MEDIAWATCH: Nothing highlights the lack of journalists like the HMNZS Manawanui
I honestly don’t think we appreciate just how damaged our Fourth Estate media industry is and for me nothing highlights that damage better than the total failure by the Fourth Estate Media to scrutinise how the bloody hell the HMNZS Manawanui sank…
What was HMNZS Manawanui doing before it sank? Calls for greater transparency
There are calls for greater transparency about what the HMNZS Manawanui was doing before it sank in Samoa last October – including whether the New Zealand warship was performing specific security for King Charles and Queen Camilla.
…the report is so damning, but the Navy dropped it late on Friday in a dense report that allowed for it to sink quicker than the real HMNZS Manawanui.
Most of the news rooms are run by Millennial’s for social media clickbait and there aren’t that many actual journalists left.
If there were, the enormous questions raised by the report would be getting debated now.
When the sinking occurred, we all wanted answers.
How the flying Christ did a $100million Naval vessel hit a reef, abandon ship, catch fire and then bloody sink?
The first press conference had none of those answers.
Judith went on and on about how brave the crew were and how close it was that we nearly lost lives, courage courage courage, blah blah blah.
We however all wanted to know, “How the flying Christ did a $100million Naval vessel hit a reef, abandon ship, catch fire and then bloody sink”?
We didn’t get that explanation, instead we had Judith furious at sexist commentary on Twitter about the Captain being a diversity hire.
Which is terrible right, but again, ‘how the flying Christ did a $100million Naval vessel hit a reef, abandon ship, catch fire and then bloody sink’?
1/6th of the NZ Naval fleet is on the bottom of the ocean floor, all we get from Judith is lectures on identity?
Well, the report is out now and the jaw dropping incompetence has been laid out in all its brutal detail and Judith ain’t bitching about diversity hires or courageous crews now is she? She’s running for the Hills putting as much distance between herself and the HMNZS Manawanui, which isn’t difficult because it’s under the water.
Our blogger Tim Selwyn is working on a detailed examination of the report, as one of the first to criticise the offical story of the HMNZS Manawanui, he is best placed on TDB to give the assessment.
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You make a very good point Martyn!
We know exactly what the ship was doing and why because it’s all in the report, but our oh so woke media won’t tackle the elephant in the room – an untrained bridge crew lead by a DEI hire.
It was only a year or so ago you couldn’t shut Judith up. But what I will say to you is that we did an exceptional 1billion plus on our no Ferries project and now it’s the no ships navy. Think of the cost savings, think of our forward thinking in getting rid of an object with the “She” pronoun.
Yes Tim did a really brilliant job in his first analysis and waiting with anticipation for his take on the report.
DEI has nothing to do with this, hate the way people conflate DEI without seeming to understand what that means ie, you have to have the qualifications and experience to have those positions, DEI just means the playing field is leveled for entry into training. If you don’t make the grade you are out, you do not qualify. That notwithstanding incompetence seems to be a big issue here. But NOT because of that. Yes, secret missions, what the hell was going on, plus the utter lack of immediate and direct regard to the villagers that the Chinese Embassy was quick to fill.
Looking forward to Tim’s analysis. I thought Jack Tame did a reasonable job of getting answers from Judith Collins, at least in relation to the DEI angle. Collins was understandably guarded at laying blame, for a couple of reasons, but in the restrictive format allowed by Q&A it became clear the ship was understaffed and more critically, the female captain not fully qualified for the role – yes, qualified in the sense she had the ticket but evidentially due to staffing pressures was thrown in the deep end at the last moment without some finalities being signed off. Perhaps a bit like having a captain’s ticket without the practice hours. What I recall was the fact the ship was short of a good many fully qualified personal – not an armed warship mind – and not only in regard to the female captain, in part because it needed to be in Samoa pronto. It appears the RNZN is critically short of qualified people. That was pretty much the explanation that Collins gave although there’s a very good chance she didn’t tell all.
As for why the HMNZS Manawanui was in Samoa Collins was far more guarded about that but from memory the interview did uncover it was there because of CHOGM – no surprises really – and in particular something to do with King Charles.