BBC Hardtalk’s Stephen Sakur roasted John Key over New Zealand’s 100% Pure brand image during a recent televised interview.
Most of us know that NZ 100% Pure is only an advertising slogan and that it has been dropped from the country’s marketing in favour of the 100% Pure You brand, but it is interesting nevertheless to watch the PM putting on his Minister of Tourism Hat and trying to defend the indefensible and outdated, much to Sackur’s amusement.
Watch an excerpt from the interview on the BBC’s website here and read what Kiwis think about it on Google groups here
But it is worth watching the full interview, which has been posted on YouTube today by aidanleenz.
Sackur called Key “the most inexperienced PM in New Zealand’s history ” who’d "never run a city let alone a ministerial department” and asked why Key was telling the country's young people to stay and make New Zealand great when he himself made his fortune working in London.
There is an absolute wealth of data demonstrating that New Zealand is not 100% Pure.
Key’s attempt to dismiss data as the ‘opinion’ of one highly regarded NZ academic, Mike Joy, comes across as avoiding the issue for the sake of the cameras, instead of seizing the opportunity to admit there is a problem that his government is taking very seriously.
John Key was then roasted in Parliament over the interview, when he admitted he “couldn’t remember” what he said on BBC Hardtalk because he hadn’t watched it yet and that “one needs to balance the environment with the economy“.
But if NZ is 100% Pure doesn’t that mean the environment has to take priority 100%?
“NZ 50/50 Pure as long as the economy doesn’t suffer and the farmers are happy” doesn’t have the same nation branding advertising pull does it.
Key has come a long way since his “loosest slot machines in the Pacific Rim” stumbles but still has some way to go. Watch the Parliamentary roasting here. You may also like to read Pure Nonsense, by Brian Turner in the May 2010 NZ Listener magazine, excerpt:
New Zealand is definitely clean and green. Yeah, right.Back to the Hardtalk interview. Sackur quotes Mike Joy as saying
“I wonder how many of us are sick of the extent to which New Zealanders delude themselves, and are willing to believe many of the most outrageous lies they are told. Like, for instance, this is a “clean and green” country, a place that is “pure” and often “pristine”…”
“We are delusional about how clean and green we are”And you can see how he arrives at that conclusion.
For data about NZ’s pollution, its use of a wide range of pesticides and herbicides, and the country’s planned exploitation of fossil fuels please visit our Greenwash NZ page, here’s the first section from it.
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