 If reality check radio enriches your day and life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Annie O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background and recently spent a year working in parliament for the leader of the opposition as the director of digital. She's been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. She joins me on the line now. Annie O'Brien, welcome to the crunch. It's good to have you on reality check radio. I think this is your first reality check radio appearance. It is. Thank you. It's been to be chatting with you. Now you're involved with the Free Speech Union and a couple of other activities around the place. I wanted to touch on the importance of free speech, particularly in some of the key issues that we're seeing arise in New Zealand now and some of the ones in the past where we've seen almost a sensorious application about free speech by politicians, by the mainstream media and others and why it's so very important to have people like you with voices out there that are saying, no, hang on, you need to hear us. I guess the biggest one is at the moment that we saw in the past 12 months was the turf wars that I call in the turf wars. I've had Rachel Stewart on the program and I'm on your side. He's the one with the arm. There's men and there's women. That's it. There's no men masquerading as women. They're just men in a frock. That's the way I look at it. But we've got this. We see it in the media. We see it in many of the political parties, this uni thought that it's OK for men to pretend to be women and we can call them women and we can change all our language and everything all around that and actually use the patriarchy. This is what I always say, using the patriarchy to subject women even further because it's men and women what they can say and think, right? It is the ultimate kind of epic move by the patriarchy to find a way to get cuckoo birds and get in the nest and say, no, we're the right kind of woman. We're the most woman kind of woman there are and you are the biological ones. You listen to us and we can tell you how it's got to be. And so it's incredible to me that for about 10 years now, I've been saying, no, you don't tell me what I can do with my spaces, my sport. You certainly don't put women in more danger in places like prison or domestic violence shelters. I'm saying, no. And then I look around and there was all these women saying, oh, we're fine with that. And I was just they're traitors. Yeah, I think there is a mixture. There are some who are what I would call the cool girl. I'm not sure if you've read or seen the movie, The Gone Girl. There's a monologue about the cool girl who says, pick me. I'm different. You know, I'm so cool. I'll do exactly what I'm basically. So I think there's an element of that. We're especially on the left. You see these women who will sign away every right that we've ever won in order to get a pat on the back and fought hard for those rights, too. I mean, you know, New Zealanders were the first was the first country that gave women the vote. Men already had the vote. So. Yes, there's a lot of that cool girl stuff. But then I also think that that fear has been the massive weapon used here. Women tend to be more agreeable because of how it's socialized. I missed that lesson, I think. You and Rachel Stewart. Yeah, yeah, we both missed that lesson. We were wagging school that day. Exactly. But on the whole, you know, we're socialised to be more agreeable and to want to be more nurturing and loving and those kind of things. And so you find that women are like, oh, you know, there's the very depressed men who think that they're women and we should do whatever we can to make them happy and safe. And they really buy into that narrative of, you know, these are the most vulnerable people around because that's what's pushed. And then they're afraid to not acquiesce, not go along with it because they'll be called names. They'll be told they're bad and they mean and that they want them to die and all that kind of thing. And so it's really been all the disagreeable women like myself who have said, no, you're not a woman. I'm sorry. I mean, this is the thing that fascinates me. If you get a nine year old come up to you and says, look, dad, I want to share a bottle of whiskey with you, get hammered. You give them a clip round the ear and send them to their room and said, don't be stupid, right? If they came to you and said, look, dad, I'm nine years old. I'm really interested in finding out about sex. Can you take me to the local brothel and just supervise and everything? You'd say, go to your room, you're grounded. But a nine year old comes up and says, dad, look, I think I'm a girl. I'm going to start wearing dresses. And can I take all these puberty blockers? It seems that they go, oh, sure, no problem. You know, we're OK with that. It's incredible. It's incredibly regressive again, though, because the nine year old says to you, I think I'm a girl. The reason for that is because he probably really likes feminine, stereotypical toys and presentation. So he probably likes to play in the same ways that some of the girls in his class play in. And when you when we say society, if you want to play with those toys, you have to be a girl. We're telling this this little boy that the only way that he can, you know, play with those toys or like glitter or whatever it is, as if he becomes a girl when really, I think kids are kids. Just let them play with what they want to play with. And you're on your own way, weren't they? I mean, you can't learn to ride a bicycle first time. You come off, you get scabbed knees, you stub your toes, you get everything wrong. And in the boys case, you managed to land on the crossbar. You know, it's like hell, you know, but you learn. Don't do that. My dad bribed me. He bribed me if I taught myself how to ride my bike, I'd get the Britney Spears CD. Right. I taught myself how to ride my bike. You really wanted that CD, didn't you? You know, it's insane what society does and contorts itself. But we we I'm still gobsmacked by the scenes that we saw when Posey Parker came to New Zealand, where a bunch of angry men, largely, were physically intimidating a smaller group of women who just wanted to hear somebody speak. Yeah. You were involved in that, weren't you? Yeah, I was right in the thick of it, it was frightening. And I felt so bad because I'd had a conversation with Posey the night before. And she said, well, like, it's really heating up down there. Like, and she said, will the police be OK? And I said, what do you mean, will the police be OK? And she said, are they going to do you think that they'll, you know, protect us? And I said yes, because in all my experiences in New Zealand, I was naive enough to think the police show up and protect those who were being attacked or like, you know, that I just assumed that even if they disagreed with what she had to say, they would protect her against physical attack. I said that. And then the next day, as this group of men, as you say, dismantled offence and ran at us. And I looked around and there were police nowhere. I just had this dread of, like, oh, my God, I've given her this false sense of security here. And the reality is that we've been left completely on our own, that they're not here. I ended up ringing one, one, one from the middle of the melee and got a really shitty responder on the phone. I was saying, you know, like, they're a woman trapped in the rotunda. And, like, I think these men are going to hurt them. And they're being pulled and pushed and the guy on the phone was just like, yeah, we know about it. But there's no cops here. And they're like, we've had lots of calls about it. I was like, well, is anyone coming? Because literally. Yeah. And it was just that the private security who were holding the crowd back from Posey, she was getting pulled and pushed. And it was like, it was really primal, some of it. Like, it really scared me because it was the type of thing where you know, you hear about people kind of or like mass hysteria or something where it were more kind of gets worked up into a frenzy. Yeah. And it kind of felt like that because they look wild. Like, and so I kind of thought, what is the end point of this? If they get to her, are they just going to rip her apart? Yeah, I know someone who is in that melee with you, you know. And she said she was frightened, frightened for her life. But, you know, the news media and the police all took the side of them. It was astonishing. I was actually quite interested on the weekend. I think it was Nicola Willis and Luxon were ushered out of the gay out because of the mob there. The Palestinian protesters, same people, same people who did that to us because there's only a small community of these psychopathic, bloody activists. And they were the same ones and the same ones who do all the very aggressive Palestine stuff. And what was interesting to me was they were being nowhere near as aggressive as they were towards us. They seemed to be shouting nasty things, but they weren't being physical like they were with us. And Luxon and Willis's police contingent got them out of there. They saw the risk. They saw it was dangerous. They got them out of there. And I kind of just made me a bit cross because I was like, every politician from all the different parties said, oh, you was mostly, mostly peaceful protest. It wasn't. It was a hugely violent and aggressive and a fraction of that happened at big gay out and they were swept out by police. Yeah. I find it astonishing that politicians pander to these groups. I mean, they do see the Green Party, especially, right? But, but, you know, the vast majority of people who would have been at the big, big gay out or any of these sort of events, they're not national voters. They're not active voters either. So I don't know why David Seymour and Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop and Luxon all go prancing around in their colorful shirts like they care because they don't. Yeah, it's interesting because I think it is fair again. It's the media is hugely plugged into this community. I hate using that because I'm supposedly. It's not a community, though, is it? It's not a community. Yeah. So my partner and I usually go to big gay out because it's usually the one that's more chilled. It's usually the one, not like the parades and stuff where it's, you know, all the telcos and stuff, dress stuff. Usually there's music and drinking and it's quite fun. We didn't go this year. And I'm glad we didn't because of the protests and stuff that kind of ruined the whole thing. But it is like last year when we went, it was there was a lot of political stuff and everyone who went on the stage was making political statements about Wayne Brown. Yeah. So there was I think he just kind of floated that he was going to cut funding to arts or something. Yeah. And so they were all making a big deal out of it. And what I noticed was these were the people going on the stage. These were the performers and the people who organized it. You look around at those sitting on the lawn with us. We were all rolling our eyes every time a political statement was made because even though most of them would have been leaf voters, people are just sick of it being politicized. They just want to like get a bit drunk and have a dance, you know? Like, yeah, everything has become this this absolute political mess. And I almost think we should tell all the politicians to fuck off and not come to these things because why do we want them there? Well, I mean, I don't get it. It's like, you know, did you see News Hub the other night doing this big story about how NZTA or Waka Kotahi had specially bought these vests with no branding? And it cost three hundred and four dollars. Where are they buying from? This is cost around four dollars for 17 of them. They cost a Big Mac chips and a Coke. But here's News Hub, that this is exactly what we're talking about. It's a different topic, but it's exactly what we're talking about. We've got News Hub making this big song and dance about three hundred and four dollars. Of course, they never made a song and a dance when various different ministers turn up and get given a jacket from civil defense or whatever they call themselves. Jacinda Ardern, there's a million photos of her wearing orange vests and all these dayglow things, same with Christopher Hickins. But I'm sitting there thinking, why do they why do the politicians play dress up? It this there's no safety issues here. The road's being opened or or it's completely devoid of any machinery or anything like that. It's about to have cars roll down it. And they have them all tip up wearing a hard hat, safety glasses and a fluoro vest. Isn't it kind of the same as attending Big Gay Out? It's just so they can tick a box to say, look at me, I did this. I think it's mostly to do with the media. And I'll use an example of when I worked for Judith Collins when she was the leader. So I was travelling with Judith. We were down in Queenstown and we went after dinner. Me, her, Shane Reddy was there and Joseph Mooney. We went to get an ice cream after dinner and it was still there was still some COVID restrictions. So we were wearing masks and what not? Literally, we were wearing the masks due to step forward to collect your ice cream, took her mask off to eat it. And someone obviously not friendly to her politics, filmed that few second without the wider context. Yeah, I then spent that evening on the phone getting all the questions from the journalists like it was Judith had committed the most massive crime. I'm not sure if you remember, but it was it was I never wore a mask. So I don't know what the fuss is. It was it was all over the news. It was it was a main story for the next few days. She's not on her mask on and so sometimes these politicians and their staffers are literally just trying to avoid a shit storm in the media. They're just like, OK, if we do this thing, then it's one thing the media can't blow up. And to be honest, that is more center right parties. That, you know, I doubt that would have happened to Jacinda. You're never going to see Winston Peters having a thought about that. What if this ends up in the media? He'll be thinking, oh, it's awesome. It's going to be in the media. Get in the box. No such thing as bad news. That is true. But I think it is symptomatic of national to a different extent. Later, those center parties are so reliant. Well, they feel they are on the legitimacy from the media that they tie themselves and not to try and play hate. Now, the problem is, I think that that we need to reassess the, I guess, equation there, because we're now in a situation where the six o'clock news is not the be all and end all. You know, it used to be you needed to hit, you know, have your press releases out in time to the six o'clock news. You wanted to get those tops. So those days are done now. Yeah, it's done. And so now you've got a whole different set of media. But also, you've got the ability to bypass the media, which is you guys are doing with your own new media type, but also social, but also by list building and direct emailing. Yes, which is what the Free Speech Union does, builds those list emails, emails direct, bypasses the media and gets the message that you want out there, not this homogenised cut down 30 second sound bite that the media like to to use. Yeah, and I think we're seeing like you used Winston as an example. And he is showing that it is possible to not play the media game and use your alternative channels to get your message across. I think it could be done better. But for what he's trying to achieve, it's working. Now, Luxon isn't even going to do that because he is down the center, national, safe, if you will. But it's not safe, is it? Because you've got you've got this is always hard back. This is a free speech issue. If you've got a media that are hostile, they are stifling your views or whoever you're representing in your case, the Free Speech Union and the media are deciding we're not going to carry this. This isn't news. And so they are acting as censors against the message that you're putting out, whether it's in terms of free speech, in terms of Polly Parker or dissenting views. And I like all views, right? You could be completely opposed to my politics and I'll still defend your right to say whatever you want, no matter how silly it is. We're going at the Free Speech Union, right? Like the amount of times where we've fronted stuff that we don't agree with, but that you have to write, you know, for example, and sometimes we deliberately speak on issues that are counted. So I've fronted the Bethlehem College stuff because I'm gay. And actually, you know, I don't disagree with them on everything anyway. But I wanted to show I can come out here and defend Bethlehem College's rights to speech and to what they teach. And it shouldn't matter if that is in an alignment with my own views, my own life. Likewise, you know, we've got Jewish members on our council who have defended the Palestinian protesters, you know, pro-Palestine rallies and that kind of thing. Yeah. So I think it's actually really important to demonstrate a willingness to stand by the principle rather than picking and choosing the issue and then saying, you know, Free Speech is an absolute, isn't it? There's no but after I believe in free speech. You can't now say but and then add something that says that you don't believe in free speech. You either do or you don't. It's quite funny. A lot of people can't grasp the concept. Like, often I'll criticise someone on Twitter, say, I'll say, you know, that was an appalling thing to say. I've said it about Chloe Swarbrick's behavior that pro-Palestine rallies have been very critical of it. And people will say, well, what about a free speech? I'm saying, I'm not impacting a free speech. I'm using my own speech. She's allowed to say it, but we're also allowed to say that that's shit. It's like, I'm not coming for it at all. I'm just saying, well, that's appalling. And it has these consequences, you know, challenging her. And in which case, I've had my free speech to criticise her. She's had her free speech to say shitty slogans. And that's all good. But people just struggle with the concept. And I just find myself having to explain it over and over and over. But we've had it here at Reality Check Radio. I interviewed somebody and they had strong views. They were very polite in the way that interviews with me are convivial, right? They're never a hostile. I'm not trying to bash anybody up, trying to prove a point. I just want to have a conversation. And having that conversation, we can find out where people think or what direction they're going in. And if you don't have those conversations, you don't find out. But the vitriol that came from that, saying, well, you should be saying it from this perspective. You should be doing it from that perspective. You know, we had on the Treaty Principles issue, we had a number of different views from David Seymour to Margaret Mutu to a couple of others. And there were people saying, we don't want that woman on our show. We don't want her saying those things. That's appalling. You shouldn't have her on the show. But Reality Check Radio was founded because there literally is no other media out there that lets people have their say. That lets the guests have their say and that we can impart knowledge and information and then people can decide for themselves whether they like that or don't like that or ambivalent towards it. And even our major competitor is hostile to particular points of view. And I don't believe that we are. And certainly on my show, I try not to be hostile to particular points of view. I might not agree with somebody, but I want to hear what they've got to say. That and that's how it should be. I mean, taking that example of the Treaty's principle bill, the polarization and toxicity that we've seen before the bill is even written is so concerning. And I lay a lot of the blame at the feet of the media, perhaps even more the politicians because of their framing has created a real fear on one side and anger on the other. These are not good combinations. And so it is completely responsible to platform people with various views on the subject and allow people to make up their own minds. But also it would have been amazing if it had been made clear that this bill hasn't been written and everyone's kind of talking about these concepts. But we don't know what we're arguing over yet. And so that's the huge thing. I saw all these people at Waitangi talking about how David Seymour was going to abolish the treaty and rewrite the treaty. Both of those things are lies. What he's saying is there's no principles in the treaty, but we've got laws that say that we have to honour the principles of the treaty. How can we make that happen? If we don't know what the principles are, let's have a debate. And all hell has broken loose. And they're trying to silence him and silence anybody else who has a differing opinion that of this wonderful woke view that the head of the British Empire, Queen Victoria, and all of her magnificent glory as the Empress of India and everything else, signed a very unique document that was different from every other thing that the British Empire had ever done and said, you disparate groups of various different tribes represented by these senior people are all on the same level as me. Well, that's just a heroic assumption to understand that that's just not true. You know, you can look at what I struggle with. I mean, I'm undecided to be honest on the principles, though, because I don't know what I'll achieve, but I'll make that decision once I've seen it and, you know, however, I do struggle with the a historical narrative that's being woven here. Not that I've really used it. I have a degree in history. And so I guess I've spent a lot more time than maybe the average person on these issues because I did a bit of a New Zealand history. And it is a historical to say that Marty did not give up sovereignty. Now, I can understand why people now would want to share that view. But you just have to go and read the speeches that were given at Waishangi, which are available online. Do a little Google. You just have to go to read. There was a conference in 1860 at Kohi Marama, a gathering of chiefs, and they were basically reflecting on, you know, it's been 20 years since the treaty has been signed and they're reflecting on how things were and relationship with the Crown, that kind of thing. Now, those speeches are very telling. You have a very clear difference to the Queen. And and the idea of sovereignty is discussed explicitly. Now, another way to look at it is if you look at the speeches at Waishangi and you look at the chiefs who didn't want to sign and weren't happy with it, they expressed that they don't want to give up their sovereignty. So they know that's what's at stake. So if they're rejecting that, then the ones that did sign it, you know, that was what we all have to forget this. And if we ever raise the historicity of all of this, we get held down with cries of racism. Yeah. And that's that's what bullies do to silence people. And they give them a label that's abhorrent that you can't you don't want to have that label put on you. So then you modify your speech. So that you don't get accused of that and then you're silenced. And they do it like labels they give to people like you. And, you know, where they say you're a turf, that's that's a derogatory insult designed to shut you up. It's incredible. I mean, I've been lucky here that the consequences haven't been as bad as it has for women overseas. So I've been called a Nazi, a turf, a racist, a trans, all the things you can think of. If you look at what's happened to some of the women in Australia when they were called Nazis, like like I was, they had huge consequences. So now you've got several women taking legal action against I think it's the leader of the opposition in Victoria, I believe. I can't remember his name, but he he basically defamed Posi Kaka and Moira Deming, who was in his party and a couple of other women who who were organisers of one of Posi's rallies. John Posito is his name. That's his name. That's the one. And so the consequences for those women had been huge. But the utilisation of the name Nazi, of the slur Nazi to save these women, Moira Deming has has just she was attacked. And now she's only able to take legal action. And it's probably going to take 11 years to go through the courts. And they do this because they know they have the power to harm us in this way. So when we're told that the most vulnerable group of people is this trans community, and we have to bow to everyone because they're so vulnerable, it is extraordinary then that these same people can shut down our events, can destroy our careers. You know, they're supposed to be the vulnerable ones. And yet they have the power to make governments, media just absolutely cut out to their wishes. You know, even the most outrageous things like I'm not sure if you've seen it's come out yesterday, I believe about the breast milk situation. Where the NHS or one of the trusts of the NHS released research, apparently, or a statement that the artificially hormone induced discharge from trans women's nipples is just as good for for babies as mothers breast milk that has required very senior people, you know, medical professionals and, you know, hospital administrator to take levels to sign off on that. And it doesn't take a genius to know that men don't breastfeed and that anything that is artificially generated is not breast milk that's coming out. And yet something as apparent as this, it is the woman calling it out who gets hold off and not the fetishists who are promoting men breastfeeding who are completely protected and even celebrated in some cases. Yeah, it's this is what I don't understand, because if I was a woman and I guess I can just tell me you are and that's how it works. Yeah, I mean, it's a funny anecdote when I had my stroke, I couldn't walk properly and I couldn't use my right arm. And I said about doing rehabilitation and some of that involved picking up a shotgun and competing in shotgun events and things like that. And I made him I said, Ken, why don't you? Why don't you apply to go to the Paralympics? But even better, why don't you apply to go to the Paralympics as a woman? And he says, you'd look great. I said, I wear a kilt and I have my hairy legs hanging out the bottom and I have my beard and I'll say I'm a woman. I'll go into the into the Paralympics and the shooting in the shotgun sports. And I seriously thought about doing that just to take the piss. Well, I got that I got to know through online years ago, so he's a kind of rapper, businessman, but he's he's half American, half British. And he became famous because he briefly identified as a woman, be all of the deadlifting records and then unidentified as woman. You know, we were seeing that he did specifically because the record in I think was the record in Canada, wasn't it, was held by a man pretending to be a woman as the woman's deadlifting record. So he went in there and blitzed him. But that's the thing, you know, there's all these men that are declaring themselves women and competing in women's sports. And I view their actions as similar, if not worse, because of the deception involved to people who wear medals that they never earned. And yeah, you know, they're saying that they're a woman. They're entering the sports. They're swimming and beating everybody in the race and then saying, look at me, I want a gold medal. But what I can't understand is the silver medal and bronze medalist just refusing to get I would if it was me, I'd refuse to get on the on the podium with it. I would speak out and and yes, you're probably going to get demonised by your sport and banned principles or principles, aren't they? Well, that's like what I was talking about before about the motivation of fear. And I think now we're seeing many more women and girls speak out and refuse and that kind of thing, which is fantastic. But if you look at the example of I'm not sure if you've seen Riley Gaines in America, so she's the swimmer that spoke out against Leah Thomas, the trans woman who who was bloody useless in the bloke's sport and then suddenly was winning all the women's sport. And that's the thing, isn't it? They're all hopeless as men. And then in order to make themselves feel better, they go and compete with women. And what's the main is that what was incredible about like when when Riley talks about what she meant through is that it's not just the foot for swimming in this case. It's not just what happened in the pool, which is bad enough, the unfairness of it. But these young women were utterly gaslit in that they were not told that Leah was going to appear in the changing room with his dick out. And they turned around were really alarmed. They as a group laid complaint and said, look, we don't want males in the changing room. They were lectured and told they needed to change their thinking. They needed to not be so horrible, there was nothing they could do. In the end, they would take turns getting changed in cupboards because they felt so intimidated and also because Leah's behavior was often sexualized. And that is a motivation here that we're not allowed to talk about. The creepiness. Yeah, same with the breast milk thing. What reason would a man have, regardless of whether he thinks he has he's a woman to need to breastfeed a child? Oh, come on, every bloke wants boobs to play with. Some of them don't even have one. They're still trying to, you know, they haven't even had any surgery or anything. But, you know, there's the sexual element is something that we're not supposed to talk about. But if you visit, you know, the trans forums online on Reddit on anything like that, getting a lot of the motivation is sexual and it harms our ability to talk about this honestly and about the impact on women and children if we can't have honest conversations about that. And that is that we don't want to partake in the sexual fetish of a man. Well, that's what it is, really, isn't it? It's a bloke who wants to dress up like a woman. And like, he can do that all he wants, but he doesn't have to come into my space. So this is the thing that I don't get, right? Is that, OK, I'm heterosexual. I'm not out there parading my sexuality everywhere I go. I'm not out there demanding other people recognise my sexuality or people call me by certain things. I mean, if people wanted to call me something, I mean, I could insist my pronouns are handsome and clever. But yeah, that's that's that's the ridiculousness of it all, isn't it? Well, because it goes right down to this this pronoun thing where people are dictating what other people can call you when they're talking about you and you're not in the conversation, because it because pronouns only occur in a third party when you're talking about somebody else, right? It's about power because I have to say at different times, I previously thought, OK, well, if I want to be polite, I can use the pronouns they want, whatever. And I've got to the point now where I don't because it's the slippery slope thing, right? It's that the politeness of a pronoun becomes the demand to access the space that, oh, well, if you call me she, then you must see me as a woman. So I must be a woman. So I have to then be allowed into the space in the sport. And and it kind of like goes from there. And it's about control. Like, you know, I wrote a piece for a mainstream publication recently, and I got it back edited with the pronouns changed. And I was like, do you know me? I am not going to have anything published that is playing these games. So I said, fine, I'll take it out and I'll just repeat their name over and over again, because I'm not going to have those pronouns. That's the thing, isn't it? If you're talking to somebody in person like I'm talking to you, I'm not going to call you whatever your pronouns are. I don't know what they are. Frankly, I don't care. To me, you're Annie, right? I'm going to use your name. And if I'm talking about you to somebody else, I'm not going to say she this or Annie said this and Annie said that. So it's this microaggression that's actually expanded to full on aggression to control people on what they say. And it's exactly as you say, it's a power play to get you to conform. I mean, I previously worked in the public service before I was in Parliament. I feel sorry for you. It wasn't the same thing. It really was. And what I was so amazed by is the amount of time we spent before every meeting, every hearing, basically ticking these virtue, virtue signal kind of things off. But actually, it wasn't about virtue signaling. It was about power and control. It was the HR department was running the shop. And so we had to, you know, say our pronouns. We had to do either a white or a kind of care. And I asked once because I said, look, I've got no problem with us doing, you know, if we do some today stuff, that's OK. But I'm not religious. So why are we doing a career like that? This is a public service. And that there are a whole lot of, you know, Fox among the hens, what do we say? Because they know how to push back on. We're doing this because it's really important that we honor Maori culture. But they don't know how to react when you're suddenly like, I'm not Christian. So why are we doing a Christian career? If you look at the caracayers, they're actually not Christian anyway, because they're talking about the sky, God in the tree, God in the water, God. And all that's not Christian, is it? It's animism. No, I think the ones we because the ones we did work. But I totally take that there would be a lot of that's the thing. Right. If if if I was running a public organization and I am a Christian and I decided, right, we're going to start every meeting with a prayer and call it a prayer. And in and it's going to be a Christian prayer. There would be howls of outrage. The PSA would be mobilising people to march in the streets about this. The news media would run it incessantly until I caved and changed the organization. But somebody says, are we going to have a caracay? I can. That's all right. Yeah, it's not all right. It's a waste of time. So much of that stuff that there is nothing wrong with if you want to do your kareke before you eat or before you, you know, when you're at home, if that's your thing, that is that's great for you. Likewise, if you're into the pronoun thing and you and your friends want to talk about your pronouns all the time, absolutely fine. But if you're working in the public service, why are we dedicating so much time to these performances? Oh, it's worse than that, though. And I know somebody worked for the call centre business during the COVID thing and phoning up. And every Wednesday that have wire to Wednesdays and until eleven o'clock in the morning, it was, you know, fifteen renditions of ten, fifteen renditions of ten guitars, you know, and that was accepted. Now, if you said, are we going to have a heavy metal Tuesday? People be outraged, you know, but but because it's a Wednesday, it's all good. I did. I did think of I wonder if I could oh, how much time was spent on way out, but there's no. It is. The other thing is is but this is controlling speech. This is silence like I was in court before Christmas and I hadn't been in court for four or five years. And that's the time frame that it changed. And the previous time I was in court, you know, the judge comes in, everybody stands up. There's a few mumbled Maori words as they come in, which is read off a card. And then the judge sits down and then peers at everybody, you know, and says, who's first? And then somebody stands up and says, oh, yes, it's Henry for the plaintiff or such and such for the defendant. And it's all done very quickly in about three seconds. Now, now that they stand up, yes, and it's all in Maori and they start listing their whakapapa to multiple levels for 10 minutes. And then finally, at the end of it, say their name and who they're representing. It's I mean, I mean, I can understand if the case is involving people who all kind of have that worldview. Great. No, this case had nothing to do with that. But and the thing that, you know, it sounds trivial, but how long does that take our court system? How long it took? It took 20 minutes. Yeah, like we should be motoring through cases because, you know, there are people waiting. I know of one murder trial that's waiting to go to court. And it's like taking three years. We should not be taking three years to hear homicide, you know, cases. And I think we should be finding ways to speed these processes up. And so we, you know, we set up these kind of authorities at the Employment Relations Authority where to divert things out of the courts to hopefully, you know, speed things up. Those are now plugged now because there's been so much time passing around. So it's like, why are we ladies? This all comes down to free speech, right? Everything comes down to free speech. And I always point out to people when they're talking about the United States and they say, oh, it's terrible. You know, the Second Amendment in the United States is appalling. And I said, well, you need to understand something. You can't have the First Amendment, which is the right to free speech without having the right to defend that free speech, which is what the Second Amendment is about. We don't have that in New Zealand. And so we we we have this bully pulpit that's largely infested with the media that are that is shutting people down, silencing people, bullying people. I mean, Nicky Haga stated that the reason why he wrote dirty politics was to take me out of the political discourse because I was too effective of what I'm doing. And he wanted to silence the other journalists that were talking to me. Now, I was at that stage, I'd already had a high court judge determine that I was a journalist. So we had a journalist, Nicky Haga, attacking another journalist for the political ideas that person had that were opposed. Nicky Haga was opposed to with the desired aim to silence that person. Me from talking to other journalists to share ideas. It was nobody said a thing. It was a mammoth job. But that's the thing is like there's always people are scared of Nicky because because he's like this because he's like this recluse who hides and then pops up with a book and doesn't give opportunity for a right of reply. Right. So he brings all the rules of journalism. But everyone is always a great journalist. No, he's not. He's a lying, sniveling scumbag who does hit jobs for money. Yeah. The exact things he accused me of doing. Yeah, I mean, maybe it was actually titled dirty politics because it was all dirty and. But they missed out all the interactions I had with Labour and green politicians for some strange reason they weren't in the book. I had Chris Trotter ring me up. He says, I don't know why Nicky Haga is complaining about dirty politics. All politics is dirty. I mean, yeah, exactly. Chris, you like. This is thrilling to work in politics. And I enjoyed almost every minute of it. It's the best. It is like swimming with sharks all the time. And it's I mean, and that's where it is that the world over. It's like that. There is no like nice parliament where everyone's holding hands and stuff because that's not how things get get done. We've got an adversarial system because that works because of a challenge of debate of ideas. One versus the other. Right. It could be worse. We could be like, I think it's the Greeks or the Italians have punch up all the time in the house, you know, Taiwan has regular punch ups. Taiwan, Thailand, Fisticuffs in the parliament. I want to we should bring that back along with smoke. I didn't give it a go, didn't I? Yes, but, you know, I think politics has been diminished since we got rid of smoke filled rooms. But that's a whole nother argument. Winston would definitely agree there. I think that the whiskey drinking smoked smoke filled rooms and, yeah, it was a different way of doing politics. And people ask me, actually, how do you think Luxon's going to cope because he doesn't drink? And it seems like a really silly question. But there is like history, the world over through through many different systems of the late night drink, the discussion, the kind of relationship building and yeah, people can argue that that shouldn't be over alcohol, but it is. Well, that's the thing that's I mean, I've got a multitude of stories from the nineties when I was sitting in the smoke filled rooms watching deals get done, you know, both internal party stuff and cross party stuff. Deals were done over over fags and whiskey. And, you know, you mentioned earlier on in the interview about polarization, and that's the thing that I find most frightening about how politics or how society has become. We are so polarized now, you're either right or wrong. There's no happy medium. There's no, well, hang on a second. You know, and I used to laugh about that Steven Crowder, you know, he'd sit down at a university with some topic and say, you know, trans trans trans women, trans women aren't real women. Convince me, you know, something like that. And have a discussion. You can't he can't do that now because he just gets torn apart. We've lost the ability to debate security. We'll usher him off because he's causing a disturbance. I mean, do you think about Helen Clark and Phil Goff and, you know, all of that era of politicians? That's all they ever did is cause disturbances nowadays. They wouldn't be allowed to. I know it's it's quite amazing. There's a lot of hypocrisy in it, like the sanitization of politics, the sanitization of protest. It irritates me to know in because usually the people involved in that process from like from Labour's side, they did protest, you know, was it Grant Robertson or Chris Hipkins that got arrested for a protest? Chris Hipkins, Chris Hipkins, you know, and it's a point of pride for him, you know, and but then wanting to sanitize stuff now. Same as with, you know, of course, you don't want to believe in Parliament, but it's also a very unique environment where you can't have staff as holding ship over ministers' heads or MPs' heads, because it just doesn't work. And yet Trevor Millard, who is well known as perhaps the naughtiest MP to ever be in Parliament in terms of drinking and punching and not getting on with people or bullying, he brought in, you know, this investigation, trying to, you know, share the innocent person. He called a man who wasn't a rapist, a rapist. I mean, that's one of the worst things, you know, thinking about. Most of the media didn't touch in. It was it was the bravery of Barry Soper that brought that to attention. And he and Millard attacks Soper for that. Just incredible. And I think, you know, I know nothing about the person who he accused and he might well have done other stuff, but he wasn't a rapist. And so he was utterly wrong to call him that. And, you know, and I said before, I've been called everything under the sun. And I actually, you know, as a female, I haven't been called that. And I think that would be possibly the most one of the most awful things you could be called. And then the taxpayer had to pay a lot of money to to rectify that through after he thought it as long as he could. Yeah, you know, so we hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I mean, rightly so, that that guy was entitled to it. But because of Trevor's lack of self-control, that happened. And, you know, and he changed the rules on alcohol. So like staffers, we couldn't drink in our in the offices unless there was like an MP crescent and like all the stuff back in his day, more responsible than other people. The more responsible staff that are saying to the MP or the minister, perhaps you better not have another one, Minister. You know, that was the case. I know, like, we'd been quick, the bar and in the beehive. And there would be a certain minister who just Cinder Ardern had put on a no alcohol ban because of his behaviour. And he would show up in pickwicks and we'd be telling the Labour staff is how you might want to come and get your guy. He's here. He's here on the booze. And it's it's like, actually, it's the staffers who are kind of making sure that the staff is the staff is in my experience of of seeing staff and ministers and MPs interaction. I've always found the staff to be very protective of the minister or their or their MP to the point where they say, you know, actually, you've had too much to drink or I'd better put you in a taxi and actually take them home and do those sorts of things. So that was one of the scandals last year with from Chucky Chucky. What was her name, the MP, Broca Lady? Oh, yeah, and in law and a law. And a law. Yeah, she wasn't she, her one of her staffers was out set because they were having to serve driver all the time. I have to say, I had to have to do that. Judith was always good. No, Judith, Judith was always good. Yeah. You know, that's just I sit here and watch our society falling apart around our ears. And like you, I lay a lot of the blame with our very liberal media that have decided that they're going to pick sides. It used to be that they reported the news. Now they try and make the news. And you know, it was a time that if you wanted to make the news and if you wanted to change laws and you wanted to do those sorts of things, you became an MP. You actually stood for parliament, got yourself elected and then went set about doing it. But the media think that they they've abrogated their responsibility as the fourth estate. And as a result of doing that, they've brought about an assault and unprecedented assault on free speech. And all of these arguments, all of these things that we talk about, treaty principles, the turf wars, you know, Posey Parker, all of these things come back to one thing. And that's the right under our Bill of Rights, the right to impart and receive information freely. And it seems that we're being censored. And Arden was the worst of that. You know, the the podium of truth, the one source of truth, all of that sort of was nonsense. But the media went along with it. And so the media is supposed to be at the fourth estate, holding the powerful to account. But all too often, they're holding hands with the powerful and merely dancing all over our rights. It's interesting now to see a bit of a shift in them, though, because I mean, I have this conversation with people a lot where there are people who have very strong views about funding of the media and stuff. And I definitely think that, you know, the public interest journalism fund was not a good idea. However, I don't think those funding scandals, if you will, are what has driven this. What has driven this is purely that the type of person who is a journalist now is a university educated, totally liberally kind of indoctrinated through the same universities, tend to be from a middle to upper class background, tend to be white, most of them, but have a complex about being white. And so you end up with no matter which mainstream media platform you're looking at, they're all the same because they come with the same set of views. They've had the same education. They've got the same social background. They believe the same things. Whereas back in the day, you could go from one publication to another and get very different views. So you had some variety. You also had, you know, working class people who didn't go to university, but were switched on people going straight into journalism and providing that perspective. And so we're kind of we're not being served because it's like this club of people. A homogenised view, isn't it? Everything's become homogenised. But if you look at reality check radio, I don't agree with Paul Brennan on a large number of things. But he's a good bloke to have a cigar and a drink with, right? I'm never going to agree 100 percent with what Peter Williams says or or Natalie or any of the other brilliant hosts that we've got. Everybody's got their own interests and their own points of view. But the great thing in reality check radio is that we can all coexist. Green voters and, you know, wambles and all sorts of people with different views. We all can can join together because we've got this core belief that that we are exactly what our name says, that we're a reality check. We are allowing people with differing views to air their views in a long format. You know, it's not a 15 minute. Let's see if we can get some hits on somebody and and it's better listening. It's better radio. And that's why our audience is growing. And that's why we're actually taking a stick to the mainstream media that are all once over lightly. And they would be very derisive of you guys. I like they have seen, you know, this this idea that that what you're doing is less than because it's not legally it's not done as they do, which is hand in hand with the public service with the with elements of the government, at least so now. You guys are more prone to misinformation because they don't agree with you, I guess. And we've got even got people who are in the same space as us who are calling us, you know, derisive names, you know, cooker radio or rabbit hole radio and stuff like that. You know, that says more about him than it does about us. We don't actually don't care because we're here about the discourse and the conversation. And that's why we've got people like yourself talking to us on the show about politics, about freedom of speech, about the challenging issues that are out there calling things as they are. Yeah. And I think I'm always quite happy to, you know, talk to people in good faith, because I think the more of these conversations that we have about tricky issues, the more we can find that awful thing called middle ground and pragmatism and all these kind of things to find a way through challenges, because the way I see it right now, that the way the legacy media and the kind of discourses, there is no middle ground to be found on these issues. Like what should they be? I mean, nor should they be like, it's OK to not agree. Absolutely. It's perfectly OK to not agree. The challenge that I worry about is these issues to do with governance and policy like the Treaty Principles Bill, where this polarization is being weaponized and at the end of it, one side is going to be pleased and one is going to be really angry instead of trying to have a conversation that bridges some of those. Well, we saw that didn't we, with Waitangi Day, because you had the media that were amping the pressure up. You could almost think that they were hoping for violence. They were talking about like the day before I was full of dread. I thought, oh, God, this is going to be horrendous, because I felt like the media were hoping something really bad would happen. And, you know, on the whole, even though there was some hostility, I think it was pretty good. You know, everyone showed up, said, but I think it was reported pretty shoddily, especially in terms of acts involvement. I mean, Nicole McKee, her speech and the way she was tickled was pretty awful. And she was trying to give. That's because that's because Nicole and David and Winston and Shane, they're the wrong sort of Maori. That's the prevailing attitude. So you're the wrong sort of woman as well. I'm the wrong sort of lesbian as well. That's what I always get. And it's quite extraordinary to me. Like I wrote a piece recently about the Green Party because they tried to get me nuts. I used to vote for the Winnells youngest. So I think that's why. But, you know, the fact that they are front and center at crime, screaming the place down, waving flags and acting like they're our babysitters or something, when they have spent the entire first part of this term of parliament, supporting terrorist organization, one of which has just sentenced 30, 13, sorry, homosexuals went to death, plus about 60 are getting corporal punishment. You know, this is the Houthis where Marama Davidson is on record in the House of Parliament, defending their their right to attack civilian and freight ships because they're upset about what's happening in Gaza. And she's this was during the ministerial statement. It'll be Gaza where they tow homosexuals behind motorcycles and throw them off buildings that mean that Gaza. Exactly. And so I've kind of gone, actually, the Greens shouldn't be welcome at pride until they stop supporting groups that kill homosexuals. Like that's how they would be if the shoe was on the other foot. You know, but they've got a cloak. They've got a shield of sanctum any and a cloak of visibility that shields them from all of the hypocrisy knows no bounds with the Greens. No, I mean, I think to be honest, they're in for a rapid tumble with the exit of James Shaw. What are your opinions on James? And I know some people have issues with his university transcripts or something. But I don't care. I never went to university. Yeah, I did. But I some I think I must have been in the last batch before indoctrination. But like, what do you kind of think of James Shaw? I tell a lie, I did go to university for one year. But the politics lectures I found incredibly boring because I'd spent a lifetime in politics. And he was this professor who'd spent, you know, a lifetime lecturing about politics and the two things were completely different. I don't remember. I had lived experience and he had book learning. I was never going to work. Yeah, I think that that James Shaw's his sensibleness will be severely missed in the Greens, because even though he is a bit long as on some stuff, he was the kind of dad was reasonable. He was reasonable. You could talk to him. The times that I've met him, I've found him to be a very nice man who was capable of discussing views that he didn't agree. We had a good chat, you know, but I think without him, you're left with co-leaders, Marama, presuming Chloe, who don't like each other and will be in a Marama's very competitive. And I can see Chloe getting a fist of fives in the rooms of Parliament from Marama at some point. I can just see that with something that we can all look forward to. But I agree with you. I think the Greens are deluded. So they think that they had a brilliant campaign that their arguments had merit and they've got the drop off from labor. That's exactly right. They've they've they lacked they lacked the humility to recognize that they picked up people off labor because they couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour, so they voted Green. And at the next election, they're going to go back. Yeah, exactly. It's what happens, you know, and and it's it's actually amazing on the right side of politics that David has grown, I say David, I should say act now, but act has grown again because they should have seen a swing back. But that's something that National probably needs to think about as to why when they grew, they didn't pick up those act voters again. And I think we can all probably quite easily see why. But it's it's Taylor's all his time, the patterns always there when the when the main parties are not serving their their base. They go to the next best thing, which is those ones on the periphery. And that's why that's why Greens are so big this time. And I think that we were we're in for a term of pay us from them because Marama and Chloe will be trying to out do each other rather than work together. And whereas James would make concessions, Chloe will not make concessions. And so I think we'll be in for a bit of a ride with them. Yeah, she had Chloe has right righteous indignation on her side all the time. She's absolutely adamant. She's 100 percent right and will not count on anybody saying anything different. No, the only thing I can't work out is whether it was Marama or Chloe or both that were involved in stabbing gores, because I reckon that's an inside job. Do you reckon it's an inside job? Because I know, obviously, that the thing that disturbs me most about the goal is situation is that that story was shocked around a little bit before it was it made its way to ZB and the media didn't want to publish it. Think about like what a massive thing it's become now. She's lost to a national MP that was shoplifting. We would never have heard the end of it. But it was all, oh, no, she's a woman of color. You know, it's understandable. It's stressful, her job, blah, blah, excuse, excuse, excuse. Yeah, nah. Yeah, sorry, you're a thief. Yeah, well, that's I mean, that was one of my pieces that has had the most anger directed at it that isn't about trans stuff, because that usually gets the most anger because you're attacking a woman of color. But it was because I said that actually, you know, we can say sympathy for your mental health, that's really awful, you know, it's just a crutch that politicians use, isn't it, to get out of the hard stuff. Oh, I was a bit sad. I'm feeling depressed. You know, everybody has, New Zealand's one of the highest medicated countries in the world. Almost everybody you meet is on some sort of antidepressant, right? So I don't use it as a crutch. I've been very outspoken over the years. I have bipolar disorder and I have had to spend a lot of time with doctors and therapists, learning how to live with it, take medication. If I shoplifted, I myself would take responsibility for it. But you can bet my dad and my partner and my sisters would all be like, that's on you. They wouldn't be saying, oh, you've got bipolar, how sad. They'd be saying, what were you doing? Shoplifting. Luckily, you didn't do it when you were at my house. I would have taken you to the police by myself. Well, they wouldn't. My dad would totally be the parent who would drive us there and say, right, she's been shoplifting. But that's the thing, isn't it? We've got the society now where there are almost no consequences for outrageous behavior and you can explain it away. Oh, no, can't you understand? I'm an oppressed trans person, you know, I'm a vulnerable person. Oh, no, Maori, it's understandable why they do that because they're vulnerable. Yeah, we saw this all the time in the COVID rubbish. It's like a vulnerable community. They're vulnerable old people, vulnerable Maori, vulnerable Pacific Islanders. If you can tell someone they're vulnerable long enough and loud enough, guess what? They'll believe it. They'll believe it. Right? Yeah. And on the other hand, you've got Rairi Waititi, who says that Maori have got superior DNA and all that. But then he's got his hand out for the vulnerable payments. So which is it? Which is it, mate? Yeah, I just think it's the bigotry of low expectations is significant in this country. And that what people forget is when they say this group of people needs help because they're not capable of doing it themselves. You're saying that you were capable and you're able to. It's condescending, isn't it? It's condescending. It's paternalistic and it's old fashioned. But politicians keep doing it. Well, it's another thing that if they don't hit those buzzwords, they get the bad headline, you know, you look at. I mean, I watch post cap most weeks because I don't know. Does your political tragic like me? And you look at the questions. It doesn't matter what the Prime Minister is talking about. He could be talking about the price of bread or he could be talking about the Olympics or something. They will always stick to the formulae questions of you'll hear about what does this mean for Maori? Don't you think that the poor would? And it everything is squeezed into that narrative instead of it being it's like the response to Louise Upton's comments. They get a whole lot of, you know, vulnerable beneficiaries who are frightened about what's going to happen. Oh, and that's what you know, what's my favorite thing to do is when they those people that they put on like the morning shows or in the news, vulnerable people Google them and they're all activists. They're all activists or they're all like members of the Labour Party who, you know, like always without fail. David Farah would used to write out a he used to put posts on his blog. He said, oh, that's a terrible story. Of course, what the news media forgot to mention or the journalists that stuff forgot to mention is that this person is a branch, a branch chairman of the Labour Party. Yes, you know, they've got this list of aggrieved people for almost any perceived trouble that have got a handy little spout sound bite about how worse off they're going to be. And in the flip side of that is if we just kept on spending money that all be OK. That's been like I just watched Question Time again tragic. But I did. And Louise Upton was she fielded, I think, three questions, maybe because of the welfare announcement. Essentially, what she is saying is that life is harder for people on the benefit. So let's try to help them off the benefit. Yeah. And that is what she's saying. She's not saying they're bad people. She's not saying let's take everything off them right away. Let's, you know, it's life's hard, so let's make it better. Ricardo Menendez-Marche's question. I was like, are you seriously saying that the government shouldn't have obligations on beneficiaries who are on jobseeker to attend meetings and to try and get a job? Because that's what he was saying. He's basically saying you can't prove that this helps them to get a job. So you should just leave them alone. Just give them the money and leave them alone. Right. It's it's incredible because that's why I call him El Woco Loco. Oh, my God, I don't know if they've made him like the little shadow leader of the house or something. He's just a winger. But he's doing all these points of order now and they're always really bad, like, or wrong. Jerry Brownlee will just laugh at him. Isn't Jerry a better speaker than Trevor? I mean, you know, I don't know. I have a bad dream, though. I didn't think Adrian was a better speaker. Yeah, I thought he was a good speaker. But Jerry's getting into his own. I think one of his biggest challenges is going to be breathing. Breathing. And God bless our deputy prime minister. But he has to reign him in because Winston is just jumping up at the drop of a hat for points of order that are probably not points of order. They're just making a point, you know? Yeah. And so he has to and Winston will keep doing that if he's got free reign to do it. Because that's Winston. But isn't it wonderful to watch? You know? It is. It's hilarious. Like, I keep sharing some of the clips. He gave James Shore a good smack last week when he made some comments. He says, oh, you should just be thankful. I'm not talking about academic credentials. This is sit down. Anyway, on that note, we've run out of time, really. It's been a real pleasure chatting to you about free speech and everything else, including the speakers and what they do. Well, I have to have you on again. It's been a real pleasure. It was lovely to to meet you finally as well. Yeah, likewise, likewise. And he's at the forefront of what I termed the turf wars. But the core thrust of that debate is actually a free speech debate. These are important debates that need to be had. And we need to avoid cancel culture and all that means with the platforming and the silencing of people with differing views. And that's why we here at RCR always will explore both sides of any issue. Let me know your thoughts on this topic, good or bad by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057. Thank you for tuning into RCR reality check radio. If you like what you're listening to, just like what you're listening to, either way, we want to hear from you. Get in touch with us now. You can text us with your message to 2057. That's 2057 or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio. We would love to hear from you to connect with us today.