The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives, Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe wryly commented – in a clever paraphrasing of St John’s Gospel – that “greater love hath no man than he lay down his friends for his life.”

Both Gladstone’s maxim and Thorpe’s quip go to the heart of the challenge a Prime Minister faces in managing the Cabinet. The Prime Minister is “primus inter pares” – first among equals – and is therefore responsible for the conduct of the Cabinet’s business. This applies whether the Cabinet is chosen by the Prime Minister (with the agreement of coalition partners) as is the case whenever National leads a government, or selected by the government caucus (again, with the agreement of coalition partners) whenever Labour leads the government.

When Ministers fail to perform, or are seen to be struggling in their portfolios, the expectation is that the Prime Minister will act. Moreover, while they will seldom get kudos for doing so, Prime Ministers certainly attract public criticism for hanging on to Ministers seen to be out of their depth. It is, of course, a careful balancing act, and Prime Ministers, whose very survival depends on the support of colleagues, cannot afford to be seen as either overly protective of weak performing Ministers for too long, or too trigger-happy and impetuous when it comes to getting rid of them.

The ultimate judgement will reflect the Prime Minister’s assessment of the detrimental impact a Minister’s performance may be having on the perception of the government’s performance (and by extension, that of the Prime Minister), and whether a compelling or credible public case can then be made for demotion or dismissal. It is something successive Prime Ministers have been loath to act on too precipitately, with most preferring instead to wait until the now normal pre-election Cabinet reshuffle, or the post-election formation of the new Cabinet, to sort things out.

This week’s demotion of Ministers Melissa Lee and Penny Simmonds need to be seen in that light. While both have been stripped of sensitive portfolios where they were not seen to be performing effectively (Communications for Lee, and Disabilities for Simmonds) both have retained their other portfolios and remain Ministers, although Lee will now be a Minister outside Cabinet.

Three features of Prime Minister Luxon’s downgrading of these two Ministers stand out.

First, the timing. The Prime Minister clearly considered that the problems Lee and Simmonds were having in their respective Media and Disabilities portfolios were unlikely to go away in the short term. They were therefore likely to be too much of an unwelcome distraction in the lead-up to next month’s Budget, where the government will be looking to glean the most positive publicity it can, in what is likely to be a very grim environment. Getting rid of unnecessary, negative distractions now, and passing the portfolios to more experienced hands, was the expedient and prudent thing to do.

Second, the scope. There is likely to be general agreement that Lee and Simmonds had lost the respective plots in the Media and Disabilities portfolios and were unlikely to be able to recover the loss of credibility associated with that, at least in the short term. Few tears are likely to be shed at their removal, but it may have been a different story had they been removed as Ministers altogether. That could have aroused questions of overreaction which would have reflected badly on the Prime Minister’s leadership style.

As it is, he has sent two clear messages – one to both Ministers that they are on their last warning, and that they will be unceremoniously shown the door if anything else goes wrong. The second warning is to all other Ministers about the Prime Minister’s limited tolerance for poor performance and the fate that might await them in such circumstances. Neither will have done him any harm with his Caucus colleagues, nor with the wider public.

However, the third feature is more problematic. Both Lee and Simmonds are National Party Ministers, making it somewhat easier for the Prime Minister to deal with them. It will be a different situation though, should future circumstances involve New Zealand First or ACT Ministers. While the ultimate authority about who serves as Ministers lies with the Prime Minister, any decision to demote or dismiss New Zealand First or ACT Ministers would have to be handled very deftly and would be reliant on the ultimate agreement of the leaders of those parties.

The Prime Minister’s credibility would be severely, perhaps irreparably, damaged if he were to attempt or demote Ministers from New Zealand First or ACT without agreement from those parties. In this context, it is interesting to compare the treatment of National Ministers Lee and Simmonds, with that of New Zealand First Minister Casey Costello who arguably caused the government just as much embarrassment, yet suffered no sanction, over her appalling handling of the smoke-free issue.

The Prime Minister may have flashed his butcher’s knife and laid down Ministers Lee and Simmonds for his life this week, but the wider context strongly suggests that he, like other New Zealand Prime Ministers before him, still has some way to go to live up to Gladstone’s maxim.

       

There has been a positive but restrained response to the deal announced between Stuff and Warner Brothers Discovery to “save” TV3’s six o’clock nightly news bulletin, currently screened under the Newshub label. According to Stuff, the deal will mean that around 40 of the jobs involved can also be saved.

This is cold comfort for the majority of the approximately 300 staff who currently work for Newshub, and the 68 TVNZ news and current affairs staff who were told last week that their jobs would be going over the next three months. There will be many presenters, journalists and production staff from both channels displaced and left looking for work in a local media market which has been decimated by these rationalisations.

That will be bad enough for those affected, but there are also wider implications and consequences that are not yet being spoken about.

The New Zealand School of Broadcasting in Christchurch currently offers a range of courses in “screen, journalism, and digital media”. It says its graduates “go into exciting careers in newsrooms, television studios, radio stations and production houses.” Well, not anymore it would seem. Even before the recent turmoil the school was finding it increasingly challenging to fill the approximately 70 new places it had on offer each year. The scuttling of Newshub and the cutbacks at TVNZ will likely make it nigh impossible to attract new students in the future, because there will be no jobs for graduates to go to in New Zealand.

The School of Broadcasting is a publicly funded entity, and in a time of fiscal restraint the government cannot be expected to look too kindly on continuing to support an agency that now seems set to be training New Zealanders to work predominantly for overseas organisations such as Sky News Australia, or Al Jazeera, in the future.

But while the New Zealand School of Broadcasting is an obvious downstream casualty of the upheavals in Newshub and TVNZ, it is by no means the only one. There are currently around 22 other New Zealand universities and tertiary institutions offering qualifications in journalism and communication. These range from diplomas, through to full degrees and post-graduate qualifications.

While not all these qualifications are specific to broadcast media, there will nevertheless be significant implications for these courses, arising from the Newshub and TVNZ situations. And, consequently, their ripple effect is likely to continue for some years.

It is all reminiscent of the situation New Zealand Railways faced in the 1980s following the Booz-Allen Report. That report recommended an overall size for the railways at the time of about half what it then was. The government accepted the recommendations, and then had to confront the reality that it still had a network of railways workshops at Otahuhu, East Town, Hutt Valley, Addington, and Hillside all geared to producing rolling stock and other equipment at a level that about twice what was required. Massive closures and redundancies were the inevitable outcome as railways struggled to ensure capacity was resized to better meet its needs.

The equivalent situation now faces the Tertiary Education Commission and tertiary providers regarding the future of journalism training. In a country of New Zealand’s size, with its limited media market, it begs the question as to how it was ever reasonable to assume 22 different journalism qualifications and courses could be offered. The shakeup caused by Newshub and TVNZ in recent weeks puts that question into even starker relief. As it surveys the current situation the TEC will need to acknowledge it is more than likely there will be more upheavals to come as journalism is reshaped to meet the demands of the modern technological environment.

In that regard, carrying on as at present is simply not an option. Streamlining the range and type of courses provided to achieve a more uniform national standard, and supporting centres of excellence rather than encouraging course proliferation would be useful initial steps the TEC could take. Students, after all, want to be assured that they will get value for money in the worth and contemporary relevance of the qualification they gain, particularly in what is likely to become to an even more fast-changing industry in the future.

When the interests of those students today and those contemplating future careers in journalism and media production are taken into account, the need to make journalism nimbler and more relevant to today’s environment becomes overwhelming.

While cold comfort to those at NewsHub and TVNZ currently pondering their own futures, a move in this direction would be a step towards equipping the next generation of journalists and media staff with the tools to cope with a rapidly changing work environment.

 

April 10 is a dramatic day in New Zealand’s history.

On April 10, 1919, the preliminary results of a referendum showed that New Zealanders had narrowly voted for prohibition by a majority of around 13,000 votes. However, when the votes of soldiers still overseas after World War I were later added in, the right to drink was retained by just over 10,000 votes.

April 10, 1968, was one of the blackest days in New Zealand history when the inter-island ferry, Wahine, sank at the entry to Wellington Harbour with the initial loss of 51 lives, later to rise to 53. For rugby followers, April 10, 1973, will be remembered as the day Prime Minister Norman Kirk cancelled that year’s planned South African rugby tour to New Zealand. Other sports lovers will recall April 10, 1984, as the day when Dame Susan Devoy became the first New Zealander to win a British Squash Open title, the first of eight such titles she would win.

April 10, 2024, now seems set to be remembered, to paraphrase songwriter Don McLean as “the day the television media died” with Newshub’s confirmation that all its news and current affairs programmes will cease on July 5, quickly followed by TVNZ’s announcements of severe cuts to its news services, including the cancellation from May of flagship programmes, “Fair Go” and “Sunday”.

Newshub’s and TVNZ News’ demise had been foreshadowed some weeks ago, so this week’s announcements were not really a surprise. Many commentators have lamented that the end of television news and current affairs broadcasting, as we have known it, is a significant challenge for our democracy. They argue there will be a loss of diversity of opinion, and that having on to rely on the more limited services that the state broadcaster will now provide runs the risk of pro-government news predominating.

However, a recent survey of New Zealanders’ news watching habits shows a different picture and offers a partial explanation for Newshub’s and TVNZ’s decisions. In short, we have been relying less and less on television as our major news provider for some time now and have also been becoming less and less trusting of television news’ impartiality. While this mirrors an international trend, the decline in viewership and trust levels has been more marked and sudden in New Zealand than elsewhere.

A contributing factor seems to have been the “Podium of Truth”, “Jessica/Tova” circus we endured during the Covid19 lockdowns, and the government’s establishment of the $50 million public interest journalism fund to support media outlets during the pandemic. Whether intended or not, these created the public impression that the government was buying the media’s support to sell its pandemic message. But rather than build public confidence in the media’s credibility, they had precisely the opposite effect.

Add to that, a marked decline in television advertising revenues – Warner Brothers Discovery has estimated that TV3’s annual advertising revenues have fallen by 74% because of the general economic downturn, and the position would be no doubt similar for TVNZ – and this week’s decisions became virtually inevitable.

There have been suggestions of new online streaming arrangements to replace programmes like “Fair Go”, or possible external contracting arrangements to provide contestable new services to both channels, but nothing specific or substantial has emerged so far. While it is not the government’s responsibility to bail out failing industries overtaken by new ways of doing things, the government does have a role to play in preserving the expression of diverse views and ensuring that New Zealanders have access to major national and international news streams.

However, to date, Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee has been disappointingly quiet. She has expressed her sorrow at the likely heavy loss of jobs and said she is taking advice on the issue, but, as the Prime Minister confirms, has not yet made any specific suggestions to Cabinet. The clock is ticking though – by the time Newshub’s doors close on July 5, New Zealanders have a right to know what alternatives will be in place to ensure they can access quality news services in the future.

On that count, the gloom and despondency now understandably affecting those most directly affected, is unlikely to be long-term. New opportunities and ways of doing things will almost certainly arise to replace what has been lost. In the meantime, we should acknowledge with gratitude the service and professionalism of those whose familiar faces we have got to know over the years and wish them well for the future.

Whatever happens next though, April 10, will continue to be a day of national significance. 

 

Taiwan and New Zealand are two small island states with much in common.

Both are vibrant, independent democracies, living in the shadow of an overbearing neighbour. (Admittedly, Taiwan’s overbearing neighbour has far more aggressive tendencies than our at-times overbearing neighbour!) There is a strong free trade agreement between the two countries and a growing cultural link based on DNA evidence that Taiwan’s indigenous people and Māori share a common ancestry.

And both New and Zealand and Taiwan lie on the Pacific Ring of Fire – the horseshoe shaped zone around the Pacific Ocean which the United States Geological Service has described as “the most seismically and volcanically active zone in the world.” This week’s devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake, with many powerful aftershocks already, is the latest and largest in a long line of major earthquakes in Taiwan over the last 25 years. As we know all too well, earthquakes are also a common feature of life in New Zealand, with major earthquakes here in Christchurch in 2010 and 2011, Seddon in 2013, and Kaikoura in 2016.

But sadly, here is where the comparison with Taiwan stops. Whereas New Zealand authorities have talked long and hard about earthquake preparedness, particularly since Christchurch, Taiwan has made the structural changes necessary to ensure it is well prepared to face earthquakes in the future. That explains why the death toll from this week’s earthquake is likely to remain low overall, even as more deaths become known. Given Taiwan’s population density – 23 million people living on an island the size of the province of Otago – that is a remarkable achievement.

Indeed, the biggest criticism so far of Taiwan’s high level of preparedness was that the national text messaging system which warns of arriving earthquakes failed to accurately measure the intensity of this week’s quake. A similar system, developed by GNS New Zealand is at a much more embryonic stage, and not as sophisticated as the Taiwan model.

Taiwan’s preparedness is considered amongst the most advanced in the world. It is central government led, through the Disaster Prevention and Protection Act, which established two national centres to oversee earthquake response co-ordination and training. It includes strict, regularly updated, building codes for new and existing buildings, with subsidies available to people to check building resilience. Penalties for non-compliance are also strict, with culpable building owners and construction personnel liable to imprisonment.  A world class seismological network has been established and there are regular public education campaigns and drills in schools.

By comparison, the New Zealand response looks well-meaning, but essentially vague and languid. Our National Emergency Management system is still feeble at best, as the recent independent Bush report into the response to Cyclone Gabrielle’s impact on Hawkes Bay has shown. More than a decade after the collapse of the CTV building in Christchurch with the loss of 115 lives, and despite the critical findings of the Commission of Inquiry, no-one has yet been taken to Court over the building’s failure because the Crown Law Office has overruled efforts by the Police, various lawyers, and experts to do so. Councils around the country continue to find it difficult to require building owners to comply with stricter earthquake standards, and there is no support available to help bring buildings up to standard, or to help people find out if the buildings they live or work in are sufficiently resilient.

GNS has a good system for recording earthquakes and their intensity, but much more work needs to be done on establishing effective early warning systems. Public education programmes are occasional and patchy, although there do appear to be regular exercises and drills in schools. Transport corridors remain vulnerable, as last years’ upper North Island cyclones highlighted in various areas.

Within hours of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, Taiwan was able to assemble and dispatch its specialist ready response unit to assist in the recovery. There is no equivalent body in New Zealand, with our emergency response in such situations left in the hands of our remarkable, but still under resourced, volunteer firefighters who have become our predominant frontline response service in so many areas, from road accidents to medical emergencies, to natural disasters.

Taiwan and New Zealand both know that earthquakes are a part of life in our respective countries. They strike swiftly and catastrophically. They cannot be prevented, but their impacts can be mitigated. Taiwan’s history means it understands how important comprehensive community resilience and recovery is, and that only it can establish that for itself. As in so many other areas of its national life, Taiwan has faced up to the responsibility of doing so and has just got on with it.

In contrast, New Zealand still has too much of the “must get around to that someday” approach. Yet, for both New Zealand and Taiwan, one unfortunate certainty is that both will suffer more large and damaging earthquakes in the future. Another is that Taiwan will continue to be the better prepared.