Here Is My Request

John McLean
Citizen typist. Enthusiastic amateur.

“Pilot of the Airwaves” is a 1979 single by English singer-songwriter Charlie Dore. The song, which reached #13 on the US Billboard Hot 100, was written from the perspective of a woman who listens to a late-night DJ. The song conveys her emotional connection to the DJ and highlights the intimacy and connection that mainstream radio used to provide.

Charlie Dore herself is a hard-working woman who continues to put out songs. But Dore has been much more than a singer-songwriter. Her multi-faceted career has included acting in film and television, radio, comedy-improvisation, and musical composition for films and TV.

Emotional connection to radio and TV hosts has waned in New Zealand. And the hosts themselves are now mostly lazy, entitled and generally useless. The craft and hard graft is rapidly vanishing.

Speaking of which, John Campbell is scheduled to start as co-host of Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report programme on 13 April, replacing Corin Dann and joining Ingrid Hipkiss. Campbell has done nothing since his amorphous role as TVNZ’s “Chief Correspondent” ended before the end of 2025. I’ve covered John Campbell in previous Substacks:

LAST BASTIONS OF WOKEJohn McLean 28 December 2025

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My pick is that, if Marvellous even bothers to start at Radio New Zealand, his term co-hosting will be short. For one very good reason. Co-hosting Morning Report requires a co-host to at least get up early and do some preparation, and Marvellous is chronically lazy. Campbell has been unemployable in the private sector since 2018 when he joined state-owned TVNZ. The contrasts between the likes of Campbell and Charlie Dore couldn’t be starker. And Marvellous is not alone.

Take the indolent Patrick Gower. Paddy is currently languishing in some ill-defined “presenter” role at tanking media outlet Stuff, with occasional but lucrative hosting roles at Red Radio RNZ.

Gower’s latest attention-seeking attempt at projecting as a serious person, worthy of respect, came on 24 February. In one of Stuff’s Quarantine Nation series of podcasts, Gower performatively pretended to apologise for his appalling “journalism” as a devout propagandist for the Labour Government’s draconian Covid lockdown and vaccination mandates. As we know, Gower steadfastly abused his positions and public profile to publicly vilify and defame anyone who didn’t subscribe to the Covidoxy. You can hear Gower’s “apology” here.

Another pseudo-journalist sucking on the taxpayer’s tit is Tova O’Brien. Tova has now surfaced on Red TVNZ’s Breakfast show. TVNZ is where Tova will die – figuratively speaking. She’s unemployable in private enterprise media because, as with Gower, she’s an ideologically biased loafer.

How can New Zealand cure itself of TVNZ? There are two ways. Either NZ should sell TVNZ, at any price, or it should demand that TVNZ start paying an annual dividend of at least, say, $10 million. Such a dividend would stop TVNZ continuing to be a slush fund repository for media has-beens and never weres.

Now I’m not the world’s most passionately industrious guy. But in between working as a lawyer four days a week and enjoying plenty of rest and recreation, I manage – on my lonesome – to put out at least one Substack a week. The trouble with the likes of Marvellous Campbell, Gower and Tova is that, while professing to be hardworking professions, they in fact always seek the paths of least (but politically partisan) resistance, easy money and free s**t. I’ve written on this sad, emergent trait previously.

FREE SH*T JUNKIESJohn McLean 11 May 2025

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On 31 March 2026, Ingrid Hipkiss conducted Radio New Zealand’s weekly interview with Labour leader Chris Hipkins. On that date, the question on lots of lips was why Hips hadn’t publicized the medical advice he’d received, back in March 2022, that mandating double Covid vaxing of healthy young New Zealanders risks damaging their hearts. You can hear the interview here.

Weekly interview with opposition leader, Chris Hipkins | RNZ

The interview makes hens’ teeth seem common. It’s an astonishingly rare example of a Radio New Zealand host asking one of their ideological allies tough questions. But the real mystery is not Hipkins’ lies, deflections and obfuscations when asked about him and his government deliberately hiding the risks of Covid vaccinations for young people. Because Hipkins is a compulsive liar, obfuscator and deflector. As the hackneyed saying goes, you can tell when Hipkins is lying: his lips are moving.

The real mystery is why the departed Labour government, including Hipkins, hid those risks to New Zealand youths. Was it simply a function of Labour’s Jab Baby Jab addiction? Or something else? Your guess is as good as mine.

What we do know for sure is that, if New Zealand suffers a Labour-led government after the upcoming general election, Ingrid Hipkiss won’t last long at Radio New Zealand if she continues to ask Labour leaders hard questions. Willie Jackson will terminate her.

Snoozetalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan did well on 1 April when she interviewed National Party Minister for Media and Communications Paul Goldsmith. Heather interrogated April Fool’s Goldsmith on what he proposes to do about the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s unlawful assertion of jurisdiction over the Platform, an internet-based independent media channel. Goldsmith bizarrely tried to lay the blame on NZ First leader Winston Peters. You can hear an abridged version of the interview here.

My request to New Zealand’s Pilots of the (lamestream) Airwaves is this – interrogate the powerful, without fear or favour, spin or bias, and cut the Fraudcasting. That way, you might just survive.

This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.