Radio NZ National Programme FM Launch

Wednesday 4 February 2004

Without being overly political, I must say I think it is completely apt that Radio New Zealand has chosen Christchurch as its venue for this launch.

As a listener I am well aware that in a market-driven media-jungle Radio New Zealand is one of the few options that still offers discourse and conversation, rather than pogroms and poll-driven theatre masquerading as news.   It still flies the flag for that increasingly quaint concept of us as a community of peoples, rather than competing economic units.

In that context as the proud Mayor of what the Business Roundtable long ago called the People's Republic of Christchurch, I am delighted to welcome and salute the evolution of Radio New Zealand into a new medium.

National Radio is a taonga in our society.   Each day history is recorded and our lives held up for everybody to hear about.

I once heard Selwyn Toogood, as he retired for the 100 th time, asked, as somebody who had worked in both   TV and radio, whether TV would ever replace radio.   He replied “off course not, the pictures are better on the radio”.   How correct he was.

Just as Christchurch has retained its sense of social justice, as our forebears mapped out for us, and as we have retained our commitment to the ‘cult of community', so has national radio.

I believe this is an important message for us all as a nation.   We are part of the way back to where I believe the Kiwi sense of fair play and community would have us be.

I tend to agree with Michael Higgins, the former Irish Minister of Broadcasting, who gave a very thoughtful speech when has here a few years back.

He said with regard to the increasing primacy of commercial broadcasting and its influence that he believed that globally we are living through the early stages of what potentially could be a deep enslavement.   He said:

"It is a historical moment of the greatest importance.... our retreat from the public world, or substitution of existence as consumers for an active life as citizens, our definition of the world as a world of private consumption, our surrender on terms we neither understand nor have negotiated, to the market.''

He raised the question of what did we plan to become..."active citizens or passive consumers.''   I know which option I prefer.

National radio expects us to be active citizens.   It challenges us.   It stimulates us.   It shares our highs and lows as a series of villages which make up our wonderful country.

Welcome National Radio 101FM.