Sore losers – 7.30 Report ignores Key win
Kerry O’Brien found much more compelling material for The 7.30 Report last night than bothering with the trifling story of a key change of government across the Tasman.
The tale of the poor boy made good, the son of a Jewish refugee raised in a housing commission home by a mother who worked as a cleaner to make ends meet, and then went on to become a self-made multi-millionaire who defeated the entrenched female PM Helen Clark.
The story of the political party that was in the wilderness just six years ago, reduced to a rump and searching for leadership and credibility, that comes back with a vengeance to score a huge victory over the dominant New Zealand Labor Party.
The yarn about the cat with nine lives-like political survivor Winston Peters, the xenophobic part-Maori veteran of 30 years in parliament who became an ally with his old party National, and then in turn with Labour, variously serving as deputy PM, Treasurer and Foreign Minister but is finally vanquished.
The tale of the veteran economic reformer Sir Roger Douglas, the leading figure in the Lange-led Labour government of the 1980s, returning to parliament in the ACT Party at the ripe old age of 72.
And the story of the New Zealand Greens, darling of the media and chattering classes, put firmly back in their box with just six per cent of the vote.
No, none of this interests The 7.30 Report when they can run stories about the Adelaide United soccer club’s tilt for the Asian Cup (holdable, as the second leg is tomorrow), marine life in the Gulf of Carpentaria facing a threat from disused fishing nets (again, holdable) and the death of some obscure South African singer.
Naturally, O’Brien was all over the Obama story last week.
Maybe John Key’s problem is that he is white and conservative.
