TVNZ hīkoi documentary needs a sequel

Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi.

Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account of 2004’s hīkoi from Cape Reinga to Wellington — narrated by Tāmati Rimene-Sprout, who marched as a 10-year-old — is undeniably atmospheric and will certainly be rousing for those who support Māori nationalism.

For others, Hīkoi: Speaking Our Truth will look like the opening salvo in a propaganda campaign to head off attempts by the government to amend the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011, which repealed Clark’s legislation.

17 people in Malaita stand in way of China’s takeover of the Solomons

• Cleo Paskal writes –

WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani.

The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t over. In an exclusive interview, former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani tells The Sunday Guardian about the pitched political battle still raging in his province over who will be the next Premier, and why China is involved. But first, a summary of events so far.

The shabby “Parliamentary urgency” ploy – shaky foundations and why our democracy needs trust

Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. 

The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency plays in that.

NZ’s trans lobby is fighting a rearguard action

Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review —

The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass report’ key to protecting girls from serious harm” — should have made news editors around the country sit up instantly and take notice.

After all, New Zealand clinicians prescribe puberty blockers to gender-distressed young people at more than 10 times the rate of Britain — as University of Otago emeritus professor Charlotte Paul told Sean Plunket recently (and North & South magazine last November). And most of the hundreds of young people in New Zealand aged 12 to 17 who are taking puberty blockers are girls.

You might imagine that such enthusiastic dispensing would make the findings by English paediatric consultant Dr Hilary Cass highly newsworthy here but our legacy media doesn’t seem to be particularly interested. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising given they have for years vilified critics of the “affirmative” treatment of gender-distressed young people as transphobes while insisting the “science is settled”. Unfortunately for them, Cass has decisively unsettled that belief.

In her report — commissioned by England’s National Health Service (NHS) and published on April 10 — she advised that such powerful medical treatments need to be supported by strong evidence, and so far such a firm underpinning is lacking: “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.” The existing evidence for prescribing gender medicine, she said, is built on “shaky foundations”.

Can taxpayers be confident PIJF cash was spent wisely?

Graham Adams writes about the $55m media fund —

When Patrick Gower was asked by Mike Hosking last week what he would say to the many Newstalk ZB callers who allege the Labour government bribed media with $55 million of taxpayers’ money via the Public Interest Journalism Fund — and that journalists “sucked up” to the government — Gower’s response was brusque: “I’ll tell them pretty much this, mate: Get stuffed.”

It seemed a curiously contemptuous response from a broadcaster who had just told Hosking that taxpayers’ money dispensed by NZ on Air might be his best chance of making another television show after Newshub’s demise.

Gower added: “Yes, there was some money flicked around by the [Labour] government and I think most people would agree now that that had a branding problem for all of us but at the end of the day I’m not going to sit here and listen to people like that say that kind of thing after I’ve slaved my bloody guts out, alongside my colleagues, for 25 years, in my case, putting damned good news out there.” 

Will politicians let democracy die in the darkness?

• Bryce Edwards writes  –

Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account.

Our political system is suffering from the actions and inactions of governments, which means that citizens have less information about public life. Therefore, to draw on the famous Washington Post tagline, New Zealand politicians are guilty of allowing democracy to die in the darkness.

In a structural deficit, the only real tax cut is a spending cut

• Eric Crampton writes – 

This week’s column in the Stuff papers. A snippet:

Tabarrok warned that America had two political parties – “the Tax and Spenders and the No-Tax and Spenders” – and neither was fiscally conservative. In the two decades after Tabarrok’s warning, the federal government never achieved a balanced budget. America’s federal deficit ranged from 1.1% of GDP to over 14% of GDP and gross federal debt doubled, rising from 60% of GDP to 120% of GDP.

Coastal court action flies under the radar

Graham Adams says NZ’s coastline may end up under iwi control.

Former Attorney-General and Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Chris Finlayson is known for his forthright and sometimes combative language. In 2022, in discussing opposition to co-governance, he referred to “the sour right” and “the KKK brigade”.

Last week, in “Te Ao with Moana” broadcast on Māori TV, the National Party stalwart, who was a Cabinet minister during the John Key administration, lambasted David Seymour’s proposed referendum on a Treaty Principles Bill:

“[While] good people can raise sensible questions about what the Treaty actually means and what the principles actually mean… you can’t have a referendum on this material because it will bring out of the woodwork the sort of people who used to write to me and say, ‘Why don’t you get cancer? How dare you give property rights to people above their station?’”

Graham Linehan gets the last laugh

• Graham Adams writes —

If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those areas where the less we glimpse behind the curtain the better.

The wailing reached fever pitch a week later with news of the proposed cancellation of TVNZ’s Fair Go and Sunday programmes. Days after the announcement, the Herald’s landing page featured no fewer than four journalists’ laments.

Further integrity problems for the Greens in suspending MP Darleen Tana

• Bryce Edwards writes –

Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal?

For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to first suspend Darleen Tana from her small business portfolio six weeks ago, and then yesterday to suspend her from their caucus while an independent investigation is made into her links with alleged migrant exploitation.