RadioLive confirms PM’s hour an election programme

Written By: - Date published: 2:46 pm, February 21st, 2012 - 46 comments
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RadioLive asked “Did the PM’s hour influence your vote?” on its website last Friday. Billy the Kid commented:

It was my first election. I heard Key and thought he sounded pretty cool so yeah I voted for him.

All it takes is one. That confirms it was an election programme and Radio Live broke the law.The Broadcasting Act prohibits election programmes broadcast before writ day whether paid or not. It is a serious breach; the maximum penalty is a fine of $100,000.

Key was also very involved in organising the programme – he personally selected the guests. So was his office – they suggested to Radio Live at the last minute that the station get an opinion from the Electoral Commission as to whether the programme was legitimate, and helped draft the wording.

Having seen the Commission’s warning to be extremely careful in playing such a programme, one of Key’s office staff commented that the Commission had indicated the responsibility for any breach lay with the broadcaster, “which was useful”. That’s pretty grubby, letting someone else take the rap.

46 comments on “RadioLive confirms PM’s hour an election programme ”

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  1. tc 1
    21 February 2012 at 3:09 pm

    the nats break the rules but get someone else to take the blame and any financial penalty is already been sorted via that interest free taxpayer loan…..a familiar theme.

    No wonder Joyce has that evil smirk, it’s all too easy really. Next step dispute the ruling or throw something under a bus as a diversion….better still trevwatch may offer up something.

  2. Sweetd 2
    21 February 2012 at 3:10 pm

    “RadioLive asked “Did the PM’s hour influence your vote?” on its website last Friday. Billy the Kid commented:

    It was my first election. I heard Key and thought he sounded pretty cool so yeah I voted for him.

    All it takes is one. That confirms it was an election programme and Radio Live broke the law.”

    Prove it. The case will be laughed out of the court room.

    • Kaplan 2.1
      21 February 2012 at 3:49 pm

      I doubt they’d laugh anywhere near as hard as people laugh at someone who things the PM’s hour was “non-political”

    • muzza 2.2
      21 February 2012 at 4:01 pm

      So you’re cool with the country being lied to blatantly, and the country being sold off in the receivership sale, because that s what it is!

      Are you happy about that?

      • Blue 2.2.1
        21 February 2012 at 4:09 pm

        Labour stole $800,000 then changed the law to make it legal are you “cool” with that?

        • Frank 2.2.1.1
          21 February 2012 at 4:14 pm

          Rightwing Response #1: Blame/deflect to Labour.

        • muzza 2.2.1.2
          21 February 2012 at 4:17 pm

          NO – I have said it enough times on here before that I am not a party voter. I dont like being lied to , or seeing , hearing the country being lied to , so it can be stolen, by anyone!

          Do you not understand that the NZ government/parliament is nothing more that a theatrical puppet show?

          The simple 2 dimensional thinking, is why we are in the mess we are in!

        • mik e 2.2.1.3
          22 February 2012 at 7:11 pm

          They paid all the money back after getting approval from parliamentary services.
          Labour paid for it in the 2008 election. Labour had to counter
          Nationals Hollow Men
          John Pinochio Key
          Borrowing Bills English
          Don the dirty dinosaur Brash
          Block of wood Smith
          Matthew Hootten king of right wing spin.
          Otherwise Known as the elusive bretheren !

  3. Adrian 3
    21 February 2012 at 3:51 pm

    ” Laughed out of the courtroom ” ?. What to make room for Key and National facing Election Fraud charges. Hang the bastards.

  4. Blue 4
    21 February 2012 at 4:08 pm

    Maybe National could do what Labour did when they STOLE $800,000 to fund their election campaign and retrospectively change the law, I’m sure all the lefties here would agree that it was a simple solution that Labour went for, and could easily be used again.

    • MikeG 4.1
      21 February 2012 at 4:45 pm

      Hey Blue, have you forgotten about how National ‘forgot’ to pay the GST for their broadcasting and so broke the rules. Did they pay that back?

    • mickysavage 4.2
      21 February 2012 at 8:08 pm

      Fuckwit.

      Labour used $800k of an appropriation for communicating with electors to do exactly that.

      It had all the tick offs.  The Auditor General thought different and ruled against it.

      Labour paid it back.

      Aint no theft.  But no doubt you will gather up all your slogans and throw them back at me again.  And hope we ignore what does appear to be a clear breach by Johnny boy. 

      • Blue 4.2.1
        22 February 2012 at 3:40 pm

        Right back at you fuckwit, it was stolen and they got caught, and they knew it. no manner of rewriting history will change that. they appropriated funds and used them for electioneering, theft, pure and simple. Key got busted but didn’t steal money. Huge difference. HOW CAN YOU BE SO OBTUSE?

        • r0b 4.2.1.1
          22 February 2012 at 5:02 pm

          While you’re ranting about long ago elections, nothing was “stolen”, unless the Nats, and ACT, and The Greens (Rod Donald, who wrote the rules), and every other party (except The Progressive Party) were stealing too, because they did the same.

          There was only one leader dumped due to the public outcry over their disgraceful behaviour in the 2005 election, and that leader was Don Brash of National.

          • burt 4.2.1.1.1
            22 February 2012 at 7:15 pm

            Nothing was stolen…. The AG changed the rules….

            Seems you have forgotten about the written warning that was ignored…

            I wonder who was the author of the response to the Chief Electoral Officers warning… who then pretended that no warning was issued – who would that have been.

            Here’s a link that might jog your memory….

        • mik e 4.2.1.2
          22 February 2012 at 7:15 pm

          Blue by ewe hippocrit Keys teflon has been so thick its wearing very thin these days.

      • the pink postman 4.2.2
        23 February 2012 at 3:56 pm

        Im sure the Auditor General said the Helen’s Pledge Card was legal then changed his mind after the election. .I know it was bloody hard work for all us LP activists to pay it back but pay it back we did,
        The ‘Rightious Honest” Nats have still not paid back the GST default. .They of course have friends in high places.

        • Anne 4.2.2.1
          23 February 2012 at 4:12 pm

          It was Parliamentary Services who originally okayed Labour’s pledge card pp. A fact NAct and their supporter trolls always forget to mention.

          When publishing the decision, the Auditor General should have emphasised that Labour had been given incorrect advice from Parliamentary Services. The fact that he/she didn’t was, in my view, the suspect bit.

  5. Ron 5
    21 February 2012 at 4:21 pm

    That’s the way Blue – just keep repeating it and eventually we’ll all agree with you. Here I’ll help:
    LabourdidittooLabourdidittooLabourdidittooLabourdidittoo

    • The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell 5.1
      21 February 2012 at 4:49 pm

      Except that the hypocrisy is a little more personal in this particular case. It was Mike Smith, the very author of this post, who promised the Electoral Commission before the 2005 election that the pledge card spending would be included in Labour’s electoral return and then, after the election had been won, decided that this was unnecessary.

      Perhaps he is not the best person to be fronting this campaign on the Standard. It might be better to use someone a little less..what?..cynical.

    • TighyRighty 5.2
      21 February 2012 at 5:09 pm

      This site defended the actions taken by the labour government then. So if it is ok for labour to do it then it is ok for national to do it. So there we go, your ditty rings true. It’s not that what has happened is okay, it’s that when you defend the actions of one party you must then defend those actions for all parties. Otherwise you look like a fuckwit and someone who is chasing the small satisfaction of saying look, those people are just as bad as my people now so that makes what my people did ok now.

      [lprent: The “site” is a dumb machine. It doesn’t defend anything. I tell it what to do including what it defends. I never told it to defend any such a thing.

      People write opinions which is what you are referring to.

      Have a educational ban for a week for thinking that a dumb computer can think. Attribute opinions to whichever author did it. Do not attribute them to the machine – that is both incorrect and shows an unacceptable level of laziness. That walks straight into a ban….

      And read the policy again so you don’t make a similar dumbarse screwup. ]

      • TighyRighty 5.2.1
        21 February 2012 at 9:31 pm

        Yea fair call.

        Rightly or wrongly, I didnt actually mean the site as in “the standard”, I meant it as shorthand for the posters and comment placers on this site. apologies for alluding to them as a dumb machine, though I sometimes wonder.

        Meant, referred to etc, I’ll take the ban to emphasise the point that if you break the rules, the rules are the rules. To argue against them is pointless if they aren’t going to be changed and, if you defend an action, you defend it for all who take it or none at all.

        [lprent: Figured that – it was a week. But it is still lazy. There are about as many viewpoints as there are people. Personally I know I am always correct and everyone else is wrong. Except of course on saturday mornings – I have no idea why he thinks such silly things. Sleeping in? ]

        • felix 5.2.1.1
          21 February 2012 at 11:47 pm

          I am a dumb machine and I find the whole conversation grossly offensive. I consider it a mechanical attack.

        • mik e 5.2.1.2
          22 February 2012 at 7:24 pm

          Tighty allmighty just like your Chicago kinder garden version of economics you push.
          Politics is a dirty business get over it when the mud is being flung the in other direction you are quite happy to jump on board with you narrow minded economic theories.
          Now you are showing how naive you are on the political front!

  6. ianmac 6
    21 February 2012 at 4:25 pm

    one of Key’s office staff commented that the Commission had indicated the responsibility for any breach lay with the broadcaster, “which was useful”. That’s pretty grubby, letting someone else take the rap.
    That is what I find contemptuous too. Rats!

  7. burt 7
    21 February 2012 at 5:20 pm

    I smell retrospective validations…….

    • bbfloyd 7.1
      22 February 2012 at 1:24 am

      no bert…tthat’s what your aftershave won’t cover….. stand up straight and it shouldn’t bother you so much…

      • burt 7.1.1
        22 February 2012 at 7:13 pm

        I can stand up straight – I didn’t need to tie myself in knots to pretend that nothing odorous happened in 2005.

        • mik e 7.1.1.1
          22 February 2012 at 7:17 pm

          Excluding the bretheren I presume.Burt the brailess.

          • burt 7.1.1.1.1
            23 February 2012 at 7:56 am

            The Exclusive Brethren… Oh, that’s right … we needed to change the law to stop them doing what they lawfully did… How could I have missed that little tilt in the playing field to favour the incumbent government.

            mik e… I didn’t financially support the Brethren because I had a choice not to… how about you – were you forced to support them ?

            Now the interesting thing is… That money spent (their own money) was described as an assault on democracy… the money spent by Labour (our money) was described as making no difference to the outcome of the election.

            So tell me; Is money spent campaigning for or against a political party only effective when it’s not Labour doing it ?

            Come on mik e – you could have just let it sit at “odorous” but no… you wanted to freshen the debate. Dork, no good will come from reminding us all that 2005/2006 was an fiercely odorous chapter in Labour party history. I’m with “The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell”, the last person who should have been making this post on the standard is Mike Smith.

    • mik e 7.2
      22 February 2012 at 7:40 pm

      Maybe the tax payer will get a $100,000 of the $44 million slush fund back.

  8. grumpy 8
    21 February 2012 at 5:41 pm

    Who is the “Billy the Kid”and how do we know he’s not Mike Smith??????

  9. Nick K 9
    21 February 2012 at 5:59 pm

    What grumpy said. If BTK is not Mike Smith it’s bound to be James Henderson, or Zetetic, or Eddie or someone of like persuasion.

  10. Bruce 10
    21 February 2012 at 9:52 pm

    Can we have a rightwing commentator stand up and say this is unacceptable behaviour by the current government, who campaigned to be a an improvement on the previous government?

  11. Nick K 11
    21 February 2012 at 10:02 pm

    I think unacceptable is a bit far, when Goff tried ever so hard to appear as well. The solution is to enable political parties to buy their own time, with their own money, if they choose to. The fact *that’s* illegal is unacceptable.

    • Colonial Viper 11.1
      21 February 2012 at 10:06 pm

      Nah political parties need to be publicly funded, and spending caps kept low, in order to keep private and corporate money well away from our democracy.

    • Ed 11.2
      21 February 2012 at 10:34 pm

      Goff did not try hard to appear as well. He pointed out that the station was supposed to be balanced, and that it was not being balanced. Key’s election programme was devised by National for National – Labour would probably have preferred other advertising.

      The determination has been made that it was an election programme – that it was not also a poluitical advertisement is due to a technical loophole int eh law which National expoited.

      It is in the hands of the police as to whether the radio station is charged – I guess we will have to wait six months for that decision – after all as John Key says they have plenty of resources . . .

  12. Nick K 12
    21 February 2012 at 10:12 pm

    You don’t want private money involved in elections – the very people the election is for?

    • McFlock 12.1
      21 February 2012 at 10:15 pm

      Everyone has a vote. Not everyone has money to throw away on election gambles. And those that do would want a return on their money – you’re proposing a license to bribe.

  13. Nick K 13
    21 February 2012 at 10:21 pm

    You don’t trust taxpayers and ordinary people but you trust politicians, who regularly feature as the least trustworthy of all professions?

    • McFlock 13.1
      21 February 2012 at 10:33 pm

      I trust each of them to be themselves.
         
      It’s easier to restrain a couple of hundred known politicos by locking up one or two every so often – just to make a point – than it is to prevent your proposal turning us into a US-style system of what is basically institutionalised bribery and a corruption of democracy.
       
      I tend to agree that ALL parties need to be held to account more effectively – like I say, lock up a few now and then. For example, Radiolive face at most (if determined DJKey was an election programme) a $100k fine. I’m sure they would have been more careful if individuals involved faced prison – not that I’m suggesting their owners would just view any fine as minor transaction costs on a multimillion dollar loan.
           
      Our system is fixable to reinforce the rule of law.
      Yours formalises bribery.
       
       

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