Reaping the Whirlwind.

The only surprising thing about the abolition of the Broadcasting Standards Authority is that it caught so many people by surprise.

WERE THEY SURPRISED? Probably. The sort of people chosen to sit on the Broadcasting Standards Authority do not expect to be decommissioned quite so publicly and, one might almost say, casually, by their Minister. They are the good and the great: citizens whose CVs, while impressive, contain nothing which might indicate that the horses of political propriety are in the slightest danger of being frightened. Such people do not get cancelled. Or, at least, not frequently.

And yet, to their considerable surprise, cancelled they were.

Was the Minister, Paul Goldsmith, motivated entirely by the BSA’s decision to go after Sean Plunket and The Platform? Under pressure from NZ First and Act, did Goldsmith, like Pontius Pilate, simply give in and give up the BSA for crucifixion?

Certainly there was fury across the Right that the BSA had moved against Plunket. Not only did their decision constitute a breathtaking example of institutional overreach, but it also confirmed to all but the most blinkered of observers that the BSA was beyond help.

How could a group of people with the slightest sensitivity to the political environment in which they were operating arrive at the conclusion that a right-wing political commentator’s description of Māori tikanga as “mumbo-jumbo” was anything more than a robust rhetorical thrust? To transform Plunket’s comment into the hill upon which they would end up dying was an act of unforgiveable stupidity.