Let's get ready to ramble

They're among our most controversial presenters, but Paul Henry and Michael Laws remain unrepentant about their on-air behaviour.

Henry's antics on TV One's Breakfast have prompted 14 complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Authority in his four years on the show - 10 in the past 18 months.

None have been upheld, but that could change when the authority rules next month on "Moustachegate" - the March incident when Henry mocked a Greenpeace spokeswoman's facial hair.

Laws has had fewer complaints during his career, but this week labelled the authority's decision to uphold criticism of his comments about two senior firefighters a "joke".

The complaint, from the New Zealand Fire Service, related to comments Laws made on his RadioLive show in January.

He condemned the service's national commander and a colleague for comments they made after a Mangere house fire in which four children died.

Laws accused the men of using "dead little Polynesian kiddies as a marketing tool" and described them as "idiots", "morons", "loathsome" and "cocks". The authority found Laws breached the standard of fairness and said his comments amounted to "sustained personal abuse".

It ordered RadioLive to broadcast an approved statement summarising its decision during Laws' show.

RadioLive programming chief Mitch Harris said the statement would be broadcast on Wednesday but the station didn't necessarily agree with the authority's decision.

Laws said the decision was an example of the authority stifling freedom of speech. He said defamation laws offered safeguard enough and the authority was wrong to apply news reporting standards to talkback.

"The BSA should be disbanded. There is no need for it.

"My job's not to offer balance, it's to offer strong opinion. I never, ever go too far. I'm not a namby-pamby left-wing liberal commie journalist."

The authority has considered three other complaints about Laws' talkback show since 2004, upholding one relating to comments about the Exclusive Brethren.

It rejected a complaint from then-children's commissioner Cindy Kiro and another about Laws' description of the Tongan King as a "brown slug" after his death in 2006.

The authority has rejected two other complaints about Laws. One was about his language on an episode of TV One's Intrepid Journeys, and the other about comments made while a guest on Larry Williams' NewstalkZB show in 2001.

Henry has triggered a catalogue of complaints since the start of 2008.

They include accusations of bias in an interview with John Key, describing people with obsessive compulsive disorder as "crazy freaks" and a suggestion that obese children be taken away from their parents and put in car compactors.

None were upheld.

Pippa Wetzell was responsible for the only complaint against Breakfast upheld by the authority for an interview this year with Garth McVicar of the Sensible Sentencing Trust found to have breached the standard of balance.

Henry didn't know why complaints against him were on the up but said it didn't bother him. "I think it's an indication that I say what I think and in television that is not overly common." He thought there were "a lot of people that don't have much of a sense of humour" and "a large number of people who have nothing better to do than complain".

His comments about Greenpeace spokeswoman Stephanie Mills' facial hair in March caused the most controversy.

"That was a moustache on a lady," he said after concluding his interview with Mills, before asking: "How hard is it to wax?"

TVNZ had about 30 complaints and wrote back apologising to each complainant.

Henry said he phoned Mills to apologise but declined to elaborate. He said he had "absolutely not" changed his on-air behaviour as a result.

TVNZ head of news Anthony Flannery didn't have "any concerns whatsoever" about the number of authority complaints about Henry.

"He is a provocative and edgy broadcaster. That's part of his talent and that style of broadcasting almost automatically attracts complaints."

Asked if Laws and Henry were the most complained-about men in broadcasting, authority chief executive Dominic Sheehan said: "I suspect Paul Holmes may, over the course of his long career, have been complained about more."

He was unsurprised by the number of complaints about Laws and Henry and was unfazed by Laws' criticism of the latest decision.

"It underscores one of the main tenets of the system - freedom of speech. Michael Laws is free to say that he thinks the decision is a joke. What he's not free to do is breach broadcasting standards, which is what the BSA found he did."