TV REVIEW: Wow – Best Q+A ever?

There are times when TVNZ and its true public broadcasting purpose shines so brightly you are reminded, ‘we should probably keep that as a public asset’.

Today’s Q+A was one of the best shows they’ve ever done.

Grant Duncan, Michelle Boag and First Union General Secretary Robert Reid were the panel, but the stories were absolutely brilliant.

Socio-economic critical analysis intelligently done in a manner that is not jargon ridden and locking out the audience???- I never thought I’d see it on TV.

The first story was the madness of our free market forestry industry that sees all our primary produce (logs) simply chopped down, shifted overseas, made into furniture and then imported back to us!

We only own 1% of our own forests? What madness is this? When we could be generating our own work force, we are simply rolling over for the cheapest cost capitalism model that drives wages lower and lower and lower while bastardising the craft.

The real kick in the teeth here is that when we sell the rights to our forests, overseas companies promise to build wood processing plants here for employment in NZ, and they don’t actually keep their part of the deal.

We are schmucks getting rolled by overseas forest companies. Hikurangi Forest Farms were supposed to provide a processing plant and they didn’t even bother doing that!

We need to re-nationalise our forests by those companies that have failed to live up to their contract. And the best place to get that money? The NZ Super fund!

Using the NZ Super fund as a means to fund our desperately needed economic and social upgrade is an idea the Left have championed, but has found no voice politically. The time for such timidness needs to end and Andrew Little and Grant Robertson should be sitting up and taking some notice.

Watching Michelle Boag panic over the obviousness of the free market failure in forestry is this best thing I’ve seen all year. Robert Reid wipes the floor with Michelle by consistently bringing the issue back to the failed neoliberal experiment that our economy has become.

Michelle keeps denigrating Robert by claiming Robert is living in the past, Robert counters, you need to learn from the past, especially when some refuse to learn.

She sat mumbling for a few minutes.

Michelle wasn’t expecting an actual debate on Q+A.

None of us were

But the cohesion of how they followed the issue was amazing.  Q+A highlighted what the problems are (privatising our forests), hey critiqued the structure in which has allowed this failure (it’s neoliberalism Michelle – neoliberalism), and it then moved to solutions with the head of the NZ Super fund.

Watching CEO Adrian Orr was a rare joy. A Public Servant in the truest sense, who has taken the obligation of NZs future and made ethical decisions that require rational compassion. The ability to fund and grow our own economy with such values holds hope and optimism like a huge burning Southern Cross in the sky.

At this stage, it’s difficult to see how this episode could get much better, but they really did leave the best till last with the wonderfully insightful Derek Handley.

Listening to his politics of compassion model, to use empathy and compassion in the values of decision making was the most refreshing politics I’ve seen on screen in 9 years. It was a positive millennial perspective that is rarely articulated in baby boomer gatekeeper media and if progressives are needing to look for a new core that can bring the divided houses of the Opposition together, then it is this Politics of Compassion.

Andre Little needs to watch this episode.

Helen Kelly’s final message to us was about kindness. A new type of political vision can be born here and Q+A managed to reflect this new momentum.

Excellent broadcasting.