Kiyotra.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. A war of words has erupted between the Green Party and Enzed first this week. It comes after photos circulated on social.
Media from a private Instagram account belonging to a Green MP, Benjamin Doyle. The account, named.
Bible Belt Bussy, also featured photos of their child, including one with Bussy in the caption. The term originated as a euphemism for a man's anus and can be used colloquially by some in the gay community, but Doyle's usage of it has sparked accusations of vulgarity and being inappropriate. That was amplified by Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who said on social media that Doutley should answer for the posts and that if police want to investigate, they can.
The Green Party has said that Doyle has received death threats as a result, and have called for the Prime Minister to intervene. So does this suggest a changing battleground for politics? With family issues and social media activists taking center stage Today on the Front Page, we're joined by Victoria University of Wellington politics professor Lara agrees to discuss
a different type of political scandal. Lara, let's focus on this incident for starters, what did you think when you first saw this making the news the other day?
Well, I think initially I thought it was in the news, and then I went and did some investigating and looked at what some of the original posts have been, what different people were saying in the various blogs and various corners of the Internet. So when I did a bit of research for my self yesterday after seeing what it kind of erupted in the media, and basically it maybe really sad because what we have here is someone whose child is facing death threats.
And I really feel.
Sad about that because our politics and altaut is, you know, it's folksy, it's small, and we like to think that things are safe.
And I think a lot of the discourse was that our dern.
Faced a lot of threats, but that was an artifact of COVID, And here we have another MP saying that they're their own safety and there the safety of their fano and their child is under threats. So that's ultimately very concerning, in a very concerning direction for our politics to go in.
Yeah, focusing on the Greens, though, an argument can be made that they should have done their due diligence in preparing a first time MP for the spotlight right, especially considering the issues they had with MP's last year. Should someone in the comms team have flagged this kind of thing earlier.
It's a really.
Awkward thing, isn't it, Because ultimately, you know, MPs do have a level of free speed, and everyone does have a history. But on the other hand, we know that politics is rough and humble. People do dig into people's past, and we've also seen internationally that that's quite a norm that people dig into people's past. There's let's been less so in New Zealand unless of course someone's committed a crime, and a lot of journalists have found bits and pieces
like that in the past. Ultimately, yes, there is an argument. We've seen Medline, Chapman and the spinoff kind of make the argument the party perhaps should have protected Benjamin Doyle a little bit more. It's one of those things that's
hard to say because the other thing. On the other hand, political parties do have limited resources, so it's a bit I think people will have their opinions on this one, and will have their opinions on what they would do if they were going for sort of public office or going for a public position as well.
I think that the discourse generally.
For most people who's going to the point that we should google ourselves and figure out what's online about us at any given moment. I'm alone for an MP, so I think people will have opinions as to we're having one's private Instagram up is something that they should or shouldn't have done. Ultimately, yeah, there's going to just be mixed opinions on it.
But I mean this again.
Starts to go back to that freedom of speech debate as well as at what point is something distasteful to the mainstream versus harmful in any way. So I think that this is kind of playing out, but more like.
The left wing version of that.
I guess we're used to seeing it more be on the right where someone said something maybe anti vax or said something that's been concerning from a different lens.
Yeah, I mean other MP's have had the media troll through their social medias in the past and bring up, you know, old tweets, etc. Do you think it's fair game now given that social media is such an integral part of our lives.
Is this incident any different from the rest?
Yeah, well, I remember we saw Ardurn's old tweets surface at one point where she'd made comments I think it was about Boris Johnson and that was kind of brought up in that context. She was I think prime minister, so a bit of a different context of being a backbench MP. I think generally we've also seen that for candidates as well, for different I think was Act Party candidates that people had gone back through and found bits and pieces of their opinions on the record going back
a few years. So I think that this is something that people can expect. Generally, there's a broader conversationist whether that's fair or should be fair game. I think there's going to be a generational shift there as well. So for people who are growing up now all they've known is the Internet, every bump in the road, every kind of ideological turn, will soon be quite well documented.
And in New Zealand we don't have that kind of right to forget.
In the way that some of the European data protection laws do, so I think we can expect to see a lot more of this and a lot more characterization of oh is this appropriate?
Is that appropriate?
But I think ultimately, I think the decades to come probably that Gen Alpha gen z is probably will care a lot less than what is playing out now, which is definitely a bit more generational differences.
Oh look, this is identity politics. That it's worse. It's virtue sitting it. It's worse. All I'm asking you is ask him to explain his posts. That's all.
Well, if you haven't seen those phraseology or the photographs and ask what they're about. And it's beyond me because at the moment we're passing hundred sixty four thousand on our post who want to have the same answers are manning them from the rainbow groups.
So to speak. Did I say there are thousands.
Of them from the rainbow groups. So it's not an anti rambo thing. It's a straight out question that you've asked countless members of parliament about their posts. You said, those members of parliament, what does your post mean? And I'm asking you how comes seventy four hours later you haven't asked the question.
Looking at New Zealand, first, what do you make of Winston Peters getting involved in this debate and refusing to down when is being challenged.
He seems pretty determined to take a stand on this one.
Fundamentally, in New Zealand, first they need to get to the five percent party vote threshold. And so now we're sitting in about a year and a half out from the election, they need to start thinking about how do they get to that five percent. New Zealand Attitudes and Value study data and various other data sources show that two to three percent of voters are loyal to them, so they normally have to find that couple of percent
from elsewhere. And I think a lot of us have been discussing where will where will they find that vote and make sure that they do now that five percent threshold that they need one of the kind of rhetorical strategies they've definitely gone down as they woke the importing, the cultural wars, they woke anti woke the DEI. We've seen a lot of kind of discussion about diversity and
inclusion initiatives and the public service coming from New Zealand. First, this does seem to be the route that they're going down. The whole PC gone mad was the kind of version of it. Twenty years ago, and a non binary Takatapui MP in the Greens does represent lot of that what they would call the woke sort of movement. Others would just call social justice or inclusion or representation your demographic
representation of communities in Altauto and New Zealand. So they've really, i think used Benjamin Doyle's Instagram posts as a lightning rod of thoughts for this and to kind of bring together sort of various interests on the Internet to try to really target a non binary MP.
So those are the dynamics that are playing out.
We've also seen Peter's refuse to use Benjamin Doyle's they then pronouns instead using Heim pronouns for them. That's another thing that we've seen internationally as well, when people are engaging in that culture wars type thing and the inclusion or exclusion of non binary people. So that's another kind
of strategy that we see around the world. So ultimately New Zealand first are really importing a lot of culture wars rhetoric, a lot of anti woke DEI rhetoric that we're seeing a lot in the States and in Canada.
Yeah, and I guess it's no we're under Noah usion where that's come from?
Right? I saw Shane Jones wearing a New Zealand Make New Zealand Great Again cap on Twitter or x rather just recently in terms of I guess the Benjamin Doyle situation, I found it interesting Madame and Davidson. In the press conference that the Greens held, she mentioned that this comes directly from the same playbook as the situations with say Destiny Church and the drag storytime events being dismantled by them.
That's the playbook that we're talking about. Hey, that's the kind of the rhetoric and the train that New Zealand First is on, and that's where they're going to try and seek that one in two percent.
Yeah, and if we see like where a lot of the sort of Benjamin Doyle type opinion pieces at the moment are from Family First, which we know kind of conservative lobby group. So I think that this is one of those there First is right cultural issues at the moment. But ultimately I think what it comes down to is there a lot of New Zealanders in the middle. There are a lot of New Zealanders that would be looking at all of this and going yuch or getting put
off politics and all of our elections. What they will come down to is who can form a coalition and who can win over those middle voters. So one of the things I'm now watching, of course knowing New Zealand versus is obviously trying to drum up votes the political parties.
That's what they do. You know, the Greens are doing the same.
I'm looking at Labor and National and that fight for the middle, that fight for that you know five to ten percent of voters that we know that float between parties. Haven't heard anything yet from Labor on this. Of course
saw Luxon's comments yesterday around inappropriate language. But these kind of issues when they really blow up in the next year and a half, because we're still a while away from the election, but when all of these issues blow up, I think, really watch to see what Labor and National do because they have to do this dance where they don't offend or they don't kind of distance themselves from their coalition or potential coalition partner too much, yet they
still that kind of person in the center can still find them appealing.
So that's the dance that both.
Labor and National are going to have this next year and a half.
This is the beginning of actor.
I think that we can see that pretty crystally clear. The point that I would really like for us all to return to right now is that we have a member of Parliament that has been subjected to immense abuse and real will death threats which have also incorporated their child and their pharmo. And the flow and effects of all of this, including as a result of the fanning of the flames from Destiny's Church and the Deputy Prime Minister, is that the Rainbow community is now squealy within the target.
Green's co leader Chloe Swarbrick said that this is a type of dirty politics in the press conference the other day addressing the situation.
Would you agree with that?
I think that there are a lot of questions to be asked around what is fair game when someone is running for office and when someone is an MP. I think that digging back through someone's personal instagram will probably make off a lot of people put them off politics. I mean, this is kind of that dirty politics that more personal, that more like identity base, that more language based, and trawling back through We haven't seen so much of
that in New Zealand politics. We haven't really seen that many sort of blowups of just kind of using a meme as much. So I think that it is that kind of quite yeah, that kind of playbook politics, that kind of what can we dredge up, how can we take hold of the media cycle all of that kind of politics and really negative, negative campaigning, and the kind of politics that risks the participation of different communities and
making ultimately the parliament more representative. So that really is it is a bit of a sort of politics as a strategy, kind of quite that kind of more nastier side of politics, rather than presenting, say a positive message forward or really drilling down on any policy issue that most people want solved.
Well, Winston Peters and it comes as no surprise to anyone when I say this has always had a bit of a contentious relationship with the media, and a press conference that he held on Monday, he kept saying that he wasn't making accusations or anything.
He just wanted the media to ask questions.
Now, is he working from the same old playbook here or is he evolving to play.
Into this new kind of social landscape.
Well, look, this has really grasped a lot of people's attention, and of course, like I don't think we would be expecting to necessarily be analyzing queer community slang in such a detail, and he hears some of those words on the news was interesting. So definitely Peter's seen an opportunity to grasp that media spotlight and to really sort of beat the drum for the kind of broader anti WOP movement that Peter's and that are trying to grab their votes to get them to turn out to vote next
time around. So it really has been a bit of dirty politics, a bit of like pulling on someone's social media comments, which again just feels ridiculous. There's also that very uncomfortable kind of tension here, and it goes back to queer politics in the nineteen eighties and earlier around the discussion of homosexual law reform, where Peters is in some way kind of leaving the door open or not
directly accusing Benjamin Doyle of pedophilia. But that is what a lot of people online are saying, which is disgusting and one of those things that I just really feel for Benjamin Doyle and their Farno at the moment. To
be accused of that is quite horrible. But for Peter's it's really treading that line between doing something that would amount to something along the lines of defamation or could potentially lead to legal action and pointing to these online rumors where someone's going to look them up and see
what the materials say. So Peters is dancing a dancer to make sure that he doesn't say anything that he could be liable or you know that it could turn into a long, long running thing, but still kind of intimating something quite disgusting and something that's quite strange to take a step back from and go, is the deputy Prime Minister or previous deputy Prime minister accusing another MP.
Of being a pedophile.
It's a weird time, and it's that dance between traditional media and sending people online to go to all sorts of corners of the internet. Because again it's one of those things if you go and start to look up the materials on this next thing, you know you're down
down in various rabbit holes. So, yeah, a lot of strange tensions here, and yeah, broadly I think makes me feel uncomfortable and would make a lot of queer communities feel uncomfortable too, with the kind of associations that Peters is intimating.
Look, I thought the language was really inappropriate. I think the reality is that the scrutiny and the reality of political life, our social media language is scrutinized by the media. It's also scrutinized by fellow politicians and also the public. And but ultimately that's a case for the Green's leadership to deal with.
So this story was circulating on social media over the weekend, but the media didn't report it until the Greens released a statement. Now, The Ends At Herald's Audrey Young wrote about this decision and she said, and I quote those keyboard warriors should know that just because mainstream news outlets have not published a story, it does not mean that they have not asked questions or have been working on it.
Sometimes decisions not to cover stories are made not to protect the subject of the story or to protect a political party, but because of journalistic ethic.
Now, this is one of those stories.
That feels like a lose lose, Right, You're going to piss off sections of the population no matter how you report on it. Do cases like this and the amplification of accusations of bias from social media put media in a more difficult position.
Well, with social media, of course, people can say anything, people can be anonymous, people can put their name on it and still say anything.
More.
Because you've got that distance from a person, you can go down all sorts of strange theoretical routes and not really have proof of things. And of course we know with the sort of social media culture, people see a line here or there and then they believe one thing or the other. With the journalistic effects to some degree, you know, we've seen a lot of strange rumors. I imagine some of them are true. Some of them are faults around the place about politicians really heading back more
than one hundred years. You know, there are rumors of someone doing this, someone doing that, and bits and pieces and all, there's this gossip and this and that, or there's a photo or you know, this is not new, But what is new is the ability for people to be able to access a lot of different opinions and bits and pieces that don't have to be backed by any kind of rigor any kind of methodological reggor or ethics.
And that is concerning because things can take hold and we see them take hold as well anecdotally of course around campaigns. Where this is really concerning and we need to be really careful about and think about in our democracy is around things like deep fakes, things like AI and the ability to just create completely false emerge or video of someone like Luxen and really turn it into something that's being spread great a scandal really and have
that be spread among members of public. So that's I think something that we've a lot of researchers overseas are quite concerned about, and I imagine that that's something that will start to happen in our elections as well, where bits and pieces of things attacking out of context and manipulated AI is involved, you know, paid ads and bits and pieces could be involved as well, and that's a real future for concern, especially as we're seeing surveys and
various sort of trust barometer show decreasing trust and leads and trust in the media. So it's something that we kind of should be on the lookout for the twenty twenty six election and elections heading forward. Is a possibility that you then now have social media take a hold, you have AI and other technologies intersecting with that, and that turns into a really negative politics and politics to not be as safe as a place as it was, so going back to the nineteen seventies, you know.
And you've led me really nicely into my last question, Lara. We are close to eighteen months out from next year's election. Do you think the fact that we're already having this type of debate already suggests we could be in for a difficult campaign.
I suspect that we will be in for a difficult campaign, yes, because I mean, if you look at what's happened in a lot of other countries. I mean, we'll be watching the Australian and Canadian elections, of course, we've got them coming up in the next month or so. But I suspect that we will be in for a bit of a dirty campaign. And again that role of social media, role of the internet really starting to rear its head in New Zealand. I guess we'll see what happens across
the ditch in Australia and Canada and their campaigns. But a lot of people are concerned about the use of technology and use of ALI more broadly, lelone in New Zealand, where we do have a range of minority party voices, that is one of the beauties of our MMP system
is that we've got this diverse speech. But what I would hope is that you know, freedom of speech is equally protected across the political spectrum, and yeah, it doesn't get too nasty, and we don't see political violence or threats of violence which are just not ideal for anything, and they don't take anything forward.
Thanks for joining us, Lara Shelda.
Thank you.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page.
You can read more.
About today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sells and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.