Friday 11th of December 2009

Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard made a remarkable comment at yesterday’s MPS/OCR announcement which stunned me. He said that at the start of the year New Zealand was in a highly vulnerable position, facing much uncertainty and was surrounded by high risks. We were teetering on the brink. All it would have taken to bring the country down would have been one irresponsible headline in the media. Then he thanked the media at the press conference for being responsible and not triggering an economic disaster. This showed how perilous things were at the start of the year. Secondly, the same couldn’t be said in regards to how the media have handled one of the other big business stories this year. Those stories were about Hanover and the treatment of shareholder Mark Hotchin. It has been quite stunning to see what has been happening in some of these investor meetings around the country. Read this piece at the Herald to see an example. These investors are quite rightly and understandably upset and emotional. But, in my view they didn’t get to this point by themselves. Their anger has been fuelled by the media, and in particular TV3’s John Campbell and Shareholders Association chairman Bruce Sheppard. The latter in particular has been a disgrace making ill-founded and incorrect comments on prime time telly. Last night TV One’s Close Up presenter Mark Sainsbury signed off the show acknowledging comments made by Sheppard were false. The media should stop using these rent-a-quote, barrow pushing people as the voices in their stories. I will defend Hotchin to the point that at least he has had the courage to front up in person to investors. Likewise he and fellow shareholder Eric Watson have come to the party and put additional money into the company, which they didn’t have to do. We have seen first hand on Good Returns the sort of mob behaviour which has been fuelled by this sensationalist reporting. Some of the comments posted to stories have been unbelievable, highly emotional and in some cases threatening violence. We haven’t approved those comments and they won’t see the light of day. We encourage discussion, but we won’t be part of this orchestrated campaign of hate and vilification.