Heather du Plessis-Allan: These TVNZ job losses won't be the last

First it was Newshub, now it's TVNZ.

We are still waiting on the details- staff have been told there will be 68 job losses, but the rest they’ll find out tomorrow.

The speculation in the media is that half of those job cuts will be in the newsroom. Fair Go and Sunday reportedly will be merged, Breakfast and Seven sharp are affected, as is the late bulletin.

Shortland Street will be cut down to three nights a week at some point, and the main news bulletin will reportedly be cut down to 30 minutes, but nothing is confirmed right now.

Point of Order: Flexing the state’s muscle - Māori ministers are admiring as the media are mobilised to inform the masses about Matariki

The state is flexing its muscle in the building and supermarket industries.

In the building industry the intervention can be criticised as long overdue and unlikely to do much good any time soon to remedy a crippling shortage of plasterboard.

A Ministerial taskforce has been set up to look at what more can be done to ease the shortage, including the potential for legislative or regulatory change.

In the supermarket business, the muscle-flexing has been announced in robust language – the press statement is headed Commerce Commission empowered to crackdown on covenants.

The Commerce Commission will be enabled to require supermarkets to hand over information regarding contracts, arrangements and land covenants which make it difficult for competing retailers to set up shop.

A much more troubling sign of the state flexing its muscle can be found in a statement jointly released by Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson and Māori Crown Relations Te Arawhiti Minister Kelvin Davis. Their lark is the mobilising of the media for an exercise in mass education – or is it indoctrination?

Chris Trotter: Jacinda Ardern’s Radical Reshuffle.

Kris Faafoi's departure from Parliament has left the Immigration, Justice and Broadcasting portfolios in need of new ministers.

In the case of Immigration the Prime Minister’s choice of Michael Wood to replace Faafoi is a sound one. The issues of employment, migration, and workplace relations are closely related, so entrusting the portfolios of Labour and Immigration to a single, highly capable, politician makes a lot of sense.

When it comes to the Justice and Broadcasting portfolios, however, matters are nowhere near so cut and dried. Between now and the General Election issues with considerable potential for creating serious political division are likely to test the skills of the new ministers to their limits.

Before examining those issues in more detail, however, it is important to establish what the Prime Minister has, and hasn’t, done.

Karl du Fresne: Why we should be sceptical about Kris Faafoi's grand broadcasting project

In a previous life, I served for two years as a member of the Library and Information Advisory Commission (LIAC).

You’ve never heard of it? That’s hardly surprising. Not many people have. It was established by Helen Clark’s government for the purposes of, among other things, “maintaining a strategic overview of the library and information sectors” and “providing stakeholder perspectives on issues and proposals”. Make of that what you will.

Karl du Fresne: Regime change at Radio New Zealand

There’s an “under new management” sign, figuratively speaking, outside Radio New Zealand’s head office in Wellington. Paul Thompson, former editorial chief of the Fairfax media group, recently took over as RNZ’s chief executive.

Thompson is a stranger to the public broadcasting culture from which RNZ’s bosses have traditionally been recruited. His predecessor, Peter Cavanagh, came from Australia’s state-owned ABC. The incumbent before that, Sharon Crosbie, had been a high-profile RNZ broadcaster, though she had also done time in private radio.