My Lovely Man.

The best news, an odd choice of interview, and the media awards.

Last night began earlier than usual. In bed by 6:30pm, asleep an hour later. Sometimes I do sleep odd hours, writing late and/or getting up very early - complemented with the occasional siesta, but I’m usually up a bit later than that on a Saturday night.

Last night I was more aware than usual of how early the sun goes down, and the temperature with it, posting this at 3pm:

The power had been a bit sketchy in recent days with people nearby complaining of issues. Perhaps something faulty, failing under the load of a lot more people without additional infrastructure? More likely, given the noises we hear in the night, someone had spun out of a burnout into a transformer or something? In any case a couple of days ago we received notification of an emergency outage from 3pm until midnight.

As the sun went down a few hours later I lit candles and ordered food, it almost sounds romantic until you consider that it was Taco Bell. Still I’m happy to report, even if you’re less enthusiastic to listen, that there has been no appearance of the notorious Montezuma’s Revenge, which that establishment is sometimes associated with.

As it got darker and colder I couldn’t think of a reason not to go to bed and read, as people were suggesting in response to my post. So I did.

Sandra commented, “we’ve become far too reliant on electricity”. I was aware that throughout history most people, most of the time, lived without power. It did seem kind of pathetic that we were so dependent on it.

Juliet helpfully noted “That's a really long time!!!” When I said I hoped they were being conservative with their estimate Pollyanna proposed a parlour game, “you could make a game of how many times can you put the jug on before remembering there's no power?”

Jan added, “Can you imagine this line as a romantic line? ‘Darling, let's make love by the heat pump’.” It’s fair to say that the initial romance of the candles had worn off, although the combination of the different aromas was somewhat intoxicating.

Around 11pm Thea and her boyfriend arriving home to a dark cold house, much to the surprise of the hounds. Soon after I noticed there was light in the hallway and I could hear the heat pump starting. Tossing and turning, looking at news sites for something to write about, about midnight I gave up and got up to write.

Late at night or first thing in the morning are my favourite times to write, everyone is asleep, the dogs curtail their treat expectations, even social media mostly closes down. About 1am two people messaged me at once, my eldest son Alex and his partner Ella, from Melbourne where it was still a few hours earlier. They had the most wonderful news.

I am going to be a Father in Law. My darling boy had proposed to his girl, and she said yes! The best news.

He joked that it only took him eight years. We have long thought, hoped, this would happen, it felt wonderful that it was. Ella has been a part of our family for many years but there’s still something really lovely about it becoming official.

My passport expired a few years back and with Covid I didn’t get round to renewing it so that’ll be a job for this week. Be great to see them, the flat they’ve bought, their city and life over there.

Alex and I. 1990.

Sometimes it’s hard seeing your kids get into relationships with people that wouldn’t be your first choice for them. But when they get it exactly right, when it is clear that they are happy and their relationship is full of love, support, and joy it is wonderful.

Around 2am I went back to bed, I woke Fi and told her the news, she was so delighted that she didn’t even complain about being woken. I drifted back to sleep then woke around 5am, still thrilled with the news but aware that I hadn’t managed to find anything to write about, other than family. I considered abandoning things political and writing more on my son but that felt a bit self indulgent. Hold that thought.

Alex and I renovating.

So here we are and Sunday morning means Q&A, with the possibility of something to write about. There is plenty going on but when it comes to political current affairs in Aotearoa, to a longer format interview of politicians, Jack Tame and TVNZ now have a mainstream media monopoly.

Jack can be a very good interviewer although he has a few work ons, as I imagine Luxon would refer to them.

His tendency to harangue guests for the purpose of controversy rather than clarity can do him a disservice. And one would hope that a lesson has been learned over the interview with the Israeli Ambassador which was such unchallenged propaganda it should never have aired.

Thea, Matty, Johnny, and Alex.

But when he’s on he can be excellent. I suspect as he matures he will better channel the empathy that lies beneath, that John Campbell stuff, which can come across as a little whiny - that’s just a matter of time.

So too will he improve his ability to get a politician to answer a question they would rather avoid. That stuff you got from Susie and Kim at RNZ, an absolute refusal to allow someone to get away with nonsense. You see it from Rebecca Wright at Newshub and Anna Burns-Francis at TVNZ, who don’t seem to get stuck on repeat in the way Jack can. Not forgetting of course Māori TV who do outstanding current affairs work.

But Jack is excellent on a good day. A fact recognised at the Voyager Media Awards this week:

You can find all the winners here, but the following are a few that I thought might be of interest.

The winner of the best short form video went to the TVNZ Breakfast team for Cyclone Gabrielle Lifeline, which you can see here:

On a topic that we saw so tragically related, John Campbell won the longform documentary for Slash. There are people out there who aren’t fans of John’s work, I can’t understand that. To me Campbell tells our stories in a genuine, humble way that makes me feel like a New Zealander, and I’m not sure you can ask for more than that.

Best coverage of a Major News Event went to Michael Morrah with Nick Estelrich of Newshub for their coverage of Cyclone Gabrielle. Which I recall as being excellent.

The Cartoonist of the year category showed what outstanding talent we have in Aotearoa with Toby Morris taking the top spot from finalist Rod Emmerson and my personal favourite this year, runner up Sharon Murdoch. I thought this one from Sharon last month was outstanding.

Obviously the whole thing is a bit incestuous in such a small market, but even given that I was astonished to see Audrey Young as one of the three finalists in the Political Journalist of the Year award. Good grief, she isn’t even the best one at the Herald.

I know some on the left don’t like him much but I reckon Thomas Coughlan has done some great work this year. In particular trawling through all the numbers to find that the so-called Fiscal Cliffs Nicola Willis was shrieking about were actually nothing much out of the ordinary.

Maybe NZME nominates it’s journalists based on length of service? I cannot think of another reason why Audrey Young would be nominated - it’s just National Party fanzine stuff.

I would’ve even said Claire Trevett was better, but then I watched her sit-down getting to know you video with Luxon and Willis last week. It was the single most uncharismatic collection of people and interview I have ever witnessed.

If you consider the rapport that existed between Grant and Jacinda to be at one end of a scale then you can place Luxon and Willis at the other. It was utterly devoid of warmth, emotion, or personality. Not so much paywalled as kept safely from the public.

So who did Jack have on today?

A bit of an odd choice, it kind of feels like she already told us how all the problems were going to be fixed by banning mobile phones and getting back to basics.

I couldn’t recall any education news stories this week, other than perhaps school lunches and charter schools but they’ve been given to David Seymour as baubles to play with as Associate Minister. Surely there were other ministers that would be a little more relevant this week?

There is the small matter of the budget. Wouldn’t the nation be better served by listening to Nicola Willis explaining a hundred times that Jack would have to wait, just four sleeps to go, and he’d get his presents on budget day like everyone else. Hope Jack owns multiple properties or he might be receiving coal like the rest of us.

The challenge for National would’ve been that they needed to put up someone who could answer questions coherently and preferably from a ministry that wasn’t about to be resurrected back into top performance through the application of leeches. If what I’m saying isn’t clear please refer to the Murdoch cartoon above.

The week before the budget is probably not the time to put forward a minister who just lost a big chunk of their funding. Unfortunately that’s pretty much all of them, except for Uncle Winston who must be kept happy lest he pull the coalition’s plug.

Where other ministries are cutting 6-7% from their budgets the wily old fox is only reducing spending at MFAT by 1%, and given that cuts were already planned by Labour MFAT will actually be $20m better off than they were expecting prior to the election.

Mind you after the whole Mike King fiasco this week I don’t imagine that whoever decides these things would’ve thought putting Winston up was a good idea.

Whatever you think of Mr King the whole thing reeks of corruption with no request for funding, no competitive process, nothing. It’s like the government going out to tender to have new facilities built but saying they’ve already decided beforehand that Winston’s mate Mike is going to be appointed the contract to concrete all of the driveways without going to market.

As for Q&A this morning I couldn’t tell you, the sun came up, 9am just rolled around and I’m thinking of coffee and maybe heating up one of the delicious cheese scones Fi made yesterday. More to the point I’m feeling great about last night’s news and don’t really want to watch Erica’s waffle right now, plus this is quite long enough already

I’ll check later, if Erica has something interesting to say I’ll probably write about that, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.

Mostly I’m just grinning from ear to ear at the news that my oldest boy, my lovely man, Alex has proposed to Ella, the person that he wants to spend his life with, who we all adore, and she said yes. Even on his best day Jack Tame can’t compete with that.

Alex and Ella.