TVNZ – a reassessment

Apart from 7 years abroad, I have grown up with TVNZ’s channel one and was privileged to serve six years on its board – 2011 to 2017

Up until recently I retained a forlorn hope that it was possible to create a hybrid public service/commercial TV operation, that was positively New Zealand oriented, presenting objectively the reality of life here, and abroad.

I wrote an open letter to Paul Goldsmith when he became minister of communication, outlining exactly how this could be done. It involved a very simple amendment to the Broadcasting Act 1989, adding TVNZ to Radio NZ to be funded directly from the public purse and removing it from The NZ On Air contestable public funding system.

This did not eventuate and I believe we are now beyond the point of no return. TVNZ is now just a commercial entity that happens to be owned by the taxpayer. It serves no more public good than any other commercial media.

I have ceased watching any programmes and would only use TVNZ+ to view Country Calendar, a programme with integrity. It retains a few good journalists such as Garth Bray and Jack Tame, but far too many are left wing and tabloid and love “gotcha” journalism. Whether it succeeds commercially or fails is of no consequence to me. Its sale/breakup value is not great, maybe $200-300 million, being fixed assets and cash in the bank.

In a small economy like ours, some public good funding of media makes sense, provided the funder is not ideological captured by any narrow group. I somehow doubt either NZ On Air or the Film Commission, are funding an adequate range of perspectives, and too many are being shut out one way or the other. Part of the problem I suspect is that left of centre folk are more likely to come up with programme proposals, than the right, This could be remedied by the decision makers being seen to be open to alternative thinking.

The other issue how does the public know about which programmes, video or sound, are funded? NZ On Air and the Film Commission, should find a way of ensuring the wider public is aware of any media outlets and content they have funded.

The rise of NZ First which, I expect is likely to continue, indicates something about how a growing dissatisfaction with the Wellington intellectual establishment, including media. This establishment has never been more out of touch with the rest of the country. It’s not just central government which has been undermined by zealots pursuing an agenda. I live in the capital and see what damage zealots in the Council staff have done to its residents. Zealotry has permeated the public sector generally – check out what the Taxpayers Union reveals from its many OIAs to see some of the mischief.

The NZ Initiative paper by director Oliver Hartwich, about who really runs the government, pinpoints a reality that’s not good for an enduring democracy. In essence Oliver argues the architecture of government leaves ministers responsible for everything done, but lacking the tools or levers to ensure the policies they want and elected on, are actually implemented successfully.

The tragedy is mainstream media seems to have little interest in this issue, even though it’s critical to our country having a credible democracy. There is alternative media, some of which is quite good, but hard for ordinary Kiwis to find and there are many rabbit holes for them to dive into.

Dunedin national scandal ignored by most mainstream media

Thanks to the Otago Daily Times, Peter Williams and now Bryce Edwards, we know a lot about how health contracting in Dunedin has failed both Maori and Pacifica patients, and the taxpayers.

However I see no evidence that mainstream media has picked up this shocker. Why?

If the provider were an organisation like Family First, I am sure mainstream media would have been all over it demanding scalps and government action. DIA is on the case but I am not sure what Health NZ is doing to correct this delinquent operator – Te Kaika a health agency set up to provide services for Maori and Pacifica in particular.

The media silence to me suggests a fear they will be accused of racism or colonialism, if they picked up this scandal which is well documented by the ODT. Mainstream media has failed yet again and wonders why its credibility with the public is just above 30%.

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Democracy Briefing: Te Kāika and the broken model of social service contracting

BRYCE EDWARDS

MAR 24

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In Dunedin, a charity called Te Kāika has been receiving tens of millions of dollars in government funding to provide health and social services to some of the city’s most vulnerable people. Over the past year, the Otago Daily Times has been methodically pulling back the curtain on what is going on inside this organisation. The picture is not pretty: nepotistic governance, unexplained payments to the leadership, staff fleeing in droves, government contracts unfulfilled, a youth facility shut down over abuse allegations, and a senior manager convicted of domestic violence. The Department of Internal Affairs is now investigating.

And yet, almost nobody else in New Zealand media or politics has said a word about it.

That silence matters too. Because this is no longer just a story about one Dunedin charity going off the rails. Te Kāika shows what can go wrong when the state hands over essential services, then barely checks what is happening on the ground. It’s a story about a gap between the language of empowerment and what actually happens on the ground.

It should make people far less comfortable about the bipartisan faith in outsourced social services

How Te Kāika went off the rails

Te Kāika – meaning “the village” – was established in Caversham, South Dunedin, in 2015 as a GP practice aimed at Māori, Pasifika, and low-income whānau. The kaupapa made a lot of sense: low-cost primary care wrapped around the needs of poorer Māori and Pasifika families. For a while it worked. During Covid-19, Te Kāika ran the South Island’s first mass drive-through vaccination centre. The Otago Daily Times (ODT) editorialised about its “remarkable rise.” People were impressed.

Then it grew extremely fast. Revenue trebled in a single year, from $4 million to over $12 million between 2021 and 2022. Staff went from about 20 to 120. The charity took on dozens of government contracts for everything from addiction services to youth justice. It opened satellite clinics in Queenstown and Oamaru. It built a $10-million-plus “Wellbeing Hub” in Caversham. It even spent $606,000 sponsoring the Highlanders rugby team.

But the governance was flimsy. For nearly five years, the board consisted of just two people: chairwoman Donna Matahaere-Atariki and Matapura Ellison – a breach of the charity’s own constitution, which requires a minimum of three. The University of Otago, which had been involved early on, withdrew its shares in 2020, and all the outside voices on the board departed.

Then in June 2022, founding CEO Albie Laurence was abruptly replaced by Matt Matahaere (the chairwoman’s son). Her daughter, Winnie Matahaere, manages social services. When the board was eventually expanded to three members in 2023, the new addition was an accountant who had previously been suspended from practice for two years for breaching the chartered accountants’ ethical code.

Ask yourself the obvious governance question: how could the chief executive be independently held to account by the board, when the board chair is his mother?

What the ODT uncovered

The Otago Daily Times, principally Rob Kidd and Mary Williams, has been digging into this story for more than a year. The December 2025 series, headlined “Trouble in the Village,” ran across four broadsheet pages – a rarity in modern New Zealand journalism.

The ODT revealed unsecured, interest-free loans to board chair Donna Matahaere-Atariki and to chief executive Matt Matahaere. One former employee’s grievance alleged he had been “bullied and ridiculed… to breaking point.” The charity spent $260,000 on “termination benefits” in a single year.

The ODT also reported on Rema Smith, Te Kāika’s former manager of social practice, who was convicted on charges including burglary, unlawfully taking a vehicle, assault in a family relationship, and breaching the Search and Surveillance Act. He turned up at his victim’s home with patched gang members driving his work vehicle.

Te Kāika’s chief executive sought name suppression for Smith to protect the charity’s reputation. Matt Matahaere also gave Smith a glowing reference to support his move to Dove Hawke’s Bay, a domestic violence support organisation. Dove’s CEO later said he felt “misled”: “If I had all the facts, I wouldn’t have taken him on.”

One Te Kāika youth remand home was shut for nine months after allegations that caregivers had abused young people there. A Te Kāika youth justice worker punched a teenager up to 15 times, stomped on him, then lied to police about it. A doctor allegedly supplied cannabis to a patient in the carpark. The charity’s own GP was convicted of evading nearly $140,000 in taxes, attributing it to “self-entitlement and greed.”

The Story gets worse

To its credit, the ODT has kept digging this year. And the newer material may be even worse, because it goes to the most basic issue of all: are the services actually being delivered?

Over the weekend the ODT reported that Te Kāika’s main site appeared to have just one part-time GP serving thousands of enrolled patients. The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners recommends a ratio of about 1,000 patients per GP; Te Kāika’s Caversham hub reportedly has one doctor working four days a week for 5,000 to 6,000 patients.

Clinical consultations plummeted by nearly two-thirds in a single year (from 44,939 to 15,874), while patient registrations (and the government capitation payments that come with them) kept climbing. That matters because capitation funding follows enrolled patients, not the number of times they are actually seen.

Te Kāika has also refused to define what it regards as “clinical consults”. One case reported by the ODT tells you a lot. A patient, Rochelle Hodge, told the ODT she only discovered she’d been seen by a nurse rather than a doctor when she read the signature on her prescription for anti-inflammatories. She had come in with a painful foot. The nurse’s treatment didn’t help. A pharmacist later suggested she see a physiotherapist, who organised an X-ray that found her foot was broken. When she returned to complain, she was told that seeing the nurse was “just like seeing a doctor.”

The charity’s latest accounts revealed that $123,000 was paid to a company wholly owned by the board chairwoman, for “research services.” A separate $20,000 contract was also paid to her. Board member James Hennessy received $61,000 into his private company for rental of Queenstown premises. The conflict-of-interest problems are obvious for an organisation funded overwhelmingly by public money and charitable support.

Te Kāika has also again missed a deadline to file its annual financial return with Charities Services. In ten years it has never filed on time. Over the past decade, the DIA granted the charity 17 deadline extensions. And it often missed those too. When confronted by the ODT about the latest failure, Te Kāika claimed it had “mutually agreed on arrangements” with the DIA. The DIA flatly denied this: “No arrangement has been entered into with the company.”

The DIA investigation has now widened to include what it calls “a number of more substantive concerns.” Its charities services manager warned that “being a charity is a privilege that comes with obligations and responsibilities.”

The Failure of government oversight

But Te Kāika is only part of the story. The other part is the state agencies that kept funding it without asking enough questions.

Health New Zealand funded Te Kāika nearly $1.8 million for an alcohol and drug service that was supposed to employ seven full-time qualified staff. The ODT eventually extracted the staffing data through OIA requests: Te Kāika had only 5.8 FTE for most of 2024. HNZ’s own reporting template didn’t even have a field for the charity to report on staffing. When the ODT compared quarterly performance reports a year apart, they found identical text saying group therapy sessions were still “ready to commence,” clinical groups still “planning to commence.” It was just copied and pasted. A year had passed and nothing had happened.

A $587,000 gambling addiction contract required clinical staff. Quarterly reports showed an employee “looking forward” to clinical staff coming on board, which was the same phrase repeated across multiple reports. HNZ said it had “no reason to believe” the service wasn’t being clinically led, but admitted it didn’t collect the data.

Oranga Tamariki funded eight Te Kāika contracts worth over $3.5 million for 2023–24. Six had “funds reconciled due to underutilisation.” The Ministry of Social Development gave $2.7 million in contracts. A Te Kāika social worker raised safety concerns about doing home visits alone in a family violence role, then left. The client feedback section of their report was blank.

One Dunedin social sector leader told the ODT you could “drive a bus” through some charities’ reports. Another said they were “rarely read” by civil servants. Charity governance expert Garth Nowland-Foreman put it bluntly: “When a board is weak and compromised there are likely to be other accountability failures and in far too many cases we need smarter oversight by government.”

Why this is bigger than Te Kāika

The tempting response to all this is to write Te Kāika off as an outlier: one rogue charity, exceptional in its dysfunction. The specific combination of allegations at Te Kāika is certainly vivid. Family governance, interest-free loans, copy-pasted performance reports, a domestic violence conviction in a family violence service, gang affiliations, covered-up youth abuse – it is quite a list. But the underlying structural conditions that allowed all of this to happen are not exceptional at all. They are features of the system.

The Waipareira Trust case makes this plain. Auckland-based Waipareira, led by CEO John Tamihere, faced a years-long investigation by Charities Services over allegedly using charitable funds to support his mayoral campaign and related political activities. Executive pay at Waipareira reached an average of $510,679 – the highest in the New Zealand charity sector. In December 2025, the Charities Registration Board decided not to deregister the trust after it undertook remedial action, but the board’s chair noted plainly: “Had significant remediation not been taken, the Board’s decision would likely have been different.”

Similarly, the Manukau Urban Māori Authority (where Labour MP Willie Jackson’s wife succeeded him as CEO) has faced a number of concerning allegations recently. So, all three of these state-funded charities (Te Kāika, Waipareira Trust, Manukau Urban Māori Authority) have featured what looks like nepotistic governance structures.

The Auditor-General flagged systemic problems with the Whānau Ora programme as far back as 2015, finding the programme “confusing, bureaucratic and poorly administered” and noting that nearly a third of its $140 million in early funding went to administration rather than to helping whānau. A follow-up report in December 2024 found insufficient progress on accountability. The programme was substantially restructured from July 2025, with new commissioning agencies, stronger conflict-of-interest provisions, and enhanced audit powers. Whether that restructure holds is another matter.

The Te Kāika case also shows how badly government agencies can handle outsourced public services, and how rarely they are held accountable when they fail. Health New Zealand, the Ministry of Social Development, and Oranga Tamariki were all channelling millions to Te Kāika. None of them had adequate oversight mechanisms in place.

This goes beyond Te Kāika. It reflects the way the system now works. This is close to what some scholars call the “shadow state”: charities and NGOs taking over public functions, but without the same transparency or discipline expected of government. The state has outsourced enormous amounts of social provision to NGOs, and has simultaneously failed to build the monitoring, auditing, and evaluation capacity necessary to ensure that outsourcing serves the public interest.

So, the state has become very efficient at shovelling money out the door. It has been far less effective at proving what that money achieves. And in a culture where questioning the kaupapa of Māori service providers has become politically sensitive, the space for honest scrutiny has narrowed further.

Why has everyone else looked away?

Broadcaster Peter Williams – not someone whose overall worldview aligns with mine, it should be noted – described the ODT’s December investigation as “the most substantial piece of investigative journalism produced by a New Zealand newspaper this year” and wrote with evident astonishment the near-total silence that followed. Williams noted the total absence of follow-up: not from RNZ, Stuff, the Herald, Newsroom, or The Spinoff.

Williams put forward one explanation: discomfort with stories that cut close to Māori political power. “Transparency is not racism,” he wrote. “Accountability is not colonisation.” I think that captures part of it. There does seem to be a widespread reluctance in New Zealand media and political culture to subject Māori-led organisations to the same scrutiny applied to other publicly funded entities.

The result is ugly. Māori communities end up with weaker accountability, while a small group of insiders can thrive in the gaps, extracting income and status from state contracts that are nominally directed at the most disadvantaged.

But there are other reasons the story has stayed so contained. Newsroom capacity has been gutted at many outlets. Stories that require months of OIA requests and legal risk don’t fit well into the economics of modern digital journalism. And there is a broader tendency, cutting across the political spectrum, to treat the charitable and community sector as beyond criticism. There’s a notion that it is a realm of good intentions that shouldn’t be subjected to the same scrutiny as business or government.

That is a mistake. Once an organisation is heavily funded by the taxpayer, scrutiny should be non-negotiable. When a charity receives $17.5 million a year, mostly from government contracts, there needs to be accountability. The ODT has demonstrated, painstakingly, that this isn’t happening.

What this says about “Broken New Zealand”

I’ve written a lot about what I call Broken New Zealand: a country where institutions increasingly fail at the job they claim to do, while well-connected interests keep doing nicely out of the mess. I’ve spent a lot of time lately examining the broken state of our economy, our monopolistic markets, our captured political institutions. The NGO and charity sector, however, has largely escaped that kind of scrutiny.

Yet Te Kāika is exactly the sort of case I have in mind. Here is a charity receiving over $17 million a year in public funds, run by a family, with a board that broke its own rules, paying its chairwoman’s company $123,000, failing to deliver on contracted services, unable to keep staff, missing every filing deadline for a decade. One staff member designated “chief operating officer” was paid $213,000.

And yet government agencies have kept making their payments. Health New Zealand, MSD, and Oranga Tamariki collectively poured millions into the organisation without apparently reading the performance reports or checking whether contracted staff had actually been hired.

That is institutional failure. And it has become far too normal in New Zealand. This is not the cinematic version of corruption. It’s a slow rot: vested interests insulated from scrutiny, performance never meaningfully measured, public money siphoned through networks of related parties and family connections, with everyone from government funders to media outlets looking the other way. It’s ticket-clipping dressed up as community empowerment.

Others have used stronger language. And in the private sector or economics profession, it’s called “rent-seeking”. Whatever label you prefer, the end result can be the same: money meant to relieve hardship gets absorbed by managers, insiders, and bureaucracy.

What makes this area worth looking at is how little serious political disagreement there is about it. Unlike debates about the banks, the supermarkets, or the electricity companies, where there is at least some cross-partisan agreement that something is wrong, the contracted-out NGO model has largely escaped critical scrutiny. The political right has always liked contracting out as an alternative to state provision; the left liked the community-empowerment language, and in a Māori context, the alignment with tino rangatiratanga. Both sides found it ideologically convenient, and so nobody asked hard questions.

The result is that too many people keep quiet. And that silence has real costs – borne mostly by the people who depend on these services.

The ODT’s own editorial acknowledged the tension: “Te Kāika needs to succeed.” And that’s true. The communities it was set up to serve genuinely need these services. But the organisation cannot succeed with this governance setup and this level of accountability. DIA charities services manager Helen Steven was right: being a charity is a privilege, not an entitlement.

New Zealand needs to think much harder about how it now delivers social services. Contracting out has become almost unquestioned across the political spectrum. But belief in the model is no substitute for evidence that it works. When government hands millions to an NGO, the public has a right to know whether services are being delivered, whether the money is being spent properly, and whether the people running the show are fit for the job. On all three counts, Te Kāika raises serious doubts – and it is almost certainly not alone.

The ODT has done the work. It’s time the rest of the country paid attention. And it’s time MPs started asking questions.

Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project

Further Reading:

Mary Williams and Rob Kidd (ODT): Thousands of registered patients, one GP on site (paywalled)

Mary Williams (ODT): $123k paid to chair’s company (paywalled)

Mary Williams and Rob Kidd (ODT): Second agency to investigate: Te Kāika now under audit by HNZ (paywalled)

Mary Williams (ODT): Health charity under scrutiny: Probe into Te Kaika widened by govt (paywalled)

Mary Williams (ODT): Charity misses financial deadline (paywalled)

Rob Kidd (ODT): Te Kāika facility closed, probed (paywalled)

Mary Williams (ODT): Questions outnumber answers (paywalled)

Rob Kidd (ODT): Trouble in the village: Star service takes unhealthy turn (paywalled)

Rob Kidd (ODT): Doctor defends supplying cannabis (paywalled)

Rob Kidd (ODT): Former Te Kāika manager guilty of serious charges (paywalled)

Otago Daily Times: Editorial – Te Kāika needs to succeed (paywalled)

Peter Williams: Silence After the Scoop

Peter Williams: The Dysfunctional Maori health trusts

Hormuz crisis may force government reform

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Hormuz crisis may force government reform

Luxon and the head of a pin

It’s very clear from Monday, the political media’s obsession with NZ’s view of the Israeli and American attacks on Iran, PM Luxon does not know how to dance on the head of a pin.

He could not adequately respond to questions about how he viewed the military action taken against the very nuanced official statement on the Beehive website. This is largely because Luxon, unlike Key, is not a natural politician

This skill deficit does not bother me at all and, nor I suspect, most Kiwis. They want a government that can deliver better services and help ease cost of living pressures. However for the woke left wing media majority, who dislike Luxon and hate Trump, nothing less than clear criticism of the military attacks on Iran is good enough, even if there are negative economic consequences for NZ from the vindictive Trump. (Luke Malpass who wrote a balanced article on Luxon and Iran, is excluded from the above.)

So the mainstream media give space also to former PM Helen Clark and Foreign Minister Phil Goff. Both Clark and Goff are seriously intelligent and well informed foreign policy wonks. The trouble is they are wedded to the post war framework of international rules based order which was never perfectly operational and has seriously crumbled over the past decade. Only romantics think it’s coming back any time soon.

We have no world government and the proxies for that dream, are incapable of enforcing rules. When major nations such as the USA, Russia, China and dozens of other countries are not wedded to the international rules created post World War 2, we need alternatives urgently.

As the Canadian PM Carney says, the middle powers (and implicitly small nations) just have to accept the world has changed and make agreements with each other that achieve positive results for them.

While I despise Trump I do accept some of the issues he has focussed are legitimate and required action. This includes protecting borders much better. That is not to excuse the policy excesses. It seems some commentators hate Trump so much they won’t credit anything he does as having merit.

What Israel and the USA achieve in the Middle East is not easily predicted, other than turmoil and change. One positive side benefit is depriving Russia of drones to attack Ukraine, many of which can from Iran. The assault on Maduro and Venezuela is another negative for Putin.

The Gulf States will gain from Iran’s military capacity being degraded. However the ideology behind the Iranian authorities will not vanish nor will their ability to keep manufacturing and using drones etc to attack Gulf States, Israel and the USA. Nor can the Americans and Israelis be sure that Iran is permanently prevented from developing nuclear weapons. North Korea might help them if neither Russia nor China will.

Given his limited verbal dancing skills I recommend Luxon do the following:

With open ended media engagements such as Monday’s press conferences, he responds to the questions to the extent he can give a clear answer. If the same questions persist ask those attending if there is another topic.

If not say thank you and leave the stage.

With media appointments get his staff to negotiate the parameters of the engagement and stick to them. There is no law which says even the PM has to engage with media and play by their rules.

Establish your own rules and stick to them.

Engineers – your country needs you

The essence of the 226 page Infrastructure Commission report is that NZ spends enough on infrastructure, but the value we get is poor compared with like countries. No doubt the terrain and small population thinly spread, will partly explain our underperformance, but I think there is a critical extra element.

This is the paucity of qualified engineers in key decision making roles. Cabinet and Councils are constantly making big decisions having to rely on consultants etc rather than by using their practical real world experience. Excessive reliance on consultants is foolish and expensive.

I have tried to find out how many qualified engineers there were in Parliament and ChatGPT gave me just ACT MPs David Seymour and Simon Court. There are other MPs with STEM qualifications but I do not know whether any have civil or other engineering degrees and experience. This is a massive intellectual/experience deficit for decision makers.

I asked ChatGPT for the number of Mayors with engineering qualifications which came up with just Auckland’s Wayne Brown and Nelson’s Nick Smith. There maybe more.

Parliament on the other hand many MPs with law degrees who are drawn to the political process for obvious reasons as well as many in the social area, including teaching and unions. A few farmers from the practical world.

In Wellington the lack of engineers at governance level has been exposed in three different areas. First the struggling “Wellington Water” had just one engineer on its board who replaced a CEO who departed after performance issues were raised. That left the board with no engineers which was remedied by the appointment of one new director with engineering experience. In my view there should be at least two engineers with relevant experience on the board of this entity and its successor from July 1, 2026.

The Moa Point disaster and the truly massive cost blowouts for the adjacent sludge minimisation plant also indicate a failure at governance level. It’s no good just blaming the Moa Point operator Veolia. The job of directors, in this case the WCC, is to hold contractors to account The WCC failed.

Of course it would be rather helpful if the WCC senior management team included a City Engineer. Someone who would sit next to the CEO along with the CFO. The Grant Thornton report showed the WCC is hopeless at managing contracts which mostly explains the massive cost overruns on projects like the old Town Hall rebuild etc, etc. Hopeless management like this means the WCC is inevitably rorted by contractors. Not one new project of consequence would be started until the WCC becomes a competent contractor.

NZ is not alone in having so many lawyers instead of engineers in its Parliament. A similar situation in Europe according to a BBC podcast I heard. China on the other hand is led by an engineer in President Xi and it shows. Auckland City has Wayne Brown who has used his real world engineering experience to upgrade the city.

My hope is NZ’s political parties will produce more engineers for Parliament so practical people can help make the critical infrastructure decisions necessary. Business as usual won’t cut the mustard.

Cutting losses – governments too slow to learn

Updated 3.20pm

Business generally works out when to cut losses because the risks of failure are too high for shareholders and workers.

Government on the other hand are very slow, regardless of stripe. Grant Robertson got very grumpy with KiwiRail re the ship and ferry land side infrastructure and should have stopped or changed it, one way or the other. Nicola Willis probably acted prematurely without fully thinking through the alternative options which could have included rescoping the land side aspect. Probably still made the right call.

Motu Move, the proposed national ticketing system, is a great concept, but clearly far too complex to deliver effectively at a reasonable cost. The current 14 year capital and operational costs estimate is $1.4 billion, hardly petty cash.

In essence, the Motu card would accommodate 13 regional transport operators and many different concession systems. This helps explain why a concept conceived in 2009 and was approved for funding in 2018, is still not operational. The government says it has been rolled out in Christchurch and a few other places, but in a rather simple way for standard fares.

New transport minister Chris Bishop believes it’s now on a better track despite numerous overruns in the last decade. I don’t share his optimism and believe the programme should cease at the point where it can handle standard fares only. For instance if I should go to Auckland and want to use public transport I want a simple option and the debit card is basic.

The fatal flaw in the overall scheme is the idea of a national card without national pricing. Vastly more stupid than trying to reinvent the wheel. And the most fundamental question is, how many people want a national card to use in 13 regions, with local concessions built in, as distinct from just using their debit or credit car, or smart phone or watch? I suspect very few.

It’s interesting to note the Greater Regional Wellington Council has given up hope on Motu and for $5.5 million will get a Snapper card replacement operating this year. Hopefully they will make good use of the many models offshore and deliver a card I might use in the capital, or at least use my debit card on Wellington buses, which at present is not possible.

Ministers have a habit of creating far too complicated policies that poor old government officials have to implement usually at great cost to the taxpayers. Some officials are complicit with the complexity and or fail to explain to ministers the scale of risk.

I rate Chris Bishop as the smartest National Party minister in part because he has a view of society which goes well beyond traditional National Party thinking. For instance I see him as quite enlightened on housing policy.

Chris, it’s not too late to change course. A simple Motu for standard fares makes a little sense, but more important is the nationwide use of debit cards etc for these fares. Trying to accommodate every regional concession does not make sense and I believe will ultimately founder. Pensioner concessions are easy because they don’t get any younger whereas students and beneficiaries can move in and out of that status. How on earth can any rational person think this system could efficiently handle that?

It’s possible I have misread the situation and welcome any comments on the facts and logic above.

The BSA power grab: Post 2

Media and Communications Minister, Paul Goldsmith’s handling of the BSA power grab follow 80 years of abysmal leadership by National Party governments re broadcasting, which have consistently betrayed their rhetoric about supporting competition and private enterprise.

The National Party Holland/Holyoake government of 1949-1957, did nothing of consequence to roll back the Savage/Fraser Labour governments nationalisation of radio. No private radio under National then nor any TV at all.

TV came in 1960 courtesy of the Nash Labour government. The only sensible thing I recall about the Holyoake National administration after it won the election late 1960, was to convert the old NZ Broadcasting Service into the more independent NZ Broadcasting Corporation.

When David Gapes and co wanted to set up private enterprise radio and they were blocked. They decided to broadcast from a boat but the National Party Minister Scott attempted to physically block the boat from leaving Auckland. Fortunately that failed and so we had one private broadcaster. The law was ultimately changed but getting a radio licence was very difficult and expensive.

I well recall a hearing in Wellington where Robin Cooke QC (Later Lord Cooke) was vigorously challenging Radio Windy’s case, presumably on behalf of the NZBC. The so called private enterprise government had made getting a licence as hard as possible.

The second TV channel also had a convoluted history. It could have had a private enterprise channel if entrepreneur Gordon Dryden had been successful in his advocacy but the incoming Kirk government favoured it being state owned, and Dryden was awarded NZ$50,000 compensation for the shabby way it was handled.

It was Roger Douglas in the Kirk Rowling government of 1972/5 that decided to split then two channels into two competing corporations – TV1 and TV2. This happened after Kirk died on August 31, 1974. It meant we had two news teams around the country and a new radio entity Radio NZ with commercial and non commercial stations.

Not acceptable to National Party leader Rob Muldoon who swept to victory late 1975 and declared he didn’t want two cameras on him at press conferences and so in 1980 the two channels were merged into one – Television New Zealand.

The Lange/Palmer/Douglas government of 1984-89 introduced many reforms which included broadcasting. This opened up the opportunity for private TV and in late 1989 TV3 commenced broadcasting as the first private enterprise TV in NZ. Pay TV operator Sky came later in 1990. The new Act created the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) as a check on the then powerful broadcasters particularly TVNZ and RNZ.

Early this year the Ministry of Culture and Heritage issued a discussion paper on media which included a statement to the effect that as the Broadcasting Act 1989 did not cover internet radio like entities such as The Platform, the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s (BSA) scope should be extended to them. The advantage is seen to be consistency of regulation.

Instead of waiting for the government to decide on whether to proceed down this route the BSA decided existing law did give them jurisdiction over The Platform and presumably Reality Check Radio. This is extraordinary.

One might have thought Minister Goldsmith would have said as we do not believe it has that authority it should await a government decision. But no, according to Kiwiblog he told RNZ’s Media Watch programme:

“That’s in the media reform package that went out for consultation …. and the government’s yet to make final decisions. “There is a lot of noise about it at the moment. Of course if you are in the sector you want to draw attention to yourself and so a lot has been said. I don’t think our democracy is under threat, but it’s an interesting little exercise.

“I think there’s a very small group in that category. They’re within their rights to test that and it may well go to the courts. I’m happy to let that flow through the system and see how it goes”.

I hope the Minister will regret these words because they won’t be career enhancing.

What he is saying is that if The Platform has to spend $100,000 or more testing this through the courts, with the taxpayers also including big costs, he is happy with that. Truly disgraceful in my book. What the Minister and so many regulators don’t understand, is the commercial consequences of their actions.

Small businesses such as The Platform often live from hand to mouth. They have no desire, or time or the money on expensive litigation. Only arrogant regulators, of which NZ has far too many, could make such a truly callous and dopey statement.

What would happen if The Platform were brought under the BSA. It would be inundated with complaints that The Platform had not acceptably dealt with their complaints lodged to it in the first instance. The Platform has many enemies who would relish the opportunity to kill it with numerous complaints.

The real issue is whether the BSA is needed today. Before this power grab I had argued in a submission to the Ministry it should be disestablished because I could only see mischief from extending its scope.

I have reviewed the BSA’s decisions of the last year. Most are dismissed and rightly so. News media does make mistakes and these are sometimes corrected. Often the complaints are about matters of judgement and there is no point in the BSA second guessing judgements made by journalists working under pressure.

I found no issue of real consequence where the BSA had a very useful social role. The news cycle is so fast that decisions rarely if ever matter in the scheme of things. See the number of times Palestine comes up.

The big media change since the BSA was established, is its diversity. No one can regulate it unless they want to emulate Russia or China. This is not hyperbole. Just think about trying to track down commentators on every internet based operation.

Public confidence in mainstream media is around 33% according to AUT. Extending the BSA’s coverage to the likes of The Platform and Reality Check Radio will not increase confidence in mainstream media. Its reputation was seriously damaged by its public funding during and since Covid. Rightly so – I am with the 67%.

PM Luxon thinks the BSA has over reached. The Government has four options:

Do nothing and see what happens in the courts
Extend the scope of the BSA to internet operations.
Make the BSA voluntary for everyone.
Abolish the BSA.

My strong preference is to disestablish the BSA and allow all media entities to decide whether or not to come under a voluntary entity such as the NZ Media Council, which also handles complaints. Self regulation works fine with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

ACT and NZ First have laid out their positions. Is it too much to hope the National Party will end its dismal 80 year record and do the right thing? Or will it be more muddle through?

Further reading: Peter Williams, David Farrar (Kiwiblog), David Harvey (Former judge) and Gary Judd KC, particularly on Radio Hauraki.

The BSA power grab: Post 1

In April 1990 the TVNZ “Frontline” programme broadcast a true block buster: the 46 minute “For the Public Good”. This gripped the nation for months and led to TVNZ receiving eight formal complaints including one from the New Zealand Business Roundtable (NZBR), The Treasury and then Prime Minister David Lange.

The programme dramatically alleged that dealings between the Lange/Douglas government and big business were essentially corrupting the political process. Deep mood music and sinister interpretations were put on meetings Ministers had with big business, and in particular with the NZBR. In essence the main allegation was business was buying government policies.

The NZBR was established in the 1980s but didn’t really get underway until 1986 when former Treasury official Roger Kerr was appointed Executive Director. Roger was loathed by many on the left. After 3.5 years in New York for the NZ Meat Board, I returned at the end of 1989 and in January 1990 commenced business as a consultant with the NZBR handling media etc. Although I knew broadly what the Government did between 1985 and 1990 and was friends with Roger Douglas, I was unfamiliar with the detail.

That night I called an old friend who worked for Lange who was equally stunned and so immediately applied my mind to how best respond to the damaging allegations. I was negative about suing for defamation knowing the pitfalls of that process so did a crash course on other options including the BSA, the route we chose. A senior lawyer and friend also played a key role helping the NZBR.

The fallout was equally as dramatic as the programme. Ultimately key TVNZ staff lost their jobs, TVNZ was sued and complaints were made under the new 1989 Broadcasting Act to TVNZ, and later to the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), when TVNZ did not agree accept most of the complaints.

A press release on June 1 quoted TVNZ’s CEO saying “while the programme contained much useful information and not all complaints have been upheld, the Committee’s findings had showed the programme to have been seriously flawed”.

On June 10 TVNZ broadcast on “Frontline” an item lasting 7.5 minutes which summarised the its Committee’s decisions upon those complaints which had been upheld, contained brief statements from three of the successful complainants and expressed regret for the mistakes in “For the Public Good”

The complainants did not accept the TVNZ Committee decision as satisfactory and formally complained to the BSA. Because the issues were so massive the BSA coopted Sir David Beattie and former RNZ CEO, Geoffrey Whitehead, to help deal with the eight formal complaints, including the NZBR and the Prime Minister.

A very lengthy process followed as can be read on the BSA website. The Authority agreed with a Dominion editorial of 24 May 1990 which said: “The programme was a closely contrived package of suggestion and innuendo, embroidered with emotive language and suggestive camera shots

The engagement with the BSA lasted months and over time it accepted several of the complaints made by the NZBR and others. It later asked the NZBR what it wanted by way of resolution. Roger suggested to me take TV1 off air for a bit. I said the NZBR was unpopular enough as it was and suggested that there be night of zero advertising which ultimately eventuated.

Anyone interested in the scope of the BSA should read the “For the Public Good” episode. It told us several things. First, at that time broadcast media was very powerful. We had just TV 1 and TV2 and a raw newcomer, TV3. Sky TV started in May 1990. No streaming of course.

In my view the BSA was then a useful brake on media power. The situation today is vastly different. Trust in mainstream media is at a new low of 33% according to AUT. I doubt there is much trust in the BSA also but have seen no measure of that. We have the internet which allows access to overseas media such as The Times, the New York Times, BBC, ABC and the Australian. TV audience numbers are well down the situation in 1990 which is why free to air TVNZ is struggling whereas in 1990 advertisers hustled to get prime TV slots.

We also have online news and informed commentary such as Kiwiblog, the New Zealand Initiative and many others. There is also heaps of misinformation in internet land and heavily partisan blog sites. In my next post I will comment on the BSA’s move to cover the streamers as well. In taking on The Platform the BSA has started a fight that might see it curbed or even abolished. I hope so.

“Media” some dangerous proposals

The Ministry for Culture and Heritage is conducting a survey with “proposals to create modern media legislation”. A worthy exercise but the actual online standard format is extremely clunky, not at all clear in parts and seemed repetitious.

For me it gets a D. A pity because media is too important to be left to the so called experts and vested interests, of which there are many.

Submissions can be sent to: [email protected] It’s best to track down the consultation paper on their website: mch.govt.nz and look for Media Reform.

Here is my own take on TV/video media regulation and funding.

Screens – should they be regulated?

I have just bought a new Samsung which with help from the installer ensures I have easy access to offshore streamers and local broadcasters and streamers. Not sure there is a problem here requiring any regulation, but if there is the state should address. This includes captioning.

Any regulation however must have regard for NZ being a tiny market and thus there is no point in adding unnecessary costs to all, to cater for the concerns of very few. The marketplace is fast changing and has shown itself to be very adaptable.

NZ taxpayer funded content – where is it?

At present it is not clear to me which broadcast or streaming outlets are showing content created with the financial support of NZ on Air or The Film Commission. It would be desirable if Kiwis could have a single place where they could view and then click on a link to the broadcaster or streamer carrying the content. Cinemas are best ignored in this respect.

Merging NZ on Air and The Film Commission?

While there is a case for merging the two because of overlapping scopes, I am opposed for two reasons. First, the polytechnic and health mergers have showed how inept the state is achieving sound outcomes at a reasonable cost. Second, while the two entities do have some overlap, creating one would be an enormous concentration of power that could create an obstacle to a creator of visual content out of favour with management. Monopolies are best avoided whenever that is possible.

A better result would be to have some directors in common between the two entities. They might even be accommodated in adjacent office space. The Minister can also achieve some influence on how they work together the statement of expectations.

Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) extension of scope?

Its proposed the BSA coverage be extended to cover local streamers such as The Platform and Reality Check Radio.

The likes of TVNZ and RNZ have the staff to evaluate and deflect official complaints. The private platforms are not so well resourced. If coverage was extended to them, the system would be weaponised against them by the very active left of centre activists on social media to drive them out of business.

As the legacy media is less dominant than it used to be, the public has alternatives which they can view or listen to. Even though I had six years in public broadcasting in NZ, Australia and the UK, and was a director of TVNZ for six years, I no longer listen to RNZ or view TVNZ news, because to me they have both been captured by their left of centre staff.

I do look at their websites because that is efficient but subscribe to: The Times, The Economist and The Atlantic, while also providing some support for The Platform and Wellington Scoop.

One option would be to make the BSA voluntary and self funded. The better option in my view would be to disestablish the BSA and let the industry create its own form of self regulation if it chooses. It seems to work quite well in advertising with the Advertising Standards Authority.

The statutory requirements for balance are not effective but should be retained in the TVNZ and RNZ legislation.

Should streamers such as Netflix be required to produce NZ content?

I oppose this suggestion because the NZ market is truly so tiny it would not be worth while for say Netflix to commercially produce content just for this market. The net result would be either very low cost low value content just to tick a box, or higher prices for NZ consumers. The better option is for the state funder of NZ content to consider proposals from offshore streamers to help support NZ content.

What’s not in the MCH paper?

Rather critically the paper does not discuss, as I recall, the sharp reduction in public respect for NZ media news. The AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (MAD) published its fifth annual Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2024.

“The study’s finding show trust in news in general fell significantly from 42% in 2023 to 33% in 2024 and the proportion of those who actively avoid the news to some extent grew from 69% in 2023, to 75% in 2024.” I am with the majority despite being a keen observer of media.

Some might say public trust has fallen because the media is financially stressed as digital advertising has been largely scooped by the likes of Facebook and Google, who do not provide original NZ news content.

There is some justification for that viewpoint, but in my view it’s not the real reason. Qualitative research would be necessary to tease out the key reasons, but I suspect they are: the medias’ uncritical accept of a modern radical interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, the medias general refusal to give space to climate change sceptics far less deniers and the refusal, during the Covid phase, to allow much space for those who had alternative views and were negative on the vaccine.

For me it was the Treaty issue that is by far the most important reason for dropping subscriptions to NZ media. Important constitutional issues at stake here and when the likes of Dr Michael Bassett and quality writer Graham Adams, are locked out, what says to me is the media does not actually support democracy.

What should the government do?

Contract with one or more quality professional researchers to explore the issues raised in the MCH paper to see what real ordinary Kiwis think about the modern media. This exercise could also have a few sessions with people working in the industry, not just CEOs.

I think this would produce vastly better information than the clunky poorly done survey under way.

Why is NZ stuck in the slow lane?

Why is that the NZ economy doesn’t grow at a much faster clip, instead of slipping slowly down international rankings of GDP per capita, particularly compared to Australia. The very short answer is we lack a growth culture and unlikely to get one any time soon.

My economic rationalist friends recommend more deregulation, cut the size of government and reduce taxes. On the left, it will be said Scandinavian countries do quite well with their very high taxes, so cutting government expenditure is a bad idea and government should be more active with its economic development policies.

Kiwis want low taxes and expensive Scandinavian policies – just not possible.

There are four main reasons why NZ is not growing its economy at a level that provides for the growing needs and aspirations of its population for a first world lifestyle.

They are: environmental priorities, community values, Treaty byproducts and the intelligentsia.

Despite these negative factors, we do have outstanding companies such as Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, Rocket Lab, Zero and Weta Workshop. And we have an agricultural sector producing high quality food produce for Kiwis and the world. I salute them all for what they deliver and only wish we had twice as many.

Most corporates, particularly those listed on the Stock Exchange, are extremely ordinary as can be seen by looking at how our share index has performed in the last five years, compared to like countries. Clearly we have a managerial and director class who are sub performers. See Cameron Bagries’ comments to the Herald’s recent mood of the boardroom, where business leaders were mostly griping about the government.

Interestingly the UK has similar problems which their Labour Government, led by Sir Keir Starmer, wants to fix. Good luck to them. Starmer likened his mission to Margaret Thatchers, albeit with different targets.

Environmental: For a country that substantially lives off its exports and tourists, it’s disgraceful the Port of Tauranga has spent more than seven years, to get a consent. I see the government has put it on a so called “fast track” so let’s hope that results in works getting underway very soon.

There are numerous other examples of good projects being unduly delayed by the RMA etc, particularly mining which we should have more of. And then there are those that are not proposed because it’s all too hard.

In the last 20 years we have seen climate change arguments added to the arsenal of those who oppose so much development, as if our 0.17% contribution to CO2 matters. The top three CO2 contributors (China, India and the USA) are not committed to net zero by 2050 but China has set a target of 2060 and is going gang busters on renewables.

I am pleased the Luxon government has wound back the methane targets so fewer people will go hungry in the world, as we produce more food than would otherwise have been the case.

Community values: NZ has gone from being a mono cultural society pre 1800, to mostly bi-cultural up until 1945 and since then increasingly multi cultural. It makes for a more interesting and diverse society but brings people with different values together under one governmental system. Multi cultural societies are much harder to manage than monocultures for obvious reasons. Thus we lack shared community values on key issues such as the work ethic and personal responsibility. It means for instance, our generous welfare system, is easily exploited by the indolent.

The former Australian Labour leader Mark Latham often quoted his mother saying “in our street there are bludgers and there are battlers. We are on the side of battlers”. Difficult to imagine a NZ Labour leader making that statement.

At present we have around 409,000 people of working age drawing the benefit. This includes people on disability, sickness and those unemployed. I have no doubt many are genuine cases. I am equally convinced many others could be best described as bludgers. Some will have self inflicted problems including drugs and an inclination to live off others.

The Economist (October 10, 2025), said China’s leader “Xi and much of the party elite dislike what he calls “welfarism”. Overly generous governments create “lazy people” and “inevitably bring about serious economic and political problems” he warned in 2021.”

New Zealand is well into the welfare trap as is Australia and the UK. The slide into welfarism is one of the biggest challenges facing the British Labour government. In Australia Labor’s Albanese government face similar challenges.

Their media discusses the problems whereas ours seems to prefer sitting in the welfare trench.

I saw a cartoon on social media recently which had someone saying I have to pass a drug test to get a job so you should have to pass one to get a benefit. Why not?

As our government found with its recently new policy re unemployed 18-19 year olds and parental obligations, the welfare industry and its many allies in the left of centre media, are quick to oppose the policy without offering practical alternatives.

School attendance levels are improving from a low base but Maori and Pacific are below average which logically leads to them having poorer career prospects. Asian attendance levels are much better, but why, when so many are migrants and don’t come from homes where English in their first language?

Education Minister Erica Stanford is making credible steps to improve the curriculum and the system in general, but it is uphill work.

Post the Pike disaster the safety industry has gone overboard. Th recently announced changes to quake standards will materially help the economy over time, because it will eliminate the spending of billions on buildings that were not seriously unsafe for people.

Treaty byproducts: There are many positive features of the Treaty settlements and some associated policies. I don’t include post Treaty concepts such as “partnership” and “co-governance” in the list of positives.

However, the opportunities created for rent seeking (which some describe as extortion), are major. The rent seekers create a climate of uncertainty in the business sector, and add to costs of projects. It rarely gets reported and when it does often well after the event.

Then there is the degradation of the education curriculum to accommodate Maori values (think science). And while I fully support the teaching of NZ history in our schools (along with Maori studies), the curriculum should pass the tests of accuracy and some objectivity which at launch it did not. See Professor Paul Moon.

The way taxpayer funds are distributed to non-government organisations (NGOs), often lack the necessary oversight to ensure that the “investments” provide a good return to parties other than the direct recipients. The $4 million spent on whale songs to help fix Kauri tree disease is just one example. Anecdotal evidence suggests there are different standards for monitoring the distribution of taxpayer funds to NGOs, with far too many leery of questioning what’s happened to the money. Why? maybe because that might be seen as “Maori bashing”, an allegation made rather too frequently.

The intelligentsia: The intelligentsia, much of it in Wellington, comprises the public service, local government, judges, lawyers, the media, and the education system including universities and MPs. They dominate public discourse and collectively smother the climate for growth, because that’s not their top priority. They make producers such as farmers look like the bad guys. See letters to the editor and the media focus on perceived social problems, rather than business success.

I spent 50 years dealing with the public service as a journalist, in PR working for Labour leader Bill Rowling, the Manufacturers Federation and the NZ Meat Board, and later as a lobbyist at Saunders Unsworth. During most of that period I would have described the public service as diligent and honest, mostly providing Ministers with free and frank advice and then implementing whatever Governments decided.

I cannot say the same about the public service today. It is bloated, constipated by the process disease with a predilection to getting consultants to do core business. And it leaks. Sir Brian Roche has identified some key issues and good luck to him making progress. I won’t hold my breath on us getting a lean quality public service that is agile and cost effective, because the problems are far too embedded. As the NZ Initiative has documented, we have an absurdly large number of state agencies and Ministries with confused and unduly complex accountabilities.

The radical plans for Wellington’s so called Golden Mile (GM), opposed by the vast majority of businesses on the streets is a local example of the elite running amok at the expense of business. As someone who was closely involved with businesses on the GM for a few years, I saw their views misrepresented to the decision makers, some of whom were unaware of the scale of the opposition.

If it proceeds, expect several years of disruption during construction and most likely less business, because customers will find getting there too difficult due to street blockages for customers and tradies. This is big test for new Mayor Andrew Little and his colleagues.

Probably missed by most Kiwis is a civil war inside the legal profession with a few lawyers challenging the judicial activism of the Supreme Court and other judges. In plain language, on one side are the judges and lawyers who seem to believe the Treaty trumps democracy, versus the likes of Gary Judd KC, Roger Partridge and others who challenge the establishments’ view of the Treaty.

This maybe unfair but it appears to me if a Judge can find a way blocking business proposal he/she will.

Our legacy media is now clearly quite left wing and I am not convinced it believes in democracy for NZ. It struggled to accept that National and co actually won the 2023 election. The sniping since has turned many Kiwis off legacy media, including me. I stopped watching all TV news March 2024 breaking a 60 year habit of watching daily TV news in all four countries in which we have lived. Prefer the BBC over RNZ.

I subscribed to the NZ Herald for a while which is not bad on Wellington issues, where I live. Have dropped that now also but do look at the websites of several legacy media and subscribe to “Scoop” and “The Platform” which provide real alternatives. Noticed a new online service called “Centrist” which appears balanced.

I also pay for “The Times” in London which, despite being owned by Rupert Murdoch, does provide a high quality online service, at a very reasonable cost for Kiwis.

Declining news consumption is bad for democracy. But as NZ legacy media is not providing balanced news or showing a strong commitment to democracy, individual decisions to avoid it are entirely understandable, even if some end up poorly informed

PM Christopher Luxon is genuinely committed to increasing economic growth and I hope he succeeds. But simply having good policies will not be enough to change the overall climate of opinion. Treasurer Nicola Willis and the whole Cabinet need to break out of their current policy framework. They need truly new policies that create some excitement and incentives for business, and Kiwis in general.

Changing culture is incredibly difficult. Roger Douglas changed the business culture in the 1980s by “persuading” them so forget subsidies and tax breaks or special protection from competition. But the unique opportunities for this, created by former PM Muldoon, are not going to come again. Even less likely with MMP which in part was introduced to prevent governments from introducing such radical policies.

My assessment may seem pessimistic, but I think it’s realistic having regard for the last decade or so. Just go to the IMF or World Bank and look at how we have performed. It’s not pretty. Because the relative decline has been slow, many will have not noticed the slide.

Quite frankly we appear to be drifting more to South America than Australia, which is hardly stellar itself. I hope we don’t end up like Argentina, a great country we have visited and liked, which under radical economist Javier Milei, is undergoing a radical, traumatic policy revolution. He has some encouraging results so far but his formula has yet to prove to be enduring. Lee Kuan Yew achieved much for Singapore over 50 years or so but that required unique skills and a generally compliant population.

Kiwis, wake up or just accept relative economic decline and second best state services, because at the moment it looks like more Asian countries will zoom past us.

Open letter to Hon Paul Goldsmith

Dear Paul

As the new Minister of Media and Communications you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course.

For what it’s worth here is my assessment

Traditional broadcasting free to air content through either satellite or terrestrial transmitters is on its way out but will survive for a few years yet. Audio visual content distributed through the internet will become dominant whether the recipients have to pay or not.

The arts can sometimes pay their way, but over the last 1000 years they have often been subsidised, firstly by the wealthy but in recent times by taxpayers. As you well know there is a fairly widespread consensus that there is a public benefit from the arts which justify taxpayer support, along with that from private donors. Quality news and current affairs on TV/screens is both expensive and can help the democratic process, provided it’s done well.

Taxpayer ownership of TVNZ creates creates extra challenges and opportunities, as it is both a broadcaster and a distributor of audio visual content, purchased offshore and New Zealand content, some of which is subsidised by NZ On Air. NZ On Air which funds audio visual content to TV channels such as TVNZ and TV3, but also many other outlets – says it’s following the eyeballs.

Taxpayers fund both the NZ Film Commission and NZ On Air, which will find their scopes overlap increasingly, as to whether NZ content is distributed by broadcast, the internet or a cinema. In some cases it will be all three.

TVNZ is not worth much more than its buildings and cash less liabilities, but its worth keeping because of its delivery capability. Clearly its eroding advertising base means that in say ten years time the advertising will only be able to fund cheap overseas content, as is the case with privately owned channels. In the near future virtually all NZ content will need to be taxpayer funded, including news.

With the exception of the USA (which does have public media), all or nearly all Western countries have an independent state owned TV channel. I think despite much legitimate criticism of TVNZ’s news and current affairs programmes the case for keeping it enjoys widespread support.

What should you do apart from gathering all the relevant facts and meet stakeholders?

First, discard the option of subsidising legacy media by reducing Korda transmission costs. That would be like doing the proverbial into the wind.

Next, while merging NZ On Air and the Film Commission might make sense, park that idea for something simpler. You need to achieve rationalisation without getting bogged down by officials as they make a meal out of it. Just sack the boards of both and create one small common board for both entities. In time they might decide to have one CEO.

Third, take TVNZ out of the contestable NZ On Air system and fund it directly to supply NZ content as is done with RNZ. Require it to spend most of this money on outside contractors with news and current affairs the exception, as it could be done in-house or by a contractor.

The advantages of these three recommendations are that:

First, they don’t require time consuming legislation, just a three word change to the Broadcasting Act 1989.

Second, they take away the NZ On Air/NZ Film Commission duopoly on taxpayer support, by giving independent companies to deal directly with TVNZ alone and not having to convince also NZ On Air their programme ideas should be funded. It’s actually close to the Maori TV model, overlooked by most commentators.

I have not commented on the quantum of support of taxpayer support which in these difficult times need not be increased for a while.

Declaration: I was a journalist for seven years from 1969-1976 including the NZBC, ABC, UPITN, BBC and NBR. From 2011-2017 I was a director of TVNZ.

Yours sincerely

Barrie Saunders

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