Editorial: When truth hurts, now it gets altered

Opinion

If the truth hurts, change it. Increasingly, the retro-fitting of reality seems to be acceptable in public life. Certainly, in the past week this has been a tactic for some members of Parliament, the country's dominant telecommunications companies, and a policeman on a high-profile crime case.

In the House, moves to exclude television broadcasters' cameras and replace them with an in-house system are barely disguised attempts to alter the public image of Parliament and its inhabitants. MPs have long objected to television cameras showing them as they can be: boisterous, petty, sleepy, inattentive and, for some of the time, childish.

Televised footage of these foibles is uncomfortable and embarrassing. It confirms what MPs regard as unjust public stereotypes of politicians. Both major free-to-air television companies regard the eviction of their cameras as manipulation of the images the public gets to see.

They are right. A publicly funded broadcaster is already televising happenings in the House. It might not broadcast all, or even some, of what MPs would wish, but it is not for them to dictate what side of their behaviour the public is shown. Voters deserve to see, and hear, all that passes for public policy-making in this country.

Massaging the truth is not limited to action in the chamber. In Treasury statements on the Crown financial statements, the word "surplus", which commonly stood before the ever-growing number representing Government income over spending, has disappeared from key references.

The inference: this figure, so often seized on by political opponents as evidence of a Government overtaxing the populace, will disappear from the lexicon. A new, much smaller "surplus", favoured by the Minister of Finance, will have sole use of that title.

When raw nerves are touched, the truth is at risk. The country's major telecommunications companies are lobbying the Government to change the way it tells the public about how New Zealand's mobile and broadband prices rank internationally.

Last year's OECD report ranked this country 29th of 30 countries on a value-for-money scale for cellphone use and 24th of 25 for broadband internet uptake.

Yet the telcos' response is to ask a Government agency to have the OECD include "unique" New Zealand factors in their calculations to balance "European-based commentary".

The most specious is one of mountainous terrain here, which it is claimed is unlike the flat, densely populated countries in Europe. Switzerland and much of hilly Europe might question that geographic logic, and honesty.

Thankfully, the Telecommunications Users Association sees this for what it is: "The phone companies are trying to fudge the issues and save themselves the embarrassment of reports which show them in a poor light."

Speaking two truths can extend to the police. Asked on breakfast-time radio about a Herald report that the Howick kidnap victim had been released, an officer on the case said it was "news to me and I suggest it is probably a little irresponsible".

Within hours he was telling a press conference of the police joy when "we" reunited the woman and her husband "in the early hours of the morning". That, he said, was a great day for a policeman.

And, we might add, for the age of twin truths.