Pharmac Director, Climate Change Commissioner, Health NZ Directors - The latest to quit this month
The neoliberal, Conservative New Zealand Government ploughs ahead with its anti-environment, anti-Maori, anti-public service investment ideology with losses. How does Seymour respond?
Summary:
As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long bow to the US.
Cartoon credit: Le Lievre
Vilified, crucified
In the human frame
A million candles burning
For the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame
- Leonard Cohen
Today’s news triggers the memory of David Seymour revealing the Coalition Government’s plans to clean house
In March, as Minister of Regulation, and as one of two shareholding ministers of TVNZ, David Seymour criticized New Zealand media, saying he and the Coalition government would be cleaning house and appointing people in their image.
In his appearance on right wing talk, Seymour didn’t push back on the host who urged him, "There needs to be a pogrom. This new government needs to clean house."
For those who don’t know, pogrom refers to “a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling (usually) an ethnic or religious group.”
Instead, the future Deputy PM of NZ showed he was rather keen to please the host, telling him his plans:
“Look at .. Creative NZ for example. These guys basically help decide how to spend $350m of funding and you see how humourless, and how really boring and often hateful the kinds of media and entertainment is that’s been funded.
We will appoint better people to it. Our government has over 800 groups of (media) appointments to make over these 3 years. And that’s why it’s important to have people who are here to serve the public interest and make a better NZ and be open minded about our common humanity. It’s important good people, especially people with business acumen, are prepared to step up and take these public service appointments”
Parties Seymour doesn’t seem to care to please includes our media and the ability to do their job independently.
Seymour had earlier told Newsroom he would be conducting a ‘value for money proposition’ on TVNZ. Seymour apparently has responsibility for that too (well done, Prime Minister!). Newroom wrote:
Seymour has delegated responsibility for state-owned enterprises and Crown-owned companies like TVNZ. He reveals the coalition government is embarking on a review of all of them, their return on investment, and the value they do or don’t provide to taxpayers.
And that, at a time when New Zealand media was already reeling from news that TV3 could not afford to keep Newshub running.
”We'll take a look at what the government’s purpose is in owning different state-owned enterprises.”
Newsroom’s Milne:
The fact that Seymour should respond to one cash-strapped news organisation’s planned closure by (seemingly) proposing to dip into the balance sheet of another cash-strapped news organisation – that tells me something.
The public don’t love and trust journalists as much as we in the trade sometimes think they do, and are in no hurry to rush to our rescue. Cuppagate showed us that. And Seymour clearly knows that.
TVNZ’s financial difficulties came into full view soon after, which led to them axing Fair Go, Sunday and other well liked programs.
Not to be outdone by himself, Seymour attacked TVNZ journalist Benedict Collins shortly after, for not covering a news story the way he wanted it to be covered.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB, Seymour whined:
“I saw a report on 1News, Benedict Collins grinning down the camera about Chris Luxon’s apartment costs. These are the people that cry, ‘Oh you’ve got to give us sympathy, and you’re inhumane and you should be kinder to us’.”
He was referring to the news story of the Prime Minister receiving an accomodation supplement of $52,000 a year because Luxon refused to move into Premier House, while he lived in his privately owned Wellington apartment.
But as shareholding minister, David Seymour needed to respect the law and media’s independence, right?
TVNZ’s editorial independence as a Crown entity is protected under the Television New Zealand Act.
Wrong.
Seymour doubled down, as usual, and ignored criticisms while Luxon tap danced around the matter.
Never mind that approximately a year before, in April 2023, Seymour had attacked Kiri Allan for making remarks at a farewell social event that could be interpreted as critical of media (emphasis mine). Seymour:
"There is a real problem when the people who hold the purse strings aren't absolutely critically cautious about even the perception of interfering with media”
“Nobody loses their democracy all at once, it's always a thousand little chips and we don't want to see them. It's good she's apologised, but I can't believe she did it."
Last year, Allan apologised for any wrong impressions, and Luxon loudly lambasted Labour and Adern for running a loose ship.
Meanwhile in Planet B a year later, TVNZ found itself under attack, with no-one in government to defend it. It hit back publicly in one of their news segments, clearly telling the Government -
"We are not asking for sympathy, but are asking for our politicians to respect the independence of our media so they can get on with their work.
"We're a commercial company that's reliant on advertising revenue. We're not government-funded, and we haven't asked for funding."
To get to the ending, there were no consequences for Seymour.
The reason why my memory was triggered on this was news today about many of our experienced leaders quitting Government positions, some with very esteemed and diverse backgrounds -
A Roll Call of Resignations & More
Today, two prominent leaders quit related to the policies of National, ACT and New Zealand First.
Climate Change Commissioner Kay Harrison. Harrison had been in her role since 2019. She came from a background with the Ministry of Environment, where was lead negotiator and also headed the Climate Change Directorate. Ms Harrison was was also a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University at the Kennedy School of Government 1997-8. Is anyone surprised that she left?
Pharmac Director Dr Anthony Jordan who told Stuff “he wrote to board chairperson Paula Bennett that night, resigning effective immediately, because he believed the new directive ignored “clear evidence” that the agency’s Treaty considerations had improved the health of New Zealand.”
