Will it be ‘On your bike, minister’?
WHILE flicking through the channels on Sunday morning to confirm that I wasn’t missing a thing by not being a regular television viewer, I stopped for a moment or two. There, among the indepth coverage of breast implants gone wrong and a blowbyblow account of a slightly deranged couple turning a garden shed into a 16bedroom mansion, I chanced upon an interview with the Minister of Health.
The interviewer appeared to be in Wellington as a backdrop of the Beehive adorned the screen, while the minister was framed with a background of an old shop building which could have been anywhere in the Western world.
It appeared, though, that the minister was in Dunedin, and this was a mystery for the North Island interviewer, who obviously believed that taking part in running the country from Dunedin was much the same as trying to win the America’s Cup in a Honda Civic. Thus, much of the interview was devoted to hard questioning along the lines of, “What the hell are you doing in Dunedin when we are in the middle of a crisis?”
The minister handled that question well, I thought, pointing out that he was in touch with all the people who mattered. Skype, Zoom, email, telephone and, in an emergency, smoke signals relayed from Opoho to Mt Cargill and then through other high points to the north.
In fact, the minister turned in a superb performance, no doubt based on what he had learned from the Yes, Minister episode in which Jim Hacker explains how to be interviewed without actually answering any of the questions, a piece of television comedy which is compulsory viewing in training sessions for new MPs.
The minister’s one failing was continually using the interviewer’s name. Using names is widely regarded as a nono. It implies a cosy, personal relationship between interviewee and interviewer and thus cuts the listener out of the loop. The only time names should be used is when the interviewee is insulting the interviewer, and I have personal experience of this.
I was obliged to interview Prime Minister Muldoon many times during my brief stints on Morning Report in the late 1970s, and he never hinted at giving a damn who was interviewing him unless he was feeling particularly vindictive. On those occasions he invariably responded to my wily and carefully worded question with, “Ahhh, Mr Sullivan, you obviously haven’t been doing your homework.”
However, first names can be used very occasionally to good effect, and Jacinda got it right when she lightened up a Covid news conference at which reporter Jason Walls got the call but had forgotten his question. “We’ll come back to you, no problem. I do worry about your sleep at the moment though, Jason.”
That response got headlines in the United States where Trump’s insulting outbursts at journalists (“I know you’re not thinking. You never do,” being one of the milder examples) have made many Americans think of emigrating to New Zealand when all this is over.
Meanwhile, back in the studio, the minister gave a masterclass in the Hacker method. The main premise is to turn the interview into an opportunity to bombard the listener with your own message, regardless of the questions asked, and the minister, having given the obligatory abject apology for bursting his own bubble, provided a 20minute endless loop in which he offered about 35 different ways of saying, “Look, Simon, we are all in this together and in the usual Kiwi way we will win this battle with everyone pulling together.”
The question might be, “Minister, we are told the PPE supplies are not getting through. What are you doing about it?” or “Can we expect an improvement in testing rates under Level 3?”. To these and all other questions came the response, “We are looking into that, Simon, but let me say we are all in this together and in the usual Kiwi, etc, etc.”
Finally, Simon got to the question which is really the only one worth asking at the moment. He asked if the minister expected to be minister of health for much longer and the Hackerhoned response went something like,
“I’ll be there in Wellington next week, Simon, as Minister of Health and surrounded by that great team of fine people, all in it together, Simon, following the Prime Minister’s lead and tackling this problem the Kiwi way, etc, etc.”
Finally, came another nono. Thanking the interviewee for his valuable time (is Opoho really that busy?) and then it was all over and we were none the wiser about anything, apart from the fact that the minister can handle pesky interviewers like Jonah Lomu demolishing Mike Catt.
That skill may just keep the bicycling member in Cabinet. Maybe Sport and Recreation (TwoWheeled).