New Zealand’s media has been gripped by Paul Henry mania

The Herald carried an op-ed from Paul Henry on why he was running for parliament before saying ‘screw it’ and running at least 15 more stories on why Paul Henry is running for parliament.

To borrow the immortal words of Christopher Luxon, it’s been a bit of a wet, whiny, inward-looking election campaign so far. National has spent much of the last few months creating a list of things it’s not going to do, including borrowing, taxing, spending and building most of its promised Roads of National Significance. Labour has proposed a series of relatively minor adjustments, all of which its political opponents have derided as a lurch towards full communism. Many of the biggest policy ideas have come from the Opportunity Party, which wants a land tax and universal basic income, the Green Party, which wants a wealth tax and a universal basic income, and NZ First, which has an ambitious plan to restore the year 1990.

Maybe that’s why our media has hoed into Paul Henry’s announcement that he’s running for Act like ferrets consuming a dotterel egg. Ever since the former broadcaster revealed his political plans on Tuesday, our nation’s news organs have been gripped by a kind of Henry hepatitis.

The outbreak has been particularly rampant at the headquarters of NZME. The company’s flagship radio station Newstalk ZB has been wall-to-wall Henry since the moment he took the stage on the rooftop of the QT in Auckland to say he’s decided to occupy a high ranking on Act’s list. Mike Hosking has done a Mike’s Minute. Heather du Plessis-Allan has penned a Heather’s hypothesis. Kerre Woodham has mused on celebrity politicians. Marcus Lush has wondered if Paul Henry entering politics changes anything, before presumably concluding that we are dust and to dust will return. The station’s website has posted 10 stories with the words “Paul Henry” in the headline in two days, though even that undersells the true breadth of its Henry coverage.

Newstalk still has nothing on the Herald though. It carried an op-ed from Henry on why he was running for parliament before saying “fuck it” and running at least 15 more stories on why Paul Henry is running for parliament. The Media Insider covered his best friendship with John Key. The Society Insider delved into his wife’s efforts to turn a Newmarket police station into a hotel. OneRoof went one step further, breaching his front door and stepping inside Henry’s inside with a tour of the candidate’s $10 million mansion. By the time Henry appeared on Ryan Bridge Today the following morning, his news corpse had been picked clean, leaving the host asking if he’d be the first person to wander nude past Keith Holyoake’s parliamentary portrait.

Henry’s candidacy is arguably a little uncomfortable. Act has spent the last few weeks chiding its coalition partner NZ First for its rhetoric on and opposition to the India free trade deal. Its new candidate is perhaps best known for sparking a diplomatic incident by deliberately mispronouncing an Indian government minister’s name as “dick shit” on live TV, before arguing it was “so appropriate because she’s Indian, so she would be dick in shit” walking the streets.

Despite that, the tenor of the coverage was on the whole glowing. By Wednesday afternoon, the Herald’s Audrey Young was chiding Labour for being a bit negative about the broadcaster’s political re-entry. “You can dislike his politics, you can envy his money, you can be appalled at some of his misjudgments as a broadcaster, but he is so damned likeable,” she insisted.

NZME wasn’t alone in its blanket coverage. 1News at Six led on Henry’s announcement, before transitioning into the comparatively minor matter of the collapse of the ceasefire in Iran. Henry was interviewed live on Three News. He was the subject of The Spinoff’s Bulletin. He was everything, everywhere, all at once. Such was his dominance in the news agenda, that virtually every other piece of political news disappeared, buried beneath an avalanche of Paul Henry’s mostly negative opinions on Chris Luxon, semi-automatic weapons and people in general.

It was a blast from the past. Forget Winston Peters transporting us back to the 1990s, here we were going back to the 2000s, where Henry’s thoughts routinely topped the news agenda. It wasn’t too bad, really. Henry can be a charming man.

But one did get to hoping that nothing else was slipping under the news radar, lost amid the wall-to-wall coverage.