Sunday 28 July, 2013
 
Susan Wood interviews Ben Uffindell, Editor, The Civilian.
 
Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE and one hour later on TV ONE plus 1. Repeated Sunday evening at 11:30pm. Streamed live at www.tvnz.co.nz   
 
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Q+A
 
SUSAN WOOD INTERVIEWS BEN UFFINDELL
 
 
SUSAN WOOD
Ben Uffindell’s satirical website The Civilian, which he started in March at age 21, is being compared to the hit US site The Onion. His favourite fodder parodying politicians and the media, and he’s already irked politicians like Conservative Party leader Colin Craig during the gay marriage debate. For those of you not familiar with the website, this is thecivilian.co.nz, with headlines like ‘Study finds that every Prime Minister was worst Prime Minister.’ On Friday, Ben Uffindell launched The Civilian political party and joins me now from Christchurch. Morning, Ben.
 
BEN UFFINDELL - Editor, The Civilian
Hello, Susan. Good to be with you on the great Q+A question programme.
 
SUSAN           (CHUCKLES) Well, it’s great to have you with us on the great Q+A question programme. The Civilian political party - is it serious or satire?
 
BEN                Well, we’re very serious about it. We’re serious about pulling together the resources of our nation to bring about negative change, and that’s something we’re very sincere about.
 
SUSAN           (LAUGHS) Negative change? What do you mean?
 
BEN                Um, well, there’s all sorts of initiatives that we’d like to bring about to make Australia a better place. To give you an example of our policies at the Civilian Party, we agree largely with the Pakeha Party, for example, who have pointed out so astutely recently that white people are quite under-represented in our society. (SUSAN CHUCKLES) I mean, look at it this way, right? The Maori Party, it’s a party, you know, just for Maori people. They have a whole party just to themselves, and white people only have six. We only have six, and seven if you include the Mana Party. So what we’ve said that we’ll do is, um, we’d like to represent other under-represented groups, such as the able-bodied. (SUSAN CHUCKLES) Whatever disabled people want, um, we’d like it too. Uh, we’d like to have special access ramps just for us. (SUSAN CHUCKLES) We’d like to have car parks. How many times have you turned up to a car park and there’s only three car parks available, and they’re all for disabled people. So you’ve got three car parks just for disabled people, and, you know, only 400 for able-bodied people, and that’s three people who have been disenfranchised by the system.
 
SUSAN           You’ve got some rules, and I think one of them involves Don Brash.
 
BEN                Yes. Um, Don Brash is not allowed to be a member of our party because we don’t want him taking it over on the morning that he joins it. So I’m sorry, Don, but, you know, don’t think that we don’t know what you’re up to.
 
SUSAN           Ben, your website - 20,000 likes. You get something like 20,000 to 25,000 page hits a day. Who is looking? What are they looking at? What are you doing there?
 
BEN                Um, I’m not sure what they’re looking at, and that’s really up to them. What they look at on the internet is entirely their own kind of business.
 
SUSAN           On your page.
 
BEN                Yeah, well, um, we do have some ads, so I don’t really know exactly what they’re looking at. But I think people who come to The Civilian are looking for a different take on the news, something different, something you’d see on, say, a standard kind of tired news programme like Q+A.
 
SUSAN           (CHUCKLES) Thank you!
 
BEN                So, um, you know, they’re looking for something fresh and different and more reliable.
 
SUSAN           (CHUCKLES) ‘More reliable.’ You do owe some thanks to Colin Craig, don’t you? Because he was actually going to sue you, and that made you hit the headlines.
 
BEN                Yeah, it did. I don’t know what Colin was thinking, but he certainly did give us a bit of publicity there. Gave himself a bit of publicity too, which was good for him, I think. I was just happy that Colin got to be on TV, really. That was nice.
 
SUSAN           (CHUCKLES) Ben, how did you become a political satirist?
 
BEN                Completely and utterly by accident, and I mean that completely sincerely, actually, to be completely serious for a moment. Um, I just set up the website one day. It was a very spontaneous idea, and it snowballed from there. I just thought, ‘What does this country really not have that we would like?’ And an Onion-style satirical news outlet was something I felt that we were lacking, and so I put it together, and there it is. Yeah, that’s how it came about.
 
SUSAN           The party, the political party, you may well get some traction. I certainly know some of the young guys I speak to are pretty keen on it.
 
BEN                Yeah, I hope so. Um, we’re sort of in the very formative stages of it, and just to throw out a plug there, in the next couple of days, we’ll have a website up. I won’t say what it is yet, but we’ll have one very soon. We’re hoping to actually, you know, bring together some people to make a serious go of it. I think it provides-
 
SUSAN           Young people? Is it a young voice you’re looking for there, looking at, Ben?
 
BEN                Yeah, it’s a young voice, but there are plenty of- We’ve had plenty of- people who have joined the party so far have ranged from 18 to 77, so-
 
SUSAN           What was that? Your grandfather?
 
BEN                No, it’s not, actually. I don’t count them. I mean, they’re in their 80s.  (SUSAN CHUCKLES)
 
SUSAN           That’s not Don Brash. He’s not that old. (CHUCKLES)
 
BEN                Well, we checked the form very carefully to make sure it wasn’t Don Brash. (SUSAN LAUGHS) But still not entirely sure. I imagine he’s submitted a few.
 
SUSAN           Now, does this mean- We’ve come to the end of the interview, so last question - does this mean Q+A makes it on to The Civilian, because that’s why I wanted to interview you, Ben! No, not really. (CHUCKLES)
 
BEN                No, no. Q+A is a fantastic programme where people ask questions and get answers, and, I mean, it’s good to be on.
 
SUSAN           We might use that in a promo one day. (BEN CHUCKLES) Thank you. Very nice to talk to you, Ben. An absolute pleasure.
 
BEN                Thank you.

ENDS

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