"...the real crime here is not just the waste of money. It is the deliberate sabotage of Maori children..."

"One could be forgiven for thinking that education in New Zealand is about preparing children for success, arming them with the knowledge and skills to thrive in an unforgiving world. But no, that quaint notion has been tossed aside in favour of racial indulgence on an industrial scale. ...
    "For the avoidance of doubt, let us be absolutely clear: the explosion of Maori 'education' is not about academic excellence. It is not about opportunity. It is not even about preparing children for a productive future. It is about separatism, racial division, and the slow but steady dismantling of a cohesive New Zealand in favour of a taxpayer-funded Maori aristocracy that feeds off endless handouts while contributing nothing of real value. ...
    "The fact that this nonsense is allowed to continue, let alone celebrated, is proof of how utterly captured the political establishment has become by the Maori lobby. ...
    "The figures are damning. Over 27,000 students are now trapped in this system, severed from the real world, taught in a language that offers them no genuine economic or professional advantage. The supposed 'success' of these schools is measured not by academic rigour, but by '90% achievement rates' in NCEA — an utterly meaningless statistic in a system where one can pass without ever learning anything of substance. ...
    "But the real crime here is not just the waste of money. It is the deliberate sabotage of Maori children, condemned to a future where they are taught to see themselves as a separate, entitled class rather than as individuals capable of success through their own efforts. It is a betrayal of the very principles that once made this country great - hard work, integration, and a commitment to excellence over racial sentimentality.
    "It is high time we called this absurdity what it is: a state-funded exercise in racial narcissism. ...
    "English, mathematics, science, and personal responsibility — these are the only foundations of success. Everything else is a taxpayer-funded diversion."

 ~ Tui Vaeau from his post 'The Great Maori Education Racket - A State Funded Farce'

The Ministry of Culture and Heritage is a Soviet-sounding name for a Ministry, with proposals for 'modern media legislation' to match

"[T]he Ministry of Culture and Heritage ... is a rather Soviet sounding name for a Ministry ... [with] a policy culture that is quite distinctly interventionist. Its proposals for [so-called]'modern media legislation' ... reflects the lobbying of vested interests in the uneconomic media industry to try to compete with the media the public actually prefer. ...
    "Today people largely obtain news and entertainment online ... on multiple devices. If news happens, it is reported through news websites and through social media. Moreover, entertainment largely comes from overseas ...
    "[T]he barriers to publishing are [now] very low indeed. ... Protectionists, legacy media and politicians with a bent for influencing the public don’t like it that much. ...
    

"Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith has decided to release a discussion document with five proposals to 'save local media.' It reflects a very shallow approach to public policy ... 'New Zealand’s media and content production sectors are facing an uphill battle to remain viable' [says the minister] 'Seeing and hearing our stories and voices has cultural and societal benefits' [he claims]... I’d suggest the uphill battle is simply due to the public not responding to what they produce. ...
    "We all have stories. ... 90% or so of the population with computers, tablets or mobile phones [tell them every day]. Tens, hundreds and in some cases thousands read or listen to them. What are the 'cultural and economic benefits' of ignoring this in favour of what is essentially a protectionist industry wanting other people’s money taken from them by force, to prop them up because the public isn’t willing to pay for their content voluntarily?
   

"... [Goldsmith's] proposal says everything about how out of touch the Ministry is. It is ....

"...to force manufacturers of smart TVs (not tablets or laptops or phones) to carry apps of traditional NZ broadcasters. ...
"... to force streaming platforms and TV broadcasters to waste their own money on what the Ministry falsely calls 'investment' into the local content the Ministry approves of. ...
"... to expand the scope of the increasingly irrelevant Broadcasting Standards Authority (a better proposal would be to scrap it) to 'ensuring positive system-level outcomes,' whatever that means. ...

"Most of these proposals ... demonstrate an ongoing philosophical belief in the role of a interventionist state in forcing others to pay for the production of content that the Ministry thinks is good for people. ...
    "What should be done instead? Stop trying to save something that people don’t want. ...
    "The Broadcasting Standards Authority should be wound down ... NZ On Air should be wound down as well. ... The Film Commission similarly so. Privatise TVNZ. ...

"You have until 23 March to submit on [the Ministry's] proposal"s, go right ahead."

~ Liberty Scott from his post 'Forget Goldsmith's media proposals'

NZ Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill: "The better underlying question seems to be why anyone thinks there's a problem here to be solved."

"David Harvey reports that AI scraping could wind up being part of the revised NZ Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. ....
    "He [writes at length about] technical elements on whether the definitions work and whatnot.
    "The better underlying question seems to be why anyone thinks there's a problem here to be solved.
    "It's simple for a website to restrict against scraping. It would similarly be simple for a news site to licence its content for AI training, if anyone wanted to pay them enough to allow it. There is no obvious reason government needs to be involved in any of this."

~ Eric Crampton from his post 'Fun antitrust application'

" 'The Government is taking immediate action to support New Zealand’s media and content production sector.' This is both an unprincipled and a stupid decision."

"'The Government is taking immediate action to support New Zealand’s media and content production sectors, while it develops a long-term reform programme, Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith says.' ...
    "This is both an unprincipled and a stupid decision. I can handle principled stupid decisions and even unprincipled smart decisions but this is neither.
    "It is unprincipled because it is forcing successful companies in one industry (social networks and search engines) to fund failing companies in another industry (media). The only rationale for this is that Google and Meta have money and Stuff doesn’t. Will we see Netflix levied money to fund home video rental stores? Will we see Foodstuffs levied money to find Whitcoulls?
    "It is also a very stupid decision. ... The Government is going to pass a law to fund a media that will oppose almost everything that supporters of the Government believe in.
    "Even worse, it will set up a structural incentive for the media to become even more left leaning. ... [to] insist the levy be doubled ... [to] create an institutional bias in favour of the parties that will benefit media the most."

~ David Farrar from his post 'Stupid Government backing Willie’s bill'

MSM looking for a new handout

"I consider that [the so-called Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill] Bill is ill-conceived. It is a means of subsidising mainstream media which is having difficulty in adapting its business model to the Digital Paradigm. ...
    "The various initiatives and subsidies undertaken by the State - primarily in the form of the Public Interest Journalism Fund - have provided artificial support for mainstream media. Those subsidies have provided a disincentive for mainstream media to adapt to the Digitalk Information Paradigm in a more agile manner.
    "What the Bill proposes is a substitution of one subsidisation scheme for another. ...
    

"Because the problem is the free riding of mainstream media content by platforms like Google and Facebook the solution lies in the area of copyright and intellectual property. What is proposed by the Bill – which was introduced by Labour ... – is a bureaucracy to determine by what means and by how much the large digital platforms will subsidise mainstream media.
    "Reading the mainstream media submissions and listening to some of the oral presentations was somewhat depressing. But then, of course mainstream media would paint a gloomy picture. Who would not when there is a pot of gold at the end of the legislative rainbow.
    "Perhaps mainstream media should address the issue of why it is that public confidence in the news media is at an all time low rather than seeking yet another hand-out."

~ David Harvey from his post (and submission to) 'The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill'

The team of $55 million

"Prime Minister Chris Hipkins insists that many voters are suspicious of co-governance only because politicians haven’t explained the concept clearly — but that failure also falls squarely on the shoulders of journalists.
    "As [one former politician] put it: 'One might have expected journalists to delve into what, precisely, the government meant when ministers incorporated this 'misunderstood' concept into lots of Acts of Parliament over recent years'....
    "There can never be a definitive answer to the question of exactly how much the Public Interest Journalism Fund has helped shut down criticism of the Treaty at a crucial time in our political history. But by accepting its conditions, it is undeniable that the media has inflicted a terrible wound on itself by being seen to have compromised its principal assets — trust, credibility and independence....
    "The widespread disdain for the recipients of the Fund’s cash was summed up by the epithet 'The team of $55 million' — a play on 'The team of five million,' which Jacinda Ardern used to rally the country behind her Covid management strategies....
    "The first of the general eligibility criteria [for the Fund] requires all applicants to show a 'commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner' — alongside a commitment to te reo Māori. The section describing the fund’s goals includes “actively promoting the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi [and this despite Te Tiriti's own three principles being Sovereignty, Property Rights, and Citizenship] ...
    "The lesson to media organisations seems clear: if the government ever comes calling with a bag of money that requires editorial prescriptions to be followed, take the advice of the advertising campaign that ran in the early 1990s to discourage children from experimenting with illegal drugs — and just say no."

~ Graham Adams, from his essay 'Has Government Money Corrupted Journalism?'

'The buying of the media is nothing less than political corruption of a scale hitherto unknown in New Zealand'

 

"This [Garrick Tremain cartoon] aptly sums up the disgraceful sell-out by our print [and electronic] media to toe the government line.... willingly prostitut[ing themselves] to the government bribe in return for the taxpayer’s unwitting subsidy...
    "The buying of the ... media, so cleverly summed up by Garrick’s cartoon, was nothing less than political corruption of a scale hitherto unknown in New Zealand."

~ Bob Jones, from his post 'Political Corruption'

"Nobody has yet come up with a credible case for amalgamating Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand."

"Nobody has yet come up with a credible case for amalgamating Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand. Even so, the merger proceeds apace, costing the taxpayer a ridiculous amount of money – to no good end. No one truly believes the quality of the broadcasting product will improve. The present audiences of both networks have longstanding gripes with the overall direction of their public broadcasters, but the response of those in charge has been to double-down on the very policies their audiences find most objectionable....
    "Citing the growing strength of the purveyors of misinformation and disinformation on social media, government mouthpieces have presented the new 'entity' as the place where New Zealanders anxious to learn what’s really going on can go to for 'the facts.' They are being encouraged to think of the new entity as a sort of beefed-up version of the Prime Minister’s infamous 'podium of truth' during Covid.
    "God save us!"
           ~ Chris Trotter from his post 'More Than One way to Skin A Cat'

Much Ado About Something: "The welfare state of the intellect"

IT'S NOT EVERY DAY that a long-dead Elizabethan playwright hits the headlines here at home. Creative New Zealand's decision to defund (or not to defund) a high-school Shakespeare competition spiralled into a debate into what Creative New Zealand should be funding and promoting. Competition supporter Terry Sheat argued a public enquiry must be held into what and how Creative New Zealand goes about its funding choices:

If I were to mark CNZ’s funding criteria and outcomes against the duties under the legislation, I would be forced to give them a failing grade. I wouldn’t give them funding. They are not delivering to the proper scope of their mission statement. Diversity is not diversity of “New Zealand art”, it is diversity of all art in New Zealand, with freedom of artistic expression for all. That is literally in the statute.
    In the case of Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ, funding was terminated primarily if not solely because Shakespeare is, to quote CNZ’s assessment, “located within a canon of imperialism” and not “relevant to a decolonising Aotearoa in the 2020s and beyond.” Vincent O’Sullivan dismissed this as nonsense in his letter published last week in the Otago Daily Times, describing it as “a breathtaking absurdity from a government body whose brief is to promote excellence in the arts.” An editorial in Stuff said that “the CNZ assessment has exposed the obvious problems that come with interpreting art through the narrow lens of national identity and politics.”

And then before you knew it, everyone was debating Creative New Zealand's funding criteria, how it should best promote "Aotearoan art," and whether or not Shakespeare was an "imperialist."[1]

Which rather starts where the argument should end. To me, it’s not an argument about how Creative New Zealand's bureaucrats should choose whom to fund in order to promote the latest fashionable ideals; it's whether these bureaucrats should have the power (and the money) to do that at all! The problem is not how Creative New Zealand goes about handing out money, in other words: it’s that Creative New Zealand hands out any money at all.

And here the issue here isn’t primarily the amounts that the establishment elects to pays out; it’s the effect of what that money buys: which (like its more quotidian companion, the Public Interest Journalism Fund) is intellectual conformity.

You may not realise it (and the dullards at the myopic Free Speech Union almost certainly won't), but this is a free-speech issue -- but not in the way you probably think.

WERE YOU AWARE THAT there is more than one way to curtail free speech? Government organisations who censor speech or expression are one way. Government organisations who promote it, like Creative New Zealand. are another.

I’m going to repost a piece from 2006 to make this point…

This is a post about free speech.  
It is not a piece about outrageous assaults on free speech committed in Paris last month, or by government censorship offices, or by successive NZ governments keen to curtail criticism during election periods.  
    No, this is a post about a different kind of attack on free speech. One more subtle, and no less chilling. One in which artists, musicians, scriptwriters, screenwriters, television producers and television production companies are kept afloat by government cash and government grants from Creative New Zealand and Te Mangai Paho and New Zealand on Air or their proxies, or in which many scientists are kept afloat by government grants or by employment in government research projects.  
    The direct result of this is what Ayn Rand once called ‘The Establishing of an Establishment’²: not the sponsorship of creative souls to toe a government line, but a more insidious kind of greyness inciting would-be creatives to to a culturalline embodied by those doling out and reviewing these government grants.

    What's the problem, you might ask?  
Well, think about this. There is more than one kind of censorship. In fact, I'd suggest to you that there are two. The first and most straightforward method of censorship is for a government to ban speech that they don't like -- that's just what National and Labour and the Greens and Gareth Morgan want to do at elections, and I hope you lot feel disgusted enough about that to do something about it. The second form of censorship is one that Ayn Rand called "the establishing of an establishment," and it is even more insidious and no less chilling: 

Governmental repression is [not] the only way a government can destroy the intellectual life of a country... There is another way: governmental encouragement.

That's right. Rather than simply banning opponents or banning expression, this form of censorship is much more subtle: it encourages expression (or scientific research) that is deemed acceptable, and by implication discourages anyone interested in career advancement from engaging in possibly unacceptable expression or research, . 

Governmental encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true: it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood.

It makes them sensitive instead to what is deemed acceptable, and thereby lucrative -- it encourages and makes lucrative that very form of sensitivity – it invites all those lucred up by the process to band together against whoever they perceive as their ‘other’ [and no better target for that than the phoney shibboleth they call 'neo-liberalism'].  
    This is what Rand referred to as "the welfare state of the intellect," and the result is as destructive as that other, more visible welfare state: the setting up of politicians, bureaucrats and their minions (the establishment) as arbiters of thinking and taste and ideology; the freezing of the status quo; a staleness and conformity, and an unwillingness to speak out – what Frank Lloyd Wright once called “an average upon an average by averages on behalf of the average” such that in interrogating any one modern artist you would get essentially the same answers as from any other -- in short "the establishing of an establishment" to which new entrants in a field realise very quickly they are all but required to either conform or go under. 

If you talk to a typical business executive or college dean or magazine editor [or spin doctor or opposition leader], you can observe his special, modern quality: a kind of flowing or skipping evasiveness that drips or bounces automatically off any fundamental issue, a gently non-committal blandness, an ingrained cautiousness toward everything, as if an inner tape recorder were whispering: "Play it safe, don't antagonize--whom?--anybody."

If you've ever wondered where this "special, modern quality" comes from, this is perhaps one answer -- through the intellectual mediocrity advanced by this less well-known form of censorship -- a censorship of encouragement. It's a much less obvious and much more insidious method of censorship, and no less chilling for that. 

The [US] Constitution forbids a governmental establishment of religion, properly regarding it as a violation of individual rights. Since a man's beliefs are protected from the intrusion of force, the same principle should protect his reasoned convictions and forbid governmental establishments in the field of thought.

Think about it.

NOW, IT SOUNDS LIKE good news that the Shakespeare funding has been reinstated, for which everyone and his leather codpiece are praising the Prime Minister's intervention

And I applaud the establishment luvvies and others who came out in defence of one of my favourite playwrights. Good for them.

I'm also happy that for a week or so we've been discussing his work. 

But why should you or I other folk be forced to pay, for the most part, for theatre (or art) you don't like. Especially when this process of bureaucratically-selected funding -- bureaucrats choosing what to fund based on what best fits the government's fashionable cultural concerns -- constitutes the self-same censorship of encouragement New Zealand is presently enjoying with the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

By my own literary and theatrical standards, it looks like the restatement this week was a small win. From the larger standpoint however, the amounts involved are but a tiny pimple one the huge arse of the government-promoted cultural establishment.

If we understand how that whole arts and literary establishment has become so comfortably established, we might feel more uneasy not just about the way this sausage is sliced - but that it's there to be sliced at all.

* * * * * 

1. You would have thought one look at Henry V would answer that one.
2. Cresswell (1996), reposted with the generous permission of Dave Perkins.
3. From "The Establishing of an Establishment," republished in her book Philosophy: Who Needs It?, from which the otherwise unreferenced quotes above derive.
Highly recommended if you want to get to grips with this subtle form of censorship.

[Pics from The Spinoff]

The Establishing of an Enzed Arts Establishment ...

"Poetry and fiction should, in my view, remain completely exempt from State patronage – except for the recording function provided by the State Literary Fund. They are of value only when they are the work of independent artists. Put a novelist on the payroll, and sooner or later you turn him into a tomcat ... that comes to the kitchen door for its milk and in return begs prettily or catches mice." ['The Culture Industry,' 1956]

 

'Note on the State Literary Fund' [1947]

Here is a piece of wisdom

I learnt at my mother's knee:

The mushroom grows in the open,

The toadstool under the tree.

 

~ NZ poet A.R.D. Fairburn, opposing the Fraser Government's extension of the state into art funding

Catton and the establishment - a different kind of censorship

The Catton controversy rolls on still, with two important issues raised now well buried now midst name calling and invective. Let me see if I can resurrect them, since the two remain relevant.

The first is Catton’s point that it is her that won the Booker Prize, not you and me.  It was her achievement, not something you or I did. So good on her for not inviting New Zealanders to bask in her reflected glory.

But the second point is this argument about her taxpayer funding, which many anti-Cattonites feel obliges her to indulge in at least a little foreluck tugging, and more than a little flag waving when overseas.

To me, this touches on an important point that needs to be better spelled out.

To me, it’s not the amount she was given by Creative New Zealand that’s important here; it’s that Creative New Zealand pays out any money at all.

And here the issue here isn’t primarily the amounts that Creative New Zealand pays out; it’s the effect of the money they pay out.

Were you aware there is more than one way to curtail free speech? Organisations like Creative New Zealand are another.

Dave will demur, but I’m going to repost a piece from 2006¹, in which only a few names and some context have been changed to make this point…

This is a post about free speech.
It is not a piece about outrageous assaults on free speech committed in Paris last month, or by government censorship offices, or by successive NZ governments keen to curtail criticism during election periods. 
    No, this is a post about a different kind of attack on free speech. One more subtle, and no less chilling. One in which artists, musicians, scriptwriters, screenwriters, television producers and television production companies are kept afloat by government cash and government grants from Creative New Zealand and Te Mangai Paho and New Zealand on Air or their proxies, or in which many scientists are kept afloat by government grants or by employment in government research projects.
    The direct result of this is what Ayn Rand once called ‘The Establishing of an Establishment’²: not the sponsorship of creative souls to toe a government line, but a more insidious kind of greyness inciting would-be creatives to to a cultural line embodied by those doling out and reviewing these government grants.

    What's the problem, you might ask?
Well, think about this. There is more than one kind of censorship. In fact, I'd suggest to you that there are two. The first and most straightforward method of censorship is for a government to ban speech that they don't like -- that's just what National and Labour and the Greens and Gareth Morgan want to do at elections, and I hope you lot feel disgusted enough about that to do something about it. The second form of censorship is one that Ayn Rand called "the establishing of an establishment," and it is even more insidious and no less chilling:

Governmental repression is [not] the only way a government can destroy the intellectual life of a country... There is another way: governmental encouragement.

That's right. Rather than simply banning opponents or banning expression, this form of censorship is much more subtle: it encourages expression (or scientific research) that is deemed acceptable, and by implication discourages anyone interested in career advancement from engaging in possibly unacceptable expression or research, .

Governmental encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true: it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood.

It makes them sensitive instead to what is deemed acceptable, and thereby lucrative -- it encourages and makes lucrative that very form of sensitivity – it invites all those lucred up by the process to band together against whoever they perceive as their ‘other’ [and no better target for that than the phoney shibboleth they call 'neo-liberalism'].
    This is what Rand referred to as "the welfare state of the intellect," and the result is as destructive as that other, more visible welfare state: the setting up of politicians, bureaucrats and their minions (the establishment) as arbiters of thinking and taste and ideology; the freezing of the status quo; a staleness and conformity, and an unwillingness to speak out – what Frank Lloyd Wright once called “an average upon an average by averages on behalf of the average” such that in interrogating any one modern artist you would get essentially the same answers as from any other -- in short "the establishing of an establishment" to which new entrants in a field realise very quickly they are all but required to either conform or go under.

If you talk to a typical business executive or college dean or magazine editor [or spin doctor or opposition leader], you can observe his special, modern quality: a kind of flowing or skipping evasiveness that drips or bounces automatically off any fundamental issue, a gently non-committal blandness, an ingrained cautiousness toward everything, as if an inner tape recorder were whispering: "Play it safe, don't antagonize--whom?--anybody."

If you've ever wondered where this "special, modern quality" comes from, this is perhaps one answer -- through the intellectual mediocrity advanced by this less well-known form of censorship -- a censorship of encouragement. It's a much less obvious and much more insidious method of censorship, and no less chilling for that.

The [US] Constitution forbids a governmental establishment of religion, properly regarding it as a violation of individual rights. Since a man's beliefs are protected from the intrusion of force, the same principle should protect his reasoned convictions and forbid governmental establishments in the field of thought.

Think about it.

We can see for ourselves the defensive laager thrown around Catton by the conformists of the "arts community" who survive off or covet the same grants themselves, and who as a result share both her convictions and (frequently) the same modern literary style.

But Catton is on one hand the beneficiary of the this system (not only by the govt grants but also by the Booker Prize itself, judged as it is by folk who are themselves part of this “welfare state of the intellect”) but also its victim – breaking free of the herd to achieve a prize she feels his hers and hers alone, and wanting to proclaim that.

If we understand how an arts and literary establishment is established, we might better understand her unease.

---

1. Cresswell (1996), reposted with the generous permission of Dave Perkins.
2. From "The Establishing of an Establishment," republished in her book Philosophy: Who Needs It?, from which the otherwise unreferenced quotes above derive.
Highly recommended if you want to get to grips with this subtle form of censorship.

NZOA: He who has the gold makes the rules [update 2]

After TV3 screened the documentary ‘Inside Child Poverty’ just three days before the last election, causing screams of horror from the ruling party*, NZ on Air** is now considering*** banning broadcasters from screening such documentaries ever again so close to election day.

The problem, they say, is that the documentary was too “politically charged” to be screened just days away from when folk would be electing their favourite politicians.

What the hell?

I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing the documentary myself, so I can’t judge whether or not it made its case****. But it would not be possible to tell the story of poverty in New Zealand without involving politics. And frankly, if a documentary about poverty is not “politically charged” then it’s not telling the whole story.

And while I know many would like to see elections being just a saccharine show of politicians with polished teeth and shiny-suited spin doctors telling you what to think*****, but if organisations are banned from telling stories like this in election week then I guess we’re well down the road to making elections just a dumbed-down ritual of bluster and box ticking; A political popularity contest with uncomfortable issues banned from the feast like pariahs, for fear of upsetting the ruling classes.

So documentaries that frighten the horse will be banned, doing to free speech what the Japanese like to do to whales.

Yes, this is censorship pure and simple. But, quite seriously, that’s what you get when the money to pay for your documentaries is doled out by government flunkies. That’s the Faustian pact agreed to by documentary makers—take this here money doled out by the flunkies, but don’t be surprised if the flunkies (and their political masters) tell you what to do with it, and when. In simpler terms, it’s the old time-honoured rule, he who has the gold makes the rules. 

When the money comes from the political process, its use is unavoidably politicised.  That means either censorship, control, or the establishing of an establishment—which is a different and even more insidious kind of censorship than the one to which most folk are already aware; one establishing a sort of “welfare state of the intellect,” doing to the denizens of culture what the welfare state does to its recipients.

So here’s the take-home message I’d invite you to contemplate: Don’t like production of your documentaries coming under political control? Then take their funding out of the political trough.

* * * * *

* NZ on Air was “spooked by political interference” reckons Tom Frewen at Scoop.

** Who, back in the day we used to call by the richly-deserved name of NaZis On Air, for what we thought were fairly obvious reasons.

*** Apparently the announcement was made by “NZ On Air board member Stephen McElrea (who, in Tom Frewen’s marvellously dry turn of phrase, ‘also happens to be John Key’s electorate chairman and the National Party’s northern region deputy chairman’) [who] has used his dual position of authority to demand answers from the funding body and, simultaneously, make implicit but forceful statements about what constitutes ‘appropriate’ policy material for such a funding body to support.” [ref: Kiwipolitico]

**** Karl du Fresne called it "a disgracefully simplistic, emotionally manipulative programme." But that’s the sort of thing the DomPost pays him to say. Meanwhile, Lindsay Mitchell corrected some of the doco’s “sensationalist” figures. And Martin Bradbury’s Tumeke! blog wrote a press release for the doco’s makers.

***** Which was the frank intent of both the Red Team’s Electoral Finance Act, and The Blue Teams’s subsequent Electoral Finance Act Lite—about which respective opponents were either incensed or disinterested, depending on which team at the time was proposing the saccharinisation .

UPDATE 1: New links added. Picture, courtesy Scoop.

UPDATE 2: New related thread at Twitter (#NZOnAirSongs) has thrown up a few new song titles, including:

• Don't fight political corruption, Marsha, its bigger than both of us
• Beige Frost
• There Is No Election In New Zealand

‘NZ in Print’ – this has now gone way beyond satire [update 3]

IT’S GETTING HARD TO make a joke these days without some humourless bastard taking it seriously – and it’s getting hard to satirise the statists without giving them new ideas.

Some years ago, back before Al Gore invented the internet, a pale physics student from Otago called Bernard Darnton penned a piece of rollicking satire called ‘Achtung Fatso!’ in which he satirised the food fascists by exaggerating their programmes. Fat taxes. Guidelines on healthy eating issued by a Ministry for Nutritional Responsibility. The commissioning of a Body Mass Index Safety Authority.  These were all satire back in 1997 – or they were, until the likes of Sue Kedgeley started getting ideas.

Bernard has a lot to answer for.

And so does Lindsay Perigo. Years ago when we Libz were opposing the broadcasting fee he satirised NZ On Air with suggestions for a new organisation called NZ in Print.

    “We have a thing in NZ, a government body called NZ on Air. It shells out taxpayer money to local outfits to produce television programmes it deems worthy. It used to collect a dedicated fee from anyone who owned a television set before we freedom-fighters got that abolished.
    “One day, as part of an ongoing campaign against this monstrosity … I went on my radio show and announced that a new statutory body was being set up called NZ in Print, which would collect a levy from every New Zealander and use it to set up a govt-run daily newspaper. "This'll point up how ridiculous and indefensible NaZis on Air is," I thought. Problem was, listeners believed me till I told them I was pulling their tits. "NZ in Print" just didn't seem that unlikely in our Nanny State environment!”

I guess he didn’t realise that people like Fran O’Sullivan was listening.

This week in Wellington, you see, while purporting to talk about political blogging O’Sullivan was shamefully shilling for her employers.  “Increasing commercial pressures on newspapers and diminishing resources to do investigative journalism,” was the bleat. Taxpayers stumping up for electronic media but not for paper-based was her whinge. Bailouts for newspapers! was her solution. What she advocated was that “NZ on Air should become NZ on Media, and all media should be able to apply for worthy ‘local content’ projects whether they be TV, radio, print or Internet.”

Oh. My. Word.  What chutzpah! To confess that your employers’ Victorian-era business model is failing, and then to stand there demanding the taxpayer picks up the slack. To take a bad idea – govt funding of the arts and culture  industry – and to use that to justify an ongoing bailout for your newspaper industry. Talk about a dirty business, and this from a supposed business journalist.

And has she been smacked down for it?  Not a bit of it.  For her trial balloon suggested journalists like her be given a tilt at the trough she’s earned herself a round of applause!

This is the sort of thing David Farrar considers “a really good idea.”

This is what Janet Wilson & Bill Ralston (the man who did to TVNZ News what he’d previously done to Metro magazine) call “an interesting idea.” “Fran has a good point,” they say.  Lead me to the trough! they smirk.

What a bunch of disgusting, grasping  low-lifes.

At times like this you can only wish that satirists would stay silent, and self-interest take a higher road.

It’s not just more welfare for Ponsonby late-lunchers that such a “solution” would deliver.  It would also deliver a further kick in the guts to free speech – and make your daily newspaper effectively an arm of the state.

We already know what “worthy ‘local content’” looks like from the dross delivered by the NZ On Air dole-outs.  Can you imagine what sort of worthy “investigative” journalism would be funded by such a body? It certainly wouldn’t be funding investigations into abuse by government, or of troughing in high places – that much is for sure – just the sort of softcock-Cameron-Bennett handwringing that contaminates your TV screen on a Sunday evening . Because as Nigel Kearney asked at Farrar’s place,

    “Can Sullivan’s plan for a permanent bailout be done without the government deciding what investigative journalism does and does not get funded?”

No, of course it couldn’t. This would be chilling to free speech – it would be what I’ve called once before “a different kind of censorship,” and Ayn Rand called “the establishing of an establishment."

So what the hell does that mean? Sit back while I explain.

LET ME START MY answer to that by mentioning a story run a few years back by the UK Daily Pundit about every liberal's favourite UK newspaper:

    “The Guardian [it said] is effectively being subsidised by the government and could go bust if a Tory government introduced a ban on public sector recruitment through newspaper ads. At present, government recruiting is costing the taxpayer in excess of 800 million pounds per year. Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, is promising to change the system to allows jobs to be advertised for free on a new official website. The cost of running the website would be approximately 5 million pounds per year.”

The Media Bulletin noted that "The Guardian currently dominates this market and, according to research by Reed Personnel Services, advertises two-thirds of public sector jobs." Now, I don't want to talk about that proposed ban or about the cost of employment websites. What I do want to talk about is that advertising. If Reeds are right, and there's no reason they wouldn't be, that's 600 million pounds of government money going to The Guardian every year by this means alone -- and I'm sure no-one would suggest The Guardian and its employees are not so stupid that they don't know which side their bread is being buttered on, and who it is who is doing the buttering.

You see what I mean by another kind of censorship? As they often say, he who pays the piper calls the tune.  Do you really want the tune the newspaper’s whistling over your morning brekkie to have been composed in a government office?

Do you really want hard stories soft-soaped by journalists with one eye on their investigation and the other on their tender into the government for further work?

It’s as easy for a government to buy a compliant media by doling out taxpayers’ cash as it was for Helen to buy a compliant “creative sector” by doling out grants and dole payments.

SO LIKE I SAY, there is more than one kind of censorship. The first and most straightforward method of censorship is for a government to ban speech that they don't like -- that's just what Labour & National  like to do with their Electoral Finance Act & Electoral Finance Act Lite respectively, and I hope you lot feel disgusted enough about that to do something about it.

It’s the second form of censorship that Ayn Rand called "the establishing of an establishment," and it’s surely no less chilling. As she says so succinctly:

    “Governmental repression is [not] the only way a government can destroy the intellectual life of a country... There is another way: governmental encouragement.”

As a form of censorship this one is much more subtle,and much more appealing to trough-snuffling self-interest.

    “Governmental encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true: it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood.”

That’s worse than flat-out censorship, isn’t it. It makes folk indifferent to truth and falsehood (and to the immorality of becoming another bailout bludger) and sensitive instead to what is deemed to be acceptable, and thereby lucrative -- and it encourages and makes lucrative that very form of sensitivity.

This is what Rand called "the welfare state of the intellect," and the result is always as destructive as that other, more visible welfare state.  You see the establishment of politicians, bureaucrats and their minions as arbiters of thinking and taste and ideology; you see the freezing of the status quo; you observe a creeping staleness and conformity, an insidious unwillingness to speak out.  What you see, in short, is "the establishing of an establishment" to which new entrants in a field realise very quickly they will have to either conform or go under. As Rand observed of the behaviour this kind of censorship encourages:

    “If you talk to a typical business executive or college dean or magazine editor [or spin doctor or opposition leader], you can observe his special, modern quality: a kind of flowing or skipping evasiveness that drips or bounces automatically off any fundamental issue, a gently non-committal blandness, an ingrained cautiousness toward everything, as if an inner tape recorder were whispering: Play it safe, don't antagonize--whom?—anybody’."

Is that what you want your taxes to encourage?  If you do then you can count me out.

The American Constitution effected a separation of church and state for a reason – one that is observed at least de facto down here at the bottom of the South Pacific. As Ayn Rand observed, the constitutional separation prevents a formal governmental establishment of religion because such a thing is properly regarded as a violation of individual rights. By extension, then,

    “Since a man's beliefs [about religion] are protected from the intrusion of force, the same principle should protect his reasoned convictions and forbid governmental establishments in the field of thought.”

Think about it.  And then send your thoughts on to people like David Farrar and Fran O’Sullivan and Bill Ralston, who should really know better. Remind them perhaps of that line I quoted above:

“Governmental repression is [not] the only way a government can destroy the intellectual life of a country… There is another way: governmental encouragement. . . .”

UPDATE: How quickly they all turn once they’re offered a trough to lie in.  Whale Oil puts his hand up for a piece of the funding pie.

UPDATE 2:  Don’t extend the aegis of the state broadcasting subsidy body NZ On Air to other media, says Liberty Scott -- Don’t extend it: abolish it!

UPDATE 3: Maybe Fran was reading PJ O’Rourke’s satire on this from last November, in which he specially pleaded for “bailouts for print paupers”?

“There are many compelling reasons to save America's print journalism. And I'll think of some while the waiter brings me another drink. In the first place, one out of three American households is dependent on print journalism* . . . We need a swift infusion of federal aid. Otherwise all the information in the US will be about Lindsay Lohan's sex life.”
*For house-breaking puppies.

Bring on the artistic dead rats

Labour's arts, culture and heritage policy is to make the poorest taxpayers pay for the 'art,' 'culture' and 'heritage' favoured by the middle classes. It's a form of middle class welfare that pays off in establishing an establishment that feels duty bound (mostly) to blow timely air kisses towards their paymasters.

So that's Labour's policy -- to make people pay for TV programmes they don't watch, artists they don't rate, symphony orchestras they don't listen to, and operas they don't attend (Lord knows I love going to the opera and the NZSO, but that's no reason to make other people pay for it). Now National has released their own arts, culture and heritage policy for Election '08, and like every other National policy for '08 it can be summarised in just two words:

"ME TOO."

Establishment entertainers defend Clark "taking the bow

Following attacks on Helen Clark by musicians Neil Finn and Bruce Lynch -- "It sort of sickens me to see Helen Clark getting up at the music awards and taking the bows," said Finn -- "(Politicians) put lots of money in and pump themselves up and ... We just create another class of people dependent on welfare," said Lynch -- there has been says the Herald a "chorus of disapproval" from the likes of establishment entertainers Ray Columbus and Sir Horrid MaoriSong.

An emotional Sir MaoriSong contacted the Herald yesterday, saying: "I'm so bloody mad."

And Columbus weighed in, saying: "In my book she can take as much credit as she likes."

Little wonder that braindead establishment artists such as these fail to identify whose money it is that Arts Minister Clark has been dishing out over the last seven-and-a-half years, and just how much fawning reverence that's bought; little wonder either that New Zealand's "arts community" has been almost "united in reverence" of Clark (as one commentator said this morning): with the sort of money being pumped into establishing this arts establishment it's no wonder "reverence" is what they feel.

As I've said here before, there's more than one way to censor a country's artists:

The first and most straightforward method of censorship is for a government to ban speech that they don't like -- that's just what National and Labour want to do at elections, and I hope you lot feel disgusted enough about that to do something about it.

The second form of censorship is one that Ayn Rand called "the establishing of an establishment," and it is no less chilling:

Governmental repression is [not] the only way a government can destroy the intellectual life of a country... There is another way: governmental encouragement... Governmental encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true: it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood...

If you talk to a typical business executive or college dean or magazine editor [or spin doctor or opposition leader], you can observe his special, modern quality: a kind of flowing or skipping evasiveness that drips or bounces automatically off any fundamental issue, a gently non-committal blandness, an ingrained cautiousness toward everything, as if an inner tape recorder were whispering: "Play it safe, don't antagonize--whom?--anybody."

If you've ever wondered where this "special, modern quality" comes from, this is perhaps one answer -- through the intellectual mediocrity advanced by this less well-known form of censorship -- a censorship of encouragement. It's a much less obvious and much more insidious method of censorship, and no less chilling for that.

This is what Rand called "the welfare state of the intellect," and the result is as destructive as that other, more visible welfare state: the setting up of politicians, bureaucrats and their minions (the establishment) as arbiters of thinking and taste and ideology; the freezing of the status quo; a staleness and conformity, and an unwillingness to speak out; in short "the establishing of an establishment" to which new entrants in a field realise very quickly they are all but required to either conform or go under.

Clark will see the defensive laager thrown around her by the conformists of the "arts community" as a well-deserved payoff for her generosity with other people's money. These are people who stay bought -- and she knows it.

"The establishing of an establishment" - a different kind of censorship

This is a post about free speech.

It is not a piece about those outrageous assaults on free speech committed in Fiji yesterday by Bainimarama's minions. Nor is it (at least not directly) about the outrageous assault on free speech planned by the Clark Government and the new National Party who both want to ban anyone from criticising political parties during the election period (you can read those pieces here, here, here, here, here, and here -- and I recommend you do read them while you're still allowed to).

No, this is a post about a different kind of attack on free speech. One more subtle, and no less chilling. Let me start here by mentioning a story run by the UK Daily Pundit [hat tip Tim Worstall] about every liberal's favourite UK newspaper:

The Guardian is effectively being subsidised by the government and could go bust if a Tory government introduced a ban on public sector recruitment through newspaper ads. At present, government recruiting is costing the taxpayer in excess of 800 million pounds per year. Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, is promising to change the system to allows jobs to be advertised for free on a new official website. The cost of running the website would be approximately 5 million pounds per year.

The Media Bulletin notes that "The Guardian currently dominates this market and, according to research by Reed Personnel Services, advertises two-thirds of public sector jobs." Now, I don't want to talk about that proposed ban or about the cost of employment websites. What I do want to talk about is that advertising.

If Reed's are right, and there's no reason they wouldn't be, that's 600 million pounds of government money going to The Guardian every year by this means alone -- and I'm sure no-one would suggest The Guardian and its employees are not so stupid that they don't know which side their bread is being buttered on, and who it is who is doing the buttering.

What that story brought quickly to mind was my own memory of reading Derek Fox's Mana magazine a while back. In many respects Mana is an admirable magazine celebrating Maori achievement and the many successes of young Maori, but flicking through its full-colour, glossy pages positively overflowing with advertising I was struck by how almost without exception those ads has been placed by Government departments (and the compliment is repaid in much of the writing, and can be seen in the links at the Mana magazine website).

It seems that like The Guardian this otherwise admirable magazine is being kept afloat by Government cash .

Don't you find that curious?

No less curious perhaps, you might say, than the many artists, musicians, scriptwriters, screenwriters, television producers and television production companies kept afloat by government cash and government grants from Creative New Zealand and New Zealand on Air or their proxies, or the many scientists kept afloat by government grants or by employment in government research projects.

What's the problem, you might ask?

Well, think about this. There is more than one kind of censorship. In fact, I'd suggest to you that there are two. The first and most straightforward method of censorship is for a government to ban speech that they don't like -- that's just what National and Labour want to do at elections, and I hope you lot feel disgusted enough about that to do something about it. The second form of censorship is one that Ayn Rand called "the establishing of an establishment," and it is even more insidious and no less chilling:

Governmental repression is [not] the only way a government can destroy the intellectual life of a country... There is another way: governmental encouragement.

That's right. Rather than simply banning opponents or banning expression, this form of censorship is much more subtle: it encourages expression (or scientific research) that is deemed acceptable, and by implication discourages anyone interested in career advancement from engaging in possibly unacceptable expression or research.

Governmental encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true: it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood.

It makes them sensitive instead to what is deemed acceptable, and thereby lucrative -- and it encourages and makes lucrative that very form of sensitivity. This is what Rand called "the welfare state of the intellect," and the result is as destructive as that other, more visible welfare state: the setting up of politicians, bureaucrats and their minions (the establishment) as arbiters of thinking and taste and ideology; the freezing of the status quo; a staleness and conformity, and an unwillingness to speak out; in short "the establishing of an establishment" to which new entrants in a field realise very quickly they are all but required to either conform or go under.

If you talk to a typical business executive or college dean or magazine editor [or spin doctor or opposition leader], you can observe his special, modern quality: a kind of flowing or skipping evasiveness that drips or bounces automatically off any fundamental issue, a gently non-committal blandness, an ingrained cautiousness toward everything, as if an inner tape recorder were whispering: "Play it safe, don't antagonize--whom?--anybody."

If you've ever wondered where this "special, modern quality" comes from, this is perhaps one answer -- through the intellectual mediocrity advanced by this less well-known form of censorship -- a censorship of encouragement. It's a much less obvious and much more insidious method of censorship, and no less chilling for that.

The [US] Constitution forbids a governmental establishment of religion, properly regarding it as a violation of individual rights. Since a man's beliefs are protected from the intrusion of force, the same principle should protect his reasoned convictions and forbid governmental establishments in the field of thought.

Think about it.

LINKS: 

• Guardian cash bonanza under threat - UK Daily Pundit
• Guardian could be hit by Tory plans for jobs ad site - Media Bulletin
• "The Establishing of an Establishment" in Ayn Rand's book Philosophy: Who Needs It?, from which the otherwise unreferenced quotes above derive.
  Highly recommended if you want to get to grips with this subtle form of censorship. 

RELATED: Free Speech, Politics-UK, Politics-NZ, Science