Stoush In A Sandpit

If the Acting PM is late, spitting your dummy is not such a good idea.

- Jane Clifton

In what other country would this happen? The nation’s leader arrives a few minutes late for a television interview and is banned by the programme for six weeks as a punishment.

Then after audience feedback – along the lines of “What are you? Twelve?!” – the wallahs at Newshub relent and ask the leader back – only to find he has booked himself with another country’s TV show for the next six weeks to punish them. If you’re going to fight like a 12-year-old, best not go up against someone who can fight like a 13-year-old.

Yes, this is low-audience AM up against low-vote leader Winston Peters. A sandpit row. And over nothing. He wasn’t late on purpose – though he has been known to be – but because the Prime Minister’s office mucked up the schedule. Still, for a mainstream media outlet to act in such a puerile and disrespectful fashion to the Acting PM is a troubling sign.

Sure, there was an element of opportunistic shock-jockery (on both sides). AM’s channel, Three, is struggling for audience attention, but what media outlet isn’t these days? It could also be a symptom of the lingering resentment some still have at the election outcome; it was galling enough that 7% Peters kept 44% National out of office in favour of 36% Labour, but now he’s our actual leader.

It’s just what happens in a country that isn’t big enough for even three degrees of separation, and in which informality is a quasi-religion. Media access to politicians here is free and easy compared with most other countries. Even in Australia, reporters can’t bowl up to ministers in the corridors, let alone bail up the PM the way we do on a daily basis.