A number of “broadcasting”lobby groups have been established lately whose aim is to take money from your pocket and put it in their pocket.  Most recently there is “The People’s Commission on Better Broadcasting“, (a name surely reminiscent of Soviet Russia). There is also “The Coalition for Better Broadcasting“, and “Action Station“.

These three organisations are all basically the same people, all of the same mindset, and all of the opinion that the taxpayer (that’s you reader) should be compelled by government edict to put money into their pockets so they can bring you the truth as they see it.

They want your money via government theft and this means they’re all basically communists. For example Lizzie Marvelly is a prominent member. A nice girl who got mixed up with the wrong crowd at uni and now writes screeds of childlike Cultural Marxist garbage for the NZ Herald. Various university academics are too of course, and others of the usual layabout left wing sector of our society. Action Station for example is also concerned with issues like human rights, global peace, and social justice.

These groups appear to overlook that broadcasting in NZ is already well funded by the long suffering taxpayer.

There is NZ on Air, that odious propaganda funder that would have been shut down years ago if we’d had even a remotely conservative government in power. They recently dolled out more than $16 million to various NZ broadcasters, film makers, media people and the like.

TVNZ received over $8 million. TV3 got just over $2 million. Maori TV got just under a million. Prime got just over $4 million. Various other outfits got around $250,000 and one of these included Stuff ($90,000). That’s right. Fairfax Media gets money from you to produce digitial content. The full list of grants for December last year is here.

This of course is only one such occasion of grants. All up for the year, NZ On Air dolled out around $82 million.

This is on top of the enormous subsidies broadcasters already receive in the way of public good advertising. The NZ Transport Agency for example spends about $13 million telling us not to speed. (Apparently the law doesn’t work as it should. )

Of course these numbers relate to content, and the money actually goes to those various production houses making the products. Presumably, many are members of the above mentioned lobby organisations. Its all the same industry.

Then of course there is Radio New Zealand, which not only runs as a broadcaster but also has two websites. It wants more money from you too, although it already gets around $40 million from the taxpayer. It recently launched a crowd funding site that has attracted $1763 from 43 donors since it was established in September last year.  Clearly there’s a lot of public support there.

All up, media in NZ is funded, subsidised, call it what you will to the tune of around $100 million a year or more taken from the taxpayer. Apparently that’s not good enough for these people and they want more money apparently because they believe, when there is no evidence, that current services are no good and they can do it better.

Here’s what really needs to happen.

All taxpayer funding to the private sector should be stopped first. The public sector should be moved to a subscription model and then privatised or if there are no subscribers, shut down. Movie makers and the like should go to crowd funding. There’s no need at all for the taxpayer to be compelled to underwrite this industry. And compelled they are due to lack of a real voting alternative that releases them from this robbery.

Remember when you vote this year how in eight years of government, National has refused to do anything to right this situation.