Harawira Hone: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and  State Enterprises — In Committee 
Harawira Hone: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and  State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8802] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
Tena koe e te Heamana tenatatou katoa e te Whare.  
[ 
Greetings to you the Chairperson and to all of us in the House. 
] 
One of Television New Zealand (TVNZ)’s top 10 charter objectives was supposed to be to ensure in its programmes and programme planning the participation of Maori and the presence of a significant Maori voice. Well excuse me if I choke on that piece of garbage. Apart from  
Te Karere 
  
Waka Huia 
 and  
Marae 
 which are paid for out of ring-fenced funding the only new Maori programme on Television New Zealand seems to be a 5-minute drama slotted into that prime 4.30 in the afternoon time slot the one right next to  
Te Karere 
. I want to give no offence to my mate Willie Jackson but  
Eye to Eye 
 once a week hardly qualifies as the significant Maori voice. That is a pity because some outstanding talent out there is being hidden away in some really poor time slots—like that for a doco produced by Tere Harrison an independent radio television and film producer.  
Framing Maori 
 gave us an insider’s look into the analysis that tells us that the television coverage of Maori issues is unbalanced—as if we did not already know that. It exploded the myth of journalistic objectivity and called for more culturally informed news reporting. It was an excellent programme that nobody saw of course because it was on at 9.30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. In fact independent studies confirm that there is a lot more bad news than good news about Maori on television and that the so-called presence of a significant Maori voice tends to be on programmes like  
Coast Watch 
  
Crimewatch 
 or the 6 o’clock news. That view was backed up by the visit of the United Nations special rapporteur last year when he noted the “systematic negative description of Maori in media coverage” as being of special concern. When Television One is brave enough to put forward a significant Maori voice it is at the crack of dawn late at night or on mornings at the weekends when whanau have other responsibilities.  
It is timely to raise these points in this debate because just a month ago the national hui of Maori film and television broadcasters Nga Aho Whakaari again challenged TVNZ for not fulfilling its charter obligations to Maori citing an age-old joke about  
Te Karere 
 being a programme that one sees only in the winter because when the cricket is on  
Te Karere 
 gets shunted to midnight.  
The TVNZ programming that does have the presence of a significant Maori voice is impressive. It is professional high quality and reflects the integrity and talents of some of our finest broadcasters but it is just hidden away in all of the wrong places. Over the years we have seen the likes of Ernie Leonard Whai Ngata Derek Wooster KingiIhaka Hone KaJulian Wilcox Wena Harawira and heaps of others who have recorded our stories captured priceless memories and contributed to an immense archive of knowledge and an enviable resource that has a legacy well outside of its monetary value. In fact the presence of a significant Maori voice can even be something as simple as seeing Carol Hirschfeld and Mike McRoberts on TV3 which raises the obvious question of where the equivalent significant Maori faces are in TVNZ. 
Pita Paraone 
: On Maori Television. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: It is TVNZ that we are talking about here. Those faces are gone. The issue is not just about the charter; it is also about seeing the faces and hearing the voices in order to know it to be true.  
It is hard to stomach lies about the presence of a significant Maori voice when the flagship stories of the Maori world that feature on the State broadcaster receive inferior programming slots meagre resources and little screen time for top Maori broadcasters. We also note too that it is not just Maori programmes that are suffering from the constant haemorrhaging of viewers to the competition. TVNZ blew it big time when it decided to dump its stars: Paul Holmes Judy Bailey Susan Wood Mike Hosking Richard Long and the list goes on. When the stars went so did the audience. The ratings dropped the advertising revenue slumped and now TVNZ seems to be caught up in a vicious spiral of its own making. It now looks—