That National promoted this change in employment law as some sort of silver bullet to help grow the economy - without empathy for the plight of those caught in the bind of being "employed" but not actually earning - says everything you need to know about the blinkered fascism of the neoliberal agenda.
It's an abhorrent law that should be struck out immediately. Little wonder if Campbell Live's campaign is showing this up.
Little wonder too if, as has been alleged, Key told friend Mark Weldon, now chief executive of TV3's owner MediaWorks, he wanted "that left-wing bastard gone".
And lo, nek minnit there's a review of news and current affairs launched, complete with the intensely humiliating idea that John and Co get replaced by a soap opera.
Of course, publicly it's all about the ratings, which commercial television lives or dies by because they directly impact on what advertisers are willing to pay for slots around each programme.
Yes, TV3's viewer numbers have been dropping, but if you track viewers of 3 News and Campbell's show, one total closely follows the other.
As do the figures for TVNZ's One News followed by Seven Sharp, proving the news hour "leads in" the audience for the current affairs shows.
The difference is that, while there is considerable drop-off in viewers from One News to Seven Sharp, there is very little from 3 News to Campbell Live. Indeed, TV3's overall share of viewers increases about 4 per cent when Campbell Live comes on.
In other words, the programme is actually beating the competition in doing its job.
There's nothing sharp about Mike Hosking's trivial posturing, nor sustaining about Paul Henry's obnoxious ramblings on Breakfast. But these two Key-hugging apologists declaim their skewed views on public television without any official murmur.
Funny thing is, John Campbell may well vote National too. He's hinted at it in the past. But he is, first and foremost, a professional investigative journalist; he reports the stories that matter wherever he finds them, without fear or favour.
Can't have that, can we? Don't want people actually thinking about what Government and its friends are doing. In short, there's a suitcase full of circumstantial but still alarming evidence to suggest this pogrom is all to do with politics and not ratings.
That the show itself has avoided commenting demonstrates the integrity they maintain. Their detractors could learn a valuable lesson from that - if they weren't blinded by their own righteousness.
That's the right of it.
*Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.
