Speechmaking

First published in Column Eight on the 9^th June, 1993.

Two rumours are doing the rounds. One has it that a computer programmer, hoping to promote his software, recently sent a programme entitled, ‘Make Your Own Speeches,’ to the Beehive. One of the queen bees, Jenny, desperate for help with her speech-making, threw it in her compatible and got a real buzz out of it.

The other rumour has Mike Moore secretly faxing his speeches out to all the other offices in the Beehive in the hope that someone, somewhere, will listen to him. Queen Jenny, being ultra-busy, grabs one of these and makes it the basis for her National Party conference speech.

I suspect that latter rumour has Moore basis in reality, since a typical piece of Moore impromptu was: ‘I don’t make promises, and those I make, I keep.’ (Huh?)

Jenny’s conference speech went much further into cloud cuckoo land: ‘We should not flinch from breaking the surcharge promise…to take the tough decisions to allow New Zealand to make more money, pay more tax and provide a better welfare society. Some people want social justice to come from socialism. I want it to come from opportunity.’

Lots of rhetoric and not much reality.

Maybe this is foot-in-the-mouth month. An Australian linguist recently claimed the New Zealand accent was rapidly changing. Why? Because, when we New Zealanders saw Britain joining the Common Market, we lost confidence in our Britishicity. Collectively we’ve instinctively felt that we’d better start sound like New Zealanders. Huh?

According to this linguist, if you’d asked an Aussie twenty years ago what a New Zealander sounded like he would probably have said ‘no different.’ This linguist is obviously a baby boomer. One Kiwi member of my family clearly remembers Australians laughing at her Kiwi accent as long ago as the 1940s.

The spoutings of the Experts (the Spurts?) is a plague upon all our houses. Not only do we have our own New Zealand variety – parliamentarians – but an endless stream of overseas Spurts who manage to make New Zealand a target for their roustabout sayings.

Fr Robert Sirico (yes, I asked who?, too), came here on a whistle-stop tour (or a mission from Michigan), to tell New Zealanders what to do about their economic situation, and to discredit clergy criticism of the Government. Maybe he’d also received one of Mike Moore’s speeches.

Fr Sirico, from Michigan, tells us that our domestic purposes benefit subsidies divorce. To take the financial considerations out of divorce we should scrap the benefit. A ‘free market free of government intervention’ wouldn’t pick up the pieces, says Fr Sirico. ‘The church must assume the role of the state in providing support for the needy.’

I thought the church was already having to do this – and barely keeping up with the overflow.

There are days when I think it’s the way I read the papers: do these aforementioned people only appear not to be making any sense? Are their words misrepresented, or placed out of context?

Sometimes when reading the news I feel like citoyen of Nancy who has been caught failing to wear his seatbelt while driving. He has a choice of punishments – a 150 franc fine (c’est irritable!), or a carnival-like trip in a car that rolls over and over (c’est magnifique!)

Trying to grasp some of the statements by those personages listed above leaves my head in the same state as the rolled-over Frenchman: Dizzy a la Gillespie.

Or alternatively, reading the news is sometimes like trying to read in the bus on winter nights. Citibus now appears to be saving power: the internal lights are so dim you can hardly see the bell-pull.

Or worse, it’s like trying to figure out whether the graffiti on a billboard in Cumberland St is the beginning of a theological statement, or the end of a philosophical one.

With the enigmatic simplicity of a speech-writing computer program, the writer has writ: ‘I AM.’

 

From the French road safety campaign recommending
that men should drive like women....

 The version of this column that appeared in the newspaper had two proofreading errors in the first paragraph alone. Probably the worst place to have errors; the current edition of one of my books has a similar problem: a spelling mistake in the first sentence!

 AI provides us with more information about the speech-writing program (which I seem to have inaccurately named):

This historic moment took place in 1993 when New Zealand computer programmer and satirist Simon Kember created a software program called ‘The Politician’ (sometimes referred to as the Automatic Speech Writer) and distributed it to members of the New Zealand Parliament.

The 1993 Speech-Writing Software

Long before the advent of modern generative AI like ChatGPT, Kember coded a text-generation algorithm using a specialized vocabulary. By selecting certain parameters, the software would automatically string together political buzzwords, policy platitudes, and rhetorical filler to generate complete, grammatically correct—yet entirely hollow—parliamentary speeches.

Public Reception and Parliament's Reaction

Kember designed the program as a satirical critique of the repetitive, focus-grouped, and formulaic language used by contemporary politicians.

• The Distribution: Kember sent floppy disks containing the program directly to various MPs across the political spectrum.
• The Irony: While intended as pure mockery, several parliamentarians and their staffers reportedly admitted that the program was surprisingly accurate and hilariously indistinguishable from real political rhetoric.

This 1993 stunt remains a legendary piece of early New Zealand computing history, demonstrating that the anxiety—and humor—surrounding automated political speechwriting began decades before the modern AI boom.

I’m not sure why I thought Jenny Shipley’s quoted speech was particularly unsound: compared to those we hear from the minor parties these days (the Greens at the moment are suggesting nationalising all supermarkets) it makes enough sense to sound feasible.

 As for Australians laughing at Kiwis accents, I can remember in the 1960s when members of a Sydney orchestra came over to play for a nationwide tour of the NZ Opera Company’s production of Die Fledermaus. The leader of the orchestra had an accent so strong that I initially thought he was a foreigner. I haven’t been able to discover who the Australian linguist was, sadly.

 AI also gives us more detail about the Nancy road safety campaign:

‘This scenario was a highly effective road safety campaign rather than a literal ‘pay or go to jail’ criminal punishment.

In Nancy, France, local police and road safety authorities utilized a rollover simulator (known in France as a voiture tonneau). Drivers caught without a seatbelt were given a creative ultimatum: they could either pay the standard 150-franc fine or agree to experience the rollover simulator to understand why the law existed.

• The Ultimatum: Instead of simply writing a ticket, officers gave unbelted drivers a choice. If they chose the simulator, they would get inside a modified, secured car cabin that safely but aggressively rotated 360 degrees on an axis.
• The Goal: The exercise was designed to vividly demonstrate the violent forces of a crash. Experiencing how difficult it was to stay positioned—even at a slow, controlled rotation—convinced many drivers that they would be severely injured or thrown from the vehicle in a real accident.
• The Outcome: Most drivers chose the simulator over paying the fine, and the shocking physical experience proved far more memorable and educational than a standard traffic ticket.’