Sharples a scapegoat for Nats’ bumbling schemers
If we’re to believe National’s version of events, Pita Sharples kept secret from his colleagues that he was going to take $3 million from a contestable Te Puni Kokiri (TPK) fund meant for job initiatives and give it to Maori TV (MTS) to subsidise their World Cup bid. When it became a big story Sharples apologised to John Key for not telling him about it earlier, saying it was a mistake from a junior minister, and Key said he would be ‘comfortable’ with MTS getting the rights.
Then, Jonathan Coleman, also without higher approval, decided to back a counter-bid by TVNZ and TV3. Just when it was getting farcical, in rode John Key on a white steed and cut the Gordian Knot into which his ministers had tangled themselves by having a taxpayer subsidise all the channels in a joint bid, leading Young to gush “John Key has just shown why he is Prime Minister.”
Nice story. But it’s a load of crap as revealed by a timeline of events leaked (presumably by Sharples or te Heuheu or Comar) to Tracey Watkins and reproduced in today’s Dom (not online, apparently stuff is still living in 1998), Audrey Young’s timeline, along with other public information:
- May 19: First meeting with TPK and MTS on World Cup bid using TPK money
- June 15: Sharples and Maori Affairs Associate Minister Georgina te Heuheu (who has responsibility for MTS) briefed by MTS on proposed bid backed with TPK cash.
- June 17: Sharples and te Heuheu meet with TPK head Leith Comar and discuss the proposed bid.
- June 23: Sharples discusses propoasl with Bill English
- Late August: TPK briefs Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully on coming bid.
- September 2: te Heuheu writes to English and Key informing them of the bid. Key read the letter but doesn’t recall exactly when. So, by the start of September all the major players know about the MTS bid.
- September 23: English, te Heuheu, Coleman, and Gerry Brownlee (McCully’s associate) meet to discuss the bid. Key is off being the jester on an adulterer’s variety show at the time. The ministers are unwilling to kill the bid without Key’s say so because of the risk of damaging the relationship with the Maori Party but are unhappy of the misuse of TPK funds (something ministers would later purport to be OK about).
- September 28: Meeting of English and McCully with TPK officials at English’s office. According to Derek Fox, English just sat there and McCully ranted and raved at Comar.
- October 2: MTS bid and TPK backing become public. National ministers decide to support a joint TVNZ-TV3 bid to beat MTS bid
- October 5: Key backs MTS bid as long as its coverage must reach all New Zealanders
- October 8: Sharples apologises to Key for not properly consulting with him and his ministerial colleagues before backing MTS bid
- October 9: Sharples provides commericially sensitive breifing paper on the MTS bid to Key. English leaves phone message advising Sharples informing him of government-backed the TVNZ-TV3 bid
- October 13: Following Cabinet on the 12th, when all these issues were certainly discussed (and Sharples wasn’t present), Coleman announces the government will be backing TVNZ-TV3 bid the against government-backed MTS bid.
- October 14: All bids withdrawn. Joint MTS-TVNZ-TV3 bid being worked on.
What’s now clear is that senior ministers knew about this whole issue for a long time and the only surprise for them was when MTS’s bid became public on the 2nd. Their response was to blame everything on brownie. National’s ministers pretended they knew nothing. They got Sharples to apologise for not informing them even though he had and didn’t tell him for a week that they were going to launch a counter-bid. They even got him to hand over the information on the MTS bid they needed to beat it (talk about mana-enhancing, they’ll be calling him Pita Pononga soon).
Meanwhile, Key spent a week pretending he was OK with an MTS bid, repeatedly stating on TV and in other media that as long as there was coverage it was OK and also making statements that humiliated Sharples. All the time, Key knew he was going to kill the MTS bid with the counter-bid.
Then when he did launch the counter-bid, MTS and Sharples didn’t back down as National had expected. The thing was develpoing into such a mess that Key had a panic response of getting all the channels together in a single bid and promising them taxpayer money (presumably supplied by those pixies at the bottom of the garden).
Watkins says that Labour has been soft in calling this a shambles. She’s right. This is a shabby, dishonest affair and this government must now be considered the least incompetent and the most internally fractured since the dying days of the previous National government. The upshot is there remains no channel with the free-to-air rights, but whoever does get it, you and I will be subsidising them.