John Key was interviewed this morning by Paul Henry on TV3. The interview was cringeworthy. The complete lack of independence shown by Henry and the obsequious nature of his treatment of Key were a joke. Winston Peters has criticised Mike Hosking for being a National Party stooge and has said that the cost of his show should be counted against National’s electoral advertising. The same comment applies to Paul Henry. Our media is in a shocking state.
Key’s comments were reported in this article and shows Key at his disingenuous best. And some parsing of his comments suggests that his comments are not, ahem, accurate.
Prime Minister John Key says protesters against a Pacific-wide free trade deal were misinformed.
Like when opponents said that Pharmac would be gutted and this was denied until recently? And much of the heat has been generated because of the lack of information about the negotiations.
… Key said the protesters, only about one-third of which he said were “genuine”, were adamant they should know what the TPP involves before negotiations had been wrapped up.
“Name a single free trade agreement we’ve ever done in the public,” he asked on TVNZ’s Breakfast.
You mean that all sorts of WTO negotiations, or negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement were also conducted in complete secrecy? And the European Union Ombudsman has recommended release of similar documents from the US-EU negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
And accusing two thirds of those who took part in the protest of not being genuine is insulting.
… Key said one-third of those were rent-a-crowd protesters who opposed any free trade deal and another third were Labour and Green supporters who opposed anything the Government did.
Funny I did not see people with clipboards at the Auckland protest determining who were “genuine”, who were “rent a mob” and who were Labour and Green supporters. Perhaps since he knows so much John Key could advise where we can get our rent a crowd payments from?
Reports that Pharmac, the Government’s drug supplier, would be disestablished under the TPP were simply not true, he said.
“Pharmac will still be able to carry on with its own policies.”
Another false flag argument. The concerns raised are that the Pharmac model, which has delivered significant savings in the cost of drugs, will be adversely affected. This will either make the cost of buying pharmaceuticals more expensive for the country or the quality of what is available will drop or both will occur. National’s position has changed. Of course Pharmac will be affected.
The media is in a bad way with such openly partisan hacks as Henry and Hosking occupying such important positions. Because it is the media’s most important job to hold John Key to account when he says stupid things. Clearly as today’s example shows the media is not doing this at this stage.
To paraphrase Winston Peters both Hosking’s and Henry’s jowls are up the Prime Minister’s cheeks and the quality of public debate is clearly suffering.
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