Speaker 1: Kiyotra.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. A war
Speaker 2: of words has erupted between the Green Party and Enzed
Speaker 2: first this week. It comes after photos circulated on social.
Speaker 1: Media from a private Instagram account belonging to a Green MP,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Doyle. The account, named.
Speaker 2: Bible Belt Bussy, also featured photos of their child, including
Speaker 2: one with Bussy in the caption. The term originated as
Speaker 2: a euphemism for a man's anus and can be used
Speaker 2: colloquially by some in the gay community, but Doyle's usage
Speaker 2: of it has sparked accusations of vulgarity and being inappropriate.
Speaker 2: That was amplified by Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who
Speaker 2: said on social media that Doutley should answer for the
Speaker 2: posts and that if police want to investigate, they can.
Speaker 2: The Green Party has said that Doyle has received death
Speaker 2: threats as a result, and have called for the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister to intervene. So does this suggest a changing battleground
Speaker 2: for politics? With family issues and social media activists taking
Speaker 2: center stage Today on the Front Page, we're joined by
Speaker 2: Victoria University of Wellington politics professor Lara agrees to discuss
Speaker 2: a different type of political scandal. Lara, let's focus on
Speaker 2: this incident for starters, what did you think when you
Speaker 2: first saw this making the news the other day?
Speaker 3: Well, I think initially I thought it was in the news,
Speaker 3: and then I went and did some investigating and looked
Speaker 3: at what some of the original posts have been, what
Speaker 3: different people were saying in the various blogs and various
Speaker 3: corners of the Internet. So when I did a bit
Speaker 3: of research for my self yesterday after seeing what it
Speaker 3: kind of erupted in the media, and basically it maybe
Speaker 3: really sad because what we have here is someone whose
Speaker 3: child is facing death threats.
Speaker 4: And I really feel.
Speaker 3: Sad about that because our politics and altaut is, you know,
Speaker 3: it's folksy, it's small, and we like to think that
Speaker 3: things are safe.
Speaker 4: And I think a lot of the discourse was that
Speaker 4: our dern.
Speaker 3: Faced a lot of threats, but that was an artifact
Speaker 3: of COVID, And here we have another MP saying that
Speaker 3: they're their own safety and there the safety of their
Speaker 3: fano and their child is under threats. So that's ultimately
Speaker 3: very concerning, in a very concerning direction for our politics
Speaker 3: to go in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, focusing on the Greens, though, an argument can be
Speaker 2: made that they should have done their due diligence in
Speaker 2: preparing a first time MP for the spotlight right, especially
Speaker 2: considering the issues they had with MP's last year. Should
Speaker 2: someone in the comms team have flagged this kind of
Speaker 2: thing earlier.
Speaker 4: It's a really.
Speaker 3: Awkward thing, isn't it, Because ultimately, you know, MPs do
Speaker 3: have a level of free speed, and everyone does have
Speaker 3: a history. But on the other hand, we know that
Speaker 3: politics is rough and humble. People do dig into people's past,
Speaker 3: and we've also seen internationally that that's quite a norm
Speaker 3: that people dig into people's past. There's let's been less
Speaker 3: so in New Zealand unless of course someone's committed a crime,
Speaker 3: and a lot of journalists have found bits and pieces
Speaker 3: like that in the past. Ultimately, yes, there is an argument.
Speaker 3: We've seen Medline, Chapman and the spinoff kind of make
Speaker 3: the argument the party perhaps should have protected Benjamin Doyle
Speaker 3: a little bit more. It's one of those things that's
Speaker 3: hard to say because the other thing. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: political parties do have limited resources, so it's a bit
Speaker 3: I think people will have their opinions on this one,
Speaker 3: and will have their opinions on what they would do
Speaker 3: if they were going for sort of public office or
Speaker 3: going for a public position as well.
Speaker 4: I think that the discourse generally.
Speaker 3: For most people who's going to the point that we
Speaker 3: should google ourselves and figure out what's online about us
Speaker 3: at any given moment. I'm alone for an MP, so
Speaker 3: I think people will have opinions as to we're having
Speaker 3: one's private Instagram up is something that they should or
Speaker 3: shouldn't have done. Ultimately, yeah, there's going to just be
Speaker 3: mixed opinions on it.
Speaker 4: But I mean this again.
Speaker 3: Starts to go back to that freedom of speech debate
Speaker 3: as well as at what point is something distasteful to
Speaker 3: the mainstream versus harmful in any way. So I think
Speaker 3: that this is kind of playing out, but more like.
Speaker 4: The left wing version of that.
Speaker 3: I guess we're used to seeing it more be on
Speaker 3: the right where someone said something maybe anti vax or
Speaker 3: said something that's been concerning from a different lens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean other MP's have had the media troll
Speaker 2: through their social medias in the past and bring up,
Speaker 2: you know, old tweets, etc. Do you think it's fair
Speaker 2: game now given that social media is such an integral
Speaker 2: part of our lives.
Speaker 1: Is this incident any different from the rest?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I remember we saw Ardurn's old tweets surface
Speaker 3: at one point where she'd made comments I think it
Speaker 3: was about Boris Johnson and that was kind of brought
Speaker 3: up in that context. She was I think prime minister,
Speaker 3: so a bit of a different context of being a
Speaker 3: backbench MP. I think generally we've also seen that for
Speaker 3: candidates as well, for different I think was Act Party
Speaker 3: candidates that people had gone back through and found bits
Speaker 3: and pieces of their opinions on the record going back
Speaker 3: a few years. So I think that this is something
Speaker 3: that people can expect. Generally, there's a broader conversationist whether
Speaker 3: that's fair or should be fair game. I think there's
Speaker 3: going to be a generational shift there as well. So
Speaker 3: for people who are growing up now all they've known
Speaker 3: is the Internet, every bump in the road, every kind
Speaker 3: of ideological turn, will soon be quite well documented.
Speaker 4: And in New Zealand we don't have that kind of
Speaker 4: right to forget.
Speaker 3: In the way that some of the European data protection
Speaker 3: laws do, so I think we can expect to see
Speaker 3: a lot more of this and a lot more characterization
Speaker 3: of oh is this appropriate?
Speaker 4: Is that appropriate?
Speaker 3: But I think ultimately, I think the decades to come
Speaker 3: probably that Gen Alpha gen z is probably will care
Speaker 3: a lot less than what is playing out now, which
Speaker 3: is definitely a bit more generational differences.
Speaker 5: Oh look, this is identity politics. That it's worse. It's
Speaker 5: virtue sitting it. It's worse. All I'm asking you is
Speaker 5: ask him to explain his posts. That's all.
Speaker 6: Well, if you haven't seen those phraseology or the photographs
Speaker 6: and ask what they're about. And it's beyond me because
Speaker 6: at the moment we're passing hundred sixty four thousand on
Speaker 6: our post who want to have the same answers are
Speaker 6: manning them from the rainbow groups.
Speaker 5: So to speak. Did I say there are thousands.
Speaker 6: Of them from the rainbow groups. So it's not an anti
Speaker 6: rambo thing. It's a straight out question that you've asked
Speaker 6: countless members of parliament about their posts. You said, those
Speaker 6: members of parliament, what does your post mean? And I'm
Speaker 6: asking you how comes seventy four hours later you haven't
Speaker 6: asked the question.
Speaker 2: Looking at New Zealand, first, what do you make of
Speaker 2: Winston Peters getting involved in this debate and refusing to
Speaker 2: down when is being challenged.
Speaker 1: He seems pretty determined to take a stand on this one.
Speaker 3: Fundamentally, in New Zealand, first they need to get to
Speaker 3: the five percent party vote threshold. And so now we're
Speaker 3: sitting in about a year and a half out from
Speaker 3: the election, they need to start thinking about how do
Speaker 3: they get to that five percent. New Zealand Attitudes and
Speaker 3: Value study data and various other data sources show that
Speaker 3: two to three percent of voters are loyal to them,
Speaker 3: so they normally have to find that couple of percent
Speaker 3: from elsewhere. And I think a lot of us have
Speaker 3: been discussing where will where will they find that vote
Speaker 3: and make sure that they do now that five percent
Speaker 3: threshold that they need one of the kind of rhetorical
Speaker 3: strategies they've definitely gone down as they woke the importing,
Speaker 3: the cultural wars, they woke anti woke the DEI. We've
Speaker 3: seen a lot of kind of discussion about diversity and
Speaker 3: inclusion initiatives and the public service coming from New Zealand. First,
Speaker 3: this does seem to be the route that they're going down.
Speaker 3: The whole PC gone mad was the kind of version
Speaker 3: of it. Twenty years ago, and a non binary Takatapui
Speaker 3: MP in the Greens does represent lot of that what
Speaker 3: they would call the woke sort of movement. Others would
Speaker 3: just call social justice or inclusion or representation your demographic
Speaker 3: representation of communities in Altauto and New Zealand. So they've really,
Speaker 3: i think used Benjamin Doyle's Instagram posts as a lightning
Speaker 3: rod of thoughts for this and to kind of bring
Speaker 3: together sort of various interests on the Internet to try
Speaker 3: to really target a non binary MP.
Speaker 4: So those are the dynamics that are playing out.
Speaker 3: We've also seen Peter's refuse to use Benjamin Doyle's they
Speaker 3: then pronouns instead using Heim pronouns for them. That's another
Speaker 3: thing that we've seen internationally as well, when people are
Speaker 3: engaging in that culture wars type thing and the inclusion
Speaker 3: or exclusion of non binary people. So that's another kind
Speaker 3: of strategy that we see around the world. So ultimately
Speaker 3: New Zealand first are really importing a lot of culture
Speaker 3: wars rhetoric, a lot of anti woke DEI rhetoric that
Speaker 3: we're seeing a lot in the States and in Canada.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess it's no we're under Noah usion
Speaker 1: where that's come from?
Speaker 2: Right? I saw Shane Jones wearing a New Zealand Make
Speaker 2: New Zealand Great Again cap on Twitter or x rather
Speaker 2: just recently in terms of I guess the Benjamin Doyle situation,
Speaker 2: I found it interesting Madame and Davidson. In the press
Speaker 2: conference that the Greens held, she mentioned that this comes
Speaker 2: directly from the same playbook as the situations with say
Speaker 2: Destiny Church and the drag storytime events being dismantled by them.
Speaker 2: That's the playbook that we're talking about. Hey, that's the
Speaker 2: kind of the rhetoric and the train that New Zealand
Speaker 2: First is on, and that's where they're going to try
Speaker 2: and seek that one in two percent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if we see like where a lot of
Speaker 3: the sort of Benjamin Doyle type opinion pieces at the
Speaker 3: moment are from Family First, which we know kind of
Speaker 3: conservative lobby group. So I think that this is one
Speaker 3: of those there First is right cultural issues at the moment.
Speaker 3: But ultimately I think what it comes down to is
Speaker 3: there a lot of New Zealanders in the middle. There
Speaker 3: are a lot of New Zealanders that would be looking
Speaker 3: at all of this and going yuch or getting put
Speaker 3: off politics and all of our elections. What they will
Speaker 3: come down to is who can form a coalition and
Speaker 3: who can win over those middle voters. So one of
Speaker 3: the things I'm now watching, of course knowing New Zealand
Speaker 3: versus is obviously trying to drum up votes the political parties.
Speaker 4: That's what they do. You know, the Greens are doing
Speaker 4: the same.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at Labor and National and that fight for
Speaker 3: the middle, that fight for that you know five to
Speaker 3: ten percent of voters that we know that float between parties.
Speaker 3: Haven't heard anything yet from Labor on this. Of course
Speaker 3: saw Luxon's comments yesterday around inappropriate language. But these kind
Speaker 3: of issues when they really blow up in the next
Speaker 3: year and a half, because we're still a while away
Speaker 3: from the election, but when all of these issues blow up,
Speaker 3: I think, really watch to see what Labor and National
Speaker 3: do because they have to do this dance where they
Speaker 3: don't offend or they don't kind of distance themselves from
Speaker 3: their coalition or potential coalition partner too much, yet they
Speaker 3: still that kind of person in the center can still
Speaker 3: find them appealing.
Speaker 4: So that's the dance that both.
Speaker 3: Labor and National are going to have this next year
Speaker 3: and a half.
Speaker 2: This is the beginning of actor.
Speaker 7: I think that we can see that pretty crystally clear.
Speaker 7: The point that I would really like for us all
Speaker 7: to return to right now is that we have a
Speaker 7: member of Parliament that has been subjected to immense abuse
Speaker 7: and real will death threats which have also incorporated their
Speaker 7: child and their pharmo. And the flow and effects of
Speaker 7: all of this, including as a result of the fanning
Speaker 7: of the flames from Destiny's Church and the Deputy Prime Minister,
Speaker 7: is that the Rainbow community is now squealy within the target.
Speaker 2: Green's co leader Chloe Swarbrick said that this is a
Speaker 2: type of dirty politics in the press conference the other
Speaker 2: day addressing the situation.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that?
Speaker 3: I think that there are a lot of questions to
Speaker 3: be asked around what is fair game when someone is
Speaker 3: running for office and when someone is an MP. I
Speaker 3: think that digging back through someone's personal instagram will probably
Speaker 3: make off a lot of people put them off politics.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is kind of that dirty politics that
Speaker 3: more personal, that more like identity base, that more language based,
Speaker 3: and trawling back through We haven't seen so much of
Speaker 3: that in New Zealand politics. We haven't really seen that
Speaker 3: many sort of blowups of just kind of using a
Speaker 3: meme as much. So I think that it is that
Speaker 3: kind of quite yeah, that kind of playbook politics, that
Speaker 3: kind of what can we dredge up, how can we
Speaker 3: take hold of the media cycle all of that kind
Speaker 3: of politics and really negative, negative campaigning, and the kind
Speaker 3: of politics that risks the participation of different communities and
Speaker 3: making ultimately the parliament more representative. So that really is
Speaker 3: it is a bit of a sort of politics as
Speaker 3: a strategy, kind of quite that kind of more nastier
Speaker 3: side of politics, rather than presenting, say a positive message
Speaker 3: forward or really drilling down on any policy issue that
Speaker 3: most people want solved.
Speaker 2: Well, Winston Peters and it comes as no surprise to
Speaker 2: anyone when I say this has always had a bit
Speaker 2: of a contentious relationship with the media, and a press
Speaker 2: conference that he held on Monday, he kept saying that
Speaker 2: he wasn't making accusations or anything.
Speaker 1: He just wanted the media to ask questions.
Speaker 2: Now, is he working from the same old playbook here
Speaker 2: or is he evolving to play.
Speaker 1: Into this new kind of social landscape.
Speaker 3: Well, look, this has really grasped a lot of people's attention,
Speaker 3: and of course, like I don't think we would be
Speaker 3: expecting to necessarily be analyzing queer community slang in such
Speaker 3: a detail, and he hears some of those words on
Speaker 3: the news was interesting. So definitely Peter's seen an opportunity
Speaker 3: to grasp that media spotlight and to really sort of
Speaker 3: beat the drum for the kind of broader anti WOP
Speaker 3: movement that Peter's and that are trying to grab their
Speaker 3: votes to get them to turn out to vote next
Speaker 3: time around. So it really has been a bit of
Speaker 3: dirty politics, a bit of like pulling on someone's social
Speaker 3: media comments, which again just feels ridiculous. There's also that
Speaker 3: very uncomfortable kind of tension here, and it goes back
Speaker 3: to queer politics in the nineteen eighties and earlier around
Speaker 3: the discussion of homosexual law reform, where Peters is in
Speaker 3: some way kind of leaving the door open or not
Speaker 3: directly accusing Benjamin Doyle of pedophilia. But that is what
Speaker 3: a lot of people online are saying, which is disgusting
Speaker 3: and one of those things that I just really feel
Speaker 3: for Benjamin Doyle and their Farno at the moment. To
Speaker 3: be accused of that is quite horrible. But for Peter's
Speaker 3: it's really treading that line between doing something that would
Speaker 3: amount to something along the lines of defamation or could
Speaker 3: potentially lead to legal action and pointing to these online
Speaker 3: rumors where someone's going to look them up and see
Speaker 3: what the materials say. So Peters is dancing a dancer
Speaker 3: to make sure that he doesn't say anything that he
Speaker 3: could be liable or you know that it could turn
Speaker 3: into a long, long running thing, but still kind of
Speaker 3: intimating something quite disgusting and something that's quite strange to
Speaker 3: take a step back from and go, is the deputy
Speaker 3: Prime Minister or previous deputy Prime minister accusing another MP.
Speaker 4: Of being a pedophile.
Speaker 3: It's a weird time, and it's that dance between traditional
Speaker 3: media and sending people online to go to all sorts
Speaker 3: of corners of the internet. Because again it's one of
Speaker 3: those things if you go and start to look up
Speaker 3: the materials on this next thing, you know you're down
Speaker 3: down in various rabbit holes. So, yeah, a lot of
Speaker 3: strange tensions here, and yeah, broadly I think makes me
Speaker 3: feel uncomfortable and would make a lot of queer communities
Speaker 3: feel uncomfortable too, with the kind of associations that Peters
Speaker 3: is intimating.
Speaker 8: Look, I thought the language was really inappropriate. I think
Speaker 8: the reality is that the scrutiny and the reality of
Speaker 8: political life, our social media language is scrutinized by the media.
Speaker 8: It's also scrutinized by fellow politicians and also the public.
Speaker 8: And but ultimately that's a case for the Green's leadership
Speaker 8: to deal with.
Speaker 2: So this story was circulating on social media over the weekend,
Speaker 2: but the media didn't report it until the Greens released
Speaker 2: a statement. Now, The Ends At Herald's Audrey Young wrote
Speaker 2: about this decision and she said, and I quote those
Speaker 2: keyboard warriors should know that just because mainstream news outlets
Speaker 2: have not published a story, it does not mean that
Speaker 2: they have not asked questions or have been working on it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes decisions not to cover stories are made not to
Speaker 2: protect the subject of the story or to protect a
Speaker 2: political party, but because of journalistic ethic.
Speaker 1: Now, this is one of those stories.
Speaker 2: That feels like a lose lose, Right, You're going to
Speaker 2: piss off sections of the population no matter how you
Speaker 2: report on it. Do cases like this and the amplification
Speaker 2: of accusations of bias from social media put media in
Speaker 2: a more difficult position.
Speaker 3: Well, with social media, of course, people can say anything,
Speaker 3: people can be anonymous, people can put their name on
Speaker 3: it and still say anything.
Speaker 4: More.
Speaker 3: Because you've got that distance from a person, you can
Speaker 3: go down all sorts of strange theoretical routes and not
Speaker 3: really have proof of things. And of course we know
Speaker 3: with the sort of social media culture, people see a
Speaker 3: line here or there and then they believe one thing
Speaker 3: or the other. With the journalistic effects to some degree,
Speaker 3: you know, we've seen a lot of strange rumors. I
Speaker 3: imagine some of them are true. Some of them are
Speaker 3: faults around the place about politicians really heading back more
Speaker 3: than one hundred years. You know, there are rumors of
Speaker 3: someone doing this, someone doing that, and bits and pieces
Speaker 3: and all, there's this gossip and this and that, or
Speaker 3: there's a photo or you know, this is not new,
Speaker 3: But what is new is the ability for people to
Speaker 3: be able to access a lot of different opinions and
Speaker 3: bits and pieces that don't have to be backed by
Speaker 3: any kind of rigor any kind of methodological reggor or ethics.
Speaker 3: And that is concerning because things can take hold and
Speaker 3: we see them take hold as well anecdotally of course
Speaker 3: around campaigns. Where this is really concerning and we need
Speaker 3: to be really careful about and think about in our
Speaker 3: democracy is around things like deep fakes, things like AI
Speaker 3: and the ability to just create completely false emerge or
Speaker 3: video of someone like Luxen and really turn it into
Speaker 3: something that's being spread great a scandal really and have
Speaker 3: that be spread among members of public. So that's I
Speaker 3: think something that we've a lot of researchers overseas are
Speaker 3: quite concerned about, and I imagine that that's something that
Speaker 3: will start to happen in our elections as well, where
Speaker 3: bits and pieces of things attacking out of context and
Speaker 3: manipulated AI is involved, you know, paid ads and bits
Speaker 3: and pieces could be involved as well, and that's a
Speaker 3: real future for concern, especially as we're seeing surveys and
Speaker 3: various sort of trust barometer show decreasing trust and leads
Speaker 3: and trust in the media. So it's something that we
Speaker 3: kind of should be on the lookout for the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six election and elections heading forward. Is a possibility
Speaker 3: that you then now have social media take a hold,
Speaker 3: you have AI and other technologies intersecting with that, and
Speaker 3: that turns into a really negative politics and politics to
Speaker 3: not be as safe as a place as it was,
Speaker 3: so going back to the nineteen seventies, you know.
Speaker 2: And you've led me really nicely into my last question, Lara.
Speaker 2: We are close to eighteen months out from next year's election.
Speaker 2: Do you think the fact that we're already having this
Speaker 2: type of debate already suggests we could be in for
Speaker 2: a difficult campaign.
Speaker 3: I suspect that we will be in for a difficult campaign, yes,
Speaker 3: because I mean, if you look at what's happened in
Speaker 3: a lot of other countries. I mean, we'll be watching
Speaker 3: the Australian and Canadian elections, of course, we've got them
Speaker 3: coming up in the next month or so. But I
Speaker 3: suspect that we will be in for a bit of
Speaker 3: a dirty campaign. And again that role of social media,
Speaker 3: role of the internet really starting to rear its head
Speaker 3: in New Zealand. I guess we'll see what happens across
Speaker 3: the ditch in Australia and Canada and their campaigns. But
Speaker 3: a lot of people are concerned about the use of
Speaker 3: technology and use of ALI more broadly, lelone in New Zealand,
Speaker 3: where we do have a range of minority party voices,
Speaker 3: that is one of the beauties of our MMP system
Speaker 3: is that we've got this diverse speech. But what I
Speaker 3: would hope is that you know, freedom of speech is
Speaker 3: equally protected across the political spectrum, and yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 3: get too nasty, and we don't see political violence or
Speaker 3: threats of violence which are just not ideal for anything,
Speaker 3: and they don't take anything forward.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Lara Shelda.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page.
Speaker 1: You can read more.
Speaker 2: About today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzadherld dot
Speaker 2: co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan
Speaker 2: Sells and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow
Speaker 2: for another look behind the headlines.