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CAN POLITICIANS STILL HANDLE OPEN DEBATE?
Tim Watkin
IF I CUT THROUGH THE CYCLEWAY on Salisbury Ave, the retired couple’s house was about halfway between home and church. But we never really met halfway.
I was there to deliver the Presbyterian Church magazine, but my memory of those visits is that, more often than not, I was on the receiving end. I mean, heck, I was asking for it. I was a teenager with strong views and I’ve never been one to die wondering. We’d start talking about something that was in the news, or the magazine, and what could have been a quick, polite handover would often end with me fuming as I biked off.
You see, this elderly couple — him, in particular — also had strong views. And stiff necks. Whether it was race relations, gay rights, the role of women, or nuclear weapons, it was safe to assume that we would disagree. There were few social issues facing New Zealand in the late 1980s on which we saw eye to eye. Stood on their wee doorstep, we would debate one issue after another, flexing our theological and ideological muscles, rehashing well-worn arguments and leaving me to wonder how these narrow-minded bigots could call themselves Christians.
How could they be so blinkered? So judgemental? So at odds with the man who spoke to the woman at the well, befriended outcasts and told the story of the Samaritan who dared to cross the road?
As I recall those exchanges, the bigotry still gnaws at me. But mostly I’m as struck by my lack of humility. My own rush to judgement. Just think of all the things I didn’t know about them, about their life. There’s a reason why pride — hubris, to use that word’s biblical meaning — is one of the seven deadly sins. Certainty can be a terrible thing.
Having spent most of the past decade producing politics programmes on New Zealand television, I’ve learnt that’s just as true in our national life. I’ve had the privilege of watching and talking to many of this country’s political leaders up close and behind the scenes for a long time now. I hold most of them — and the difficult job they do at some personal cost — in high regard. But the shadow of pride hangs over modern politics. Pride as Dante defines it: ‘contempt for one’s neighbour’. Pride in the form of closed minds, risk-averse strategies and an unwillingness to debate.
Some might find that counter-intuitive, given we live at a time when social media and comments sections arguably allow more ‘debate’ than ever. Everyone has a pulpit. But I’m not talking about the like-minded wagon-circling and race to outrage that you see so often on those forums: the kind of debate that breeds the blocking culture and lack of respect for different views that shuts the door to other ideas and drives people away from politics.
I’m talking about debate that is open-minded, informed and accountable. Because politics at its most meaningful is a contest of ideas, played out in public as politicians are probed and tested. This is the politics that humbly makes room for disagreements and allows for progress without the sort of polarisation that’s coming to dominate political discourse around the world.
Politics is still and will always be about the art of compromise. The best thing about those upsetting stoushes on that old man’s doorstep is he never slammed the door in my face and we still worshipped and prayed together on Sundays.
Because while we’re still debating, we’re still talking. And learning. Without this sort of debate democracy withers on the vine.
Which is why it worries me that we are living through a debate drought. Oh, there’s plenty of banter, abuse and dissent. It’s raining press releases and written statements, and we are flooded with Facebook videos, angry tweets, panels and photo ops. Yet our leaders have become increasingly reluctant to engage. While the right to govern should be built on the ability to win an argument and take the public with you, too many of today’s politicians — wrapped in the quilt of minders and spin — are refusing to even enter the fray. They are looking for short-cuts, work-arounds and low-risk alternatives to actually making a case in the faith they can win that argument. Or, they have decided that because they have won the argument among themselves, the only battle left is the propaganda battle.
No, I’m not trying to paint a picture of some grand conspiracy by the political class or say our politicians are bad people. Blame can also be laid at the feet of the fragmenting media, which knows the problem but is falling victim to selling news like it was a tin of beans. But our leaders are doing harm, poisoning our politics as they try to manage it into bland talking points.
Without some good old-fashioned barneys like I had on that doorstep, ideas are not tested and the foundations of policy and public opinion aren’t as robust. For me, debate is as vital for the success of a country and its government as road-worthiness tests are for the safety of a new car. Politics without open-minded, informed, accountable debate disrespects you and me, blots out clear thinking and good ideas. Globally, it’s one of the reasons we have Donald Trump and Brexit. And the purpose of this chapter is to pull back the curtain, share some of my experiences and ask for something better.
I’D LIKE TO THINK THAT MY INSISTENCE that politics should be a contest of ideas is about as uncontroversial as saying the All Blacks aren’t bad at rugby. Undoubtedly, most New Zealand politicians would publicly support such a notion. Yet here’s the rub: the deeds no longer match the words.
I lost count of the times I heard the words ‘we don’t debate’ over the eight years I produced Q+A on TVNZ, then The Vote and The Nation on TV3.
This signified a turning of the tide. When I was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s it was not uncommon to see and hear ministers and Opposition spokespeople debating. The expectation of politicians to front up and be challenged on TV started in the late 1960s with programmes such as Compass and Gallery, hosted by pioneers such as Ian Johnstone, Brian Edwards, David Beatson and Ian Fraser. The pros and cons of an argument could be laid out before you like a tinker’s wares and subjected to scrutiny. If the politician couldn’t make the argument, we got to see it.
Excuse me if this sounds nostalgic. I know a prime minister like Rob Muldoon could then exercise terrible control over our supposedly independent media. One of the lesser noted elements of the famous Simon Walker interview with Muldoon — the one often used as an example of probing interviewing when Muldoon resorts to calling Walker ‘a smart-alec interviewer’ — is the way Muldoon reveals the programme’s producer had sent him the questions in advance. Today, that could lead to disciplinary action.
Nevertheless, we saw more informed, head-to-head debate; democracy in action as voters watched. Nowadays, the sweet rains of such debate fall only in election season, once every three years. So why the change? A few reasons spring to mind. A consolidated media had more power. If politicians wanted attention they had the choice of TV One and National Radio, as they were then called, and not much else. Audiences were bigger and also had less choice. As Fraser says, politics was ‘put in the shop window’ of primetime, before the rise of the internet, when TV was still king.
Politicians, too, were more practised and talented debaters, from Muldoon to Moore and Lange, McKinnon to Prebble and Cullen. Even in the 1980s, any politician could be pulled up by the Speaker if they were thought to be reading from notes during a parliamentary debate. Today, most use notes. MMP (the mixed member proportional voting system), too, with its list selections, has seen a cohort of politicians rise through the ranks without having to stand on street corners and debate in draughty church halls. On the other side, media time has sped up, newsrooms and news bulletins have shrunk, formats have changed, and sound bites have stifled in-depth debate like a parasite vine on a tree.
Despite all that, what critics crying for the good old days of journalism often miss is that there is more media covering politics now than there was then. The platforms for debate still exist, even if they are spread more thinly and tucked away in off-peak slots. They’re the programmes I used to make. But the politicians themselves — without many New Zealanders noticing — have decided they are no longer up for the contest of ideas. Instead, they merely want to deliver their message. Politician, uninterrupted. And it’s past time they got called out on it.
It’s hard to pick precisely when the tide started to turn and politicians to demand less scrutiny. In the Clark years ministers did debate, but it was often discouraged. But shows like Holmes still had the power to ‘empty chair’ politicians and a sense of obligation remained.
Under the Key Government — and my criticism is mostly aimed at them, because it was in those years I was producing politics television — we crossed a Rubicon.
Labour’s run of leaders in those years also ducked for cover at times, and the new Labour Government’s commitment to more open government has, as I write this, got off to an unimpressive start. But it was National, through nine years in power, that introduced the policy that cabinet ministers would not debate head-to-head with their opposition numbers. Full stop. The exception to that rule was the six weeks of an election campaign and the period when, later in that government’s life cycle, some ministers agreed to weekly slots on breakfast TV that involved some debate, but usually more banter.
National’s new policy came as journalists were losing audience and sway, while press secretaries and political advisors were growing in power. For them, debate involved too much ‘downside’. Why risk their minister losing an argument? Why give the opposition spokesperson the air time or — worst of all — equivalence?
I remember one conversation with a press secretary for a senior minister in 2013, in which the cynicism was laid bare. When I pushed back on why this minister wouldn’t debate, I was told that ‘we won the election. We don’t need to keep debating our opponents because they lost.’ I was flabbergasted: ‘Are you saying your government gets carte blanche between elections? That you only have to debate and win the argument once every three years?’ To this day, I think back on that exchange with a sense of righteous rage. And while it was one of the most expansive rejections I ever got, I had plenty of others on a smaller scale.
The risk aversion extended to requests not just for debates, but also interviews. They, too, at their best are a contest of ideas, when the interviewer plays devil’s advocate to see whether the politician’s argument can withstand interrogation. But I suspect voters would be horrified how common it has become for ministers to simply refuse to be interviewed. Oh, they are too busy or have electorate commitments (even if we offered to pre-record or do the interview ‘down the line’ from wherever they would be); they’ve already said all they have to say (often in a written statement), as if some imaginary question bucket was now full; or they simply ‘have nothing to say’. I would drily point out that they needn’t worry, we could come up with the questions. No dice.
When I pushed back on why this minister wouldn’t debate, I was told that ‘we won the election. We don’t need to keep debating our opponents because they lost.’
Press secretaries dismissed the idea that ministers had an obligation to be interviewed where voters could see or hear them. Sometimes they argued their minister spoke to media all the time. Which was true to a point. But it was less true when they had done something that warranted questioning; seldom involved long-form, in-depth interviews; and increasingly involved a very particular section of the media. One of John Key’s PR masterstrokes was to recognise that serious broadcast interviews were high-risk, low-reward. The way to reach maximum voters with minimum risk was through commercial radio, and his goofy demeanour made him hugely popular with DJs, who didn’t realise or didn’t care that they were being used as vehicles of partisan spin.
Because I lived and worked in Auckland, I developed the tradition of starting each year with a trip to Parliament, setting myself up in Copperfields and buying coffees for a stream of press secs, talking to them about their agenda and availability for the year ahead. It was there that one prime ministerial press sec confirmed the ‘we don’t debate’ rule came from the top. There, too, a year or two later, I heard her replacement ask me why Key should bother coming on the programme, because he could put a video on Facebook saying what he darned well pleased and get just as many viewers. It was there that another senior minister’s press secretary asked me to present him with our ratings to decide whether it was worth appearing. To my shame I almost did. But you can see how far the power pendulum has swung and how political operators view debate. And given the need to build relationships, fill the slots and — perhaps most of all — not waste viewers’ time, it’s very hard for producers to call out these politicians on air.
To be fair to Key, he did make himself available for long-form interviews, but then he was the rock on which National’s poll success was built. Most minor party leaders were more accommodating in my experience, although Winston Peters and Hone Harawira were notoriously prickly and difficult to pin down.
Bill English and Steven Joyce were notable exceptions. English, in particular, was willing to appear and argue his point. It may be no coincidence that he learnt his trade in the more combative and ideological years before Clark and Key introduced their era of risk-averse political management. In a part of Jenny Shipley’s interview for RNZ’s The 9th Floor that didn’t make it into the podcast, the former prime minister spoke of the Bolger Government being so unpopular in its first term that ministers ‘explained and explained and explained and worked our way through, and by 1993 certainly our majority was reduced, but the majority of New Zealanders felt we were heading in the right direction’. She knew she had to answer questions to win the argument, and the election.
Despite Jenny Shipley’s personal unpopularity, she recalled, ‘I took the challenge of speaking directly to the public … who knows how many Holmes shows I would have to do in every blessed portfolio? … [But] people wanted to know the rationale and that we would care for them. So I spoke to them, even though the headlines were quite critical.’ What a stark contrast to the next National Government, when ministers so often hid in the trenches and left the battle for hearts and minds to that senior troika of Key, English and Joyce.
I remember months spent requesting a single interview with Housing Minister Nick Smith in 2016, when the housing crisis dominated the news agenda. I struck a new level of intransigence that, brilliantly in one sense, left me snookered. This is, more or less, how the exchange with his press secretary went on several occasions:
Me: We’d like to interview the housing minister on The Nation on Saturday.
Press secretary: He’s in Nelson at home in his electorate on Saturday mornings.
Me: OK, would he go into the studio down there?
PS: He doesn’t like to do interviews down the line with the delay and not being able to see the host; he prefers to do them in person.
Me: So do we. How about a pre-record then? Friday? We could have an interviewer in Wellington or in Auckland if he’s up here.
PS: He doesn’t like pre-records. You can edit them, events can change. Live is better.
Me: Yes, it is. So can we make Saturday morning work then?
PS: But he’s in Nelson …
Round and round we went. I pointed out that, by her logic, Smith could never appear on the programme. I don’t know if that was down to the minister’s instructions or the press secretary’s zeal. But a few years earlier, when I worked for another programme, it was clear the minister was determined to avoid scrutiny.
We had been wanting to get Chris Finlayson on Q+A — I think about Māori affairs — but his press secretary kept finding reasons to say no. It was National’s first term, and the press secs were still bothering to come up with reasons. (As you’ll see later, that changed.) Then one day, having just asked yet again, I got word that Finlayson was at TVNZ’s Māori unit, so I dashed across the building and waited for him to come out. I hovered for some minutes and then, when I saw him coming, made as if I just happened to be walking by.
‘Hello, minister,’ I said, and invited him to appear on the programme that weekend. My advantage was that this was happening in front of other people. No one likes to look scared. Still, he said it was impossible as he was on the road that weekend. ‘Where?’ I asked. ‘Rotorua,’ he replied. I was able to say we had a studio there. When he said he’d be busy when we were on-air, I offered a pre-record earlier that morning and, to my delight, he agreed. We shook hands, I thanked him sincerely and wandered back to my desk full of the joys of ‘the get’. Within a few minutes my phone rang. It was the press secretary. ‘The minister can’t do the interview—’ he began, but I smiled and cut him off. ‘No, it’s OK. I’ve just seen him a few minutes ago and he’s agreed.’ The press sec sighed. ‘Look, I’ll just give it to you straight. He’s just called me this minute and told me to get him out of it. There’s no way he’ll do it.’ I’d note the precise language was significantly stronger than that.
It was one thing in public, quite another behind the scenes. Funny thing was, the one time I did get Finlayson into a studio — several years later on intelligence issues — he argued his case superbly.
I tell you those anecdotes to give you a sense of the sometimes Yes, Minister-esque battle for accountability waged by producers. But there’s also the despairing grind of weekly rejection. Through National’s second and third terms the excuses evaporated; justifications faded. We asked some ministers, most notably Paula Bennett, Judith Collins and Jonathan Coleman, week after week after week. Others have told me similar stories about Louise Upston and Amy Adams. Having spoken to a range of producers, I hear those names oft-repeated and I think it’s in the public interest for me to call them out. Of those, Bennett probably stands out. On The Nation we endured a year of refusals from her; The Hui suffered two years.
Sometimes in desperation we would say to press secretaries ‘name a week’. Still we were refused. Sometimes we were ignored. Press secs have admitted to simply turning their phones off when they saw who was calling, or nipping down corridors when they saw producers coming.
Sadly, the culture in recent years began to seep into government departments. For nearly two years The Nation asked to interview Ray Smith, the head of Corrections. Throughout the era of Serco, the escape of Phillip John Smith, a booming prison population and the controversies around electronic monitoring and the murder of Blessie Gotingco — while he was paid nearly half a million dollars a year in taxpayers’ money — it was never the right time for an interview.
Sometimes press secretaries didn’t even bother to come up with an excuse. I once tweeted a curt emailed reply from Bennett’s press secretary that, after weeks of repeated asking, read: ‘Hi, minister’s not available.’ Funnily enough, that tweet suddenly made a phone call worthwhile as the press secretary rang to scold me for embarrassing the minister.
You might shrug this off as par for the course in modern politics. Or nothing more than a rude and sensationalist media deserve. A well-deserved kick up the backside. So let me say this: journalists aren’t perfect. Sometimes the quest for accountability tips over into a ‘gotcha’ mentality. Sometimes we love the theatre more than we should. And let’s be frank: The media as a whole has sometimes trivialised, sensationalised and cost-cut its way through the news. Yet that criticism misses the point. The refusal by politicians to debate or be interviewed is seldom a statement about journalism’s failings. It’s a cold, hard strategy to avoid scrutiny. Plain cost–benefit analysis.
From the press secretaries’ point of view, my protests are irrelevant. Their job is to advance and protect a minister and his or her agenda, not to worry about the health of our democracy. (They’re there to sell the burger, not worry about obesity rates, you might say.)
One former press sec I spoke with in researching this chapter said it comes down to ‘upsides’. The question was always ‘Why would you do it?’, not ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ Sometimes, he argued, ministers genuinely struggle with what they can say. Negotiations are sensitive and secret. Cabinet discussions are confidential or inconclusive. Policies are not fully formed. But mostly it’s strategic avoidance. Key was the government’s prime asset, so why distract from him? The party would have agreed messages to focus on that week, so requests for interviews on other topics would get short shrift. It’s what he called a ‘small target’ strategy. Don’t give your opponents any more to shoot at than you have to. Which means don’t talk to voters unless you have to. Head down, mouth closed.
For them, understandably, it’s about winning. But at what cost? They get control of the well for three years, but in the process they poison the water. They lose the public’s trust. It’s happening all around the world.
The respected Australian Election Study in April 2018 revealed that more than half of voters saw politicians as out of touch, and dissatisfaction with ‘how democracy works in Australia’ had hit 40 per cent — both record highs. And as disillusionment grows, so does polarisation. Since 1993, the percentage of voters who described themselves as centrist has fallen by almost a quarter. Look to Trump, Farage and Sanders. Germany, Italy and France. Politicians, by failing to make and win the argument, are diminishing democracy.
The refusal by politicians to debate or be interviewed is seldom a statement about journalism’s failings. It’s a cold, hard strategy to avoid scrutiny. Plain cost–benefit analysis.
It’s not just by refusing to debate, either, but by refusing to be open with the facts so that the debate we do have can be informed. Which leads us to the urgent need for change to the Official Information Act. Here, too, there are stories to tell.
FOR THERE TO BE INFORMED DEBATE, POLITICIANS and officials need to rediscover their respect for the Official Information Act. A disappointingly tepid 2015 report from the previous Chief Ombudsman, Dame Beverley Wakem, somehow concluded the OIA had not become politicised.1 That was a year after Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics was published, and two years after Key had admitted delaying the release of official information to suit his political purposes.2
Even that report, though, still raised concern about the growing influence of political minders in ministers’ offices and their reluctance to release information; something many journalists know from frustrating first-hand experience. It would be naïve to argue that a politician shouldn’t have someone to protect and push their political interests, but the tension comes when, for example, they use their access to OIA releases to try to pressure agencies to change or limit the information released. As the report says, ‘such instances are inconsistent with promoting a culture of openness’.
The report ‘found government agencies were receiving mixed messages from Ministers as to their expectations in terms of compliance with the OIA’. Stop and think about that statement for a moment. The Act says front and centre that its purpose is ‘to increase progressively the availability of official information to the people of New Zealand’, and its central principle is that ‘information shall be made available unless there is good reason for withholding it’. Yet the Ombudsman found ministers were giving mixed messages as to whether or not government agencies should — let’s be frank — obey the law.
Problem is, the law is flouted on a frequent basis. While the Act says information must be released ‘as soon as reasonably practicable, and in any case not later than 20 working days’ after the request, even Key as prime minister admitted in October 2014: ‘Sometimes we wait the 20 days because, in the end, government might take the view that’s in our best interest to do that.’ 3
Wakem later said Key had been ‘cavalier’ and showed ‘disregard for the law’. Yet he suffered no consequences. The fact is, even the 20-day limit is a joke. It’s often missed with little or no explanation (as the law also requires).
Most journalists have an OIA story. About armies of communications staff blocking their path to information. About waiting years for an answer or having to break through brick walls to get the information requested. Mine involves the Saudi sheep deal, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), and former Foreign Minister Murray McCully.
In June 2015 Lisa Owen had interviewed McCully on The Nation. He was another reluctant guest who turned down many requests, but New Zealand was about to take up the presidency of the United Nations Security Council. It was a proud moment for him, an important one for New Zealand and one that was on the government’s list of things they did want to talk about. He could hardly refuse.
With half the interview covering the new United Nations position, the team decided to focus the rest of their questions on what evidence McCully had to support his claim that Saudi businessman Hamood Al-Ali Al-Khalaf could have sued New Zealand for $20–30 million over the 2003 decision to ban live sheep exports from this country. McCully had used the supposed legal threat to help justify National’s decision to pay Al-Khalaf $11.5 million to appease his complaint. But could Al-Khalaf have sued? Under what law? What advice justified public money being paid to this billionaire? In the interview, McCully refused to release the legal advice, saying ‘it’s the [Foreign Affairs] Ministry’s advice’ and ‘the advice was that those circumstances outlined did provide such a basis’ for a lawsuit.
McCully, however, said MFAT could release the advice if they wanted to. So I asked the ministry to do just that. I asked for ‘all and any legal advice’ on the matter, because, in truth, I was beginning to wonder whether any legal advice existed. If not, the minister had been deceiving the public.
MFAT claimed the legal advice was privileged, and refused to release it. I argued that the minister could waive privilege; that by referring to its contents on TV he had implicitly done just that. MFAT wouldn’t budge. I went through two appeals to the Ombudsman and, to cut a torturously long story short, in the end my request was rejected on national security grounds.
Yet while my appeals had been slowly working their way through the system, Auditor-General Lynne Provost had completed a report on the deal and stated that ‘we saw no evidence of internal or external legal advice’ on the matter.4
Concerned that it might appear the Ombudsman had seen legal advice that the Auditor-General had not, the current Ombudsman Peter Boshier at least, two years after my first request, demanded clarity on that point from MFAT. The result was this damning confession in September 2017: ‘[T]he ministry advises that it did not seek or provide advice on the extent of the risk of a claim in the New Zealand courts for compensation from the Al-Khalaf Group against the government.’ 5
There never was any advice. None. And McCully has never commented on that revelation.
This is just one example, but it shows misuse of the OIA at both the ministerial and the ministry level. That can’t be allowed to continue.
I understand journalists can be cheeky, even lazy, in their requests. They, too, could show greater respect. I understand the frustration in the public sector at the hours soaked up by seemingly meaningless questions. But you know what? Such is the price of democracy and accountability. You can argue questions of degree until the cows come home, but the principle really is this simple: the information belongs not to the minister, the ministry or its staff, but to us all. It is with our taxes and in our interests that official information is gathered and we own it. That should be the starting point for a new deal for official information, to clear away the fog of spin and self-interest.
So the opportunity for debate and openness now lies with a relatively new government. The Labour-Greens coalition agreement promises to ‘strengthen New Zealand’s democracy by increasing public participation, openness, and transparency around official information’, and its ‘Minister of Everything’ David Parker nobly told the House in 2017: ‘Government departments ought not to be seeking permission from their Minister’s office to release something; they should be doing their duty.’ 6
Jacinda Ardern has said she wants ‘people to feel that it’s open’, and in arguably her most significant speech by the time of writing, on the upper marae at Waitangi she urged listeners to ‘hold us to account’. If she is genuine not just in spirit, but also in hard, real, political practice, then she must be available for close scrutiny, the OIA must change, and she must allow — even encourage — her ministers to debate.
Sadly, the opening months have not been encouraging. In February, as I was writing this, Education Minister Chris Hipkins was invited to debate charter schools on TV and declined. The indication was that Labour would be rolling over National’s ‘only debate in election campaigns’ policy, contrary to Ardern’s promises. The fear, it seems, remains.
Labour’s polls, too, seem built on the popularity of a leader rather than its ability to win the argument, and the signs are that the prime minister is fiercely protective of the ‘Jacinda Effect’.
Which leaves me afraid that Key and Co. have created a new norm. I can only hope that, under pressure from journalists and voters alike, Labour will take the long view of democracy and challenge itself to walk the talk on openness and accountability.
AND WHAT ABOUT US? WHAT PART MUST WE PLAY? Well, we could start by letting those we disagree with speak, and treating them with respect. That’s the final piece we need to make our debate work. The point of the contest is not to needle or score points, but to open our minds and challenge assumptions. Yet, sadly, outrage and offence are quickly becoming the default settings in our political discourse. The rise of social media and the fragmentation of the mainstream media have sent us scurrying into our own like-minded burrows, where we are reinforced in our beliefs and encouraged to think of those outside as ‘the other’. Less exposed to — and less forgiving of — those with different views, we indulge in ‘othering’ and the sin of pride, as Dante defined it.
As I was writing this chapter, someone on Twitter discovered a view I had expressed in a Press Council ruling and tweeted that I was ‘vile’. Of course, they have every right to be offended by my view and to argue strenuously against it. But without knowing my life, family or values, he reduced me to that single opinion he so strongly opposed.
What we seem to be forgetting is that we are none of us just one thing.
Some years after those delivery debates on that doorstep in Palmerston North, I learnt more about that old couple of bigots who so infuriated me. How they had determinedly struggled to raise a troubled child. How they took people in off the street and cared for them. How kind they were to my mother when she went through a hard time. No, we are none of us just one thing.
Remembering that is the foundation of debate that leads us to wisdom.
I don’t want to pretend any of this is easy. It can be painful, listening while ideas we find repugnant or foolish are given voice. But it should take only a modicum of humility to appreciate that others may see my views as foolish or repugnant and they have as much right to their views as I do to mine. If you disagree with that, then tell me: who gets to play God and decide which opinion is deemed acceptable?
When journalists take on that role, of deciding who gets to express an opinion, we are guided by the principle that we report ‘without fear or favour’. We haven’t always been the best judges of that, rather skewing coverage to the rich, white and male. Yet as we work to remedy that, we must guard against replacing one group of easier-to-ignore voices with another.
Some of the wisest commentary following the election of Donald Trump was from those who recognised what they failed to see during the campaign: that there were groups of voters who went unreported because they held views many journalists found hard to swallow. People like that old man on the doorstep. It’s easy to dismiss those views as outdated, even triggering. To decide the debate is over. Where’s the harm in silencing bigotry, after all?
But ignoring people doesn’t make them go away. As we saw with Trump’s election, they feel patronised and demonised.
But ignoring people doesn’t make them go away. As we saw with Trump’s election, they feel patronised and demonised. They still want to debate, to say ‘we are more than just one thing’. They are parents and lovers, friends and volunteers. They are our neighbours and we don’t get to move on without them. They have things that they believe in. Good things. And like all of us, they want to be heard.
So whether it’s marriage equality or climate change, women’s rights or the place of faith in politics, history doesn’t end. The debate isn’t over just because you want it to be. You don’t get to rest. Or condemn. But you do get to argue back. To speak your truth. To have a chance at winning the argument. Oh, and you get to listen, and maybe learn something along the way.
Don’t get me wrong: huge strides have been made in recent decades in terms of social justice and inclusion. I often think we fail to appreciate how far and how fast we’ve come. But in an age of instant gratification, it’s easy to forget that social change is slow. Just because the pace of life has sped up and we get a new iPhone every few years doesn’t mean the big, cultural changes can keep up. (Those who repeat the great quote used by Dr Martin Luther King Jr that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’ tend to focus on the ‘justice’ bit and forget the ‘long’ bit.) But a big part of achieving that change has been an openness to debate and unpopular views. What’s more, if we stop debating, all that has been gained can yet be lost.
You might say some free speech can hurt and I’d agree; there are limits. Lines should be drawn. While hate speech is notoriously hard to define, it is real and some things should not be open to debate. But silence is too high a price to pay for merely being offensive. Our pain threshold has to be higher, because history teaches us that a loss of free speech and rigorous debate hurts us more in the long run.
You might also argue that we need to be more vigilant as to who gets to be heard. True. But we should be looking to add, not just redistribute. We need more voices, not fewer.
When the use of te reo has been debated in the past year, I was disappointed by the calls for people such as Don Brash to be excluded. Faced with the choice, isn’t it better to contest those ideas, not condemn or silence them? Because in the end, who dares claim the right to be the censor? And where does it end? I’ve heard the same arguments made against voices from the left, such as Jane Kelsey or Sue Bradford. We all remember the killings at Charlie Hebdo and, I hope, retain the lessons about making room for views that some among us find objectionable or offensive.
Before you answer ‘But …’, remember that to ostracise people who appal us is to ostracise and insult the many who agree with them. More, it invites them to retaliate when you want a voice. That way leads to polarisation and closed minds.
I’d rather return to that doorstep in Palmerston North, where, for all the pain and rancour, there was still hope, still room for difference, because we were still talking. Where we can recognise we are more than just one thing and respectfully disagree on this, knowing we might unite on that. But our politicians need to lead the way; to end the debate drought, reform the OIA and remember that politics, at its best, is a contest of ideas.
1 http://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/system/paperclip/document_files/document_files/1573/original/not_a_game_of_hide_and_seek_-_review_of_government_oia_practices.pdf?1466555782.
2 https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/257009/pm-admits-govt-uses-delaying-tactics and http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/editorials/10640015/Editorial-Abuse-of-OIA-disgraceful.
3 Ibid.
4 https://www.oag.govt.nz/2016/food-security.
5 Provided in a letter to Tim Watkin.
6 https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/11/13/59878/shane-cowlishaw-the-oia-is-broken-can-it-be-fixed# and http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11824175.