It’s neoliberalism, stupid’ New Zealand media and the NZME-Fairfax merger

Abstract

AT THE JAIPUR literary festival in January 2015, the writer Eleanor Catton described New Zealand as a country governed by ‘neoliberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture’.1 The comments generated much media controversy in her homeland. Catton was denounced for her insolence, ingratitude, and even traitory. Some right-wing pundits disparaged what they saw as her politically illiterate use of the term ‘neoliberal’. Her comments triggered a local version of a reactionary discourse that regards the concept of neoliberalism as the paranoid creation of left conspiracy theorists.