Rich Katherine: Television New Zealand Bill — In Committee 
Rich Katherine: Television New Zealand Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:606;Page:3829] 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: 
 Now we move to one of the most gripping parts of this bill and that is the schedules and the consequential amendments. Since so much has been deleted schedule 1 is a lot shorter than was originally intended. It makes reference to the Broadcasting Act so it seems timely once again to discuss political interference which is one of the key things that really worries TVNZ staff. They know that under the present regime they are already under pressure to put on the air stories that show the Government in a good light. They tell me that much pressure was put on during the editing of the Ella Henry story and that much pressure was put on reporters when they were covering the Susan Bathgate double-dipping story. 
Rodney Hide 
: Triple-dipping! 
KATHERINE RICH 
: I apologise to Mr Hide. It was triple-dipping. 
Rodney Hide 
: Don’t sell me short. 
KATHERINE RICH 
: Yes; I underestimated that. Pressure was put on when TVNZ was covering Tariana Turia’s holocaust comments. Quite clearly there have been situations where journalists feel that they have been very much constrained when it comes to providing objective news reports and in particular news reports that are critical of the present Government. The last thing a journalist wants is a call from the ninth floor after a story—and the calls are not just from the ninth floor. Reporters talk about getting calls from Dr Armstrong after particular pieces.  
I am sure that members can imagine how reporters feel when after they have put hard work into a particular story checked their facts and got their clips and the story has been screened they suddenly get a call from the chairman to ask them why they ran that particular story. It has happened. I would like to know why for example TVNZ took until today to run the John Tamihere story. That story ran on Friday on TV3. I say that TVNZ is already very cautious. It is already pretty worried about how it represents the Government and it is already pretty nervous about complaints from the ninth floor and in particular the press secretaries who work for the Prime Minister. All of that constrains a democratic use of media. This bill is really designed to constrain TVNZ further. If anything there will be less objective media coverage and a far more sanitised version of the sort of coverage we get of the Government.  
In the second schedule there is a long list of land to be transferred from TVNZ to the new entity Transmission Holdings Ltd. It is quite interesting to look down the list. There are two references to Waipareira. What does that remind members of? 
Dail Jones 
: Good old “John-Boy”. 
KATHERINE RICH 
: Yes. I am wondering whether John Tamihere has had a look at this bill. I wonder what his view of it is and what he thinks it will do for his people. I am sure that he has a view. I am sure that he plans to share a number of his views with the House over the next few months because he has made a conscious decision—he has not come here to eat his lunch; he is going to make a difference to the people he purports to represent.  
Schedule 2 also mentions the city of Wanganui. I wonder whether Jill Pettis has checked out whether the transferral of 2.2763 hectares is a positive move for her city. I suspect she is not even aware that reference is made to the city of Wanganui in this bill. I am sure that Mr Benson-Pope has not noticed that there is a transfer of land from Otago. When we look at the total amount of land that is being transferred one of the big questions of course is: “Why are we transferring all this land anyway?” Obviously the Government plans to sell BCL. Obviously the Government is packaging the land. It wants to put it across to a new entity and finally sell the lot. A lot of this arguably is part of the infrastructure of the country. If we look down the list we see that there are lots of very recognisable spots. There are some very recognisable areas of the country that given that we now have the Resource Management Act we would never be able to re-establish.