NZ POLITICS DAILY: A Bob Jones verdict

Back in 1974 Bob Jones wrote and published a book entitled "The First Twelve Months - The Achievements of The Third Labour Government".

All 125 pages were blank. Last night, the very satirically minded Imperator Fish blogger, Scott Yorke replicated that technique with a blog post entitled What I Learned From Tonight's Leaders Debate. And of course the blog post was empty. He followed it up later with a less sarcastic attempt, entitled What I Actually Learned From Tonight's Leaders Debate, in which he concluded that ‘All in all it was an utterly forgettable 90 minutes’.

Leaders debates are always a fascinating part of the election campaign.

But not because of the actual 90 minutes of debate – more because of the screeds of analysis and disagreements that come out afterwards in the commentary.

Last night’s first debate has launched all sorts of interesting media reports, opinion pieces and blog posts. The media’s reporting of the debate is actually more coherent and interesting than any of the words that Phil Goff and John Key had to say.

For instance, see the following mainstream analysis: Dene Mackenzie’s Key wins but Goff may lift, John Armstrong’s Attack dog lost scent, and Tracy Watkins and Vernon Small’s Goff finds bark in leaders' debate.

There’s inevitably a huge emphasis on evaluating how ‘won’ the debate, which often seems rather superficial. As I told RNZ’s Morning Report, I thought the winner was likely to be TV2’s Shortland Street which was screening at the same time (listen here). Surely the incredibly bland and boring debate was a huge turn-off for viewers. And according to the Throng website, last night’s ratings were Shortland Street: 536,990 viewers and Election 2011 Leaders Debate: 402,340 viewers.

The format of the TVNZ leaders debate is also being questioned by a number of commentators. See, in particular: Brian Rudman’s Anything but a debate, TV3’s TVNZ debate format under fire, Steven Price’s Horsing around, and Brian Edwards’ Who won, who lost in the first television leaders’ debate? I name the biggest loser.

However regardless of the format, the leaders debates are always incredibly contrived and fake – that’s their basic nature. Although last night’s one seemed more dull than usual. Both Goff and Key performed very well and came across as competent. But they both sent everyone to sleep with absolutely nothing interesting to say. Where was the dynamism? Where was the vision? Where were the big issues and differences? Hardly anything in the debate that is likely to inspire enthusiasm about either leader.

In this sense, the leaders debate simply epitomized a relatively meaningless election campaign in which the choices on offer are much less significant than many people assume. I’ve written about this today in my first weekly election column for the New Zealand Herald – see: Left right rhetoric masks almost identical policies. In this I argue that although superficially there appears to be a definitive left-right difference on offer in 2011, an analysis of the policy and manifesto promises of the two major parties shows Labour and National are in virtual agreement on something like 99 per cent of the way society is run. Parties have an interest in marketing their policies as being different from one another by magnifying their slight differences with partisan rhetoric, but a most voters realize that the similarities are more significant than the differences.

Other important items to read today include: Colin James’ Does National need to turn the Key from bland to bold?, Morgan Godfery’s Native Affairs Kowhiri 11: Te Tai Tonga, and David Farrar’s The minor parties.

Bryce Edwards

NZPD Editor (bryce.edwards@otago.ac.nz)

Today’s content

First leaders debates

Brian Rudman (NZH): Anything but a debate

TV3/RadioLIVE: TVNZ debate format under fire

Steven Price (Media Law Journal): Horsing around

Gordon Campbell (Scoop): On last night’s debate between John Key and Phil Goff

Dene Mackenzie (ODT): Key wins but Goff may lift

John Armstrong (NZH): Attack dog lost scent

Audrey Young (NZH): Goff lands first punch