Luxon's Breakfast

Can we have Jenny May back? Daniel is even worse.

Cover me with kisses, baby
Cover me with love
Roll me in designer sheets
I'll never get enough
Emotions come, I don't know why
Cover up love's alibi

Songwriters: Giorgio Moroder / Deborah Harry

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This morning, TVNZ realised that they couldn’t credibly put forward Jenny May to interview the Prime Minister again as the possum in the headlights, dithering while the country’s leader ignored all her questions, wasn’t a good look or justification for public broadcasting.

Today, Daniel was in the Lion’s den. Mr Faitaua beamed at the Prime Minister, and Christopher gave him back his “pleased to be here, isn’t everything wonderful” look. I immediately felt a looming disappointment, so I pushed the remote control out of reach lest it be propelled towards the screen.

As they began, it looked like it was going to be an infomercial for the government’s progress on addressing crime, which is apparently going great so long as you squint so you only focus on a very small area in Auckland Central and ignore the entirety of the rest of the country.

To be fair, Luxon is definitely the man for the job when it comes to ignoring large parts of this country.

The Prime Minister began by saying, “What we’ve noticed so far this year is that when we put police out on the beat, crime starts coming down”, as if he had just discovered that when the sun falls below the horizon at night, it gets dark.

Luxon spoke about having a police station in the area and an open public counter being good things as if he had just discovered fire.

It was certainly an interesting revelation for a party that has a history of closing community stations and whose current police funding would never allow such breakthroughs in crime prevention to be made available beyond small areas.

The Prime Minister used some of his well-known pull-cord phrases to add confidence. “It’s going to be really fantastic,” he said, “and we’re working really hard to recruit 500 more police officers.”

Right as he said that I could hear the police helicopter overhead in Te Atatu, West Auckland; there has certainly been no increased presence on the beat here despite regular reports of violent crime, and our last community station was closed during the previous National government.

Daniel smiled placidly as the Prime Minister spun his story, grinning, “When the police are visible, crime goes down”. I thought if he gets this excited about more police helping crime, maybe someone should suggest funding more medical personnel so we can actually give people the operations and medical care that they need and should expect?

The interviewer asked a question, “Where are the police coming from to man this station?” they hadn’t recruited them yet and had clearly had to borrow them from other areas in order to provide a policing service fit for the needs of cruise ship passengers and others utilising central Auckland.

Luxon said, “Yeah, so we have, um, the efforts have actually been really good; we’ve had about five and a half thousand people apply to join the police this year, that’s up two times from this time last year.”

I was glad I’d moved that remote as I yelled internally, “Maybe the reason there are so many more people applying to join the police is that since you came to power, there are so many more people out of work, and secondly he meant the actual real police you’ve seconded from other areas, which are presumably now under-resourced - those Auckland central crime victims can’t talk to your ghost police!”

Daniel was very still, like a Tuatara; his face gave away no hint of concern that the Prime Minister was simply ignoring his questions and promoting his government instead while giving an idiot’s guide as to why having more police might generally be a good idea.

Bring Back Jenny May, I thought.

Christopher prattled on about walking around the area with Mark Mitchell and seeing “the relationship with the storekeepers and the businesses and the public who just feel so much safer”. It sounded like Donald Trump reading a Richard Scarry book about people in your neighbourhood.

“We want to make sure the public feels safer in their homes”, intoned the leader. Daniel was utterly motionless, either overwhelmed by the charisma of the PM or so concerned at upsetting management by saying anything that might turn Luxon’s grin to a frown that he remained resolutely silent. At least Jenny May managed to look perplexed.

After listening to the PM spout more and more achievements in his victory over crime, Daniel risked a question asking the obvious, “But doesn’t that just push crime out into other areas? How will you monitor those?” given the government are resourcing a small area by diverting police from other places further away from the cameras.

Unsurprisingly, Luxon did not talk about the other areas. He simply continued to blow his own trumpet over the work in the CBD. He blathered on about working in a multi-agency way, moving his hands around as if trying to solve an invisible Rubik’s cube. He listed a bunch of government departments as if that was some sort of answer, which it would have been if the question had been, “Which critical functions have you cut funding to over the last year?”

It was hard to believe what you saw at the PM announced that “they had to try something different”, and then, “let’s try stuff, and this is working really well”, as if having open police stations and cops on the beat was some sort of major revelation or cutting edge approach.

Daniel asked the next question without any enthusiasm, as if it had been approved ahead of time or even provided by the PM’s media people, “what will the measure of success be for this new station?”. Almost as if he wasn’t expecting Luxon to answer honestly, “a boost in the polls”.

Instead, Luxon cherry-picked some very narrow measures to show improvement, which went unchallenged by the presenter despite many other crime statistics worsening.

Faitaua asked where the budget came from for this new station, and the PM responded by saying “um” three times before talking generically about the police budget, which was up to that organisation to manage.

Luxon spouted a whole lot of nothing for some time uninterrupted before Daniel, having failed to question the PM in any meaningful way on Policing, decided to move on to the need for palliative care services for children outside of Auckland, which is the only place that such exists.

If you haven’t seen that story, you can read/watch it here: NZ neglecting palliative children outside Auckland - report.

According to the report, “3000 children with serious illness need specialist palliative care each year in New Zealand, but 75% of this group don’t receive specialist care because they don’t live in Auckland. Of that group, 270-300 children die each year on average.”

This time, it really was just as well that remote was not in reach as the PM condescendingly told the presenter that he’d checked, and although it was all very sad, there were services available.

I thought of the people who had appeared the day before explaining the problem, and I felt sick at the PM’s response denying the issue - how bloody dare he - we are talking about children dying with unnecessary pain; these parents aren’t making it up!

The advertorial for Luxon continued with Faitaua warmly saying, “Prime Minister, tomorrow marks your first year in office as Prime Minister; I’m going to put you on the spot; how would you rate yourself out of ten and be honest” Both men smiled broadly, seemingly unable to contain their delight at this milestone.

“I’m always constructively dissatisfied with myself, and with results and performance anyway but um, look I think it’s been a really strong year. I’m proud of the way in which our governments come together, three parties, first time we’ve done that.

But more importantly, I’m proud of the way that we’re working our way through the challenges and the tough decisions that we’ve got, and if you think about the way we’re re-building the economy, we’re seeing inflation and interest rates come down. You’re seeing us restore law and order with the focus on taking really serious action on gangs and serious young offenders and policing.

And lastly, in education, we’re really proud of the progress that we’re making there, a long way to go; the system is really challenged and broken, great teachers, but we’ve got to make sure our kids do math, reading, and we get them to school.

So, some really good progress; I know it’s still tough for New Zealanders, but I think that they can see the plan is starting to work, and what we’ve got to focus on is delivering for New Zealanders. You know they’re over the words and the bumper stickers and the slogans they want us to deliver for them, and hopefully, they’ve had a sense that our government every quarter is working our way through a series of actions to make life better for them in an everyday sense.”

Daniel didn’t interrupt as Luxon gave his long address; he didn’t challenge him on anything whatsoever.

He did not mention race relations, the haemorrhaging health sector, the stagnant economy, the increase in unemployment or the running down of our public services. All he said was, “Will that be the focus for the next twelve months?” before allowing Luxon to go off on another speech about all the actions he had to tick off.

If Jenny May looked out of her depth, Daniel reminded me of the hostages Saddam Hussein would put before the cameras. They would smile nicely and say everything was fine, even though you could tell they were terrified of saying anything wrong, lest there be awful repercussions.

I have long been an advocate for public broadcasting, but if that sycophantic bullshit is what the money is paying for, then it is hard to mount any sort of argument in its defence. That wasn’t an interview. It was a speech from the throne with the occasional bit of direction to the next part of the monologue.

This went beyond Jenny May’s sheer lack of ability as an interviewer and was in the sort of territory where Jessica Mutch McKay used to reside, never deigning to criticise or challenge the National party.

I can only assume that Daniel values his job more than his integrity as any semblance of a journalist, which is a real shame because he should resign after that disgraceful performance.

On the anniversary of a year in which more Kiwis have protested against their government than in any first year of a new administration, I can recall, our public broadcaster chose to mark the occasion by blowing smoke up the PM’s backside. Shame on them. New Zealanders deserve better.

If you still have concerns about the level of violent crime present in Aotearoa, I advise you to do as many of our police resources have and relocate to central Auckland. I guess the only thing remaining after that would be to build some sort of a wall around the place. Maybe the Breakfast crew could have a whip around?

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Long-time readers might remember the Spanish zombies below, Broken Peach, with Blondie’s Call Me and a bit of Kiss for good measure. Have a good one all of you lovely people, surely the day can only get better from here. 🙂