Newstalk ZB has an unscrupulously selective and misleading account of my blog comments and discussion with their journalist. Perhaps that's why they've not linked to this blog, despite having got the story from it.

I'm not surprised. It leaves them more free to make up the story.  But it is a good illustration of why our elected politicians must be so mealy-mouthed.

My job does not depend on whether media will  quote selectively to create claims and controversy where there was none, and to ignore the real points.  No MP would dare go into the territory I went into for that reason.

Here is a reaction typical of what our leaders now have to fear. The reaction is not unreasonable, given the misleading broadcast she would have heard.

"There was not much of your interview played on Newstalk ZB. 

Not surprising.

"Your comments were highly offensive.  But not only this, they were ignorant and ill-informed.

Sufficient to say that many, many people are living in (literally) frightening houses and face a void of information, support and help". 

Are you up for a house swap?"

 And my response:

I have no doubt that many people are living in frightening houses. I'm sure that more of the EQC effort should be for such people. But I strongly suspect that my informants are right, that one of the best ways to deliver that would be to cut out having to deal with the relatively trivial losses. That is the normal principle that makes insurance affordable. The higher the deductible the lower the premium, in a win/win trade-off, because the administrative cost of dealing with small claims can be the same as for dealing with big ones.

I can't be a persuasive judge on whether I'm ignorant and ill-informed since I was reporting comments I heard from a range of Christchurch people. As they were commenting on their own direct experience they seemed to me to be valid. Of course they might not be representative, but the thing that interested me most was the journalist comment that no one was willing to explore such issues publicly.

 There is a problem for our democracy when everyone in authority is too scared of being accused of lack of compassion. There is no robust and useful debate if one side can be silenced with "how about a house swap" (and other variants of the claim- "you can't speak unless you have shared our suffering").

That kind of reasoning results in one handed clapping on a whole range of issues for New Zealand. We have an entire Parliament of people bidding for votes with money they will then borrow from countries poorer than us. Almost no one dares argue for sensible things – like cutting the cost of ACC by allowing people lower premiums in return for carrying minor claims or the first week of wages themselves, or higher national super in return for a later start date, or better benefits in return for more rigorous work search conditions etc etc. 

Update:  Friday, 4 February:  CTV in Canterbury have done a pretty balanced item on this: 

http://www.ctv.co.nz/videopop.php?vid=1206506455&url=http://www.ctv.co.nz