On the Tiles: Investigative series on catchphrases politicians use in interviews

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and National leader Christopher Luxon. Photo / NZ Herald

“Coalition of chaos”, “bread and butter”, “if I may” - all politicians have phrases they like to deploy in interviews and media appearances to try and sway the public to their cause, or take control of the interview.

Now a new series from RNZ has taken a deep dive into the phrases and words used the most by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, National Party leader Christopher Luxon, and former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern when they are being grilled by the media.

The Interviews, from Guyon Espiner and Farah Hancock, looked at 28 hours worth of interviews over nine months from the three leaders to see what popped up the most, how often the different politicians were interrupted by their interviewer, and the positivity of their talking points.

Speaking to Thomas Coughlan on the Herald’s politics podcast, On the Tiles, Espiner said part of the inspiration was how some phrases were able to resonate with members of the public.

“People would say, ‘oh, John Key, he always used to say at the end of the day’, and ‘oh, Jacinda always says, if I may, if she’s interrupted’, and people will recognise these things, and they’ve got incredibly good minds at absorbing phrases that are used. So what we wanted to do was to quantify that, nail it down and actually get some statistical underpinning to back up that sort of anecdotal experience.”

Espiner, who used to host RNZ’s Morning Report, said if he interrupted Ardern, there would be comments referring to him as a misogynist.

“Now we know for a fact that the interviewee gets 71 per cent of the interview roughly, and the interviewer has roughly 29 per cent, and we found that that was pretty consistent across politicians of red and blue stripes and most interviewers.”

RNZ senior investigative reporter Guyon Espiner worked with Farah Hancox on the series. Photo / Supplied

Hancock said the data shows some of the phrases politicians try out and then drop if they fail to catch on - and the ones that become popular.

“‘Tidal wave of cash’ was one that Christopher Luxon Luxon tried to use and he used it a few times, but there was virtually no pickup and that one got dropped and then a few weeks later it was ‘addicted to spending’. I did some searches on Google to see how many news stories had that as a headline, so that got a bit more pickup and he revived it again several months later. There were also press releases which used it, so you can kind of see them grabbing this term, using it in press releases and interviews, and then it getting picked up by the media.”

Listen to the full episode of On the Tiles here for more on what the data shows about political interviews.

On the Tiles is available on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available on Fridays.