The Government must provide bridging finance so RNZ can
fix its finances without weakening our public broadcaster,
the Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi
says.
PSA National Secretary Fleur Fitzsimons says
public broadcasting matters more now than it has in a
generation.
“Commercial newsrooms have shrunk
dramatically in the past three years. RNZ is one of the few
remaining with the reach and independence to report on every
part of the country and hold the powerful to account. That
is a public good, and a healthy democracy depends on it.
Every role lost at RNZ reduces that capacity.”
RNZ
proposes to cut 58 out of a staff of about 340, following
today’s shock announcement that the broadcaster had made
an unexpected $11.8 million loss.
“RNZ’s own
statement says the loss happened because its internal
financial reporting did not reflect its true position, and
land sales were wrongly counted as revenue. That is a
failure of financial management and governance at the top of
the organisation, not of the journalists, producers and
technicians who put RNZ to air every day.
“RNZ’s
board says the cuts won’t affect its journalism or
content. It is hard to see how you reduce staff by one in
six and cut operating costs by five percent without
affecting what goes to air. RNZ should tell the public how
many of these roles are in news and
programme-making.
“The right response to a governance
failure is to fix the governance, not to cut the workforce.
Bridging finance would give RNZ time to put proper financial
oversight in place while the independent review does its
work, rather than rushing through cuts before anyone
understands what went wrong.
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“There are also fair
questions about the level of ministerial oversight RNZ has
had under Paul Goldsmith, a Minister with ten other
portfolios.
“Something has clearly gone wrong at RNZ.
We should not respond by punishing RNZ’s staff, or cutting
the public service broadcasting our democracy relies on,”
Fitzsimons says.
About PSA:
The
Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi
is Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest trade union, representing
and supporting more than 95,000 workers across central
government, state-owned enterprises, local councils, health,
and community
groups.
