MAXX/ARTA, Zimbabwe, Winston Peters, Media Ownership

MAXX / ARTA

The NZ Herald published a story quoting me as being upset that public forums had been removed form the MAXX web site last week. I was. There was a community of MAXX users there who used the forums almost daily to ask questions or get answers to questions. Everyone there was a supporter of public transport. But the folks at ARTA didn't appreciate - and still don't - that when they removed the forums, they effectively destroyed that community. Most interesting to me was that it didn't appear to have any value to them and still doesn't, judging by the public comments of the spokespeople concerned.

I exchanged some e-mail with Sharon Hunter, Communications Manager for ARTA. She seems like a perfectly nice person. We're both passionate about public transport. But her comments made it clear that the forums (and by implication, the community therein) had no value to MAXX. At least not sufficient value to see the forums retained. Instead, the MAXX site will point to forums on someone else's site. OK, that's a good fall-back position as there will still be one place where people who support public transport can go to talk amongst themselves.

Separately, but on the same day the Herald story appeared, I got a call from a person at ARTA who wanted to talk to me about all the issues I had been raising with the MAXX Help Centre that were not being addressed. We went through them, he accepted they were valid (or so he said, anyway) and committed to see them resolved and keep me updated as to progress. Great! That was all I wanted in January when I first called. He made apologies to me blaming issues arising from the opening of the Northern Busway as having clogged their pipes for a while. I'm sure they did.

I'm particularly keen to see what happens about Birkenhead Transport refusing bus services to school students on the normal buses. There is no way that is consistent with MAXX policy with respect to children. I asked the ARTA rep whether he could imagine what might ensue should a child refused access to a bus then suffer serious injury or other major misfortune as a result while hurrying to school on foot after being turned away. It doesn't bear thinking about.

Zimbabwe

Still waiting on the result of the presidential election. That's good in that Mugabe hasn't already been declared the winner with 99% of the vote. That's bad in that no one else has been declared the winner. One broad speculation I could make is that if Mugabe can't hang on, ZANU-PF may use the opportunity to ensure some other person from their ranks is elected and strategising around that outcome may be the source of some of the delay. The least likely outcome is that they say "You won, Morgan!" and hand over the presidency. But who knows? It might happen.

Winston Peters

I've never voted for Winston Peters, but I do confess to a certain amount of admiration for him at times. He says things others are too afraid to say and in a way that the media love to cover.

On the free trade deal with China, he rightly points out that we don't know what's in it, so how can we support it? Perhaps because that is my own position I'm happy to hear a politician say it out loud. To be fair, the Greens have also warned against the deal, but they don't have a Minister in the government, so the media doesn't react in the same way as they do when Peters says it. I'm surprised this isn't the position of EVERY party - including any Labour MPs not privy to the details of the agreement. How can you support a deal you've never seen? I couldn't do it.

Media Ownership

Another reason I felt warmly toward Peters this week was his jibe to journalists (while facing questions about the $158,000 for charity)about reviewing the foreign ownership of New Zealand media. I have to confess I'm with him on that one. The editorial stance of the Fairfax and APN media has been distinctly and consistently pro-National, and generally US right-wing in tenor, for some time now. Having watched the media evolve in this direction over the past 18 years - roughly since Richard Long took over at the Dominion Post within the INL / now-Fairfax world - I know where Peters is coming from. For example, the leader writers of the DomPost would have had us invading Iraq along with Bush, Blair and Howard. If i recall corerectly, prior to the invasion, they had few if any issues with the obviously shonky, reality-free case for invading the place. Only later, when it was clearly a disaster and we were obviously well out of it, did they stop. The conversion over the past 3 years of the Listener into the "ListeNBR" has been duly noted.

Where is the alternative point of view that free speech is supposed to enable? From both foreign-owned media empires there is open hostility to the present government and no admission or recognition of the colossal mistakes they did NOT make that the National party clearly WOULD have. Like invading Iraq.

I'd like to see a law that says no person or corporation can own more than ONE media outlet of ANY kind if that media outlet editorialises and seeks to influence public opinion. I think that is the only way we will ever have something approximating a free press in New Zealand.