Quote of the Day - 18 August 2013

Fran O'Sullivan adds her 10 cents worth to the various opinions expressed in the wake of Wednesday night's Campbell Live John-off:

These days we have Seven Sharp where journalists are often reduced to bimbo status and are too wrapped up making fillers to give sustained focus on the big issues of the day, such as the Fonterra food scare or, for that matter, the GCSB legislation.
Campbell Live certainly can't be accused of that.
But John Campbell has become so involved in the thrust of his crusades that when he was finally presented with the opportunity this week to interview the Prime Minister on the GCSB bill, he was blindsided by John Key's fluency and not sufficiently prepared to sustain 20 minutes of primetime television without coming very close indeed to throwing his toys out of the cot.
I don't for one moment believe that Key is the product of his press minders or media training, as left-wing commentators claim.
I've watched him make many apparent off-the-cuff speeches at countless business conferences and dinners where he exhibits a fine ability to combine humour (at times demonstrating a larrikin nature) with firm messages about the Government's policy framework, keen insights into New Zealanders' responses to domestic issues and the ability to flatter his audiences by sharing top-level communications on international matters.
People who believe he is slumped in some brain-fade fog have not studied the politician.
But overpreparation does not suit him. He is better at making what appears to be an impromptu speech rather than reading a statesman-like speech where he can take oxygen from his audience.
When he does prepare too much he comes up with dreadfully overwrought phrases (the Norton Anti-Virus analogy for the GCSB this week; Fonterra being New Zealand's poster-child for safe food last week).
What Key does do is study leadership.
He has spent many hours watching tapes of the way other leaders have dealt with opponents in major political debates.
Would that Campbell had done the same.
But the TV3 host's disorganisation was immediately apparent from the shuffled papers displayed in front of him rather than a laptop, clipboard (or preferably no notes at all).
But while Key may have come to the interview with no notes, he would certainly have worked out a gameplan in his head on how he would control Campbell and get across the story he wished to tell.
One little verbal joust said it all.
Key: "You've done so many stories which are absolute nonsense, and you know they are and I've actually answered those in the past ..."
Campbell: "Prime Minister, feel free to sue us, go to the BSA, make a formal complaint."
Key: "I don't bother complaining because when you weave your web and do all those little things ..."
You only had to look at Campbell's face to see he realised he had effectively been told to go and sit on the naughty stool.

The most interesting aspect here is Fran O'Sullivan's dismissal of the Left's oft-repeated allegation that John Key is "the product of his press minders or media training". She has probably seen enough of the PM in action both in New Zealand and offshore to make that call.

We've heard the PM in person several times, and on each occasion he has spoken without notes, and largely off-the-cuff. His command on details, especially in regard to economic issues though is impressive.

John Key is nobody's fool, despite what you might read at The Standard or the Daily Blog (which we generally choose not to). Those who underestimate him do so at their own risk; just ask John Campbell.

Plunket on the "John-off"

RadioLive talkback host Sean Plunket also writes a weekly column for the Dominion-Post. And his column today is devoted to what he calls the "John-off"; Key vs Campbell, on Wednesday night. Under the heading PM gives Campbell a masterclass Plunket opines:

I wasn't even a working journalist when Sir Robert Muldoon uttered the famous line, "I love you, Mr Lange".
It was July 1984 and Ian Johnstone was moderating the final televised leaders' debate of the snap election between just two party leaders, incumbent prime minister Sir Robert and ebullient Labour leader David Lange.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet 30 years on I could watch the whole thing again this week. Not so I could get all dewy eyed about my lost youth but rather because this week I saw for the first time in three decades a television encounter which matched that debate in terms of utter dominance for one participant and defeat for another.
I'm talking, of course, about the mighty John-off on TV3 last Wednesday night, Campbell v Key on the GCSB.
Having decided that the GCSB bill is the most important piece of legislation this Parliament will ever pass (it actually isn't), the team at Campbell Live jumped in their sponsors' cars and hit the highway to ask New Zealanders if they like being spied on and were happy to give up their personal freedoms to a secretive government.
Of course they are not, they are outraged and so is John Campbell, especially when the prime minister thinks recreational snapper quota is probably worrying people far more than the GCSB bill and won't come on Campbell Live to defend himself.
It took a couple of days of the self-generated sanctimonious road trip before Mr Key finally snappered and agreed to join Campbell in the studio to explain himself.
The rest will one day be broadcasting history. Never has an interviewer who has almost gleefully proclaimed his right to practise advocacy journalism been so comprehensively and obviously "owned" by his intended victim. 

Campbell Live's promos at the beginning of the year set the programme on a collision course with the Government. John Campbell and his team chose some highly political and emotional subjects which they were going to hone in on. Read this Whaleoil post from 16 January, and watch the video on it; it was a very accurate prophesy of things to come.

So Campbell Live eventually settled on supporting those who oppose the GCSB Bill. That's fine; once colours were nailed to the mast, no-one expected objective, balanced coverage. But John Campbell  may now be regretting inviting the PM along; Plunket continues:

In 17 minutes of compelling viewing Mr Key either answered every question put to him or explained why he couldn't. He maintained his dignity and focus throughout in what anyone who knows anything about the art of the interview has described as a masterclass.
Campbell was left shuffling his papers, defending his lack of friendship with Kim Dotcom and finally, in the style of Sir Robert 30 years ago, ruefully admitting, "Mr Key, you are a brilliant politician".
Next night in a petulant self-serving tone he defended all the hard work he had done to get Mr Key to front up on the programme and lo and behold the magical mystery misinformation tour continued as if the exhaustive and reasoned statements of the prime minister the night before had simply never happened. 

Quite so; the opening minutes of Campbell Live on Thursday night were simply bizarre. John Campbell has obviously never read Whaleoil's Rules of Politics, and specifically rule #1 which reads thus:

If you are explaining, you are losing

To be fair to Campbell though, he wasn't really losing on Thursday night; he had already been comprehensively thrashed, and was simply trying to stem the bleeding. But it was clear that his encounter with the Prime Minister on Wednesday night had knocked the stuffing out of him, despite his bravado.

Plunket concludes, suggesting that this interview will be mandatory viewing for journalism students in years to come, but with a particular twist:

Thirty years ago you couldn't miss the symbolic significance of the Lange/Muldoon debate. "I love you, Mr Lange" was Sir Robert writing his own political epitaph and days later he was out of office, never to return. Looking back at that debate was remarkable. Unemployment was 100,000 but 40,000 of them were on government make-work schemes, Mr Lange and Sir Robert sparred over a $660 million loan from Britain, Sir Robert committed to spend $10m on promoting tourism and Mr Lange made much of the shocking fact that every man, woman and child in the country was paying $10 a week to service our national debt.  
Perhaps the most marked difference between that encounter and what occurred this week was that it was two politicians going toe to toe, not a politician and a journalist. Johnstone moderated that 1984 debate like the utter professional he is, soothing an increasingly agitated Sir Robert and controlling an ever more dominant Mr Lange.
There were no fancy graphics, just three chairs, a table, two pitchers of water, some carpet on the wall and three or maybe four cameras. It is still the best piece of political television I've ever seen.
For 18-year-old journalism hopefuls watching on Wednesday, John vs John may one day occupy the same high mantle in their professional memory but I'd suggest for quite different reasons.
One represents the success of the media providing a forum for the important business of political debate, the other represents an abject failure to do so.  

We could not agree more. Wednesday night was a huge own goal for Campbell Live, and its campaign against the GCSB Bill was left in tatters. 

Perhaps John Campbell should sit down with Sean Plunket, Dr Brian Edwards and the video of Lange vs Muldoon from 1984 for a spot of media training.

Quote of the Day - 16 August 2013

Toby Manhire does internet stuff for The Listener, and is also a columnist at the Herald. It's safe to say that he doesn't lean to the right. So his comments on the John versus John interview on Wednesday night are quite revealing; check this out:

And so it came as something of a surprise that John Key had decided to appear on Campbell Live on Wednesday night, despite his sullen "probably not" response to the programme's repeated invitations.
Maybe his advisers felt the spy bill issue was starting to get some traction in Middle New Zealand. Maybe they sensed that dismissing the bill's opponents as peddlers of "misinformation" rung hollow as long as there was so little informing. Probably they detected that he had begun to look dangerously derisive, sneering and unleaderly in the earlier exchange with Campbell Live reporter Rebecca Wright, in which he deployed the dead-eye stare along with the snapper gambit, dismissing a series of questions on the spy bill with the advice that "more people will watch" if the programme would "switch to snapper". The calculation, it seems, was that it could do him damage among those who might actually vote for him.
So the Prime Minister braved the Campbell Live studio. And he was formidable. There were some evasions, some elisions, and too many soothing assurances that have not in fact been inked into the legislation. But as far as the chess was concerned, Key was masterful, pushing John Campbell on to the defensive, grabbing the initiative, dwelling on issues that suited him because, after all, wasn't this about explaining things properly?
It was a striking reminder of John Key's ability as a political performer. He understands his audience - no, his audiences - as well as any politician in recent times. For a prime minister halfway through the second term, his command is astonishing. Even Campbell, who's seen a few, said it: "You're a brilliant politician."
The great strength of his media performances is the way that every pronouncement has a sort of silent prefix: "Oh, come on, be reasonable". And when his adversaries attack him as a buffoon or a devil - or a "psychopath" in the words of one prominent left-wing blogger reviewing the encounter yesterday - he grows stronger, more reasonable still. If opponents want to go for him personally, they'd be much wiser to cast him as shapeshifter, whatever the mood requires: one day a jovial dork, the next a forgetful bureaucrat, the next a ruthless political operator.
In the meantime, the Labour party has good reason to worry about how they can match him in campaign mode come 2014. Under the old electoral system another landslide would be just about guaranteed. And National's cousins in the Australian Liberal Party must be torn up with envy. I bet they'd swap him for their own daggy leader, Tony "Suppository" Abbott, in a heartbeat.

We wonder which "one prominent left-wing blogger" described Key as a "psychopath." We haven't visited The Standard for a while, and we never bother with The Daily Blog. But we suspect that the answer to our question almost certainly lies at one of the above.

In the meantime, the Left continues to dismiss John Key, to its peril. If the Left wants a third consecutive term in opposition, they should continue with that tactic, because it's working a treat for the PM!

Emmerson on John versus John

Herald cartoonist Rod Emmerson is at his brilliant best this morning as he reflects on the Campbell Live interview from Wednesday night:

Great stuff Mr Emmerson!

So much for the Campbell Live campaign

TV3's John Campbell and his fellow travelers have been trying to get John Key to come on the show for a few weeks to ambush him over the GCSB Bill. Yesterday they took to social media to advise that the Prime Minister had agreed to come on the show.

John Campbell may now be wishing that they hadn't tried so hard. Here's a link to the video of the interview, followed by TV3's overview of it:

Campbell Live has devoted much of this week to the GCSB bill. We're on a nationwide road trip, finding out whether you support or oppose the bill or even if you feel informed.

We've asked Prime Minister John Key to appear on a number of occasions to discuss the bill. He's always declined, until tonight.

"We got 124 submissions on the GCSB bill, and 30,000 on snapper," he says.

Mr Key says he spends a lot of time touring the country, but the GCSB bill is not a topic that comes up in his discussions.

"People do not raise GCSB. I have public meetings, I have question sessions at everything I do. I probably have half a dozen meetings a day with public engaging with people…People don't raise this issue," he tells Campbell Live.

The Prime Minister says under the changes, the GCSB will need to obtain a warrant from the Commissioner of High Security Warrants – a retired court judge appointed by Mr Key.

"[The surveillance of] Kim Dotcom was illegal under the old law, which is why I apologised, and it's illegal under the new law," Mr Key says.

Mr Key says some discussion around the bill has been misrepresented, and the organisation will not be able to spy on New Zealanders.

"The point here is that you're going into a shop, or you're going down the main street of New Zealand, and you are saying, 'Do you want to be spied on?' If you come and ask me that question the answer is no. But you cannot do that under Section Eight," he says.

Mr Key says the GCSB stopped surveillance of 88 New Zealanders last year under advice from lawyers.

"I'm a bit busy running the country…so I don't need to go in there and read out a pro-former second reading speech," he said when asked why he did not show up to the committee stages or second reading of the bill, before accusing Campbell Live of creating stories around the Dotcom saga.

"You've done so many stories which are absolute nonsense and you know they are, and I've actually answered those in the past," he says.

Mr Key says the original problems with the GCSB stem from a section passed by the Labour Government in 2003.

We didn't see the interview the first time around. But when we checked our Twitter feed around 7.30pm, there were all sorts of comments going on from some very unlikely sources about how John Key had schooled John Campbell, so we made sure that we watched the TV3 plus one channel at 8pm when Campbell Live replayed.

We know that we are biased, but John Key was absolutely masterful last night. Those who dismiss him as a lightweight could not be more wrong. He was factual, he refused to let John Campbell cut him off and/or speak over him, and he answered Campbell's questions at length and with detail.

And he made a very valid point; watch the video from around the 2 minute mark where Key talks about some of the misinformation in the public arena about the GCSB Bill. Key confirms that the Kitteridge Report identified 88 occasions between 2003 and 2012 where the GCSB may have acted unlawfully by providing support to external agencies; on average each year ONE for every HALF-MILLION New Zealanders.

The Left is trying to paint the GCSB Bill as giving the GCSB the power to undertake mass surveillance of New Zealanders. Patently that is fiction, and John Key exposed that fiction last night in a very powerful manner. The fact is that the GCSB's powers will be little different to what they were under Helen Clark, but they will be more clearly defined and less ambiguous, and they will be subject to considerably more scrutiny.

If John Campbell was hoping to ambush the Prime Minister last night, he will be awfully disappointed. We would go as far as to say that last night's interview was as good as any that John Key has given in his five years as Prime Minister.

And the Labour Party must be desperately worried. John Key regularly took on Sir Michael Cullen's rapier-sharp wit when he was Opposition finance spokesman and later Leader of the Opposition. In 2008 he went head-to-head with the formidable Helen Clark, forcing Miss Clark to resort to a jibe about Key shouting his family down. And in 2011 Key was all over the experienced Phil Goff in the televised leaders' debates. How could they even consider putting the gaffe-prone David Shearer up against him?

In 17 minutes last night, John Key went a long way towards answering criticisms of the GCSB legislation. Sure, the extreme activist element will continue to beat this up, but John Key is dead right; far, far more people care about how many snapper they can legally catch than whether the state will spy on them. No amount of beating up of the GCSB issue by John Campbell, David Fisher, Kim Dotcom et al will change that.

du Fresne on Peters

Karl du Fresne probably wouldn't complain at being described by us as a veteran journalist. He admits to having been in journalism for "more than 40 years", which means that he has been writing longer than Winston Peters has been an MP; Peters first entered Parliament after the 1978 General Election and the infamous Hunua electoral petition.

So du Fresne's musings on Peters this week are the product of a career's worth of observations, and should be taken in that context; he opines:

Some people are in the fortunate position of being able to write or say almost anything and get away with it.
Take art critics, for example. Most contemporary art is, almost by definition, incapable of being explained coherently.
It follows that a critic can interpret it any way he or she chooses and sound authoritative, at least to the gullible.
Often the artists themselves have no idea what their works mean. Some of the more honest ones admit it.
The critic, therefore, has total freedom to decide what the artist's creation represents - and if the critique is phrased in words whose exact meaning is impossible to pin down, so much the better.
Much the same applies to wine writers, some of whom are in danger of displacing art critics as the most infamous creators of pretentious tosh.
Because the flavour, aroma and texture of wine is subtle, nuanced and hard to capture in words, a wine writer can use outrageously fanciful descriptive terms and appear knowledgeable. I know, because I used to be one.
Then there's Winston Peters. Even art critics and wine writers should bow to him as the acknowledged master of verbal flummery.
Words cease to have any meaning when they tumble out of Mr Peters' mouth. The sounds that emerge resemble recognisable language but they reveal nothing.
It follows that it's usually pointless trying to get sense out of him. An interview with him is as futile as a dog chasing its tail. Yet journalists keep on trying, as John Campbell bravely did on Campbell Live a couple of weeks ago.
Campbell is an accomplished broadcaster, but perhaps he needs to be gently reminded that Albert Einstein defined insanity as trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. 

In many ways, the Winston Peters who disrupts the flow of Question Time these days is a pale imitation of the Peters of old. Time, late nights and cigarettes have not treated the bloke they once called Luigi kindly. His "suppmentyqueshin" calls and the words that follow them are at times very difficult to interpret.

Peters can still light up a smoke-filled room with his mischievous grin, but his oratory is nowhere near as sharp as it used to be. As du Fresne notes "it's usually pointless trying to get sense out of him. An interview with him is as futile as a dog chasing its tail." 

One has to wonder for how much longer Peters will be able to keep it all up. There's certainly no-one emerging from the NZ First caucus to take his place, and you have to think that when Winston calls "time" on his career (or when the electorate does that for him), there will be no way back. But he has already completed one Lazarus-like comeback.

Winston Peters will never change, and people like John Campbell need to accept that. However willing the spirit is however, Father Time may dull the flesh.

Great stuff from The Civilian

We'd love to be able to do satire. We've tried, with a singular lack of success, so we'll leave it to people like Imperator Fish and The Civilian.

And The Civilian has excelled himself this morning:

That's great stuff from The Civilian, who has quickly become a daily must-read. In fact it's better than great; it's marvellous!

FOOTNOTE: This post is NOT brought to you by Mazda...