Unemployable?

There's one reason ­ among many perhaps ­ why Rodney Hide (the ACT MP) and Katherine Rich (from National) don¹t have a job with Mana, and are unlikely to land one.

It's to do with getting things right.

Yesterday in Parliament ­ in the course of an understandable attempt to embarrass the Government in general, and Parekura Horomia in particular ­ there were questions for the minister about Te Mangai Paho¹s contract management, and Mana being contracted by TMP to deliver a 30 minute language documentary each week day to the network of iwi stations.

That, in fact, is what we do, and have been doing so for many years.

The ACT MP, however (perhaps on the basis that you can create a Maori scandal simply by asserting that there is one) was proclaiming that, for five months, we¹d taken money and not delivered the programmes.

We don¹t operate that way.

National¹s spokesperson for broadcasting, Katherine Rich, was (in the same session) displaying righteous indignation that TMP was getting only 10 hours of Maori language programming a year from us at a cost of $34,000 an hour. They were her calculations.

Actually, it¹s 120 hours of programming per year, Katherine, at a cost of less than $3000 an hour.

There¹s a difference, if you look closely.

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