Leader of the Opposition Christopher Luxon questioned the rationale behind the Labour government’s move to merge TVNZ with Radio New Zealand ( RNZ) in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.
Luxon was directing oral questions at Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in Parliament on November 8.
Defending her government’s decision, Ardern sought to separate the issue of public service broadcasting from the cost-of-living crisis.
She argued the merger would add value to public broadcasting in the same way that “ABC and the BBC have demonstrated their value in their respective countries [the US and the UK].”
Ardern justified the merger in view of the revenue drop experienced by TVNZ.
But Luxon pegged the merger between TVNZ and RNZ at a whopping $370 million, which he said was “greater than the combined value of both of those entities,” and wondered if that was a responsible use of taxpayers’ money.
Luxon estimated the merger would cost taxpayers” $ 200 million a year, each and every year, for the next 30 years,” and suggested the money could fund the purchase of extra hospital beds, hip operations or cancer drugs instead.
Luxon called the TVNZ-RNZ merger “wasteful spending.”
Questioning the numbers touted by Luxon, Ardern asked why he was focused on public broadcasting instead of cost of living, which was “top of mind” for most New Zealanders.
She defended her government’s record on health reforms and pointed to a 43 per cent increase in Pharmac spending .
“We fixed the botched roll-out of bowel cancer screening that we were left by that [National] government,” Ardern noted.
She claimed her government had improved access to mental health support for young people.
Ardern accused Luxon of promoting an $ 11 billion tax cut, “which predominantly supports those on the top, top incomes.”
Ardern fell back on her childcare package which brought more children back into its ambit after being left out by National’s child assistance cutbacks a decade earlier.
She reminded the House that the National Party had reneged on its promise on childcare support.
“In 2008, National’s goal was to deliver cheaper childcare to parents: “We will keep all existing subsidies.” Two years later, they cut them so they could give a tax break to the wealthiest New Zealanders. You cannot trust National.”
Act Party leader David Seymour questioned the purpose of merging RNZ and TVNZ and asked how New Zealanders would know that the objectives have been achieved enough to “justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars of their taxpayer money on the merger?”
In response, Ardern pointed out that taxpayer money was already going to public service broadcasting and stressed the need to “future-proof these models in a dramatically changed environment.”
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