The New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority may be about to learn that mission creep never ends well. Its provisional decision to claim jurisdiction over Sean Plunket’s online entity The Platform has far-reaching implications.

Its interlocutory decision was marked ‘Not for publication’: That was as naïve as thinking that old warhorse Plunket would meekly accept its finding that the BSA had jurisdiction over online broadcasts. The decision inevitably was published, and there were predictable reactions from the Platform’s owner and from the leaders of the two coalition partners with an inordinate influence on the actions of the present government.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters posted on social media, saying “Why does the Broadcasting Standards Authority think they can make up their own rules in secret meetings to act like some Soviet era Stasi.” ACT MP Todd Stephenson – no doubt acting on instructions from party leader David Seymour – complained to Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith and intimated that ACT is considering a private member’s bill seeking the BSA’s abolition. Goldsmith batted the complaint away as an operational matter.

Both coalition parties see the BSA’s decision as mission creep and, by implication, an attempt to do something that is the prerogative of Parliament. It is for a majority of the House to determine the jurisdiction of its statutory regulators through legislation, not the body empowered by that legislation. Continue reading “BSA’s mission creep could prove to be its nemesis” →