Speaking to the Herald, Laws identified several ministerial portfolios that took his interest, including broadcasting, local government, public service and tertiary education.<\/p>\n
In a clip from his show uploaded today, Laws mentioned his desire to become the Broadcasting Minister and pointed to Radio NZ as \u201cfirst on the chopping list\u201d.<\/p>\n
NZ First party leader Winston Peters has teased the prospect of himself becoming the Broadcasting Minister. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
Peters had long teased reporters that in a future Government, he would take the broadcasting portfolio and make significant changes to the media industry, particularly state broadcasters Radio NZ and TVNZ.<\/p>\n
Laws accused RNZ of being politically biased when asked why it should be scrapped.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public subsidises $60 million worth of government subsidy when there is such dynamic competition in the media world, television, radio, all media across the world and yet we\u2019ve got a state broadcaster that leans very liberal left.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Radio New Zealand was more representative of all New Zealand, the issue might not arise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another of his chief concerns was the balance of power between politicians and the public service. He argued that his time on the Otago council had proved how some public servants had \u201cwoke sensibilities\u201d with \u201cno sensitivity towards our region\u201d and he supported legislative change to increase ministers\u2019 power over the public service.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s absurd that this Government and many of its ministers have been publicly professing, as they have on my show, their frustration that policies they\u2019ve been voted in on have been put into the coalition agreements, the various parties have been frustrated by senior public servants in Wellington either slow-bagging the policy implementation or arguing ideologically against it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is not the way democracy should work.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka refusing to intervene in the Ministry of Social Development\u2019s performance targets for its staff related to emergency housing approvals.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s a minister of the Crown saying, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s an operational matter, I can\u2019t get involved\u2019. You\u2019re the effing minister, what do you mean you can\u2019t get involved?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is the kind of relationship that exists now in Wellington, where elected ministers feel that they cannot interfere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laws appeared optimistic he might be able to retain his show on The Platform should he form part of a Government, although he acknowledged it was not a decision solely for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a different matter, so we\u2019ll cross that bridge when we get to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I would certainly say there are good benefits to retaining that particular role \u2026 it\u2019s extraordinarily powerful to be able to, not just be able to communicate to that sizeable group of people, but also more importantly to get the feedback as to whether or not what you\u2019re doing is right or wrong and having that sort of instant response.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam Pearse is the deputy political editor and part of the NZ Herald\u2019s press gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei and the Herald in Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking to the Herald, Laws identified several ministerial portfolios that took his interest, including broadcasting, local government, public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16717,3795,19956,13242,5903,1888,2740,193865,12472,10934,5494,6722,117,111,43,139,12885,69,11535,4965,45,312,14170,50216,14446,61,14638,1883,1533,102,80],"class_list":["post-507561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-becoming","tag-broadcasting","tag-candidate","tag-confirms","tag-election","tag-first","tag-former","tag-intention","tag-laws","tag-mayor","tag-michael","tag-minister","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-november","tag-nz","tag-portfolio","tag-radio","tag-rnz","tag-says","tag-scrap","tag-sights","tag-stand","tag-to","tag-wants","tag-whanganui","tag-will","tag-with","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}