Richard Harmon

Because it's always confrontational and tough, but it's not personal.

It's not personal between the journalists and the politicians.

And one of the ways where that was reinforced, if you like, was that everybody could have a drink at the end of the day.

So everyone knew it wasn't personal.

But I think in recent times, and Seymour perhaps is an example of this, Luxon's becoming a bit of an example too, where he's saying, I'm not going on that show and I'm not going on that show anymore.

It's becoming personal.

It's not a great trend.

I wish it wasn't like that.

Yes, and there's one person's name that you haven't mentioned there, and that's Winston Peters.

Who's a recidivist in this game.

I think it's hugely responsible for weakening trust levels in the media if you have these constant attacks by politicians for political reasons.

And politicians have always had this robust thing.

I was a young reporter.

I was dealing with Muldoon and stuff.

And when I was working in Australia, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, man, these guys are really, really tough.

But I don't think that they tried to create this distrust in the media.

They just hit you back hard, but they didn't try to say stuff like, you shouldn't be asking me this, or you are biased, or you're not giving me a fair go.

They just took it and they gave it back to you.

But now we've got this sort of sookie behaviour.

Oh, he's asked me a really nasty question and they're having a go at me.