Race relations get primetime TV debate with Anita McNaught

By GREG DIXON

Q. This seems an odd sort of thing to come 12,000 miles to do?

A. I've come because State Of The Nation producer John Keir laid siege to me. I was enormously busy in London and that's what I said in the first instance: I can't make time for this. And I questioned whether I had been out of the country too long.

John said, "We'll fit around you and we want you because you have a measure of detachment." Then he explained what the programme was about, what it would achieve and I thought the programme sounded laudable, really.

There comes a point where [you ask] what you care about. I'm not in this industry to make heaps of money, I'm in this industry to do good work.

TVNZ seems very concerned that everyone thinks it brought you over?

This is an independent production for TVNZ. There seems to have been some misapprehension that Bill [Ralston, TVNZ head of news and current affairs] was involved in my coming here.

I haven't spoken to Bill since I got back, I haven't had time to talk to anyone. I've done nothing but work since flying in last Wednesday.

But how have you fitted it around that flash job of yours at BBC World?

Oh, it's not that flash. I do two shifts a week there and I do freelance work that is invisible to the New Zealand eye most of the time. I've scaled BBC World right back.

It's been a lovely seven years, it's a fantastic channel. But two shifts a week is all I need at the moment and I need to be doing other stuff.

You've said you want to come back here permanently to work at some point. Under what circumstances?

No idea. I have unfinished business professionally in Britain. I have a lot more I want to do as a freelancer in broadcasting and journalism there.

And I also have one surviving relative left on this planet, who is my 76-year-old aunt in Sussex. I need to be with her now.

What did you go to Britain to do?

To broaden the journalism I was able to do. I've always been interested in the global picture and I wanted to more international journalism and that's what Britain is enabling me to do, and to an increasing degree.

And my partner is in the same line of business. He's a news cameraman specialising, if that's not too gruesome a word, in war zones.

He's been in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Pakistan and Jerusalem for the past three years or more. And when he's not there, he's working with me. We're a good team.

From Britain there are a lot more countries to cover and a lot more stories to tell.

Freelancing is a tough life though?

It's enormously tough, it's bones-of-the-arse territory. The presenting job at the BBC was a very useful thing to fall in to when I arrived in Britain.

When I started out there, because I had to put food on the table and pay a London rent, which was a shock, I was working five days a week.

But I don't need to do that any more either professionally or financially, so I have scaled it back.

You are, of course, freelance British correspondent for Eating Media Lunch. Have you seen the show?

Yeeesss.

Your rather serious interviews seem at odds with its let's-take-the-piss attitude, don't you think?

Jeremy [Wells] takes the piss extraordinarily well. Never has the piss been taken quite so adroitly and beautifully in New Zealand.

But there is scope for more. You would be shortchanging your viewer if you just left them with satire. It's a balanced approach to journalism.

How in touch would you say you are with the race relations climate here?

I haven't been away for a while, in a sense. I was back in February-March when things had really just kicked off and it consumed an awful lot of talking time while I was here.

And there are a number of New Zealanders working at BBC World and it was all we talked about.

I'm on the net so I'm aware of what's happening in the media here. I knew a large amount of what was kicking off.

So what views did you form?

If you'll forgive me, I'm not going to start airing my views in advance of the programme, because the programme doesn't require me to have any views. My views are not relevant.

How would you characterise things at present then?

When I left seven years ago the treaty settlements process was ticking along nicely and it didn't really excite a great deal of comment. It could possibly have excited less comment than it could usefully have done.

I think what we're reaping now is the consequence of a process that was going on that a lot of people in New Zealand didn't have a handle on. But we're not going to solve anything tonight. We are not healing the nation.

So there will be no laying on of hands?

No, none of that. There may be some warm pats on the back, but no laying-on of hands.

But I hope we will contribute to the early stages of a necessary dialogue, a necessary korero. I hope this programme can help a little bit, maybe even a medium-sized bit.

What then is your job? Presenter, moderator, what?

I will be a very stern air traffic controller. I'm here to make sure that everyone gets a chance to be heard, that respect is offered on all sides and that the people who have something useful to contribute have an opportunity to contribute it in a relevant and accessible manner.

I expect it to be energised and passionate not disrespectful. But there is one crucial thing that people have to keep in mind ... I really have an absolute mandate here to maintain the one-person-speaking-at-a-time rule otherwise no one at home will know what the hell is going on.

That's my out clause. I'm going to be very firm with people because I'm no use to anyone if it's a free-for-all. I'm not having it.

So you'll be madam lash, then?

I know technically what will and won't work in a televisual environment like this. And at the end of the day my duty is to make this intelligible to the people at home and if that requires me to be really quite abrupt with people I'll have to beg their forgiveness afterwards.

* Anita McNaught was one of the brightest stars of New Zealand news presenting before she left for Britain seven years ago to work for BBC World.

These days, she splits her time between the Beeb and freelancing, including for TV2's satire, Eating Media Lunch.

She is briefly back in New Zealand to front tonight's debate on race relations, State Of The Nation.