Was Max Ritchie’s speech the dumbest in radio history? (The Panel, RNZ National, Monday 7 December 2015)

7 December 2015 at 5:33 pm

“Safeguarded eavesdropping by the state is a price we might have to pay for our safety.”—was Max Ritchie’s speech the dumbest in radio history? 
The Panel, RNZ National, Monday 7 December 2015
Jim Mora, Ali Jones, Max Ritchie

Just before the 4:30 news, host Jim Mora called for opinions about the SAFE advertisement that appeared in the Guardian yesterday. [1] Predictably, both Ali Jones and Max Ritchie reiterated the Federated Farmers/Fonterra corporate line and upbraided Hans Kriek for not talking enough to farmers and for (according to Ritchie) pushing his vegetarian lifestyle on everyone else. Ritchie should have left his comments at that, but, foolishly, he then went on to quote one of the less respected, crazier people to have appeared on the Panel….

MAX RITCHIE: I heard on the radio earlier that professor of agriculture that frequently comes on your program, I forget what her name is.

JIM MORA: Jacqueline Rowarth.

MAX RITCHIE: That’s the one. Well, she said that our animal welfare standards are the best in the world.

Ritchie should have carried out due diligence. If he had, he would have quoted someone better than Jacqueline Rowarth, who has established herself alongside such notorious characters as Dov Bing, Ron Smith and Willem de Lange as one of the loopier academics to periodically slither out from under the rock of Waikato University. Jacqueline Rowarth blundered into our line of sight last year, when she came on to assure the Panel that there is no such thing as poverty in New Zealand, that it’s all in the minds of the poor, who actually don’t exist anyway, and that media reports of children without shoes were rubbish: it was nothing more than kids who just didn’t want to wear shoes. [2]

Endorsing a loopy provincial academic was bad enough, but there was worse to come from Max Ritchie. He announced grandly that his Soapbox piece after the news would be about “freedom”. In fact it turned out to be nothing more than a windy homily about how he is perfectly happy to prostrate himself to the state, which he trusts absolutely to do the right thing: “Safeguarded eavesdropping by the state is a price we might have to pay for our safety,” he intoned. He then went on, speaking as solemnly and as slowly as he could, to state that New Zealand doesn’t have a culture of heavy-handed persecution by the state, and that we could be perfectly confident if we did as he suggested, and surrendered all our rights to politicians and bureaucrats.

After he finished speaking, there was a pause. Jim Mora does have a tendency to make a glib wisecrack after one of his guests makes such a portentous statement, but this time he was obviously flabbergasted, and said nothing at all in response. Neither did Ali Jones. It was like they were hoping that what had just been said—in essence, “I am happy to be a slave, and so should all of us be happy to be slaves”—was a horrible phantasm, and would vanish into the ether if they just stayed silent.

Interestingly, five minutes after expressing his confidence in the benevolence of the state, Ritchie indulged in a lengthy whinge about being stopped by the police for speeding on Orakei Road on January 4th this year. “Utterly RIDICULOUS,” he growled, “I am not at ALL convinced that this is an appropriate way of policing!”

Perhaps Max Ritchie would not enjoy his voluntary enslavement as much as he thinks he would.

[1] http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/74783076/new-zealand-dairy-cruelty-claims-target-uk-consumer-in-guardian-ad-campaign
[2] http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-23092014/#comment-895173

• Macro30.1

  7 December 2015 at 9:36 pm

  Yep! Whenever I hear Jacqueline Rowarth on air – I switch off – Why is she always the go to gal whenever they want some input on rural matters? Ok that’s her job – but surely there are others less loopy? She posts on Pundit too from time to time 
  You do a great job for us M, I don’t know how you do it! 
• Chooky30.2

  7 December 2015 at 10:02 pm

  +100 Morrissey…for stripping down what they say and critically examining it

  I also think Prof Rowarth is loopy…and a mouth piece for interests which are not necessarily farmers’

  ….”Waikato University agribusiness professor Jacqueline Rowarth questioned whether New Zealand should be doing business with Russia.

  “We need to be looking carefully at the reasons others have stopped trading with Russia,” she said.

  “We stood up against the Springboks in 1981 because we didn’t like the way people were being treated.”

  Rowarth said New Zealand could experience “short-term gain, long-term pain” from continuing to send dairy products and other food to Russia.

  “There could be repercussions for other trade if we just say we’ll keep selling you our products,” she said..”..

  http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/10363174/Russia-wants-our-cheese-but-at-what-cost
•