Opinion: The role the media and politicians play in social cohesion has always been important, but perhaps never more so than right now. Words matter. They really do. What fuelled my frustration at the weekend amid the trans-rally, and one of the reasons I have elevated this issue in my programme, is because I watched the Greens engage with us through social and mainstream media, and their collective method of communication can only be described as one of social antagonism. These are politicians - and they were reckless with social cohesion. They labelled people trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). They labelled people Nazis. They said white men were the source of all violence. They called on people to rise up and later applauded the intimidation tactics used in what should have been a peaceful protest. There is no other term for it. It was socially reckless. Neither Chris Hipkins nor Christopher Luxon operates in this way. Both are de-escalators. Both have the life skills and experience to read the room and understand the role they play in taking the public with them, and supporting social cohesion. If the Greens possess any of those skills, they have not shown them. How we communicate and educate ourselves, how we access information and form an opinion can rely, in part, on the way politicians speak with us, and how the media shapes and curates what they say and the news agenda. Yesterday, I heard an interview with Sir Peter Gluckman, a former Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister. A highly respected man and someone who, in this interview on Newshub, so beautifully articulated what I haven't been able to over the last few days. It's probably the most important five minutes of audio you can listen to about how we have found ourselves where we are today as a society - polarised, angry, divided and intolerant. Below is a transcript of Sir Peter Gluckman on TV Three's AM explaining how we got here, and who needs to lead us back towards social tolerance. "It's deep across all the Western democracies, across all the democracies that we're seeing polarised societies, not coping well with rapid change and change is very, very rapid," said Sir Peter. "We've seen the weaponization of narrative, particularly through social media. And these things polarise people, and make people scared, which in turn reinforces the ability for people to be more polarised. "We're also dealing with the fact that politics, as we've just been talking about in relation to disasters, has become short-term and superficial and focussed on identity rather than on ideology or ideas. And we would rather, I think as a society, have a contestation of ideas than a contestation of personality. But we can't have a contestation of ideas if we no longer allow for people who don't necessarily agree with each other to have constructive dialogue and find a way through what are difficult matters. "And we see epithets like racist and other ‘ists’ being thrown around in ways that are not appropriate. And there are racists, but many people who are accused of being racist just happen to have a different idea to other people and to the people who are throwing the accusations at them. We need to get better. We need to find ways to have constructive, non-emotive or less emotive conversations on matters where society needs to come together and have a consensus. AM co-host Ryan Bridge asked Sir Peter how such a vision could realistically be accomplished. "How do we do that?" Asked Bridge. "When you have things like Twitter which restrict the number of characters you can use and maybe forces people to become more extreme in their views?" Sir Peter responded to say society needs to turn away from extremist ideals on both the left and right. "That's precisely the problem," said Sir Peter. "That's why organisations like yours need to encourage sensible discourse and not give hype and exaggeration to people at the extremes. We need to see our politics return and our discourse return to the centre. Otherwise, we will fragment and we'll look like other countries that we do not want to emulate in that regard, who have large protests on the street or where politics can quite cheekily say black is white and one and one equals three. AM co-host Melissa Chan-Green asked Sir peter his thoughts on how the Posie parker protest was handled on all fronts. "When you talk about commentary on the extremes, and I'm thinking particularly about what we've seen at the weekend with Posy Parker and the strength of feeling on both sides there, how do you think that was handled or how could it have been handled better so where it didn't come to the scenes that we saw at the weekend?," asked Chan-Green. Sir Peter responded to say we need to understand each other's needs on a deeper level. "People are scared by rapid change," said Sir Peter. "Quite clearly, human rights are critical and we need to explain, and the whole of society needs ...
