Cracker by Damian Christie

With a baby due, um, Wednesday, and a fair bit of work relating to the general election, my procrastination levels have never been higher. Not that there's much I can do re the baby's arrival, but I could probably clean something again, or buy something, or pace a bit. So anyway, some random thoughts regarding the election campaign.

1. Richie McCaw could pretty much win any electorate. Something that Act and NZ First should consider.

2. I'll probably be proven wrong on this one tomorrow (which is the deadline for electorate nominations), but I wouldn't be surprised if Winston Peters chooses not to stand in an electorate seat. He knows he's highly unlikely to win wherever he stands, he's old, he's tired, and no-one likes setting themselves up for a loss like that.

3. The gap between Labour's policy-based campaign and National's Presidential campaign is almost precisely as wide as the gap between Goff and Key's preferred Prime Minister ratings. It's the right thing for both parties to do.

4. Just as the memo from Labour read "don't put Goff's face on any billboards – are you sure we even need him on the Mt Roskill one?", the memo to all National MPs, kindly CC'd to both Don Brash and John Banks reads: "Don't say 'National-led Government', say 'John Key-led Government'. People like John Key, but they're still a bit iffy about National."

5. John Banks is now running Banksie OS 3.2. Bug fixes on previous iteration include removing all those pesky joining words that get in the way of Important Positive Key Words. New sample sentence from a recent debate on Q+A: "Choice, self-responsibility, investment, growth, jobs, financial responsibility."

6. The people of Epsom don’t mind Banksie 3.2. But what they don't like  is Don Brash. And not because he represents the failed policies of the 90s. They don't like him because of his moral failings. With that, and everything else, Act has simply become too big of a dead rat to swallow. Goldsmith will win, even though he's not supposed to (but of course he secretly wants to).

7. The Vote for Change campaign won't succeed. The supposed pontificating within the Vote for Change organisation about which of the various alternatives they will support after due consideration is, of course, complete nonsense. From the outset they have been pushing for SM. Jordan Williams, Vote for Change spokesperson told me weeks ago that they didn't want to confuse people with too much information too early, so they would first campaign for change, and then later announce that the preferred change was SM. I guess it makes sense to do that, but it has meant an awful lot of disingenuous game playing.

8. If a party really doesn't want the electorate vote, I wish they just wouldn't stand an electorate candidate. However I'm told research shows that an electorate candidate increases visibility and hence the party vote. But if that is the case, can't we cut through all this "I think the voters of Ohariu/Epsom should vote for whomever they decide is best" bullshit? I'm really getting sick of politicians NOT saying they want my vote.

9. Changing MMP so that people can't be both electorate candidates and on the party list would stop a lot of that, or at least mean you wouldn't have people like David Parker campaigning for Labour in Epsom, or Gareth Hughes for the Greens in Ohariu, knowing full well they're not going to win, but will get in anyway. On the other hand, such a policy would stop genuine candidates giving it a go in a seat they think they could take – Charles Chauvel in Ohariu, Jacinda Ardern in Auckland Central, Carmel Sepuloni in Waitakere.

I would draw a distinction (although again, I don't know whether either should be excluded from a list place) with the idea of voters kicking out a sitting electorate MP everyone is thoroughly sick of, only for them to return via the list, and a challenger having an honest crack. I don't think someone who loses by a few hundred votes in a well-contested electorate battle could ever be considered to be "rejected" by voters, especially in a plurality result where the winner gets say, 40%, the second place candidate 39%.

10. It will be very hard for Labour to back down from Capital Gains Tax or a retirement age of 67 now that it's policy. Which means in time it will become law. But as someone noted somewhere over the past week, when the babyboomers die off, do you think we could have it lowered again please?

[EDIT: I forgot to say, Backbenches is coming live from the Britomart Country Club this Wednesday for an Auckland Central candidates' special, all welcome, live from 9-10 but get there early...]

I went to Samoa the other weekend.   It was a work trip (I know, right, but someone’s gotta do it), filming an interview and links for this season’s final episode of Hindsight, airing at the end of the month. (Might have more blogging time after that, we'll see).

It was the second time I’ve been to a Pacific Island this year; a couple of months ago we went for a ten-day holiday in Rarotonga, so I was interested in the comparison. Rarotonga was enjoyable enough, but ten days was too long, the island didn’t really hold our interest, everything was expensive and there was no sense of adventure. On the other hand, our friends who’d come to stay with us for half the time loved it, and talked of going back every year. I think that’s probably the divide right there – some people enjoy returning to a relaxing favourite spot, others want to continually seek out somewhere new. I’m not saying either is better, but I’m definitely in the latter camp. (Because it’s better).

Without immediately contradicting myself then, I would return to Samoa – next time with my Beloved, for a little longer, and with more time to explore, particularly the other island, Savai’i, which I didn’t get to this time around, and seems more rugged, wild and perhaps beautiful.

First thing I enjoyed about Samoa, it has a sense of authenticity. Driving from the airport into Apia, you pass through a dozen or more villages. Each village proudly proclaims its name – with a complete absence of street signs, it’s the only way you have any idea where you are on a map – each boasts one or more massive churches, each has a number of grand open-sided fale (fah-lay) lining the road. While these are often used for meetings or just generally hanging out in during the hottest part of the day, I’m told they are also symbolic. These days many Samoans have a more western style house tucked in behind the fale, but the open walls of the fale is a sign of constant openness and hospitality to friends and family.

And so in these villages life goes on without any regard to tourists. I know that might seem self-evident, but if you’ve travelled through South East Asia, you’ll realise it’s exceptional in a tourist destination. There are no roadside trinket stalls, for instance. And so when you putt through a village and find a game of kirikiti (cricket) occupying the road and adjacent fields, the fielders breaking into spontaneous yet choreographed dances to celebrate some happening or another, you know it’s got nothing to do with you.

These villages are largely self-sustaining. They fish, further inland they harvest taro, coconuts and other crops. During the day people work on the land, although much like the Spanish it seems they also have a chill out period during the height of the day’s heat.

The weather was spectacular while we were there. 28 degrees and sunny every day, no rain. On the other hand the lady who was very quick to collect our money at the natural wonder that is ‘sliding rocks’ might have warned us this meant less sliding, more rocks. I’d say avoid that unless it’s been raining recently.

My cameraman and I both agreed if there was one thing that would stop us living there, it was the driving. The speed limit is 40kmp/h within town and villages, and 60kmp/h between villages. There’s villages every kilometre it seems, and it’s hard to say when one ends, and then just in case you were tempted to speed there’s speed humps every few hundred metres, even in the midst of “open road”. Add to this the fact most people are content to drift along at 30kmp/h regardless and it becomes a frustrating experience, especially as the island is a big place, (at least a couple of hundred kilometres around) so it takes a while to get anywhere.

The almost complete absence of street signs, even within central Apia, also causes a few issues.

I went for a little dive while I was there – the short trip meant I really only had one opportunity, which that day was a bit of a baby dive, 7m deep, and while it was pretty enough, there wasn’t that much going on. I’d be keen to head back and do it properly, perhaps off Savai’i. I felt for the dive operator though, AquaSamoa.  Being located on the grounds of Aggie Grey’s Resort (as opposed to the original Aggie Grey’s in Apia) might usually be a good thing, but when the crew of Survivor turn up, book the place out for months, and inform security to actively turn away everyone including paying divers, well, business is struggling.

In short, we had a great time, and I’d highly recommend it, with the following caveats: Check the addition, we had a few cases of ‘mistaken’ overcharging, which were quickly and apologetically rectified, but still – the Avis one alone would have cost us $300 if not spotted; and don’t expect too much in the way of bars and restaurants – the lack of ‘touristy’ feel does come with its downside. Not to say there’s no decent places to eat – Scalini’s is a great Italian restaurant (!) on the cross-island road.

And finally, although this is only an issue until the end of the year, (at which time Samoa is unilaterally shifting its place on the international date line to bring it in line with NZ), check your itinerary, even if it’s been  booked by a respectable travel agent. You will leave in the evening and arrive early the previous morning. You will find your hotel. It won’t be booked until the following day and will be full. You will be stranded at Apia at 3am with nowhere to sleep. Coming back, as happened to a friend recently, you will get all confused and turn up at the airport to discover your flight left yesterday. You will do what we did in Rarotonga, leave on Sunday and forget that you land on Tuesday and might need to talk to your boss about having Monday off. Mind you, just like being an hour late every time the clocks change for daylight savings, it’s a pretty good excuse. Try it.

Yeah I know, I know. I’ve been away. Too much to do, not enough to say, and even less time to say it, that’s been the problem. And with a baby due later in the year (our first), I can’t see that changing any time soon. My blogging, erratic at best, will become increasingly sporadic. I’ve thought of throwing in the towel, then I thought, why? I like it here. The great thing about Public Address is the different voices, and that includes their varying pitch and frequency. So I’ll just write when I’ve got something to say, and the time to say it. Even if, as I discover when I get off the plane from Wellington having bashed this out, Russell has already said it. Although his doesn’t use the phrase “wet-nurse”. Your choice.

I wanted to start a conversation about Capital Gains Tax, which after this week’s leak looks set to be part of Labour’s tax policy at the next election. I don’t quite know why they decided to leak their own policy (which is what I’m led to believe happened), the last thing Phil Goff needs is to look like a flailing I-can-neither-confirm-nor-deny leader when this is the first bold thing the party has done in a while. I disagree with Russell’s analysis it was a smart thing to do – Key might appear ‘panicky’ to some, but at the moment he’s the one dictating the conversation around this, absent any response. By the time this comes out next Thursday, the media conversation will be over, and Labour will have lost another opportunity. CGT will be “that thing John Key told us was bad.” If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you a beer Russ :)

Now I’m not generally a fan of more tax. I quite like having money, and working seven-or-more days a week at the moment to produce various shows, I feel like I’ve earned it. Fundamentally I believe in a proportional tax system, where the more you earn, the more you pay.  I also believe in a low, or even nil rate up to some minimum income level, the latter of which Labour is also expected to propose. But am I a fan of Labour’s expected reintroduction of a “rich prick” top tax rate? No. I accept it’s an arbitrary point of view, but zero low tax, sure, punitive high tax rate, no. For nine years under the last Labour administration the top rate was used as an increasing tax grab, and despite promises it would only affect around 5% of the population, over three terms it was allowed to creep to almost three times that.

On the other hand, as one of National’s policy advisors said to me the other day, “of course capital gains tax makes sense”, and then added, “but it’s political suicide.”

Yes it makes sense to tighten up the biggest systemic loophole we have, where people can make huge amounts of money but pay no tax on it. I haven’t heard anyone arguing otherwise who isn’t arguing out of self-interest. As Key says, people will simply go to their tax accountants – I can’t help but picture a row of dangling ropes, connected to bells in various parts of the JK mansion, variously labelled “Cook”, “Nanny”, “Tax Accountant”, “Wet Nurse” and so forth. Maybe that’s true (about people going to their accountants, not about Key having a Wet Nurse.) Maybe it’s a glib response that could equally apply to the idea of company tax as a whole. Maybe Key knows CGT makes sense too. He’s certainly been vague enough about it in the past to suggest he can see the logic. It just might make for an uncomfortable summer of BBQs with the neighbours up at Omaha.

There was a chap interviewed on the news the other night on this. A guy who routinely buys and sells houses for a profit. “I employ people” he said. “I employ carpenters and electricians and plumbers and so on. So why should I pay tax on the money I make.” It barely requires a second glance to point out that a lot of people employ others and still have to pay tax on the money they make. They’re called business owners. And therein lies the fundamental hypocrisy of it all. We wonder why kiwis invest in real estate and don’t invest in business? Because one is not only relatively risk-free, it’s also completely tax free.

If the introduction of a CGT results in people leaving the housing market, or holding on to their second or third houses rather than selling them for a quick profit, okay. Far more likely is that people will add the tax they will pay into their rational decision-making process to sell at any given time, the same as they might do with real estate agent fees. And if paying a bit of tax means they’ve got less money to buy the next house with, well that’s okay, because the deflationary effect will mean that next house’s price isn’t juiced up on the promise of quick profits.

It makes sense, and I think a world where CGT is part of our tax scenario is one in which I could happily exist. But I’d rather see it as another tool in the box, with a corresponding drop in something else, than an increase in the pile. I don’t know of any party that won an election promising higher taxes, but I’m sure to be proven wrong on that. In the meantime, let’s hold our breath for Labour’s announcement next week. 

I’ll have an Asahi, thanks Russell.

Last night on Back Benches I quipped, entirely unoriginally, if Don Brash was the answer, we really needed to look at what the question was.  Stephen Franks, to whom I was speaking at the time, batted the comment aside.

But the seriousness beneath the statement remains. Having failed to secure National a win in 2005, and being rolled for a leader on a seemingly endless public honeymoon, where does the good doctor think his role lies? Sure, he can talk up the precise details of the narrow loss to Labour under his stewardship, but there ain’t no second place in the Westminster system. Well there is, it’s called ‘last’.

In the past week however, it’s become clear that Dr Brash believes he still has something to give. That in itself is not surprising – like Grainwaves and/or cocaine, politics in the limelight is rather moreish. What does surprise me is how readily accepted he has been by the fringe right.

It’s not an age thing, although I LOL’d in my mouth a little when Brash explained it away by comparing himself to the most senile US President in living memory, Ronald Reagan. If Brash is suggesting he will be a doddery old fool, a retired cowboy actor, while others pull the strings around him, well he is doing himself a disservice. Don Brash is, after all, a smart man.

Still not smart enough to pull off a clean coupe though. I remember when he rolled Bill English. If my occasionally Reagan-esque memory serves, it wasn’t looking like a great week for Labour. The moratorium on GE was about to be lifted, and for the first time in a while, Labour was taking a hit from the Left. Good week to let it play out, you’d think. Do some damage. But no, in comes Brash, and takes the leadership with all the surgical precision of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

This time around, same thing. Good publicity, you could argue, having your new leader declaring his intentions on every media outlet available – even ‘Perigo’ FFS. But from the outside it makes the fringe right look fractured, compromised, messy. We’ve seen the uncertainty, the machinations – will it be John Boscawen or Hillary Calvert who plays Judas – all play out.

I’m writing this on a plane. It seems this morning like Hillary Calvert has accepted her thirty pieces of silver, although frankly she is quite mad enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if her price were magic beans. By the time I land this may all have played out, or it may wait until Tuesday.  Or, it might be (having just landed) that this all takes place at midday. His marginal right-wing agenda will take the place of the marginal right wing agenda of his predecessor. One bully will replace another in Epsom. The more things change, as the French say, the more things stay the same.

There's been a lot of talk these past few weeks about the imminent demise of TVNZ 7.  I've stayed away from saying too much about it – many of those against the decision have more or less covered my thoughts, and obviously with my snout deep in the TVNZ 7 trough, it's hard to even pretend I'm in the least objective about the decision.  But there's also increasingly a fair bit of misinformation floating about, in some cases just misguided, in others I think more deliberately (or at least recklessly) inaccurate. 

The disclaimer then, such as it is needed: I have worked for TVNZ 7 since the outset. I started off on Back Benches (and helping out a bit on Media 7 in the early days), and I continue as co-host on the former. I now also have my own show (mine in the sense that it's my concept, and I write and produce it, but it's made in-house by TVNZ), called Hindsight. I also work as a writer/producer on Q+A, which screens on TV ONE, and is funded by NZ On Air's platinum fund. 

On a personal, financial  level, the loss of TVNZ 7 will no doubt affect me. I will still (presumably) work on Q+A after TVNZ 7 finishes mid-2012. Back Benches and Hindsight may or may not migrate to another channel; I'm not holding my breath or counting my chickens. But, personally, that's telly. My first ever job at TVNZ ended two weeks after it began, when the show I was contracted to work on – the late edition of Flipside – was cancelled. I hadn't even received my first paycheque. That was a shock, but it taught me two things – never expect any job to be there in a fortnight, and there's always another job waiting. Well, that's been true for me anyway, I moved immediately to Flipside (day), then Sunday and then Close Up, before starting at TVNZ 7. Seven years now, not bad given the shaky start. So personally, I'm not so worried about next year. After four years of Back Benches, I might've been looking to move on anyway. 

So if you will, take that on board and try and assume that my thoughts aren't entirely based on the state of my back pocket, when I say I think the demise of TVNZ 7 is a real shame. A shame because after three and a bit years, the channel is really starting to hit its stride. And it means something to be people who watch it. Travelling around the place (for the Back Benches Summer Tour, for instance) or even just going into town on the weekend, people often say how much they love not only the show, but the channel. "It's the only channel I watch any more," that sort of thing. I'm not pretending for a minute it's more popular than TV3 or TV2 or TV ONE, just that the sort of people who watch it seem a lot more passionate about it than other views.  A bit like say, the bFM or National Radio listener. People don't get really passionate about The Breeze or ZM. 

TVNZ 7 is without a doubt less popular than those other channels. It has almost zero promotion and a budget to match. It doesn't appear in listings in newspapers or The Listener. And the programmes aren't your usual commercial fare. 

In an editorial this weekend, the Herald showed its usual love of beating up TVNZ – I'm told that every time they put TVNZ on the front page, sales jump by a few percent and they're a commercial enterprise, so it makes sense. But whoever wrote this particular editorial could do with a wee lesson on comparing apples with apples, when referring to the "mere 207,000 viewers a week that it attracts."

This really is television for minority interests taken to extreme. By way of contrast, TVNZ's One News attracts 600,000 viewers each and every night.

Can you spot the issue here? You can't compare daily and weekly viewship, because obviously these aren't unique viewers. ONE News doesn't have 600,000 people watching one night, then 600,000 completely new people the next. It's viewership isn't 4.2m people per week. It's probably more like 2m. But the point of the Herald editorial seems to be simply to pick one high figure (and ONE News is obviously one of the highest you can pick, twice that of 3 News) and compare it with a relatively low one (although 200,000 people? I'm stoked).

I could, for example, say "More people watch TVNZ 7 each week than read the Herald on a daily basis". And that would be true, but just as wrong. Likewise "about the same number of people watch TVNZ 7 each week as watched Campbell Live on Friday." 

Equally – and equally unsurprisingly – inaccurate was the figure someone forwarded to me which Whaleoil pulled out of his rectum last week in a post about the demise of TVNZ 7 entitled "Good": 

I was at Back Benches last night and over­heard some “con­nected” peo­ple talk­ing about their very secret viewer num­bers. Less than 6000 peo­ple watch Back Benches. More peo­ple read my blog on any given day, includ­ing Christ­mas day than watch Back Benches.

Where do I start? First, the TVNZ 7 viewer numbers are "very secret" because no-one actually knows what they are. A non-commercial channel, TVNZ 7 doesn't have ratings as such, because ratings only exist so networks can work out how much to charge advertisers. Second, I was at Back Benches last week too, and no-one 'connected' was there, other than the usual BB staff, none of whom have any more clue than I do. Third, it's "fewer", not less.

What makes this ironic is that even believing Back Benches only has 6000 viewers, it didn't stop Mr Slater running up and bawling (not for the first time, either) to both my producer and my co-host about how I don't like him (wah-wah) and won't let him on the show (boo-hoo) and that my fellow Q+A Producer Tim Watkin and I have a secret conspiracy against him appearing. I find this hilarious: There's nothing secret about it – sorry to say Cameron, but devilish good looks aren't enough. Personally I prefer those – from all sides of the political spectrum – who can take part in reasoned debate without turning into a slobbering inaccurate mess of ad hominem attacks, such as last week's:

"Pinko troughers Damien Christie (sp) and Rus­sell Brown will have to find other ways to fund mas­sive extensions to their houses."

Well I'm hardly going to leave my new Merc out in the rain, am I?  But even more ironic (like, Alanis Morrissette would be preparing for a comeback of epic proportions if only she knew) is this response after Michael Laws gave him a serve:

 "If he wants to increase his rat­ings by bash­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ries, peo­ple with Asperg­ers and peo­ple with depres­sion and rooting hook­ers on top of that then so be it. If he can’t debate the facts and instead have to resort to per­sonal attakcs (sp) then, again, it says more about him than it does about me…. [I’m] just point­ing out that he is a cock and can’t debate on facts just personal abuse." (emphasis added)

Anyway, I dare say I'm preaching to the choir.  But then Richard Harman (former producer of Agenda, now the recipient of $1m state funding for 36 episodes of 'The Nation') weighed in on Kiwiblog with this seemingly throwaway line:

We get NZ on Air Platinum funding to produce “The Nation” for TV3 though I suspect we get considerably less per programme than the budget for TVNZ7 shows. 

Which again, is complete nonsense. I hope Harman's political suspicions are better informed than this. I'm not going to reveal figures here (because they're not mine to reveal), but suffice to say I know of no current TVNZ 7 show (and I know the approximate budgets of several) receiving more than the $27k per episode received by The Nation, and I know some that get less than half that, even though you wouldn't know it to look at the production values of The Nation.  It's not like the Nation's ratings are exactly out of the park either – 33,000 people tuned in on Saturday morning. (Q+A gets around 200,000 viewers, with slightly less funding.)

For the reasons given above, it's hard for me to say how many people watch Back Benches each week. To be honest, it'd be interesting to know but I don't really care – we go out to make a good show, and if my experience on primetime TV taught me anything it's that watching the ratings is a dangerous game. Based on the number of repeats of Back Benches each week (6), the cumulative weekly audience for TVNZ 7, a bit of hunch-work, comparing on-line viewership with other shows that do have ratings and so forth, I'd guess it's around 50,000 – 60,000 viewers per week.

I am of course simply falling into the trap –that unless TVNZ 7 shows can somehow prove themselves as popular as commercial shows, they shouldn't exist. Which kinda defeats the purpose of public service broadcasting.

That's the thing I'm going to miss next year, is having the opportunity to put forward shows that don't necessarily have mass appeal (but still have far more mass appeal than Lindsay's new show "Perigo". Good God) but in some way add value to society.

Back Benches has, for instance, engaged people in political debate who normally would run a mile from such a thing. I know, they've told me, and they keep telling me.

There are of course many important things our money should be going on right now (plastic waka and MediaWorks bailouts aside – although I don't have much of an issue with either of those, actually). Because our little nation ain't doing so well. But I suspect even if it were, the ideology of a couple of National Ministers would find another reason to ditch our last great foray into public broadcasting. And I think that's a shame.