opposition. The US supported the regime and its suppression of opposition.
However huge demonstrations in 1986 made it impossible for the US to continue to support Duvalier family rule. They had outlived their usefulness and so the US arranged for the family to move into exile in France. Elections held in 1990 brought the popular leader John-Bertrand Aristide to power as President with 67% of the vote.
Aristide is a former Catholic priest who worked with the people in Haiti’s urban slums. He sided with the poor and the marginalised, the majority of the population, but was never given the chance to rule without overwhelming pressure and interference from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund who have a stranglehold over almost every developing country. They largely controlled the purse strings and insisted the country follow the “Washington Consensus” whereby public infrastructure and social services are privatised and the interests of the poor, the majority of the population, are abandoned.
Aristide played a cat and mouse game with the US on economic policy and has served three terms as President. However he was overthrown in a coup less than a year after he was first elected but was re-elected President with 91.8% of the vote in 2000 and 73 of the 83 parliamentary seats going to his political party.
The US has worked hard to destabilise and undermine his leadership and done its best to vilify Aristide. They accused him of all manner of corruption. In 2004 he was ousted in another US inspired coup (by kidnapping) and now lives in exile in South Africa. Today he remains the most popular political figure in Haiti but is unable to return, unlike Hillary Clinton who flew in a few days ago.
Following his ousting the United Nations sent in a widely criticised “stabilising force” after Aristide’s supporters began campaigning for the return of their democratically elected President.
An organisation called Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights reported in 2005 that the UN stabilization force “effectively provided cover for the police to wage a campaign of terror in Port-au-Prince’s slums” which constitute “an unflinching bastion of support for Aristide and for Lavalas.” (Aristide’s political organisation)
With the UN building in the capital levelled in last week’s earthquake the US army is now sending 10,000 marines to keep up the stabilisation work.
So when Hillary Clinton abandoned New Zealand last week she had much more on her mind than helping the Haitian people devastated by earthquake. Keeping a lid on democracy on the Caribbean Island remains a key US priority.
ENDS
Xmas hope lies in stroppy Copenhagen protest
Over the past 16 years I’ve taken my kids away camping in the week before Xmas. I detest the frenetic, consumerist hype of the season, the cloying Xmas carols piped to crowds of exasperated shoppers with tired toddlers and the in-your-face push to spend, spend, spend. Add in Auckland’s daily traffic chaos in the growing heat of summer and if there’s a purgatory on earth then this is it.
The chance to holiday away from the rush has mental and financial benefits while keeping the kids occupied in sparsely populated camping grounds beside beautiful beaches is the best bonus.
If you can’t get away this year then try to plan for it next year. It comes with a high recommendation for families with young kids.
Most of us know we will overspend and overindulge at this time of year but the inevitable momentum of the season propels us onwards to a host of family responsibilities and expectations.
Most kids are overindulged. Gifts from parents and extended family members can overwhelm them with junk. For many years now plastic crap and cheap rubbish have replaced the solid treasured toys of previous generations. So much of the stuff that looks good in its gaudy shrink plastic wrapping turns out to be less than robust and lasts just long enough to disappoint.
I hope this doesn’t sound Scrooge-like. Xmas should be the family highlight of the year but it’s become more a celebration of consumption.
I wonder what Jesus Christ, whose birthday Xmas celebrates, would have thought of the whole scene. I think he’d be avoiding the frenzy and living the words of his Sermon on the Mount. He’d be spending his time (and his money) with the lonely, the marginalised and the poor.
This year most of my gifts will buy ducks, cement, mangroves, water, goats, chickens and seeds for families in overseas development projects. They are gifts you purchase through Christchurch-based Christian World Service for your family members to send to CWS project partners in Timor Leste, Uganda, the Philippines, India and other places in the developing world. What better gift could we give our own kids before we even begin to consider how it will transform lives in other places? If we want children to develop good human values of generosity, selflessness and compassion this is a good way to start. So why not make the first gift you buy your kids and other family members some ducks ($15) or a goat ($30)? It also means you can stop worrying about buying something for those who have everything and what’s more it’s also they are the only gifts in the marketplace which come with a tax deductible receipt.
If you want to follow up then check out the CWS special gift programme on www.cws.org.nz
And how about a gift voucher to a child saying you have given the gift of a food parcel on their behalf to a New Zealand family living in poverty. Your local foodbank will be grateful. The Auckland City Mission newsletter says their emergency food parcels issued this year are up 52%. I think it’s the first gift Jesus Christ would have given.
If you buy children’s books then why not look for a book with a message that matches the supposed values of the season? I’m not sure what’s around for kids these days but I recall a delightful story about Xmas for an impoverished family from Poland. It was called Just Enough is Plenty and the story matches the message of its title. Unfortunately we should by now have our own home-grown stories with the same theme, given the level of endemic poverty in New Zealand.
Meanwhile our government is preparing an important Xmas gift for our children as well. John Key is heading to Copenhagen to join with other governments to come to an agreement on climate change. Whatever emerges will help decide what environmental legacy our generation will be leaving for our kids.
All the signs are that it will most likely be a weak, self-interested, short-sighted approach to global warming which will leave a badly crippled planet for them to inherit.
Having further watered down Labour’s already inadequate legislation, New Zealand at Copenhagen is siding with the developed world which is striving to continue its own unsustainable emissions and shift more climate responsibility onto developing countries.
The protests on the streets at Copenhagen will help balance the heavy pressure being wielded by the corporate sector who use governments as a cover to push their growth-at-all-costs agenda.
We can’t rely on John Key. A stroppy, successful Copenhagen protest is the best gift we can hope for our kids this Xmas.
ENDS
TVNZ has retarded attitude to Paul Henry
I wasn’t going to write about Paul Henry. I didn’t see the point in saying the obvious about his mocking of UK singer Susan Boyle as a “retard”. But the failure of Television New Zealand to act on its own behalf (and our behalf because it is a state broadcaster) and deal with him is deplorable.
We are now two weeks after the event and there’s still no sign of criticism from the TVNZ leadership for Henry’s boorish behaviour. And no apology from Henry either. It’s been left to his colleague Peter Williams to issue a public criticism. Williams told the audience at last Thursday’s Attitude Awards, to honour New Zealanders with disabilities, that “I completely disassociate myself from Paul Henry. I only wish he could be at nights like tonight, to be inspired by people with amazing attitudes.”
Henry’s comments have been excused by saying Boyle suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and was therefore technically retarded. But Henry went much further, saying “here’s the really interesting revelation: she is in fact retarded….And if you look at her carefully, you can make it out”.
Retard is now used as a broad term of abuse from the days when it was used to describe a mental deficiency. But it was Henry’s mocking use of the term which was offensive and obnoxious. He laughingly used it as a term of ridicule and thought it was all a joke.
He did the same earlier this year mocking a woman guest on his show for having what he described as a moustache.
These are the sorts of things one might expect to hear from immature adolescents in a school playground. Why should we have to put up with it from a host on broadcast television?
In all likelihood TVNZ has given Henry a nod and a wink and encouraged him to be a bit “edgy” and “push the boundaries” in a pitch for his programme to be the breakfast television equivalent of talk-back radio.
Whether or not that’s true the latest Henry incident marks a new low point for TVNZ. It’s hard to see it as other than another marker in how far the broadcaster has slipped into terminal decline.
I watch very little television and can’t remember the last time I watched TV1 or TV2. They have been used as a political football by governments for a long time and it shows.
Most recently Labour gave TVNZ the impossible job, via so-called Charter obligations, to be both a high quality local programmer while at the same time providing a dividend to the government through advertising income as a commercial broadcaster. To cut a long story short this was a failure and the demand for dividends from successive governments has led TVNZ in a race to the bottom as it pitches lower and lower. The latest Henry saga is the lowest watermark yet for this once impressive organisation.
Meanwhile the government is using the recession as an excuse to slash public spending and is taking the axe once more to TVNZ with reports the broadcaster needs to make $30 million more in saving after it cut 80 staff positions in March following a $25 million shortfall in advertising revenue. It’s a fair bet that after the next election the National Government will move to privatise all or most of TVNZ and it’s hard to see there will be much of a public outcry. Is there anything worth saving from this broadcaster we could once have felt some pride in? I don’t think it’s salvageable as a state broadcaster.
Any self-respecting organisation would have taken Henry off air till the whole issue was dealt with. With his past transgressions I’d have expected him to have been cast adrift permanently a long time back.
Instead of acting on its own behalf TVNZ says it will wait for formal complaints to be lodged and will then follow through with a process to decide if Henry’s behaviour was offensive and warrants further action.
It seems TVNZ is beginning to reflect the standards of the cheap reality TV shows it broadcasts which celebrate the ritual humiliation and degradation of competitors in subject areas as diverse as cooking, survivalist camps, pop shows and modelling. We are seeing more and more extreme versions of these shows as they seek to outdo each other and win the ratings battle on behalf of corporate advertisers.
So instead of working to provide quality television TVNZ is looking for cheap distractions to keep viewers watching between the adds. Paul Henry fits the bill.
ENDS
Lots of good reasons to support this $15 petition
Last Saturday I spent three hours at Auckland’s Grey Lynn Festival collecting signatures for Unite Union’s $15 minimum wage campaign.
The aim is to get 300,000 signatures for a citizen’s initiated referendum which asks the question “Should the adult minimum wage be raised in steps over the next three years, starting with an immediate rise to $15 per hour, until it reaches 66% of the average total hourly earnings as defined in the Quarterly Employment Survey?” (For the record the adult minimum wage is currently $12.50 an hour with the minimum for 16 and 17 year olds set at 80% of the adult minimum for their first 200 hours or three months employment)
In general I’m not a fan of CIRs. The experiences here and in places such as California have been negative with contradictory outcomes being common.
However unlike most previous New Zealand referenda this one asks an unambiguous question and if adopted would do more to close the wage gap with Australia than any of the pontificating from the Don Brash-led taskforce.
It’s a popular petition. Nine out of ten agree immediately and sign without a second thought – the issue resonates immediately. Instinctively people know New Zealand workers are well behind where they should be and are still losing ground.
The reactions of the 10% who won’t sign are interesting. One man told me the problem was too much taxation and politicians were wasting public money. There’s always an element of truth in politicians wasting public money – Rodney Hide comes to mind – but when I asked him why it was that countries with the highest taxation had the highest standard of living he exploded. “Liar, liar” he fumed. I gave the example of the Scandinavian countries where taxes are high but services in areas such as health and education are the best in the world. Confronted with an uncomfortable challenge to his prejudices he became more agitated. “Liar, liar, liar” was all he could splutter loudly and continuously while his partner signed the petition. I made a last attempt to break through with reason but he was a lost cause. His partner apologised as she handed back the clipboard…
Several people I spoke to were small business owners who employed staff. A woman dealing in cut flowers said the profit margins were too small and raising the minimum wage could put her out of business. However it turned out she paid her staff $18 an hour and agreed $15 wasn’t an excessive ask for any employer. She agreed the problem for employers would be greatly reduced if the minimum moved in all businesses at the same time.
One young man shrugged off the petition. He said he’d started out being paid $7 an hour and because he did it hard others after him should do the same – he wasn’t prepared to lift a finger or engage in a wider discussion.
Another woman quizzed me at length about the effect raising the minimum would have. She said it might make it harder for young people to get jobs. I told her this was predicted by employers several years back when the campaign to raise the minimum to $12 an hour (from $9.25) was launched. It didn’t happen. Youth employment actually increased throughout the time Labour moved to $12 over three years. We agreed that this could change in an economic downturn but the country is coming out of recession (so we are told) and by the time the referendum is held unemployment should be decreasing steadily.
Only one person said to me he thought “the market” should set pay rates and there should be no minimum. Roger Douglas would have been proud – here was a true apostle. He didn’t stay to explain how a family should be expected to survive with a breadwinner earning perhaps $5 an hour at times of high unemployment. Already we have too many working families living in poverty.
Another said she’ll never sign a petition again after she signed one and ended up on a mailing list. I sympathised but she moved off before I could ask why she would let someone else’s behaviour limit her democratic participation.
But what surprised me most was the depth of feeling which accompanied the willing signatures. About 200 signed my sheets in three hours which I thought was pretty good despite knowing another 250,000 are needed before May 1st next year.
Getting enough signatures will depend on how many people across the country can help out. If 1000 people commit to getting 300 signatures each we will get there. The union is calling such people working-class heroes. Indeed!
ENDS
Hone Harawira – speaking truth to power
If you drive from Auckland to Hamilton you pass through some of the richest farmland in the world. Settlements like Pokeno, Rangiriri and Huntly dot the route as the road runs down from the Bombay Hills and along the Waikato River.
Along the way virtually everything you see in all directions is confiscated land. It was stripped from Tainui after the British colonial army marched down Auckland’s Great South Road and invaded the Waikato in 1863. The land was taken for the alleged “rebellion” of Tainui but the Waitangi Tribunal found the people of the Waikato had never rebelled but had been forced into a defensive war.
The same story is repeated around the country most particularly in the Bay of Plenty and Taranaki. All together more than three million acres of prime land was confiscated as a result of the land wars of the 1840s and 1860s.
Even Tuhoe, who refused to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, had their most productive coastal lands in the Bay of Plenty confiscated by the Crown because they supported other tribes in the defence of their land such as at the famous battle at Orakau Pa. The confiscation of land was officially punishment for Maori resistance but the real reasons were to provide highly productive land for land-hungry European settlers as well as to defray the costs of war to seize the land in the first place.
Other myriad cases of alienation of Maori land through bribery, corruption and theft have been well-documented through the Waitangi Tribunal process but the history remains obscure to most.
Alienation has continued through most of the intervening decades. The Maori Land Court was used to individualise and privatise land titles and force the sale of Maori owned land through demanding payment of rates and dog taxes. More land was seized under the Public Works Act for war purposes and never returned.
Setting aside the expletives, Hone Harawira was 100% correct when he said “…white motherf…ers have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries.” And later when he singled out Phil Goff and Labour for the biggest recent land grab – the foreshore and seabed – it needs to be seen as part of the same historical context. Those who say the issues of the 19th century have no relevance in the 21st century ignore recent history and how the devastating impact of colonisation on Maori continues to be visited in the present.
None of this should need to be said but the reaction of so many to Harawira’s angry email resembles the deeply embedded racism which Don Brash tapped into so successfully a few years back at Orewa.
I’ve been very critical in the past of the Maori Party judging people on their race rather than their behaviour. For example the refusal of Pita Sharples to criticise Robert Mugabe as he brutalised Zimbabweans, the support shown for Donna Awatere-Huata (convicted fraudster) and Taito Philip-Field (convicted of bribery and corruption). In each case the Maori Party leadership reacted to race first and behaviour second despite Awatere-Huata and Field ripping off the very people the Maori Party claims to represent. For some reason this was lost on Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia.
For the next couple of weeks this saga will continue – the Maori Party leadership trying to force Harawira’s resignation and him defending his position in the party. None of this will take Maori or New Zealand any further forward.
Abandoning Hone Harawira is a deeply disappointing approach by the party leadership. It seems they are more concerned about negative pakeha reaction than about the fundamental accuracy of Harawira’s comments and how they are perceived by Maori. It seems Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples have begun to take on the attitudes and values of their political colleagues in coalition.
For her part Tariana Turia has made it her priority to work with National ministers to implement the Whanau Ora programme whereby Maori families will get co-ordinated support from Maori providers through Maori networks. There will be some gains for Maori but these are unlikely to be significant because we know the underlying cause of the extreme social problems we face in New Zealand is the high level of income inequality which has blossomed in the past 25 years. Hone Harawira is the Maori MP who understands this better than most.
It’s the Maori Party leadership, rather than Hone Harawira, which faces a critical decision in the next couple of weeks. Will it seek to appease National or will it accommodate its strongest voice which speaks truth to power?
ENDS
