Labour Leader Helen Clark said today that a restructuring plan proposed by Radio New Zealand Board member Richard Rayner would destroy RNZ's news and current affairs services, and calls into question Mr Rayner's position on the Board.

Helen Clark tabled the plan in Parliament. She said that if it were adopted, it would see RNZ staff numbers cut by about two-thirds.

"This plan would see the end of Radio New Zealand as a provider of quality public radio news and current affairs. Programmes like Morning Report and Kim Hill would suffer disastrously.

"In an attempt to defuse the issue, the Board's chair and chief executive today released a statement stating that contracting out news services would not be consistent with the Radio New Zealand charter. Yet that is precisely what Mr Rayner appears to have been advocating.

"Mr Isles' statement today claimed that the thrust of Board discussions had been to enhance the news operation. That is nonsense. The deep cuts in staffing that the Board has considered would destroy, not enhance, the news service.

"The Minister responsible for Radio New Zealand, Marie Hasler, maintains there is no problem with Mr Rayner's apparent conflict of interest. That view is simply naïve. As a director of a private radio company, Mr Rayner knows that the success of public radio may well impact on private radio. That is where the conflict of interest arises.

"Ms Hasler has yet to answer the question posed to her yesterday: on what occasions has the contracting out of news services been discussed by the RNZ Board, formally and informally, and has Mr Rayner absented himself from those discussions on all occasions?

"Today in Parliament, I lodged a question for the Prime Minister to answer on her views about the conflict of interest which appears to arise on Radio New Zealand's Board.

"Mrs Shipley ducked the question. It seems that either she did not want to be seen publicly stating her confidence that the current RNZ Board is acting properly, or she did not want to support yet another bumbling National Minister. Radio New Zealand is turning into another government disaster area," Helen Clark said.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>