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  AGENDA, 29 OCTOBER Simon Pound's story on the ethic of attribution can also be found on this page, below. GARTH National MP Murray McCully has been a politician for almost 20 years but it was still a surprise this week when the spokesman for sport was handed the foreign affairs portfolio in a shadow cabinet reshuffle. Don Brash's closest advisor he also drops the title of Parliamentary Assistant to the Leader of the Opposition. Well Murray McCully is with me now, let's start with that foreign policy area Murray. Earlier this week Foreign Minister Winston Peters and yes were still just getting used to that formulation, was talking about reviving ANZUS and restoring New Zealand's relationship with the United States. So how far would you go in his position to restore this? MURRAY Well I've seen the statement that he made, I understand that he's disputing some of that statement made to an Australian newspaper, I guess we'll have a chance to chat about that when we get back to parliament. GARTH My question though stands, what would you do? MURRAY Oh look there's no secret the National Party and I'm pretty mainstream in the National Party in this respect, place a greater emphasis on our relationship with our traditional allies, with the United States particularly, with Australia, we're looking to see every advance that can be made made in that regard. We understand the limitations that exist at the moment. I'm gonna get my head around all that over the next few weeks and of course after every election you sit down and look at the policy and say well what worked what didn’t and we've gotta through that reappraisal process as far as our foreign policy is concerned as well. GARTH By limitations you're talking about the nuclear free legislation there or are there other things. MURRAY Oh no, I just think we'll have a top to bottom review of most of the things we put out there in the campaign and foreign policy and particularly some of the defence issues will come into that arrangement as well. GARTH But you're not the defence spokesman are you? MURRAY Oh yes I am. GARTH So that’s been taken off Wayne Mapp and you're hoping to consolidate… MURRAY I'm very pleased to have the defence responsibility as well as Foreign Affairs, I think that there are some huge issues on the procurement side of things, I've taken an active interest in those, if you're gonna send your people over to the dangerous parts of the world they deserve to have the best equipment, it's pretty clear and I think the Auditor General's reports on the LAVs the LOVs and our Project Protector suggests that we've got a long way to go in that respect. GARTH Yeah but the bottom line remains within ANZUS this relationship that isn’t quite one, the problem with the nuclear legislation that we see it in New Zealand as something as a sacrosanct article and the United States and Australia seem to be a little bit at odds with us about that, what would you do to change that? MURRAY Yes well I mean again it's no particular secret that I supported the National Party's change in position on the nuclear legislation – well under the Bolger administration when we decided we would endorse the legislation I was one of those who supported that and that remains my position. GARTH Why is that exactly? MURRAY Well I understand the importance of the legislation to New Zealanders, they don’t want to see nuclear armed, nuclear powered vessels coming into New Zealand, the legislation is there, it has widespread public support and to the extent that we have some political capital to use let's employ it in the areas that are gonna make a difference in terms of mending fences, bringing relationships with the United States and Australia forward. GARTH Yeah bring them forward and closer but if you won't make any changes on that there's really nothing more to be said is there? MURRAY Well I'm three or four days into the job, I haven’t had a chance to have a discussion with any of the representatives of any of those governments and I'll get back to you when I have. GARTH Well Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has said that we're a friend but not really an ally as such, what would you do to try and restore that relationship? MURRAY Well the first thing I'd do is have a talk to Minister Downer before I was to provide him with advice from this distance and over the channels of TV1, so I'll do him that courtesy before I express a view on the relationship further. GARTH But can you restore closer ties with Canberra at a defence level without restoring ANZUS? MURRAY There's no doubt that there's room for improvement on the defence side of things. GARTH Yes but how can you do it unless you restore that relationship, how can you ask the Australians to do a completely different set of military exercises with us when they're not doing them with the Americans? MURRAY Well it's not just about a different set of defence exercises, it's about procurement policies lining up and there are some big ticket procurement issues that we need to look at, which must be looked at when you look at our budget in association with Australia, that means you’ve gotta think about your overall strategy alongside that of Australia. GARTH But it's things like the upgrade to the Hercules and so on. MURRAY Yeah they say so but I'm convinced that there is considerable room for improvement in that respect but again I'm two or three days into the job, I'm gonna go and meet the people have the discussions and form some intelligent views hopefully on it, take some good advice, I've got Tim Grocer and John Hayes as my associates spokespeople, both distinguished and respected former MFAT officials, as a team we're gonna get our heads around these issues and we're not gonna be panicked into doing something two or three days out from our appointments. GARTH Isn't it more of a vision thing though, I mean what is our role in the world? MURRAY Yeah there's not much point in having a vision though if you actually can't back it up and I think the public in this country expect us to take Foreign Affairs and Defence issues seriously, I'm going to take them very seriously, my colleagues are highly respected and experienced in this area, together as a team we're gonna make sure New Zealanders are presented with some coherent thinking and some logic and some plans to back it up. GARTH You're gonna be squaring off against Winston Peters in the House one imagines. MURRAY So I keep reading. GARTH You could have been there as Foreign Minister instead, what do you think National's learned about coalition negotiations? MURRAY Oh look we did the best we could in the campaign, we did very well but we didn’t get enough votes to hold the hand that we needed to have to form a government, that’s the reality of politics, we make the best of what we've got. GARTH But you basically left ACT for dead, you were in treaty to United Future didn’t really convince voters that that was gonna work and the Maori Party stuff I mean where were you going with all of this? MURRAY Well where we were going is we were trying to get the largest number of votes that we could so that we would have the whip hand in terms of any coalition negotiations. We failed not by a lot but we failed to achieve our objective. The idea that we might have done better by promoting people to vote for ACT that could only have taken us further away from our goal of being the largest single party. GARTH Helen Clark made the point that you really just hoovered up the vote on that side of the ledger didn’t you, rather than growing it across. MURRAY Yes I'm not sure that Helen Clark's got the National Party's best interests at heart when she says some of these things. GARTH That’s an accurate analysis isn't it? MURRAY But the name of the game this time was to become the party with the largest single share of the vote, that was our goal, you can't achieve that goal and have the whip hand of the negotiations if you don’t convince your people to vote for someone else. GARTH So why did you and Gerry Brownlee negotiate with the Maori Party? MURRAY I didn’t, I wasn’t present for any negotiations with the Maori Party. GARTH So you don’t think that was a particularly good idea? MURRAY Oh no look I think that Don Brash and Gerry Brownlee did exactly the right thing. I mean you were obliged under our system to go and negotiate, to explore the options, I mean if you don’t do that then there's only one game in town, it means that Helen Clark is hugely advantaged in terms of her ability to negotiate with those small parties, so the very least you'd want to achieve is to put pressure on the government so that they do the weakest deals that we can make them do. GARTH And how did Peter Dunne come to support Labour when on paper he was down with National? MURRAY Well probably because he had a calculator at his disposal somewhere, he could understand the arithmetic and he was made some offers, we're philosophical about that, the only thing we could have done about that is to achieve a two or three percent bigger share of the party vote, that’s was always our goal, we didn’t meet it. GARTH Don Brash conceded the day after the specials were counted, was that a decision that you supported? MURRAY Yes it was. GARTH So how can you concede and then carry on as he did for some weeks trying to negotiate an alternative government? MURRAY Well I was actually there for the concession and played a part in that process and what he said was that he was conceding that Helen Clark had the first opportunity to put something together and if that fell over then he stood ready to try and form a government instead and that is precisely the process he followed. GARTH And now you're focused on your own caucus obviously and trying to allocate the responsibilities that are in there, and looking at that reshuffle there are a lot more women, a lot more Maori faces sort of higher up the ranks as well. How is this going to address your party's problem with getting across those demographics? MURRAY Well I don’t think our party's got a particular problem with the demographics, we could have done better across the board if we'd have done a few things a bit differently or if the ball had bounced a bit differently, it's true that we've got bigger ground to make up in some areas than others. When you’ve got a caucus of 27 obviously things are pretty thin, when you’ve got a caucus of 48 you’ve got a whole lot more talent there to build on, we're in that fortunate position now we weren’t for the past three years and I guess that made it extra difficult for us. GARTH Well we're not alone here this morning either, I just wonder what our guests think of what you’ve said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MURRAY Oh not really no. BRIAN Are you going to look at it in terms of reviewing your performance? MURRAY Yeah, I think for example one criticism that’s been made was that it was a bit confusing or a bit complex for some people to understand that we could commit to holding a referendum before we changed the policy but say that we had no plans to have such a referendum in the next parliamentary term, and some people said that’s a bit difficult for us to understand. I mean we'll look at the presentation and the formulation of …the sort of thing I was talking about. BRYCE JOHNS – Editor, Waikato Times MURRAY Yes it does, I mean absolutely you’ve gotta line up your vision and your strategy and then go about the procurement business but for a country of New Zealand's size with the sort of budget we've got obviously putting your vision together and particularly putting your strategy together you’ve got to understand where Australia's going and how we can work in and share economies in the best possible way with them. I've got reasonably close to looking at some of the procurement decisions that have been made and I'm pretty horrified when I look at the Auditor General's report into the LAVs, when I look at the fact that we've got LOVs that don’t work because the transmission doesn’t operate properly and we've now got some huge question marks over Project Protector and more to be heard about on that front, and I say look that’s not good enough when we're talking about the gear that we give our service people to take overseas where their lives are at stake, we've gotta do a better job than that. GARTH If those are the big issues though and obviously they're issues you're gonna be focusing on, the headline issue really for the latter part of this week for National was Wayne Mapp becoming the Political Correctness Eradicator. Can you explain how he got that title? MURRAY No I can't because the leader makes those decisions you need to ask Dr Brash about that. GARTH So you played no part at all? MURRAY I didn’t actually no, but what I can tell you is that Dr Brash has a very strong view about some of the silliness that we see in the processes of government and some other aspects of New Zealand life and he's asked Dr Mapp to have a good look at it. GARTH Is it a good look though if you're talking about a party that’s trying to appeal to a broad range of people to have the concerns of an older man represented in this? MURRAY Look I understand that inside the bulk weigh in Wellington this will not be a popular decision but can I tell you that from the reaction I've had from people in my electorate, people who are pretty hacked off with some of the pettiness that they see in the public sector's adherence to the Treaty and other things that this is a popular decision leaving aside the fact that one of my colleagues in particular is pursuing this task, most people seem to think it's time that politicians decided to do something about it. GARTH What can you do though I mean it's a lot of huff and puff but he's not gonna really blow the house down is he? MURRAY Well as I say Dr Brash has made the point that in this parliament there are gonna be some areas in which political parties are able to cooperate and make more progress than was the case with the numbers in the previous parliament, so let's just wait and see. GARTH You’ve already had sort of stirring broadsides for Tau Henare saying no more dial-a-Kaumatua, would you be looking at disbanding the Kaupapa Maori Unit that sits within Foreign Affairs? MURRAY Well I mean everything's on the agenda for us to have a good look, I'm sure that within Foreign Affairs there are some things that we can improve but I'm not going to with two or three days in the job run into the trap of speculating about those. GARTH But I mean as Tourism Minister you would have travelled overseas with pretty significant Maori concert parties and so on to try and demonstrate that aspect of our culture, isn't there a place for all that? MURRAY Not particularly actually, but I'm sure that there is some room for improvement and for us to apply some commonsense in these areas and I'll have a look at those things but I'm not gonna dash into those after two or three days in the job. GARTH Well Don Brash has had rather more than two or three days in the job how many more has he got? MURRAY I think as many as he wants to be blunt, I think that there's a massive level of support for Don Brash within a caucus that’s enormously grateful to have doubled in size, I think there are no illusions amongst my colleagues particularly the new ones about the fact that Don Brash got them to where they got to very close to forming a government after having been on 21% in the previous election, it's an outstanding achievement for anyone and particularly for someone who'd been new to politics. GARTH Brian you're just edging. BRIAN I dare say you're right there's a lot of support for Dr Brash but it doesn’t seem within the caucus and maybe not quite so much for you, why do you think you are so unpopular among your colleagues? MURRAY Oh look I wouldn’t get too excited about some of the stuff you’ve read in the newspapers in that respect. Look my job for the last little while has been to shoot down every loopy idea that’s brought along by one of my colleagues, I mean political parties that are serious about winning and maintaining a role in government have to have good political management, it's one of the keys to success in the Clark administration, my job on our side was to make sure that we shifted out of those things that weren’t gonna work particularly well, that means you're thwarting the ambitions and the strategies of your colleagues on virtually a daily basis. The media for their own purposes seemed to find it newsworthy that that’s the case, I find it quite unremarkable that my colleagues might be a bit hosed off about that sometimes. GARTH Though I wonder if you look at how long this can hold together if we get to sort of August 2007 and Winston Peters and Helen Clark are still in government albeit not in coalition government as we've been told to say, at that point he's managed to take it a lot further than he did with the Bolger or the Shipley administrations, people are gonna start wondering – there's not gonna be an election until one's due in three years time, is Don Brash the man to go all the way? MURRAY If Dr Brash wants to go all the way I'm quite sure he can and as I say there's a huge level of support for him, huge level of good will and my own view is that he will make the decision as to whether he is the leader at the time of the next election, he says that’s his current intention and that’s great. BRYCE Murray I'm curious about your own ambitions really, you're coming out front now, you’ve got a much higher profile is this part of the jockeying for next time round yourself? MURRAY Not at all. I don’t think you should ever start a three year contract saying well this is the last one I'm gonna do, but I think that after you've been in politics for as many years as I have you need to re-evaluate before every election whether you're adding value or whether you should make way for some new blood, I find it curious that the commentators of course think that it's a virtue to have lots of experience whereas the politician they comment on they should be taken out and shot after they’ve been in there for ten years or so, but leaving that aside I'm offered the opportunity to do something in my own right with a yardstick by which my colleagues are measured daily will be the yardstick which I can be measured by and I welcome that opportunity. I was very keen to get out of the backroom and have a shot at doing something substantial myself and I intend to give it my best shot. GARTH Well thanks for coming out of the backroom and joining us this morning Murray McCully.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GARTH Gentleman what did you make of Murray McCully's comments there, we couldn’t seem to quite pin him down on how long Don Brash has left to run. Is he after the job I don’t know. In any party there has to be sort of some succession plan and in politics people don’t like to talk about it because they are seen to be putting their hands up, being disloyal to the leader, but clearly in National there has to be two or three people that are thinking ahead whether it be one year three years seven years I would like to be leader of this party, who are they. GARTH Murray's surely not one of them, I mean he was touted I think as a he was leader of the young Nationals he went in there with a great blaze of glory but I think he told me that he went to 2002's election with a concession speech folded in his back pocket. So clearly the tide was looking pretty low at that point. BRIAN And I think Dr Brash himself has said you know that there is a tradition of rolling unsuccessful leaders you know and the bottom line is he's not the Prime Minister now he's a Leader of the Opposition again, he's certainly improved their standing, but it looks more like a legacy to pass on to someone else. GARTH He's sitting tight do you think just in case things become unstable in the next 12 months 18 months do you think? BRIAN Yeah quite possibly and that’s a very smart tactic I think and one that I think his caucus will allow him that rope. There'll be guys sitting behind John Key for me the star performer for National during the election campaign, he's got promotion up the ranks, and a few others, the Simon Powers of the world. GARTH Gets talked up a lot. BRIAN Yeah long touted but what did he do during the election campaign and how can he lift his profile, he's gone up the rankings as well but he's gotta lift his profile he's gotta be more up front and out there if he's a logical successor. Those type OF people. BRIAN Also I think you can't discount Bill English at this stage either, that Chapman lecture he gave if you set that view against the Orewa speech you know there's a world of difference in terms of the subtlety and almost the modernity of where the two men are coming from. BRYCE That'd be a great comeback. GARTH That would be a great comeback.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GARTH On Thursday the Reserve Bank Governor, Alan Bollard, raised the official cash rate for the eighth time since the beginning of last year, it's 7%, it is amongst the highest in the developed world. With an inflation now running above the target band of 1 to 3% the latest rise is yet another attempt to stem the tide of domestic spending, but will it work? Well Ross McEwan is Head of Retail Banking and Marketing at the ASB, he joins me now. Will it work Ross? ROSS Well first off the move wasn’t unexpected, the markets had been expecting a rise, Dr Bollard had been signalling that for some time, very actively signalling that even at Taranaki about two weeks ago when he had a hall of business people there saying that things had to change so we were not at all surprised when the change came through. GARTH He says while there's been a noticeable slowing in economic activity and particular weakening in the export sector, you know we've seen ongoing momentum in domestic demand, so what's you're bank's perspective on this? ROSS The feeling we're getting out there is that people are feeling pretty good, I mean the house prices have moved up over the last two to three years, there's full employment, you know when we say full employment 3.8% I think it's the lowest of the developed countries' unemployment figures in the world, so people are still feeling pretty good, and you’ve got some more equity in your houses because they’ve gone up some of them 50-70%, you know people are feeling quite good out there in the marketplace. GARTH So how long can that feel good factor last? ROSS Our view is it's starting to get patchy now, there are parts of the New Zealand marketplace that the pricing has slowed down, the time to sell a house is now taking longer, some parts of the market are still going along very very nicely and moving very quickly but other parts have reached a momentum where people are saying hey I'm not prepared to pay those prices, I can't afford it, and that’s when you start getting the market sorting itself out. GARTH How does that sort out happen exactly? ROSS Well as we're seeing around the country particularly in the housing market that as prices get to a level where people can't afford to get into those homes they stop buying and so prices have moved in some cases 70% well the supply and demand effectively comes into play and the bar comes off. Now you are seeing that in places, for example the likes of a Taranaki and Taupo, prices moved very dramatically, prices started to ease off, we started to see some slowing down in the actual markets there but Rotorua lifted, and it gets a level where it will slow down as well, and that’s what we're seeing all round the countryside now. GARTH Alan Bollard obviously wanted to try and use the measures he had to bring that about even sooner, but how much effect does a rate change really have these days? ROSS Look I think it's a wee bit of a blunt stick if I could put it in that terms, in that five years ago it would have affected the interest rates on housing, it affects really the variable rate and possibly the one year rate, but the two three four year lending rates are dictated more offshore, and people have moved into the two year and now they're moving into longer rates. GARTH Well you’ve moved them in there haven’t you? ROSS Well effectively they’ve moved themselves there because those rates have remained very very competitive as the variable rate has come up, so you’ve seen quite a change in that position. BRIAN Can I just ask you about this, I mean it's always interesting for journalists to ask where is the money coming from and clearly with this housing boom, which is I think now the strongest we've had since the 70s, an awful lot of it is not coming from Kiwi savers, it's coming from overseas, you know the famous Belgian dentists and Japanese housewives and so on, and presumably they're finding the sort of Kiwi interest rates attractive and they're prepared to take the risk that when they get repaid the exchange rate won't have moved against them, but I wonder how long that can go on because the exchange rate is clearly overvalued, exporters are hurting, it's gotta come down at some point, when that happens they’ll be getting fewer yen and euros back for their money, meanwhile if they roll the credit over they're gonna at least want higher interest rates and global rates are rising already, so is it likely that as people come to renew these two year loans and so on they’ll be looking at considerably higher fixed rates from you guys, and that’s already happening to some extent isn't it? ROSS The rates – looked back over the last three years of rates from one through the five year rate. Put aside the variable rate, the variable rate has moved because we've seen eight moves in the OCR, so they’ve gone up about 2%, and the latest move will probably push it this week up another 25 bases points from .25. Over the last three years the actual fixed rates have only moved less than 1%. The impact will come as you say when we are getting a lot of money coming offshore to fund the activities going on in New Zealand, probably about 50% of the money that’s going into housing is coming from offshore suppliers because they like the interest rates down here and they're prepared to take the risk. BRIAN But isn't the concern that while you’ve had this plentiful supply of relatively cheap money to fund these fixed rate loans people have been borrowing like there's no tomorrow, we've got what 114 billion dollars worth of debt, mortgage debt between us and already servicing that debt at relatively low rates is taking a bigger chunk of people's incomes than in the past, when those rates go up it's gonna really hurt the household sector isn't it, have you really been pushing too much credit their way is probably what I'm asking. ROSS The banking sector tends to take the demand as opposed to push because we have to have a position of we'd like to get that money back so you take a prudent position on what you're lending out. Now you do have to look forward and say well what is the sensitivity if rates do move 1 or 2% and what happens to the people that have borrowed that money at that time? What we're seeing at the moment is probably the lowest ever debt problems from the housing sector of New Zealand, so because of the employment, I think employment is the issue, it's when employment starts to come off that’s when people start to get more concerned. While there's full employment in New Zealand people are feeling good they move from one job to another and I noticed the comments early on that that was starting to slow down, well that will be the biggest impact I suspect, then you do have to look at what the impact on your client base is. BRIAN But aren’t we seeing some banks now offering 100% mortgages, no equity at all, is that responsible at this stage? ROSS We are one of those that will do 100% for certain people, now this isn't carte blanc across every client in the New Zealand marketplace and you're very careful about who you lend 100% to, and it's really for the first home buyer who actually has a commitment long term. If you're in the market for one year to buy and sell a house and make a quick buck we are not interested in lending 100% to. A lot of younger people now are committed to actually getting into a house, they’ve done a lot of spending in the past, they’ve been overseas, they’ve paid off their student debt, and that’s a big factor that’s come through, that they’ve paid those debts off, they’ve proven they can pay money off and they're very happy to actually take out 100%. Remember on the 100% there is a fast acceleration of the payment in the first five years to get that debt down. That’s the commitment. BRYCE Isn't though the risk with the home owner not with you? ROSS I think there's a risk for both parties, I mean despite what some people think banks like ourselves the ASB don’t actually like taking homes off people, it's not a good feel, and that’s sort of one of the things that dictates your risk policy that you don’t want to put people into a position where it's unpleasant for them, I mean so I think there's a risk on both sides. GARTH We hear a lot of talk about how we're shocking savers, how is giving people 100% mortgage and not encouraging them to save first for a deposit rectifying that at all? ROSS Well if we have a look at the marketplace the great returns for most people over the last 20 to 30 years have been in property, so who is it for us to say that they shouldn’t be saving through their home and paying it off if that’s the way they want to do it. New Zealand does have a very poor savings record, I mean having come out of the investment industry you see that, and New Zealand does need to do something about it, I think that’s a different debate, it probably needs some structural change around that, but housing has been a very good place for people to put their money, pay off debt and over the longer term and I mean that longer term it's been a pretty good investment for them. BRIAN But wouldn’t you agree that this shift that’s taken place from floating to fixed rates I think 80% of it's as fixed rates. ROSS Yeah 80 to 85. BRIAN Makes like really hard for Alan Bollard you know if he wants to slow things down he can bombard the whole economy with higher rates and it pushes the dollar up and hurts exporters, pushes up business borrowers, it hits everybody except the people who are the core of the problem which are namely your customers who are locked in for two years or whatever. ROSS Yeah, we could debate whether they're the core of the problem because there are other things driving inflation other than just housing but it is one of the large pieces at about .5 or .6. He has limited tools to use and one of them is moving OCR and as people have moved and banks have moved people, and as people have wanted to go into fixed rates yes it takes a longer time for it to come through and I think that’s what we're seeing. The moves that were made a year ago may only impact now or in another year's time for people on two year rates. BRIAN Alright given that he has fired off these seven torpedoes already before this week, and they're still in the water heading our way do you think he'll need to go again this week? ROSS I think the impact really needs to come through from the export sector and some of the business community as opposed to the impact purely from housing, because of that impact of the fixed rates. The impact I believe will come through from when businesses start to hurt, they start pulling in their horns a wee bit they stop spending as much, they don’t take on as many staff, people feel uncomfortable about employment that’s when it starts to stop, so unfortunately there maybe a little bit of not so much pain but slowing down in the business community which will have an impact on housing. GARTH Ross McEwan, thank you very much.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GARTH Accuracy and the attribution of sources are basic tenets of professional journalism, unfortunately however they're not always adhered to, and as Simon Pound has discovered the problem in one case only bigger than we thought. SIMON POUND: For any newspaper this is the most humiliating story to have to run --- The Herald conceded that John Manukia's interview with Anthony Solomona --- But there is more to the story. On Tuesday this week TV3 ran a story that there were doubts about another piece that Mr. Manukia had submitted to the Herald on Sunday. On September 11 they ran this story claiming that a fight had taken place outside a Parnell bar involving All Black Sione Lauaki. Bartender Arthur Hodder was quoted as confirming the incident: "I remember the incident. It happened outside and the bouncers had to keep an eye out so they didn't get inside the door." We interviewed Mr. Hodder yesterday and he denies giving that quote or any other confirming the alleged incident. The owner of the establishment, Liz Sullivan, also disputes the facts presented in the article: “This event did not happen here at billfish. We are a respectable business.” In the nearly seven weeks since the report, the Herald has been made aware of the quoted man's and the bar's concerns, but to date no official apology or retraction has been made: “I would have hoped that they would have come back and said we’ve investigated, we’ve made a mistake, I’m sorry. Always, I’m sorry is too late because whatever they have written about the person, the business, people remember the bad part, never the good.” This morning the disputed article by the former Herald on Sunday reporter was still available on the Herald website. In further investigations Agenda has found another incident of an interview conducted by John Manukia that raises questions. On August 21, as part of the Herald on Sunday's election coverage, a piece entitled 'The very thin blue line' appeared. It included an interview with a former police officer: "Former cop Dave Parks …… left the force 2 years ago, after 12 years " Agenda contacted the New Zealand Police who were unable to find any record of a police officer, sworn or un-sworn, matching the name and employment details given in the story. As of this morning this story was also still available on the Herald website. Furthermore Agenda has found that a series of articles written by John Manukia about alleged prison assaults on John Francis Waterworth are disputed. Mr. Waterworth's lawyer Ron Mansfield told Agenda that they are currently preparing a complaint. The Herald on Sunday's editor Shayne Currie declined to appear on camera but in a written statement says the paper is continuing to check stories written by John Manukia. The statement goes on: We look forward to Sunday's paper --- but this case raises a very important issue for the whole newspaper business in this country. And that is the way newspaper practice here makes invention so easy. Take --- for example --- the question of attribution. Look at this Martin Kay story from last Monday's Dominion Post. There is a 49 word quote apparently from Helen Clark --- well we can confirm she said it, but she said it on Agenda last Saturday. No mention of that in the story.It is a small point, and we do have a vested interest --- and it is not on the scale of John Manukia's invention. But in a way the principle is the same --- newspaper readers are surely entitled to all the facts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BRYCE I can see why I was invited now the sacrificial lamb on behalf of the newspaper industry. Look it's very scary, any newspaper editor in the country will be following this case very very closely, the reporter concerned here he hasn’t just worked for the Herald on Sunday he's worked for a number of titles around the country both in APN the Herald stable and Fairfax newspapers as well which is the Waikato Times stable – very very worrying times and it can happen if you’ve got dishonest people and you're not reading the tealeaves. GARTH Well it's dishonest people that are the problem then not newsroom structures because the story about the thin blue line, there's a pretty thin line in the newsrooms as well, people are expected to do their jobs, a lot of it's on trust isn't it? BRYCE Oh it is, it is, a lot's on trust, and the smaller the newsroom the more trust you're putting in people, and look I would sit here and say hey I've got a very talented writing team in the Waikato at the moment that I think's one of the strongest I've had around me in my time there, but could the same thing happen? It's possible if people are plausible enough to say hey I've had an interview with someone I've got a great story here it all is, and the quotes are there and they’ve got the notes for it, how do you stop that? GARTH Well where does this come from in the first place though, surely one of the things about being a journalist is you enjoy getting out and meeting people and talking to them so you're not creating fiction for the sake of it, it's pressure isn't it? BRYCE Oh I don’t know that it's pressure I think there'll be some ego involved, you know wanting to be on the front page, wanting to be a heavy hitter, wanting to further your career, and you know that is the way to do it, to get the heavy hits but they’ve gotta be accurate, and look I think a big part of this is the way newspapers deal with this sort of thing, you’ve gotta have your ears open, when you get a number of calls about a reporter questioning saying hey did I say that, you’ve gotta start listening and we've had a couple of cases here, the current one with the Herald on Sunday, was there earlier warnings, could they have done something earlier. GARTH Well clearly there was, there was seven weeks worth of early warnings which seemed to go begging. BRYCE Well that’s right there were alarm bells that should have rung, we had a very strong case last last year where a Herald reporter fabricated a story on Lee Gillage and Tarawera Nikau, ran a Waikato Times story almost word for word in the Herald claiming that it was their interview when in fact they'd been nowhere near Huntly and seen Tarawera, that person kept their job. GARTH Papers overseas though, august organs like the New York Times and so on they’ve had troubles with this as well but they supposedly employ large staffs of fact checkers - will this be something you can take to your board and say look we need to put some money into this or is that just an unrealistic solution? BRYCE Oh look I think it's happening, I think the imperative in the news rooms around the country especially the bigger ones is that we do need to do more checking. I think you'll find that’s happening in places like the Herald, Christchurch Press, Dom Post, to a lesser degree with us but there is a high deal of trust and it's about how you handle these things, if you find them if you get the warning signals you’ve got to act, you've gotta send the message, you’ve gotta show people you're serious and that you're doing something about it. GARTH Thanks Bryce. Transcripts are copyright to front Page Ltd and may contain errors. They should be checked against a taped copy of the programme to ensure accuracy. Copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used PROVIDED attribution is made to TVOne and Agenda |
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