By Lloyd Burr
Prime Minister John Key says he is “not concerned in the slightest” that he may have breached electoral rules after hosting a RadioLIVE show last Friday, despite Labour lodging complaints with the Electoral Commission and the Broadcasting Standards Authority.
Mr Key hosted RadioLive’s new annual show, The Prime Minister’s Hour, last Friday which featured Richie McCaw, Sir Richard Branson and Sir Peter Jackson.
The Labour Party is calling the show a “blatant disregard for fairness and balance” from RadioLIVE’s owner, Mediaworks, and have suggested the timeslot was “gifted” to Mr Key for the Government’s “multi-million dollar loan” to the company in 2009.
The “loan” was a series of delayed payments, totalling $43 million dollars, which the Government allowed Mediaworks to make for its radio frequencies, rather than have to pay it in one lump sum.
When asked if he thought the show had anything to do with the deferred payment, Labour leader Phil Goff replied “that suspicion exists”.
“It might or might not be right but the Government did give $43 million worth of assistance to the company and when the company then returns and says ‘for the first time ever, we are going to give the Prime Minister, on the edge of an election campaign, an hour with full editorial control’ then that’s the suspicion it has left.
“It might be well-founded, it might not be but it is there. If that was the reason for them doing so, that would be totally against the democratic process that exists in this country.”
But Mr Key is being nonchalant about the issue, saying it was not a bad look for National and he has nothing to fear.
“That’s a matter for RadioLIVE, we do our very best to make sure we observe any electoral law that is in place and we believe we have done this,” Mr Key says.
“Look, they want to run an annual programme with the Prime Minister of the day and I happen to be the Prime Minister at the moment and if Phil Goff is the Prime Minister in a year’s time, I’m sure he will accept it.”
Mr Key says he didn’t seek advice on whether it was against electoral laws and he did not know if his office did.
When told that it would be his office and not the radio station that would be responsible for the breach of the rules, he replied, “that’s a matter for others, there’s a process and people should feel free to go through it”.
“We were very careful when we went on the show [not to be political] in election year and in fact, Labour criticised us about not wanting to talk about policy, well, we will see how it goes,” Mr Key says.
But Mr Goff says it does not matter whether Mr Key spoke about politics or not, it was promotion nonetheless.
“[RadioLIVE] said it was not political and frankly, 'yeah right' would be my answer to that. This is either naïve or worse than naïve.
“I didn’t listen to it but I am told that it wasn’t about politics but obviously it was a chance for self-promotion for the leader of the National Party.
“It’s not just about politics, it’s about promotion and this was an hour of self-promotion for the Prime Minister – fine if it was available to everybody – but it wasn’t available,” Mr Goff says.
“We contacted RadioLIVE and said ‘Look, you can’t have, in this part of the electoral cycle, one party leader, where he has full editorial control, without extending that to other political leaders’ and our request for that was declined.
“It wasn’t just for us, it was for other parties, political parties across the board.
“[RadioLIVE] didn’t give an explanation [as to why other parties weren’t allowed] and that’s the truth of it and you should seek an explanation from them.”
The radio station did not want to make a substantial comment as there is now an official complaint, but did release the following response:
“We took care to ensure the Prime Minister’s Hour was neither election programming nor election advertising.
“The Labour Party is entitled to ask regulators to check we have acted lawfully and while that process is underway we will not comment further,” the station said.
3 News