Sacked minister Melissa Lee concedes she might’ve been “a little slow” to act when hundreds of journalism jobs were axed in a matter of weeks while she held the Government’s media portfolio.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon sacked Lee from her responsibilities in the portfolio last week, saying that the challenges in the sector required more senior ministerial oversight.
The move left Lee, one of the National caucus’ most tenured MPs, outside of the Cabinet room. She was replaced in the media role by Paul Goldsmith.
At the time, Luxon said Lee “played back” her disappointment to him about the move. Speaking to media today, she said the changes in the media happened “really, really too fast”.
In the wake of Newshub’s closure and show cuts at TVNZ, the minister had been put under pressure to come up with a plan to help keep journalism sustainable.
However, she had struggled to get a paper to Cabinet.
After her sacking from the media role, Lee said today: “I’m focused on actually delivering for the portfolios that I have responsibilities for.”
“I think what happened was that media was facing very difficult times, very quickly, and it’s actually come about quite suddenly.
“Although we were thinking that, actually there needs to be some changes. It just came about really, really too fast.
“Things in government actually take time and perhaps I was a little slow, but what I can say is I tried my very best, and this decision has been made, and I respect the Prime Minister’s decision.”
On Wednesday, Luxon said Lee had been cut out of Cabinet as her reduced workload “doesn’t warrant being” around the table. He told media: “That doesn’t preclude Melissa from making it back into Cabinet at some future point either, frankly.”
Luxon said: “I want to make sure I’ve got the right people on the right assignment.”
“It’s disappointing, certainly for Melissa, I get that and I understand that, and she played that back to me, and I fully understand it’s a tough day in that regard.”
Lee said today that “maybe one day” she would want to become media minister again.
Asked about her remarks, Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the challenges faced by the media this year had not been new to the sector.
“She clearly wasn’t paying attention for the last four or five years,” he said.
“The trends in the media that we’re seeing kind of come to a head now, have been evident for a very long time.”
The former prime minister was challenged as to why his government hadn’t done more.
“We did do some things about it. We obviously had the debate about the RNZ-TVNZ merger, which we did not go ahead with, whether you agree with that or not. I wasn’t convinced that was the right answer, but there was a lot of work that went into that.
“We had the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, which is currently before the House, which was also a product of that work.”
After he became prime minister last year, Hipkins announced he would cancel plans to merge TVNZ and RNZ, during his drive to focus on “core bread and butter issues”.