Posts by philipmatthews
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The above addressed to Tom, not Kyle of course.
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But that's not how the model works. The spend is designed to be spread evenly across arts consumers in Auckland, Wellington, Chch, etc. If your desire to be a ballet dancer means you have to move to Wellington, why is that any worse than your desire to be a Shortland Street actor means you have to relocate to Auckland?
Or should national arts organisations be moved out of the capital simply because an Aucklander resents money being spent elsewhere?
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I would be interested to know how Simon Prast has calculated that of the $68 million available each year to major arts organisations from the Ministry of Arts & Culture and Creative NZ, only $9.5m makes it out of Wellington. It looks like he's arrived at that $9.5m by adding up the annual Creative NZ grants that go to Recurrently Funded Organisations outside of Wellington -- eg Artspace in Auckland, the Court in Chch, Fortune in Dunedin, etc -- and decided that the remaining $58.5m has stayed in Wellington because it has gone to Wellington-based organisations. But these organisations include the Film Commission, Music Commission, NZSO and Royal NZ Ballet, who are national bodies. You would expect that much of the film spend, for example, goes north to Auckland. Both the NZSO and the Ballet, Simon would know, are mandated to have national reach and both play Auckland as often as they play Wellington. Yes, they are based in Wellington but why is that in and of itself a problem?
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Money you say? What you didn't mention is that in NSW they're arguing about whether to spend A$1 billion in a recession to finish the building properly, leading to opposition statements like these:
"Five months ago we cut rail projects to the northwest and southwest because Mr [Nathan] Rees said we didn't have the money," Mr [Barry] O'Farrell told reporters in Sydney.
"Now we have a lazy half billion or billion dollars, and his first priority is going to be the Opera House.
"This project ... is the equivalent of three major hospitals ... It would complete the upgrading of the Pacific Highway. It would help construct rail links to the northwest and southwest of Sydney."That story here:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/789094/govt-mull-1-billion-opera-house-project
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Now even Bridget Saunders has weighed in on the "lady with a moustache" incident:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/blogs/about-town/2296667/Moustachegate
Breakfast definitely is considered one of TVNZ's news shows. On this page, it's one of a group of nine shows TVNZ defines as News and Current Affairs:
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news
Veitchy's Serena Williams comment was: “Do you know where the apes come from? She is a reminder."
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Unless I take a drink from the Heathcote in that time ...
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I'm about two minutes away from one of the spots on the Heathcote, just by Tennyson Ave, where this is going to happen. It's never been the clearest, cleanest looking river in the world but apparently it's improved over the years. This looks like such a retrograde step.
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Good points Geoff. There's still a geographic snobbery around culture in NZ that seems juvenile and defensive: you should have heard what many Aucklanders said when I decided to move to Chch.
I have to admit, my heart sank a little when I heard that Media 7 was going to head down this Auckland-vs-Wellington route, but I thought it was handled well. The important thing about Simon Wilson's article was not in its numbers-game comparisons -- how many art galleries here, how many art galleries there -- which seems facile, but in its call for Aucklanders, esp the Council, to recognise that they have world-class culture going on right in front of them. But it's a shame that it must then turn into Wellington bashing, or Hamilton bashing, or Parmy bashing ...
One thing, though: I'm not sure Simon Wilson can claim that Auckland is the capital of NZ literature. Has he done a headcount of published authors and where they live and work? From memory, he arrived at this by saying (in the story) that the publishers are almost all based in Auckland. But that's the industry, not -- to use Tommy Honey's word -- the incubator. Penguin Books is in Auckland, but Maurice Gee, Charlotte Randall and Laurence Fearnley, to name three of its writers, aren't. Anyway, surely we don't have to settle on a single capital for that or any other kind of culture.
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Again with the Jonathan Ross example, I would be hugely impressed if TVNZ had the balls to suspend Paul Henry as the BBC did Ross and Brand while it "investigated" the incident. Doubt it will happen though.
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I wasn't saying that the item in question breached fairness, balance, good taste and decency; rather that these are qualities that one would more readily expect from a state-owned broadcaster than a commercial radio network in the US or Ian Wishart's magazine, to use two examples cited. Both Limbaugh and Wishart have well-known, clearly signalled bias and play or publish to narrow audiences; One News is expected to have no biases and to reach mass audiences. And for all its infotainment trappings, this show is still part of the publicly-funded news division of TVNZ.
And Craig: Jonathan Ross was never purporting to be a news co-host; the prank call to Andrew Sachs was during Russell Brand's radio show. Sure, it was on the BBC but not on a news programme. Clearly there is a difference. I've never heard the show that you, Damien and Russell do so I wouldn't know if it carries the same level of journalistic responsibility that a show like Breakfast should.