NZ Government to Disestablish the BSA

This is what caused their problems

https://lawnews.nz/administrative-public/bca-investigates-it...

They investigated one too many rightwinger who supported the government

I’m highly doubtful about this - it seems to be an excuse to disestablish the BSA, rather than a genuine basis for the decision.

I think this will help drive more partisan and sensationalist media, like one gets in the US. NZ has been relatively resistant to populism and partisanism in the past, partially because we have a watchdog to make the media all play nice.

Based on their arguments, they should really be expanding the BSA’s remit to officially cover internet-based NZ media.

Also, they’ve done a press release and talked on the radio about it to try and stir up headlines, but it’s highly unlikely to get through parliament before the upcoming election. Based on the current polling, the makeup of parliament is likely to dramatically alter by the end of the year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_N...

New Zealand has always imported the bulk of its television content from the USA, Australia and the UK (more rarely Canada and elsewhere) and yet New Zealanders are forced to pay a sky high TV licence. Where is this money really going? The obvious answer is that a handful of people are creaming it off to fund their lifestyles rather than to produce domestic content. Has the BSA ever addressed this obvious elephant in the room?

Other than "Shortland Street", the news and some sports games, there has been disappointingly little in the way of domestic television production. A shame because NZ can produce excellent films and dramas sometimes. It is pretty clear that Peter Jackson has done more for New Zealand that way than the state broadcasters ever did.

Without knowing anything about the current state of NZ politics, some general political strategies could be the source:

1. since they are in a lame-duck state (as you mentioned, everyone expects there will be an overhaul), they are trying to get done the dirty stuff they promised to big donors (this particular thing looks like a wet dream of Rupert Murdoch, for example)

2. since they expect to be beaten, they think unleashing the "dogs of hell" of unregulated media might actually help them

3. they have an actual proposal that is different from this but that they can sell as a compromise, after the inevitable pushback on this one, which will then be rushed through sight-unseen "because there is no time left"

4. this is just campaign noise, meant to attract interest from moneyed media so that they get treated well in the upcoming election cycle

If I were a betting man, I would put money on 1.