July 8, 2008 10:02am by David Farrar

Following the script

I have found it very amusing that Labour have been accusing John Key of following focus group supplied scripting, because they are so good at it themselves. The media have already reported on how they spent one entire month trying to label Key as “slippery”.

Their other tactic is to label every policy or move by National’s as “privatisation”. Their focus groups have shown the public don’t like this word. So whatever National does or say, will be labelled privatisation by Labour.

We saw this yesterday with Helen Clark and Trevor Mallard’s response to what is hardly an earth shattering policy by National (rather tepid in my views).

NZPA reported:

He [Mallard] was suspicious that a National government would look to commercialise or even privatise Radio New Zealand.

Now what was the actual policy:

Continue funding for Radio New Zealand, National Pacific Radio Trust, and Access Radio

So a policy of maintaining funding, is described by Trevor as a policy to privatise. It’s hilarious.

Then we have TVNZ:

Broadcasting Minister Trevor Mallard said without TVNZ having charter obligations there was little point in having it remain as state-owned broadcaster.

“The promise to retain ownership rings hollow. This policy is a Trojan horse privatisation down the track,” Mr Mallard said.

You have to give Trevor kudos for not acually trying to defend the charter as having produced anything worthwhile – he knows it has been a disaster giving TVNZ mixed priorities.

But let us look at his claim there is no point in hvaing TVNZ owned by the state without the charter. Well, apart from the 30 or so years it was happily state owned with no charter.

I am looking forward to future Labour responses to National policies. We will see stuff such as: