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Edwards on Kirk Labour Talkback & Edwards

Salient: You say that your split with the Labour Party was due to their stance on civil liberties and also on their attitude towards homosexual law reform. We could start by taking those individually. What kind of action did you want on homosexual law reform?

Edwards: I would have liked to see them introduce a private members bill, making homosexual acts between consenting adults in private legal. That's the sensible and humanitarian thing to do. I would have expected that from a Labour Government, certainly from someone like Martyn Finlay. The possibility is virtually eliminated now, and there is the astonishing situation of someone on the far right like Muldoon introducing a private members bill. Labour, which ought to be dedicated to that sort of progressive social reform, won't do it. What we're talking about isn't just a law, what we're talking about is emotional suffering and stress for thousands of New Zealanders.

The Government now won't even put it to the consciences of the people in the House! I think that is very bad. Let's at least have a democratic vote on it and see where we stand.

This is another example of consensus politics at its worst, where what Norman Kirk is in fact saying is "let's wait until we are absolutely sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that there isn't a sufficient body of opinion in New Zealand against this move before we actually do anything." We're back to the situation where government makes no attempt at all to lead the popular will and I think that's a great pity. When you abandon humanity and sense like that, well I really want nothing more to do with the party after that.

The only statement by Kirk on this is that the vote itself would be "divisive". You're saying that you expect "greater moral leadership" from Kirk in this respect. Doesn't calling for greater moral involvement by Government conflict with your misgivings on the civil liberties issues? You said on your programme a week or so ago that there is a danger of people writing their own private hangups into legislation.

The leadership of the party generally is doing just that, its writing its hangups on homosexuality, its hangups about drugs, into the legislation. That's what's happening all the time. And that bothers me badly.

So it's not really a lack of moral leadership that bothers you, it's that the moral leadership Kirk is giving differs from your own.

Yes, at right, you might be right. It's a form of negative moral leadership, if you like, based on a sort of ethical conservatism, or puritanism, which is very much behind the leadership's thinking, and to some extent also the party as a whole. We're all being held back in New Zealand society. If you go back to the beginning, my resignation from the party merely reflects my final disillusionment. It began very early indeed, with with the Pagliara deportation. That was an act of such barbarism that I could barely understand, and I said so at the time to people like Martyn Finlay. I think Finlay probably agreed with me. This is an indication that Finlay (who I regard as a liberal and humane man) is ineffectual as a Minister of Justice in swaying Cabinet and Caucus. Things are happening that I know he disapproves of. There is no hope for the party, if the Finlays, and the so-called young radical left are having no influence.

We will go along the same well worn conservative path where the worst you get is repressive legislation in the field of civil liberties, and the best you get is complete inertia. They are saying all right, we'll do nothing about it, we'll wait and see.

But isn't there a danger here. You and I can make our political judgements on the basis of our individual consciences; these people as public officials can't act simply on this basis. Norman Kirk has to wait and assess public opinion on contentious issues because he is elected to administrate this opinion.

There is some substance in what you say but I think in this instance homosexual law reform would be a good place to start. In addition to adopting this negative ethical stance they, have seriously mis-judged the public mood on this.

Now if you go by talk-back programmes, at all, the evidence is this; if you suggest on talk-back that we should change the abortion law you are over-whelmed by people against you. If you suggest that we should change the laws on homosexuality the great majority of the people who ring in say "yes—definitely. We don't like homosexuals very much, the thought of the things, they do in private horrifies us, but they are victimless and it is their life. They may be sins in some peoples minds but no one is hurt." I would gauge from the talk-back that Government has mis-judged the public which was ready for law reform some time ago.

But how fair a gauge is the talk-back show?

It's a reasonably sort of gauge. Talk-back will attract on a contentious issue, the antis more than the pros. If you put something forward that people don't like they will be motivated enough to ring in.

The people who feel positive about something tend not to be motivated as strongly. So you do get a fair reflection, if anything it favours the people against. On homosexual law reform the antis just don't appear. You might get one in 20.

And you don't think your own personality might have any thing to do with the response you get? I think a large amount of motivation would be needed to ring up and attempt to argue with a parson such as yourself.

I think that some people who ring fear they will be demolished in the argument. It might account for a percentage of people not ringing, but not a substantial one. It wouldn't affect one's overall judgement of the situation.

The country's ready for homosexual law reform and that makes it worse because you have something which is bordering on dictatorship. What you've got is a man or men, legislating by Omission in this case, their personal hang-ups, when in fact the country is quite ready for change. You have to bring it back to the human situation. The misery this law creates, its pointlessness—it isn't even policed but still exists as a threat. It seems to me that the government is careless of that suffering when it ought to care about it.

You mentioned dictatorship. At the 1973 Labour Party Conference apparently pro-abortionist Sue Kedgely wasn't allowed to speak. The debate on abortion was closed by Kirk, who spoke for about 15 minutes to other speaker's three minutes. Is that the sort of dictatorship you mean?

That's a form of dictatorship and I am quite sure that's what happened when it began to look as though the conference might be swayed in favour of law change Kirk intervened. There was no right of reply, but more importantly he was the leader of the party and it was a challenge to the people to go against what he as leader wanted. I am sure that the same thing happens in Caucus and Cabinet, week-in, week-out; Kirk, having listened to the debate, expresses his viewpoint.

People in the Labour Party stand in the most astonishing awe of Kirk. I have talked to young radical MP's, before the election, were highly critical of Kirk. I have talked to them since and they stand in absolute awe of the man. They admit he has some faults but think he is a great man, a great leader. They have been genuinely converted, and in that sort of atmosphere you don't have a true democracy operating in cabinet or caucus. Kirk merely has to stand up and put his viewpoint and that is the end of it.

Your criticisms of Labour on homosexual law reform, etc, are fair enough but the issues you have mentioned are not the most important. How about Labour on industrial relations, economic matters, and foreign policy?

Well, I suppose each individual has his own interest and field of understanding. I would concede to be badly informed in such things as foreign policy and not particularly well informed in such things as economics. I am well informed in the wider social issues like health, housing, education. When I resigned I said that Labour's 18 months in office had been a period of betrayal and broken promises and one of the areas of broken promises is in the area of health. We still have the same waiting lists that we had before, and the same incredible and astonishing doctor shortages that we had before. No real attempt is being made to do the things the government said it would when in opposition. The third medical school is simply not on the horizon, and what we need now is a fourth.

In those areas I feel equally disillusioned although I look at them probably more rationally than I do at things like civil liberties, abortion, sexual reform, but equal suffering is being caused there.

Now you know how much suffering is being caused in the field of housing. The recent business with Colleen Andrews was just the tip of the iceberg of the amount of suffering that is being caused in New Zealand through bad, non-imaginative, non-radical housing policies. These areas in their own way are emotive areas. Bad economic policy causes suffering for thousands of people; pensioners, beneficiaries, you name it. But I am not well informed in these other areas.

What do you think is the cause of Labour's inaction? So far you have suggested only unawarensss of public sentiment and personal hangups of the politicians involved. Are there any other reasons?

We are talking about the area of civil liberties. Take the Pagliara incident. Theoretically, Pagliara was deported because he was an alien who had been found guilty of a drug offence for which he could be sent to prison for more than a year. But the real reason he was deported was that he was bi-sexual, a drag queen, or whatever he was. His drug offence was really quite minor. He was on the social fringe in terms of normalcy, he didn't belong within society. There agin the hang-ups of the Labour Party and its leadership in particular were being written into legal action. I think if Pagliara hadn't been homosexual he would've had a much better chance of staying in the country. And that's a very bad and dangerous situation to have.

What do you think now of Kirk's statement on the recent TPA/State Advances issue, his aspersions on TPA, his statements about Dennis O'Reilly?

That's appalling but not surprising. One thing which has worried me about the present administration and leadership, in its readiness to indulge in ad hominem argument; often without any justification. The use of innuendo and smear, by the Prime Minister, outside of the House, is becoming a day to day part of politics. And that's a bad thing, because it's difficult for the individual to respond.

The situation with regard to the media is analogous. Kirk claims that he has the same right as any other citizen to ring up a media employee and criticise something that he has written or correct him. On the surface that seems reasonable but it isn't at all. By being Prime Minister he forfeits that right, because his stature is such that even to phone any journalist is in itself an act of intimidation because of the enormous difference in the stature of the two people. If Goliath says to David "I don't like what you're doing, son", that is an act of intimidation. And that goes on all the time. Many more examples apart from what you've been citing exist. I have heard of them privately, of the Prime Minister telephoning people in the media. I've been on the end of a blast from the Prime Minister on a different issue and I know that's a scary experience. Now if you're a Joe Bloggs working for the 'Dominion' and the Prime Minister rings you and says "Look, son, we didn't like what you did last week", you're going to be bloody careful to see you don't do it again next week. It wouldn't matter if we all knew about it. It does matter when nobody knows about it except Kirk and Joe Bloggs, because then you have an insidious undermining of freedom of the press which is happening day after day in New Zealand under the present government.

It's interesting really reading that 'Sunday Times' article to try and look through Norman Kirk's eyes and understand his motivation. It seems to be so much more than just normal Labour Party paranoia about the media. To what do you attribute his sensitivity about the media?

It's true that the Labour Party has a persecution complex about the media. You have to be a little sympathetic. If you were in opposition for 20 years, and throughout that period, the press gave you an unfair deal and to a degree manipulated its news presentation in favour of the government, you'd be a pretty strong person if at the end of that 20 years you didn't feel some sense of persecution. But somehow or other it went beyond that.

There were areas in the media where Labour got a fair deal, for instance from the NZBC. Not because the NZBC was courageous, but because it was so gutless and terrified and....well the NZBC you could describe as a political eunuch. It was so afraid of offending that it at all costs retained balance.

At the end of the 20 years, a reasonable ground for complaint against the press, especially editorially, had changed into paranoia about the media and that expresses itself, day in, day out, even when the media are being reasonable.

It has been said for instance.....

It's counterproductive of course, because the more you attack the media the more she'll strike back. This confrontation I had the other day is described by the papers as one of the most embarrassing political events of the year. But if I'm attacked, if the NZBC is attacked, if the newspapers are attacked, they'll strike back, particularly if the attack is unjustified or couched in innuendo and not straight from the shoulder. You read through that transcript—it's quite astonishing. The inability or unwillingness of Kirk to state who he is talking about—people resent that more than anything else. Not only are people smeared by the leadership, but they can't defend themselves because often they are not named. 'Some people', 'you know very well who am talking about'—these sorts of statements. One deserves better than that from a Prime Minister.

Just by the way, we had the same thing up at varsity the other day with Rob Muldoon talking about racial stirrers.

This happens, it isn't the prerogative of Kirk or the Labour Party. Muldoon is an expert in that field and has been for a long time. Actually he is much better at it, and he does it with an element of humour, which makes it more bearable.

Where do you think this is all leading?

It's leading in an undesirable and dangerous direction. If the Prime Minister and the Cabinet could get Radio Windy and all the rest of us off the air, could stop the 'Dominion' and the other editors from saying what they have to say, could inhibit all the investigative journalism in the country and could excise all the embarrassing stories that appear on television, and could stop Nationwide from putting Colleen Andrews on and so on, I think they would. I think their grubby thumb would be in there if they thought they could get away with it.

The statements made by Kirk, Munro, Douglas, and others about talk-back programmes and the media in general were kiteflying. They were saying we don't much like these things, so we will see how much the public will tolerate by way of interference. They got an answer they didn't expect. When the suggestions and rumours were put out about what was going to happen to talk back shows, there was a public outcry. People saying we'll march on Parliament if they take you off and that sort of thing. The kite-flying gave a very clear indication that the public would not buy this interference.

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But they don't appear to have learnt their lesson.

No, and I don't suppose that they ever will. I think they'll keep flying the kites. That is their technique of government. Look at a fairly small example, the milk subsidy business. They rumoured that they were going to remove the milk subsidy. Everyone got up in arms, so it didn't materialise.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and as long as the public keeps their eyes and ears open it will be all right. Talk-back hosts sometimes get accused of 'raving on' about interference in the media. You've got to do that, you've got to keep people aware of the potential danger of it all.

Policy oversees by governments as regards talk-back shows, teams to be one of neglect.

Well, Kirk was asked by someone the other day what he was going to do about talk-back programmes; and he said "let them die a natural death". But there isn't really any indication that talk-back will die a natural death. They may change in style and formal and duration and ell the rest of it. I don't think they'll die though.

People like Marcuse say that free speech isn't an issue, but that it's the freedom to act that's important. People are free to talk about issues on your programme only as long as this doesn't lead to effective political action.

Well the evidence of course is that it is transformed into action. I can see the point you're making. But I don't see those things as being exclusively of one another. On the question of MPs salaries for example, the appearance of Fred McComish of the Pensioners and Beneficiaries Association onto the Programme was followed on the same afternoon by a pensioners' march on Parliament. We've done programmes about parents who beat their kids, for example, which have been followed by action. Not political action, of course, but nonetheless action, where organisations have been set up to help parents under stress. So I think people do things. We suggested on one occasion that people send telegrams. Now I know that they did do that. Isn't there a corollary danger that people denied the ability to speak may also not act and may also not be aware that there are other people who feel the same as them? On your own you may not act, but if you feel that lots of others feel the same way, then you have a sort of mass resentment growing and that certainly happens on the programme from time to time. On the issues of salaries it grew very strongly indeed. People acted because they heard the programme and partly because they were given directions on which they could act. The person at home may feel he'd like to do something, but doesn't know what. The programme may provide him with that information, not necessarily from the host of the programme but from other callers. These programmes can be a spur to political action but they're not a substitute for political action.

You mentioned the example of MP's salaries, but nothing actually got done. A lot of noise and that's all.

Yes, well, that's an example of politicians riding out the storm. In that sense I don't suppose there is a great deal that people can do. What are you going to do? That sort of political action I think is going to come from trade unions. It's not going to come from beneficiaries who were the people most upset. They did all they could do they marched, they made their opinions known, they made press statements, they organised themselves better. But the only real leverage is in the hands of the trade unions, who didn't seem unduly worried about it all.

By expressing your own opinion you catalyse other people to express theirs. Probably most talk-back hosts in New Zealand, express their own opinions forcibly, and this is one of the areas which government resents. It resents a man who can express in the media political opinions which very often are against the establishment. They resent that the public can express themselves too. If you ask 'how could the individual citizen express himself politically, previous to talk-back' the answer is once every three years by putting a piece of paper in a box, and by writing letters to the newspapers. If he was a student he could demonstrate, but most people don't want to do that. Those were the options

Now there is a new option which means that in Wellington for example you can express your opinion annonymously and strongly to 30,000 other people; in Auckland to 50,000 other people. That is, I think, a real advance in democracy, and the politicians resent it because the people are not saying the sort of things that they want to hear. As the host of the programme you are not politically impotent as you are on television. You can express your opinion, you can editorialise. You can't do those things in any other medium

The only other thing of course is that politics plays only a very small role in the talk-back programme. It has many other functions. Certainly it makes people feel that they can have some form of participation in what is happening in their community. In quite a small way, whether it's the price of milk or the amounts of money you get on returnable lemonade bottles, they can express themselves, they can get things done. It provides intellectual stimulation for people who previously had nothing but 'Dr Paul' and 'Portia Faces Life'. Of all the letters that I get the great majority say, "previous to talk-back, I had nothing to make me think. Now I have a programme which makes me think, and I get intellectual stimulation from that". That's very important.

It provides company for people. The Americans have done psychological studies of this, and they find things like a woman in the home enjoys the presence of a male voice communicating with her in the morning. It relieves peoples' loneliness. One very important thing that it does it makes people realise that they are not alone in their situation and in that way it provides comfort. A good example, concerns people who beat their kids. A woman rang up on a programme one morning and said that she beat hell out of her kids and it was terrible, and she must be an awful, dreadful woman. She told the story weeping. For the next three hours other people rang up and said, "look you're not an awful dreadful woman, I beat my kids as well, and I'm worried about it and I've never been able to do anything about it." And as a result of that two things happened. What you might call a radio community of people was formed who knew that they were not different, bad and to be rejected.

Secondly, action was taken in the form of the setting up of an organisation to help those people.

It also provides a sort of para psychiatric function for people who ring up and who have problems and fear and anxieties and worries. They express those on the programme and probably feel better. So the talk-back host has got to be a lot of things: political commentator, psychiatrist, devil's advocate, you name it.

Aren't you creating a big illusion, for the women who like hearing the sound of a male voice and generally for people who don't feel quite so lonely. Isn't it an incredibly illusory solution to their needs or problems?

It doesn't matter whether it's illusory or not. I have no objection to illusion if it makes people happier, and yeah, you're probably right. It is an illusion, but from that illusion people draw strength and comfort and emotional sustenance.

But isn't 'democracy' that you're making people believe they have, also an illusion?

No, I don't think it is an illusion of democracy. If it were then this programme wouldn't be recorded every morning in the Prime Minister's office. If the politicians weren't listening, then it would be an illusion of democracy. But I think they are listening and taking note as well. You may not see the results of that in any dramatic form. No politicians is ever going to admit that he did something because of whatever he heard in talk-back programmes. But they're listening all right.

Don't you think they should be listening to more primary sources, to their own elecorates?

Well, yes, I suppose so. And I'd like to see politicians spending far less time in the House and much more time in their electorates. I'd like to see a national network talk-back programme, which I think would be great. You have to accept that talk-back is quite a powerful medium and its power is alarming politicians. They find it threatening, they find it worrisome, they find it annoying, they find it embarrassing. What annoys them most is the power of 20—30,000 people being able to express themselves. They couldn't do that before.

If I can go back to the question of the impartiality of the.....

Can I just come back to the question of the Pagliara thing which I couldn't remember before.

The government seems to say to New Zealand society, "we offer you a materially better life, in return for certain things that you will give up." This was all crystallised in Kirk's use of the term "family life". He said, "what we want to establish is a better quality family life"—which meant a roof over your head, (which you could afford!, enough to eat, adequate medical services; you children could go to school and get educated, and would not be discriminated against if they were Maoris.

Now assuming for the moment that government had provided all of those things (which of course it hasn't) the price to be paid was the sacrifice of people who did not fit in to this concept of family life. Family life means normalcy, and not stepping outside the perimeters of society that are approved of by right thinking people. "Family life" excludes homosexuals, drug addicts, alcholics, transvestites, and so on. What Kirk has said is that you can have everything that is normal, providing that you are intolerant of things that are not normal, which means what doesn't come within the norm as I define it. People like drug offenders today, homosexuals and all the rest of them are all going to victims of this materialistic, conservative puritasnism. What worries me is that New Zealand may be prepared to accept that in order to get all the other goodies. We have a sort of lawn-mower society. We are offended by things sticking up out of the ground and we have to mow them down. That includes people.

How about alcoholics and drug users? Do you let them flourish and grow?

Yes, providing as I said before that what they are doing is not hurting other people.

It is hurting themselves very badly though.

Well, mat is their right. I am entitled to hurt myself if I want to and no one is entitled to stop me. I am entitled to kill myself by smoking, take my own life, drive myself to insanity by taking LSD, all of those things.

Surely when you blow your mind out with LSD or alcohol or what ever you are not only hurting yourself but you are also hurting your family, for instance; you are lowering the morale of your friends. It can never be reduced to what the individual does to himself? When you harm or kill yourself you inevitably hurt someone else.

Well there may be side effects that are unpleasant for other people, but I maintain that the individual has a right to daal with his own mind and his own body in what ever way that he wishes and that the state has no right to interfere.

There is a distinction between a situation where a man considers whether or not he is going to hurt his family emotionally, and a situation which the state interferes. What I am saying is that the state has no right to interfere in a man's right to do that. It has no right to interfere in what is in fact a victimless sin, or victimless crime.

If someone takes sleeping pills or barbiturates because he can't sleep all night and that upsets the rest of his family should the state then intervene and say 'You may not take these any more because that's upsetting the rest of your family?' Obviously not. When a man becomes of age or mature he must have total control over his own body and mind. That to me is indispensable in society. A man must be allowed to kill himself if he wants. Voluntary euthanasia should also be available, providing it is controlled to the extent that the individuals is protected from every possibility of making a mistake, and allowed every opportunity for changing his mind.

This is impossible.

Well, its not....There will always be cases that will get through. But if you give a man a period to decide, if you present to him all the possible options of help, that's important. And then you give him....you say, you have to wait for a month or three months or whatever it may be, and decide then whether you still want to. All right, people will get through. I am not really sure that it matters anyway. If a man wants to kill himself at the time when he does kill himself, there is no reason for regret. You can't speculate on what he might have felt a month later. It doesn't matter, the point is that he was satisfied at that point.

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Don't you think we ought to be working towards the sort of society in which people don't want to take drugs, and drink alcohol and beat their children and pop themselves off.

I wouldn't have included beating children in this, because there you are hurting someone else. Yes, we should, of course we should be trying to get rid of all of these things.

Well surely that's what Norman Kirk in his bumbling and ineffectual way is attempting to do? Just that he's going about it the wrong way?

I suppose so. Let's take abortion as an example, right. And you say Norman Kirk would like to see fewer abortions eliminated. So would I, But how can you eliminate the need for abortion when you have a law which makes it almost impossible for people to provide any evidence, researched evidence in the whole field? Because as soon as they present themselves to give it they are liable for prosecution. Once you repress something your chances of uprooting it diminish immediately. How can you uproot something when it's being stifled.

Most of our social solutions are symptomatic, aren't they. We put criminals in jail, we punish drug offenders, and so on. Very few of them relate to the causes at all. This government and the previous government believes in what you might call social aspirin. What we need is social surgery. And social surgery involves in the case of abortion, changing the law, to make it possible to deal with the causes. And the same with drugs. You need to be able to look at drug offenders, let them come forward, make them free. You need to have a sort of amnesty in all of these fields before you can start to do the sort of things that are necessary to change this society.

We've talked about the extreme people in society, like the drug users and so on. What about the ordinary person, the working men and women. Do you think that they are happy in this society?

Yes, they are probably reasonably happy. If your sights are material, there is no reason why you shouldn't be happy, unless you are at a disadvantage in the terms of opportunity at the start, if you are a Maori or a Polynesian, or whatever it may be. But aside from that there is no reason why people whose sights are material, or environmental, in the sense that they want a nice house to live in, want to be by the beach and so on, can't do all of those things.

That they are happy is a reason for their intolerance of those who aren't, because they can't understand it. People generally believe the shibboleths about this being a good country to bring up children, the perfect society and God's own and what have you. Because they believe it and experience it themselves, they are intolerant of others who don't. They regard those as 'stirrers' and 'rockers' and what have you.

Do you think they really experience it when for a start most of them are workers rather than bosses? The only democratic participation they have in society is once every three years, and we know how big a participation that is. Most of them spend their lives working towards their retirement, and when they retire they die off out of sheer boredom, and most of them spend their whole lives paying off a mortgage on their house and saving up for colour TV.

Yeah, I think they are. Happiness relates to your imagination to a degree. The more imaginative you are, the more you can conceive of better things, and the more likely you are to be unhappy. Thomas Mann spoke of the curse of insight and the phrase is a good one. If your parameter in life have never included anything more than the expectation to have two cars, a house and all the things you mentioned, you will be happy within that. The great majority of people are not aware of the possibilities. Take the man who works on the shop floor. He's probably not aware of the possibilities of worker participation, profit sharing, having a role in decision-making within the factory, job changing, retraining. He may be happy in a dull sense, in a negative sense, that he feels free from unhappiness, I might concede, that, but he's not unhappy either. And I think most New Zealanders come into that category.

You think that's a good way for them to be?

No I don't. But you've got to ask the question, is it desirable to make people unhappy in the interests of enlightening them? It's a relevant question in the field of Women's Liberation for example. There isn't any doubt at all I think that there are around the country people who previously were satisfied in their passive ways who are now dissatisfied and unhappy. It's interesting if you talk about Women's Lib on the programme, it's amazing how many women very aggressively resent it because what effectively it has said to them is "why are you happy when you should be unhappy?"

One thing I'd like to get back to is a comment you made earlier, you said people want a host who expresses his opinions fairly forcefully. Do you think this is the basis of the politicians' distrust of the talk-back medium?

I don't think so. Politicians are bothered by the audience, not the host. J.B. Munro and I appeared in a confrontation on Nationwide. When I asked him who he was referring to as cranks, he said he was referring to the callers, it was them who he regarded as dangerous. Geiringer or Edwards can rave till the cows come home, and it won't bother the politicians. They can dismiss it, they can say Edwards raves about Labour because he didn't get into Parliament, he's got sour grapes, so we can ignore him. Ok. Erich Geiringer we can dismiss because everyone knows that Erich Geiringer is a disgruntled nutcase and he's been raving on like this for years. No-one takes any notice of him any more.

Is there not a possibility that they listen and think 'here's Brian Edwards raving, people are going to believe his raving because he's Brian Edwards, and the few people who get through on the line are going to agree with him because those are the sort of people that ring up.'

Well, we're just going to have to agree to differ. I think their anxieties relate to the callers and not to me. Politicians are free to organise lobbies of people to ring talk-back shows if they wish, and this in fact does happen.

In New Zealand?

Certainly, politicians organise people to ask them the right questions if they're the hosts of talkback shows, or they ask them to put forward points which will be sympathetic to their viewpoint. Everyone's free to do that. You can't stage-manage a Talkback show. I have no idea at all what call is coming up, no one tells me. I give no instruction as to what sort of calls.

What evidence have you got of lobbying like that? How did you hear about that?

Ah....I can't tell you that,...but I know it goes on. What I suggest you do is listen, for example, to Rob Muldoon's programme and.....here I am indulging in innuendo, but I do it unashamedly, because I don't really have enough evidence....you will have the impression that many of the calls provide him with an enormously convenient platform to say the particular things he wants to say.

But this impression can equally be gained from your progra-program me!

Maybe I do as well.

This is the point. How genuine is this "participatory democracy" that is supposed to operate on talk-back shows?

Well I can only speak for myself, and in the case of Rob Muldoon I'm really only talking about the occasional call, and I suppose if you're a Muldoon supporter you'll ring up and try to do your best for him. If you're a supporter of me you'll try to do the same.

It has been said by a number of people who have done programmes with you that you are capable of phrasing and directing a series of questions so that you extract from the subject just that answer that you want, rather than the answer that the person in the normal course of events would give. How do you feel about that?

I'd like to know the names of the people,

I'm sorry, we can't disclose them.....

That's an innuendo (laughs)

It's a criticism that a lot of people who have been interviewed by you have made, and a lot of listeners also say this.

I don't know what to answer to that, I'd regard myself as a highly skilled interviewer but I'd see my aim personally to reveal rather than to entrap the individual, if the individual is being devious or dishonest or is avoiding the point I'd use all my skills to get him to say what I thought he really meant. Now if what you mean is that I use my skills to make people say things that they don't really believe then I would deny that. But I do use my skills to make people say what they don't want to say, but do really believe; in my opinion.

There are obviously on the phone people who are less adept, debators than t and they may come out feeling that they didn't say what they really wanted to say. That's quite possible but that's their fault, not mine.

No, it isn't, in the sense that you could take a lower profile than you do.

I could take a lower profile and sometimes think I should take a lower profile on some issues.

What we are really getting at concerns the whole nature of the medium. There are people out there who are going to accept your opinions because you are Brian Edwards; because of the confidant way you express yourself.

Yes, I really don't know. I am not being silly, or falsely humble; I really don't know if that is the case. It may be, but I don't know. Yeah sorry, but if there are then what?

Wall then you take all the means possible to lower your profile. You stated in a Listener article that an error you made on one programme was that you said you didn't like Norman Kirk. Would you still regard that as an example of the type of statement you shouldn't make on Radio Windy?

Yes, I am not sure that the function of the programme should be to subject my personal beliefs to the scrutiny of the listener. If that becomes the function of the programme then I am assuming too important a role in it. To that extent my job is to test things, not to have people testing me. To that extent I shouldn't be saying that I don't like Norman Kirk, I should be asking what people think about him and why. But people do want to hear what your opinion is; not necessarily that they believe it, they want to hear you say it; and in some areas they do seek advice—I don't deny that. But generally not in political areas.

I don't think that current affairs television changes many opinions. It polarises opinions, it confirms people in their prejudices but it doesn't change their opinions. For example I had a confrontation with Commissioner Sharpe over the gangs in Auckland. After the programme I received hundreds of letters and they could be divided into two piles. In one pile people said I was crucified by Sharpe, which was a good thing, and wasn't it tremendous how he put me down when he said 'blah, blah....". Nowhere in the interview, in most cases, had the commissioner said any of the things that people who were on his side thought he had said. They had projected on to the programme, onto him, the things they wanted him to say, because they were on his side. Other people who wrote to me said "it was fantastic the way I nailed him to the wall, when I said such and such." And they too were things I hadn't said at all. People hear what they want to hear; they see what they want to see. Generally speaking what comes out of broadcast dialectics is a confirmation of people's previous opinions. That applies to talkback as well, and there may be, in the middle, a very small group of people who are influenced one way or the other but they are a very small group.

But before you ware saying that the number of people that had found talk-back intellectually stimulating was quite significant.

Oh yeah, but finding it intellectually stimulating is not the same as having your point of view changed. Recently I suggested that all people should be paid the same and that got a tremendous response simply because it was something that had never occured to most people because it seemed to be so much of the natural order of things that surgeons should be paid 10 times what labourers are paid. When one suggests that everyone should be paid the same there is a general broadening of horizons just in terms of intellectual thought, whether or not they agreed. I once suggested that contract marriages might be a good thing. The great majority of listeners hadn't thought of that before. That's what t mean by intellectual stimulation.

What about your future? You mentioned in an article that you wanted to get back to television if possible.

That's right, but not as a performer. I don't particularly enjoy being in the public eye. You develop a reputation for egotism and publicity seeking which really has nothing to do with your real persona. I'm actually a very shy person although I'm probably like all performers, schizophrenic. There are two seperate personalities, one in the studio and one outside. In the studio I'm self confident, aggressive, outgoing, more than I would be in an eyeball to eyeball contact with you over a beer. I would be hesitant, inarticulate and find difficulty in speaking. Schizophrenia applies to many people in this business. What I regard as the true part of me doesn't much go for the publicity.

page 9

What are the satisfactions for you in this job? Do you consider yourself a socially motivated parson?

Well, yes, in some ways. The things that affect me strongly and emotionally relate to under-privileged people and institutionalised people. That's why when you ask me about economics and superannuation I'll probably not be able to answer you because I don't have the stimulus to look into it enough. It's too dry, cold, inhuman for me. But I am deeply moved by the plight of people, particularly in prisons, mental hospitals, the poor and so on. That is not just bullshit, I feel strongly about these people, I get angry. My main motivation is anger I suppose, at social injustice, its negative in some ways. I'm not very good at taking small steps and joining committees to sort things out. I'm an extravagant person who makes grand gestures and that reflects itself in the job. The job to a degree gives you the opportunity to articulate your anger, which is what I do all the time, as anyone who listens to the programme will know. Edwards is always raving about something.

There's a combination. I think listeners to all talk-back programmes get a certain amount of personal therapy out of it, and I do too. Of course, it's very much a two-way thing, and also I like to be liked. I like people to ring me up and say "we enjoy your programme", "You're doing a great job". But funnily enough the disadvantages now of fame and fortune and publicity far outweigh the advantages. So in answer to your question "where to now?" I would like to stay in television because I don't understand anything other than broadcasting.

I'm a typical arts graduate in many ways. I sit here with my BA and Ph.D and I'm good for nothing. What can I do, I don't want to teach because I hate teaching, I loathe universities, which I think are ivory towers which in the main (certainly in my field which is arts, humanities) have no bearing or relevance to the true world. So what does someone like me do? Our society is flooded with people like me whose options are: teaching, which generally they don't want to do, public relations, which generally offends their sensibilities and their moral sense, advertising, where the same applies, or broadcasting. Now it happens that I love broadcasting, but it's also the only thing I can do. So I'd like to move into television; but off the screen. Which means into an ideas field, or a production field, even an administrative field.

Do you inland to become publicly involved in a specifically political role?

On my own part no. I'll probably vote Labour next election because the alternative is so much worse. That's not a good reason for voting, but I will.

Do you have any time for the Values Party?

No. I think the Values Party is an elitist, right-wing party in disguise. It consists of people who can afford to sacrifice short term realities to short term dreams. Only people who don't need to worry can do that. The Values Party has no relevance to the pensioner, to the person without a house or to people in agony because of their varicose veins. Values has nothing to offer to those people.

There's a description of Austin Mitchell at the start of your book as being someone who's "a very good talker and a very poor listener," and you said, looking back, that this exemplified a healthy disregard for boring people. Does this sound more like a self-portrait to you now?

Yes. I wouldn't agree now with what I said then. It was written in 1970 and I've become much more tolerant in those years. I'm still a bad listener because I'm intolerant of people who are concise in expressing what they have to say, who waste time—which I may do myself, I don't know—but by saying too much when they've already made the point. I'm intolerant of people who don't understand the economy of language. It's interesting you should say that because my friends tell me that they find me very abrupt on the telephone. I think the reason is I feel that I've got the message pretty quickly. It's not that they're boring, it's just that they've already said it.

It's one aspect of an attitude that you give of being someone who doesn't particularly like people—you might like people as a mass maybe but individuals....

Well, I'm a mass communicator of course, and I've already conceded I don't do well in person to person, eyeball to eyeball relationships. I mean even in private I don't, I communicate best with people in the mass.

Do you think there's a danger of someone in charge of a media tool like a talk-back programme having lack of tolerance for people?

No, I haven't a lack of tolerance for people, that's quite a different thing. I find it difficult to communicate with people on an individual basis. I suffer from this feeling of wanting them to say what they have to say quickly. Being intolerant of them wandering around the point, that's one thing, you can at the same time have compassion and understanding for people who need It or require it. Now one doesn't require any insight or compassion in an interview with three people from Salient, so the situation isn't appropriate to the expression of that, and you just have to take my word for it that it is there, in other circumstances.

To an extent it is inevitable that mass communicators to a degree lack personality; they don't communicate well on a one-to-one basis. There's not much that can be done about it except to go to one's psychiatrist to help improve.....

This, of course, occurs with lecturer, at university, people who can project only to some artificial entity out there....

I'm a good electronic communicator. Very interesting when I was working in television, you know for ten or fifteen minutes in the control room before the interview I found it hard to talk to the person. I'd mumble and stumble around, I couldn't quite tell them the sorts of areas we wanted to talk about, I was often intimidated by the person. Then we walk into the studio and it affords an electronic protection, you were no longer really two people, you were two performers on a drama set and you performed your given roles of interviewer and interviewee with no embarrassments, there's no real human contact, and in that situation I do very well. So I communicate better with microphones and masses than I do with individuals. But that's just me. And it may be a necessary part of one's job. But with people who are very close to me I communicate all right.

Do you go along with the "to communicate is the beginning of understanding" line? For that matter do you really think that Radio Windy is reaching out and touching "you"?

How does one judge that, do you judge it by audience rating figures? If you judge it by that the answer is yes. If you judge it by what people say in the mail, the answer is yes. There's certainly communication, in some cases it may be because people hate you, but that's a form of communication too. What the nature of communication is I'm not sure. As to whether communication is the beginning of understanding, I suppose it is, but you can communicate in other ways other than words. I have the ability, quite highly developed, to tell a great deal about people just by looking at them, and that's a form of communication too. By definition, if you aren't communicating, I don't suppose you can begin to understand.

You mention in the book about politicians not understanding the nature of television. It seems that the nature of talk-back radio in that it concentrates on the ability to articulate, might make it harder for politicians to "defend the indefensible" than on TV, where they can manipulate image and authority by non-verbal means.

I think each medium has got its advantages or disadvantages. Television has the ability to reveal in the face a deception not discernable in the argument and we've all seen that happen again and again. The politicians can sit there and what they say sounds adequate, but it is apparent in their unease, (which is expressed in his hands or his eyes, or his mouth) that what he is saying is not a satisfactory answer. That, of course is denied to you on the radio. On the other hand, the radio gives you the opportunity to develop the subject in terms of time in much greater depth.

You take Patricia Bartlett and you put her on television; you're told that you've got 12 minutes to do this lady over (which is really what your instructions boil down to) and you go in there boots and all. The effect is that you get nothing really, because she's on the defensive; and she looks like it so audience sympathy goes out to her. Her following grows enormously overnight, because people feel that she's the underdog. Bring her onto a talk-back programme, where you've got three hours. You spend the first hour very gently chatting, putting the person at ease, and making them feel relaxed. Then you spend the next hour asking all the questions you couldn't have possibly asked on TV where you lacked the build up. Since the person is relaxed they start to admit and concede and reveal. It's like a relationship. You can't establish the sort of relationship in ten minutes that you can in three hours. The person who would tell you almost nothing on television is telling you the most intimate details about their personal sexual feelings, their personal sexual response to the pornography that they have in their home, and how they deal with sexual stimulus in their own relationships. You've revealed that person in this case Patricia Bartlett, in a way you could never do on television. Also, the radio studio, where you're pretty well atone provides an intimacy which you don't get in the television studio. But again you lack that visual facial dimension which can tell you quite a lot about people.

A lot of people have said on your show that you've 'got it in for Kirk'. You've replied 'give us a concrete example', and of course often they can't, but that isn't really an answer.

Well, the answer is I haven't got it in for Kirk. I have met him on a number of occasions. I wouldn't (and this might surprise people) really withdraw the things I said about him in the book. He's a man of enormous personal dynamism, tremendous intelligence, he's a superb debater; he has what must be near photographic memory, an overwhelming personality, and a tremendous Insight and perception. Kirk has this ability to sum up people very quickly and to know what direction their mind is going and what sort of people they realty are. Its an extraordinary, almost psychic understanding of people, which I have experienced at first hand with him. A knowledge of people that goes beyond what you would imagine would be picked up by your five senses. He has all of that. To a degree it is misused, he is a man who has an elephantine memory for ills that were done to him and that means he is a man who carries a grudge. That is undesirable in the leader of any country.

He's a man who one must admire for his intellectual stature and his perception. I've criticised him for what I call his ethical conservatism, his hang-ups, and the way they infect government and legislation, and I'll continue to do so. I'm not interested in 'getting' Kirk, I couldn't if I wanted to, I don't have that sort of power.

I also believe he is helped by a sycophantic, arse-licking press, in the main, which reflects itself at press conferences. You listen to the press conference where he was talking about Dennis O'Reilly; listen to the nervous giggles on the tape, to people laughing at his every joke. You know how with famous people when they make very bad jokes, everyone laughs anyway.

The lack of investigative press in New Zealand and the lack of journalists with guts is a good reason for being more probing on programmes which are prepared to examine more closely, I regard my programme as one, Eric Geiringer is another and Bob Scott's is another. I see some evidence of good journalism around the country in people like Warwick Roger in the 'Dominion'. But in the main there isn't that, so the effect is that there are only a few people who do criticise, and when there are only a few they stand out, and people leap up and down and say you're out to get him. I don't think I'm out to get him, I think I'm merely doing the job that all journalists in New Zealand ought to be doing. That is, revealing inadequacies where they appear, and being complimentary when it's deserved. But no more than that.

Did Kirk oppose your selection as candidate for the Miramar seat?

I don't know. I know that the secretary of the party opposed it, and he may have done so on instructions from the leader. I know that much. I know that one of the trade unionists on the central committee opposed it, for all the obvious reasons. He would have seen me as an intellectual, possibly as a radical, (whether that's right or not I don't know) as a stirrer, as a trouble maker. He might even have seen me as someone who could be classified as being disloyal in so far as I had left one employment and written a book about it. I'm not the sort of person he would have wanted. You don't invite into your camp, willingly someone you think may stir things up for you while he's m there.

Do you think you would have been much of a threat to Kirk if you had got into the party caucus?

In what sense?

Well in the sense of not bowing down when he walks over caucus as you described it before. Most of the other former "radicals" in the party, like Hunt or Isbey, have in fact become tame...

Well, you don't know do you, it's very hard to say, I mean if the enormous intellectual and political weight of Norman Kirk comes bearing down on your head how would you respond? It's like saying what would you do if a dog or a lion attacked you. I think I would have probably stuck much the way I am now. But I can't be sure, I've seen some people that I have enormous respect for sucked into that system. So I can't be sure that I might not have been sucked as well. The ground is littered with idealists who have been sucked in; the Amoses, the Hunts, a lot of the young back-benchers who I can only assume from their silence have also been sucked in. Those were old people of integrity and ability who seem to have lost it, and it they can loss it, so can I.