Environment - Talkback, Morning of 08/03/2005

According to John Banks his talkback show is the 'people's parliament'. To an extent he is right. Talkback is a forum in which individuals can have their views heard without prejudice (though I'm not sure how many would hear you on Banks' show). The hot topic of this morning's talkback shows was Minister of Conservation Chris Carter's decision to veto the development of a Whangamata marina, thereby overturning an Environment Court decision. Executive interference in judicial decision certainly deserves a great deal of attention. Debate in talkback circles (and the Devlin and Holmes talkbackish shows) was however confined to irrelevant political opinion. Let me explain. Paul Holmes (ZB), Leighton Smith (ZB), Justin du Fresne (ZB), Martin Devlin (Radio Live), Michael Laws (Radio Live) and presumably John Banks (Radio Pacific - though I won't put myself through the pain of listening to him), were all against the Minister's decision. Every single morning talkback host in the country was in favour of the proposed development. This inherent bias contributed to the framing of the debate throughout the morning. The pro-development anti-environment non-objective stance prevented reasonable debate on an important issue surrounding Carter's decision - should the executive be allowed to overturn a judicial body's decision, if so, in what circumstances? Yes, most of the talkback hosts gave lip service to this important argument. But debate was stifled because they'd already made up their minds that the overall outcome of the decision was bad. Holmes framed the debate about business leaving the country, Smith said people with contrary opinions were 'idiots', Devlin cleared his throat at the veto, and Laws talked about benefits of development. To his credit Justin du Fresne was the only one who at several points took an intelligent line to the argument, before moving on to talk about Transmission Gully. That all talkback hosts seem to be of the same political breed is worrying. It means debates are framed along particular lines, preventing an equal and fair hearing for different sides of arguments. Objectivity suffers when a host's intrinsic political persuasion prevents intelligent and lively debate on important matters. And that's exactly what happened this morning within the dark depths of New Zealand's talkback stations. (Someone has put up Leighton Smith's quite hilarious angry accusations that anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot here. The first few minutes are pure gold.)