They'd like to keep us in dark

DEMOCRATIC LIGHT: Cantabrians know that Campbell has helped keep the focus on their continued plight. PHOTO/FILE

RECENTLY, I signed a petition in support of keeping John Campbell on the air.

The Prime Minister, it seems, would not be upset if the Campbell Live programme disappeared. Mr Key was all too happy to appear on it before the election in a series of events designed to humanise the major political candidates by showing them at their homes carrying on such normal tasks as frying eggs.

That feel-good Hallmark card production suited the purposes of Mr Key just fine. It is some of the serious capabilities of the programme that Key finds expendable.

John Key has never seemed very keen on government accountability. Many politicians would like to believe that the only job for the citizen of a democracy is to vote. After that the citizen should just go about his private business and leave the task of governance to the big fellas - the select professional bunch best suited for the task of deciding what's right for everyone else.

If that sounds astonishingly patronising - and it is - it fits the description of Mr Key's remarks in response to the projected cutting off of the Campbell Live show.

Mr Key says that the purpose of Campbell Live should be to entertain rather than to hold the government to account. Key recommends, instead, that viewers watch Seven Sharp of the government-owned channel. He believes viewers - that is you and me - would prefer "light entertainment" to programmes that comment on government or on the news.

His thinking contrasts sharply with that of the founders of the American democratic experiment. One of them was the newspaper publisher Benjamin Franklin. Another, the farmer, Thomas Jefferson, wrote: "A well-informed electorate is essential to democracy."

More and more, Mr Key prefers to keep his own accounts. The only way for a citizen to be included on his speed dial is to resemble a cetacean.

I would prefer he followed his own maxim and "if he's got nothing to hide, he'll have nothing to worry about".

Meantime, I see John Campbell performing an important function of helping us gain access to what the government is doing or what it ought to be doing. Without Campbell Live we would be in the dark in more ways than the ones that annoy the PM.

Try this thought experiment. What would the country have been like if we had not had Campbell Live during even the past year or so? Here is just a sample of things that might not have happened or not have been so successful.

- Campbell's focus on child poverty might not have caught our attention (to the government's consternation) and there would not have been the support for Kid's Can. That programme - additionally sponsored by Meridian Energy - supplies lunches for kids in 400 schools so that needy kids can learn without hunger.

-The people of Vanuatu, hit by Cyclone Pam, are grateful to the Campbell Live viewers who have given or pledged $2.2 million. Of that sum, $1 million is a matching fund pledge by Gareth Morgan.

-Cantabrians know that Campbell has helped keep the focus on their continued plight and thereby helped them to hold the government and the insurance companies to their responsibilities.

If Campbell is allowed to disappear I suspect that several politicians would not miss him - but a lot of the kids and the people he has helped would.

It is not only the folks who received the gifts who are enhanced. Those whose generosity was engaged are the better for it - and we viewers are better off for being more informed as citizens of what is going on in our country and how we can help to improve conditions.

John Key may not enjoy the spotlight unless it is flattering but he ought to be grateful to Campbell nonetheless for performing the very public service of generating private beneficence that his party says it stands for, promoting good citizenship.

Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.