Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern (Getty Images)
Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern (Getty Images)

The BulletinFebruary 14, 2020

The Bulletin: Peters admits and denies involvement in journo smear

Staff Writer
Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern (Getty Images)
Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern (Getty Images)

Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Deputy PM both admits and denies involvement in smear on journos, new poll shows National have the numbers, and dozens of Te Kuiti sawmill jobs gone.

NZ First leader Winston Peters has admitted and also denied involvement in a hit job against journalists pursuing the NZ First Foundation donations story. Photographs of two journalists – Radio NZ’s Guyon Espiner and Stuff’s Matt Shand – were published on the BFD blog, while the journalists were in Tauranga to meet with former NZ First president Lester Gray, along with criticism of their stories and alleged motives for publishing them.

Last year Gray quit his role as party president, citing moral reasons, along with “a claim he has been kept in the dark over party expenditure and donations.” The NZ First Foundation story refers to allegations that money given to the Foundation was then laundered to the party itself, thus skipping donation laws. The matter is currently being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.

So how does Winston Peters come into this all? Well, on Magic Talk (audio doesn’t appear to be online) Winston Peters told Peter Williams “we took the photograph, just to prove that’s the kind of behaviour going on.” What did he mean by ‘we’? Radio NZ followed up on that, and Peters told them that he didn’t know who took the photographs. He subsequently tweeted “NZF has no interest in following Mr Espiner or any other journalists. The very reverse applies. No private investigators have been engaged to follow Mr Espiner or anyone else. A supporter thought it odd seeing ex-president Lester Grey with Mr Espiner so took a photo.” There was no mention of why when Shand was photographed, he was alone and not with Grey at that moment.

As a sidenote, the BFD is a blog that effectively took over from Cameron Slater’s Whaleoil. For an elaboration on just how similar the sites are, read my story from August last year. In an incredible coincidence, the two sites even have the same phone number. And just on the relationship between Peters and Whaleoil, I’d love to draw your attention to his comments when Dirty Politics came out in 2014 – the Nicky Hager book detailing links between senior figures in the National party and attack pieces on political blogs like Whaleoil. For example, this Radio NZ story in which he accused National of using public money to attack private figures through the blog, or this NZ Herald story where he called for a Royal Commission into the allegations contained in Dirty Politics.

And I also want to recall another piece from that time – in fact it also involved Guyon Espiner. In 2014, Morning Report interviewed then-PM John Key about his MPs allegedly feeding information to blogs to be used for political attacks. Espiner repeatedly asked Key, with increasing vehemence, whether or not Key thought this sort of behaviour was okay. As The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire writes, this is a huge predicament for PM Jacinda Ardern. I for one would love to know if she thinks this sort of thing is okay. Unfortunately, as this Stuff story reports, she wasn’t willing to comment.

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Stories for and about parenting often lack humanity. They generally treat new mothers in particular as if they can no longer think for themselves. I’m proud to be part of a media organisation that encourages us to see each other and celebrate our differences as new parents, rather than pit us against each other for ‘engagement’ in imaginary ‘mommy wars’. If you want to support writing that pushes boundaries and encourages seeing the world in a less insular way, then please support The Spinoff by joining as a member.

A new poll has come out showing National and ACT would have the numbers to govern, proving how close the margins are right now. The One News Colmar Brunton survey showed National with a clear lead over Labour, and ACT’s 2-3 projected MPs putting them over the top. Interestingly – and just like Newshub’s recent survey – it showed the Greens just making the threshold, and NZ First falling below it. National leader Simon Bridges is also climbing in the preferred PM stakes, having now hit double figures in the polls of both major TV news outlets – though Jacinda Ardern still has a whopping lead on that particular question.

Dozens of sawmill workers in Te Kuiti have been laid off, in what is a troubling example of the state of the industry. Stuff has reported comments from Spectrum Group’s Managing Director Wade Glass, who says the biggest problem facing the sawmill is the steady increase in pruned log prices. However, adding to that is the disruption caused by the coronavirus, and that’s something everyone in forestry is facing, given how important the Chinese market is. A sawmill in the nearby Waikato town of Putaruru also closed down earlier this year.

Another really strong piece to share about the state of Auckland’s water – this time focusing on why the beaches are so often dangerous to swim in. Metro’s Tess Nichol has looked at the state of the city’s infrastructure, along with the geography and weather patterns which combine to create the problem, along with what the Council is doing about fixing it. It’s a classic example of the consequences of the city growing way faster than anyone expected, coupled with local authorities spending decades trying to fix problems in an ad-hoc fashion, rather than a big picture approach.

Tackling homelessness has been the focus of a major new government initiative this week, with some serious money put towards it. Interest reports that $300 million all up will be spent on both creating 1000 new transitional housing places, and other particular targeted programmes. There are two important numbers for context. The first is 14,000 – that’s the number of households on the waiting list for public housing, a number which has blown out completely in the last several years. And the second is $48 million – that’s how much the government spent on emergency housing grants in the last quarter of last year, mostly on motels and hostels in the absence of anything else.

A really interesting report about candidate selection within the Labour Party. Newsroom’s Dileepa Fonseka reports that sitting Manurewa MP Louisa Wall could be taken out in a primary challenge, with two potential candidates in the frame to succeed her. Wall has held the seat since 2011, and enjoys massive majorities in both the candidate and party vote stakes. However, there are no guarantees in politics, and it will be fascinating to see who ends up taking the nomination into the election.

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Drop us a line at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz

Right now on The Spinoff: In her uniquely quixotic style, Madeleine Chapman reviews every dairy lolly in the country. Josie Adams defends the Auckland live music scene from attacks from the indie rock world. Hayden Donnell reviews the new flavours of Kiwi Onion Dip, finding them abominable. I’ve got a cheat sheet on the growing anger around the dross stored in Mataura, and whether mining giant Rio Tinto will help out in cleaning it up. Tara Ward looks back on the achievements of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Director Heperi Mita celebrates the achievements of Taika Waititi, and writes about what it means for indigenous creators.

And to my mind, the piece of the day is this remarkable essay by novelist Eamonn Marra. It’s about his new book, which follows a young man with depression – something that mirrors a lot of Marra’s own life. And the essay is a really thoughtful look at what exactly writing about depression serves, and why he doesn’t intend to keep writing about it.

For a feature today, a really interesting think piece on the commodification of online audiences. Writing on Overland, Ben Egliston and Marcus Carter have analysed the phenomenon of Twitch streaming, which is a platform that primarily exists for people to watch other people play video games. You’d be forgiven for not having heard of it, but it has become a pretty massive subculture. Why? Here’s an excerpt that gets into it.

So, how exactly is this labour mediated by Twitch? A viewer’s basic act of opening up a stream and watching it contributes to that particular stream’s view count – a small numerical aggregate of viewers displayed at the bottom of each stream, as well as on the Twitch stream directory. Viewercount is the default way that Twitch sorts streams for viewers. The viewer’s simple watching of a stream, then, contributes to a collective framing of how people feel, think about and engage with content. A larger viewer count might frame a stream as more lively, whereas a smaller viewercount might frame it as more intimate.

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Twitch’s chat function is another way that audiences interact. A very busy chatroom might work similarly to the noise of a sports crowd in creating an atmosphere of excitement. The crowd of Twitch Chat creates a sense of ‘happening’, of vitality – of activity, excitement, frustration, elation, etc. This ‘noise’ is often layered into the broadcast by being superimposed over the top of the screen. The experience of watching a popular stream – such as an esports match – derives not only from the content of the stream, but also from the visibility of these audience practices, which allow the viewer to be fully taken up in the here and now of the event.

So the Halberg Awards are in, and the favourites have deservedly won. The Silver Ferns won both the supreme award, and team of the year, after their turnaround triumph at the World Cup in particular, reports the NZ Herald. Dame Noeline Taurua was also named coach of the year. Israel Adesanya and Sophie Pascoe also picked up major awards, and Lisa Carrington continued her annual tradition of being named sportswoman of the year – seriously, that’s four in a row now.

That’s it for The Bulletin. If you want to support the work we do at The Spinoff, please check out our membership programme.

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Everyone had a wonderful time as parliament resumed for the year (Images via Parliament TV)
Everyone had a wonderful time as parliament resumed for the year (Images via Parliament TV)

The BulletinFebruary 13, 2020

The Bulletin: Parliament returns as petty as ever

Staff Writer
Everyone had a wonderful time as parliament resumed for the year (Images via Parliament TV)
Everyone had a wonderful time as parliament resumed for the year (Images via Parliament TV)

Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Parliament is back for another fraught year, bad weather news likely to continue, and Winston Peters goes live.

After taking a day to mark the life of former PM Mike Moore, Parliament began in earnest yesterday. As is customary, the party leaders each start the year by giving an extended speech, laying out their interpretation of the term so far, and their intentions for the next year. As often happens in practice, the tone is generally more brutal slanging. I’ll summarise the main parts briefly and link to each here:

PM Jacinda Ardern described her administration as the government of. It was the government of housing, the government of infrastructure, the government of mental health and a few others. She also laid into the neglect her government claims to have inherited from National.

National leader Simon Bridges responded with an instant mention of Kiwibuild, stagnant light rail in Auckland, and other failures in delivery. Themes in his speech included the rising cost of living, the tax burden, and increasing numbers of people on welfare rolls. Much of the speech was devoted to picking targets among the ministerial ranks and highlighting their professional failings.

NZ First leader Winston Peters had a rollicking good time making jokes at the expense of Bridges. Among the more substantive points raised in his speech, he raised the topic of a population strategy, as growth has risen much faster than the projections of several decades ago. An example of his of the neglect inherited by the government was an accusation that the previous government had allowed the Pacific tsunami warning system to degrade.

Green co-leader James Shaw opened his speech with a call to mark the damage done by the Australian bushfires. His speech was especially heavily focused on climate change, and he claimed significant government progress on that front, with more to do. The speech ended for a call to those also concerned about climate change to agitate on the matter.

And ACT leader David Seymour also hammered away at the theme of non-delivery. He described the government as indulging in the “politics of gesture,” and fired a shot across the bows of Winston Peters and the ongoing donations controversy. He finished on a note directed at Speaker Trevor Mallard himself, accusing him of unfairly concentrating powers over parliament, and said he has “for now, all the power except for one – to choose how others will judge you as you leave this place in future.”

And that highlighted another theme that is certain to be ever-present over the last year of this parliamentary term – Trevor Mallard himself. Any fragile sense that it might go differently was blown up immediately after Bridges’ speech, in which the pair haggled over whether the latter had described Mallard as “petty.” It also followed the speaker insulting Bridges by suggesting that he didn’t know something that a “competent” MP should, over a procedural point. The NZ Herald’s (paywalled) political editor Audrey Young weighed in on that, arguing that even though Bridges hadn’t actually called Mallard petty, it might have been fitting.

The bad weather news continues for the country, with heavy rain likely to continue going where it isn’t wanted or needed. The NZ Herald reports Cyclone Uesi is likely to hit the West Coast and Fiordland around Sunday. It is unlikely to still in fact be a tropical cyclone by that point, but that could be a fairly meaningless distinction for those getting wet. If severe weather warnings are needed, they’ll start coming out on Friday.

Deputy PM and NZ First leader Winston Peters has answered a series of questions from supporters around the NZ First Foundation donations scandal. He did a 10-minute long Facebook livestream, picking questions out from the list and then knocking them out of the park. Political commentator Ben Thomas was watching, and found that some of the most pertinent details and allegations were left hanging in the air.

The Reserve Bank is forecasting that the impacts of coronavirus will not long enough to justify an immediate OCR cut, reports David Hargreaves for Interest. They’ve held at 1%, with room to move if that changes, and there has been a wider signal that the programme of further rate cuts is now over. Their interpretation of the likely coronavirus impact on GDP is described as “relatively benign” compared to that of other economists.

The RNZ Concert restructure changes have been torn up, and a vocal campaign to save the station has won. The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire has delved deep into what on earth just happened, and what is now likely to happen next. Meanwhile, Alice Webb-Liddall reports on another sector of the radio world which is fighting for financial survival – iwi radio. Leader of the NZ Māori Council Matthew Tukaki says that with the level of funding they receive, iwi stations are only ever in a position to tread water, rather than invest and grow.

A scare for Waihi yesterday, with the town temporarily running out of water. The Bay of Plenty Times (paywalled) reports a burst water main pipe was the culprit, rapidly draining the reservoir. However, it was fixed quickly, and water is now available again – albeit with heavy usage restrictions in place. Sun Live reports that schools will continue to be closed today because reservoir levels are still pretty low. Water from taps and tanks set up around the town also needs to be boiled before drinking.

That load of dangerous old dross around Mataura won’t be moved any time soon after all, reports Radio NZ. There were fears during recent flooding that if it got wet it would have let off a cloud of ammonia. The Gore District Council believed they had a handshake deal to move it back to Tiwai Point, where the hazardous waste was first created. But Tiwai’s owners Rio Tinto have stepped in and overruled that.

Sky TV has seen a massive slump in profits, to around $12 million for the six months to the end of December, reports Stuff’s Tom Pullar-Strecker. However, those numbers aren’t necessarily disastrous, for a few reasons. The first is that the profit is down in part because of some expensive acquisitions, along with the rights to All Blacks games for many years to come. And they’ve lowered their rates of customer churn, meaning they’re doing better at holding onto the people they’ve still got.

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Drop us a line at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz

Right now on The Spinoff: Jihee Junn has marked the end of The Department Store, including a revealing interview with designer Karen Walker about the challenges retail faces. Holly Walker went to see author Margaret Atwood being interviewed by Kim Hill, and wrote a remarkable review of the confusing night out. And Alex Casey revels in another utterly dignity-crushing performance from the lads on The Bachelorette.

For a feature today, a more sideways look at the current RNZ Concert furore. Writing on Newsroom, Anna Connell argues that we need to look at isolated stories – like this one, or the end of government funding for the NZ Books literary journal – in a much wider context, that sees these institutions as part of a much wider cultural ecosystem. In particular, she laments how much critical arts writing on major publications has been cut back. Here’s an excerpt:

One of the truly enduring gifts that working in the arts gave me is insight into how it works at a systemic level. You learn the landscape and the players. You know nothing is as simple as it seems and the real gnarly stuff lies in the nuance. You learn that subsidy of the arts in New Zealand isn’t because audience numbers are small, it’s the reality of a small population. You learn what it costs to get an orchestra in and out of a venue.

You learn about the arts as an ecosystem and where some people see elite, ‘high-brow’ art forms, you see professional development opportunities, living wages, cost-sharing, a network of support, and an infrastructure that’s dependent on all its parts being in working order. As in the natural environment, killing off parts of an ecosystem – including arts media and arts writing – results in consequences and damage that can be difficult to repair.

With increasing awareness of the impact of head injuries, it’ll be interesting to see if this technology takes off. Stuff reports that a new handheld brain scanner is now available for use in New Zealand, having previously been tested in a few other countries. It aims to give a reading within a couple of minutes of whether a brain bleed has taken place. The story is illustrated by former league player Monty Betham, who reckons he saved his own life by deciding to halt his developing boxing career after just such an injury.

And the Halberg Awards are on tonight. Newshub has a list of the finalists, and who (in the opinion of their various sports journos) should win. Dare I say it, there’s a bit of groupthink going on in a few categories, but when it’s for something like the Silver Ferns as team of the year, or Israel Adesanya getting sportsman of the year, it feels pretty fair enough.

That’s it for The Bulletin. If you want to support the work we do at The Spinoff, please check out our membership programme.