Businessman and researcher kept links to history alive
It is a good bet that few New Zealanders know the story of the SS Ventnor. Keeping the memory of the Ventnor alive was something Wellingtonian Gordon Wu, who died in February, aged 86, worked hard to achieve.
TheVentnorsankoffNorthland’s Hokianga Heads in October 1902,carrying the remains of 499 Chinese gold miners, beingtakentoChinaforreburial.
Over the next few months their remains washed ashore, and members of Te Roroa andTeRarawaiwiinterredthemintheir urupā.
It created a unique bond between the New Zealand Chinese community and Northland Māori which, 122 years later, is astrongone.
GordonWuwasbornin1938,inthe home of a Hataitai, Wellington, midwife.
The second child of Leslie Yew Tong and Foonlin Wu, he was raised in a twobedroom cottage in Abel Smith St.
With no toilet, they had to go to the family fruit and vege shop, Wong She and Co, in Cuba St to use the bathroom.
When the hard-working family raised enough money, his parents purchased a home in Newtown with a large section. Each of the siblings was allocated a garden plot to look after and they grew radishes to sell at the shop.
As an adult, he won 15 minutes of fame when he successfully grew a pineapple. He had learned the value of being a good gardener by being the sibling that grew the most radishes for the family shop.
Gordon went to St Mark’s School and then Rongotai College, which he left at 16. As a youngster he was not interested in sport, but enjoyed photography, playing the violin and singing in the choir at the Chinese Anglican Church.
As the eldest son, it was his responsibilitytoworkinthefamilyfruit and vegetable shop.
Hisson,Danny,saidthatitwasnotan easy job.
“His life at Wong She’s was hard, manual work. He hauled 90kg sacks of potatoes off the truck and into the shop. Veges were washed and trimmed by hand. This was in the days before refrigerated shelving.”
Every Saturday he would pack the entire contents of the shop and put everything into the cool store before washing down the shop.
At 18, he did his compulsory military training at Linton Military Camp where he was drafted into the medical corp. At a time when Chinese faced widespread racism, he won an efficiency trophy.
Inthemid1960s,hebegan corresponding with a Chinese woman, YvonneChan,inHongKong.Afterfour years of correspondence, he visited her and spent six months learning Chinese.
Returning to New Zealand, he married Yvonne in 1961. Gordon ran a number of businesses, including the Strathmore Dairy for 11 years.
After the dairy came two cafes – the Edelweiss on Perrett’s Corner and the Carriageway in Willbank Court.
Running cafes was hard work, as they made a lot of the food themselves. After tiring of making pies and scones, he spent a lengthy time as a real estate agent before retiring.
ItwasafterretirementthatGordon really flourished. With a natural green thumb, he loved gardening, particularly growing vegetables and fruits. In 2018, he featured on Stuff for growing a pineapple.
Although his family labelled him as “mad” for trying to grow the tropical fruit, he was delighted to show them otherwise.
"I've tried growing mango, I've tried growing bananas, I've tried growing lychees, none of them succeeded.“
His home garden resembled a market garden with different crops all year round. It wasn’t just edible crops that enjoyed growing, he had a large collection of orchids and would proudly send his children pictures of them in full bloom.
With his love for gardening, it was only natural that he served on the committee of the Wellington Chinese Garden Society, looking to establish a Chinese garden on the capital’s waterfront.
Danny recalls his father “fancied himself” as a musician and singer.
“He loved to play the violin, harmonica and piano accordion whenever he got the opportunity. Us kids all learnt the piano and it was so irritating practising with him humming in the background.”
The choirboy in him was always determined to have a voice.
“He would sing along to songs mostly out of tune and rhythm but he would sing. I could not believe it when he told me he sang at a family wedding recently.”
Gordon also worked hard to promote Cantonese. Believing it would keep their culture alive, he gave free lessons to anyone wanting to learn the language.
In his later years it was in his passion for history and genealogy that his greatest achievements came.
Chinese Kiwis had long faced hostility in New Zealand and Gordon gave them a voice, helping out on numerous books on Chinese stories including Fruits of Our Labour, a book examining the importance of the humble fruit and vege store in Aotearoa.
He also became a skilled researcher. That was never more handy than when it came to the Ventnor.
In countries like Australia and New Zealand, which experienced gold rushes, Chinese always had to deal with the tricky issue of returning home if they died.
Chinese benevolent societies collected an annual fee and took responsibility for getting their remains to China.
In New Zealand, the first repatriation took place in 1883 by the Otago-based
Cheong Shing Tong Society.
The Ventnor carried the remains of 499 Chinese who were exhumed from cemeteries across Aotearoa, including Karori.
The story of it sinking and the washing up of bones was quickly forgotten by everybody, other than Northland iwi.
In 2007, cultural consultant Wong Liu Shueng began hearing stories about bones being washed up and buried by local Māori.
In an article in New Zealand Geographic, Wong spoke of talking to Māori elders who remembered being told: “There’s Chinese over there. Don’t play in there.”
It set off a series of events which led to the discovery of the wreck, a documentary and the involvement of the Chinese government.
One big question, however, remained – what were the names of the 499 men? A research group headed by Wong
Liu Shueng failed to find any relevant documents, until Gordon visited National
Archives in 2016.
He found a list of exhumation requests with Chinese names appended from 39 cemeteries.
Among the names was Gordon’s great-grandfather, Ng Jor Ching, of whom Gordon said: “He is the brother of my grandfather's natural father. He went back to China and married. Came back to New Zealand and had no children. When he died – his wife had no children, so she adopted his brother’s youngest son. She brought up grandfather as her son.“
In other words, Ng Jor Ching was Gordon’s great-grandfather by adoption and his great-grand uncle by blood.
His discovery of the Ventnor names came just in time for them to be added to a memorial put up by the New Zealand Chinese Association.
Throughout his life, Gordon had a great sense of community. When the Wahine sank in 1968 he took food from his Strathmore dairy to feed survivors and rescuers, and he was a member of a number of Chinese community and church groups.
One notable organisation was the Tung Jung Association of New Zealand, set up to encourage Cantonese culture and language among descendants from the Tung Goon and Jung Seng counties of Guangdong.
He was the heart and soul of the organisation for over 20 years. As well as welcoming new arrivals he researched family history to help Chinese understand who their relatives were and where they came from in China.
Family friend and historian Kirsten Wong wrote an obituary for the Tung Jung newsletter, noting the depth of his influence and knowledge.
“In our little group of history buffs we had an in-joke, ‘what Gordon doesn’t know about Wellington (its Chinese community), isn’t worth knowing’.”
It was his willingness to serve the community that was his greatest strength, she said. “With Gordon’s passing a world has been lost – not just of knowledge but of a certain old-fashioned way of doing things. Gordon was a people person. He valued community service and he valued relationships. Whatever he could do to help, he did.”
Speakers at his funeral spoke of a man who worked hard for his family and community.
In 2021, he was awarded a Queens Service Medal for services to the Chinese community.
Danny said his father was “chuffed” when he rang to say he was getting a gong.
“The family were so proud that his community contributions were recognised.”
Gordon is survived by siblings Grace, Harvey and Victor, wife Yvonne, and his children Karen, Danny and Rodney.
– by Nicholas Boyack
Sources: Danny Wu, Rodney Wu, Kirsten Wong, Willie Wong, Kevin Leong and New Zealand Geographic.
A United Nations expert and New Zealand’s disability rights commissioner say access to care for older Kiwis has become a human rights issue. Louisa Steyl looks at what needs to change.
New Zealand’s health and disability system is upside down. Funding is being pumped into secondary care, such as hospitals, the proverbial ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. But it’s well known that thousands of hospitalisations could be avoided with more funding of primary and community care.
The people most impacted by this flaw are older Kiwis, who Carolyn Cooper, the aged care commissioner, argues haven’t been taken into account in health strategies.
People over 65 are the highest users of the healthcare system, and will be 20% of New Zealand’s population by 2028, so the situation is becoming urgent.
So urgent, in fact, that Kaihautū Tika Hauātanga-Disability Rights Commissioner Prudence Walker has labelled access to primary health and aged care a human rights issue.
Walker holds the Human Rights Commission portfolios for health and older people.
“The GP shortages and shortages in aged care facilities raise critical human rights issues, including older people’s ability to live a life of dignity, the right to housing and access to healthcare, and to live in their own homes and communities if they want to,” Walker says.
She points to a paper published in the New Zealand Medical Journal in March, which found only 28% of general practices have enough resources to enrol new patients.
Rosa Kornfeld-Matte, the UN’s independent expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons, in 2020 called for the New Zealand government to act to ensure the rights of older people.
Declining home ownership rates and rising living costs would increase material hardship, she warned. The government needed to invest in affordable housing.
Tough times in aged care
Aged residential care services have been crippled by years of underfunding.
Ansell Strategic last year found the sector’s earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) had fallen from $23.82 per occupied bed per day to $3.94 in just six years; a drop of 83%.
Researchers found that 56% of New Zealand’s 670 aged care centres were making a net loss of $4.24 per occupied bed per day in the 2023 financial year.
People tend to think of aged care providers as big, publicly listed companies who can subsidise hospital-level care with income from retirement villages or premium rooms – but these make up only 34.6% of the sector.
Small, individual owners or charity organisations make up the largest proportion at 43.4% of the sector.
This is particularly the case in regional New Zealand, as bigger providers tend to invest in cities.
Southland and Nelson reported the greatest losses, with an average operating Ebitda loss of $10 per occupied bed per day, Ansell Strategic says.
Where has the money gone?
Funding structures haven’t changed in 20 years. They’re currently under review, with recommendations expected in mid-2024.
The government has set a subsidised rate per bed per day, and, much like general practices, aged care facilities aren’t allowed to charge anything more, based on the assumption that they can charge for premium amenities.
But many Kiwis are coming into aged care sicker and frailer than before.
In the over-65 demographic, 59% are disabled, according to a report from Cooper on seniors’ access to health and disability services.
The number of Kiwis living with dementia jumped by 7000 between 2016 and 2020, reaching 70,000. That number is expected to reach 100,000 people in the next decade, and 170,000 by 2050.
Data from the New Zealand Aged Care Association shows the number of residents needing hospital-level care has grown by 10% in the past five years.
But with critical staff shortages, providers are being forced to close beds when faced with insufficient nurses to manage them.
In November, Aged Care Association chairperson Simon O’Dowd wrote in a minister’s briefing that 1000 beds had been closed in the previous year, and 1200 closed temporarily, as a direct result of staff shortages.
Te Whatu Ora expects New Zealand will need 80,000 beds by 2040 – that’s double the number currently available.
But with the cost of adding a new bed at about $250,000, few providers have the capital to invest in growth.
Their biggest cost pressure comes from wages, with aged care providers often forgoing other costs such as maintenance work, to try to keep and attract nurses. The sector has about 760 nursing vacancies.
And it’s not just nurses’ wages that need lifting.
Caregivers who spoke to Stuff last year said they were often working on a ratio of two staff members to 27 residents, or four to 26 hospital-level-care seniors.
With about 89% of patients in aged residential care facilities having some level of dementia, amid a critical lack of dementia beds, it isn’t unusual for them to be physically and verbally abused during their shifts.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) joined forces with the PSA and E tū unions representing care and support workers to file a pay equity claim in November.
The claim also covers home care support workers who help Kiwis stay in their own homes.
NZNO’s aged care industrial adviser, Louisa Jones, says registered nurses are earning up to 12.79% less than their Te Whatu Ora counterparts, and healthcare assistants up to 23% less.
New Zealand introduced an Ageing in Place policy directive in 2002 with the goal of helping seniors continue to live in their own homes for as long as possible.
But for this to work, they need access to home care support and primary care.
Cooper says it’s becoming increasingly challenging to provide care consistently to a proper standard.
Shortstaffing and complex funding arrangements mean some seniors with disabilities end up losing services when they turn 65.
Between 2015 and 2019, 20 home care providers left the market, mainly in urban centres. There’s probably been more closures since, Cooper says.
Many seniors wind up in aged residential care after being in hospital, but there’s a better chance of discharging them to their own homes if there’s community support available to help them.
When there’s no spare aged care beds and no support in the community, they wind up stuck in hospital, which means the hospital has to defer planned care.
“A lot of people deteriorate at home because they don’t know how to access services. We want them to have quality of life,” Cooper says.
People over the age of 85 have a 25.5% drop in hospital admissions when they see a practice nurse regularly, Cooper says.
The problem with primary care
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti recently called the sector “fundamentally broken”, referring to the existing GP funding model as a “blunt tool”.
Doctors want a funding model that recognises the complexity, co-morbidities and deprivation levels.
They too are short-staffed, and struggling to fund pay parity for their nurses.
The paper published in the New Zealand Medical Journal last month found only 28% of practices could take on new patients, while 27% had closed their books completely.
Adjunct professor Mona Jeffreys from Victoria University says the research team was surprised by how many practices had closed their books.
And while closed books did not affect existing patients, they meant doctors did not have time to help people with multiple conditions.
“You can see how burnt out these practices are. I don’t see a single GP sitting there happy because they had to turn patients away.”
There is strong evidence that early intervention prevents hospital admissions, and considering a night in hospital costs about $1700, compared with $372 for hospital-level aged residential care, Jeffreys says government money would be better spent investing in primary care.
The current general practice funding model is based on the idea that the average Kiwi needs only three 15-minute consultations a year.
Nelson GP Dr Graham Loveridge worries that some older patients aren’t getting the care they should.
“GPs are trying to do in 15 minutes what a doctor in a outpatient clinic would do in an hour,” he says, adding that it’s common for older people to have overlapping health concerns.
GPs are getting creative in the way they use staff, such as nurse prescribers, he says, but those staff members still need oversight, and practices aren’t funded for that.
The Ministry of Health and University of Waikato signed a memorandum of understanding for a third medical school in February, with plans for a four-year graduate entry, rather than six.
But this is a long-term solution, and GPs say more urgent action is needed. The profession needed to be attractive to those graduating now, just to keep GPs in primary care.
General Practice Owners Association chief executive Mark Liddle says he’s encouraged by the record numbers of training places in general practice, but says replacing like for like won’t be enough. “We’ve got demand outstripping supply.” It’s a pressure that’s been building for the past 15 to 20 years, he says.
New Zealand Medical Students’ Association workforce spokesperson Andrew Xiao says while he finds the work rewarding, he also sees a sector that’s overwhelmed and unable to provide the necessary training.
“In order for us to grow our own workforce, it’s important that we invest in our primary sector,” Xiao says. “We need a healthy workforce for us to learn from.”
The pressure on GPs means limited placement opportunities.
Xiao says primary care is “an incredibly attractive career”, offering great relationships with patients, but it’s easy to be put off by the several hours of overtime GPs put in to make sure their patients don’t fall through the cracks.
“Ultimately, these are their patients, and they want to do the best for them, but our GPs are working around the clock to meet demands. It’s not sustainable.”
Te Whatu Ora national commissioning director Abbe Anderson told the health select committee in March that closing the gap for the general practice workforce would cost about $170 million.
If the aged care and support workforce were included, the price tag would rise to $1 billion.
Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners president Dr Samantha Murton says a full cohort of nurses would give practices the capacity they needed to help train more staff.
There is lots of evidence that offering care in the community is cost effective, Murton says. “Whatever we do, the numbers stack up every time. The health system is the wrong way around.”
Cooper is calling for a health strategy for older people. “Unless it’s on a strategy and at the top of the agenda, the government won’t find it important,” she says. “Primary care can, and wants to, do more.”
Minister for Seniors Casey Costello, who is also an associate health minister, says she sees no need for a strategy for health and disability services for older people.
“The problems the commissioner [Cooper] is talking about have been around for some time and are not simple to address, but there is a unique opportunity for me ... to bring focus to this area, and to make sure that services for older people are connected and accessible.”
A solution will need to take into account a full spectrum of services that allow seniors to live as well and as independently as possible, she says.
That would include reviewing housing options and making it easier to build subsidiary homes, and finalising the aged care funding and service model review, for which Costello was now responsible.
“You are right that we need to think long term about our ageing population, but I am hoping we can make some decisions around the funding formula this year as there are immediate pressures on some facilities.
“While we need to think ahead, I don’t want to see us losing existing beds in the meantime.”
Costello says there are already strategies covering seniors’ wellbeing: Better Later Life, the Healthy Ageing Strategy 2016, The New Zealand Disability Strategy and the Carers Strategy.
Reti says that as a former GP he’s “frequently reminded” of the sector’s pressures. He acknowledges a position paper put forward by General Practice New Zealand in January, outlining solutions such as investing in workforce development, investing in planned care outside hospitals, making seasonal adjustments to funding for rural practices, and facilitating data and information sharing.
“There are certainly some big discussions for me to have with Cabinet and with officials around how we tackle all this.”
You’ve probably heard of Mike McRoberts, but producer Angus Gillies and hundreds of others working off-camera will also be out of a job when Newshub ends.
reports.
When Angus Gillies was young, it was in the days when the family would sit together and watch the TV news in appointment viewing, like huddling around a campfire.
The 6pm news producer for Newshub, based in Auckland, is one of about 300 people to lose their jobs after Warner Bros Discovery decided to axe its entire TV news division, citing plummeting advertising revenue that’s been sucked up by internet giants Meta and Google, and streamers like Netflix and Disney.
The decision came a day after 68 jobs from TVNZ’s suite of current affairs and news programmes were also confirmed to go – with the shows Sunday, Fair Go and its midday and late-night news bulletins all being abandoned, and the state news broadcaster’s Re: News team cut from 10 to six roles.
News anchor Mike McRoberts started the nightly Newshub bulletin on the day of the decision by saying it was the end of the news as we know it.
But Gillies, who has worked with Newshub and its predecessor TV3 since the 1990s, knew something bad was going to happen when all of the company’s staff were called into a meeting last week.
“We all knew that last nail in the coffin was coming. A lot of people in the newsroom ... just want to basically have it all done and move on with their lives,” he told The Post in an interview.
The majority of workers losing their jobs are people like Gillies: camera operators, editors, technicians and producers, who, while not as recognisable as on-screen journalists, are likely to feel the brunt of the mass redundancies because of the lack of viable alternative jobs and, now, a flooded market of potential employees.
The Newshub staff will work through to July 5, meaning workers have 2½ months to find something else to do, while TVNZ is stopping many of its current affairs shows before then, in mid-May.
Gillies doesn’t know what he’ll do, but he’s always loved doing the news and had planned to produce till he retired. That love is shared by everyone who is to be laid off. But Gillies also speaks about the TV news in past tense, like it’s already dead.
As newsrooms have moved towards cutting expenses to stay afloat, audiences will have noticed that reporters are expected to do the jobs of four or five people – journalist, editor, writer, camera operator, producer. This has meant a compromise in the quality of news production, and a loss of artistry in news, which the video editors and camera operators ensured.
Gillies says the news needs to find new ways to tell stories. He recently spoke to Lisette Raymer, Newshub’s Europe correspondent, who told him she spent hours crafting a story for the TV news that was watched by 100,000 people or so. She felt duty-bound also to create a quick TikTok video, finished in five minutes, which racked up millions of views.
When Mark Jennings left TV3 in 2016 and digital news was on the rise, Gillies remembers him saying there could be two or three more years of the TV news.
In that respect, it’s lasted longer than a lot of staff expected. “I have wondered if TV news might make a comeback like vinyl ... It’s a bit like the news version of the Blockbuster video stores. Maybe its time has come and gone, definitely the golden era has gone,” Gillies said.
Stuff owner Sinead Boucher this week announced that Stuff would be paid by Warner Bros to deliver a new version of the hourly 6pm TV news for Three. She wouldn’t confirm how many people Stuff would hire to help make the show, but said it would be fewer than 40, meaning most who’ve lost their jobs across both TV stations will still be without work.
Trust in the news media is also plummeting to new lows. For years, reports have said audiences increasingly distrust the news, with people saying they avoid the media because of its negativity, perceived political bias, opinions masquerading as news, and the impact it has on their mental health.
Gillies says he’s always been a fan of the curated hour of nightly TV news, and there’s a certain seriousness about the TV that can’t be replicated by digital news. When 9/11 happened, or the Haiti earthquake of 2010, for example, the visuals and sound helped show and tell the stories in ways a newspaper and words alone could not. “There’s something about using pictures. There’s a real art to it.”
For Tony Meinen, the closure is particularly brutal. He’s a Wellington-based freelance camera operator who’s worked for Newshub for two decades. TV is his bread and butter, making up about 90% of his income in a year.
Because he’s a contractor, not a fulltime employee, he doesn’t get any payout. After years of sacrificing other jobs to be available for the news, he has nothing to show for it. “To get nothing at the end of the length of time ... It is what it is.”
Despite working for Newshub for nearly 20 years as a contractor, he couldn’t even access the Zoom meeting where staff were told they were out of a job. He says Warner Bros had invested in new cars, new cameras and recently refurbished its office and the decision took him by surprise. “It was just a sledgehammer of like, whoa, what just happened?”
With much corporate video work having been moved in-house, and huge cuts in the public sector meaning job prospects there are unlikely too, Meinen worries about what he’ll do once the news shuts down and he has to compete against his colleagues to get contracts.
Because of the lack of opportunities, many are looking towards other industries, or moving cities or even country.
Meinen lives on the Kāpiti Coast and says the prospects there are limited to positions like a security guard at Mitre 10. “It’s pretty scary ... Maybe real estate photography, or video/drone work. Then I have other little bits and pieces, but not enough to actually make a living out of it.”
Meinen says during the Covid-19 pandemic he noticed a change in attitudes to the news, with some people being hostile or aggressive to him on jobs, accusing him of being complicit in spreading fear and misinformation, and being unwilling to engage in any civil dialogue.
Research shows young people aren’t watching the news, and are getting their information about the world from social media. Meinen says people don’t know what the facts are any more, which has led to increased paranoia and conspiracy theories about the media.
He’s worried young people will have seen TV news’ demise and not want to enter the industry. But James Hollings, an associate professor at Massey University’s journalism school in Wellington, says the university has good teaching numbers and people are still keen.
Advertising spending, Hollings says, is not get any better, and so the Government must act on getting Meta and Facebook to pay news organisations fairly for hosting stories on their platforms.
It’s been reported that $74 million of broadcast TV advertising disappeared in New Zealand in 2023. Apart from the year after the global financial crisis, that 14.3% decline was the largest year-on-year drop in three decades, Warner Bros Discovery’s Asia Pacific president, James Gibbons, has said.
The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill which would help news organisations in their fight to get fair pay from the tech giants, still has not become law.
Hollings wants TVNZ funded better and made into a non-commercial entity like Radio NZ to make sure overseas powers can’t affect it detrimentally.
He says journalism will continue to evolve and be delivered in new formats. “Before there was public funding, there were journalists.”
Marcel Pfister, a senior video editor for Newshub in Wellington who’s been laid off, and has worked at the TV station since 2003, says he’s not holding his breath for a job “in any way” now that Stuff will produce Warner Bros’ 6pm bulletin.
In 2018, Pfister could see the writing on the wall and got his driving instructor licence, and began contracting for a driving school on weekends. Now, he’s looking at building up clients so by July he’ll have enough business to keep the lights on and food on the table for him and his two teenage children.
He says Facebook, Google and YouTube came along but the TV news never really changed a lot. “I don’t really have much faith in the TV industry any more to carry on. Most people watch Netflix, and the news on Facebook and online sites. Being a TV news editor is definitely a very fastdying career ... ”
Pfister is excited about teaching people to drive, even though he’s enjoyed doing the news. “I feel for the ones that haven’t got a backup plan yet. I think a lot of people will be going overseas.”
While journalists were creative, innovative and resilient, it will be more difficult for off-camera workers to reinvent themselves, he says.
Meinen says the worst part is the loss of talent across so many fields, people who are all motivated by holding power to account, and exposing those who rip others off. “There’s going to be nobody sticking up for people.”
Asked how she is doing, Irene Gardiner, president of the NZ Screen Producers’ Guild, says: “My industry is falling apart around me.”
She’s worried most of the news workers won’t be absorbed into general local production roles because money is tight in that world, too. And just because someone loved broadcast journalism doesn’t mean they’ll want to move into general screen production. “It’s not like everyone coming out won’t get a job, but it does mean certainly some of the younger people in our industry will start looking offshore.”
Gardiner renewed calls for the Govern-ment to urgently introduce a levy for the big streaming companies like Disney and Netflix, but says even in a best case scenario it’ll be a while till that money comes through.
Until then, to tide the sector over, the Government should provide a financial lifeline to make sure more companies and shows don’t shut down, such as considering waiving Kordia’s transmission fees. “If everything gets too small and too tight, it becomes difficult to keep the industry sustainable, and you actually start to lose the ability to contribute to the New Zealand economy.”
That wasn’t even to mention the cultural argument in losing so many positions from local production.
The Government has said it doesn’t have a magic wand to fix the problems of the media, and Gardiner agrees it’s not fair to blame them for what’s happening.
“This has been coming for a long time. And actually, successive governments were slow on doing something to regulate the big tech multinationals. If that had been done some years ago, we’d have had that new revenue coming in as ad revenue was diminishing.”
She’s asked for screen funding agencies to be exempt from the 7.5% cuts the Government has asked from ministries. But that isn’t happening.
The Film Commission this week told The Post that it was engaged in a confidential process with staff and could not share details of it publicly. Its new structure would be in place on July 1. NZ
On Air also said it was in discussions with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and could provide more information after May 30.
Gardiner says even shows like Shortland Street, Celebrity Treasure Island, The Traitors NZ, Married at First Sight NZ and food and home shows are not immune from the chopping block if ad revenue continues to drop, as is expected.
Cameron Harland, NZ On Air chief executive, is also concerned for the media, but says the organisation will keep funding a range of content to provide “some stability” and “some jobs”.
“Loss of news plurality is a real concern for democracy ... Unfortunately we are limited in what we can do given increasing demands on our finite funds, but we see our role as continuing to communicate with and listen to the sectors we support, and to seek to spread our funding as far as possible.”
Tui Ruwhiu, executive director of the Directors and Editors Guild, says with screen funding agencies having less money to dole out, less local content will be made. There’ll also be increased competition for those small pots of money.
“Essentially, we will not be seeing ourselves reflected on the screen in the future as we have been up until now. And that’s a very sad situation in our view. It also means we are losing our voice, the voice of us as New Zealanders,” Ruwhiu says.
“Shortland Street ... is potentially being affected by what is currently happening. So that means one of our most iconic New Zealand soap operas may not be on screen in future and will be replaced by probably something from America or Australia or England or somewhere else.
“The cultural impact of us not seeing ourselves on our screens, of us not creating our own stories, will be profound, particularly at a time of social change and division.”
Ruwhiu says it’s often said New Zealand can’t introduce quotas or levies because they will contravene our agreements on trade.
“Meanwhile, our industries are crumbling. That’s a big problem.”
Andre Chumko