NZ Politics Daily: 8 April (liberation)

There’s an interesting mixture of both consensus and squabbling in the fallout over the bailout of AMI as well as the decline of NZPA and TVNZ7. With the bailout, all parliamentary parties have essentially signed up to apparent reality that the financial institution was too big to fail, especially in light of the earthquake. Commentators, too, are in agreement about this – see: Bernard Hickey article on interest.co.nz, Why the government had to bail out AMI, Audrey Young’s Too big to let fail... minister makes solid case for rescue, and Corin Dann’s AMI bailout had to happen. Where the debate starts occurring is on the question of how will the Government afford this latest run on the taxpayer’s funds. See the Newstalk ZB articles ACT backs AMI package and SOE sale could fund AMI package, in which Rodney Hide argues for further spending cuts and I am quoted as predicting that increased borrowing will result, with perhaps a greater urgency for partial privatisation. The most interesting blog post on the bailout is on Labour-friendly Standard, which channels the party’s residual neoliberalism in making the case for letting AMI go bust – see: AMI socialises its losses.

Within parliamentary politics, the squabbles over TVNZ7 and the Mediaworks loan are still going strong. Necessary questions are being asked about privatisation, commercialisation, and cronyism – even if there is nothing particularly tangible arising from those questions. The wider changes in the media environment are most analytically dealt with by John Drinnan's excellent weekly Herald column, this week entitled RNZ touts its news to private sector and William Mace’s rival Stuff column, The media week that was. Drinnan reports on the significant news that Radio NZ might be branching out into the private sector. Although not covered in these articles, the Listener has recently given its website (www.listener.co.nz) a major upgrade and is now well-worth using – especially for the daily Internaut column by the excellent Toby Manhire. Yesterday’s internaut was particularly good: The tupperwaka party.

There’s plenty of material on the economy in today’s NZPD – and not just about the travails of capitalism, but also about the struggle that poor and middle-income earners are currently facing – see, for example: TVNZ’s Budgeting groups say government ‘out of touch’ and Demand for food parcels increasing. The Waikato Times article, Middle income budget falls short shows how the Labour Party are campaigning hard on this. But if your concern is more for the rich, check out the plight of the NBR’s Cantabrian rich list who have been made homeless: Canterbury who’s who without an address. And the PSA have smartly picked up on the ‘Nice to have’ line that is everywhere in political commentary and are using it for an effective campaign, but one which is being mercilessly derided and parodied by the right – see: Whaleoil’s Social Media FAIL by PSA and David Farrar’s PSA fail. The PSA are probably thinking, ‘All publicity is good publicity’. [Continue reading below for a full list of the highlights of NZ Politics Daily]

Below are the internet links to all the NZ politics material from the last 24 hours that are either informative, insightful, interesting or influential. This list and the links are taken from a fuller document, NZ Politics Daily, which is emailed out, Monday to Friday, to various researchers, academics, journalists, MPs and so forth. The document is purely for research purposes only, and if you would like to be on the subscription list, please email: [email protected]

AMI bailout

Bernard Hickey (interest.co.nz): Why the government had to bail out AMI

Audrey Young (NZH): Too big to let fail... minister makes solid case for rescue

Corin Dann (TVNZ): AMI bailout had to happen

Adam Bennett (NZH): Another mega-bill looms for taxpayer

Laura Frykberg (TV3): Govt ‘can’t bail out bad business decisions’ see Video

Editorial (Dom Post): AMI collapse is simply unthinkable

Newstalk ZB: ACT backs AMI package

Newstalk ZB: SOE sale could fund AMI package

Nevil Gibson (NBR): AMI: Still believing in financial fairies

Roeland Van Den Bergh (Stuff): Insurance shock for all households

Anne Gibson (NZH): ‘Cheapskate’ insurer too risky: rivals