Debate Preparation
June 30th, 2005 at 6:45 pm by David FarrarArrived in Auckland at 5 pm and got to hotel (Heritage – very nice) at 6.15 pm so have an hour before I have to head over to TVNZ.
Reasonably nervous, which is unusual for me. I’ve done TV dozens of times before, but as far as I can recall this will be the first live programme I have been part of. I have been part of the studio audience for the last three election debates at Avalon but in theory you are not part of the programme (in reality my heckling of the PM almost got me evicted by Paul Holmes 
The more I think about Dr Cullen being a no-show the more amazed I am. All the polls say that this is shaping up to be “the issue” of the campaign. There’s a one hour programme on tax with every other party participating, and the Finance Minister refuses to attend. This is quite extraordinary. I spent enough time in the Beehive to know that normally one would move heaven and earth to change one’s schedule to take part in a debate like this.
Anyway better get ready. Hopefully I will update live from the studio (starts at 8.30 pm on TV One) but they were not 100% sure this would be possible. Will be interesting to see how the format goes – with 30 people and 44 minutes of screen time, I expect most people will only get to speak once or twice, and hence one won’t get much actual debating.
No tag for this post.
June 30th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
All the best – will be watching. Hope there’s wifi for you
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
have a great time!
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 7:16 pm
Good luck.. will be interesting to see how labour defends their tax policy…I can’t wait for my $8 per week in 3 years
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Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 7:16 pm
Good luck, give ‘em hell
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 7:43 pm
If possible David, you should reduce the number of posts on your home page – the site’s loading slow at the moment.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
FWIW I will also be liveblogging the dabate at Sir Humph’s. Should be fun.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
Bags seeing you first
Where’s the laptop?
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
You can be sure that the West Coast alibi is a lie. So the reason much be to give Cullen wriggle room without him laying down the law against tax cuts on TV. They are going to make a move alright. How much and when. I suspect they will adjust the threasholds for inflation since the change in Government plus a bit.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 9:26 pm
I enjoyed the so-called debate. (Congratulations on your effort – lucid and effective.)
Vote:The real question is, who know’s best what’s good for us?
Ourselves, or highly paid socialist “consultants”?
June 30th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
I like the union hack “workers” the the audience has been stacked with. Especially the pom.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
Interesting “debate”. It’s a shame that all the “working class” people seemed to favour not having tax cuts. Would have been nice to have people from both sides.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
Cullen will be laughing , and glad he didnt bother to turn up. The so called live blogging didnt happen ( you should have stamped your foot D).
Vote:One question , if Australia has higher tax rates for the better paid who pay most of the taxes how come they have less tax as proportion of GDP ?
June 30th, 2005 at 9:41 pm
The Pom was the star of the show. I liked his line: “We need to pay our taxes so the government can spend it”.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
I wasn’t too impressed with the “debate” it seemed whenever anyone actually started to explain their point of view they were cut off.
And who would have expected the Maori party to be an advocate of tax cuts (though I expect that there was going to be a “we suggest a tax cut… BUT” before he was cut off.
Its a pitty rodney didn’t get more of a chance to speak.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
Crazy format for a “debate”, but it was cool. I only hope Kiwis don’t go to the booth with this evening as a basis for their opinions on tax cuts, as the topic tended to change just as it got interesting.
Well done DPF, didn’t know you’d be on and was suprised when I saw your name. I’d imagined you were a skinny blone guy with slightly more hair!
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 9:56 pm
Crazy format for a “debate”, but it was cool. I only hope Kiwis don’t go to the booth with this evening as a basis for their opinions on tax cuts, as the topic tended to change just as it got interesting.
Well done DPF, didn’t know you’d be on and was suprised when I saw your name. I’d imagined you were a skinny blonde guy with slightly more hair!
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:02 pm
Farrar – a face made for radio ;-0
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
You did great with your one minute under the spotlight. National’s tax policy is looking more mysterious as time goes on. I’m going to have to ask Helen to name the election date just to end the suspense.
Overall, I don’t think the “debate” (forum?) is going to sway many people from where-ever they sat before the show, but it was still worth doing.
Another one once National policy is out would be worth doing. (But cut down the number of tunnel vision unionists and patsy “worker on the street” folks).
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
30 people. WTF were they thinking? It could easily have cut it down to 10 and the quality would have been much higher (a bit like some government spending). Too many people who said nothing. Too many people making some rambling contribution and then needing to be cut-off.
David – Take a cue from Rodney. Don’t put up your hand, interject vigorously
I thought your comment was good though.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Insider – I’m sure you’ll be posting a photo of yourself on the net so we can make sure you can talk.
Allah protect us.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:23 pm
“a skinny blone guy with slightly more hair…” oh dear…David will be so touched by this (as will his Swedish gym instructor
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:27 pm
It did reveal one thing to me and that is if the Labour Party try and match National with cuts they may piss off a lot of their supporters who still think the Government should spend and spend and spend. So they may have gone beyond the point of no return when it comes to a U turn. But I still think they may be forced into a U turn but it will not be easy, I bet they are frantically doing those numbers. Helen will be pouring over them, should we or should we not. Focus groups, media leaks, spin, lies, snarling, scoffing, deep authorative voice, glaring.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
I don’t know if the Commander-in-Chief of the Smarmy Army was much better than The Cullenator. God, that sneer, the eye-rolling and shaking his head like was having a slow motion seizure. Did say on the talking points, though – the peasants are stupid, greedy and irresponsible. And Don will rape your kitten, if you give him half a chance.
(BTW, where did the ‘ordinary workers’ come from because they sounded well-primed with CTU/Labour Party talking points.)
And did someone tell Maharey to lay off the running interjections – because they were annoying, and it was stupid of John and Rodney to respond in kind. Don’t do it anymore, John.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
Tim – that just sounds like any Labour Caucus meeting…
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
Ah Prophet, unfotunately that would involve removing my yashmak, which I;m sure you would understand would be a serious breach of our religion
Insh’Allah
I also thought David and the man from Sydney looked spookily alike….
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
Who was the cute “wrote at letter to the editor” guy? Woof!
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 11:20 pm
Insider, are you suggesting that someone has a secret cloning experiment going, and that DPF lookalikes will shortly be taking over the world? The softy lefty commie hippies should be shaking in their boots.
Vote:June 30th, 2005 at 11:24 pm
jeff – simple answer – their GST is lower and they have more company tax exemptions. It’s really pretty close to ours. We have lower rates, but fewer exemptions, too.
sorry i missed it all, i’ll just be blogging on the content. From the tone of your responses, it went well for my side of the fence.
and i doubt many people watched it — though, fingers crossed I’m wrong, given the responses here.
Vote:July 1st, 2005 at 1:08 am
I watched the debate, you seemed like envy with families who earn more than you and got more tax return whilst you have to pay more tax. It makes sense, but it could still be like that even with tax cut.
Vote:July 1st, 2005 at 2:04 am
Great debate, very hypocritical of Cullen not to show up, coward.
PS, I just took it upon myself to create a blog, for those of you that may be interested the URL is: http://jasonmolloy.blogspot.com
Vote:July 1st, 2005 at 9:16 am
Hmmmm… was Craig watching the same programme?
Key came across as far more smarmy than Maharey. I was surprised, as I thought it was dangerous to send Maharey, but he came across very well (much better than I expected). Key looked like he was tied up in knots – he looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Could it be that “mainstream” New Zealanders – like the ones that we saw last night – really do think the government is doing a good job?
Vote:July 1st, 2005 at 9:29 am
Weizguy:
Maharey gets full credit for staying absolutely on message, and it was an extremely good idea to keep Cullen out of the picture. OF course, there wasn’t a huge amount of substance in what he said but I wasn’t expecting any.
But, dude, if I was a media trainer my advice for these things would be:
“Always assume the camera is on you, and every word you say is clearly audible.
You’re going to hear things you don’t like. Under no circumstances sneer, roll your eyes or (most importantly) keep up a running commentary while other people have the floor. You look like a wanker.”
From DPF’s later post, it seems everyone was told to settle down. But it shouldn’t have gotten to that point. I get extremely pissed off when these things reduce to white noise because everyone’s bellowing at each other. I’m sure it was very entertaining for Dallow and the production staff, but tedious and uninformative at home.
BTW, I think Key did better than you give him credit for. But please, folks, Labour has some huge credibility problems of its own and you’ve got to start hammering them. There were assumption and assertions made by Maharey and the Union hacks getting fisked left right and center, and you should have been all over them.
Vote:July 1st, 2005 at 11:30 am
I have to say John Key did not look his best at all. Nervous unfortunately, so he needs some work on his presentation skills. He is really quite good in person.
Vote:July 1st, 2005 at 11:47 am
Yeah, Insolent Prick had some interesting predictions before the debate. Are he and Farrar the same person? See http://www.insolentprick.blogspot.com
Vote:July 1st, 2005 at 4:53 pm
Yes… too many people – either that, or they should have devoted another hour to give people their say.
ALthough some of those people had outstayed their welcome by the time an hour was up.
Ha ha! yes, I loved the guy with unconditional trust in his government too. ANd really, they should have shown us that woof guy’s letter. WHo knows, maybe it was about roading.
Vote:July 1st, 2005 at 7:56 pm
Oh God, this is hilarious. For some reason, trade workers are ‘union hacks’ because they seem to agree with some of what a Labour government is doing?
It isn’t possible that their views might have mistakenly coincided? From reading all the comments one would think that Labour had no support at all, at least not from Mainstream NZ.
You hardly hear people whining on about National/ACT party hacks (ex. maybe Millsy) in the Chamber of Commerce, Business NZ, Business Roundtable et al: could it be that perhaps lefties realise one can have coinciding views yet ‘somehow’ not be a party hack? Perhaps that makes them a party hack (Labour’s no doubt).
I was impressed with the guy from Business NZ who talked about the need for reinvestment in New Zealand and seemed to agree with the call for more focus on the skills shortage. Similiarly, I thought Peter Conway from the CTU did well to divert attention that way. Of course, that makes me a union hack now, doesn’t it?
Vote: