The Black page
A nobel calling
by Joanne Black
It’s hard to believe Barack Obama qualified for a peace prize after only 12 days in office.
The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to United States President Barack Obama has single-handedly devalued the mana of both the prize and the man, which is no mean feat, given the status of both. The decision has devalued the Nobel Prize because when nominations closed Obama had been President for only 12 days and was a long way from proving he could make good on his campaign rhetoric. It has devalued Obama because he should have pointed that out to the Nobel committee. Admittedly, turning down a Nobel Prize is a large ask for anyone – and perhaps an impossibility for a politician. Modesty has been a trait of only a few politicians, and none whose name you could remember.
If success in politics is primarily about perception, Obama has so far been spectacularly successful. Moreover, his predecessor, George Bush, ended his presidency looking spectacularly unsuccessful, particularly to liberal European academics. None of us knows what goes on when the Nobel committee meets, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were so delighted to see an articulate, intelligent and broad-minded President that they wanted to pin a medal on him at the first opportunity. It didn’t really matter that all Obama had achieved was to get elected. But that should not be grounds for winning such a prestigious prize. New Zealander Ernest Rutherford, for example, didn’t win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for giving the world hope that perhaps atoms could have their positive charge concentrated in a small nucleus. He actually did the business, and got a Nobel Prize for doing so.
With or without a Nobel Prize, Obama has the time, ability and opportunity to achieve great things. For other nominees, who are daily risking their lives on ventures like bringing education to girls in Afghanistan, there is little recognition, even less money and no adoring media. What a difference the Nobel Prize would have made to such a person, and how little difference it will make to Obama.
For all the years I worked in the parliamentary press gallery, my office was paid for by taxpayers, ultimately to the benefit of the two private news organisations I worked for – NZPA and the Evening Post. Any day now I, or my employers, must surely be outed in the media’s examination of taxpayer subsidies of accommodation. It doesn’t take much. The latest breathless revelation is that some MPs own their electorate office buildings, and the rent is paid by taxpayers. In addition, reportedly at least one political party – Labour – owns properties rented to its MPs for electorate offices. I can’t quite spot the scandal. Both arrangements seem eminently sensible. It is not my business if the Labour Party chooses to rent property to its MPs, any more than if it rented that property to a family of five, a tax accountant or a dry-cleaner. Equally, it makes no difference to taxpayers whether MPs rent their offices from themselves, their party, a trust or their mother-in-law. What’s important is that rentals match market valuations, no one is coerced into any arrangements, and taxpayers are getting value for their money.
In the fiasco over bidding for the free-to-air TV rights to the 2011 Rugby World Cup, the Government could not have made a better case for selling TVNZ if it had tried. No one could think that the Government was trying to make such a case, because that would imply that someone, somewhere, knew what they were doing, when it is evident that no one, anywhere, had a clue. The public mood, as much as there was time to judge it, shifted from being against Maori TV for proposing to use Te Puni Kokiri money to make a bid, to supporting Maori TV once the possibility of a rival Government-backed TVNZ-TV3 bid came up. The only grounds to object to MTV’s bid was the manner of its funding. If the Government was going to sort that out with a fistful of cash, then Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples had every reason to question why that money was going to Pakeha TV, rather than to Maori TV. The whole episode begs the question: how many state-owned TV channels does a country of four million people need? None. But if there is to be one, it should be Maori TV because it is indigenous and unique. Mind you, after all this, if you were a TV channel, would you really want the Government on your side?
