Three public meetings have been held so far on the vexed issue of Saving public broadcasting in NZ.
On 30 June, the government shuts down funding to TVNZ 7 and it will cease to exist.
In Auckland, more than 350 people turned up to a public meeting with standing room only. In Wellington more than 400 attended, in a packed hall. Last Friday night almost 200 people turned up in Nelson, which is, I understand, a rather unusually large turnout.
Tonight’s meeting in Christchurch is likely to be similar.
There are meetings coming up in Palmerston North, Dunedin and Hamilton. At least four more meetings have been planned for parts of Auckland in the coming weeks.
To date, the meetings have had speakers from Labour, the Greens, NZ First and various academics. At tonight’s Chch meeting, the Maori Party will have a speaker. Peter Dunne and I have conversed on Twitter about the need to retain a public television channel in NZ
National is conspicuously absent from the discussions. Their tactic of ignoring the issues they don’t want the public to focus on is making them more conspicuous.
How come hypocrite Tory MPs turn up to be on Back Benches?
jen.. not to show up on backbenches would open them up to nationwide ridicule as cowards…. better to throw a few mp’s(crumbs) to the proles….it’s the lesser of two evils…
the only reason the little boys and girls playacting as leaders can get away with running away from every difficult issue is because they are having their inadequacies covered up by what is supposed to be a safeguard against exactly this situation….the fourth estate….it can’t be stressed enough just how vital it has become to cleanse the corruption from our news gathering organisations…
we will never move past our adolescence as a society until we start informing ourselves using actual reality as our yardstick, rather than having personal self interest dictate what we are allowed to know….
Attempting to shut down the media,heaven forbid those in charge becoe answerable for their actions.
Is this issue really worth all the noise?
despite the attempt to shrug at it like a johnny “sparkles” key soundalike, it would be better to have just stayed out of the discussion altogether ghosty….
this IS an issue for an increasing number of people, whether the apologist clique likes it or not…
there are myriad issues, not all of them of vital importance to the economy, or new zealands security…. yet to dismiss each issue as not worth the time to focus on is to allow the breakdown of societal structure to continue at a compounding rate…
obviously, the tactic then would be to point to the “status quo” arrived at as justification to ignore even more “minor issues” that will keep cropping up as the symptoms of the degradation show up more and more…
this attitude does nothing but harm…. to pursue attitudes of selective blindness towards issues which don’t suit the power bloc,who would have open debate, and information sharing with the general population suppressed is to endorse the kind of fascism that the nazis made so famous…
look where that ended up…..do we really need to repeat the idiocy??
“How come the National Govt isn’t fronting up on TVNZ 7?”
Because no-one is watching perhaps?
@Bbfloyd ‘nazism’ really? Seriously champ – you need to calm down and reduce your levels of hysteria. You’ll do yourself a mischief.
Lou
You may not be comfortable but eroding critical analysis and comment is what does the mischief.
New Zealanders have lost access to 5 public service channels over the last 12 months. TVNZ6, TVNZ7, Stratos and the superb SBS1 and SBS2 from Australia.
+1 on the comments of bbfloyd and John W.
This government has established itself as a “crisis”/”dark skies” government that bounces from crisis to crisis, defending the poor people of New Zealand from forces beyond their control, which they say they understand and for the most part we don’t.
In its long list of excuses for failure, it paints public broadcasting, as a “nice-to-have” alongside other essential services. Why, if it wasn’t for ‘dat GFC, Pike River, the rise of China, ‘dem earthquakes and trouble in Europe, we wouldn’t have to take the ESSENTIAL (no no, not ideologically motivated) STEP of flogging off our SOE’s and public broadcaster, and we’d all be making hay in the sunshine again.
This is a fantasy. It relies on a complicit media who are prepared to take their story cues from the right-wing blogosphere and it is inspired by the PR strategy of Crosby/Textor and other PR men who are deploying the same template in the UK, the US and Australia.
As for Lou and his “mischief”, that is becoming a pretty boring Tory troll catch-cry. I’ve seen it deployed on this blog by him and others. It is not such a clever way to deflect criticism of the government.
So sorry, Ghost, but we’ll keep making noise.